Imperial Alchemy: Resettlement, Ethnicity and Governance in the Russian Caucasus 1828-1865

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Imperial Alchemy: Resettlement, Ethnicity, and Governance in the Russian Caucasus, 1828-1865 by DANA LYN SHERRY B.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1993 M.A. (University of Washington) 1996 M.A. (Central European University) 1998

DISSERTATION Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History in the OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS Approved:

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Chapter 1: Introduction In many ancient Books there are found many definitions of this Art, the intentions whereof we must consider in this Chapter. For Hermes said of this Science: Alchemy is a Corporal Science simply composed of one and by one, naturally conjoining things more precious, by knowledge and effect, and converting them by a natural commixtion into a better kind. A certain other said: Alchemy is a Science, teaching how to transform any kind of metal into another: and that by a proper medicine, as it appeared by many Philosophers' Books. Alchemy therefore is a science teaching how to make and compound a certain medicine, which is called Elixir, the which when it is cast upon metals or imperfect bodies, does fully perfect them in the very projection. Of the definitions o f alchemy, from The Mirror o f Alchemy, attributed to Francis Bacon (1597) This study traces the course of the two largest compact population movements in the history of Imperial Russia as experiments in social alchemy, whereby Russian officials sought to convert the rough human elements o f the Caucasus into a better kind: a society of loyal, productive subjects. Education and high culture played a role in the development of local elites, but the impact of these projects on the population as a whole remained limited. In contrast, the practice of resettlement served as a cruder mechanism for reshaping the region that touched the lives of entire communities and constituted the administration’s most radical tool for reshaping the practices of Caucasians. Resettlement opened avenues for increased state intervention, and it allowed officials to reshape the demography o f the region. Their experiments sought to achieve a two-fold transformation. First, closer supervision of indigenous ethnic groups would eradicate their undesirable qualities. Second, good administration would harness the virtues of each ethnic group by merging them into a cosmopolitan population united by loyalty to the tsar. Theoretically, ethnic difference would thus be perfected by the elixir of good governance, and produce social gold. As it evolved, however, imperial alchemy, like its chemical counterpart, proved a volatile business, and Russian administrators frequently struggled to keep up with the processes they unleashed. Ultimately, by the late nineteenth

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century, officials turned to more conservative, though equally utopian projects that emphasized the introduction of Russians to stabilize the region. The alchemy of migration studied here exposes changing visions of what constituted an ideal population in a non-Russian setting. European governments radically reconceptualized their relationships to their subjects, then citizens, in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The welfare (and wealth) of the population emerged increasingly as the purpose of government, and the science of statistics served as a tool for measuring the condition of the population as an abstract collective entity. At the same time, states took on the task of modifying the social and economic practices of their populations, and thereby increasing their own economic and military power.1 The wealth of nations, and empires, lay in their populations, and this view of governance had spread to the Russian empire by the early nineteenth century. This improvement could come through transforming the existing social body, excising harmful elements of the population, or introducing more desirable subjects into the population. Within Russia proper prior to the Soviet era, opportunities to introduce great changes were limited, but the borderlands presented much greater freedom of action.

1 For a more com plete discussion o f the em ergence o f the population as an object o f government, see M ichel Foucault, “Govemm entality” (in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governm entality. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 87-104); Ian Hacking, The Taming o f Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Libby Schweber, D isciplining Statistics: D em ography and Vital Statistics in France and England, 1830-1885 (Durham and London: Duke U niversity Press, 2006); David Horn, S ocial Bodies: Science, Reproduction, an d Italian M odernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Amir Weiner, L andscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century P opulation M anagem ent in a Com parative Fram ew ork (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). For an excellent overview o f the ways scholars have taken up Foucault’s argument, see Jonathan X avier Inda, Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, an d Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 1-27. For a brief overview o f the rise o f statistics in nineteenth century Russia, see Peter Holquist, “To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate” in A State o f N ations: E m pire an d N ationM aking in the A ge o f Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (N ew York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 112-116.

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Caucasus officials found themselves particularly well-positioned to reconstitute the population on the territory under their administration through large-scale resettlement projects. Even without state intervention, the Caucasus saw a great deal of social mobility, as communities and individuals alike responded to the shifting borders with the Ottoman Empire and Persia. While movement did not originate with state policy, officials rapidly capitalized on the chance to attract desirable subjects and to allow less desirable subjects to depart. The debates surrounding which communities should become Russian subjects and which should leave create a unique window into how the administration saw its own mission in the region and how it sought to manage the diverse peoples under its rule. Moreover, they highlight the disconnect between the simple formulations based on religious identity that emanated from Petersburg and the more complex local approach to population that determined the course of events on the ground. I trace the shift from what I term a traditional approach to population management (1801 to 1841) to a colonial mode (1841 to roughly 1877).2 The traditional mode adhered to practices o f governance that evolved over the past two centuries as the Russian state expanded into non-Russian territory. In general terms, this style of government aimed at creating a loyal community of subjects regardless of ethnic or religious identity, and

2 The secondary literature describes a nationalist approach to population in the late nineteenth century throughout the empire (see below for a more sustained discussion o f that approach). I take the year 1877 from Austin Jersild’s argument that uprisings in the highlands in that year caused imperial officials to conclude that highlanders as such were incompatible with the benefits o f empire (Austin Jersild, Orientalism an d Em pire: N orth Caucasus M ountain P eoples an d the Georgian Frontier, 1845-1917 [Montreal, Ithaca: M cG ill-Q ueen’s Press, 2002], pp. 31-32. These uprisings did not have the same impact on how the administration view ed other non-Russian communities, yet there is a general consensus that all Caucasians were marginalized by the turn o f the century. See A ldo Ferrari, A lla F rontiera dell'Imperio: g li Arm eni in Russia (1801-1917) (Milano: M im esis, 2000); Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russia and Azerbaijan: A B orderland in Transition (N ew York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Audrey Altstadt, The A zerbaijani Turks: P o w e r an d Identity under Russian Rule (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1992); Ronald Grigor Suny, Looking Tow ard Ararat: Arm enia in M o d em H istory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Ronald Grigor Suny, The M aking o f the Georgian N ation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).

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called for the cooptation of local elites who sought to become Russian subjects.3 The state then relied on these intermediaries to provide the limited administration such borderland populations required. This minimalist mode of governance did not aim to transform new subjects, though the state welcomed converts, and interaction between the state and its subjects remained limited.4 At the same time, in the 18th century the administration began to expect that non-Russian subjects would gradually come to embrace Russian practices. As a rule, the state did not exert great pressure to force assimilation, but the spread of Russian manners and administration became an important long-term goal for law-makers. In the case of the Caucasus, the early years of Russian rule were dominated by a need to establish clear control over the region and to establish a boundary with the Ottoman Empire and Persia to the south. After the borders stabilized in 1830, Petersburg came to believe that the region was ready for direct administrative assimilation into Russia. This move would have completed the process of integration that the traditional mode held out as a distant ideal, yet its failure led to the articulation of a new mode of governance. The colonial mode grew from the belief that Caucasians themselves were essentially different from Russians, and therefore required a different form of government. Once the appropriate form of administration was in place, it would refine the local population and transform it into a community of loyal and productive subjects. “Productive” in this instance meant primarily adopting western agricultural practices, consuming European products in the European style, and rejecting raiding as an 3 The desire to have a community o f loyal subjects obviously was not unique to this place or period, and loyalty to the state or nation is a key feature o f any political community. M y point here hinges on the lack o f further qualifications. Loyalty did not stem from ethnic or religious identity, but rather becam e manifest in word and deed alone. 4 Michael Khodarkovsky provides a broad picture o f this dynamic in R ussia's Steppe F rontier: The M aking o f a Colonial Em pire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).

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economic pursuit. Caucasus officials engaged extensively with west European ideas about colonialism in articulating their goals for the region, borrowing some ideas directly while re-evaluating others. Like its counterparts in western colonies, the administration relied on scientific knowledge to incorporate Caucasian subjects into imperial society. Scientific knowledge generated about subject peoples, rather than the personal knowledge of their leaders that drove the traditional mode, would enable the state to assess its population, administer it appropriately, and determine how each group could contribute to the region’s development. Vorontsov and his successors actively promoted the production of this knowledge through their sponsorship of periodical publications and institutions like the Caucasus Division of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, and most of the contributors and editors of these publications held official positions within the civil or military administration. Knowledge remained the domain of the state, and the articles discussed here constitute statements about how local officials viewed the populations directly under their administration. The connections between knowledge and power in this case were manifest. Moreover, these articles focused on communities defined not by religion, but by what approaches contemporary definitions of ethnicity. Officials relied on language as a key marker o f identity, and typical accounts in the Notes of the Geographical Society also provided information on religious practices, dress, physiognomy, places of residence (and when communities arrived at their present habitations), architecture, and class and gender relations. At the same time, Caucasus officials did not share their western counterparts’ enthusiasm for biologically defined racial identity. “Blood” did not explain

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local cultures for Russian officials, though it appeared prominently in British accounts of local inhabitants.5 A more Romantic view of ethnicity dominated, and the origins and impact of this way of thinking is discussed below. Ethnic diversity remained a fact of life in the region, and officials struggled to find a way to reconcile heterogeneity with the social transformations they aimed to effect. Ultimately, they argued that knowledge of each group’s allegedly natural proclivities would allow the administration to fit them into particular niches the emerging order. This vision called for Caucasian subjects to enter an ethnically defined social hierarchy that would, in the language of the time, bring them into the modem era. This modernity included the adoption of European economic and cultural practices, and it would unite the diverse peoples of the region under the authority of the tsar and his emissaries. In contrast to the assimilationist dreams o f the traditional mode, officials in the colonial period did not seek to recreate Russia. Rather, they intended to harness the natural aptitudes of indigenous groups and thereby create a productive, modernized society on the edge of the Orient.

Resettlement Resettlement had served as a key tool in the administration’s arsenal for centuries. 6 It allowed the state to remove troublesome members of Russian society, place nonRussians in more desirable locations, and solicit foreign immigration. Yet for the most part, these movements remained small in scale. The colonization of Siberia forms an 5 See James Stanislaus B ell, Journal o f a Residence in Circassia D uring the Years 1837,1838, an d 1839 (London, E. M oxon, 1840) for one example o f this tendency. 6 The most thorough survey o f forced resettlement in the Russian Empire as a w hole appears in Alexandre Grigoriantz, L es dam nes de la Russie: L e deplacem ent d e popu lation comme m ethode de gouvernem ent (Paris: Georg Editeur, 2002).

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exception to that general rule, but the slow rate of movement there meant that it took decades (if not centuries) to create a large Russian population in the region. Russians moved to the Caucasus in limited numbers, and the greater part of Russian colonists came to it as a place of exile from 1825 through the 1880s.7 Indeed, from the mid-nineteenth century, Russian settlers played a similar role in the Caucasus to European settlers elsewhere in the empire.

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Caucasus officials did use the small-scale resettlement of local communities, particularly highland communities, as part of their efforts to transform the region. The relocation of individual highlanders and individual highland communities was a standard practice in the Caucasus and generally reflected the logic guiding resettlement elsewhere. As a rule, officials required highland individuals and communities that accepted Russian control to reside in places where the state could reach them easily, generally near forts or Cossack settlements. This relocation marked a physical and psychological movement to “our side,” and for officials it seemed logical that newly created Russian subjects should live on Russian-controlled land. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement: the state could administer its new subjects and attempt to prevent backsliding, while simultaneously protecting them from the depredations of unpacified highlanders.9 These small-scale movements occurred regularly and quietly from the beginning of Russian rule

7 The Decembrists formed a prominent group o f political exiles, and rebellious Poles also found them selves exiled to the “Southern Siberia” in the wake o f the uprisings o f 1830 and 1863. Orthodox sectarians constituted a much larger group o f exiles, though they never made a significant impact on the ethnic makeup o f the region. For more details on this group, see N icholas Breyfogle, H eretics an d Colonizers: F orging R u ssia ’s Em pire in the South Caucasus (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2005). 8 For a full discussion o f foreign settlement in the late eighteenth century, see Roger P. Bartlett, Human Capital: The Settlem ent o f Foreigners in Russia, 1762-1804 (Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press, 1979). 9 Although conversion was not expected in this case, resettling those who converted to Russian subjecthood parallels the practice o f resettling those who converted to Orthodoxy (see A gnes K efeli, “Constructing an Islamic Identity: The Case o f Elyshevo V illage in the Nineteenth Century,” in R ussia's O rient, Daniel Brower and Edward Lazzerini, eds. [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994], pp. 271-291).

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in 1801 through 1917, and their underlying philosophy, that physical location should align with political allegiance, formed a backdrop to the mass migrations that are the primary focus here. I examine the two largest migrations in the history of imperial Russia: the immigration of some 200,000 Persian and Ottoman subjects into the Russian Caucasus in 1829 and 1830 and the exodus of some 370,000 highland Circassians to the Ottoman Empire in 1864. These population movements are remarkable for their compactness as well as their scale. Some 40,000 Christian immigrants arrived in a three-week window in 1829, and 80,000 Ottoman Christians arrived in three weeks in 1830. The highland Circassians left their homes within three months in 1864, though thousands found themselves stranded in port cities over the winter, waiting for the weather to allow them to finish their journey.10 The immigration of Persian and Ottoman subjects in 1828 and 1830 took place in what I term the traditional mode. At that point, officials relied on primarily on personal knowledge of immigrant communities to ascertain their loyalty to the Russian state, and granted or denied them admission to the empire on the basis of those assessments. They sought to capitalize on political affinities, whereby communities loyal to Russia would become Russian subjects, and sought to treat the region and its inhabitants on par with Russia proper. The exodus of communities from the Black Sea coast (the highland Circassians) occurred during the colonial period and reflected the administrative sensibilities of that time. Small scale resettlement was commonplace in the colonial period, as moving 10 An additional 80,000 highlanders had departed from their hom es in various parts o f the Caucasus for the Ottoman Empire from 1857 to 1864. The cumulative impact o f these sm all-scale migrations helped depopulate the region, but they pale in scope to the m assive emigration o f 1864-65.

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highland communities into areas where good administration could integrate them into the emerging order as agricultural laborers became common practice. The same logic inspired the forced relocation of the highland Circassians, and the emigration of the Circassians came about as officials granted Circassian demands to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire rather than settle in the lowlands. Officials attempted to repopulate the coastal region in accordance with geographic and ethnic affinities, but in the event, they had to make do with Cossacks and Russian colonists, who proved as unsuitable in practice as theory had predicted they would be. The emigration of 1865 was the last mass population movement in the region, and it marks the end of this study. The few historians who have examined these movements have tended to view them as evidence of the Russian state’s quest for homogeneity. From the perspective of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it seems obvious that an ideal population would share a common national and religious identity. Following this logic, some argue that the administration sought to attract Christian subjects and expel Muslims. Justin McCarthy offers the strongest articulation of this argument, claiming that all states seek to eliminate religious difference and that non-elites invariably sought to aid their coreligionists irrespective o f their citizenship.11 Austin Jersild offers a more subtle version of this thesis in his analysis of Russian policies in the highlands from the 1860s forward, arguing that Caucasus officials deemed the Muslim highlanders incompatible with civilized rule for cultural as well as religious reasons. He finds that this belief inspired officials to exile the highland Circassians, who had already witnessed the departure of other highland Muslim communities who sought to live under the rule of their coreligionists in the Ottoman

11 Justin McCarthy, D eath an d Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing o f Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995), especially chapter 1.

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Empire. He demonstrates that late imperial officials dreamed of “restoring” Orthodoxy in the mountains, thereby further mitigating religious difference as a source of tension, though they pursued this goal gingerly and only after the highlands were pacified.12 Firuzeh Mostashari also argues that Caucasus officials sought to Christianize the region, a goal that she links with the immigration of Armenians into the Russian Caucasus. Peter Holquist sees the emigration of the highland Circassians as the product of a desire to remove non-Russians and then to colonize the region with Cossacks. With the exception of McCarthy’s largely polemical argument, these analyses focus primarily on efforts to transform the region in the late nineteenth century, and mistakenly see patterns from the first two thirds of the century in the same light. By the late nineteenth century, most west European administrators idealized a homogenous population, with religious or ethnic diversity minimized in a united nation, and late imperial Russian officialdom largely followed this nationalist trend.13 According to this mindset, ethnic Russians were the bearers of state interest, and the state should defend their interests over those of other groups.14 This stance left no place for non-Russians in the state, and conservatives dreamt of the expulsion of non-Russians or their fading into the larger Russian population. This reliance on Russian nationals to achieve imperial

12 Jersild, O rientalism an d Em pire. In his analysis o f the exodus o f a smaller group o f Chechens in 1865, however, Jersild presents a more com plex picture, concluding that the impulse to leave came from below and that the state used this opportunity to allow undesirable subjects to leave (“From Savagery to Citizenship,” in R u ssia ’s Orient, Daniel Brower and Edward Lazzerini, eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 101-114). 13 See Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Em pire in the Russian Steppe (Ithaca: Cornell U niversity Press, 2006), chapter 5; Jersild, Orientalism and Empire, chapter 2; Peter Holquist, “To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate” in A State o f N ations: Em pire and Nation-M aking in the A g e f Lenin an d Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (N ew York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 111144. 14 See Sunderland, Taming the Wild F ield, chapter 4.

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visions became the dominant mode of administration only under the last two tsars,15 and even then there was no official consensus on how to treat non-Russians. These accounts of Russian efforts to limit the Muslim population in the region reflect the line set out in Petersburg, but that principle did not affect how Caucasus officials thought or behaved. In contrast to directives from the center, Caucasus officials through at least the 1870s actively sought to make use of all the human capital at their disposal in the Caucasus, regardless of religious identity. Heterogeneity would become the region’s strength, as different ethnic groups would perform different functions in the emerging socio-economic order. In the traditional mode, subjects who had demonstrated loyalty to the tsar earned membership in imperial polity. At the same time, officials called for different groups to fill different roles. Thus, Muslim nomads would help monitor the borders and their livestock would enrich the local economy, Armenian peasants would cultivate the underdeveloped lands in the southeast, and Armenian merchants would revive trade along the Black Sea coast. During the colonial era, Caucasus officials actively embraced ethnic heterogeneity. Armed with knowledge of universal principles and the specific qualities of the materials at hand, officials developed plans to fit each ethnic group into the emerging order. As each ethnic group possessed particular economic practices, the administration could capitalize on these natural aptitudes to fill niches. With the exception of nomads, whose perceived failure to work left them locked in primordial savagery, each Caucasian

15 Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field. At the turn o f the century, “It was now conceivable that nonRussians might em ploy their new ly written languages, the lessons o f the Russian educational system, or the notion o f civilization to criticize the regime. For later officials, increased literacy was not necessarily progress, and by the turn o f the century the regime was in the business o f restricting writing rather than promoting it.” (Jersild, Orientalism an d Em pire, p. 128). This timeline largely fits the conventional wisdom about increasingly exclusive policies in western colonies as more colonial subjects began to demand equal treatment with citizens in the metropole.

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nation would contribute to modernity under the guidance of the administration. Elite Georgians would oversee the details of development, while the Georgian peasantry would provide agricultural labor.16 Armenians would make up the merchantry, while “Tatars,” a group that here encompassed virtually the entire Muslim population of the region, constituted “perhaps the most important productive working element of Transcaucasia.”17 The universal and the particular combined in perfect harmony under the skillful eyes of the state. These ideals directly shaped policy surrounding the emigration of the highland Circassians in 1864-65. The administration resolved to forcibly relocate all highland Circassians from the Black Sea coast to ensure their obedience, and it envisioned their transformation into productive laborers in the lowlands. Yet when the highlanders themselves insisted on the right to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire instead, officials expressed surprise at the scope of the exodus but did not lament their loss. Instead, they turned to the question of how best to repopulate the emptied territory. Geography and ethnicity loomed large in these debates. Officials sought to find settlers who came from geographically similar regions to supplement or supplant colonization by ethnic Russians. Thus, Greeks, Georgians, Orthodox Slavs from the Balkans, and Germans seemed appropriate. Throughout, officials all agreed that a civilian population would best develop the region. Since the highland Circassians had already left, there was no need to maintain Cossack units in the region. The Azov Cossacks formed an exception to that rule, and they figured as potential colonists along the coast because they had experience in

16 “O snovnye promshlennye sily Zakavkaz’e,” K avkazskii k a len d a r’ 1846, p. 140. 17 Zapiski t .l, 1852, p. xix.

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maritime activities. According to official calculations, the correct combination of ethnicities would create a loyal and productive society. Yet these theories carried weight only on paper, and in the event, only a small number of colonists arrived in the 1860s. The Cossack stanitsas (villages) built during the war remained in place for the lack of any alternative settlers, and they failed as dramatically as theory had predicted. They remained in desperate poverty, subsisting on state subsidies. Even worse, they adopted the very worst of the highlanders’ economic practices and engaged in raiding on lowland villages. Ultimately, the administration resolved to resettle a small number of highland Circassians among the Cossacks in order to teach them suitable agricultural practices. The region would remain underpopulated until the 1880s, when Georgians and Armenians began to arrive in substantial numbers. Until the end of the century, modernity meant utilizing heterogeneity, not imposing homogeneity. These two movements represent a unique moment in the history of governance in the Russian Empire in terms of the massive scope of the operations and the grandiose expectations for the changes that would result from them. The demographics of the region would change almost overnight, and the state hoped to see equally radical changes in the region’s economic and cultural status. They resemble twentieth-century visions of social engineering in the grandeur of their expectations and the extent of their operations. However, it would be a mistake to cast these movements as instances of ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing in its most extreme variants (as in the case of the former Yugoslavia) calls for the creation of an ethnically homogenous region, and Caucasus officials clearly did not imagine that ethnic homogeneity would result from these

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movements. Norman Naimark argues for a more subtle definition of the term in his study of Soviet deportations, which in his view constituted ethnic cleansing because these “policies were implemented to reeducate the Chechens-Ingush and Crimean Tatars, forcing them to forget their homelands and their cultures.” 18 Yet this definition does not apply to the nineteenth century Caucasus either, for two main reasons. First, while the administration relied on ethnic categories to identify groups slated for relocation, it sought to integrate all potentially useful members of those ethnicities into the empire, forcibly if necessary. Moreover, officials did not aim to force resettled communities to forget their cultures. On the contrary, their cultures - once properly refined - equipped them to participate in their designated slots in the emerging economic order. Moreover, in contrast to state-planned ethnic cleansing, both these movements came about in response to demands from below, though the local administration rapidly committed to orchestrating these movements as a way to increase the number of loyal subjects and reduce the number of rebellious subjects in the region. In the earlier instance, the administration initially responded to requests for refuge made by individuals who had helped them during their campaigns in Persia and Anatolia, but quickly seized the opportunity to move whole “loyal” communities. In the later case, officials called for the forcible relocation o f highland Circassian communities to the lowlands as an extension of small-scale resettlement practices. To their surprise (and, it must be noted, satisfaction), the majority preferred emigration to life under Russian rule. This dynamic marks a clear departure from the ethnic cleansing model.

18 Norman Naimark, “Ethnic Cleansing between War and Peace,” in Weiner, L andscaping the Human Garden, p. 225.

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Enlightened colonialism in the Caucasus The dominant mode of government in the Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century continued the Catherinian tradition of tolerance, while adding an interest in ethnicity as a category of administration. The Catherinian model took its inspiration from the efforts of Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796) to create a secular state that not only tolerated religious difference but coopted (or created) religious institutions as a space for the state to connect with its non-Russian subjects.19 Religious difference was something to be managed, not eradicated - or at least, not immediately. In the long run, Catherinian tolerance was intended to lead to the mitigation of difference, as public practices throughout the empire came in line with Russian - or, better, European - standards. This tradition continued under Michael Speranskii as governor-general of Siberia (1819-21) and “the driving force behind the drafting of the 1822 Regulations” on governing nonRussians. In the words of Virginia Martin, Speranskii espoused a legal philosophy that was followed by lawmakers drafting legislation for the steppe for the rest of the nineteenth century; it was oriented toward using law to “civilize” the Kazakhs gradually in a colonial mission that mixed the material goal o f settlement of the nomads with the cultural goal of “softening” the morals and changing the customs that did not coincide with Russian legal sensibilities and cultural norms. 20 Thus, the Catherinian approach to ethnic and religious difference called for a gradual rapprochement (sblizhenie) of non-Russians with Russians through state-sponsored institutions. Non-Russians would come to see the virtues of embracing Russian practices, and Russians would wait patiently for them to realize the self-evident superiority of western civilization. 19 See Robert Crews, F or P rophet an d Tsar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), chapter 1, for a more substantial treatment o f this question. 20 Virginia Martin, L aw an d Custom in the Steppe: The K azakhs o f the M iddle H orde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001), p. 34.

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I will use the term “enlightened” to describe this line of political thought, as it drew on the Enlightenment ideal of tolerance within a secular state that administered its inhabitants without discrimination. Moreover, it emphasized that colonized subjects could advance culturally under the state’s tutelage and, eventually, participate in imperial institutions. In this view, officials did not rely on Russians alone to meet the state’s needs, but rather saw the empire as something that must transcend ethnic and religious difference. The rhetoric was universal and inclusive, not exclusive. The impediments to full participation lay in the realm of culture and could thus be mitigated. At the same time, this enlightened view remained profoundly and unabashedly hierarchical in the context of Russian autocracy. Inclusion remained theoretical for many in the periphery, and no one could say when Caucasian highlanders, nomads, Poles, Jews, or others would finally become equal members of the polity.21 Yet it should be remembered that equality within an autocratic state would not have entailed the same privileges enjoyed by the citizens of liberal democracies. Prior to the Great Reforms, if these groups did attain full membership, they would enter a complex political environment where social status determined legal identity and the public sphere was subsumed by the state. While the Reforms did open more room for public action and moved towards legal equality regardless of estate, colonial officials after the 1860s had little reason to fear granting colonized subjects the freedoms allowed Russians.22

21 Many scholars have addressed this issue. See, for example, Virginia Martin, L a w an d Custom in the S teppe; Theodore W eeks, Nation and State in L ate Im perial Russia: N ationalism an d Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863-1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); Daniel Brower, Turkestan and the Fate o f the Russian Em pire (London and N ew York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); Yuri Slezkine, A rctic M irrors: Russia and the Sm all P eoples o f the North (Ithaca: Cornell U niversity Press, 1996). 22 Unlike national movements in western colonies, the oppositional political m ovem ents that developed in the Caucasus drew on ideas o f social justice and national rights as expressed by Russian revolutionaries or philosophers in the west, not the promises inherent in R ussia’s civilizing m ission.

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Nationalist movements in the periphery would begin to disturb their complacent confidence in rapprochement in the final decades of the empire, but until then enlightened officials could argue that cultural harmony would come in time. Caucasus officials through the 1860s operated within this enlightened mindset, but their views on how to administer the region and its peoples evolved over time. Moreover, Petersburg did not dictate practices in Tiflis, where the personality of the commanders-in-chief (first govemors-general and then viceroys) played the dominant role in determining the tone o f the administration. Alexander I, Nicholas I, and Alexander II set the tone for developments in Russia, but Ermolov, Paskiewicz, and Vorontsov put their own stamp on the Caucasus. The first fifteen years of Russian rule remain understudied, and then the govemors-general seem to have been most occupied with military activities. 1816 saw the arrival of the flamboyant and energetic A.P. Ermolov, who won renown for his savage campaigns in the highlands. The devastating campaigns tell only part o f his story, though. A new administrative spirit arrived with him, and Caucasus officials began to work conceitedly to bring western civilization to the region. The administration sponsored the reconstruction of town centers along European lines, promoted commerce, and proposed the creation of a “Russian-Transcaucasian Company.”

His tenure has also become associated with a liberal political agenda at

home, and Nicholas I dismissed him in part due to rumors about his involvement with Decembrist circles.

23 See L.H. Rhinelander, “The Incorporation o f the Caucasus into the Russian Empire: The Case o f Georgia, 1801-1854” (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1975), pp. 152-170; A.P. Ermolov, Zapiski (Moskva: V ysshaia shkola, 1991). For the text o f the Transcaucasia Company proposal, see Griboedov, A .S. Sochineniia (M oscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1956), pp. 497-520.

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In Ermolov’s place, Nicholas appointed Ivan Fedorovich Paskiewicz as governorgeneral of the Caucasus (1827-1830). Again, military concerns dominated, with the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828) and Russo-Turkish War (1828-1829) keeping him away from Tiflis. Historians see his tenure as a period of centralization, as he set the stage for bringing in Russian administration and reducing reliance on local practices.24 This picture emphasizes Paskewicz’s emphasis on the need for a clear order, regardless of local realities. Rhinelander in particular took a dim view of Paskewicz’s tenure as governorgeneral, writing that Paskiewicz “appeared to embody the bureaucratic, formalistic approach o f the new emperor.”25 At the same time, though, Paskiewicz charted his own course in terms of managing migration, and here his administration seemed more in tune with Catherinian ideals than the tenets of Official Nationality generally associated with Nicholas I. As we will see in the next chapter, he relied heavily on non-Russians to direct the migrants. Key figures included the Georgian Alexander G. Chavchavadze, and Armenians L.I. Lazarev, V.O. Bebutov, and the future Patriarch Nerses, while Paskiewicz sought to utilize the enigmatic Mujtahid Mir-Fettakh to reach his Muslim subjects more readily.26 More importantly, his officials acted independently in accepting all Persian and Ottoman subjects who had shown loyalty to Russia as subjects, directly contradicting orders from Petersburg to allow only Christians to enter. Religious and ethnic identity mattered less to

24 See Rhinelander, “The Incorporation o f the Caucasus,” pp. 173-89; Firouzeh Mostashari, On the Religious Frontier: Tsarist Russia an d Islam in the Caucasus (London, N ew York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 10-11,29-30. 25 Rhinelander, “The Incorporation o f the Caucasus,” p. 174). 26 In this stance, Paskiewicz attempted to follow Catherine’s m odel to the letter, though his efforts to create a Muslim Spiritual Assem bly in Tiflis under Mir-Fettakh’s leadership failed. For more on Mir-Fettakh, see Dana Sherry, “M osque and State in the C aucasusl 828-1841” ( Caucasus an d Central A sia N ew sletter, Summer 2003, pp. 3-8), though this article raises more questions about the mujtahid and his relationship with the administration generally and Paskiew icz in particular than it can answer.

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Paskiewicz than political loyalty to the tsar, and this stance meant that both the administration and the population they administered became even more diverse during the late 1820s. Moreover, officials consistently showed sympathy for the plight of recent migrants during his tenure, and Paskiewicz himself frequently supported the complaints of migrants against officials. Overall, while he sought to create orderly institutions, Paskiewicz relied on local elites in the administration, actively sought to attract nonRussian subjects, and heeded the needs of those new subjects once they arrived. In this respect, the Paskiewicz years in the Caucasus did not move in line with the mood in the center, and officials advanced a purely pragmatic approach to population management. Pragmatism argued that loyal subjects made good subjects, and mental affinities should determine political identity. Ottoman and Persian subjects who had shown support for the Russian army when it occupied their territory, according to the logic of official reports at the time, deserved to become Russian subjects. Political allegiance mattered more than religion and ethnicity, and resettlement aimed at placing all tsar-loving peoples on the Russian side of the border. At the same time, officials showed no concern at losing potential subjects who preferred to leave the newly Russian territories of Armenia, Nakhichevan, and Karabagh to remain under Persian rule. (In fact, reports on population exchanges never directly addressed this phenomenon, which reduced the Muslim population in the Erevan khanate alone by almost a third, from 87,000 to 61,000. 27 ) Paskiewicz and his officials welcomed Muslims, nomadic and settled alike, who had supported the Russians, but made no effort to retain those who wanted to leave. Thus,

27 George A. Boum outian, The K hanate o f Erevan U nder Q ajar Rule, 1795-1828 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1992), p. 50.

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they operated according to perceived affinities that they expressed in political, not religious, terms. When Paskiewicz left for Warsaw in 1831, Grigorii Vladimorovich Rosen (18311837) brought a new style of administration. On the one hand, he was a localizer in terms o f administration,28 but he exhibited much less patience with his new subjects than had his predecessor. His methods in dealing with them were classically Nicholaevan: establish surveillance and punish both individuals and communities for misdeeds. He also showed a preference for sending inspectors to determine whether officials on location had conducted themselves properly. Rosen showed none of Paskiewicz’s sympathy for his subjects, and the names o f the officials involved in government were Russian or European in origin, not Caucasian. In terms of relations between Tiflis and the immigrants, Rosen’s administration was in line with the conservative, authoritarian policy from the center. Once again, religious and ethnic identity per se played no role in official thinking. However, an Orientalist note crept into official discourse as officials disparaged the alleged malevolence and “inborn laziness” of immigrants.

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Rosen left in protest against Nicholas’s mandate to devise a new Caucasus administration along Russian lines. Baron Pavel Vasilievich Hahn oversaw the project, which called for the immediate introduction of Russian administrative practices and for all official posts to be held by Russians. The plan was enacted in 1841, and it marked the high point o f centralization and Russification in this period. 30 The reforms sparked widespread revolt among almost all communities throughout the region, and by the end 28 See Rhinelander, “The Incorporation o f the Caucasus,” pp. 191-99; Firouzeh Mostashari, On the R eligious Frontier: Tsarist R ussia an d Islam in the Caucasus (London, N ew York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), p. 27. 29 Georgian State Historical Archive [SSSA ], f.2 o p .l d.3078, 2 June 1832: Ogarev to Rozen, and f.2 op .l d.3078, 7 July 1832: Sniskarev to Rozen. 30 See Rhinelander, “The Incorporation o f the Caucasus,” p. 206.

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of the year the government was forced to acknowledge that the reforms had failed. For the purposes o f the present analysis, this moment marks the moment when Russian officialdom reluctantly recognized the need to account for colonial difference in administering the Caucasus. As much as they wanted to treat it as a part of Russia proper, their effort to ignore local realities failed spectacularly and required a new approach to the problem. In response to this debacle, Nicholas created the position of viceroy for Mikhail Sergeevich Vorontsov,31 and a new era in the administrative and intellectual history of the Caucasus began. The “discovery” of colonial difference led officials to rethink the problem of loyalty. Rejection of Russian rule, once seen in terms of rational choice (as when Armenians returned to their original homelands in pursuit of economic opportunities, or when old elites favored Persia as a means to hold on to their fading political influence), was recast in the language of colonialism as fanaticism. Petersburg remained suspicious o f all Muslims in the Caucasus, as their religion purportedly made them susceptible to excessive religious fervor, but local officials still viewed most Muslims as desirable subjects. For them, fanaticism reflected a convergence of religious and social factors: fanaticism seemed an elite phenomenon. The religious and/or political elite called for resistance to Russian rule, and the masses followed them blindly. If the bond between the local elite and their followers could be broken, the majority o f highlanders could participate in the new order productively by providing a much needed labor force.

31 M.S. Vorontsov has attracted significant scholarly attention, and two historians in particular have written volum inously on him. L.H. Rhinelander’s most notable contributions are “The Incorporation o f the Caucasus” and P rin ce M ichael Vorontsov: Viceroy to the Tsar (M ontreal: M cG ill-Q ueen’s University Press, 1990). O. Iu. Zakharova has devoted at least six volum es to the study o f Vorontsov, including G en eral-fel’dm arshal svetleishii kniaz M.S. Vorontsov: rytsar Rossiiskoi im perii (Moskva: Tsentrpoligraf,

2001 ).

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In many ways, the golden age of colonialism in Tiflis began with the arrival of M.S. Vorontsov (1845-1854). The enthusiasm for awakening a moribund nation to a glorious modernity in the Caucasus took on distinct colonial overtones, however. The civilizing mission there hinged on a sense of difference, and the rhetoric of the administration emphasized the need to bring the “Oriental” peoples of the region into the present. Ethnographic and statistical knowledge, disseminated through newly established publications and societies sponsored by the viceroy, would create a road map, showing officials how to reach the subject populations and replace their “Asiatic” features with “European” ones. Vorontsov is widely recognized for his desire to include indigenous elites in these projects, and official rhetoric emphasized the power of love for the tsar to unite the diverse peoples o f the region in pursuit of a common good: Western civilization. Empire did not seek to eradicate diversity, in this model. Rhinelander refers to this mode as a “national-imperial society;” 32 in chapter three, I explore this phenomenon as “imperial in form, ethnic in content.” Ethnographers demonstrated that each ethnic group in the region possessed its own unique attributes that stemmed from the impact of geography, and administrators sought to harness the positive features of each group to fill given niches in the imperial order. At the same time, indigenous intellectuals like Shora Nogmov and Khan Girei published paeans to the history and folklore of their peoples. For the moment, national awakening went hand in hand with devotion to the empire. A less studied aspect of Vorontsov’s viceregency is the habitual resettlement of highland communities to the lowlands as part of the process of pacification. Movement was a cornerstone in his approach to managing highlanders, though at this point the relocations were small in scale and precise in their targets. Individuals and communities 32 Rhinelander, “The Incorporation o f the Caucasus,” p. 262.

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who sought to be on the Russian side in the military conflict were relocated to Russiancontrolled territories, generally near forts. While it is difficult (if not impossible) to determine how many highlanders pursued this course, official correspondence and memoir materials made reference to these relocations as standard practice. To accept Russian rule meant to live within reach of Russian administration and Russian troops. This maxim, established under Ermolov, inspired routine small-scale population movements until pacification. Vorontsov’s immediate successor, Nikolai Nikolaevich Muraviev (1854-55), was quickly followed by another powerful and charismatic viceroy, Mikhail Ivanovich Bariatinskii (1855-1862). In many respects, Bariatinskii continued the Vorontsovian tradition. He too enjoyed great independence from the center in economic and administrative terms, thanks to his close personal relationship to Alexander II. He also continued Vorontsov’s patronage o f scholarly societies. During his tenure knowledge production remained important, and the publications and scholarly societies established under Vorontsov flourished. The rhetoric at this time continued to emphasize unity through the tsar as a way to contain ethnic difference, though fewer publicistic articles celebrated the histories and traditions of indigenous communities. In their place, more articles appeared on the changes occurring in Russia and on local Russian society in the Caucasus. A new genre of article appeared, devoted to the development o f “civic life” (obschestvennaia zhizn ’) in the forts and towns of the region. These pieces rarely included references to indigenous Caucasians, and then only to very Russianized locals. This subtle shift in emphasis on the Russian presence in the Caucasus can be seen as the very beginning of a new era, though Russian nationalism would not make a major impact on policy until the late 1870s.

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Orthodoxy also gained more official support at this time. Rhetorically, articles in official publications emphasized the participation of all confessions in Orthodox celebrations, but 1860 also saw the establishment of the missionary Commission for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus. The organization did not have much success, but its creation marked an increased effort to promote religious homogeneity. The major changes under Bariatinskii occurred as the long war in the highlands drew towards a close. As more and more communities were pacified, more and more highlanders left the region for the Ottoman Empire. Thus, Bariatinskii’s tenure saw the beginning of emigration as a mass phenomenon, with the departure of the Nogai tribes to the Ottoman Empire in 1858-59.33 The administration did not take an active role in orchestrating these movements, which were driven from below as a rejection of Russian rule. Officials only rarely lamented the loss of these subjects, but at the same time, the empty lands they left behind did not spark dreams of bringing in other settlers. The successive waves of emigration created a model in the minds of Caucasians who did not want to become Russian subjects, and taught officials that relocation to the lowlands was not the only way to deal with particularly obdurate highlanders. The war served as a crucible that divided would-be loyal subjects (who relocated to the lowlands) from those who rejected Russian rule (who relocated further and further into the mountains). With pacification, officials faced the question of how to integrate highlanders who had long refused to embrace imperial values. Officials initially attempted to use old methods of surveillance and cooptation o f local elites to integrate the east Caucasus when it was pacified in 1859, but the endurance of localized resistance through the early 1860s led

33 For a detailed list o f emigrations from 1858-1864, see Jersild, Orientalism an d Em pire, pp. 22-27.

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them to consider a new approach to pacifying the coastal mountains along the Black Sea under Bariatinskii’s successor, the Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich (1862-1881). Officials hoped to separate the loyal along the Black Sea coast from the “fanatical,” by acceding to the desires of those recalcitrant highlanders who preferred to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire to living among the Cossacks in the lowlands. According to their calculations, a minority would leave, and the remainder would settle peacefully into their new occupations. Yet when events proved that the vast majority would leave, officials facilitated their departure without regrets and set about using their ethnographic knowledge to determine the best groups to repopulate the emptied territory.

Colonialism in the Caucasus The colonial project that evolved after 1841 drew on ideologies and practices generated in western Europe, most visibly in the articulation of colonial difference and in the effort to transform local society selectively. Many scholars have addressed the role of difference in justifying the illiberal administration of European colonies, and Partha Chatteijee has provided a particularly influential and pithy articulation of the general theme. In The Nation and Its Fragments, he demonstrates that the colonial project depended on perceived racial difference to legitimate the endurance of political difference. The ostensibly universal political liberties enjoyed by British citizens could not be extended to Indian subjects due to the particularities of Indian culture that stemmed from the inherent, racial weaknesses of the Indian peoples. The rhetoric of race grew especially strident after the uprising of 1857, which, Chatteijee argues, threatened to expose the lie of the civilizing mission. Race thus allowed British officials to rest

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comfortably in the knowledge that democratic capitalism was a universal good, and that it would never come to India (which would require granting the subcontinent independence) because Indians themselves were too flawed to ever practice it. Moreover, race constituted “the one factor that united the ruling bloc and separated it from those over whom it ruled.”34 Difference united the rulers into one unit, and cast the ruled into another group united in its subordination, if nothing else. The colonial state aimed solely at perpetuating its dominance over colonized subjects. In this account, one can only speak of a mission to transform local realities in Foucauldian terms, that is to say, civilization functioned to strengthen state control. In contrast, David Scott’s “Colonial Govemmentality” presented the main activity of the colonial state not as the exclusion of its subjects from political power, but rather as the transformation of local conditions. Like Chatterjee, Scott argued that the overarching objective of the colonial state lay in the consolidation of its control over subject peoples, but he emphasized its need to change local realities and the necessity of historians to recognize the transformation of colonial governance over time. In his view, colonialism was a project that "was concerned above all with disabling old forms of life by systematically breaking down their conditions, and with constructing in their place new conditions so as to enable - indeed, so as to oblige —new forms of life to come into being. [...] What is at stake is how this break is configured and what it is understood to

34 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation an d Its Fragments: C olonial and P ostcolonial H istories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 1 9 . 1 do not mean to misrepresent Chatterjee’s work by focusing on the argument in the first chapter alone, and I should note that the bulk o f Chatterjee’s text addresses the equally exclusionary nature o f nationalist discourse in India. However, his initial chapter encapsulates the basis o f colonial exclusions so effectively that I have chosen that short section o f his work to frame my discussion o f colonial difference in the Russian Caucasus.

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consist /«.”35 This view framed colonialism as a project that aimed to create a break between the past and the future, and to move resolutely away from the old into the new. Whereas Chatterjee emphasized the exclusionary nature of colonial rule, Scott emphasized its totalizing ambitions that sought to compel colonized subjects to behave in new ways. I draw on both these approaches to illuminate the state’s involvement in population movements in the Caucasus. Difference mattered in the Caucasus, but the autocratic state was not primarily concerned with justifying the political exclusion of indigenous subjects in either the traditional or the colonial mode. In the earlier instance, officials believed that the main axis of difference involved political loyalty, and that the peoples of the south Caucasus had accepted Russian rule by the mid-1830s. Officials not only maintained that the peoples of the Caucasus could become like Russians, they believed they had earned the right to administrative assimilation in 1841. The Caucasians themselves rejected this arrangement, which disrupted local customs without granting any appreciable privileges before the state. Difference did not disappear so quickly, and officials in the colonial period reconceptualized its significance for the region’s development. Again, difference did not form the basis for exclusion, but showed the correct way to integrate each group into a modernizing order. In this vision, knowledge and power would combine to harness difference. Colonial officials generated scientific knowledge about each ethnic group in the region, and the administration acted to mitigate Caucasians’ undesirable cultural features on the basis of this expertise. Once local communities had been cured o f their objectionable behaviors, they would productively

35 David Scott, “Colonial G ovem m entality,” in A nthropologies o f M odernity: Foucault, Governmentality, adn Life P olitics, Jonathan X avier Inda, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p.25.

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occupy a particular niche in colonial society. Thus, enlightened officials in the Caucasus saw difference, defined in terms of ethnicity and geography, as a force that could fuel their civilizing mission. Scott’s insights into the state’s efforts to transform its subjects by disabling the old and thereby obliging them to change have a direct bearing on the practice of resettlement. The physical relocation of communities aimed at transforming their political, cultural, and economic practices by cutting off access to older ways of being. Yet at the same time, the emerging system required that useful older practices be retained. Caucasus officials sought to create a new society that took elements of Caucasian culture and recombined them to fit into a western model. In contrast to liberal officials later in the century, these measures did not aim at recreating Russia in the Caucasus. Instead, they envisioned a Caucasus that retained a sanitized version of local color while embracing European standards. In short, they began to engage in experiments in social alchemy.

Imperial alchemy This alchemy involved utilizing the basic materials at hand and transforming them into a more perfect society. Officials drew on two bodies of knowledge to drive this project: knowledge of the universal laws that governed human development, and knowledge about the Caucasus and its inhabitants specifically. Caucasus officials echoed widespread European notions about the universal course of progress that culminated in European civilization, without overtly questioning autocracy. In this vision, all communities would progress through the same historical stages, and Russia would help

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awaken the somnolent peoples of the Caucasus to modernity under the guidance of scientific knowledge. On this point, Caucasus officials partook in typical nineteenth century expressions o f a civilizing mission. They entered more unorthodox territory, however, when they linked these laws to a defense of ethnic distinctiveness. Caucasus officials embraced a Romantic view of national uniqueness, and they linked that distinctiveness with geography. Montesquieu’s ideas about the fundamental impact o f the climate on local customs formed a distant backdrop to the projects of Caucasus officials, but their views had much more in common with the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder. Herder argued that each ethnic group had its own particular qualities, and that ethnic identity stemmed directly from the physical environment.

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Unlike Hegel, who saw national distinctiveness as the unfolding of geist irrespective of physical conditions,

->7

Herder emphasized that human culture evolved out of a nation’s

relationship to the surrounding world: “The constitution of their body, their way of life, the pleasures and occupations to which they have been accustomed from their infancy, and the whole circle of their ideas, are climatic.” 38 Herder presented a complex view of climate that encompassed its physical aspects - temperature, elevation, and air “and its myriad component parts” as well as cultural features. The culture grew naturally out of its physical surroundings. Thus, a region’s “nature and products, the food and drink men enjoy in it, the mode o f life they pursue, the labours in which they are employed, their clothing, even their ordinary attitudes, their arts and pleasures, with a multitude of other

36 Find reference to Herder’s influence in Russia - conventional wisdom holds it was widespread... 37 See G.W .F. H egel, Lectures on the P hilosophy o f World H istory: Introduction: Reason in H istory. Trans. N .B . N isbet (Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press, 1975), p.56. 38 Johann Gottfried Herder, Reflections on the P hilosophy o f the H istory o f M ankind (Chicago and London: University o f Chicago Press, 1968), p. 10.

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circumstances, which considerably influence their lies, all belong to the picture of changeable climate.”39 The first issue of the Notes of the Caucasus Division of the Imperial Geographical Society laid out an explicitly Herderian argument about the nature of difference in the Caucasus. The editor’s preface is worth quoting at length: The truth o f the influence of the terrain on History is nowhere clearer than in the Caucasus. This truth underlies the difficulties the Administration has encountered and is the key to all the endless contradictions that are the distinctive attribute of the entire region. [...] Both the environment and the people far around [the Caucasus range] submit to its power, which impresses upon them its distinctive stamp. In the Caucasus everything acquires its origins and meaning from the mountains. The Caucasus can only be understood by the Caucasus. [...] [From the diversity of the physical environment] arose the diversity of all the populations, distributed with their colorful ethnographic particularities around the entire region, and, more importantly, the level of their development (