Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The acquisition of Georgia created a geopolitical anomaly that all but assured further fighting in the Caucasus. By 1813, following war with Persia, Russia was firmly positioned in the middle of the region with territorial claims spanning from the Caspian to the Black Sea. However, most of the heavily Muslim north central Caucasus was unreconciled to Russian domination. In a practical sense, Georgia constituted an island of Russian power in the so-called Transcaucasus whose lines of communications to the old Caucasian Line were ever precarious. Soon Dagestan, Chechnya, and Avaria in the east and the Kuban River basin in the west emerged as major bastions of popular resistance. Particularly in the interior of the country, among the thick forests and rugged mountains of the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, the terrain as well as throngs of able guerrilla warriors posed a formidable military obstacle. As in any such unconventional conflict, Russia had to stretch its resources both to protect friendly populations and prosecute a complex political-military struggle against a determined opposition. To secure areas under imperial authority, the Russians established a loose cordon of fortified points around the mountains. This, however, proved insufficient to prevent hostile raids. Meanwhile, the Russian effort to subjugate the resistance, widely known as the “mountaineers” or gortsy, required the ever increasing application of armed force. In the view of General Aleksei Petrovich Ermolov, commander of the Caucasus, the mountains constituted a great fortress, difficult to either storm or besiege.

  Roughly speaking, the Russian subjugation of the mountaineer resistance is divisible into three stages. From 1801 to 1832, Russia’s campaigns were sporadic, owing in part to the distraction of intermittent warfare with Persia, Turkey, Sweden, and France. In addition, the threat to Russian rule

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  View of Caucasus Mountains from Mount Elbrus. © DEAN CONGER/CORBIS in the Caucasus did not for several decades appear extremely serious. This situation changed in the early 1830s as the resistance assumed increasingly religious overtones. In 1834, a capable and charismatic resistance leader emerged in the person of Shamil, an Avar who headed a spiritual movement described by the Russians as “muridism” (derived from the term murid, meaning disciple). Combining religious appeal with military and administrative savvy, Shamil forged an alliance of mountain tribes that fundamentally transformed the character of the war.

  Although the true center of Shamil’s strength lay in the mountains of eastern Dagestan, his power was equally dependent upon the support of the Chechen tribes inhabiting the forested slopes and foothills between Georgia and the Terek River. Also important to the eastern resistance were the Lezghian tribes along the fringes of the Caucasian range. Because it was not strongly linked to Shamil, the Russians were less concerned in the short term with resistance in the western Caucasus (the southern Kuban and Black Sea coast), and formally treated that area as a separate military theater from 1821.

  From the early 1830s, the Russians relied increasingly on large, conventional campaigns in an effort to shatter Shamil’s resistance in a single campaign. This strategy did not produce the desired results. Although the tsar’s columns proved repeatedly that they could march deep into the rugged interior of the region to assault and capture virtually any rebel position, Shamil’s forces would not stand still long enough to risk total defeat. Moreover, upon retreating from the mountains, where it was impossible to supply Russian armies for more than a few weeks, Russian forces suffered repeated ambushes and loss of prestige The last such attempt was the nearly disastrous expedition of 1845. Under the command of the new Viceroy of the Caucasus, Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, a force of about eighteen thousand, including one thousand native militiamen, drove deep into the mountains and stormed a fiercely defended fort at Dargo. Yet, the mountaineers managed to evade total destruction by melting away into the surrounding forests.

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  Upon their return from the mountains, Russian troops suffered incessant harassment by unseen snipers and were cut off from resupply. Only the arrival of a relief column prevented a complete debacle, but the invaders endured more than three thousand casualties during the campaign.

  Finally, in 1846, Russian strategy changed to reflect a more patient and methodical modus operandi. Russia refocused its efforts on limited, achievable objectives with the overall intent of gradually reducing the territory under Shamil’s influence. The advent of the Crimean War disrupted Russian progress as the diversion of Russian regiments to fighting the Turks served once again to encourage popular resistance. However, with the conclusion of that war in 1856, the empire resolved to finish its increasingly tiresome struggle for dominion over the Caucasus by massing its strength in the region for the first time.

  To accomplish this, the new viceroy, General Alexander I. Baryatinsky, retained control of forces assumed committed against Turkey in the Caucasian theater. With approximately 250,000 soldiers at his disposal, Baryatinsky was able to apply relentless pressure against multiple objectives by mounting separate but converging campaigns. He was ably served in this endeavor by Dmitry Mi-lyutin, the future War Minister, as chief of staff. Both men were veterans of fighting in the Caucasus and understood the necessity to separate the resistance from the general population. They ruthlessly achieved this end by systematically clearing and burning forests, destroying villages, and forcibly resettling entire tribes, thereby progressively denying Shamil access to critical resources. Following the fall of Shamil’s key stronghold at Veden in 1859, the Russians captured the resistance leader himself at Gunib. Then, having gained success in the east, Russian forces liquidated remaining opposition in the west during the next several years. Ultimately, as many as half a million Moslem tribesmen, above all Cherkes in the west, were relocated from their ancestral lands. See also: BARYATINSKY, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH; CAUCASUS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; MILYUTIN, DMITRY ALEXEYEVICH; SHAMIL; VORONTSOV, MIKHAIL SE-MENOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Baddeley, John. (1908). The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Baumann, Robert. (1993). Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Afghanistan. Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute. Gammer, Moshe. (1994). Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan. London and Portland, OR: F. Cass.

  ROBERT F. BAUMANN

  CAUCASUS

  The Caucasus region is a relatively compact area centered on the Caucasus Mountains. The foothills to the north and some of the steppe connected to them form a northern border, while the southern border can be defined by the extent of the Armenian plateau. The Black Sea in the west and the Caspian Sea in the east form natural boundaries in those directions. It is a territory of immense ethnic, linguistic, and national diversity, and it is currently spread over the territory of four sovereign nations.

  The Caucasus region has long been known for the diversity of its peoples. Pliny the Younger in the first century, writing in his Natural History (Book VI.4.16), cited an earlier observer, Timos-thenes, to the effect that three hundred different tribes with their own languages lived in the Caucasus area, and that Romans in the city of Dioscu-rias, encompassing land now in the Abkhaz city of Sukhumi, had employed a staff of 130 translators in order for business to be carried out.

  The relative remoteness of the Caucasus from the Greek and Romans lands led to erroneous ideas concerning its location, not to mention exotic claims for its people. Some thought that the mountains extended far enough to the east that they joined with the Himalayas in India. The Caucasus was the scene of the legendary Prometheus’ captivity, the goal of Jason’s Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece, and the homeland of the famous and fantastic fighting women known as Amazons. When Pompey invaded the region, he was said to have wanted to see the mountain where Prometheus had been chained.

  The main Caucasus range is often considered part of the boundary that separates the state of mind that is Europe from that of Asia, despite aspira
tions of people to the south to be a part of Europe. The highest peak is Mount Elbrus at 18,510 feet (5,642 meters), making it the highest in Eu212

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  rope; other prominent summits include Kazbek (Qazbegi) in Georgia at 16,558 feet (5,047 meters). The lands to the south are protected by the barrier they form against the cold northern winds, to the point that lands along the Black Sea coast, although at latitudes above 40? N, possess a subtropical climate.

  To the north of the Caucasus range is the Eurasian steppe, which stretches far to the east and west; it has been the route of countless invasions. To the south are a variety of lesser mountain ranges, plateaus, and plains-an area that has also been a crossroads of military and economic intercourse-Persians from the east, various Greco-Roman states from the west, and Semitic cultures from the south have interacted with the peoples of the South Caucasus.

  There are a variety of climates in this region due to the steep gradient in elevation from sea level to mountain peak. Glaciers are nestled at the tops of the mountains only a couple hundred miles from citrus and tea plantations. Fast-moving rivers course along this gradient. By and large, the mountain rivers, cutting steep gorges, for example, the Pankisi in eastern Georgia and the Kodori in Abkhazia, are not navigable, but there are rivers to the south and north-such as the Mtkvari (Kura), which starts in Turkey and flows through Georgia and Azerbaijan to the Caspian Sea, and the Terek to the north, which flows also to the Caspian-that have been important water highways throughout human history. The mountains hold mineral resources such as coal and manganese. The Caucasus is near the oil resources of the Caspian Sea and pipelines run to, or are planned for, the north and south of the mountains.

  There is great potential for promoting a prosperous tourist industry. Alpine skiing, pristine mountain lakes, white-water rafting, and the breathtaking scenery of snow-capped mountains juxtaposed with fertile plains are all available to the visitor, and the hospitality of the many peoples of the region, when they are not fighting among themselves, is the stuff of story and legend.

  The region, formerly contained within the boundaries of the Soviet Union, is in the early twenty-first century spread over four nations: the Russian Federation to the north; and the three republics of the South Caucasus, also known as Transcaucasia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The Russian part of this area is divided into several ethnic jurisdictions: Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan.

  The Northwest Caucasian languages include Abkhazian, spoken in Georgia, and Abaza, Adyghe (or Circassian), and Kabardian in Russia.

  Balkar-Karachay is a Turkic language, as is Kumyk of Dagestan. These languages were left behind as Turkic peoples moved along the steppes from Central Asia.

  The Ossetes speak an Iranian language, as do the Judeo-Tats of Dagestan. The Tats have the added distinction of being Jews in the midst of a predominantly Muslim territory; many of them reside in Israel.

  The Ingush and Chechen languages are fairly closely related and are collectively known as Vainakh languages. They might have been considered one language, but Soviet-era language policy often encouraged a fragmentation in linguistic definition. At the same time, languages that had little or no written expression before the twentieth century were given alphabets and encouraged- principally, of course, to be instruments of communist propaganda. Such was the case with many of the languages of the Caucasus, the two major exceptions being Armenian and Georgian with alphabets dating from the fifth century.

  The languages of Dagestan to the southeast are divided into a long list of small groups, including Aghul, Akhvakh, Andi, Archi, Avar, Bag-valal, Bezhta, Botlikh, Chamalal, Dargwa, Dido, Ghodoberi, Hinukh, Hunzib, Karata, Khvarshi, Lak, Lezgi, Rutul, Tabassaran, Tindi, and Tsakhur.

  Georgia is also divided by the ethnic autonomies of Abkhazia, Ajra, and South Ossetia; and a number of Georgian and other ethnicities reside in the mountainous regions: the Svanetians to the west, speaking a Kartvelian language related to Georgian; the Khevsurs to the west, speaking a dialect of Georgian; Bats, a small group speaking a Vainakh tongue related to Chechen and Ingush; and the Khists, who are related to the Chechens and who occupy the Pankisi Gorge.

  The ethnic and linguistic diversity described by Timosthenes and Pliny in antiquity, continues to be a fact of life in the Caucasus. It is a source of wonder, but also of conflict, as boundaries have continued slowly to shift back and forth over the millennia, but with a greater frequency in the past two centuries, as the Russian Empire appeared to

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  claim this territory as its own. The spread of Russia southward was not always by military means, and in the case of the Caucasus, the military was preceded by the gradual migration of Cossacks, except along the Caspian coast, where Peter the Great led incursion early in the eighteenth century. Their collective societies lived at the edge of Russian territory and its legalities; in the eighteenth century they began to come into closer contact with the peoples of the Caucasus. Occasional violent conflict turned eventually into organized warfare.

  The wars in the Caucasus throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem to defy any logical reference to a benefit that the Russians may have gained from holding on to the land. The great authors of nineteenth-century Russia have left a vast collection of poetry, short stories, and novels that have the ambiguous heroics of war in the Caucasus as part of their plot. One of the most famous is Leo Tolstoy’s novella Hadji Murad, set in the central Caucasus. Its prologue, in which the narrator utterly destroys a beautiful yellow flower while attempting to pick it, should be required reading for any who study the Caucasus.

  Some of the conflict between Russia and the natives of the Caucasus has traditionally been defined across confessional lines. The North Caucasian peoples were converted to Islam, although some, such as the Abkhaz, have been less intense in their assimilation of that faith. The wars in the nineteenth century came to have religious meaning for both sides, especially with the leadership of the Imam Shamil, from the Avar people of Daghestan, who led the Chechens and others until his capture in 1856. His defeat, and Russia’s eventual “pacification” of the region, was followed by a massive migration, not altogether voluntary, of North Caucasian peoples to the Ottoman Empire. Slavs, Georgians, and others often filled the “empty spaces” left behind, adding to the potential for ethnic conflict in later times.

  The chaos of Revolution in 1917 was greatly felt in the Caucasus, with Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan all experiencing short periods of independence. The North Caucasus peoples attempted to form a Confederation of Mountain Peoples. All of these, pressed by foreign intervention, as well as White and Red Russian Armies, fell to the Bolsheviks. The shifting realities of ethnic jurisdictions in the Caucasus region is its own study of nationalities policy in the Soviet Union, with the most tragic chapter being written toward the end of World War II when entire groups were forced into exile, including Ingush and Chechens, and several smaller groups. Although allowed back in the 1950s, these deportations are part of the fuel that has fed the fire of revolt and conflict in the Caucasus during the post-Soviet period. See also: ABKHAZIANS; ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; DAGESTAN; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Baddeley, John. (1969). The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus. New York: Russell and Russell. Braund, David. (1994). Georgia in Antiquity: A History of Colchis and Transcaucasian Iberia, 550 BC-AD 562. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Ethnologue Web site: «www.ethnologue.com». Greppin, John A. C., ed. (1989). The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus. Delmar, NY: Caravan Books. Pipes, Richard. (1997). Formation of the Soviet Union, revised ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Walsh, Warren B. (1968). Russia and the Soviet Union: A Modern History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

  PAUL CREGO

  CAVES MONASTERY

  One of the oldest and most important East Slav
ic monasteries, the Kievan Caves Monastery is located in the southern part of Kiev along the Dnieper River. Its name derives from the tunnels and caves that served first as cells for monks and later as burial crypts. According to the Primary Chronicle, the monastery was founded by Saint Anthony of the Caves (died c. 1073) in 1051 after his return from Mount Athos in Greece, where he was tonsured. Anthony’s pious life attracted a number of followers, and soon he appointed Varlaam, the son of an influential boyar, as abbot and secluded himself in a nearby cave. In 1062 Varlaam left to lead the St. Demetrius monastery, and the brethren chose Theodosius to replace him. The monastery grew steadily under Theodosius’s guidance, and in an attempt to provide an orderly life for the monks, he introduced the Byzantine rule of Theodore of Stu-dion (759-826). Despite the strong coenobitic nature of this rule, which required a common life under the strict guidance of the abbot, the way of life described in the Primary Chronicle at the time of Theodosius’s death in 1074 is more idiorrythmic,

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  in that each monk was left to develop his own method of monastic practice. A hallmark of caves monasticism in the Kievan period was the claim, often repeated in the sources, that the Caves was a monastery founded not by princes or rulers, but through tears, fasting, prayer, and vigils. As a spiritual center, the monastery was a major source of bishops and missionaries in pre-Mongol Rus.

  The Caves Monastery was also the center of cultural life in Kievan Rus. The Primary Chronicle has been traditionally ascribed to Nestor, a monk of the Caves Monastery writing at the end of the eleventh century, who also wrote the Life of Theodosius and the life of the slain princes Boris and Gleb. In addition, the monastery is the setting of the Kievan Caves Patericon, a thirteenth-century compilation of stories about caves monks, which was reworked and later reprinted until the nineteenth century.