found.
The Dargin language is a member of the Lak-Dargwa group of the Northeast Caucasian family of languages. In Soviet times it would also have been included in the larger category of Ibero-Cau-casian languages. This grouping owed as much to the politics of druzhba narodov (the Soviet policy of Friendship of the Peoples) as it did to the reality of linguistic relation in this diverse collection of languages found in the Caucasus region. Following the general pattern of many of the non-Slavic languages of the Soviet Union, Dargin has had a modified Cyrillic alphabet since 1937. A Latin alphabet was utilized from 1926 to 1937 and before that Dargin was written in an Arabic script.
A modest number of books was published in Dargin during the Soviet period. From 1984 to 1985, for example, a total of fifty-one titles appeared. This compares favorably with other ethnic groups of its size, but without an ethnic jurisdiction of its own. A people such as the Abkhaz, with less than a third of the population of the Dargins, had 149 titles published in the same two-year period.
The Dargins have competed with other local nationalities for position within the diverse Dagestan Republic as ethnic politics are manipulated along with religious identity. The Dargins have traditionally been Sunni Muslims, with the strong inDASHKOVA, YEKATERINA ROMANOVNA fluence of Sufism characteristic in the Caucasus region. See also: CAUCASUS; DAGESTAN; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Karny, Yo’av. (2000). Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
(1743-1810), public figure, author, and memoirist.
As director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and president of the Russian Academy, Princess Yekaterina Romanovna Dashkova (n?e Vorontsova) was one of the first women to hold public office in Europe. By any standard, Dashkova led a remarkable life: She was born in 1743 to a prominent Russian noble family, the Vorontsovs. After losing her mother at the age of two, Dashkova grew up in the household of her uncle, Count Mikhail Vorontsov, where she received the best instruction available for young women. Yet, as she points out in her Memoirs, Dashkova felt compelled to supplement her education with intensive reading of authors such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Helv?tius, and demonstrated a lively interest in politics from her earliest years. Her passion for learning, and for theories of education, would prove constant throughout her life.
In 1759 Dashkova married Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Dashkov and bore him three children in quick succession: Anastasia (1760-1831), Mikhail (1761-1762), and Pavel (1763-1807). Their marriage was happy, but short-lived: Mikhail died after a brief illness in 1764, leaving Dashkova with the task of paying his debts and rearing their two surviving children. Significantly, Dashkova chose never to remarry. Moreover, her relationship with her children became the source of recurring sorrow to Dashkova, who outlived her son and disinherited her daughter.
By far the most significant figure in Dash-kova’s life, however, was Empress Catherine II, whom Dashkova met in 1758, while the former was Grand Duchess and twice the age of the fifteen-year-old Dashkova. According to Dashkova, the attraction between the two was immediate, if only because-as she writes with some exaggeration in her Memoirs-“there were no other two women at the time . . . who did any serious reading” (p. 36).
The defining moment in Dashkova’s life took place in 1762, when the young princess took part in the palace revolution that overthrew Peter III and brought Catherine, his wife, to power. While historians continue to debate the precise role that Dashkova played in the coup, Dashkova places herself at the center of the revolt in her Memoirs. Catherine initially rewarded Dashkova’s loyalty with gifts of money and property. Within a short time, however, the relationship between the two women deteriorated-the result, perhaps, of Dashkova’s exalted claims for her role in Catherine’s ascension to the throne.
Following the death of her husband in 1764, Dashkova spent much of the next two decades in self-imposed exile from the Russian court. From 1769 to 1771, and again from 1775 to 1782, Dashkova traveled abroad, overseeing her son’s education in Scotland and meeting with prominent figures of the Enlightenment, such as Diderot, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and Adam Smith. After Dashkova returned to Russia, in 1783 Catherine appointed her director of the Academy of Sciences, which the previous director had left in considerable disarray. Not only did Dashkova restore the fortunes of the Academy-much as she would affairs on her various estates-but she also inspired Catherine to found the Russian Academy, with the goal of compiling the first Russian etymological dictionary and fostering Russian culture. In her role as director of both academies, Dashkova was instrumental in bringing Enlightenment ideas to Russia. Dashkova also wrote and published extensively: She translated works on education, travel, and agriculture; composed verse and several plays; and oversaw the publication of several journals.
After quarrelling with the empress over the publication of the Yakov Knyazhnin’s play Vadim Novgorodsky, which Catherine claimed was an attack on autocracy, Dashkova requested a leave of absence from the Academy in 1794. Catherine’s death in 1796 brought further misfortune to Dashkova: In order to punish her for the role she played in the downfall of his father, Emperor Paul exiled Dashkova to a remote estate in northern Russia. One year later, after Dashkova appealed for clemency on the grounds of ill health, Paul
DASHNAKTSUTIUN
permitted her to return to Troitskoye, her estate near Moscow. Paul’s death and the accession of Alexander I to the throne in 1801 brought an end to Dashkova’s exile, but she chose to spend her remaining years at Troitskoye, managing her holdings and writing her celebrated memoirs.
As a historical figure, Dashkova remains significant for her prominent role in the intellectual life of eighteenth-century Russia: She exemplified the Enlightenment ideal of the educated woman, or femme savante, and inspired both admiration and anxiety among her contemporaries for her unusual achievements. Furthermore, her accomplishments illuminate central themes in the social and cultural history of Russia: female intrigue and patronage during the era of empresses; the persistence of noble family politics in the emerging bureaucratic state; and the Russian reception of the Enlightenment. See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; CATHERINE II; PETER III
Dashkova, E. R. (1995). The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova: Russia in the Time of Catherine the Great, tr. and ed. Kyril Fitzlyon, with an introduction by Jehanne M. Gheith. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
MICHELLE LAMARCHE MARRESE
The Hay heghapokhakan dashnaktsutiun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation, ARF, Dashnak Party, or Dashnaktsutiun) was founded in 1890 in Tbilisi, by Russian Armenian intellectuals, in order to help Armenians in the Ottoman Empire obtain economic and political reforms. The party established branches throughout the Ottoman and Russian Empires as well as in Europe and the United States. At different times the party supported guerrilla activities, political action, and Western intervention as means to achieve its goals in the Ottoman Empire.
In the Russian Empire the Dashnaktsutiun led the opposition to the anti-Armenian policies of the tsarist government (1903-1905) and, subsequently, the militia forces that clashed with Azerbaijani Turks in the Caucasus during the revolution of 1905-1907. In 1914 it supported a Russian plan for reforms in Ottoman Armenia. During World War I it also organized Russian-supported Armenian volunteer units in Eastern Armenia to help Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
The genocide committed by the Young Turk government against the Armenian population ended the presence of the party in Turkey. With the disintegration of the Russian Empire, the Dash-naktsutiun led the first independent Armenia, 1918-1920, only to cede power to the Bolsheviks in 1920. The party, along with other noncommu-nist groups, was banned from Soviet Armenia.
In the diaspora the Dashnaktsutiun focused on community-building, representing Armenians in host countries, and pursuing national aspirations internationally. Until the 1960s that meant a free and independent Armenia. Beginning in the 1970s, the party shifted its focus from an anticommunist and anti-Soviet crusade to an anti-Turkish campaign for the recognition of the genocide and territorial reparations from Turkey, for which Russian and USSR support was considered essential.
