Djelal ed-Din Aselder oğlu Korkmasov ( – 27 September 1937) was a Dagestani revolutionary and Soviet politician who served as Chairman of the Dagestan Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) in 1920 and as from 1921 to 1931. Despite originally being a Menshevik or anarchist, he led the Bolsheviks to victory over various anti-communist groups in the Russian Civil War, and he is sometimes described as the founder of Dagestan.

Born into a family of Kumyk nobility, Korkmasov was the first Dagestani to study at the University of Paris, and he was a leader of anti-government protests by peasants during the Russian Revolution of 1905. In exile, he supported the Young Turks before returning to Russia in May 1917, amidst the Russian Revolution. He led the Dagestan Socialist Group, a non-Bolshevik left-wing party within the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, and led the party to a landslide victory in the August 1917 regional election. He was a political rival to Najmuddin of Gotzo and the , and following the he joined the Bolsheviks, quickly becoming their leader in Dagestan. Taken prisoner by forces under the control of the Ottoman Empire and warlord Lazar Bicherakhov in late September 1918, later leaving prison and joining an that led to him becoming leader of the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

As leader of Dagestan Korkmasov invested heavily in agricultural improvement and development, taking inspiration from Benito Mussolini's drainage of Italian marshes. He was also involved in Turkic affairs, helping to draft the Yañalif Latin-script Turkic alphabet and negotiating and signing the 1921 Treaty of Moscow between Russia and Turkey. He was appointed to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union in 1931 before later being executed during the Great Purge.

Early life and career

Djelal ed-Din Aselder oğlu Korkmasov was born on 1 October 1877 in the village of , in the Dagestan Oblast of the Russian Empire to a family of Kumyk nobles (). His maternal grandfather had been a murid to anti-colonial uprising leader Imam Shamil, while his paternal grandfather fought under Shamil's Caucasian Imamate, being sent into internal exile and executed after the failure of the uprising. His father, Aselder-Hajji, was an officer in His Imperial Majesty's Own Escort and an employee of the colonial bureaucracy in Dagestan Oblast. He later left the bureaucracy due to his opposition to Russian rule and became a housekeeper.

Korkmasov studied at the , graduating with honours. While studying, he began writing, sending some completed works to a literary magazine for students and literary critic Nikolay Mikhaylovsky. Korkmasov began studying at the natural sciences faculty of Imperial Moscow University, but left after a year to enter the University of Paris, where he also studied at the natural sciences faculty. Korkmasov was the first individual from Dagestan to study at the University of Paris. He also graduated from the École pratique des hautes études and the , a Paris-based university founded by Russian Maksim Kovalevsky. From 1903 to 1906, Korkmasov was a lawyer in the capital of Dagestan, Temir-Khan-Shura (now Buynaksk).

1905 Revolution, arrest and exile Korkmasov participated in the Russian Revolution of 1905 as it spread to the North Caucasus, joining the Temir-Khan-Shura branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He was locally regarded as the leader of Dagestan's landless peasants, despite his status as an uzden and member of the intelligentsia. Korkmasov was also the leader of the Temir-Khan-Shura branch of the All-Russian Peasant Union, and advocated for the expropriation of landlords' properties, refusing to pay taxes, militarisation of the peasantry and the establishment of zemstvos in Dagestan. During the revolution, Korkmasov met other radical intellectuals, such as , with whom he would later collaborate.

The extent to which Korkmasov's activities with the Bolsheviks, a branch of the RSDLP, has been disputed. Researcher M. A. Abdullayev has claimed that the Temir-Khan-Shura branch of the Peasant Union was responsible for establishing the Bolsheviks among the highlander peasantry in the North Caucasus. Z. G. Kharisova, by contrast, has argued that it is unlikely that Korkmasov was closely connected to the Bolsheviks during the Revolution of 1905, citing the significant presence of Mensheviks and anarchists in the Temir-Khan-Shura Peasant Union and the fact that the Bolsheviks were primarily focused on the cooping, machining, and railway industries. She has additionally stated that Korkmasov in particular was especially close to the Mensheviks. Other sources, particularly those written during the Soviet era (both in official Soviet historiography and among White émigrés), have described him as an anarchist.

Between June and July 1906, Korkmasov was arrested on three separate occasions. On 20 August of that year he was sentenced by the Ministry of Internal Affairs' to internal exile in the town of Lodeynoye Pole in the northwestern Olonets Governorate. In early 1907, at his own request, he was deported from Russia to France, where he returned to the University of Paris. He studied at the university's faculty of law, and became a member of the Young Turks movement supporting the Committee of Union and Progress in the Ottoman Empire. After moving to the Ottoman Empire, he founded a Russian-language pro-Young Turk newspaper, known as Constantinople News (). The newspaper had a distribution of 1,000 copies. During his time in exile, Korkmasov was close to Mustafa Subhi, an Ottoman communist who would later establish the Communist Party of Turkey.

Revolution, return to Dagestan and electoral politics (1917–1918) Korkmasov returned to Dagestan in May 1917, amidst the Russian Revolution. By the time of his return, the North Caucasus was ruled by the Union of the Peoples of the Northern Caucasus, an effectively-independent body that claimed autonomy under the Russian Provisional Government. Together with Dahadayev, , and others, he formed the Dagestan Socialist Group, comprising Dagestan's premier, largely-leftist intellectuals. The group was small; Ṭahaq̇adiqala would later claim that it effectively comprised a group of five or six men. Of the Socialist Group's members, Korkmasov was the most radical and had the most enemies among Dagestan's local elite. Upon his return, he proclaimed that "whether the mullahs want it or not, the revolution will decide the land question and the status of women in its own way", in remarks that incensed the general population.

The Socialist Group's early activities were protests calling for the resignation of Ibrahim Gaydarov from Dagestan Oblast's local administration. They soon scored a significant victory after bringing Ali-Hajji of Akusha, the sheikh of a Naqshbandi tariqa who was the de facto ruler of the Dargin, Kaitag-Tabasaran and Temir-Khan-Shura districts. At a rally during Mid-Sha'ban in June 1917 or 1918, Ali-Hajji endorsed the Socialist Group, saying that their electoral victory would be beneficial for sharia law. This support enabled the group to expand its presence, building a coalition between moderate clergy members and socialists.

In the leadup to the 5 August 1917 election to Dagestan's local government, the Regional Executive Committee, Korkmasov heavily emphasised the Socialist Group's proposed land reforms. These reforms interested the local peasantry, and the elections resulted in a decisive victory for the Socialist Group. , a member of the centre-left Socialist Revolutionary Party affiliated with the Socialist Group, was elected as Commissar of the Dagestan Regional Executive Committee, while Korkmasov was appointed chairman. The majority of seats in the committee went to either members of the Socialist Group or individuals who had expressed support for them. Korkmasov earned the derogatory nickname of (Cyrillic: ), a Kumyk term for an Islamic preacher, from his political opponents in reference to his oratory skills and devotion to socialism.

Following the socialists' victory in the election, local religious leaders in Dagestan were alarmed by their increasing popularity. 12 days after the election, imams Najmuddin of Gotzo and Uzun-Hajji oversaw the . Though the event had been scheduled upon the conclusion of the in May, the socialist victory gave the imams further impetus to undertake drastic action. Najmuddin was briefly appointed as by a group of five thousand local supporters from the Dagestani highlands, before being forced to relinquish the title three days later.

The short-lived attempt by Najmuddin to seize control of Dagestan sparked a political crisis in the North Caucasus, and several local political and religious leaders unaffiliated with the Socialist Group, such as sheikh and and . Najmuddin's attempted seizure of power was particularly opposed by Chechen sheikhs such as Arsanov, and a month later he accepted the lesser title of mufti. The fallout from the Andi Congress was minimised as a result of the October Revolution in metropolitan Russia, as a result of which the Provisional Government was overthrown and replaced by a Bolshevik government led by Vladimir Lenin. Korkmasov, as with all other members of the Socialist Group, strongly condemned the overthrow of the Provisional Government and expressed support for the deposed Russian Constituent Assembly.

Civil War

After the Andi Congress, but either shortly prior to or shortly after the October Revolution, the was held. At the event, the Union of Highlanders declared itself to be independent from Russia as the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus. Korkmasov and the remainder of the Socialist Group continued to primarily involve themselves in fighting the as the Russian Civil War escalated and began spreading to the North Caucasus. A soviet was formed in the city of Port-Petrovsk (now Makhachkala) by Bolshevik Ullu-biy Buynaksky in December 1917, as part of a Bolshevik strategy of reaching the South Caucasian city of Baku.

In January 1918, the National Committee with the intention of again declaring Najmuddin Imam of Dagestan and Chechnya. Shortly after being declared imam at the town's congregational mosque, however, he again backed down, leading Uzun-Hajji to leave the National Committee and leave politics for the North Caucasian highlands. Korkmasov enlisted the aid of Islamic scholar Ali al-Ghumuqi in convincing Najmuddin to step down by dismissing his claim to the title of imam as unjustified and illegal. Al-Ghumūqī's support for Korkmasov divided the Regional Executive Committee, which was by this point so embroiled in crisis as to be practically defunct, and particularly angered members of the National Committee. However, Nuh-bey Tarkovsky, a former Tsarist military officer associated with the National Committee, provided an armed contingent of 300–400 soldiers, as well as mountain guns and the intact fortress of the village Khunzakh to the Regional Executive Committee. With the Bolsheviks increasingly threatening the Mountainous Republic's government in Dagestan, the assistance was welcomed by the Executive Committee's leadership.

The began on 23 March 1918 as Najmuddin's forces entered the city at the Regional Executive Committee's urging in an effort to crush the soviet. Ṭahaq̇adiqala noted that the battle, which killed 1,200 people, was an effective declaration of war against the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which surrounded the North Caucasus from the south (Baku), north (Astrakhan), and west (Vladikavkaz, which had been taken over by the Bolsheviks in January). In the aftermath of the battle, the Mountainous Republic quickly descended into anarchy, as militias loyal to Uzun-Hajji the city of Khasavyurt.