Connection: A Sister City Lost

Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, was once Spokane’s Soviet sister city.

It was visited by then-Mayor Sheri Barnard in 1991. The two cities swapped sculptures that same year - Totem Pole, a Harold Balazs piece, was sent to Caspian port city, and the beaten copper image of the soldier-hero Shamil by Anatoli Abgudaev was placed on Scupture Walk near the Spokane River.

In some respects, it was a good fit, said Joel Moore, who was president of the Spokane Sister City Association at the time. Both had surrounding areas that relied on farming and tourism.

But problems with communication and fear for the safety of visiting delegations prompted Spokane to terminate that relationship in the mid1990s.

“We tried contacting Makhachkala for three years and got absolutely zero response,” Moore said. “You couldn’t get through by phone.” In 1994, a delegation from Spokane attended a meeting on women’s rights. “The city was not unsafe, but their car was fired on between the airport and the city,” Moore said.

Based on State Department advice, the City Council sent officials in Makhachkala a formal letter saying it planned to terminate the sister city relationship. A protest letter came back some nine months later, but by then the council had terminated the arrangement.

About all that’s left of it is the Abgudaev sculpture, just east of Shenanigan’s restaurant downtown.