"Ingushetia is a very special country, with 60% of the country being arable land and 3/4 of the population being farmers. Therefore, the land there is strictly protected and prohibited from destruction, and dumping heavily polluted garbage is punishable by more than 10 years of fines and a minimum fine of 2 million rubles."
I was completely unimpressed by what the Russian guide Rankar said about Ingush, and I had never even heard of the country, until I arrived in the North Caucasus Mountains, only to find that this very special country can be said to be a clear stream of modern society: on the one hand, backwardness and poverty, on the other hand, pure natural ecology and almost harsh environmental protection concepts.
On the way from Dagestan to Ingushetia, Rankar elaborates on the history and current situation of the country in great detail: about 8,000 years ago (the early days of Mesopotamia civilization), the Nakh people of the Two Rivers Valley gradually migrated to the east, one of them to the northern Caucasus Mountains, where they claimed to live in the castles of the west, and were forced to migrate due to war.
The Nakh people valued the fertile black calcium soil in this mountainous area, not only brought more advanced agricultural tools and planting techniques, but also taught the mountain people how to make and use pottery, stone tools and other tools, which were very popular with the indigenous people of the North Caucasus, and then married and merged with them to form the Ingush.
There is sufficient archaeological evidence that the Ingush people have been using horse-wheeled axles as early as 6,000 years ago, and have also learned to refine the metal elements in the ore to make armor, knives, tableware, etc. Although the population is not small, but the factors such as the frequent mountains and better equipment make the Ingush not suffer too much invasion and destruction.
Ancient Roman documents have recorded that as early as 400 BC, this people was discovered in the mountains north of the Caucasus, but mistakenly thought that they were the legendary "Kingdom of Aran" (a kingdom in ancient Roman mythology), not only did not invade the North Caucasus, but rushed to tell it to be regarded as a "forbidden area". Until the Arabs brought Islamic culture into the Caucasus Mountains, the Ingushetia were gently alienated into Muslims, but they still retained a fairly distinct indigenous culture.
In 1239, Timur's army reached the banks of the Terek River in Russia, and in order to escape the war, the Ingushetia who settled in the plains had to return to the mountains and build a large number of forts and watchtowers. However, after escaping foreign invasion and being occupied by Russia in the 18th century due to the betrayal of the internal clans, the ambitious Darryl Valley tribe took the initiative to surrender to the Russian Emperor Ivan the Terrible, leading the Russian army to sweep through hundreds of tribes and villages in Ingushe.
In 1832, baron Rosen of Russia was ordered to hang the Ingush, and in a letter to his wife he boasted: "I can wipe out several Ingushetia villages every day, and my goal is to occupy all the highlands of Ingush within 3 years and kill them all."
In fact, Baron Rosen's massacre of the Ingushetia was merely a matter of order, because the Ingushets relied on the climate and the changing nature of the mountains and played a "guerrilla war" with the Russian army: the large army retreated into the mountains, and replaced by a small army and turned back to destroy the Russian army.
As a result, the tired Russian army simply implemented the "extermination system", 13,000 soldiers divided into nine roads and simultaneously advanced into the mountains, leaving no living mouth in the places they passed, and then forcibly moved the more docile Cossacks and Ossetians to stabilize the rear. General Modo, who was in charge of the Caucasus at the time, reported to the Tsar that it was a brave and universally militarized people who were willing to die and did not want to accept alienation.
As soon as the words fell, in 1858, the North Caucasus War, in which 5,000 Ingushets participated, was launched by the indigenous democratic movement that cost the Russian army a great price, directly prompting the Tsar to order the deportation of the Ingushetia to Turkey and the Middle East desert, and the famous phrase "Muslims should go to the muslim place" was born. According to some documents declassified in 2012, more than 80 percent of Ingushetia were "voluntarily" exiled before 1865, with only a few arriving in Turkey alive and the rest sent to the Middle East desert to fend for themselves.
The remaining Ingush did not succumb, migrating all the way to the depths of the Caucasus Mountains, building one mosque after another representing indomitable will on the steep cliffs, and this group of people was not allowed to return to their original land until the founding of the Soviet Union.
In his Prison Diary, the royalist Denikin detailed the feud between the Ingushetia and Tsarist Russia: the largest, most united and strongest force in the Caucasus, who had been dispossessed of their land because of their ethnicity and culture. So they sought weapons assistance from Turkey, and when war broke out between Chechnya and the Soviet Union, the Ingushets succeeded in looting the Terek Bank and The Mint, and together with Chechnya and Dagestan declared the establishment of the "North Caucasus Mountain Republic".
In 1942, when the Germans occupied more than half of the North Caucasus in World War II, the Ingushets rejected the Chechen and German alliance proposals, resolutely opposed the invasion, and resisted until only two small towns remained, but the Soviets arrived and repelled the Germans, one of which was occupied by each side 4 times each before repelling the Germans. In gratitude to the Soviets, thousands of Ingushetia youths joined the Soviet counter-offensive against Europe.
However, the Soviet Union did not trust the Ingushets, and Stalin planned to expand the territory south to Turkey, while the Muslim Ingushetia were considered a potential threat, so in 1944, at the end of World War II, a large number of Ingushets and Chechens were eager to send a large number of Ingushetia and Siberians to no-man's land in Kazakhstan and Siberia, which is recorded in the Three Hundred Years of Siberia: At least half of the Ingush died of bitter cold, hunger and disease during the deportation.
The Ingushets, who escaped deportation, once again infiltrated the mountains and engaged in decades of guerrilla warfare with the Soviets, until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ingushetia officially joined the Russian Federation as a member state. Today, there are still many monuments, cemeteries and so on built for soldiers in the soviet era in the remote mountain villages of Ingushetia.
It takes about 6 hours to travel from Dagestan to Nazlan, the largest city in Ingushetia, and it was more than 8 p.m. when we arrived, but there are still many vehicles and pedestrians on the streets, which seems to match the size of Ingushetia.
According to the official data, the Republic of Ingushetia covers an area of only 4,000 square kilometers, of which 1,400 square kilometers are mountain forests and grasslands, and the remaining 60% of the land is arable land; the population is about 490,000, divided into 4 ethnic regions, 3 cities and 27 villages and towns, which is the smallest and least populous member country of the Russian Federation, and its economic main body is mainly agriculture, with oil reserves of about 11 million tons, which is only enough to maintain its own needs.
Nazlan is a very young city, in 1957 the Soviet Union transferred thousands of Gulag prisoners to prepare to build a North Caucasus immigration area, the construction of a decade before the initial completion, in 1967 changed the name of the city as Nazlan, and after 1991 became the capital of Ingushetia, after the destruction in 2002 the capital moved the capital to the new city of Makas.
If you look at the cityscape, the largest city in Ingushetia can only be said to be the level of Russia's third and fourth-rate, but the design of the details is very humane, such as the drinking places that can be seen everywhere on the streets. However, the guide Rankar soon poured a basin of cold water on him: this was not drinking water, but a shoewash sink, and because Ingushe lacked urban facilities and most people lived in the countryside, they would carry a lot of mud when they entered the city, so many shoewash sinks were set up.
The next day, at the suggestion of the driver, we visited the famous Ingushet scholar Logue, whose book "Ingushet culture" was translated into many languages and sold well in more than 30 countries in Europe and the United States.
In Aunt Logue's description, the Ingushetia culture is not only long-standing, but also very unique, integrating the strengths of local and Muslim cultures. Due to Russia's strict control of publications, the works had been heavily censored when they were published, and the complete manuscript that Aunt Logue kept contained the Ingushet customs I most wanted to know about.
After four hours of conversation, I had a general understanding of the reasons why Ingushetia is not recognized or even excluded by other Islamic countries, such as the traditional marriage of Ingushetia, people do not recognize Muslim men and women in arranged marriages by their parents, when an Ingushesh man proposes marriage to a woman, the woman's parents must ask for the consent of their daughter to make a decision, and the first meeting must be accompanied by many relatives and friends. The girl agrees to meet even during the wedding, but not alone, on the day of the wedding the woman's relatives and friends will use gunshots to send the bride and dowry to the groom's home, the groom will provide at least 1 sheep as a dowry to the woman's relatives and friends, and alcohol will also appear at the banquet that is forbidden by Muslims.
When she was about to say goodbye, Aunt Logue told her: Tomorrow there will be a grand Muslim rally, you can visit it. In fact, the rally we saw the next day was not a rush to the market and the market, but the local people who opposed the land exchange agreement between the Russian Federation and Chechnya, who believed that this move was harmful to the interests of the Ingushetia, so they initiated and sat quietly.
This sit-in rally has a long history, as Aunt Logue said, the original area of Ingushetia should be 26 times that of the present, of which nearly half is occupied by Chechnya, and the rest is divided between the Russian Federation and North Ossetia. It is worth mentioning that today's Ingush people did not take up arms, but instead protested by sit-ins, which can be described as a representative phenomenon of secularization. Of course, some people regard such gatherings as a sign of weakness, after all, Ingushetia is the weakest member of the Russian Federation.
In order to experience the traditional culture of Ingush more personally, we visited the chef Lasotho recommended by our aunt, and witnessed the production process of traditional dishes of Ingush, the first is the meaty goat potato pot, which can be used as a rice bowl or as a main dish, and the other is the "suncake" of the Ingush herders, which mixes chicken meat with cheese, herbs, wild vegetables, etc. and stir-frys into the flavor, puts the scones into the filling and then bakes for 3-4 hours, it is said that ingush herders often drive cattle and sheep to alpine meadows dozens of kilometers away. Bring a piece of scone at a time, and before eating it, bask in the sun to remove moisture, hence the name "suncake".
In addition to the tempting food, I also noticed that Lasotho said a word: the cost of this pot and a cake is about 300 rubles. According to the exchange rate at that time, it was 30 yuan, which also gave me the idea of exploring the price of living in Yingush.
As a result, this trip made me see an extremely rare phenomenon: Nazlan, with a population of more than 100,000, actually has 8 large markets, and the goods sold in each market are not the same as those targeted by ethnic groups, such as Market No. 2, which is patronized by a large number of Muslims, which is said to be imported from Turkey.
The 3rd market is dominated by Georgian fruits and vegetables, the price is generally low, the 4th, 6th, 7th market are All Russian and Chechen goods, mainly engaged in local and peripheral meat, fruits and vegetables, due to the slightly higher price (blueberries 550 rubles / kg, cranberries 230 rubles / kg), also known as the "noble market", here are basically non-Muslims with a better economic level.
Surprisingly, the Georgian market was actually born in 1920, the local old people generally believe that during the war between Georgia and Russia, Ingush once had a "peace market" that prohibited war, soldiers on both sides could buy necessities with local residents in this market, so they developed the custom of filling food with bottles and cans (easy to carry, prevent spoilage) and tongsu, such as a can of buckwheat flour 50 rubles, the shopkeeper will use a special shovel to press hard, There is also a large bottle of mixed honey jam for 60 roubles, which can be eaten directly on scones or bread.
Rankar said that the main reason for the low price of Georgian goods is the tax exemption policy introduced in 2012, as long as imported goods do not leave the North Caucasus region, they can enjoy the preferential prices given by Georgia.
On the way to the capital, Magas, we passed almost all over the alpine steppe landforms, although Ingushet claimed that 60% of the country was arable land, but the real situation was mostly uncultivated, and most of the locals also lived on grazing, otherwise there would be no need to import agricultural products from Turkey and Georgia.
According to the itinerary, we would stop for a short time in Magas, the capital of Ingus, to photograph the natural beauty of the Caucasus, but after arriving in Magas, I changed my mind and decided to stay for one night, because the new city was quite impressive: when the capital was moved in 2002, it was just a grassland, and now it is a thriving new look.
In fact, the original planned area of Magas was 200 square kilometers, due to economic, population, industrial and other scale restrictions, so far only 12 square kilometers of area has been opened, plus all employees of the capital government and other functional departments, there are only 8,000 people.
On the streets of Magas, a money changer showed me a brand-new stack of dollars, and Rankar immediately rejected him, turning to me and saying that it was illegal to buy and sell foreign currency in Ingushetia, and that violators would be fined heavily. Without warning, I asked her: Does the fact that the merchants with so much cash on the streets mean that ingush is very good.
The driver, who knew a little English, interjected: Ingushetia has always been very safe, especially after the situation was peaceful in 2012, people went shopping on the streets and even thieves could not see.
After taking a walk in the streets at night, I found that although Magas is small, the urban construction facilities are still quite good, especially the spacious and clean lanes and trails, the street lights on both sides and the spotless street park, which matches its official new tourist city. The citizens were also relatively more enthusiastic than the Chechens and Dagestans, and the overall quality of civilization was arguably the highest among the three North Caucasian states.
In the next few days, I really understood why the Ingush people were reluctant to reclaim land for a large number of plantings or introduce industry to increase GDP, originally in order to protect a pure land to choose to develop natural eco-tourism, which can also be said to be the purest and pollution-free natural scenery I have ever seen (the next part mainly talks about the culture and scenery of the Ingush Mountains).
(Documentary travel is not easy, I hope to get your recognition and attention)