Official LJ RIA Kabardino-Balkaria

December 4th, 2013 , 10:01 am

At first there was surprise. Vacationers, i.e. people who came from all over the country to the all-Union resort city of Nalchik for some reason called the local residents Kabardino-Balkars. What was surprising was not the fact of ignorance of the ethnic composition of the multinational republic. Are there not enough uneducated workers and weavers in such a huge country as the USSR? What caused bewilderment was the question: “Apart from Russians, what nationalities live in Nalchik? Kabardino-Balkarians?” sounded from the lips of people not only with secondary education, but also with university diplomas.
This seemed sacrilege to me until I saw one program (this was at the height of Gorbachev’s glasnost) on the First Program of the USSR Central Television. In that program, teenage girls from the capital, when asked by the film crew: “What is your nationality?”, answered: “Muscovite!”


The answers from the residents of Belokamennaya did not surprise me. In those years, residents of the capital divided the entire country into Muscovites and visitors. Muscovites treated those who were forced to look for a good suit, shoes, electronics, a mink hat, a leather coat and other high-demand goods that never entered the retail chain in the periphery with particular hostility. But the employees of the capital’s stores adored those who were looking for “scarcity” and were always happy to “push” something to them, adding a substantial commission for themselves to the state price. Most Muscovites treated ordinary buyers who came from neighboring regions for meat, sausage, butter, candy, etc. with undisguised contempt, calling them “occupiers,” “paratroopers,” and “bag slingers,” apparently for their large shoulder bags for products.
Another example that sheds light on the “advancement” of ordinary rural residents of Central Russia regarding the issue of ethnic groups inhabiting the country. I remember how, in my first construction team in 1973 in the Mozhaisk district (100 kilometers from Moscow), the village women stunned me, declaring that “Russians, non-Russians and Armenians live in the Soviet Union.” “What about Stalin, he was Georgian?” - I couldn’t resist being sarcastic. “Stalin was Stalin!” - they simply and laconically retorted. The most amazing thing is that these women, approximately 50-55 years old, studied at school, some graduated from seven classes, others from ten. I asked my question about nationalities more than once in different villages and in the city of Mozhaisk itself, the result was approximately the same.
Unlike Central Russia, in the Caucasus, people for the most part are very well versed in nationalities and ethnic groups. Moreover, people here, and not only the elderly, know their relatives well: close and distant; not only your relatives, but also your neighbors, friends, work or study colleagues.
Maybe that’s why statements like “all Balkars are relatives”, “all Kabardians are relatives” appeared.
“Are all Balkars and Kabardians really related to each other?” - I thought somehow. This happened during the heyday of social movements and the increased interest of former “Soviet people” in their national roots, i.e. about a quarter of a century ago.
As a basis for calculating the degree of closely related ties of these ethnic groups, I based the fact that in the average Caucasian (in this case, Balkar or Kabardian) family, three or four children grow up, get married and also raise three or four. This figure is not exaggerated and has been confirmed by some statistics since the mid-19th century. For a long time, starting from the Middle Ages and until approximately the mid-60s of the 20th century, from 8 to 12 children were born in the average mountain family. Taking into account the factor of child mortality, wars and epidemics, accidental death from accidents, illnesses at a relatively young age, on average 3-4 children grew up in one family and created their own families. Since relatives come from both parents - father and mother - the number of relatives in the second generation does not triple, but increases sixfold or sevenfold.
Let's take the average number 6.5. Now all that remains is to raise it to a power. Anyone who wishes can check these calculations himself using a regular calculator. Our calculation gives 75.4 thousand people in the sixth generation. For comparison: according to the 1979 All-Union Census, there were 70.2 thousand Balkars in the KBASSR and more than 14 thousand in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In the seventh generation we already get 490.2 thousand people. According to the same census, there were approx. Kabardians. 359 thousand people. On Wikipedia, the figures from the same census look slightly different: Balkars - 66,334, Kabardins - 321,719.
Probably, one could prefer the figures of the most popular Internet resource to old newspaper clippings and one’s memory, if not for one factor. On Wikipedia, anyone can be an author, editor, or proofreader, who has the right to change the text and numbers as he or she wants.
In any case, it is clear that theoretically all Balkars are relatives no further than the 6th generation, and Kabardians - no further than the 7th generation. For greater accuracy, we can “dilute” the kinship of these ethnic groups by one more degree in order to neutralize the effect of two factors: 1) Balkars and Kabardians married not only with representatives of their own ethnic group, 2) Balkars traditionally (especially before deportation) married mainly only with representatives of their own, relatively speaking, tribes: “Malkars” (“Cherekts”), “Chegems”, “Baksans”, “Khulamo-Bezengis”, which somewhat slowed down the process of uniform “mixing” of the entire ethnic group.
Thus, it turns out that almost all Balkars are blood relatives no further than the 7th generation, and Kabardians - no further than the 8th generation. And hardly anyone can refute this with reason. But here one curious question arises: are people of the same surname, of the same clan, even if some of them are written as Kabardians and others as Balkars, blood relatives? As a rule, in this case, both parties willingly acknowledge the relationship, and sometimes even tell who ethnically “separated” from whom, although they remain related by blood.
It would be interesting to find out what is the size of this, so to speak, “Kabardian-Balkar ethnic group”?
In search of an answer, we had to “punch through” data on undoubtedly Kabardian-Balkar clans: Bozievs, Kazievs, Otarovs, Gergokovs, Sabanchievs, Sokurovs, etc., then on other names, depending on the availability of the relevant information. The information was taken from various sources, including “homemade” databases throughout the Russian Federation and individual regions, computer disks with which can always be purchased at the Gorbushkin Dvor shopping complex in Moscow.
Of course, the data is not complete. I am sure that errors could not help but creep into this information, and there was probably some double counting. Often the same person can be entered into the database twice, this especially happens with girls who change their last name when they get married.
A few more words before the “list of clans of Kabardian-Balkar nationality” is presented. Along with the undisputed “bi-ethnic” surnames, the list includes clans where a small number of people, sometimes even several families, are spelled Kabardians or, respectively, Balkars. In doubtful cases, it was necessary to select the entire surname according to the patronymic of the men (after all, a woman could even be Chinese, get married and register as Balkarova or Malkarova) and determine by the presence of a clear affiliation of the name with a Kabardian or Balkar. For example, anyone can distinguish Magomedovich (Magometovich) from Mukhamedovich. But Boris Aslanovich, he is also Boris Aslanovich in Africa. Therefore, we had to choose differently: if a person’s patronymic is Auesovich, Galievich or Muzachirovich, most likely he is a Kabardian, but if we meet Mazanovich, Akhmadiyevich or Khuseevich, then we boldly write him down as a Balkar. Although, of course, this is not a guarantee. In some cases, place of residence helps: if Aslan Khasanovich lives in Kakhuna, then he is most likely a Kabardian, if he is registered in Upper Zhemtal, he is a Balkar.
So, for example, the Shomakhovs remained outside the list, although two out of 3,049 people had the patronymic Magometovich, and the Shurdumovs (3 Magometovichs out of 6,693 representatives of this family). For the same reasons, in order not to artificially increase the share of representatives of “bi-ethnic” surnames, the most numerous clans of Kabardians - the Shogenovs and Kardanovs - were not included in the list. Although, to tell the truth, even in these surnames you can find small “interspersions” of other ethnic groups. For example, the daughter of my cousin, whose father is one hundred percent Kabardian from the Kardanov family, married a Karachay and has already become one hundred percent “turned around.”
The fact that the Balkars of the Narshaovs have Kabardian roots is quite obvious. Just like the Abaza roots of the Balkars Tramovs (according to historians, Tramovka - the ancestral village of this Abaza, and now famous Balkar, family, located in a place opposite the city of Lermontov near Mashuk, was a settlement from among those burned by General Ermolov during the Caucasian War) .
Many two-, three- and even four-ethnic surnames were not included in the list: Khasanovs, Umarovs, Chapaevs, Shidakovs, Kipkeevs, Erkenovs-Erikenovs, Yusupovs, etc., since the stated topic necessarily required a Kabardian-Balkar component. Although, I am sure, the history of the Balkar-Ossetian (or Ossetian-Balkarian?) families of the Gazaevs-Gazzaevs, Budaevs, Abaevs, Kasayevs, Mamsurovs, Tsakoevs would be no less interesting.
There is no need to talk about the Kabardian-Ossetian, or more precisely Ossetian-Kabardian, component in the Kabardian ethnic group, just remember all the Kabardian surnames that begin with the characteristic Ossetian combination at the beginning of the word “d.”
And now, a small table of Kabardian-Balkar surnames indicating the number of their representatives as of the beginning of 2012. I apologize in advance for possible, and even inevitable, inaccuracies.
The most-most Kabardian-Balkar surnames