DAGHESTAN (Dagestan), an autonomous S.S.R. in the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic. Area 55,272 sq.km. Pop. (1926) 788,078, urban 73,831, rural 714,247. Its boundaries are :— north, the Autonomous Kalmuck Area, east, the Caspian Sea, south, the Azerbaijan S.S.R., west, the North Caucasian Area, the Chechen Autonomous Area, and the Georgian S.S.R. It was created in January, 1921, and then included mainly the former Daghestan province, a mountainous area, with a narrow coastal strip. But later, in view of the need for winter pasture for the transhuman hill shepherds, the Kizlyar and Kara-Nogai steppes were incorporated in the republic. The republic falls into four structural divisions.
The main features of Daghestan are that inaccessible moun tains occupy four-fifths of its area and that, of the remaining plain, much is salt or marsh. Pasture and hayfields occupy most of the republic which is not bare, stony or sandy, forests come next, and the small remaining area suitable for crops and fruit cultivation is liable to drought and needs careful irrigation.
During the Civil War Daghestan probably suffered more se verely than any other part of Russia. Various political parties ex ploited the fierce love of liberty of the illiterate hill folk and their passionate devotion to Islam. Their fighting powers were well known and they were enlisted by the National Independents, by the Denikin group, by the Georgian Menshevists, by the Pan Islam and Pan-Turk leaders, and for a short time an emirate of the North Caucasus under the Sultan of Turkey existed. The Bolshevists, like the Imperial government, attached great im portance to the area because of its links with Baku and finally succeeded in conquering its wild peoples. But the cost was terrible ; roads, bridges, primitive irrigation schemes and the simple implements of peasant industry were completely destroyed. Of 6o villages and one town, Khasav-Yurt,, not a trace was left, while in other towns, notably Derbent, more than three quarters of the buildings were destroyed. The impossibility of moving the herds to winter pasture led to the starvation of more than 75% of them, and an equal proportion of vineyards and fruit orchards was ruined by the destruction of irrigation works. The famine of 1921-2 was specially severe in Daghestan, cattle plague broke out among the remnants of the herds in 1922 and locusts and field mice, enormously increased by the lack of vigilance in the troubled years, injured the crops in 1923, while the hurricanes and hailstorms of that year completed their ruin. The partial drought of 1924 was severe in Daghestan. Typhus, famine diseases, malaria and social diseases have wrought havoc among the survivors of these terrible times. The unemployed workers from the ruined towns fled to the hills to swell the numbers of land-less and cattle-less, half-starved hill peasants.
The new republic thus starts its existence under heavy handi caps. Capital is needed, but is not yet forthcoming, to provide new irrigation works, to replace the destroyed sheep and cattle, to rebuild the ruined towns, villages, roads and bridges and to provide seeds and implements for the poverty stricken cultivators; while the shattered morale and physique of the natives are added disabilities. A problem of much longer standing is the fact that among the bleak uplands of Daghestan, isolated by deep gorges and arid ridges, more than thirty nationalities, speaking different languages, some bearing historic names, e.g., Avars and Huns, have survived to modern times, and thus difficulties of linguistic communication are added. Attempts are being made to introduce Azerbaijan Turkish, which seems easiest for most of these na tionalities to assimilate, into the schools, but under present condi tions education is difficult and many children receive no school education. Relief works include the construction of the October canal, supplying 15 villages with the means of irrigation, the making of irrigation canals in the Kara-Nogai steppe, the regula tion of the Terek river and draining of the Sulak marsh, while cotton, maize and sun-flower seed cultivation is reviving, and the cotton factories at Tagier and Makach-Kala have been re opened. A scheme of electrification for the latter town and the railway to the Sulak river is planned, and small cotton, glass, leather, food-preserving and nail factories are working there, and oil refineries are being constructed. The fishing industry has been financed by credit banks and is reviving rapidly. Co-operative movements are attempting to finance the scattered peasant cultivators and their home industries of silver and tin working, bootmaking, cloth, felt and carpet making; the latter were tem porarily ruined by the destruction of sheep and consequent lack of wool supply. Possible future sources of revenue may be the establishment of health resorts and the working of the great mineral wealth, but this needs capital. In pre-war times French capital was working the sulphur, and English capital the quick silver and cinnabar mines, while the Nobel firm worked the naphtha and natural gas. The coastal railway forms part of the line linking Baku with the Black Sea, but turns westward at Makach-Kala; a branch from Shakhmaya, just north of Makach Kala goes south-west to Buinaksk (Temir-Khan-Shura), situated on the north to south road, while another branch from the inland town of Cherelennaya on the Terek goes north-east as far as Kizlyar, at the head of the Terek delta. The administrative centre is Makach-Kala (Petrovsk). Pop. 1926 (31,702), a port on the Caspian through which naphtha from Groznyi is exported to the Volga. The town has cold storage facilities, a lighthouse, and routes to various Caspian ports. It has small manufactures (see above) and recently a factory for extracting soda from Glauber salts has been established, and sulphur extraction has re-commenced. South of it is a health resort with sulphur springs. Derbent, also a port on the Caspian, has wool spinning mills, and like Makach-Kala, is a centre for the fishing industry. Kizlyar. at the head of the Terek delta, is a centre for the vine and fruit of the district and should increase in importance if the plans for irrigating the area and settling the poverty stricken hill-peasants in the surrounding district are successful. An electric station has been established at Akhty, in the heart of the mountains, on the Samur and efforts are being made to drain the Samur delta marshes, while another electric station has been established near Gunib in the central mountain area. Buinaksk (Temir-Khan Shura) is increasing in importance owing to the establishment of fruit preserving works, the products of which can be sent by rail to Makach-Kala.