‘Thank God, We Were Living Back Then’. Besalma and the Gagauz Heritage

Besalma is a village almost entirely inhabited by Gagauz people. Between its small unpaved roads, rural houses and cattle tracks, the distinctive sound of the Gagauz language, not too dissimilar from Turkish, can be heard everywhere. The village is the site of the National Gagauz Museum, founded in 1966 by Dmitry Karachoban, a local artist, poet and educator who dedicated a large part of his life to rediscovering the ethnographic and linguistic heritage of Gagauzia.

Despite a recent revival in Gagauz culture, there are increasingly fewer people, mostly elderly, that remember how the village with all its traditions looked like in the past. Because of the primary role of the Russian language in Gagauzian schools’ curriculum, younger generations tend to speak less Gagauz in public.

“I know a lot of songs about women and love. Often sad stories about the hard destiny faced by women. For example, about a woman who could not marry the man she loved, about family feuds and the impossibility to make your own decisions.”

Elena Gheorgievna Ceakir remembers well how the village looked in the past. Elena is in her seventies and lives with her husband in a house just beside the museum. She is a Gagauz native speaker and, although able to speak Russian, she turns to Gagauz whenever she can.

It is freezing cold outside as we sit down in a small, warm room, heated by a large stove and covered in carpets. Elena is working the wool and smiles when she sees our thin socks, which are clearly not suitable for the weather. “If I only knew, I would have made a good pair of woolen socks for you. Now I only have old ones that I cannot give you!”

On the walls, there is a series of black and white portraits of her family, taken a long time ago. Some of her sons live in Russia now. “Thanks God, we were living back then. Life was tough but people used to gather and sing. Weddings lasted three days,” she says. During Soviet times, the Gagauz culture and language were not widely acknowledged and there was no official celebration or folklore festival in the village. When Mikhail Gorbachev, the last USSR leader, during the perestroika (a period of political reforms at the end of the 1980s) mentioned the Gagauz nationality for the first time in an official speech, he mispronounced the adjective ‘gagaúz’, saying instead ‘gágauz’. Back then, weddings were amongst the most awaited social occasions where Gagauz people could express themselves and their culture.

Elena worked all her life in the fields and she learned how to sing at a young age. She still knows many songs in Gagauz even though she rarely sees her former friends with whom she used to sing. “Now all of my friends are married, of course, and they have grandchildren. So we do not gather anymore. Although they all came to visit me and my husband on our golden wedding anniversary. We were even dancing together. It was interesting.”

Elena starts singing a few songs in front of us, whilst untangling a ball of wool. Despite her age and the emotions the songs clearly evoke, her delivery is still remarkable. “I know a lot of songs about women and love. Often sad stories about the hard destiny faced by women. For example, about a woman who could not marry the man she loved, about family feuds and the impossibility to make your own decisions and so on.” It is a story that we often hear in Moldova: a nostalgic remembrance of the past, when things were much harsher but, according to some people, more genuine.

 

Şu cayırda, şu bayırda