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The focus of this chapter is on the complex developments in the North Caucasus during the time of Revolution and Civil War (1917-1921). If the period of the February and October revolutions was characterized by attempts of the North Caucasian political and religious elite to form a single state entity, the outbreak of civil war brought societal and ethnic cleavages to the fore, undermining common state-building efforts. Caucasians fought on all sides of the front, but most of the North Caucasian Muslims allied themselves with the forces of the Bolsheviks, with whom they shared a common cause: to prevent the re-establishment of the old regime. While the “White” troops under former tsarist General Anton Denikin fought for a Russia “one and united,” the Bolsheviks promised the non-Russian peoples land and freedom. Shortly after the triumph of the Bolsheviks, cracks began to appear in these alliances. By mid-1920, the mountainous parts of Chechnia and Dagestan had been set aflame in a large-scale anti-Bolshevik uprising led Imam Gotsinskii. Only in late 1921 did the Bolsheviks, with assistance from regular units of the Red Army, manage to crush this rebellion and establish military superiority.

This chapter explains developments during the early 1920s, when the Bolsheviks, for the sake of consolidating their still shaky hold on power, were eager to win over the rural populations and strengthen the alliances they had forged during the Civil War. One way to achieve this was to accommodate aspirations for freedom through the creation of autonomous administrative units in the form of ethnically defined territories, and by promoting members of the so called “titular nations” to positions of power. In the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks even co-opted religious figures into administrative local structures in order to expand their power basis and gain the trust of the native populations. This chapter provides an insight into developments in the Soviet North Caucasus through the life story of the famous Chechen Sheikh Ali Mitaev, whom the Bolsheviks included into the regional Chechen government in 1923, only to arrest and kill him two years later. At the same time, the Bolsheviks also conducted several campaigns to disarm the male population. The case of Mitaev illustrates the ambiguities of Soviet nationalities policies, especially regarding their attitude towards Muslims, as well as the complex struggle for power and influence in the non-Russian populated North Caucasus region.