The Loving Man

Sochi Olympics 2014

The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXII Olympic Winter Games, will be the next Winter Olympics held from February 7 to February 23, 2014 in Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The city was elected on July 4, 2007, during the 119th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Guatemala City, Guatemala. This will be the first time that the Russian Federation will host the Winter Olympics; the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.

Sochi

The Conquest of the Caucasus by the Russian Empire in the 19th century during the Russian-Circassian War, led to the destruction and killing of many Adygs -Towards the end of the conflict, the Russian General Yevdokimov was tasked with driving the remaining Circassian inhabitants out of the region, primarily into the Ottoman Empire. This policy was enforced by mobile columns of Russian riflemen and Cossack cavalry. "In a series of sweeping military campaigns lasting from 1860 to 1864 . . . the northwest Caucasus and the Black Sea coast were virtually emptied of Muslim villagers. Columns of the displaced were marched either to the Kuban River plains or toward the coast for transport to the Ottoman Empire . . . One after another, entire Circassian tribal groups were dispersed, resettled, or killed en masse" This expulsion, along with the actions of the Russian military in acquiring Circassian land, has given rise to a movement among descendants of the expelled ethnicities for international recognition that genocide was perpetrated. In 1840, Karl Friedrich Neumann estimated the Circassian casualties to be around one and a half million. Some sources state that hundreds of thousands of others died during the exodus. Several historians use the term 'Circassian massacres' for the consequences of Russian actions in the region.

(Wikipedia)

In the end of one hundred years of war period, Circassia region of the Caucasus was invaded and colonized by Russian Empire in 1864. During that period of time the inhabitants of the West Caucasus, more than one million five hundred thousand Circassians (Adige, Abkhaz and Wubikh people), were forced to leave their land in famine after all their villages and fields were burned and destroyed. They were exiled from their land to Ottoman Empire under inhumane conditions. Sochi region, where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held, was the center that the parliament of independent and free Circassia was gathering until 1864. After the Russian invasion it was not only the Circassians removed from their land but also all their cultural heritage and even their graves were completely destroyed brutally. Today in the state museums of Sochi there is nothing displayed related to Circassians, the autochthonous people of that land for thousands of years.The real ancient history of Sochi extends to Anatolian Hattis, famous Troy, Meot and Sind Empires is almost forgotten. The Russian written history of Sochi begins in 1830 with the victories bombardment of Russian Tsar Navy landing soldiers to the Socha village which was destroyed and renamed by Russians as Navagiski fortified territory. In the museums of Sochi you can only see the pictures of poor Russian mujicks who were brought from inner Russia then forced to settle to Circassia after the Circassian Exile and also the Cossacks who even appropriating the national clothes of the exiled inhabitants shamelessly. The grandchildren of the massacred and exiled native people of the 2014 winter Olympics city Sochi and the Krasnodar Kray still live in the countries they were exiled to but their faces turned towards to their homeland. There are millions of Circassians who live in the other side of Black Sea in Turkey, are longing and waiting to repatriate to their motherland. Now in destroyed Circassian villages, on the lost graves of Circassians, in Circassia, there are true strangers living there. As a result of a hundred years of iron curtain they probably don’t even have any idea about the real owners of those lands. Today Circassia became Russian Riviera where the first and the foremost Mr. Putin having rest, swimming and skiing. The Russian Federation governments are still completely blind and deaf to develop any empathy or to understand the feelings and the longings of the people of the Caucasus. Moreover the real history is distorted by the Russian state purposely. To conceal the massacre and the exile of the ninety percent of Circassians, the reality of the Circassian legendary resistance to colonial powers for more than one hundred years is obviously ignored. For that purpose producing the factitious history thesis of 450-th years voluntary joining together of Circassia’s to Marx’s so called prison of nations Tsarist Russia is very tragicomic and flippantly far away from the seriousness of a statehood. Today Russian Federation government appropriates funds of millions of rubles for spreading that propaganda to all over the Circassian federal republics (Adigeya, Karachai, Cherkes and Kabardino Balkaria) by official campaigns and imposing anniversary ceremonies instead of using that money to improve the conditions in those underdeveloped republics. Even more, regardless of the fact that all the criticism and the protest of the Circassian intellectuals and organizations both in the Caucasus and in the Diaspora, hasty preparations for 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics is still pursuing heartily. The geography and the ecological structure of that beautiful and sacred part of our land are destroyed by commands of the inconsiderate Russian politicians in Moscow atrociously. After Circassian exile in 1864 Sochi was emptied from Circassians and the Kbaada Valley was renamed as Krasnaya Polyana where the heavy construction equipments are excavating the mountains for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics now. On the contrary of Russian culture, Circassians are very respectful even to the death bodies of their enemies. Now the skulls and the bones of our honorable ancestors are thrown away all over the place by Russians barbarously. The planned grotesque destroying process of that one of the most beautiful parts’ of the Caucasus is very meaningful for Circassians. By all means we, the people of Caucasus, we are not surprised from the Russian behaviour. All the process is running by the commands of the new tsar of Russia, Mr. Vladimir Putin who has the blood of the thousands of children of Caucasus on his hands, from Chechenya, Daghestan, Beslan... etc. May Mr. Putin as an inheritor of General Yermalov, General Vorontzov, General Baryatinski, is not able to understand how his smart decisions cause pain for Circassians and confronting them. But the time will manifest. After the glasnost the governors of the Circassian republics in Caucasus were forced by public to take action to built Circassian Exile monuments. Although it has been long years, there are still not any government funds received to finish that project. At that point the supreme government shows the highest effort indeed. Nobody but only them can build such an expensive and meaningful genocide monument to our land other than 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics which must have been the symbol of the friendship and the brotherhood of people. Despite Sochi is the place where the “Drujba Derevo” (the tree of friendship) belongs to, there is no any native people left in that land, there is no any native people is allowed to settle there. As the Circassians both in Caucasus and the Diaspora announced before by sending lots of protesting letters to Olympics Committee, even the idea of holding Olympics in Sochi on the soil of genocide where the hundreds of thousands of Circassian tears, moans and curse are bleeding, can not be acceptable.2014 Sochi Winter Olympics will always be remembered only as “2014 Circassian Genocide Olympics”. Unfortunately 2014 Circassian Genocide Olympics is not only making the Olympics a tool of inane politics but it is also renewing the sorrow of Circassians in exile. Besides it also intensifies the deep and legitimate distrust on Russia for hundreds of years. It causes hate. As the inheritor of one of the most humanist culture in the world, we, the people of the Caucasus, inspite of the past and the present, we don’t want to have any kind of abhorrence towards other people including the Russians. Still, we can not be unresponsive to the provocative actions of declining and distorting the thousands of years old real history of our people and our land. As Circassians, as grandchildren of our ancestors we have enough pride and honor to not to bear this denial. Again, we want to urge all the Russian Federation governments and right minded intellectuals of Russia. Please stop those provocative actions. Stop Imperialist and Great Russian (Velikorus) chauvinist behaviour. As a criminal you can not pretend to be fair, you can not to powerful forever! You are losing the Caucasus, you are losing all the people of the Caucasus!

(Sefer BERZEG)

On this day, Feb. 14th 2014 the insanity of the Olympic ideal,

the Apollonic virtue of mastery over nature,

the loving man opens his heart and feels the blood

shrieking from the earth and snow upon

which the young heroes ski and snowboard.

The loving man is moved by beauty.

By Eros

He bleeds easily for the world and the dead

He is moved by other’s pain

And is broken by his own soul

And his unrequited love.

Schechinah beckons him

In all her manifestations of beauty

And vulnerability.

His broken heart

Allows all to enter and wound him

Especially the virginal goddess

And those who reflected her virtue.

He stands at the foot of the castle

Waiting for Her

Bathing in her memories

In her longing

Hoping she will reveal herself

If only for a fleeting moment

A gaze

A look

Is sufficient

To allow him to live another day.

This longing

Can only emerge from the broken heart

Which opens itself to repeated wounding.

A repetition of the initial wound of creation

As God Himself allowed this pain to enter Himself

And reflect it in Her, in exile, in the very woundedness of the world

Where she lives

Now exiled.

This wounding must repeat itself

In the loving man.

Who worships at Her altar.

But the loving man

Knows this,

Knows Her,

Her pain,

Her aloofness,

Her splendid isolation

As she waits patiently

Over aeons.

He must rescue Her

On the Hero’s quest

In every woman

In every gaze

He sees the longing

It cannot be him alone

It must be Her too

Waiting for him to long

And gaze and seek.

In loving her

In loving them all

He loves Her

In his pain

And brokenness

He sees Her

Finally gazing at him through the window

In the castle

For a brief moment

And the loving man

Is restored

And relieved of the burden

Of his existence

Of his self

Ever so briefly.

In the earth She conceals the blood

Of those who loved her.

The victory and the history

Will be written by others

But the loving man

Knows

In his heart is concealed

This gnosis

Of truth

A different narrative

And the pain cries out

From the earth

His heart

And She knows too

And here they meet

In this pain and sorrow

Listening to the cries of all

Whose blood soaked in Her earthiness

Silenced by the living

And the victorious.