Social Alchemy on the Black Sea Coast, 1860-65 Dana Sherry 2009

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Social Alchemy on the Black SeaCoast, 1860â€“65

Dana Sherry

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 10, Number

1, Winter 2009 (New Series), pp. 7-30 (Article)

Published by Slavica Publishers

DOI: 10.1353/kri.0.0068

For additional information about this article

Access provided by The Ohio State University (17 Apr 2013 03:14 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/kri/summary/v010/10.1.sherry.html





Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, 1 (Winter 2009): 7–30.

Articles

Social Alchemy on the Black Sea Coast,1860–65

DANA SHERRY

The Russians had forcibly removed Muslim peoples in order toreplace them with Christians.— Justin McCarthy 1

To drive the mountain tribes from their thickets and to settle the western Caucasus with Russians—such was the military plan for thelast four years.

—Rostislav Fadeev 2

Massive demographic changes took place on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasusin the early 1860s.3 From 1860 to 1865, at least 370,000 people indigenous tothe region departed for the Ottoman empire,4 another 74,000 to 100,000 wereresettled in the lowlands among Cossack stanitsy ,5 and over 100,000 Russians

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, the editorial board at Kritika , the reading groupformerly known as the kruzhok at Stanford, and especially Peter Holquist for their insightfulcomments on earlier versions of this article.1 Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922

(Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 1995), 40.2 Cited in R. U. Tuganov, ed., Tragicheskie posledstviia Kavkazskoi voiny dlia adygov: Vtoraia

polovina XIX–nachalo XX veka. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Nal chik: El´-Fa, 2000), 157.3 The affected area reached approximately from the Bzib River in the south to the Kuban River

in the north, encompassing part of today’s Abkhazia and neighboring territory in Krasnodarkrai.4 Most recent studies state that 450,000 people left the western Caucasus for the Ottoman

empire from 1858 to 1865, but this number includes all Muslim groups who left the regionbetween the close of the Crimean War and the official conquest of the Black Sea coast in June

1864. It also exceeds Russian estimates at the time, which put the total emigrants from 1858 to1865 at 400,000. Some 30,000 Nogai left in 1858 and 1859, prior to the new policy. Emigrationin response to the rise in Russian military activity in the western Caucasus began in 1861 andreached its height in 1864, when Russian officials estimated that some 320,000 left (Tragicheskie posledstviia , 155–57).

5 This number is rarely cited, but a Russian report of 1864 states that 73,686 Cherkess re-mained in the Kuban under Russian rule (ibid., 121). A higher number appeared in December



8 DANA SHERRY

arrived to fill the emptied space.6 The epigraphs cited above strongly articulate what has become the conventional wisdom about these shifts: the Russian statedrove out Muslims, while bringing in Russian settlers. The relatively few schol-ars who have studied these events have tended to view them as an illustrationof a general principle of governance in imperial Russia: namely, that Muslims

made undesirable subjects and ideally should be replaced by Russians or otherChristian groups. According to this vision, the state aimed to create an ethni-cally, or at least religiously, homogenous population.

I argue that, on the contrary, the Caucasus administration pursued a civi-lizing mission that aimed at transforming the peoples under its rule.7 Socialengineering remained beyond its reach, and with its limited ability to mold thelocal population in new directions, Tiflis relied on theoretical calculations thatI term “social alchemy.” These formulas reflected current ideas of social science,drawing on knowledge of ethnicity in the abstract and given ethnic groups inparticular, and it promised to deliver marvelous results in transforming im-perfect social elements into an ideal society. As practiced along the Black Seacoast, this alchemy involved two key steps. First, officials aimed to refine theindigenous population, removing elements deemed fanatical, relocating those

who could accept Russian rule to the more accessible lowlands along the KubanRiver, and subjecting those who remained to close administration. Western

Circassians, once brought under control, would help provide the manpower todevelop the resources of the Kuban lowlands.8 Next, by repopulating the coastal

1865 in a letter from Kartsov to Miliutin, in which he stated that some 80,000 to 100,000indigenous peoples remained under Russian administration (ibid., 205). 6 A report from 1864 states that 106,000 Russians had settled in the region by 1863 (ibid.,121), and I have been unable to find a figure that covers settlement through 1865.7 All the sources used in this article were written by members of the civil and military admin-

istration in the region in their official capacities. The boundaries between the civil and the mili-tary were porous, as civilian officials frequently joined in military expeditions and individualsmoved freely between posts in Tiflis and in the army, and accordingly I have not distinguishedbetween the types of imperial service. I have focused deliberately on official correpondence andliterature published under the auspices of the viceroy in order to address the views advanced bythe administration in its efforts to improve the population under its rule. I do not seek to makeclaims about what opinions officials may have held as individuals, a fascinating question to theextent that it can be answered but one that goes beyond the limits of the present article.8 The communities living in the northwestern Caucasus range were known collectively as cher-

kes in Russian (or even as simply gortsy —mountain dwellers, a term used collectively for all thehighland communities in the Caucasus range), adygei in their own language, and Circassianin English. The rubric “Circassian” covers some 15 different tribes residing in the mountains.To call the emigrants simply Circassians is misleading, as in the final years of the war in theregion only three groups received the collective right to emigrate: the Ubykh, the Shapsug, andthe Abadzekh. All other Circassian communities had already signed treaties with the Russianadministration, even if they subsequently broke those agreements, and therefore the administra-tion did not offer them what it saw as the privilege of leaving Russian territory en masse . I referto the three groups collectively as Western Circassians, a phrase that lacks precision but has thevirtue of emphasizing that only select Circassian communities were affected by these policies.



SOCIAL ALCHEMY ON THE BLACK SEA COAST, 1860–65 9

highlands with the right combination of geographically appropriate peoples, theadministration hoped to create a prosperous new society. Due to their histori-cal connection with the geography of the Russian heartland, Russian nation-als alone lacked the necessary skills to flourish in such an environment; andofficials sought to attract colonists from a variety of geographical and ethnic

backgrounds to populate the region and develop its resources.Officials thought in terms of the transformation and utilization of the hu-

man elements at their disposal, and they aspired to integrate all but the mostnoncompliant individuals into the imperial order. Usable human capital was inshort supply, so making use of the population at hand made pragmatic sense.Moreover, they claimed that controlled diversity would generate modernity anddrive the region’s development. In this view, all ethnic groups could participateproductively in empire, and unity would come through devotion to the tsar(or at least submission to Russian rule and participation in the local economy).This liberal project was profoundly hierarchical, and the place allocated to high-land communities was unenviable. Nevertheless, to say that officials intendedto expel hundreds of thousands of potential subjects greatly misrepresents howCaucasus officials approached empire-building.

In the event, however, both stages of the experiment failed. Officials man-aged to force highland communities along the Black Sea coast to leave their

homes, expecting that they would submit, relocate to the lowlands, and con-tribute to the emerging agricultural economy. In the event, the highlanderscould not remain in place, but they could and did choose to reject Russian ruleand depart for the Ottoman empire. Geographically suitable colonists provedimpossible to find in the 1860s.9 Perforce the administration relied primarily onthe Cossacks who had helped conquer the region for settlers. As predicted, thesecolonists proved unable to adapt to the new environment and, alarmingly, be-gan to adopt some of the least desirable habits of the region’s previous residents.

Ultimately, like true alchemists, Caucasus officials did not succeed in generat-ing gold and struggled to control the unstable composite they had created.

Ethnicity and Enlightened ImperialismEthnicity, not religion, dominated the debates over who should inhabit theBlack Sea coast, a preference that stemmed from the liberal bias of Caucasusofficials at mid-century. Scholarship over the last 15 years has revealed the sa-lience of ethnicity in Soviet governance, and it is emerging as a significant cat-egory of governance in the borderlands in the imperial period as well. To besure, religious and ethnic categories overlap both in terms of their content andtheir usage, yet by the mid-19th century the choice of terms implied different

9 Georgian, Greek, and Armenian settlers would arrive in large numbers to repopulate theregion only later in the century.



10 DANA SHERRY

understandings of empire.10 Daniel Brower argued that in Turkestan, conser-vative officials relied primarily on religion to emphasize the impossibility offully incorporating the local populations into imperial structures. Islam, theyargued, constituted an immutable obstacle to civility ( grazhdanstvennost´ ); andas Muslims, the peoples of Turkestan could never overcome their backward-

ness. An alternate view of empire, however, drew on Enlightenment principlesto promote modernity through diversity. Knowledge of the population wouldenable these enlightened officials to introduce progress, modernity, and capital-H History to backward peoples. Accordingly, these officials categorized theirsubjects in ethnic terms and emphasized the need to transform them. Ethnicdiversity and empire dovetailed neatly in this picture. Brower wrote:

reformers who sought the association of Turkestan’s peoples within the

imperial order were persuaded (and argued so publicly) that recognition ofethnic differences was compatible with (and for some was a prime condi-tion of ) progress and modernity. They minimized the “uniqueness” allegedby conservatives to mark the entire Turkestan Muslim population and ar-gued that social and institutional evolution was both feasible and desirable.Paternalistic guidance by enlightened colonial rulers and collaboration with compliant elected native elites were the preferred means.11

This enlightened view of empire dominated in the Caucasus as well, andGovernor-General Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman may well have broughtthese views with him to Turkestan from his service under Caucasus ViceroyMikhail Sergeevich Vorontsov.12 Like their later counterparts in Central Asia,Caucasus officials in the mid-19th century publicly espoused a vision of empirethat celebrated ethnic diversity and the shared devotion of all the peoples of theregion to the tsar. Resistance to Russian rule was attributed in official publica-tions to the malevolence and fanaticism of a few individuals, who succeeded

in tricking the gullible masses into revolt. While conservative voices deploredthe inherent savagery of highland communities, state publications consistentlyespoused the liberal argument that all ethnic groups could experience devotionto the tsar and earn a place in the new social order. Hierarchical inclusion, notexclusion, was their ideal and the key to modernizing the region.

10 Talal Asad offers a systematic analysis of the intersection of secular and religious categoriesin Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress, 2003).11 Daniel Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London: RoutledgeCurzon,2003), 10.12 Elsewhere, Brower argued that Kaufman in part drew on his experiences in the Caucasus indeciding to “ignore” Islam: that is, to disregard its private aspects while limiting its impact inpublic (“Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy in Turkestan,” in Russia’s Orient : ImperialBorderlands and Peoples , ed. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini [Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1997], 115–37).




The nation may have been the protagonist of modernity for conservatives,to modify Nathaniel Knight’s pithy formulation, but Caucasus officials arguedthat ethnic diversity itself would ultimately provide the key to modernizing theregion.13 Devotion to Russian values would draw the fragmented peoples out oftheir backward somnolescence and integrate them into the empire, where their

specific aptitudes could be put to good use. Indeed, the entire hierarchy positedfor the local population was essentially an occupational structure, and officialssaw work and participation in the colonial economy as markers of membershipin both the Russian empire and the modern world. Officials speculated thatgroups who did not work, like the nomads, fell outside the universal laws ofprogress and even outside the realm of humanity.14 Such groups seemed des-tined to die out as ignoble savages, but the remainder of the indigenous popula-tion worked, or should work, to build a stronger empire.

Officials confidently assigned a role in this occupational hierarchy to eachethnic group. Russians and foreigners would remain a minority and help guidethe region into the modern age. Aristocratic Georgians would best be used as amanagerial class, whether they served the state directly in civil or military posi-tions,15 while the Georgian peasants, who were “not strangers to hard work,”could become good agricultural workers “under the direction of an intelligentlandowner.”16 Conforming to stereotypes, Armenians would form a merchant

class, aiming toward the acquisition of wealth (though not capital—modernindustry belonged to Europeans).17 “Tatars”18 naturally engaged in agricultureand animal husbandry, and constituted “perhaps the most important produc-tive working element of Transcaucasia,”19 though their work could be mademore efficient only if the necessary shepherds traveled with their herds and therest stayed home to work.20 What kind of work they would perform at homeremained unclear, but providing wage labor was a clear option. Persian mi-grant labor contributed significantly to the Caucasian economy, but the official

13 Nathaniel Knight, “Ethnicity, Nationality, and the Masses: Narodnost´ and Modernity inImperial Russia,” in Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices , ed. David L. Hoffmannand Yanni Kotsonis (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 42.14 Male Kurds, whose martial abilities and flashy clothes gained them the attention of manychroniclers of official processions, formed an exception to the rule. Sustained discussions of en-tire nomadic communities focused on the Kalmyks. For a representative article in this vein, see“Rasskaz Kalmykov, slyshannyi v Stavropol skoi gubernii,” Kavkaz , 13 May 1862, 37–39.15 “Predislovie,” Zapiski Kavkazskogo otdela Imperatorskogo russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 1 (1852): xix. A similar picture of the ethnic composition of Tiflis itself appeared in “Pis´ma vSankt-Peterburge 30,” Kavkaz , 30 July 1861, 59.16 “Osnovnye promyshlennye sily Zakavkazía,” Kavkazskii kalendar´ (Tiflis: n.p., 1846): 140.17 “Predislovie,” xix.18 The problematic term “Tatar” can refer to almost any Turkic-speaking Muslim group in theCaucasus, but here it seems to mean pacified Turkic-speakers throughout the region.19 “Predislovie,” xix.20 “Osnovnye promyshlennye sily Zakavkazía,” Kavkazskii kalendar´ (1846): 139.



12 DANA SHERRY

preference for keeping close control over border crossings made developing adomestic labor force desirable.

Caucasus officials viewed the highlanders, unlike the nomads, as peoplespossessed of natural intelligence and well able to adapt to civilized life, once theyaccepted Russian rule. The process of acculturation might not move quickly,

but even pessimistic voices did not judge it impossible, after much time hadpassed, for the highland masses to appreciate the virtues of Russian civilization.Optimists argued that this moment lay close at hand. Once highlanders enteredthe imperial family, officials proclaimed that Russia itself would take up theircause:

Through the establishment of civility, the spread of civilization [obra-zovanie ], and the desire to master technical labor, the government will

endow the highlanders with a most happy life… . The grandchildren ofour grandchildren will record in the annals of Caucasian history the nameof the great man who brought civilization to a wild country abandoned byGod: Dagestan.21

The god-forsaken Dagestanis would need this introduction to the ways oftechnical labor, for like the Tatars, they were destined to fill the lowest levelin the hierarchy as members of the working class. The true conquest of the

Caucasus would be achieved when the highlanders “understand that which isearned through labor is better and more safe than that which is taken at knifepoint.”22 The highlanders would fill a similar function to that allocated to allTatars in the general plans for the region and become laborers, whether work-ing their own land or for wages on imperial projects (roads, wood-felling) or onlowland plantations.23 The two latter options were more likely, as officials drewon familiar colonial tropes to argue that the highlanders did not deserve to haveland because they did not make use of its bounty.

Other authors argued that the highlanders themselves embraced the op-portunity to become wage laborers on construction projects or agricultural es-tablishments. The administration, for its part, proposed to foster the seeds of“civilization and labor” that it had sown and rejoiced at the “great softeningof the native character and mores” that had already taken place, seen in the dropin raiding and the rise in the number of wage laborers.24 As one author enthused,agriculture and trade would “occupy the many hands of lazy highlanders. What

21 “Petrovsk,” Kavkaz , 12 December 1863, 97.22 Fedor Bannikov, “Zavod Alagriskii, 8 oktiabria 1850,” Kavkaz , 15 November 1850, 90.23 This transition from martial activities to wage labor mirrors the fate of the high-land Chotanagpur peoples in British India, as described by Kaushik Ghosh, “A Market for Aboriginality: Primitivism and Race Classification in the Indentured Labor Market of ColonialIndia,” Subaltern Studies 10, ed. Gautam Bhadra, Gyan Prakash, and Susie Tharu (New Delhi:Oxford University Press, 1999), 8–48.24 Pavel Przheslavskii, “Ulli-Kala,” Kavkaz , 10 July 1860, 53.




can pacify a people, accustomed to idleness and theft, if not trade and industry! A clear example of this is presented by the natives of southern Dagestan and itsenvirons, who have grown wealthy [!] on the madder plantations.”25

The main problem with the highlanders before pacification lay not in theiridleness but in their rebelliousness, though dependence on wages would help

curb that quality as well. Civilized life consistently meant a life of labor, andboth entailed making the highlanders more compliant.

Using the indigenous population to develop the region made sense in anunderpopulated state like the Russian empire, yet that choice also reflectedcurrent views on the intimate relationship between the terrain and the peo-ples who inhabited it. Caucasus officials adhered to the Romantic belief thatland and national identity were inextricably intertwined, and that resettlinggeographically unsuitable colonists would have tragic consequences.26 Ethnicgroups had uniquely adapted to their physical surroundings, and they wouldsuffer if artificially placed in a new, unfamiliar location. Russians could notsurvive easily in the topographically unfamiliar lands of the Caucasus, andtherefore they would play a supervisory role and make use of the local humancapital to pursue their goals.

In this vein, V. A. Frankini, the military advisor to the Russian consul inIstanbul, argued passionately for the need to retain as many of the highland

Circassian communities as possible in order to realize Russia’s economic andsocial goals along the Black Sea coast. A loss of large numbers of potential subjects would work against Russia’s true interests in the Caucasus itself, which hedescribed at length:

The full and complete conquest of the Caucasus should not mean only anempty land but a land together with its original [ pervobytnoe ] population.The Caucasus War represents the struggle of enlightenment with savagery,rational material power with banditry. But those bandits are people inex-tricably bound with the land, and they hide within themselves a wealthof mental and physical activity… . Let our selfless care for them show

25 “Iz Petrovska,” Kavkaz , 16 May 1863, 37. Madder is a plant that is used in making dyes.Madder plantations appear frequently in discussions of the highlanders’ migrant labor, though Ihave seen no discussion of it as part of the larger plans to develop the region, which focus moreon cotton, wine, and honey. Some official correspondence waxed lyrical about raising leechesas a way to make money in the western Caucasus, but fortunately the highlanders seem to haveavoided this unpleasant occupation. The notion that the highlanders grew wealthy through theirlabor is absurd, as the descriptions of their lamentable working conditions confirm (“Derbent,”Kavkaz , 16 December 1862, 99; and “Derbent,” Kavkaz , 23 December 1862, 101). For more onthe fate of the gortsy of the eastern Caucasus, see Dana Sherry, “Imperial Alchemy: Resettlement,Ethnicity, and Governance in the Russian Caucasus, 1828–1865,” especially chap. 3.26 Montesquieu laid the groundwork for this view, but Johann Gottfried Herder’s vision ofethnicity had the greatest direct impact on this thinking. For Herder’s understanding of geog-raphy’s impact on nationality, see Johann Gottfried Herder, Reflections on the Philosophy of theHistory of Mankind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), especially chap. 1.



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even in our punishment; let us love them and they will be transformed.Russia cannot be content with only the naked mountains and valleys of theCaucasus. Russian blood was spilled in vain, if it did not save the popula-tion itself from the moral denigration in which it stagnates, and its finalcivilization [okonchatelńoe obrazovanie ] is necessary for Russia to justify

before the enlightened world the harshness with which it struggled for 60years in such a cruel war.27

Frankini’s call to love the savage residents of the region went far beyondthe more typical calls for hierarchical integration, yet his belief that the region’sdevelopment depended on the control of its residents as well as its territory heldgeneral currency among Caucasus officials. The final conquest of the Caucasuslay in the “final civilization” of its inhabitants; and without the submission of

indigenous peoples, the conquest itself would be empty. Their physical absence would make Russia unable to achieve a more crucial victory.

Expulsion or Emigration?Given the prevalence of these views, how did it happen that hundreds ofthousands of Western Circassians fled to the Ottoman empire from 1860 to1865? One of the key debates in the historiography of Russia’s presence on theBlack Sea coast revolves around the exodus of the indigenous population and

whether this movement should be seen as expulsion (they were driven out bythe Russians) or emigration (they chose to go). Contemporary Western scholar-ship favors the former explanation.28 Justin McCarthy polemically presents themaximalist view: all states seek religious homogeneity, and all subjects seek tobe ruled by a state that shares their religion. The Russian state was Christian;and the Circassians, like all the communities addressed in his study, “identifiedthemselves as Muslims, were classified as ‘Muslim’ by their government, and

were persecuted because they were Muslim.”29 Specifically, “the Russians had

27 Tragicheskie posledstviia , 116–17.28 In the interest of brevity, I have chosen to focus on three recent works that embody dis-tinct approaches to the question. Other studies of the topic in English include Mark Pinson,“Demographic Warfare: An Aspect of Ottoman and Russian Policy, 1854–1866” (Ph.D. diss.,Harvard University, 1970); Pinson, “Ottoman Colonization of the Circassians in Rumeli afterthe Crimean War,”Études Balkaniques 8, 3 (1972): 71–85; Willis Brooks, “Russia’s Conquest andPacification of the Caucasus: Relocation Becomes a Pogrom in the Post–Crimean War Period,”Nationalities Papers 23, 4 (1995): 675–86; Paul Henze, “Fire and Sword in the Caucasus: TheNineteenth-Century Resistance of the North Caucasian Mountaineers,” Central Asia Survey 2, 1 (1983): 5–44; and David Cuthel, “The Circassian Sürgün,” in Ab Imperio, no. 2 (2003):139–68. Russian scholarship is underdeveloped, as the many post-Soviet volumes devoted to thetopic are collections of documents rather than analyses of the material they present. Georgian-language scholarship is not accessible to me, but discussions with Georgian scholars suggest thatthey present the movement as a voluntary exodus, a stance that is intimately linked to Georgianclaims to Abkhazia today.29 McCarthy, Death and Exile, 3.




forcibly removed Muslim peoples in order to replace them with Christians.”30 Most scholars of the exodus share this general view, though they do not expressit in such strong terms.

An alternate argument suggests that the emigration stemmed in part fromcompulsion by the Russian state and in part from the tradition of hijra , whereby

Muslims would leave for Muslim-ruled lands to avoid Christian domination. Austin Jersild, in his brief discussion of these events, offers this model to explaindepartures up to 1858, but he uses the term “exile” for all subsequent departures

without explaining the change in terminology.31 After noting that the initialplan to pacify the western Caucasus entailed resettlement within the empireor in Ottoman lands, Jersild states: “Many regime officials and other Russiansin the Caucasus and throughout Russia quite simply believed that the Adygei[Circassians] and the mountaineers in general did not belong in the empire.”32 He argues that the Russians chose to “cleanse” the region of mountaineers; thatis, force them from the body politic. The bulk of the sources he cites to supportthis conclusion were written after it became clear that many of the Circassianshad already left or were waiting for transport on the coast, by which time itremained only to justify and naturalize the exodus. This justification came overtime, however, legitimizing rather than driving events.33

Yet another approach to the question seeks to locate the resettlement in

the context of European and Russian notions of governance. Peter Holquistargues that from the 19th century on, European administrators generally cameto think in terms of population; that is, to define the social body in quantifiableethnic units through the use of statistics.34 By the early 20th century, he sug-gests, Russians accepted developments in West European thinking about gov-ernance and began to see ethnic homogeneity as the surest guarantee of social

well-being. Holquist views the western Caucasus as one of the first places whereofficials attempted to create a homogenous population on a mass scale. His ar-

gument rests on three key figures: Dmitrii Alekseevich Miliutin (chief of staffin the Caucasus from 1856 to 1860 and minister of war from 1861 to 1881),Rostislav Andreevich Fadeev (adjutant to Viceroy Bariatinskii and a prominentpublicist), and Count Nikolai Ivanovich Evdokimov (commander of Russian

30 Ibid., 40.31 Austin Jersild, Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the GeorgianFrontier, 1845–1917 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 22–27.32 Ibid., 25. For a full discussion of conditions on the Black Sea coast in the final years of the war, see 22–27.33 In contrast, Jersild’s interpretation of the smaller movement of Chechens to the Ottoman em-pire in 1865 bears much in common with my analysis of developments on the Black Sea coast.See Jersild, “From Savagery to Citizenship,” in Russia’s Orient , 101–14.34 Peter Holquist, “To Count, to Extract, to Exterminate: Population Statistics and PopulationPolitics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia,” in A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Makingin the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2001), 111–44.



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forces in the Kuban region, 1860 to 1865). Miliutin and Fadeev presentedin retrospect the view that non-Russians should be removed from the region,

which would then be colonized by Russians. Miliutin played a major role inevents surrounding the emigration, namely in developing the military policiesthat laid the foundation for the exodus and in setting the guidelines to colonize

the coastal mountains after the Western Circassians had left (and as I showbelow, he did not propose simply introducing a Russian population), but he hadlittle to do with the emigration itself. For his part, Fadeev took part in militaryactivity in the eastern Caucasus, wrote articles promoting the administration’sviewpoints, and composed reports with suggestions for how to administer high-land communities throughout the region. The last responsibility brought himclosest to the emigration, as he visited the highlanders who had been settledalong the Kuban.35 Evdokimov was the only one of the three directly involvedin the forced relocation, and his writings confirm that he did not propose simplyto replace the Circassians with Cossacks. As I show below, Evdokimov in factplanned to remove what he presumed to be the rebellious minority from theboundaries of the Russian empire, but he, like most other Caucasus administra-tors, sought to relocate as many Circassians as possible to the lowlands wherethey could contribute to the colonial economy. This argument takes conserva-tive polemics written after the fact for policy, which can be summarized as aim-

ing “[t]o ‘cleanse’ undesirable populations in the Caucasus.”36

I argue that the existing scholarship on the Circassian emigration hasmistaken the origins and goals of the movement and that the exodus shouldbe understood as an unintended, if unsurprising, consequence of draconianRussian military practices in the region. Before 1860, the Caucasus Army hadlimited activity in the mountains along the Black Sea coast, given the morepressing resistance offered by Shamil in the eastern Caucasus and the diffi-culty in reaching the western region.37 After Shamil’s capture in August 1859,

however, stamping out resistance in the west became the final step in the “finalconquest” (okonchatelńoe pokorenie ) of the Caucasus as a whole. Evdokimovpresented a plan for conquest that expanded on old policies of encirclement

35 For a summary of Fadeev’s service in the Caucasus, see O. V. Kuznetsov, R. A. Fadeev:General i publitsist (Volgograd: Izdatel´stvo Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta,1998), chap. 1. Kuznetsov presents Fadeev as a moderate who promoted the gradual, attentiveintegration of highland communities into the empire, an uncommon view to say the least, butthe account of Fadeev’s service seems reliable.36 Holquist, “To Count, to Extract, to Exterminate,” 118.37 Shamil established an imamate in the eastern Caucasus that claimed to introduce a pureIslamic order into the region and fought with remarkable success against the Russians for 25years (1834–59). For more on Shamil’s life and career, see V. V. Degoev, Imam Shamil: Prorok,vlastitel´, voin (Moscow: Russkaia panorama, 2001); Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to theTsar (London: Frank Cass, 1994); Lesley Blanch, The Sabres of Paradise (New York: Viking,1960); and Thomas M. Barrett, “The Remaking of the Lion of Dagestan: Shamil in Captivity,”Russian Review 53, 3 (1994): 353–66.




and resettlement. Conquest meant removing the unpacified population fromthe highlands, where it had so effectively resisted Russian control. This relo-cation would become irrevocable through the systematic destruction of emp-tied villages and fields. Official reports improbably presented this process asa bloodless one that did not involve fatalities, but they did claim the diseases

and hunger that came in the wake of this destruction as an intended result ofthe campaigns. As one official wrote unapologetically, these hardships “acton them [the highlanders] morally, leading them to the awareness that onlyunder our protection can they find contentment and well-being, and only wecan provide them with a calm and peaceful life.”38 Communities that surren-dered could migrate to lands set aside behind the line of Cossack stanitsy or, asa concession to demands from below, they could emigrate to Ottoman lands.The violence of the campaigns and the forced relocation doubtless fueled the

Western Circassians’ desire to emigrate to the Ottoman empire, but Russianplanners in the early 1860s anticipated that most Western Circassians wouldrelocate to the lowlands.

Emptying the Highlands Yet by 1863, the administration began to consider alternatives to relocation tothe Kuban region, as the highland communities continued to resist the impo-

sition of Russian rule despite the increasing hopelessness of their cause. A. P.Kartsov, then commander in chief of the Caucasus Army, explained to Miliutin,then war minister, that the communities of the western Caucasus realized the

weakness of their position and would surrender immediately if they could re-main in their present locations. Surrender on such terms would, however, con-tradict the plan for conquest.

The nature of the coastal strip and the habits of the population occupying it

are so incompatible with what we can offer the mountain tribes … that we will have to destroy the majority of this population by force of arms beforeit will agree to satisfy our demands. Under these circumstances, it wouldbe most profitable for us to make use of their [the Western Circassians’] widespread desire to emigrate to Turkey.39

Kartsov improbably cast emigration as a humanitarian move: by allow-ing the local inhabitants to leave, Russia would spare Circassian lives. He then

arrived at the main point of his letter—namely, more money to facilitate theirdeparture. In short, it would be cheaper and easier to help them move than toexterminate them.

At the same time, once it became apparent that the majority of the WesternCircassians preferred emigration, few officials lamented their departure.

38 “Vesti s Linii : Pis mo k priiateliu,” Kavkaz , 19 January 1855.39 Kartsov to Miliutin, 10 November 1863, in Tragicheskie posledstviia , 81.



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Evdokimov expressed a widespread view when he concluded that, “as for thethreat that the entire population [along the coast] may leave, even if that hap-pened, it would bring us both satisfaction and a real benefit by freeing us of apeople [narod ] that does not wish us well.”40 At most, officials derived satisfac-tion from the emigration of unwilling subjects, an attitude that falls far short of

actively driving the Western Circassians from the empire entirely.The war officially ended on 9 June 1864, when all the mountain com-

munities had evacuated the highlands. The newspaper Kavkaz claimed thatthe entire Caucasus and Russia rejoiced at the great feat, which marked thebeginning of an “era of peace, public welfare [blagoustroistvo], and develop-ment in lands that are generously endowed with natural wealth.”41 Before theselands could be developed, however, it remained to finish the process of destruc-tion. The report of an onsite official recorded 8 June 1864 as the last day whenthe Circassians could leave. Many villages were burned that day, and over thesucceeding days troops reconnoitered the villages and burned buildings thatremained standing.42

Yet, unintentionally echoing the anarchist Mikhail AleksandrovichBakunin, Caucasus officials argued that this destruction served as a creativeforce, marking the dawn of a new era of peace. In September 1864, Evdokimov

wrote confidently that the military era had passed and a new peaceful era had

begun. He dwelled at length on what this new era could mean for the indig-enous population:

The not insignificant matter remains of bringing peace to the region com-pletely and laying a firm foundation for the development of well-beingand a peaceful life for the natives, and to make them forever harmless forRussia. If the mountain tribes had a clear understanding of civic life [ gra-zhdanskaia zhizn´ ] and truly wanted only peaceful occupations, clearly thematter [of establishing a new order] would be resolved without particulartrouble. They could come to us when it was time to work the fields and would find in the lands designated for their use a free space, because thereis still much unoccupied land in the Kuban district. But the savagery oftheir manners, their complete distrust of us, and their desire for unlimitedfreedom will long serve as an impediment to the rapid establishment ofcivility and loyalty to our government.43

40 See Evdokimov to Orbeliani, 3 June 1860, in ibid., 27.41 Kavkaz , 18 June 1864.

42 Georgian State Historical Archive (SSSA) f. 416 (Kavkazskii arkheograficheskii Komitet),op. 3 (Materialy k izdaniiu XII toma “Aktov”), d. 144 (Raport nachalńika malo-labinskogookruga komanduiushchemu Kubanskoi oblasti o khode vyselenii Pskhuvtsev), l. 1.43 Ibid., d. 139 (Otzyv komanduiushchego voiskami Kubanskoi oblasti nachalńiku GlavnogoShtaba Kavkazskoi armii ob iz˝iavlenii gortsami Kubanskoi oblasti pokornosti pri uslovii pere-seleniia ikh v Turtsiiu na kazennyi schet), l. 4.




Evdokimov thus asserted that interests of state called for promoting civil-ity and domestic security, and that the governmen had alloted a place for the

Western Circassians in the empire. It would take time for the local inhabitantsto abandon their savage freedom to become useful agricultural laborers, an un-enviable fate, to judge by the poverty that Russian rule brought to the eastern

highlands. Caucasus officials envisioned a place for Western Circassians along-side the highlanders of the eastern Caucasus at the lowest rungs of the emergingsocial order, not outside it. This projected future, combined with the years ofsuffering at the hands of the Russian army, could explain any distrust and desirefor freedom on the part of the Western Circassians far more than allegations ofsavagery.

To integrate the remaining Circassians into their allotted place in the order,Evdokimov proposed further culling the population. In his view, the communi-ties on the whole were too large, and even careful surveillance would not suf-fice to keep them pacified. Therefore, “it [was] necessary to weaken the nativepopulation” to the point where it could not present a serious threat to secu-rity, and reducing the population by 10,000 families should achieve this goal.44 Thus Evdokimov, the man credited with authoring the plan for exile, estimatedin September 1863 that removing some 60,000 individuals from a populationof over 400,000 would be enough to achieve the state’s purpose. This plan

alone called for a significant reduction in the population, but it paled next tothe scope of the actual emigration. When the number of emigrants proved sixtimes larger, the situation caught officials off-guard and put great strain on bothRussian and Ottoman resources.

The management of a vast number of migrants required the creation ofa new bureaucracy to oversee their itinerary and their minimal well-being enroute . The state had to ensure that the émigrés did not attempt to return to theirdevastated homes or disrupt the communities they passed. To this end, officials

established three points of departure, to which communities traveled underCossack escort from February 1864.45 By the late summer of 1864, the exodusfrom the mountains was complete, but conditions at the coast worsened daily.

The situation of the Circassians in the fall and winter of 1864–65 wasnothing short of disastrous. Two weeks of heavy rain impeded the WesternCircassians’ progress, meaning that they arrived largely after the clear summer

weather had ended. Moreover, they arrived in a weakened condition, exhaustedand vulnerable to disease. Continued storms delayed their departure from theport cities, and restless seas destroyed at least one vessel. Of that ship’s 370passengers, 250 died despite rescue efforts. In late 1864, the Ottomans asked

44 Ibid., l. 5.45 Western Circassians could depart from the ports of Taman, Konstantinovsk, andNovorossiisk.



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that the migration stop until spring “for humanitarian reasons.”46 The Russianadministration concurred, and officials in the port cities struggled to meet theneeds of the émigrés. Almost 11,000 Circassians wintered in Novorossiisk, fill-ing the small town to overflowing. Officials expressed dismay at the povertyof the emigrants and their woefully inadequate preparations for the winter.

Despite efforts by the Caucasus administration to ameliorate the emigrants’suffering, they lacked food and had neither heat nor privacy in their lodgings,and according to one official there was no way to know how many had died.47

Another reported that 1,480 graves had been dug for Circassians that winter inNovorossiisk alone.48 Nevertheless, the situation remained calm, leading oneofficial to marvel at the “patience and unusual order” of the emigrants despitetheir suffering.49 The steamers resumed their routes in the late spring, but arrivalat their destination would not immediately improve the lot of the highlanders.

Ottoman officials attempted to maintain public order and provide for theempire’s new subjects upon their arrival. They determined set points of arrivaland received notification of when to expect the vessels and how many arrivalsto expect, again in the interest of ensuring order. Just as Russian officials couldnot cope with the massive number of migrants, however, Ottoman officials alsoproved incapable of making adequate preparation for the hundreds of thou-sands who arrived. Between the sides, officials estimated that a quarter of those

who left died.The emigration came to a quick close. Viceroy Mikhail Nikolaevich issuedan edict ending the emigration within three weeks of the official end of the

war, though those individuals who had left for the coast before that time wouldbe allowed to leave when the weather permitted in the spring. From that pointforward, the Caucasus administration insisted on retaining its subjects.

Civilizing Those Who Stayed

The Circassians who resettled in the Kuban became the objects of plans in-tended to transform their daily practices while claiming to accommodate reli-gious difference. Officials proclaimed that the Russian state would address the“true” (istinnye ) needs of these groups, give them sharia and adat courts, workthrough local elders, and thereby earn their trust to prevent future uprisings.They could remain Muslim, so long as that fit within the framework set out bythe administration, and the officials predicted confidently that this arrange-ment should satisfy all parties involved. In the long run, officials anticipatedthat the fact that the Western Circassians were settled among and outnumbered

46 SSSA f. 416, op. 3, d. 145 (Otzyv nachalńika Glavnogo Shtaba Kavkazskoi armii nachalńikuKubanskoi oblasti ob ustanovlenii nadzora za pereseleniem gortsev), l. 15.47 Ibid., d. 149 (Perepiska o pereselenii Kavkazskikh gortsev v Turtsiiu), l. 13.48 Tragicheskie posledstviia , 192–95.49 SSSA f. 416, op. 3, d. 142, ll. 1–4.




by Russian settlers50 would lead to the establishment of civic virtues and therestructuring of Circassian society and daily life.51 This exposure to Russianculture would attract and transform those Circassians capable of this transmu-tation and make them productive members of the empire.

For those communities who did not benefit from direct exposure to

Russians, however, a good Russian administration could also suffice. Once theCircassians were relocated, appropriate government could instill grazhdanstven-nost´ and create good subjects, and administrators initially believed that thegroups who stayed would recognize the advantages of this project. As early asthe spring of 1861, Evdokimov wrote that pacified Circassians should be settledalong the Kuban in large auls, “and in this way they could be kept under closeobservation and we could best attend to the civic development [ grazhdanskoerazvitie ] of the mountain peoples.” By 1864, Evdokimov’s views had changedlittle, though he now wrote of good administration rather than directly of ob-servation. Writing confidently that resettled Circassians would not respond to aTurkish call for continued emigration, he concluded, “in any case, we must now

work on building a proper administration among the natives, in keeping withthe views of the administration and the demands of the time, so that solicitudeabout the improvement of their daily life would retain those natives who truly

want to be Russian subjects and not attract censure for failing to attend to their

situation.”52

These improvements, which included the establishment of sharia courts,aimed “in time to Russify them [the Western Circassians] more than other na-tives.”53 Attention to the needs of non-Russian communities and Russification

were linked goals in this scheme. Officials proclaimed that this transforma-tion would benefit the Western Circassians, and good administration wouldcreate a good society with this social material, with or without the admixtureof ethnic Russians. Evdokimov did not explain exactly what Russification en-

tailed, but these comments and his earlier vision of what Russian rule offeredthe Circassians suggested that Russification meant agricultural pursuits andliving according to Russian notions of civility —the elusive ideal of grazhdanst-vennost´ . Those who remained under Russian supervision could eventually losetheir savagery and attain this state through careful supervision. Although thisprocess did not run smoothly, officials refused to relinquish their belief in theviability of the transformation or in its supposedly self-evident appeal.

These reports reveal that the administration meant to transform theCircassians who remained into productive subjects. The ethnic cleansing model

50 “Russian” here includes both peasant settlers and Cossacks, who officials believed wouldexercise the same beneficial influence over their savage neighbors.51 SSSA f. 416, op. 3, d. 114 (Polozhenie ob upravlenii gortsami Kubanskoi oblasti), l. 1.52 Ibid., d. 109 (Prikaz po voiskam Kubanskoi oblasti o vvedenii novogo upravleniia mezhdutuzemtsami Kubanskoi oblasti), l. 2.53 Ibid., l. 2.



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would call for a push to remove or assimilate these groups entirely, whereas theCaucasus administration emphatically insisted that it could provide for andtransform the Western Circassians while keeping key aspects of their identityintact. Official correspondence and periodical literature generated in the regionunanimously supported this goal. I have focused on Evdokimov’s statements

because of his centrality to this project as commander of the Kuban region andbecause he has gained misleading renown as a proponent of ethnic cleansing.

As seen here, he allowed malcontents to leave but for the rest relied on a gradualprocess of integration into imperial structures, assuming that the remainingCircassians would themselves see the value of Russian civilization and embraceit of their own accord. At no point did Caucasus officials brand the WesternCircassians as inherently incompatible with empire, though it would take greatpatience and external discipline to teach them the value of civility. These re-quirements in turn necessitated their relocation so that they could be properlyadministered, transformed, and ultimately incorporated into the body politic.

At the same time, officials believed that the highlanders must retain certainfeatures of their ethnic identity in order to contribute to the local economy.Becoming Russians would defeat the state’s purposes.

Social Alchemy in Practice

Once the Western Circassians had left the highlands, it remained to repopulatethe region. Russian settlers had entered the region in small numbers since the1840s, primarily settling in the environs of Anapa and the newly constructedport Eisk, but the question of colonization gained new importance as the endof the war came into sight. At first, the ideal solution seemed to be a populationthat could provide defense against any Circassians who had evaded Russiantroops, engage in agriculture, and pursue maritime industry. The Cossacks firstcame to mind, though officials recognized that they were ill suited to fill this

role on the coast. The Cossacks came primarily from the steppe and thus hadlittle experience with life at sea or in the mountains. In the highlands, the ter-rain favored agriculture practiced by small farms, as the Western Circassianshad maintained, not by communities with shared land as in Russia proper.The coast, in contrast, required a population that could engage in trade andmaritime industry. To turn Cossacks into prosperous residents of the region,however, Viceroy Mikhail Nikolaevich wrote optimistically in December 1863,they needed only the freedom to pursue maritime and mountain economic

activities and some state support at the outset. Allow nature to take its course,he argued, and the Cossacks would adapt to their new environment. Ultimately,Mikhail Nikolaevich aimed to create “Coastal Cossacks” (beregovye kazaki )from a mix of Azov Cossacks, retired sailors, and some Ural Cossacks.54 Getting

54 Ibid., d. 216 (Otnoshenie namestnika Kavkazskogo voennomu ministru o zaselenii vostoch-nogo berega Chernogo moria russkimi poselentsami), l. 4.




the Cossacks there would not be easy, however. In a letter written on the sameday in December 1863, the viceroy complained to Miliutin, then war minister,that not one Azov Cossack responded to the call for volunteers to colonize theregion, and those who were settled against their will kept up a steady stream ofpetitions to be allowed to leave. He continued to ask Miliutin to send the entire

Azov host or at the very least 500 families.55 Few Caucasus officials shared Mikhail Nikolaevich’s preference for

Cossacks, and the serious debates over the right path to colonization in thefall of 1864 moved decisively away from this approach. In July 1864, Kartsov,then head of the civil division of the Caucasus administration, left for a series ofmeetings in Petersburg to discuss the question of the colonization of the BlackSea coast. Upon his departure, he asked the officials most directly involved inthe process to give information on the state of settlements and to make recom-mendations for the future goals of the administration.56 Each report drew onnotions of geographical determinism and social alchemy in their schemes fordevelopment, though they reached little consensus on what combination of eth-nicities would generate the desired result.

Evdokimov proved the strongest proponent of prioritizing military con-cerns to protect civilian development. His plan called for a combination ofCossack and diverse civilian groups: Cossacks and married soldiers to defend

the region, peasants to cultivate the land, and wealthy investors to developindustry. For Evdokimov, a combination of social estates drawn from otherparts of the empire would create the desired community. He did not addressquestions of ethnicity or religion explicitly, though Russians could easily fillall the roles he listed.57 The commander of the Kuban Cossacks, Count F. N.Sumarokov-El´ston, submitted a laconic report that, like Evdokimov’s, didnot comment on religious or ethnic affiliations.58 He expressed concern, how-ever, about combining different estates, which he feared would create conflict

and administrative complications in proportion with the “quantity of hetero-geneous [raznorodnye ] composite elements.” He proposed instead the carefulselection of peasant settlers, allowing only successful agriculturalists to enter.

As we will see, his concerns about the potential tensions arising among eth-nically homogenous but legally diverse groups within the communities soonproved well founded, but at this point he alone saw legal status as a potential

55 Ibid., d. 247 (Otnoshenie namestnika Kavkazskogo voennomu ministru o vodvorenii russ-kogo naseleniia na vostochnom beregu Chernogo moria), ll. 7–8.56 Ibid., d. 254 (Perepiska o zaselenii i ustroistve severo-vostochnogo berega Chernogo moriamezhdu rekoiu Tupase i Gagrinskim khrebtom), l. 1.57 Ibid., ll. 2–16.58 On a trivial note, F. N. Sumarokov-El´ston’s grandson, Feliks Feliksovich Iusupov, wouldeventually gain renown for participating in the murder of Grigorii Rasputin.



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source of conflict and as a more significant factor than national or religiousidentity.59

Most other officials argued that an exclusively Russian population couldnot prosper in the region and called for the addition of other ethnic com-munities. The governor-general of Kutaisi, D. I. Sviatopolk-Mirskii, invoked

national and economic principles in his presentation. He argued that althoughRussian settlers would serve to anchor Russia’s claim to the territory, they alonecould not create the kind of society that the administration needed. He ac-knowledged that Cossacks could be useful for strictly military purposes, buthe maintained that they would inhibit economic and civil development andcould serve as an unnecessary provocation to other powers. Finally, a militarypopulation could not achieve the true goal of rule on the coast: the “creation ofa Russian population engaged in maritime industry and the development of aRussian commercial fleet.” Since Russians were not sailors and were unfamil-iar with the type of agriculture suitable for this region, however, he found itnecessary “to add a dash of another [population], which could serve as an ex-ample and an encouragement to the Russian population.” Sviatopolk-Mirskiisaw the Trapezond Greeks as the best group for this, as they were familiar withthe region, had already expressed an interest in settling there, and engagedin the sorts of activities that the state should encourage. Russian consuls would

evaluate potential immigrants to make sure that they were “distinguished bygood mores [nravstvennost´ ] and industriousness.” In his view, Russian civil-ians, with the addition of some Greeks, would best serve to develop the coastin the right direction.60

The caveat about verifying the Greeks’ good values and work ethic reflecteddifficulties with other Greek settlers. A report on the status of Greek immi-grants in Stavropol´ maintained that very few of the Greeks who came to theCaucasus were distinguished by their industriousness. Instead, it claimed that

most of them had arrived utterly impoverished and subsequently did nothingat all, relying on government support for their sustenance. Even worse, “bynature they are all lazy, careless, crude, unreliable, and antisocial.” It concludedby pleading that no more Greeks be sent to Stavropol´, or at least that they beproperly supplied with cattle and money before arriving.61 Yet despite these dif-ficulties, officials did not rule out Greeks as potential colonists; they simply hadto be chosen carefully.

This connection between nationality and economic activities stemmed di-rectly from ideas about geography and its influence on national character, apoint made more explicitly in another report. Baron L. Nikolai, head of the civiladministration, argued against Cossacks as an unnecessary defensive element

59 SSSA f. 416, op. 3, d. 254, ll. 26–29.60 Ibid., ll. 17–19.61 Ibid., d. 187 (Predstavlenie Stavropol skoi palaty gosudarstvennogo imushchestva po voprosuposeleniia v Kavkazskom krae grecheskikh pereselentsev iz Turtsii), l. 3.




now that the land had “returned to its primeval [ pervobytnoe ] state of empti-ness [bezliudnost´ ].” He echoed Sviatopolk-Mirskii’s argument about the needfor a civilian population, then began a long discussion of historical geographyand its impact on the development of national character. He reasoned that thecoast should be inhabited by groups familiar with its topographical specificities

and only in areas that had previously supported human habitation. Other com-munities would take generations to adapt to the new environment, with highmortality in the process, or simply leave. Nikolai then turned to the issue of who

would be best suited to the task of colonization:

Is it necessary to settle an exclusively Russian or exclusively Christian pop-ulation, or is it possible to open the country indiscriminately to any who want to settle there, whatever their extraction or faith may be? There is no

doubt that state interests would be best served if the newly acquired coun-try were settled exclusively by the Russian nation [narodnost´ ]. The ques-tion is whether the Russian nation can settle there. The Russian people[narod ] has its own specific economic character, stemming from the to-pography of Russia… . From this it is clear that the Russian people cannotdistill from itself any elements for a maritime or mountain population. Tosummon it to do so artificially would be to violate nature, which does notsurrender itself to political considerations or regulations.62

Geography, economics, and laws of nature came together to determine thefuture of the region. Abstract goals of state played a secondary role to the de-mands of space and its impact on national identity. The space of the Black Seacoast fundamentally differed from Russian space and required settlers funda-mentally different from Russians, even though “state interests” would demandRussian colonists. The right colonists would come from a similar geographicalregion and therefore provide the necessary “elements for a maritime or moun-

tain population.”The question was then where to look for such colonists, and Nikolai was

guided by both national and religious principles in his choices. Nikolai proposedthe following candidates, ranked in order of preference, in place of Russians.First, he looked to coreligionists within the empire, namely Georgians; thento Orthodox Slavs from outside the empire (Montenegrins, Nekrasovtsy); andfinally Orthodox non-Slavs from outside the empire (the Trapezond Greeks).He further noted that the delicate process of placing the right people requiredflexibility and, above all, prudence. In this case, prudence meant allowing onlyOrthodox colonists to enter, though only communities familiar with mountain-ous and maritime environments could settle productively. He also recognizedthe desirability of bringing in settlers from within the empire, and movement

within the Caucasus itself would be the most administratively simple solution.

62 Ibid., d. 254, l. 23.



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Nikolai also sounded the sole cautionary note that the region had never been wealthy in the past, and that it could prove as difficult to develop as it was toconquer.63

In December 1864, Kartsov wrote to Mikhail Nikolaevich to inform himof the policy on colonization as determined in his meetings with Miliutin

and the emperor. The population would be civilian, with a battalion stationedalong the ridge to defend them from any Circassians who remained in themountains. As for the question of colonists, “considering recent events andthe situation of the country, it is recognized to be absolutely impossible to al-low Muslims to settle there. Due to the very nature of the Muslim religion,Russia, like any Christian power, cannot rely on the loyalty and unwaveringfidelity of a Muslim population.”64

While none of the Caucasus officials had actually proposed settlingMuslims along the coast, none of them saw it necessary to forbid this optionoutright. I would suggest that this difference in tone between Petersburg andTbilisi reflected the more liberal view that dominated in the provincial capital.Caucasus officials did not envision a prominent place for their highland Muslimsubjects, but they did insist that the highlanders had become loyal after accept-ing Russian rule. They might require additional supervision to guard againstthe agitation of figures whom officials described as alienated malcontents,

but the Muslim masses belonged in the empire—and would be kept there byforce when necessary. I would emphasize that a liberal view of empire did notequate to a gentler view of how to relate to imperial subjects, but it did divergefrom the more conservative line emerging from Petersburg in its vision of a hier-archically integrated and heterogeneous empire. This distinction is particularlynoteworthy at a historical moment when central control was weak and localactors enjoyed significant control over the implementation of policy.

Although “regarding nationality [natsionalńost´ ], it would be most desirable

to see a purely Russian population here,” Petersburg recognized that Russiansalone could not be responsible for colonizing the region.65 Kartsov continuedthat all Christian settlers, except those who were “hostile to Orthodoxy,” couldbe allowed to enter. While Russian immigration would be encouraged, foreigncolonists would be needed, “predominantly from those parts of Germany whereresidents predominantly are engaged in horticulture and viticulture.” The long-standing faith in the German colonist endured in Petersburg, even if it didnot seem a practical option in the region. Germans were not the only alterna-tive, however, and geography paired with religion to determine the range ofother possible colonists. Georgians from the neighboring provinces of Imeretiaand Mingrelia were the second choice, on the basis of geographical similarities

63 Ibid., ll. 20–26.64 Ibid., l. 40.65 Ibid., l. 41.




(and implicitly religious ones as well). Finally, Greeks could settle in the region,but Petersburg viewed them with some suspicion. They could settle only in ar-eas set aside for the development of trade, in known and limited quantities; andeach settler needed to have a recommendation from the Russian consul in hisarea. The Greek presence would encourage the development of maritime trade,

as “they present a ready-made element that can be used to create, so to speak,a cadre of future mariners and on the part of the government it is necessary totake all measure to ensure that that cadre be filled with Russians.” The Greeks

were thus viewed as a volatile element requiring additional supervision as theyacted as a positive catalyst upon the surrounding Russian population.66

The reports from the various local officials and the imperial center differedin many respects, yet certain points remained constant throughout. First, theregion needed to develop economically, and this required a civilian population.

Any military presence would be limited and would serve only to ensure thesafety of the civilians. Second, despite the unspecified advantages of Russiansettlement, Russians did not suit this environment and other, more geographi-cally appropriate groups should be brought in to promote economic develop-ment and impart necessary skills to Russian settlers. Third, all parties agreedthat good colonists would develop the region’s maritime potential, engage inagriculture, and develop industry, and that an ethnically heterogeneous popula-

tion would best meet these needs.

The New HighlandersIn the event, none of this worked out smoothly. Settlers from abroad and fromoutside the region arrived only in small numbers, and the administration had tomake do with the Cossacks who had served in the region and a mixture of will-ing and unwilling Russian peasant colonists. The 1864 debates led to the for-mation of a commission to oversee colonization, and this commission issued its

findings on the state of the new settlements in 1865.67 It found that they lackedthe necessary economic and cultural (nravstvennye ) skills to survive, let aloneflourish. The Cossacks had adapted poorly to life in the mountains, as feared inthe earlier debates, and the commission suggested that the best solution to this

weakness was to bring back some of the Western Circassians, at least for a while:“It would be useful to settle among [the Cossacks] … a few families of WesternCircassians who are good agriculturalists... . This measure is necessary for thestanitsy on the lowlands as well. If it is inconvenient to settle the Circassians,then at least allow them to work some small plots near the stanitsy . This wouldbring significant benefit [ pol´za ], particularly if they do so under the directobservation of the local officials themselves.”68

66 Ibid., ll. 40–42.67 Ibid., d. 261 (Zakliuchenie Komissii po uluchsheniiu byta poselentsev v stanitsakh, vodvo-rennykh v gornoi polose na Severnom sklone Kavkazskogo khrebta), ll. 1–23.68 Ibid., l. 4.



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The Russians would still provide surveillance over the Circassians, but nowthe flow of knowledge had reversed. The administration aimed not at teachingthem but at learning from them. Immediate exposure to the Circassians wouldbenefit the Russians, who could thus adopt their ways directly, but in need, localofficials could act as intermediaries and transfer needed skills to the Russians.

Sumarokov-El´ston used stronger terms, claiming that the administration mustaim to “recast all the inclinations and capacities of our steppe dweller and makehim into a highlander [ gorets ].”69 By this he meant above all that the colonistsshould adapt to their new environment, but his use of the term gorets , normallyreserved for the often defiant Muslim residents of the mountains, made a strongrhetorical point. This plan to resettle a small number of Western Circassians inthe region was approved and implemented in 1866.70

The Western Circassians could help with developing agriculture, but theproblem of nravstvennost´ remained. The commission knew what qualities goodcolonists should possess: “love for work and order, energy in striving towardthis goal, fortitude in the face of failure, the ability to adapt to new situations.”The report went on, however: “It is self-evident that these qualities could not bedeveloped to the same extent in all the settlers, as they were gathered from vari-ous estates [sosloviia ], from various places and on various terms.”71 Some settlerscame willingly, others were sent by their communities, and others still were sent

by the state as a punishment, and communities thus composed failed to thrive. Although the settlers seem to have been ethnic Russians—at any rate, the com-mission did not note anything to the contrary —mixing estates now proved to beas disruptive as Sumarokov-El ston had feared in his 1864 report. Almost everystanitsa contained “diverse elements,”

combining in a single stanitsa people who are more or less foreign [chuzhie ]to one other, sometimes hostile, suspicious, with different rights, and not

always of the best culture—[and this] could not but have a negative effecton the well-being of the stanitsy and their development. A throng of people,brought together by chance, mechanically, could not immediately create asociety in the true meaning of the word; a society infused with civic spirit.In such a society, any wholesome idea is taken suspiciously, any good be-ginning is met by envy and malevolence.72

The careless combination of elements created not a civilized society but

a suspicious throng. Ethnic unity did not suffice to create a coherent, orderlycommunity in the absence of legal equality and a common cause. Chance alonecould not create the desired society. Such an important task required planning

69 Ibid., d. 259, l. 5.70 Ibid., l. 5.71 Ibid., d. 261, l. 8.72 Ibid., d. 260, l. 16.




and careful selection, particularly when the harsh environment itself contrib-uted to the volatility of the interactions. The colonists found themselves in anextremely impoverished state and, according to the report, wanted nothing butto leave the mountains. Worst of all, lacking the means to support themselves,some of the settlers turned to banditry, horse theft, and robbery, the very social

ills the administration most associated with the region’s previous inhabitants.73 The Russians were becoming highlanders only in the most negative sense of theterm.

ConclusionFrom 1860 to 1865, the population along this section of the eastern Black Seacoast underwent a massive shift as Western Circassians departed and died invast numbers and were partially replaced by Slavic settlers. Yet did the adminis-tration’s population policy regarding the Black Sea coast constitute an exampleof Russification? The instability of the term has been well documented, yet evenat its most elastic, it would mispresent the views of the Caucasus administrationat this point to refer to this process as Russification.74 The officials’ insistenceon the maintenance of difference, while claiming to instill modern practicesand values among the region’s subjects, points to a colonial, not a nationalist,mode of governance. The administration aimed to transform many practices of

indigenous peoples, including the Western Circassians, a process that resembledRussification. At the same time, however, it insisted that they retain, on the onehand, their affinity with the land and, on the other, the stereotypical economicaptitudes that would fit them neatly into an ethnically defined occupationalstructure. Like their counterparts in other colonial enterprises, Caucasus of-ficials at mid-century envisioned a system that maintained and managed differ-ence under the careful supervision of an imperial elite.

This deliberate maintenance and use of ethnic difference moves beyond

the binary of inclusion and exclusion from the body politic. Hierarchical in-clusion and diversity, not equivalence and homogeneity, drove their vision ofmodernization.75 The administration enacted extremely harsh measures towardthe highland population in pursuit of its ideal, yet it ultimately aimed not atexcluding them from the body politic but at forcibly including them at the baseof the hierarchy. The flight of the Western Circassians came as a clear result of73 Ibid., d. 261, l. 18.74 The literature on this question is vast, and I do not attempt to cover it in a footnote. However,recent articles that focus explicitly on the nature of Russification can indicate the status of theterm. See A. I. Miller, “Russifikatsiia: Klassifitsirovat´ i poniat´,” Ab Imperio, no. 2 (2002):133–48; and the forum on “Reinterpreting Russification in Late Imperial Russia,” Kritika 5, 2(2004): 245–98.75 This approach parallels the co-optation or creation of religious institutions for Muslimcommunities as a way to integrate them into the imperial polity, as Robert Crews argues inFor Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 2006)—reviewed in Kritika 9, 2 (2008): 407–31.



30 DANA SHERRY

Russia’s brutal military policies, yet it also marked the state’s failure to retaina potentially productive human resource. In retrospect, it is hardly surprisingthat the government’s efforts to realize a feat of social alchemy rendered suchdisastrous results. Subsequently, the administration did turn to more conserva-tive measures, but at mid-century, enlightened officials still dreamed of creating

cultural gold with the human elements at their disposal.

Introduction to the Humanities ProgramMain Quad, Building 250Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2020 USA [email protected]

Documents

Social Alchemy on the Black Sea Coast, 1860-65 Dana Sherry 2009