Gotsinskii, Nazhmutdin

Born in 1859, in the village of Gotso, present-day Dagestan ASSR; died 1925, in Rostov-on-Don. One of the leaders of the counterrevolution in the Northern Caucasus (1917–21).

Gotsinskii was a big landowner and the son of Magomed Dongonol, one of the vicegerents of Shamil’. After the February Revolution of 1917 he joined the Dagestan bourgeois-nationalist regional executive committee and the government of the Gortsy Republic as a mufti, or spiritual leader. In 1917 he was proclaimed fourth imam of the Northern Caucasus. Gotsinskii endeavored to create on the territory of the mountaineers of the Northern Caucasus an imamate—a Shar’ia monarchy under the protection of Turkey. In March 1918, Gotsinskii’s detachments overthrew Soviet power in Petrovsk-Port. He joined the German and Turkish interventionists in fighting against the Red Army. During 1920–21, Gotsinskii actively participated in the outbreak of an anti-Soviet revolt in the mountains of Dagestan. After the revolt was crushed in March 1921, he fled to Chechnia. In 1925, Gotsinskii was arrested and shot in accordance with the sentence of a Soviet court.