I'm reading this really cool book, a really obscure, but striking story - one of those odd, unlikely stories that, through its unique oddness, actually serves to recount a bunch of things about different contexts. Its called
Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus, by Georgi M. Derluguian.
Derluguian, an Armenian who had moved out to Moscow, then America, himself, in 1997 meets a striking figure: Musa Shanib, then the head of the
Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, and residing in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. The Confederation is admittedly a movement whose time by that time had already come and gone, having had its heyday in the early 90s when the Soviet Union collapsed and ethnic nationalisms erupted throughout the mountain range and foothills. That was when Shanib's star rose, riding the tiger of Circassian nationalism that came close to putting the republic on the same trajectory that Chechnya went down. He remained an imposing figure, however, a grandee of ethnic separatism and moreover, a former guerilla commander of the Abkhaz war - where one of the men under his command was Shamil Basayev, who was to become the most feared/hated Chechen terrorist of all.
But what Derluguian finds out is that Shanib has a past; and perhaps an unlikely one. For sure the transformation of an originally secular- and democratic-oriented Caucasian separatism into more sectarian, and ultimately also Jihadist appearances is already an intriguing subject. But before his re-emergence into political life in the Gorbachev era, spearheading a dissident, nationalist opposition, Shanib had been a university lecturer on socialist self-governance, and
that was the self-chosen niche he had retreated into after a prior appearance on the republic's political stage.
Because as it happens, in a previous life Shanib turned out to have been the local version of what the French call a
soixante-huitard: one of the New Left rebels of 1968. In those still-promising days when Khrushchev had just thrown open new windows and Brezhnev hadnt quite thrown the wet blanket of stagnation over them, he had been at the center of a dissident circle of historians, philosophers and philologists, and he had subsequently developed into a devoted follower of Sakharov and his style of principled, reflective dissidence.
So the full story is, in fact: from New Left reformer to principled dissident, to nationalist revolutionary (aspiring to be the Garibaldi of the Caucasus) - to guerrilla commander training Basayev.
Now part of this previous life turns out to be an unlikely source of inspiration for Shanib. Derluguian recounts it with verve.
Quote:At last, enter Musa Shanibov, a stocky and very quick-moving man in his early sixties who immediately filled the room with his charismatic presence. Following him came a large, somber man, evidently his bodyguard [who] wore a long beard as a sign of Muslim piety. By contrast, Shanibov sported a stylish leather trenchcoat and an expensive silvery-grey papaha. In the faculty lounge this costume looked a bit eccentric. When a senior professor jokingly asked why he was dressed like a mountain shepherd, Shanibov merrily retorted that he was inventing the national tradition. At the time it seemed to me a purely coincidental echo of the famous book title.
With a hearty laugh, Shanibov proceeded to regale us with one of his favourite anecdotes: In Ankara, at the entrance to their Ministry of Defense, the young lieutenant on duty demanded that I take off my papaha because Turkey is a secular republic where Muslim head-dress is banned by law. Of course, I refused, saying that I am not a Turk [..]. We, the Kabardin Circassians, did not take off our hats even for the Russian tsars! It took a Turkish general to come downstairs and restrain the angry lieutenant. Thus I became the first man ever since the times of Ataturk to enter Turkey's Ministry of Defense wearing a papaha, this very one. The faculty laughed and nodded in approval of the story. Of course, it also served to underline Shanibov's exceptional status and unusual connections.
On Shanibov's arrival the banquet acquired the tone of a political rally. With a glass of vodka in hand, he spoke endlessly and grandiloquently about national pride, the base imperial mentality, self-determination, the pan-ethnic solidarity of the Caucasian highlanders, past sacrifices, and future challenges. Time and again I was defeated in my attempts to shift his discourse to something more specific, such as [..] the attempted revolution of 1991-1992, or Abkhazia's war against Georgia. We were already five hours and two dozen toasts into the feast when, trying to ask another question, I blurred out the words "cultural field". Shanibov's reaction was astonishing. He reached across the table to hug me: Our dear guest! My Armenian brother! Now I see that you are not a spy - forgive our confusion, but you seemed to know too much about local affairs, and my security could not figure out whether you worked for the CIA because you came from America, or for the Russian FSB because you and your companion are from Russia. But now I clearly recognize in you a genuine sociologist, for you are knowledgeable about the work of Pierre Bourdieu! (So, the long drinking session was a charade intended to sound me out for possible hidden intentions.)
I fell into my seat: And YOU?
Me?! - exclaimed Shabinov: But of course! Bourdieu's Nachala [the 1994 Russian translation of Choses Dites] became the second most important book in my life after the Holy Quran. I studied it in my hospital bed when I was recovering from a wound received in Abkhazia.
Shanibov dragged us one flight downstairs to his tiny office behind a steel-reinforced door. Sure enough, in his more peaceful capacity our exotically dressed host was professor of social studies at the same Kabardino-Balkarian University. He unlocked his safe and produced the proof: a worn-out copy of Bourdieu's book with Shanibov's underlining and scribbling all over it. In the safe I spotted a different kind of document: a photograph of Shanibov in the company of bearded guerillas, one of them clearly the Chechen, Shamil Basayev. [..]
When I asked if I could take my own photo of him, Shanibov agreed, but suddenly suggested: When you return to the West, please, show this picture to Bourdieu and tell him how greatly we appreciate his work here. I had to admit that I was returning to America rather than France, and that I was not acquainted with Bourdieu. Shanibov insisted nonetheless.
See, this kind of story, in all its ethnographic yet postmodern surrealness, makes me smile.
There was one more specific thing about this that made me smile though. I was reading my book, yesterday afternoon, up in a tiny coffeehouse up on the Castle Hill - Ruszwurm. Very charming in a kind of German way; I often go there on a Sunday. There's a lot of tourists there but the place is so small anyway that it doesn't really matter.
In fact, I was reading exactly this above page of the book as well, and chuckled. Across from me were a young man and woman, and he looked up, looked at the cover of my book, and nudged his girlfriend. I thought nothing of it but he was intently starting at the book a couple of times more, and at one point caught my glance, and gestured.
"Can I ask about the book you're reading? What language is it in?" I showed him the book, and tried to summarise in three lines what it was about (which was kind of difficult). He got a glow in his eyes and became agitated, and then - which is what made me smile again - almost literally repeated Shanibov's reaction. "I'm asking, because Bourdieu is my hero!", he blurted out; "His work is very important to me!"
He was a Swede, it turned out, and he worked as a social worker, specialised in working with agressive men. But his interests clearly went beyond the practical, and Bourdieu had shaped his conceptual vision. (His girlfriend, an engineer, empathically did not like Bourdieu - apparently having been gushed to about him once too often.)
So, there you are. Learned something new. There's a secret, global comradeship of Bourdieu fans, which you are likely to encounter in the most unlikely places, where they will reveal themselves to you upon being told or shown some reference that will serve as a magic code.
