A Colonial Experiment in Cleansing Rusia 1856-65

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Journal of Genocide Research
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A colonial experiment in cleansing: the Russian conquest of Western Caucasus, 1856-65

Irma Kreiten
To cite this Article Kreiten, Irma(2009) 'A colonial experiment in cleansing: the Russian conquest of Western Caucasus,
1856-65', Journal of Genocide Research, 11: 2, 213 241 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14623520903118953 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623520903118953
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Journal of Genocide Research (2009), 11(23), June September, 213241
A colonial experiment in cleansing: the Russian conquest of Western Caucasus, 1856 65

IRMA KREITEN
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In the course of colonial conquest, Russian military policy underwent a process of radicalization which culminated in the expulsion of most of the local population. This policy was explicitly referred to as cleansing by Russian contemporaries. Even though imperial Russian ofcials did not yet think in ethnic terms and were not backed up by biologistic concepts, their images of Northern Caucasians had become highly essentialized. In the case of the Circassians from Western Caucasus, this essentialization led to their exclusion from the civilized world and turned them into objects to be dispensed with. This article seeks to explain the origins of Russian resettlement and cleansing by locating them within the emerging eld of governmentality and tracing their further development. It argues that Russian colonial authorities, in conducting their strategy of nal subjugation, created a new, supplementary instrument of state power that could be used where other, less openly violent techniques of domination and control had failed. In contradiction to widespread assumptions, in Northern Caucasus the mission to civilize and the intent to destroy could exist side by side and even came to complement each other.
The task in fact is to know which has made them possible, and how these discoveries could be followed by others, which took them up again, rectied, modied, or eventually annulled them. Michel Foucault1
Introduction Recent research in the area of Postcolonial Studies has sought to demonstrate that what is today regarded as genuinely European has for a large part evolved out of the interaction with the non-European world. This argument is especially convincing with regard to modern techniques of rule and state violence. Colonies provided a space for modern state power in which to experiment at will, freed from the sociocultural restrictions present at home. The imperial periphery thus came to serve as a laboratory for social, economic, political and cultural experimentation.2 The Russian Empire has traditionally been represented as backward and as a power bent upon imitating Western European developments. While this is to a
ISSN 1462-3528 print; ISSN 1469-9494 online/09/0230213-29 # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14623520903118953
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certain degree correct, the very process of emulation gave rise to several new developments that were then re-imported back to Europe. Ethnography as the new science of mapping the states subjects had rst been invented by a German in Russian service.3 The idea of the Panopticon, made famous by Michel Foucault as modern technique of disciplining subjects which replaced earlier forms of corporal punishment, had originated with Jeremy Benthams brother during his stay in Russia. Samuel Bentham had thought of the Inspection House as a method of surveilling the ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse employees and servants on count Potemkins estate at the southern fringes of Russia.4 I want to argue that yet another, supplementary, instrument of state power was shaped on the Russian periphery, one that could be employed where other methods of control had failed: that of cleansing and re-settlement. Peter Holquists article on population politics in late imperial and early Soviet Russia has argued that the advent of Russian military statistics gave rise to the idea of extracting unreliable elements from within the population, an idea which was rst realized in the conquest of Western Caucasus with the replacement of the local Circassian population by Russian Cossack settlements.5 In following Holquists path-breaking study, I will examine cleansing as a strategy to overcome Caucasian resistance to the Russian colonial project and its emergence from within the wider eld of modern govern-mentality. The article thereby joins recent efforts to wrench the Foucaultean concept of governmentality from its exclusively European anchoring.6 By tracing both the origins of this new Russian policy in the conquest of Western Caucasus and its subsequent actualizations, it shall be demonstrated that the Russian Caucasian periphery was far more central to the unfolding of European modernity than is generally acknowledged. My intention is to bring the colonial history of Western Caucasus back into perspective and show that the events that took place at the Northeastern Black Sea coast in the early 1860s form an integral, albeit dismal part of European history that should not be forgotten. I will start by locating the Russian policy of nal subjugation within the wider context of the Russian colonial project. The second and third parts of the article will examine in detail its invention and realization. The fourth part will track the emergence of modern notions of governance and mission civilizatrice and specify the place nal subjugation occupied among them. The last part deals with the Russian realization that the conquest of Western Caucasus had given birth to a new political instrument that could be applied to other cases as well. The will to conquer: origins of Russian imperialism in Northern Caucasus Colonization is commonly assumed to have played a formative role in Russian history. Yet this assumption holds true only in certain regards. When dealing with pre-nineteenth century Russian political culture at a conceptual level, one is rather surprised by the absence of explicit discussion and clear-cut notions regarding colonization: until the mid-eighteenth century there were no memoranda 214
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addressing Moscows foreign policies and Russians did not seem to invest the enterprises of migration and settlement with a larger meaning.7 Russian rulers had been in contact with Northern Caucasians from at least the sixteenth century onwards. However, for Muscovite tsars safeguarding the empires southern borders remained paramount. As Brian Boeck has shown, the Muscovite state generally pursued a risk-averse policy towards the steppe. It preferred to contract with clients rather than plant colonies. This can be attributed not solely to a pragmatic calculation of costs and benets, but also to Muscovites overall political culture: Muscovite foreign policy in the south was still oriented on traditional steppe policy with its stress on exibility, coexistence and pragmatic conict regulation. What was lacking was not only the means toward territorial conquest and for securing settlements against the nomadic threat, but the political will itself. Russia did not yet possess a systematic agenda of colonial expansion.8 This was to change dramatically in the course of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of Peter the Greats reign, Russia had increasingly become perceived as backward. Its international position seemed threatened and it ran the risk of succumbing to the superior military power of its Western neighbors in case of war. The only way to catch up seemed to adopt both Western ways of ruling and knowing. This included the acquisition of colonies as one of the ways to increase Russias political, economic and symbolic power simultaneously. As the idea of developing inferior or uncivilized peoples became a source of imperial legitimization, Russias attitude towards adjacent non-Russian populations underwent a profound change. From the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, Russian ofcials consciously modeled their policies on Western Europes experiences overseas. This intellectual shift rst became visible under Catherine the Great, when the Russian state conquered the Black Sea steppes and became engaged in managing colonization on a larger scale.9 Before long, the Caucasus was to become the main object of Western-style colonial expansion. Here, with the waning inuence of the Persian and Ottoman Empires, a power vacuum emerged that could be exploited by the modernizing Russian state. Geostrategical interests in the Caucasus were redoubled with an ideological thrust. In order to legitimize its new claims to imperial power, Russia stylized itself as a Christian state at the forefront of the struggle with the Islamic world. Still somewhat blurry and vague, Catherines Greek project promised to re-erect the former Christian Orient.10 Enlightenment in this specically Russian context took on a double meaning, with prosveshchenie designating both the adoption of a European philosophical current and the spiritual enlightenment of formerly (or non-) Christian peoples. In 1801 Russia succeeded in annexing the Transcaucasian kingdom of Georgia without any bloodshed. However, mountainous Northern Caucasus, separating the new colony from the Russian core, posed a quite different challenge. The situation in Western Caucasus was especially sensitive because of its densely wooded valleys, wild rivers and steep mountain slopes which made it a terrain extremely difcult to oversee. The local population, commonly known as Circassians, was 215
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mainly organized in a segmentary fashion and did not form part of any state society. There were no easily identiable leaders with whom to conclude treaties or with whom to engage in regular military campaigns. Furthermore, the Circassians had been participating in the Black Sea trade and both their outside contacts and their growing Islamic orientation were something the Russian military was highly suspicious about.11 Initially, the Russian Empire remained ambivalent whether the aim in Northern Caucasus should be direct conquest or merely to safeguard Russias Transcaucasian possessions. Out of the fear of offending the Ottoman Empire, early nineteenth-century Russia conned itself to establishing links with Northern Caucasians, or mountaineers in Russian terminology.12 However, the need to pay attention to Ottoman interests in Western Caucasus became obsolete with the Russo Ottoman war of 1828 29. Although neither power had been able to rule over Circassian lands so far, the Treaty of Adrianople stipulatedin the subsequent Russian reading of the treaty at leastthat the area south to the river Kuban had now passed under Russian control.13 In this way, a unique situation was created: a territory was held to be rightfully belonging to Russia while in practice colonial authorities were still far from gaining any foothold in the region. This gave rise to a stream of plans and projects about how the subjugation of Western Caucasus might be accomplished, that is, how Western Caucasian reality could be made to conform to an already existent imperial imagery.14 While serious efforts to bring the area under Russian control were made starting from 1829, Russian success remained extremely limited. Most of the territory conquered in individual campaigns was lost again shortly thereafter. Repeated failures led to a growing amount of frustration among imperial ofcials. After Russias defeat in the Crimean war, the subjugation of the Circassians became an issue of national pride. Now, it seemed to Russian colonial ofcials, was the right time to concentrate all their forces on Western Caucasus, end native resistance once and for all and thus prove Russias imperial might to its Western European rivals. Relocation or extermination? Arguing for a new plan In 1857, Russian military ofcer Dmitrii Miliutin, close associate of the new Caucasian viceroy A.I. Bariatinskii, proposed a new system of action. In a memorandum called rather inconspicuously On the means to develop the Russian Cossack population in the Caucasus and to resettle part of the native tribes, Miliutin explained that territorial conquest could generally be achieved by two different means: either by letting the local inhabitants remain on the occupied land, or by taking the land away from the native population and settling the victor on it. He went on to argue that in the case of the Circassians, the rst option was not feasible, as [t]he non-uniformity of these tribes, the age-old habit of anarchy and freedom, the light-minded mobility do not allow to hope that one could at some time subject them to a regular order and to rightful authorities.15 The local Circassian population would always remain an 216
untrustworthy element and continue to endanger Russian imperial integrity. Miliutin therefore proposed to secure Russian control over the region by replacing the local population with Russian Cossacks. He then hurried to explain that the Caucasians forced from their lands could be re-settled farther north on Cossack territory where they could easily be held under the control of the Russian military. Thus, according to Miliutin, a simple exchange of populations would be the option to be pursued.16 Already then however, the memorandum provoked a controversy and a series of mutual accusations among Russian ofcials. This discussion is all the more important, since it proves that the policy that followed was well-planned and that its fatal consequences for the Circassians were anticipated and consciously accepted by its proponents. The governmental commission entrusted with judging upon Miliutins memorandum strongly objected to the measures proposed herein, which, in their eyes, constituted a major departure from former forms of submission and techniques of rule. They not only questioned the feasibility of the plan, but presented strong moral objections, as, due to
the mountaineers deep affection for their homeland [. . .], it is not to be doubted that they would prefer death to the settlement on the steppes [. . .] and one can denitely say, that not only whole tribes, but also individual families would not make up their mind to submit under these conditions, and that this would lead not to submission, but to their extermination.17
The notion of extermination was obviously familiar to Russian contemporaries. To subdue Northern Caucasus by way of annihilating the local population had occasionally been proposed by Russian ofcials, as for example in 1841 by a Petr Chaikovsky, who claimed that to pacify the Caucasian eternal savage could mean nothing else than to disarm him, and to disarm again meant to kill, because he would rather kill himself than hand over his arms voluntarily. A proposal of 1863 which Miliutin kept among his papers, read: But if it is not possible to civilize the mountaineers, then they have to be exterminated (ich sleduet istrebit).18 However, Russian policymakers after the Crimean war were extremely careful to avoid any expression of exterminatory intent on their part. Russian viceroy Bariatinskii showed himself hurt because of the allegations made by the committee and defended the resettlement plan. He sought to appease the committee by asserting that extermination was far from their minds and that the memorandum did absolutely not propose any new system of action.19 In the end, it was the Bariatinskii-Miliutin faction that kept the upper hand and succeeded in pushing through its visions against all domestic opposition. That Bariatinskii and Miliutin were able to circumvent regular governmental organs was an expression of both the exceptional structural position of the Caucasian viceroy in Russian politics and their personal connections with the imperial family.20 Counting upon the benevolence of the Tsar and his brother, they frequently took the liberty of running ahead of ofcial policymaking and acting at their own discretion. 217
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Not least due to Bariatinskiis machinations, minister of war N.O. Sukhozanet, who had been one of the most serious obstacles for the realization of the new policy, was substituted by Miliutin towards the end of 1860.21 While this replacement involved a fair amount of chanceskillfully exploited by Miliutinlowerranking opponents such as G.I. Filipson could be removed by Bariatinskii directly. Filipson, who had advocated gentle measures when discussing the plan of action for Western Caucasus at a staff meeting in autumn 1860, was replaced with A.P. Kartsov in spring 1861, and it was Count N.I. Evdokimov, whose views Bariatinski knew to be more in line with his own, who was now entrusted with working out the details of the plan and putting it into action.22 As the plan took shape, the notion of re-settlement came to have an even more radical meaning. The aim formulated now was to nally cleanse the mountainous region from its primordial population, forcing it to choose one of the two [options]: either to resettle to the indicated places on the lowlands and to subject themselves wholly to the Russian administration, or to leave their native soil altogether and leave for Turkey.23 Domestic resettlement had thus been supplemented by the option of foreign exile. The decree on the military settlement of Cossacks in Western Caucasus (and thus the re-settlement of the Circassians) received imperial conrmation on May 10, 1862. However, while ofcially the resettlement of the mountaineers started only after that date, the Caucasian administration had long before begun to realize the new policy.24 This gradual unfolding of the military course of action and the accompanying construction of a mitigating discourse will be examined in the following part. Military actions and legal constructions Formally, the Circassians were to be given the option of either re-settling to designated areas further north on the Kuban plain or emigrating into the Ottoman Empire. After it had become evident that the Russian policy of cleansing resulted in a major humanitarian disaster with masses of destitute refugees trying to escape into the Ottoman Empire, Russian authorities explained that the terrible calamity that had befallen the mountaineers resulted from their own stubbornness. According to Russian military writer R.A. Fadeev, the Circassians turned down the benevolent proposals made to them by the Tsar, thus suggesting that what happened to them was their own fault. What I will do here then is take a closer look at what these benevolent proposals consisted of. My aim thereby is less to judge whether the terms offered by the Russian government were reasonable, but to gain access to an imperial discourse characterized by a strange inconsistency, seeking to deny, veil and excuse at the same time.25 While on the one hand stating that the land allocated to the expulsed Circassians was the most fertile in the whole region, Russian colonial ofcials on the other hand were entirely conscious that the proposed alternative of migration into Turkey would not be a viable option for most of the people concerned. Thus, general Kartsov in a letter to D.S. Novikov, Russian envoy in Constantinople, 218
expressed his expectation that [n]ot many of them will agree to leave the picturesque nature of their native land in order to resettle on the Prikuban steppe. Another letter by the chief commander of the Caucasian army admits that the habits of the population [. . .] do not match with what we can propose to them, that is, with life on the Prikuban steppe, so that the majority of the population will have to be exterminated by [the force of] weapons, before it agrees to fulll our demands.26 Already at the planning stage Russian authorities had calculated that the land set aside for the Circassians would not sufce for all of them, and they denitely included the Circassian aversion to domestic resettlement into their calculations. They also explained that Circassians needed to be assigned considerably less land than the Russian Cossack population, as for the mountaineers a large allotment would denitely be harmful. An abundance of land would only encourage them to continue with cattle-raising, an industry [which], when it takes preponderance over agriculture, accustoms them to idleness, and from there on develops and supports their passion for raiding.27 From this follows that the aim of the Russian administration was not only to resettle the Circassians but also to re-educate them, so that they would better t Russian imperial notions of citizenship. The Circassians who preferred domestic exile were to be settled in special villages closely supervised by the Russian military. Once encircled by Cossack settlements, they could, upon the least hostile endeavor [. . .] be subjected to total extermination. In this way, the Caucasian administration would need less effort to impose the desired lifestyle upon them. One document even expressed the conviction that the insignicant remainders of those [re-settled Circassian] tribes, deprived of all liveliness, will vanish without traces in the midst of the predominant Russian population, without causing the government any new trouble.28 Therefore, we can conclude that resettlement in the Russian colonial mindsetin so far as it was envisaged as an option at allcame to mean the same as forced cultural assimilation, euphemistically termed sblizhenie (rapprochement) in Russian sources.29 A close reading of the sources reveals that the Caucasian ofcials responsible for the cleansing operations wanted to get rid of as much of the irredeemably troublesome and obstinate population as possible, only fearing that a mass expulsion would entail huge material difculties and would meet opposition from side of the Porte. The decree passed on May 10, 1862 explicitly stated that: The more migrants of this kind [preferring to emigrate into the Ottoman Empire] will turn up, the less trouble we will have with the future organization of the conquered region. Resettlement thus took onspeaking in Lacanian termsthe function of a lure.30 It served to detract from the good-riddance mentality of Russian colonial ofcials and spared them major domestic and international difculties. As we have already seen, it was quite clear to Russian ofcials in the Caucasus that the Circassians would not leave their homeland voluntarily, but only when threatened with extermination. The task of the Caucasian military therefore was to make the Circassians understand that, in the words of one contemporary, for them there remains only one [way of] salvationto leave for Turkey. The 219
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instruments employed to achieve this were outright military terror and the systematic destruction of the Circassians economic means of existence. Additionally, the tsarist government hired individual Circassians which were to express their urgent wish to migrate, thereby serving as an example for their fellow countrymen and women and creating a wave of panic.31 The military operations which gained impetus in 1859 after the capture of Shamil, the leader of anti-colonial resistance in Eastern Caucasus, were characterized by the use of uttermost force and extreme brutality. M.I. Veniukov described the Russian course of action during the nal stage of conquest as follows:
War went on with inconceivable, merciless rigor. We advanced step by step, but irreversibly, cleansing all land from the mountaineers up to the last person. [. . .] The mountain auls [villages] were burnt down by whole hundreds, as soon as the snow had passed away, but before the trees were clothed in green [. . .]; the sowings were destroyed by the horses or even trampled down. The population of the villages, if it could be seized unexpectedly, was quickly led to the closest Cossack stanitzas under military convoy and from there sent to the coast of the Black Sea and further to Turkey. Sometimes, but to the honour of our soldiers, very seldom, cruelties were committed that attained bestiality.32
Tribe by tribe was driven out of the inhabitable areas, and, when forced to surrender after having been weakened by hunger and cold, marched off towards the coast by military convoys which ensured that no one could turn back. Even when the majority of the various Circassian groups and sub-groups had already been expelled, military units were dispatched into the mountains with the task of hunting down every single remaining inhabitant.33 In November 1863 the chief-in-command of the Caucasian army decided that they should now start with the cleansing of the coastal plain. While before Russian authorities had abstained from forthright involvement in the transport of the migrants, leaving it to foreign vessels and private initiative to evacuate the destitute refugees from the shores of the Black Sea coast, they now began to actively organize the emigration. As had already been proposed in the decree on Cossack colonization in 1862, the Russian government now proceeded to facilitate the emigrations by generously allocating funds to this project. Committees were created at various points on the coast and given the task to arrange for transport, supervise the process of emigration and look after the Circassian refugees camping at the shores.34 While Russian ofcials publicly prided themselves for their excellent organizational skills, their care for the natives and their philanthropy, the actual circumstances proved disastrous and a major humanitarian tragedy ensued. Refugees were forced to camp on the shore under the open sky, sometimes for months, until ships arrived to take them to the Ottoman Empire. Weakened by hunger, cold and exhaustion, the refugees easily succumbed to contagious diseases. Even more disastrous were the conditions on the crowded ships which often were not t for sea. Upon their arrival in the Ottoman Empire, the refugees were dying by the hundreds each day.35 Ultimately then, the endeavors of the Russian administration were less directed to ensuring the well-being of the 220
refugees than to staging the migrations in such a way as to make them seem more acceptable and give them an appearance of legality. Russian sources and historical accounts dealing with the nal subjugation of the Transkuban area are for the most part characterized by a high degree of sanitization and the use of euphemisms like the term nal subjugation itselfafter all, the vast majority of the Circassians was not subjugated, but expelled. Other expressions included cleansing, nal migration, total removal or reduction of the harmful population.36 Russian authorities also made conscious efforts to steer public opinion. Veniukov thus stated:
Truly [. . .] the government, in the news about the Caucasus, seeks to evade as far as possible the question of the fate of the mountaineers relocated to the plains or leaving for Turkey [. . .] and to limit itself to depicting those successes which our colonization makes. The minister of war, bearing in mind that I could be approached with queries on that subject, namely expressed the wish that I would not communicate information that could arouse an outcry of foreigners.37
As has been mentioned, Russian colonial authorities were especially afraid that the Ottoman Empire would object to the inow of refugees. They had contacted Ottoman authorities from early on in the process and sought to gain their approval, without however informing them about the true extent of the migrations. An early command issued by the general staff urged to proceed more carefully in dispatching the mountaineers to the Ottoman Empire and to evade any correspondence with consuls in order not to have documents on this issue outside the connes of the Russian Empire. Only later on, when the process of expulsion became more formalized, was a secret order issued to mark the refugees passports with departing for migration.38 When Ottoman queries and complaints started to arrive, Russian authorities hurried to explain that the Caucasian Muslims were not petitioning for migration, but for temporal leave in order to worship the grave of Muhammad. The Russian government, so the argument ran, could and did not want to oppose the realization of a desire instilled by religious conviction.39 The claim that the Circassians were requiring leave for pilgrimage to Mecca was true in so far as the Russian government had issued instructions which explicitly demanded that Circassians leaving their homeland request leave for pilgrimage instead of the permission to migrate. Upon the expiry of their permits the Circassians were considered to have voluntarily migrated. Furthermore, Russian authorities should not hinder the mountaineers to sell their property and not undertake any inquiries as to their objective in selling their property, and also not deliver any reports on this subject.40 Fearing international opposition at an early stage of their new policy, Russian authorities in this way created a legal ction which helped them to carry on with their plans. The pilgrimage topos was also used in an inverse way in order to curb backmigration. Already in summer 1861 Russian colonial authorities came upon the problem that our mission in Constantinople did not have a legal foundation for refusing to mark the passports (visa) of those of our emigrants, which presented 221
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non-expired passports and on this basis had the right to request permits for [returning] home as subjects of the Russian empire. After considering this issue in the committee of ministers, Russian authorities argued that the departure to Turkey together with [their] property, relatives and household members or after selling all their property provides indubitable evidence of the intention to migrate from the Caucasus.41 Now, it was the mountaineers who had left their homeland under the pretext of pilgrimage, hiding their true intention from Russian authorities. Formal rules for dealing with back-migration were set up in September 1861. The purpose obviously was to exclude as many return candidates as possible by introducing a whole catalogue of conditions which could not easily be met. For example, passports issued not to individuals and their closest family members, but to several families or persons would not be taken into consideration, and those willing to return had to indicate that they still possessed a homestead or property in the Caucasus.42 On May 21, 1864 the Caucasian administration proudly declared that the nal subjugation of Western Caucasus had been accomplished and that no single recalcitrant tribe was left in the Caucasus. In fact, the Transkuban area had been depopulated almost completely. In 1864, except for the smaller portion resettled north of the river Kuban, the Circassian population in the Caucasus, estimated between 500,000 and two million, was gone.43 In autumn 1865 mass migrations of Caucasians were outlawed and effectively put to a halt, which proves once more that the Russian colonial administration was in command of the situation at any time.44 Also, even if it is true that the local military commanders were the most aggressive in pushing the Circassians into exile, it should not be forgotten that it was the Tsars brother Grand Duke Michail Nikolaevich who, in his role as viceroy of the Caucasus, had from the end of 1862 overseen the last and most radical phase of the war. The Russian imperial government was proud of its achievements, staging elaborate festivities to celebrate the events being of importance for all educated mankind. All in all, the policy of nal subjugation was deemed a huge success both in domestic and international terms.45 In fact, the high degree of premeditation and organization displayed by the Russian colonial administration were quite surprising for a modernizing nineteenth-century state. As we have seen, the decision to get rid of an unwanted population had been made early on, and it was only the details of the cleansing operations and the exact modalities of the forced migrations that remained to be specied. This was also acknowledged by contemporaries: one report on the migrations even stated that such an outcome of war in Western Caucasus was anticipated [. . .] from its very beginning.46 As Foucault has argued by drawing on a seventeenth-century plague regulation, states of emergency did not in themselves give rise to plans for excessive interventions into the social sphere, but provided an opportunity to put utopian visions into practice.47 The frequent hints at a new international war in Russian documents on the cleansing policy in Western Caucasus can be understood in a similar way. Some of the ofcials responsible for nal cleansing might of course have 222
sincerely believed in the danger of a hostile incursion by the Black Sea coast.48 Yet this cannot diminish the fact that the Russian Empire wasas numerous projects drawn up from 1829 onwards showrmly determined to bring the conquest of Western Caucasus to a successful end. The sense of danger that went along with an impending international war was instrumentalized by Russian colonial ofcials like Miliutin and Bariatinskii. The topos of war served them as a cover and justication for the new political course, and the alleged necessity to speed up the conquest left their potential opponents little time to think through the full implications of the new political course and formulate their objections. If city administrators in late seventeenth-century France were fantasizing about the state of plague, Russian ofcials in 1854 were dreaming of the opportunities the Crimean war presented for the realization of their imperial ambitions in the Caucasus. As early as November 1854 Miliutin had written a memorandum in which he urged not to let the opportunity pass and to already prepare the ground for future politics.49 Ultimately then, the whole issue of nal subjugation was bound up with larger visions of re-ordering the political terrain. Final subjugation, governmentality and the dreams of authoritarian modernism Final subjugation was a standard expression when speaking of the conquest of Western Caucasus, but Russian ofcials did not bother to set out what exactly they meant by it. Our understanding of this contemporary concept can be advanced when taking into account that meaning is differential: according to poststructuralist theory, a single term in itself has no positive content but always draws its meaning from its relations with other terms. What we have to think about then is the suppressed opposite of nal subjugation.50 When M.I. Veniukov sought to explain that the subjugation had been conducted in an entirely different way than any former subjugations of Caucasian tribes, he specied that in former times wars were usually conducted endlessly with separate tribes, which after heavy defeats calmed down, but then arose again and [thereby] made new campaigns necessary [. . .].51 The aim of the new policy was to make the historical process irreversible. The opposition on which the Russian notion of nal subjugation relied was that between a segmentary state which limited itself to lose suzerainty with indirect rule and occasional punitive expeditions, and a modern territorial state with a homogenized apparatus of administration reaching from the top to the local level. This ts neatly in with the fact that the subjugation of Western Caucasus coincided with the beginning of the Great Reforms: both bore witness to a transformative vision inicted upon Russian society. What I want to stress here therefore, in keeping with David Scotts appeal to impose an historicity to our understanding of the rationalities [. . .] of the colonial state, is the conceptual novelty of Russian colonial policy in the late 1850s and early 1860s.52 Transformative visions had generally come to play an important role in modernizing Russia.53 Their origins lay in a new philosophy of the state that had been 223
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imported to Russia from Western Europe. There, an art of government had gradually come to replace earlier notions about the divine nature of the sovereign and his place in the universe. While the traditional objective of political power had been to guarantee order and restore the divine law in case of disruptions, it was now seen as the rulers task to actively promote the common good and welfare of his subjects. In the place of its former transcendental goals, rational planning now became the causa nalis of the state. The objective the emerging science of governmentality set itself was to consciously steer and model society and thereby secure its steady movement towards the future.54 The Western European concept of government as the management of both population and territory was introduced into Russia in the eighteenth century. As in Western Europe, the legitimacy of Russian state power now came to rest on the assumption that one of its central purposes was to improve its populations skills, vigor, civic morals, and work habits. Mid-nineteenth century reformers took these ideas further and advocated the replacement of the oppressive division of the population by social orders by the concept of a uniform citizenship. In order to achieve this, backward subjects had to be molded into happy and productive citizens, everyone had to be assigned to an economically useful life, instructed and closely monitored.55 Russian modernizers had from the very start seen colonization as a way to create model communities in the spirit of Enlightenment projects and now the Caucasus as Russias rst modern colony had become such a eld for experimentation.56 In the case of the Transkuban region, this amounted to a complete eradication of the local culture(s). Russian colonial ofcials by cleansing the area from its indigenous population created a tabula rasa which would allow the remodeling of both population and landscape according to colonial needs. Russian military historian Fadeev stated enthusiastically:
Everywhere man will have free rein; in a warm and healthy climate ploughed elds, pastures, woods and water everywhere, all will be at his hand. [. . .] And this sumptuous, one can say, newly discovered land lies not in the Pacic Ocean, but on the shore of the Black Sea. [. . .] The Kuban province will grow a breed of people we have not heard of even in fairytales. We see Russian mountaineers. A round-faced, fair-haired Russian boy conveys the visiting [female!] tourist on his horses on steep mountain paths [in order] to watch from the neighboring valley how the sun rises from out of the snows and [how] the shadow of the mountains suddenly reaches out over the whole region.57
A new, progressive society was to be built up at the shores of the Black Sea. Not everybody however would be included in this vision. The potential of violence inherent in these plans of improvement can be inferred from the fact that in Fadeevs romantic depiction the Circassians are missing: in his fantasy they have been replaced by Russian mountaineers, by people worthy of the new country. The problem with the Circassians was not one of territorial sovereignty alone. With them, the task of establishing the principles of citizenship and obedience to the authorities proved to be extremely difcult, if not even altogether impossible. 224
The obstinacy of the Transkuban population, as it was understood by the Russian colonizers, was an obstinacy to adhere to their notions of progress and a rejection of the states benevolent role as guide on the road to modernity. In the views of Russian statesmen, Western Caucasians were split into small communities or family unions, not governed by any authorities, not having in between them any civil link. By drawing upon Enlightenment anthropology, the character of the mountaineers was said to mirror the coarse and wild nature of their physical surroundings. They were regarded as an unproductive population lacking any interest in the improvement of their lives. Cultural difference was essentialized to a degree where Circassians no longer seemed redeemable. Consequently, they were to be dispensed with and replaced by a peaceful, hard-working and industrious population. Military historian Fadeev bluntly stated: The land of the Transkuban people was needed by the state, [while] in themselves there was no necessity at all. Regarding the production of national wealth ten Russian peasants produce more than 100 mountaineers. Thus, the fear of losing large numbers of indigenous workforce, which is often thought to have kept in check the exterminatory intent of colonial regimes, did not work here anymore.58 The removal of the Circassians formed part of an all-encompassing project of modernization. This, I think, can also explain why those advocating the most violent means for subjugating the Circassians were known both in Russia and abroad as modern-minded liberals: nal subjugation can be understood as an elitist conception of radical reformers, a Russian version of authoritarian modernism.59 It was as an instrument to enforce visions of a new order when other methods had failed to bring about the desired state. While it is true that some pre-modern states had used resettlement in order to secure their power in volatile areas, this was something conceptually different from the Russian expulsion of the Circassians. In Russia, it was only during the eighteenth century, that is, when the Western art of governance was introduced, that the rst instances of organized state peasant resettlement took place.60 In the rgu n, relied on the pre-modern Ottoman Empire, deportations, known as su cultural recognition of the strength created by ethnic heterogeneity and openness to refugees from different lands. They were used to bring together different groups in the same region, to promote difference and not homogeneity. Russias aim in Western Caucasus in contrast, was the numerical superiority of the Russian population, with the colonization by Armenians and Greeks being only second-best options which became necessary because of the difculties the unfamiliar ecological environment posed to Russian settlers.61 This is not to say that Russian colonial ofcials aimed at creating an ethnically homogeneous Caucasus, which would indeed be anachronistic as Russians at that time did not yet possess a clear concept of ethnic group. Ratherwhile not completely devoid of some kind of Russian-orthodox chauvinismRussian imperial politics aimed at a kind of standardization associated with the creation of a modern and administratively uniform empire. Its objective was less outright Russication than the production of a uniform citizen-subject.62 While only a couple of years after the nal conquest the failure of Cossack colonization had 225
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to be at least partly admitted and the grand utopian visions of a land of plenty had died down, what stayed was the conviction that the policy of nal subjugation had been a huge political success. According to the report of the Caucasian viceroy on the so-called resettlement of the mountaineers to Turkey
these facts of migration show, that the government can make use of this gravitation of the mountaineers to Turkey [. . .] for its own interests, as a most true means for offering a convenient outlet for the rude [. . .] obstinacy and the religious fanaticism, which, to a greater or smaller degree always appears when any important reform is to be introduced into the lives of the mountaineers.63
Russian colonial authorities had by now realized that what they held in their hands was a new, powerful instrument of authoritarian modernization. For someone to whom uprisings and political unrest seemed to be expressions of a sickly irritation of the social organism, expulsion and forced migrations functioned as political blood-letting. It would both rid the government of the most radical elements and make it easier for the state to mould those subjects that remained. As the Caucasian viceroy explained, the nal subjugation of the Transkuban region had had a double effect: on the one hand, it freed space for the colonization of the lands left vacated by it [the mountaineer population], and on the other hand, it considerably facilitated organizing on a new basis that part of the mountain population of Western Caucasus that had stayed in its homeland.64 The overarching aim remained to bring about blagoustroistvo, meaning improvement, but also carrying notions of bliss achieved by the correct organization of a territory and its people. Here then, instead of being mutually exclusive projects, the practice of civilizing or disciplining and the practice of cleansing came to support and complement each other.65 As Timothy Mitchell argued, in the colonial realm there was no historical procession from a restrictive, exterior form of power to a more internal, or disciplinary power. Rather, at the same time as power relations became internal, they also appeared to take the form of external structures. The task as described by a French ofcer in Algeria therefore was to capture their minds after we have captured their bodies.66 Claims that Russian policy in Western Caucasus was bent upon a civilizing mission and not upon excluding the Circassians and forming a homogenized Caucasus therefore somewhat miss the point.67 In Russia, the expulsion of the Circassians (as exterior, restrictive form of power) was designed and implemented during precisely the period in which the concept of imperial citizenship became fully formed and was rmly integrated into Russian policy. This is not as surprising as it may seem at rst glance, as modern Russian notions of governmentality had relegated the citizen to the status of a working tool, or dead mass that was only put into motion by the monarch.68 With the nal subjugation of Western Caucasus, Russia had crossed the threshold to the era of modern population politics with both its positive, constructivist and destructive aspects. The expulsion of the Circassians had effected a profound change on the ground: by 1864, cleansing had denitively entered 226
the states repertoire for dealing with recalcitrant subject populations and from thereon could be reactivated in case of need. From imperial cleansing to Soviet terror: actualizations The ofcial end of the Caucasian War had not yet been declared when Russian colonial authorities, apparently encouraged by their successes in Western Caucasus, already thought of applying the new technique in Eastern Caucasus for the nal subjugation of the Chechens. In spite of the fact that organized resistance had been broken already in 1859, Russian authorities were not yet satised with the state of Chechnya. They criticized the unsystematic course of action in settling Eastern Caucasus, so that the Russian population mingled in a disorderly fashion with the indigenous and in this dispersed state cannot show that decisive inuence, which would be expected of it. Russian colonial authorities therefore proposed partial eviction for weakening the Chechen tribe and thinning it out. Again, the ambition to civilize and compulsory relocation were understood as complementary means: for as long as civilization does not weaken the fanaticism of the mountaineer, he had to be kept in check by repressive measures.69 While at the very start of the discussion it seemed unclear whether the government should use force to induce the emigration of the Chechens, it was soon decided to revert to a peaceful way, by renewing among the mountaineers of the Terek region the inclination to resettle to Turkey. The Chechens were to be made to leave of their own volition.70 Russian authorities proved to be quite inventive in the business of preparing Chechen minds for migration. It was decided to choose some of the most popular gures from among the indigenous population and offer them recompense for setting an example. By expressing their wish to migrate and placing themselves at the head of the groups, they should make the rest follow them. Proclamations by Turkish emissaries which invited the mountaineers into Turkey should be distributed among the population. At the same time, Russian ofcials carefully sought to hide their interest and participation in the emigrations by making local authorities pretend to oppose them.71 According to an agreement with the Ottoman Empire, the total number of migrants was limited to 5,000 migrant families. In the initial stage of planning however, the possibility of a much larger emigration had been envisaged. M.T. Loris-Melikov, one of the driving forces for the resettlement of the Chechens, had voiced his complaints over the small scale of the project, remarking that whether one resettles one thousand families or expels all, will entail the same difculties: therefore would it not be better to get down to realize the whole system now? The relocation of the mountaineers was thus conceived as a larger, longer-term project, and not as a prophylactic measure in the face of an immediate threat.72 A. Kantemir, who edited the memoirs of Mussa Kundukhovone of those paid by the Russian administration to lead his fellow countrymen and women into exilementions that on the eve of the Russo-Caucasian war of 1877 78 there 227
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had been even more grandiose plans of relocating Northern Caucasians. Worried that any further migrations of Northern Caucasians into the Ottoman Empire would only strengthen the ranks of the enemy, Russian ofcials thought about a possible transfer of the remaining Northern Caucasians to the Afghan frontier. Here, a New Caucasus could be created, which might even serve as a buffer against British interests in the region.73 After the start of the Russian Ottoman war of 1877 78 it was Russian ofcial N. Butkevich who took the issue of resettlement up again. In his article called The Muslim Question in the Caucasus he regretfully stated that when it already could be hoped that the whole of Western Caucasus will be completely cleansed from the mountain population, the expulsion [vyselenie] of the mountaineers was suddenly called to a halt.74 Contrasting the situation in Western and Eastern Caucasus, he noticed the relative peace and calm in the Kuban region and went on to suggest that the reason for this exception was the different way in which subjugation had been conducted here. Not content with advertising the complete disarmament of the Northern Caucasian mountain population he wrote: We should also revert to yet another, more vital measure, which should forever close down the Muslim question in the Caucasusthe expulsion of Muslims in the largest scales. In Butkevichs view then, the primary marker of difference was religion, with Enlightenment notions of correct economic behavior in the second place. While Ossetians as preponderantly Christian should be exempted, a general expulsion of the Chechens as most fanatic, unpromising brigand population was of utmost necessity. If not accomplished on a voluntary basis it should be brought about by way of force.75 Butkevichs plan was not realized, and neither was that of creating a Caucasian mountain republic in Central Asia. Yet, the will to expel Northern Caucasians did not die down, and emigrations kept surfacing periodically, so that Russian statesmen saw them as an already normal phenomenon.76 Why then did the migrations after 1864 remain relatively limited in scope and less openly violent than those of the Circassians? Why did the intention of getting rid of all the mountaineers largely remain in the stage of planning? Possible reasons were the difculties experienced with Cossack colonization in Western Caucasus, the fear of Ottoman and international reactions and the missing pretext of war.77 Even more important, geographical conditions in Eastern Caucasus were less favorable for mass migrations than in Western Caucasus: in the view of a Russian ofcial, the situation in the Kuban oblast had been considerably more convenient. Here, with the Black Sea coast at hand, the Circassians could easily be sent away without calling forth the concern of [local] authorities for holding the population back. In the Terek oblast on the contrary, the enclosed [nature] of the region deprives [us] of the possibility to drive the Chechen tribe, restless and little suited for the adoption of citizenship, out of the connes of the oblast.78 Before the time of railways, the seaway proved to be the only quick and efcient way to get rid of large masses of refugees. Migrations by land, besides putting economic strain on the transit regions, had the disadvantage that Russian authorities had to watch over the migrants until the borders were 228
reached, as these could at every moment provoke unrest among the population, call forth the compassion of local observers, or, in the worst case, even change their minds and turn back. If the mountaineers left by ship however, Russian authorities could rid themselves of the migrants almost instantly and also reject any responsibility for the further fate of the refugees. The seaway allowed for a much higher degree of emotional and moral detachment and nality than was possible with overland migrations.79 Ultimately then, some of the key reasons for why the extreme radicalism of the period of 1856 65 was not reached again in pre-revolutionary Russia were of an utterly pragmatic nature. The case of the Circassians was exceptional in so far as here both exterior and conceptual preconditions for the use of extreme violence had been met. These allowed the realization of what would otherwise have remained a perverts fantasy and not have been regarded as an outow of the reason of state.80 In some sense however, the plan to get rid of yet more Northern Caucasians was only put off until a more favorable occasion.81 Once they had entered the governments pool of political techniques, cleansing and deportation could, under certain conditions, manifest themselves again. These conditions were met in the crisis experienced by the Soviet Union during World War II. Soviet revolutionaries were following the Enlightenment vision of a rational, and therefore just, social order. This gave rise to a veritable cult of scientic planning. The Soviet Union was however not only devoted to a utopian, transformative quest, but also willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive power to bring these high-modernist designs into being.82 In the years of 1943 and 1944 all Chechen, Ingush, Balkar and Karachay were deported from the Caucasus and resettled to Central Asia. These operations demanded skillful planning and a high degree of bureaucratic coordination. Soviet authorities herein did not only draw upon the know-how recently acquired by resettling diaspora nationalities and so-called class enemies from other parts of the empire, but also upon pre-revolutionary, imperial experience. Peter Holquist has aptly demonstrated how the very idea of extracting bandit elements evolved out of pre-revolutionary scientic and military traditions.83 I will therefore limit myself to pointing out some continuities in the stereotyping of Northern Caucasians, as this could help to answer the questions of why it was again Northern Caucasian peoples who were targeted, and what this tells us about the Soviet civilizational project in general. In the Soviet Union, Northern Caucasians and also Crimean Tatars had once again come to be perceived as barring the way to progress. They opposed Soviet collectivization efforts and their cultures generally displayed a remarkable resilience in the face of Soviet modernization pressure. In their efforts to understand and gain control over local society, Soviet ofcials reverted to prerevolutionary geographic and ethnographic information and came up once again with notions of criminal mountaineer culture.84 What the lazy, unproductive Caucasian was to imperial Russia, were backward local communities to Soviet authorities. Both imperial Russian and Soviet practices of othering of Northern Caucasians were based on notions of economic-political progress. They even used 229
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the same euphemistic terms when describing the objective of politico-cultural assimilation: drawing together (sblizhenie) and blending (sliianie).85 Furthermore, in contradiction to the overtly atheistic nature of Soviet power, there seems to have remained some kind of (secularized) Christian bias in Soviet policymaking. Almost all those deported from the Caucasus were of Muslim faith; the Ossetians, who in imperial times had become regarded as somewhat half-hearted, but recoverable Christians, were exempted.86 This, I think, points to the Christian-European roots of Enlightenment philosophy and consequently the development of the Soviet concept of citizenship from out of earlier notions of pastoral power.87 Not only the way the problem was formulated by Soviet authorities, but also its solution was strikingly similar to that of imperial politics. The Soviet decision to deport Northern Caucasians was justied by the alleged cooperation of the latter with hostile foreign powers. According to Avtorkhanov, Soviet authorities even staged faked foreign espionage activities. Expulsions and deportations were again called resettlement with the aim of covering up the involvement of the state and making the migrations seem voluntary.88 Finally, the Soviet course of action displayed the same tension between molding and melting certain groups into the wider, state-orchestrated society on the one side, and outright physical destruction on the other. Soviet policy makers certainly thought of the re-settlement of Northern Caucasians to Central Asia as a measure leading towards their assimilation, that is, their destruction as an ethnic group without having to kill its individual members. Yet there are also some aspects to Soviet policy that seem to profess the intent of at least partial physical annihilation. In the course of Soviet cleansing operations, villagers were in several instances locked into sheds and burnt alive. Generally, those deemed unt to walk to the nearest railway stations were shot on the spot. The Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennykh Del [Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs] (NKVD) even seems to have experimented with methods of systematic (serial) physical annihilation. Transport conditions in the trains to Central Asia were bound to cause further deaths: the deportees were locked into cattle wagons without sanitation, and often left without food and water for days. The places the deported were sent to were already known to Soviet authorities for having caused mass death among those unaccustomed to their hard climatic conditions. Furthermore, Soviet authorities did not see to the provisioning of the refugees with housing or clothes, and food rations assigned to special settlers were far below the subsistence level. Thus the resettlement resulted in a decimation of the targeted Northern Caucasian ethnic groups by 20 to 50 percent of their original size.89 Most studies with a broader focus on Soviet terror and Soviet ethnic cleansing have stressed the Soviet aversion to Nazi-style zoopolitics and the Soviet pretension to redeem problematic individuals.90 However, regarding the character ` -vis Northern Caucasians, a certain amount of ambivalence of Soviet policy vis-a and undecidedness remains. The construction of cultural difference according to Enlightenment notions of citizenship and correct exploitation of natural 230
resources could and did under certain conditions devolve into highly essentialized and naturalized antagonisms leading towards physical annihilation.91 Ultimately, the Soviet deportations of Northern Caucasians can partly be understood as the resumption of a project that their imperial predecessors had begun but left incomplete. It even seems that the idea of re-settling Northern Caucasians surfaced once more in post-Soviet times: according to Naimark, there is serious evidence that the Russian government developed plans to deport the Chechens once again in the turmoil of the mid-1990s.92
Conclusion With regard to earlier apologetic accounts of the nal subjugation of Western Caucasus, the most important insight is probably the amount of conscious decision-making in Russian policymaking. Although they may not have foreseen every detail and although the exact modalities remained to be negotiated, Miliutin and Bariatinskii had outlined the new course of action in Western Caucasus from early on. They were entirely aware of and consciously accepted the deadly impact of their policy upon the Circassians. Russian authorities carefully planned and orchestrated their policy of nal subjugation, so that the cleansing of the Transkuban area was carried out with a surprising degree of organization and administrative coordination. After their apparent success in 1864, they realized that they held in their hands a powerful instrument that could be applied to other cases as well. Although no further mass expulsions were realized in the remainder of the nineteenth century, the idea of getting rid of Northern Caucasian mountaineers was kept alive to be carried over the revolutionary divide. When taking into account the surprising continuities between Russian and Soviet stereotyping and policymaking in the Caucasus, Soviet nationality policy appears in a somewhat different light than upon assuming a centralist and exclusively post-1917 perspective. Focusing upon the Caucasian periphery can help us resolve the paradox of the Soviet Union as both a nation-building and nationdestroying power. Terry Martin sought to give account of this apparent contradiction by pointing out that Soviet ethnic cleansing developed out of the project of ethnic consolidation, and that instead of aiming at assimilation it was bent upon emphasizing the distinct primordial essence of Soviet nationalities.93 In light of the destructive nature of both Russian and Soviet politics in Northern Caucasus, this explanation no longer seems quite appropriate. Assertions of both Russian and Soviet authorities that their policy was generically much more benign than that of their European counterparts should therefore not be taken too literally but subjected to a careful examination.94 The nal subjugation of the Transkuban region was exceptional in the sense that the perception of Circassians as a harmful population that could not be gainfully integrated into the colonial order invalidated fears of losing the indigenous workforce. The tragedy of the Circassian migrations thus reveals that the process of essentialization could work according to different modi. Even in the absence of a biologistic idiom, 231
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Russian images of mountaineers could be essentialized to a degree where any peaceful measures seemed inadequate. It has further been shown that the new Russian techniques of cleansing and resettlement that were rst brought to bear upon the Circassians formed part of a larger vision of re-ordering the terrain: they were not contradictory, but complementary to other instruments of state control. Those responsible for the policy of nal subjugation already carried strong notions of improvement and imperial destiny. Cleansing on the one hand served them to get rid of those elements deemed unt for the project of imperial citizenship, and on the other, it curbed the resistance of those who stayed and facilitated their transformation into subject-citizens. The presence of voluntary moments in an overall coercive policy and philanthropic measures for securing the well-being of natives also should not be understood as proof of imperial restraint. The Circassians were confronted with a choice between a greater and a lesser evil at a moment when objectively a choice did not exist any more, having been preempted by the tsarist administration.95 The use of brutal military force was seen as a precondition for the establishment of more nely-tuned mechanisms of disciplinary power. While European modernity built upon dichotomic oppositions like liberalism and political repression, or mission civilizatrice and extermination, a closer examination of the Russian colonial project reveals the secret complicity of these terms. In Russian Caucasus at least, the way from declaring ones intent to civilize the natives to the frustrated declaration that those people could not be civilized and should be done away with could take only a few steps.96 Acknowledgements My most humble thanks to Peter Holquist, who did not object to my appropriation of his ideas, but encouraged me at the very start of my research. Notes and References
ologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 2002 (1969)), p 59. 1 Michel Foucault, Larche 2 Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, Between metropole and colony. Rethinking a research agenda, in: Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, eds., Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, LA/London: University of California Press, 1997), pp 1 56; Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Introduction. Tensions of empire: colonial control and visions of rule, American Ethnologist Vol 16, No 4, 1989, pp 609 621; Amir Weiner, Introduction: landscaping the human garden, in: Amir Weiner, ed., Landscaping the Human Garden. Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp 118, here p 1011; James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven/London: Yale ` ne: recent works University Press, 1998), p 97; Robert Aldrich, Imperial mise en valeur and mise en sce on French colonialism, The Historical Journal Vol 45, No 4, December 2002, pp 917936, here p 935; Stoler and Cooper Between metropole and colony, p 5; Enzo Traverso, Moderne und Gewalt. Eine euro ische Genealogie des Nazi-Terrors (Ko ln: ISP, 2003), especially pp 51 80; Ju rgen Zimmerer, Holocaust pa ologie des genozidalen Gedankens, Zeitschrift fu r Geschichtswisund Kolonialismus. Beitrag zu einer Archa senschaft No 12, 2003, pp 1098 1119. zers Entwurf einer Vo lkerkunde oder Ethnographie seit 1772, Ethnologische 3 Justin Stagl, August Schlo rich, No 2, 1974, p 7392; Han F. Vermeulen, Origins and institutionalization of ethnography Zeitschrift Zu
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A COLONIAL EXPERIMENT IN CLEANSING and ethnology in Europe and the USA, 1771 1845, in: Han F. Vermeulen and Arturo A. Roldan, eds., Fieldwork and Footnotes. Studies in the History of European Anthropology (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), pp 3959. I thank Volker Harms for bringing these sources to my attention. See also Gudrun Bucher, Von uche der Vo lker. Die Instruktionen Gerhard Friedrich Mu llers und ihre Beschreibung der Sitten und Gebra r die Geschichte der Ethnologie und der Geschichtswissenschaft (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002). Bedeutung fu Simon Werrett has recently published an extraordinary article on this. Simon Werrett, The panopticon in the garden: Samuel Benthams Inspection House and noble theatricality in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Ab Imperio No 3, 2008, pp 4770. Peter Holquist, To count, to extract, and to exterminate. Population statistics and population politics in late imperial and Soviet Russia, in: Ronald G. Suny and Terry Martin eds., A State of Nations. Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 201), pp 111 144; Peter Holquist, State violence as technique. The logic of violence in Soviet totalitarianism, in: Weiner, Landscaping, pp 19 45. Publications on the nal stage of the Russian war in Western Caucasus in English include: Willis Brooks, The politics of the conquest of the Caucasus, 18551864, Nationalities Papers Vol 24, No 4, 1996, pp 649660; Willis Brooks, Russias conquest and pacication of the Caucasus: relocation becomes a pogrom in the post-Crimean War period, Nationalities Papers Vol 23, No 4, 1995, pp 675 686; Justin Carthy, Death and Exile. The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821 1922 (Princeton: rgu n, Ab Imperio No 2, 2003, pp 139167; David Darwin, 1995); David Cuthell, The Circassian su Cuthell, The Muhacirin Komisyonu: An Agent in the Transformation of Ottoman Anatolia, PhD Dissertation, Columbia University, 2005; Alan W. Fisher, Emigration of Muslims from the Russian Empire in cher fu r Geschichte Osteuropas Vol 35, H 3, 1987, pp 356 371; the years after the Crimean War, Jahrbu Paul Henze, Circassian resistance to Russia, in: Marie B. Broxup, ed., The North Caucasus Barrier. The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World (London: Hurst, 1996), pp 62 11; Austin Jersild, Orientalism and Empire. North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 18451917 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002); Kemal H. Karpat, The status of the Muslim under European rule: the eviction and settlement of the Cerkes, Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Afairs Vol 1, No 2, 1979, pp 7 27; Tugan Ch. Kumykov, The Russian War in the Caucasus and the Expulsion of the Circassians (Pyatogorsk: RIA KMV 2004); Mark Pinson, Demographic WarfareAn Aspect of Ottoman and Russian Foreign Policy, 1854 1866, unpublished PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 1970; Stephen Sheneld, The Circassians. a forgotten genocide?, in: Mark Levene and Penny Roberts, eds., The Massacre in History (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 1999), pp 149162; Dana Sherry, Social alchemy on the Black Sea coast, 1860 65, Kritika Vol 10, No 1, Winter 2009, pp 7 30; Brian G. Williams, Hijra and forced migration from nineteenth-century Russia to the Ottoman Empire, Cahier du Monde russe Vol 41, No 1, Janviers Mars 2000, pp 79 108. Peter Redeld, Foucault in the tropics: displacing the panopticon, in: Jonathan X. Inda, ed., Anthropology of Modernity: Foucault, Governmentality and Life Politics (Malden: Wiley, 2005), pp 5079; David Scott, Colonial governmentality, Social Text No 43, Autumn 1995, pp 191220; Peter Pels, The anthropology of colonialism: culture, history, and the emergence of Western governmentality, Annual Review of Anthropology Vol 26, 1997, pp 163183; Lynn A. Blake, Pastoral power, governmentality and cultures of order in nineteenth-century British Columbia, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series Vol 24, No 1, 1999, pp 7993. According to Geraci, Holquists argument is somewhat de-validated with the discovery that protogenocidal fantasies were formulated well before the advent of the age of military statistics as depicted by Holquist. However, Geraci bases his critique on a very narrow understanding of statistics as the science of numbers, which allows him to oppose quantitative-statistical data and earlier ethnic stereotypes in alliance with economic considerations. He thus does not pay enough attention to the fact that in the nineteenth century, state-istics had a much broader meaning: as the modern states science of mapping both territory and population it included also geographic and ethnographic information. Statistics then belonged to a whole bunch of new, not yet clearly delineated disciplines which emerged out of governmentality as the new philosophy of the modern state. See Robert Geraci, Genocidal impulses and fantasies in Imperial Russia, in: A. Dirk Moses, ed., Empire, Colony, Genocide. Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), pp 343 371, especially pp 352 and 354355. For a discussion of Russian expansionist traditions see Hugh Ragsdale, Russian projects of conquest in the eighteenth century, in: Hugh Ragsdale, ed., Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp 75 102; Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field. Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004), especially p 4. On the absence of clear-cut notions, which has also been termed the silence of Muscovy, see Valerie Kivelson, Claiming Siberia: colonial possession and property holding in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in: Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader and Willard
4 5
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IRMA KREITEN Sunderland, eds., Peopling the Russian Periphery. Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), pp 21 40, here p 22, pp 34 36; Michael Khodarkovsky, Russias Steppe Frontier. The Making of a Colonial Empire, 15001800 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp 39 40; Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader and Willard Sunderland, Russian colonizations. An introduction, in: Breyfogle, Schrader, Sunderland, Peopling the Russian Periphery, pp 1 18, here p 2. I do not however pretend that pre-modern Russian behavior towards adjacent non-Russian peoples was nonviolent. The treatment of Siberians could be extremely brutal. However, it seems this was not an explicit policy of the Muscovite government, and that it at least displayed some kind of interest in sentencing the offenders. See Kivelson, Claiming Siberia, pp 3031. On early Russian involvement in Northern Caucasus see Marie Bennigsen Broxup, Introduction: Russia and the North Caucasus, in: Broxup, North Caucasus Barrier, pp 1 17; Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Cooptation of the elites of Kabarda and Daghestan in the sixteenth century, in: Broxup, North Caucasus Barrier, pp 1844; On the Muscovite risk-averse policy towards the steppe see Brian J. Boeck, Containment vs. colonization: Muscovite approaches to settling the steppe, in: Breyfogle, Schrader and Sunderland, Peopling the Russian Periphery, pp 4160, here p 44; see also Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, p 17; for a discussion of Russias early steppe policy and its origins within the political traditions of the Golden Horde, see Khodarkovsky, Russias Steppe Frontier, especially pp 4675. Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, p 35; Ronald G. Suny, The empire strikes out. Imperial Russia, national identity, and theories of empire, in: Suny and Martin, A State of Nations, pp 23 66, here p 3; Khodarkovsky, Russias Steppe Frontier, pp 226; Breyfogle, Schrader and Sunderland, Peopling the Russian Periphery, p 2. Khodarkovsky, Russias Steppe Frontier, pp 184 and 192. For early Russian projects regarding the Caucasus see ber das griechische Projekt Katharinas II, MitteilunRagsdale, Russian Projects; Peter Stegnij, Noch einmal u sterreichischen Staatsarchivs Vol 50, 2003, pp 87111; Edgar Ho sch, Das sogenannte griechische gen des O lfte des 18. Projekt Katharinas IL. Ideologie und Wirklichkeit der russischen Orientpolitik in der zweiten Ha cher fu r Geschichte Osteuropas Vol 12, No 2, 1964, pp 168206. On the geopolitical proJahrhunderts, Jahrbu jects of G.A. Potemkin see O.I. Eliseeva, Geopoliticheskie proekty G. A. Potemkina (Moskva: IRI RAN, 2000). On the Black Sea trade and Circassian participation in it see Alan Fisher, A Precarious Balance: Conict, Trade, and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier (Istanbul: Isis, 1999); T.V. Polovinkina, Cherkesiia Bol moia. Istoricheskii ocherk (drevneishee vremia nachalo XX v.) (Maikop: GURIPP Adygea, 2001), pp 29 79. Lapin thus states that until the 1810s Russia generally did not plan to establish its control over Northern Caucasian territory. V.V. Lapin, Ubedit nepokornye plemena v prevoschodstve nashego oruzhiia. . .. Voennye plany pokoreniia Kavkaza, in: I.A. Gordin, ed., Kavkaz i Rossiiskaia Imperiia: proekty, idei, illiuzii i realnost. Nachalo XIX- nachalo XX vv (Sankt-Peterburg: Zvezda, 2005), pp 9 29, here p 9; Khodarkovsky, Russias Steppe Frontier, p 199; one the rst political projects dealing with Western Caucasians was The opinion of admiral Mordvinov on the ways with the help of which it will be more convenient for Russia to gradually attach to itself the Caucasian inhabitants, written in 1816, reproduced in: D. Romanovskii, Kavkaz i Kavkazskaia voina. Publichnye lektsii, prochitannye v zale Passazha v 1860 godu generalnogo shtaba polkovnikom Romanovskim (Moskva: GPIB, 2004), pp 275 282. For the Treaty of Adrianople and subsequent Russian interpretations: Anita L.P. Burdett, ed., Caucasian Boundaries. Documents and Maps 1802 1946 (Oxford: Archive Editions, 1996), pp 21 66. Some of the plans and projects are reproduced in Gordin, Kavkaz i Rossiiskaia imperiia. The issue of Russian colonial planning is here dealt with only in a precursory fashion, as it will be analyzed in greater detail in a separate article. RGVIA f. 38, op.1, d. 351, l. 62, l 66 ob.- 67. Ibid., l 71. Ibid., l 144 144ob. Petr Chaikovskys proposal is located in RGVIA, f. 864, d. 18014, ch.3, l 13 14; for the proposal of 1863 written by a certain Iachontov see OR RGB f. 169,k.44, d. 33, citation l 2. RGVIA f. 38, op.1, d. 351, l 258-258ob., l 270-271ob., citation l 258. For a closer analysis of colonial policymaking concentrating on the period from 1856 to 1859 see Brooks, Politics of the Conquest of the Caucasus, and Brooks, Russias Conquest; on Bariatinskiis inuence with Alexander II see Alfred J. Rieber, The Politics of Autocracy. Letters of Alexander II to Prince A.I. Bariatinskii 18571864 (Paris: Mouton, 1966 ), p 6162; Alexander II had already passed over the heads of several important ofcials in appointing Bariatinskii as viceroy in the rst place. See Rieber, The Politics of Autocracy, p 64; On Miliutins connections to the imperial family see for example D.A. Miliutin, Vospominaniia general-feldmarshala Dmitriia Alekseevicha Miliutina 18601862 (Moskva: Rossiiskii Archiv, 1999), p 20. D.A. Miliutin, Vospominaniia general-feldmarshala Dmitriia Alekseevicha Miliutina1856 1860 (Moskva: Rosspen, 2004), p 335; Miliutin, Vospominaniia 1860 1862, p 99101; Willis Brooks, The Russian military
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A COLONIAL EXPERIMENT IN CLEANSING press in the reform era, in: David Schimmelpenninck Van der Oye and Bruce W. Menning, eds., Reforming the Tsars Army. Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), pp 107132, here p 128. On the replacement of Filipson see Miliutin, Vospominaniia 1860 1862, p 97, p 113. On the discussion of harsh versus gentle measures in autumn 1860 and the difference of opinion between Filipson and Evdokimov, see Miliutin, Vospominaniia 18561860, pp 474 475. The fact that Evdokimov was assigned to work out the details of the plan has caused some confusion in historiography, so that Evdokimov is occasionally credited with the authorship of the policy of nal subjugation in Western Caucasus. See for example S. Esadze, Pokorenie zapadnogo Kavkaza i okonchanie Kavkazskoi voiny (Moskva: GPIB, 2004), p 351. Miliutin, Vospominaniia 18601862, p 118. Polozhenie o zaselenii predgorii zapadnoi chasti Kavkazskago khrebta Kubanskimi kazakami i drugimi pereselentsami iz Rossii, Voennyi sbornik, t 28, No 11, otd 1, 1862, p 235 284. On Bariatinskiis early preparations for the nal subjugation of Western Caucasus, that is, immediately after the pacication of Eastern Caucasus in 1859 see AKAK T. XII, p 652 (Doc 568). See also Miliutin, Vospominaniia 1860 1862, p 119; A.L. Zisserman, Feldmarshal Kniaz A.I. Bariatinskii, Glava IX, Russkii Archiv 6, 1889, pp 237 267, here pp 249 250; A. Kh. Kasumov, Okonchanie Kavkazskoi voiny i vyselenie adygov v Turtsiiu, Kavkazskaja vojna: uroki istorii i sovremennost. Materialy nauchnoj konferentsii g. Krasnodar, 1618 maja 1994 g (Krasnodar: Kubanskyi Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1995), pp 63 79, here p 68; A. Kh. Kasumov and Kh. A. Kasumov, Genotsid Adygov (Nalchik: Logos, 1992), p 149. R.A. Fadeev, Kavkazskaia voina (Moskva: Eksmo, 2005) (reprint, originally published in 18641865), here p 187. For the Freud-based interpretation of the inconsistency characteristic of the perpetrators response to iz ek, Violence. Six Sideways Reections (London: Prole, 2009 (2008)), p 93. their own violence see Slavoj Z O pereselenii kavkazskich gortsev v Turtsiju, Voennyi sbornik t 39, No 10, otd III, 1864, pp 164168, citation p 166; see also Polozhenie o zaselenii, p 262; In fact, parts of the land set aside consisted of swamps and unhealthy (malaria-infested) lowlands, see Polovinkina, Cherkesiia Bol moia, p 149. Letter by Kartsov cited according to A.P. Berzhe, Vyselenie gortsev s Kavkaza, reproduced in: Russkie avtory XIX veka o narodach centralnogo i severo-zapadnogo Kavkaza, T. 1 (Nalchik: El-Fa, 2001), pp 279316, here p 295. The second letter is from November 10, 1863, reproduced in R. Kh. Tuganov, ed., Tragicheskie posledstviia Kavkazskoi voiny dlia Adygov. Vtoraia polovina XIX-nachalo XX veka. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Nalchik: El-Fa, 2000), p 81. See Polozhenie o zaselenii, p 262 264, citation p 263. Another fact that has to be taken into account is that there was only free land on the Prikuban steppe in so far as it had been vacated by the Nogais, a nomadic group of Tatar origin living on pastoralism, which increasingly came under pressure by the Russian colonization of the region. On the Nogai migrations see Williams, Hijra, pp 9498, and Polozhenie o zaselenii, p 264. According to some calculations, Cossacks received as much as 1012 times the share than was awarded to re-settled natives, see Z. Kumykov, Vopros o vyselenii Adygov v Turtsiju v 50-60-ch godach XIX veka v istoricheskom Kavkazovedenii, Nalchik 1998, p 20; I. Abramov, Kavkazskie gortsy, Materialy po istorii cherkesskogo naroda, Kiev 1991, pp 5386, here p 74; The stereotype that the local way of securing ones livelihood consisted of raiding ones neighbors was common in Russian ethnographic descriptions of Northern Caucasians (see also part IV on Enlightenment anthropology). Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 156, citation p 249. Polovinkina, Cherkesiia, p 181. According to Polovinkina, some of the regulations actually set forth requested that any inhabitant obtain a written permit before leaving his village, even if it was only for hunting (Ibid., p 181); G.A. Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev v Turtsiiu. Materialy po istorii gorskikh narodov (Rostov na Don: Sevkavkniga, 1925), citation p 16. See for example S. Ivanov, O sblizhenii gortsev s Russkimi na Kavkaze, Voennyi sbornik t 7, No 6, 1859, ch. neoff., pp 541549; N. Avgustinovich, Po povodu stati: O sblizhenii gortsev s Russkimi na Kavkaze, Voennyi sbornik t 8, No 7, 1859, ch. neoff., pp 201214; see also Ustroistvo Kubanskoi oblasti, Voennyi Sbornik t 48, No 4, 1866, otd. III, pp 168170. Miliutin, Vospominaniia 18561860, p 449; Polozhenie o zaselenii, p 264. For the lacanian concept of iz ek, The Parallax View (Cambridge: MIT Press 2006), p 304. lure see Slavoj Z Fadeev, describing the military actions taking place in the Transkuban region writes: The mountaineers had to be exterminated by half, in order to make the other half lay down its arms. Fadeev, Kavkazskaia voina, p187; citation: Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 198. See also the document (ibid. p 40), stating that out-settling them from their mountain dens to the plain can be achieved in no different way than by the use of force. On the Russian practice of bribing individual Circassians to boost the migrations see A. Kh. Sheudzhen, ed., Zemlia Adygov (Maikop: Adygea, 2004), p 181; Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 228; Polovinkina, Cherkesiia, p 168. Miliutin himself described these as characterized by merciless severity, see Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 56; M.I. Veniukov, K istorii zaseleniia Zapadnogo Kavkaza, Russkaia starina t XXII, 1878, pp 249270,
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IRMA KREITEN citation p 249. On the brutality of the Russian campaign see also A. Fonvill, Poslednyi god voiny Cherkessii za nezavisimost 1863 1864 g. iz zapisok uchastnika-inostrantsa, especially p 37, and I. Abramov, Kavkazskie gortsy, especially p. 60, both reproduced as V. Dudko, ed., Poslednyi god voiny Cherkessii za nezavisimost 1863 1864 gg. Kavkazskie gortsy (Kiev: UO MSHK MADPR, 1991). See the report reproduced in T. Kh. Kumykov, Vyselenie Adygov v Turtsiiu posledstvie Kavkazskoi voiny (Nalchik: Elbrus, 1994), pp 4776. Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 8082, p 173; Polozhenie o zaselenii, pp 277 278. For more details on these committees and their work see the documents reproduced in Kumykov, Vyselenie. Jersild, Orientalism, p 24; Abramov, Kavkazskie gortsy, pp 5960; N. Bereedzh, Izgnaniia Cherkesov (Prichiny i Posledstviia) (Maikop: Adygea, 1996), p 126128; Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 92, 142 143, 148 149; Kumykov, Vyselenie, pp 95 96. See for example Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 26, 53, 173. Ibid., p 151. T. Kh. Kumykov, Problemy Kavkazskoi voiny i vyselenie cherkesov v predely Osmanskoi imperii. 20-70-e gg. XIX v.: Sbornik arkhivnykh dokumentov (Nalchik: Elbrus 2001), p 181 182; Kumykov, Vyselenie, p 122. Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 41. Kumykov, Problemy, p 85. Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 34 and 38. In case of doubt whether the owners of the passports still possessed property in the Caucasus, the local Russian authorities were to make enquiries in order to validate the truth of these claims. See also the document reproduced in Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 38 which expressed the intention to put a hold on back-migration as far as possible, Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 43, p 35. Po povodu okonchaniia kavkazskoi vojny, Voennyi sbornik t 38, No 8, otd 3, 1864, pp 136 148, here pp 136 and 138. There were no reliable estimates concerning the overall number of the Transkuban population prior to the forced emigrations. According to the report of the commission for the resettlement of the mountaineers to Turkey from February 12, 1865, the number of migrants from the Transkuban region alone amounted to 315,000 individuals, while together with Nogai migrants from the Kuban steppes and other groups the gure of 418,292 was reached (document reproduced in Kumykov, Vyselenie, p 39). This information however was based on the reports of the emigration committees set up at various points of the Black Sea coast for the last stage of expulsion. While pretending to be able to present highly precise numbers, these neither included those that left without the commissions support or before these were set up in autumn 1863. Nor do they take into account the casualties of Russian economic destruction and Russian military actions, or the victims of epidemics that broke out as a consequence of Russian presence in the region. According to Fadeev (Fadeev, Kavkazskaia voina, p 187), not more than the tenth part of those who died fell through weapons; the rest fell because of the deprivations and hard winters, which they spent under snow-storms in the woods and on naked rocks. An ofcial estimate in the journal of the War Ministry (O pereselenii kavkazskich gortsev v Turtsiiu, Voennyi sbornik t 39, No 10, otd. III, 1864, p 168) assumes a total of 400,000 mountaineers leaving Western Caucasus in the entire period from 1858 to 1864. However, even when taking into account that the most massive migrations took place in 1863 and 1864, this number seems very small. According to an English newspaper article, Russian authorities had in May 1864 still spoken about 100,000 migrants (Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 129). The gures cited by Dana Sherry concerning the population remaining in the Kuban region, which seem to cut down the number of migrants, unfortunately do not match with the documents she refers to (Sherry, Social Alchemy, pp 7 8). Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 207, 215. Brooks, Russias Conquest, p 681; Po povodu okonchaniia, p 138. Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 174. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 2002 (1975)), pp 231 232. On the historical soils particularly favorable for the ourishing of high-modernist ideology such as wars see also Scott, Seeing Like a State, especially p 97. On the fear of a new international war see for example Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 89, 95; AKAK T. XII, p 487 (Doc. 425). On the historical soils particularly favorable for the ourishing of high-modernist ideology such as wars see Scott, Seeing Like a State, p 97. In Weiners view total wars and their consequences have been both the embryo and the outlet for governmental transformative schemes. Weiner, Introduction, p 4. .1, 15.11.1854 -16.6.1856, ll 1-6 ob. On the discussion about whether or not to RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 6661, c recall the 13th and 18th infantry divisions from Caucasus as an indirect approach of the issue of nal subjugation see also Rieber, Politics of Autocracy, p 63. According to Derrida, Western culture is based on binary oppositions, with the two parts of the opposition forming a hierarchy. While one term is highly valued, the other is found wanting. However, the meaning
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A COLONIAL EXPERIMENT IN CLEANSING of each depends on the trace of the other that inhabits its denition. See Catherine Belsey, Poststructuralism. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp 8, 75. Tuganov, Tragicheskie, p 197. D. Scott, Colonial Governmentality, p 197. Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, p 45. Colin Gordon, Governmental rationality: an introduction, in: Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality (London/Toronto/Sydney: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp 1 51, here p 10; Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge: Polity Press, Blackwell, 2004 (1991)) p 20; Gordon describes the new philosophy of political sovereignty as one in which the principles of state were no longer part of and subjected to the divine, cosmo-theological order of the world, but immanent in the state itself (Gordon, Governmental rationality, p 9); Michel Foucault described this transformation as one from a juridical, restrictive model of power to a positive, gener I. La volonte de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 2003 ating one. See Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualite (1976)), pp 113, 118, and Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley, LA and London: University of California Press, 1991 (1988)), p XI; Michel Foucault, Governmentality, in: Burchell, Gordon and Miller, Foucault Effect, pp 87 104; Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State. Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 16001800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1983), especially pp 3, 5, 26, 40, 50, 149150. Willard Sunderland, Imperial space: territorial thought and practice in the eighteenth century, in: Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen and Anatolii Remnev, eds., Russian Empire. Space, People, Power, 1700 1930 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007), pp 3366, here p 49; Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, Vol I, From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), cited according to Ronald G. Suny, The empire strikes out. Imperial Russia, national identity, and theories of empire, in: Suny and Martin, State of Nations, pp 23 66, here pp 3940; Sunderland, Wild Field, pp 45, 115; Raeff, WellOrdered Police State, pp 5, 149; citation Scott, Seeing Like a State, p 91; Jersild, From Savagery, p 101 102; On the notion of police government as the universal assignation of subjects to an economically useful life see Gordon, Governmental Rationality, p 12. On the imperial Russian concept of citizenship see Austin L. Jersild, From savagery to citizenship: Caucasian mountaineers and Muslims in the Russian Empire, in: Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini, eds., Russias Orient. Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700 1917 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp101 114; Dov Yaroshevski, Empire and citizenship, in: Brower and Lazzerini, Russias Orient, pp 5879; Joseph Bradley, Subjects into citizens: societies, civil society, and autocracy in Tsarist Russia, The American Historical Review Vol 107, No 4, 2002, pp 10941123. Rieber, Politics of Autocracy, p 270; Sunderland (Sunderland, Imperial Space, p 50) writes that already in the eighteenth century, of all the empires steppes the most attractive in this respect were those of the northern Black Sea region and the Northern Caucasus and these quickly emerged as the governments premier venue for colonization-related planning. See also Alfred J. Rieber, Colonizing Eurasia, in: Breyfogle, Schrader and Sunderland, Peopling the Russian Periphery, pp 265279, here p 272, for the perception of Russian rulers that it was somehow easier to construct a progressive, ideal society on the periphery, outside the old center of Russian life; D. Scott, Colonial Governmentality, here p 197; on the Russian contemporary perception that the policy in Western Caucasus represented a new departure, see Holquist, To Count, p 117 119. Fadeev, Kavkazskaia voina, pp 210 211. This depiction strikingly resembles the scenario evoked by British author William Reade: young girls are sitting at the banks of the river Niger, which had been turned into a romantic river like the Rhine, and are reading with tears in their eyes a short story titled The Last of the Negroes. See Traverso, Moderne und Gewalt, p 66. On the European notion of dying races see Patrick Brantlinger, Dying races: rationalizing genocide in the nineteenth century, in: Jan N. Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh, eds., The Decolonization of Imagination. Culture, Knowledge and Power (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1995), pp 4256. Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 17 and 154; Fadeev, Kavkazskaia voina, p196; Weiner, Introduction, p 9; Zimmerer, Holocaust, p 1111. Enlightenment anthropology emphasized the role of climate in the shaping of human culture(s). S.M. Bronevskii for example in his ethnographic description from 1823 wrote: As manners are closely related to climate, way of life and upbringing, one can say that the manners of wild people, leaving between precipices and snow-covered mountains, must be coarse. [. . .] In one word, war is the normal condition and the way of life of these peoples. S.M. Bronevskii, Noveishiia Izvestiia o Kavkaze, sobrannyia i popolnennyia Semenom Bronevskim: V 2 tomach (Sankt-Peterburg: IV RAN, 2004), pp 3839; for a more theoretical reection see K.M. Ber, Ob etnogracheskich issledovaniiach v obshche i v Rossii v osobennosti, Zapiski RGO, Kn.1, Sankt-Peterburg 1846, pp 93115. On the place of climate theory in early anthropology, see Karl-Heinz Kohl, Entzauberter Blick. Das Bild vom Guten Wilden
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IRMA KREITEN (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1986), especially p 116. See also Vladimir Bobrovnikov, Bandits and the state: designing a traditional culture of violence in the Russian Caucasus, in: Burbank, von Hagen and Remnev, Russian Empire, pp 239 267. Radical Westernizer Petr Chaadaev had even suggested that the whole of Russia could be regarded as some kind of tabula rasa. He argued that the absence of history and tradition in Russia (that is, Russian backwardness) presented the unique opportunity for experimenting with new ideas and solving the questions which had arisen in older societies. See Suny, Empire, p 49; on the concept of authoritarian modernism see Scott, Seeing Like, pp 87102; on the ideologically driven elite as possible candidate for genocidal policies see Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State. Vol.1, The Meaning of Genocide (London and New York: Tauris, 2005), pp 106 117. Foucaults warning not to adopt too high a time horizon in dealing with the emergence of new concepts should be taken seriously here. As a discourse is anything but the place where objects, that have been installed in advance, are laid down and superposed, as on a simple surface of inscription, it should not be traced back to ologie, the far-away presence of the origin, but rather examined in the play of the moment (Foucault, Arche pp 37 and 58). On the emergence of Russian resettlement politics see Willard Sunderland, Peasants on the Move: State Peasant Resettlement in Imperial Russia, 1805 1830s, Russian Review Vol 52, October 1993, pp 472 485, here p 473. See also Nolte on the introduction of religiously motivated mass-resettlement: HansHeinrich Nolte Umsiedlungen als Instrument der russischen Mission im Wolgaraum 17401748, Jahrbu r Geschichte Osteuropas Vol 45, H. 2, 1997, pp 198 209, here pp 199 200. A noteworthy detail of cher fu zer in his role as foreign specialist who suggested to the Russian this development is that it was A. L. Schlo rulers that the essence of the state lay in its land and its people, and that the relationship between territory and population had to be congured by state intervention. See Sunderland, Imperial Space, p 49. The Muscovite state had displayed no interest in empty, virgin territory, and therefore did not seek to erase indigenous presence. See Kivelson, Claiming Siberia, pp 34 and 36. Kivelson accounts for this by pointing out that the tsar needed the afrming testimony of the indigenous population in order to legitimize his claims to sovereignty (Ibid, p 35). Even after the conquest of Kazan, which saw a partial elimination of the indigenous elite, the Muscovite state staged the re-establishment of political control as a joint project. See Matthew P. Romaniello, Grant, settle negotiate: military servitors in the middle Volga region, in Breyfogle, Schrader ten. Das Zarenand Sunderland, Peopling, pp 6177, and also Andreas Kappeler, Rulands erste Nationalita lker der Mittleren Wolga vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert (Ko ln and Wien: Bo hlau, 1982), pp reich und die Vo 97 101. Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference. The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp 128130; RGVIA, f. 38, op. 7, d. 351, l 26; See also the document from March 29, 1867 reproduced in Kumykov, Problemy Kavkazskoi voiny, pp 405 407, especially p 406: It is not to be doubted that from a political point of view it would be more agreeable for the government to have only a purely Russian population in the coastal region [. . .] but the experience of such a colonization [. . .] turned out to be quite disadvantageous in terms of economical well-being. The observation that Russian administrators in nineteenth-century Caucasus pursued the aim of normalization and homogenization has sometimes been confused with the claim that its foremost attention was bent upon Russication. This ignores that there are different ways of conceiving and creating uniformity which do not all have to rely on the creation of national or ethnic categories, and that therefore the scope of the project is much wider. Thus, the opposition between colonial/imperial and nationalist modes of governance (see for example Sherry, Social Alchemy, p 29, and Suny, Empire, p 36) is misleading. Its popularity may have to do with the widespread belief that nationalism is inconsistent with liberal-democratic reforms, while, as Kaspe points out quite correctly, it is rather the logical consequence of liberal-democratic modernization. (Sviatoslav Kaspe, Imperial political culture and modernization in the second half of the nineteenth century, in: Burbank, von Hagen and Remnev, Russian Empire, pp 455493, here p 466. Vsepoddanneishii otchet glavnokomanduiushchago Kavkazskoiu Armieiu po voenno-narodnomu upravleniiu za 1863-1869gg. (S.-Peterburg: Voennaia Tipograia, 1870), p 110. Ibid, pp 109 and 116. The Russian colonial mindset here bears remarkable similarities to what Zygmunt Bauman sees as the characteristics of ordinary genocide: Ordinary violence is rarely, if at all, aimed at the total annihilation of the group; the purpose of the violence [. . ..] is to destroy the marked category [. . .] as a viable community capable of self-perpetuation and defense of its own self-identity. If this is the case, the objective of the genocide is met once (1) the volume of violence has been large enough to undermine the will and resilience of the sufferers, and to terrorize them into surrender to the superior power and into the acceptance of the order it imposed; and (2) the marked group has been deprived of resources necessary for the continuation of the struggle. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge and Maldon: Polity, 2007 (1989)), p 119. I thank Pieter Lagrou and Aude Merlin for straightening out my thoughts on this issue.
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A COLONIAL EXPERIMENT IN CLEANSING 66 Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, p XII, p 95; Pels (Pels, Anthropology of Colonialism, p 176) makes a similar point by cautioning that an emphasis on governmentality as a pervasive form of power should not obscure that the ones hegemony was often the others coercion. 67 For a recent approach working with this opposition see Sherry, Social Alchemy, p 8. Jersildalthough clearly describing the Russian policy in Western Caucasus as one of forcefully exiling the Circassiansmakes a similar mistake. He understands exile and conquest as remnants of the past that continue to resonate with some administrators, while this former historical tradition has generally been replaced by citizenship as a progressive model for integrating non-Russian peoples into the imperial political order. See Jersild, From Savagery, pp 101 103. While Yaroshevski somewhat questions Jersilds more customary, modern liberal vision of citizenship and locates the idea of citizenship more rmly within the imperial milieu, he too describes the emergence of grazhdanstvennost (citizenship) as part of the search for an alternative to military repression, when the limits of the latter had become apparent during the last stage of Great Caucasian War (Yaroshevski, Empire and Citizenship, pp 61 and 75). 68 On the period of 185667 as last stage in the development of the concept of citizenship see Yaroshevski, zer in Empire and Citizenship, pp 62 and 65. The expression dead mass is from August Ludwig Schlo his preface to the book on Catherine the Greats accomplishments, see Yaroshevski, Empire and Citizenship, pp 62 63. The paradox of the simultaneous presence of liberalizing and highly repressive moments in the concept of citizenship is however not a Russian specicity. David Scott thus stresses that modern political rationality works not in spite of, but through the construction of the space of free social exchange, and through the construction of a subjectivity normatively experienced as the source of free will and rational, autonomous agency (Scott, Colonial Governmentality, p 201). 69 The following is based on the archival documents published in Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev, here pp 9, 12, 4041, 46, 50. Other euphemistic expressions include the nal settlement of the Chechen question (Ibid., p 17) or the nal elimination of the possibility of insurrections in the future (Ibid., p 44). Vsepoddanneishii otchet, p 111. 70 Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev, pp 17, 39 and 69. This shows again the inextricable interweaving of repressive and productive moments characteristic of modern political power. Interestingly, it was Jeremy Bentham who had suggested to articially arrange things in a way so that people, while following their own self-interest, would do as they should (Scott, Colonial Governmentality, pp 202 203). It is only in this very limited sense that the migrations of 1865 can be called voluntary, and with self-interest in this case meaning the objective of self-preservation in the presence of an overpowering threat. 71 Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev, pp 19, 48, 51, 53, 78. Tellingly, these persons were also to be allowed to return to the Caucasus within one year if they did not wish to settle down in the Ottoman Empire (see p 51). One of these was Ossetian Mussa Kundukhov, who later on was accused of being a traitor to his own people. However, it is possible that he had been blackmailed into this cooperation, see ibid., p 198. For moires du Ge ne ral Moussa-Pacha Koundoukhov Kundukhovs own account see his memoirs: Les Me (1837 1865) (Paris: Editions du Caucase, 1939). 72 Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev, pp 74, 137 138, citation pp 3940. In the Chechen case, inducing voluntary migration was termed a slow way of dealing with the mountaineer problem in contrast with forced relocation inside the connes of the Russian Empire. See Ibid., pp 3637. moires du Ge ne ral, pp 5 14, here p 13. 73 A. Kantemir, Moussa-Pacha Koundoukhov, Les Me 74 Reproduced in Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 237 247, here p 239. 75 Ibid., pp 243244, 246. 76 Citation in Vsepoddanneishii otchet, p 115; For a documentation of the emigration to the Ottoman Empire after 1865 see Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 223 onwards. 77 Thus, a post-1864 document reproduced in Dzagurov (Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev, p 184) states that largescale emigrations carried the danger of a total standstill of the economy. Another possible reason is that now that the Northern Caucasians were more aware of what mass migrations meant both for those who left and those who remained, they more steadfastly resisted to Russian efforts at pushing them out by producing a sense of panic. Indeed, several indigenous leaders had started to counteract any tendencies to migrate, urging their fellow countrymen and -women to stay and face Russian oppression, see Kasumov, Kasumov, Genotsid Adygov, p 159 and Bereedzh, Izgnaniia, pp 164 175. An additional cause was probably the Russian fear that the situation could run out of hand and lead to a general uprising in Northern Caucasus (see Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev, pp 69, 83). 78 Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev, pp 16 and 67. 79 This interpretation was inspired by Ilya Vinkovetskis examination of the colonization of Siberia and Russian America. Vinkovetsky argued that the slow route overland versus the seaway gave rise to remarkable differences in the way natives were perceived and treated by Russian colonists. See Ilya Vinkovetsky, Circumnavigation, Empire, Modernity, Race: The Impact of Round-the-World-Voyages on Russias
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IRMA KREITEN Imperial Consciousness, Ab Imperi Nos 1-2, 2001, pp 191 210. For efforts of Russian authorities to ban emigrations by land see Tuganov, Tragicheskie, pp 18 and 20; Kumykov, Vyselenie, pp 102 102. See also the statement in the report of the Caucasian viceroy that the indirect course of action pursued with the Chechens was the only practical in the given case (Vsepoddanneishii otchet, p 111). Weiner in this context speaks of a unique conuence of ideologies, social scientic paradigms and institutions with the desire to transform the existing order, which took place under the growing power of the modern state. Weiner, Introduction, pp 1 2. See also Scott, Seeing, p 88. This expression was used by a contemporary when discussing possible Ottoman objections to the impending Chechen migrations of 1865, see Dzagurov, Pereselenie gortsev, p 35. For a detailed discussion of the factors giving rise to the most tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering see Scott, Seeing, especially pp 4 5. Citation ibid., p 5; Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, LA: University of California Press, 1995), pp 6 8; Lynne Viola The aesthetic of Stalinist planning and the world of the special villages, in: Breyfogle, Schrader and Sunderland, Peopling, pp 189 212, especially p 196. Holquist, To Count, especially pp 126 127; Holquist, State Violence, pp 20 and 25; Abdurakhmanov Avtorkhanov, The Chechens and the Ingush during the Soviet period and its antecedents, in: Bennigsen Broxup, Caucasus Barrier, pp 146 194, here p 184; Terry Martin, The origins of Soviet ethnic cleansing, The Journal of Modern History, Vol 70, No 4, December 1998, pp 813 861, here p 823; Marie Bennigsen Broxup, The last Ghazawat. The 1920 1921 uprising, in: Bennigsen Broxup, Caucasus Barrier, pp 112 145, here p 131; also Isabelle Kreindler, The Soviet deported nationalities: a summary and an update, Soviet Studies, Vol 38, No 3, July 1986, pp 387 405, here p 390. Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp 9596 and 106. On the reliance on pre-revolutionary ethnographic knowledge see Avtorkhanov, The Chechens, pp 164 and 169; see also Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations. Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005), p 10. The report of the Caucasian viceroy speaks of the nal blending of the mountain nationalities with Russia, see Vsepoddanneishii otchet, p 120, also pp 117118. On the primary targeting of Muslim/non-Christian groups see L. Ia. Arapchanova, Spetspereselentsy. Istoriia massovych repressii i deportatsija ingushei v II veke (Moskva: Andalus, 2004), p 110; also Kreindler, Soviet Deported Nationalities, p 388. The Ossetians, while probably being not much less (or more) syncretist than most other Northern Caucasians at the beginning of Russian expansion into the Caucasus, had in imperial times been stylized as Christians to be reawakened after the decline brought about by the historic rise of Muslim inuence in the region. See Jersild, Orientalism, pp 3858. According to Naimark, Stalins motives were not entirely clear, but may have encompassed the establishment of some form of Christian, if not purely Slavic domination in the Caucasus (Naimark, Fires, p 105). curite , On the passage from the pastoral of the soul to the political government of men see Michel Foucault, Se ` ge de France, 19771978 (Paris: Gallimard, 2004); Oliver Le Cour Territoire, Population. Cours au Colle Grandmaison in his analysis of the French conquest of Northern Africa transports Foucault into a colonial context. According to this author, the idea of pastoralization consisted of treating sociocultural groups as ocks, distributing them in space in an authoritarian manner, so that each group would be assigned to a special region and a special task according to its inherent characteristics. Grandmaison then describes how the concept of pastoralization (cheptellisation in the French original) expressed itself in the expulsion of the indigenous population and its replacement by Europeans. See Oliver Le Cour Grandmaison, Coloniser. tat colonial (Paris: Fayard, 2005), pp 58 59. Exterminer. Sur la guerre en lE Avtorkhanov,, The Chechens, pp 162 163, also p 171. On the voluntary character of the migrations, here on the example of the Crimean Tatars, who were exiled to Central Asia together with the deported Northern Caucasian nationalities, see Brian G. Williams, The hidden ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the Soviet Union: the exile and repatriation of the Crimean Tatars, Journal of Contemporary History Vol 37, No 3, July 2002, pp 323 347, here p 341. The aim of cultural destruction becomes more apparent if we take into account that back in the Caucasus, the traces of the former inhabitants were systematically erased, see Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p 98. Williams, Hidden Ethnic Cleansing, p 342; regarding physical annihilation, Avtorkhanov reports that in 1937 socalled anti-Soviet elements from among the Caucasians were taken to a special execution hall in Grozny, established for the extermination of large groups. Euphemistically called relay chamber, it was made of reinforced concrete with revolving ring positions tted into the walls and the ceiling from the exterior. The dead bodies were taken away in lorries. Avtorkhanov, The Chechens, p 175. According to Bennigsen-Broxup, in the Soviet campaign of 1920 21 the Red Army also experimented with chemical weapons, see Bennigsen-Broxup, Last Ghazawat, p 137. On the deportations themselves, transport, the
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A COLONIAL EXPERIMENT IN CLEANSING conditions at the Central Asian places of resettlement and death rates see Arapchanova, Spetspereselentsy, pp 124 and 133; Williams, Hidden Ethnic Cleansing, pp 332334; Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p 97; Bernard ` cle des ge nocides (Paris: Armand Colin, 2004), p 103; Kreindler, Soviet Deported, Bruneteau, Le sie pp 390392; Walter Comins-Richmond, The deportation of the Karachays, Journal of Genocide Research Vol 4, No 3, 2002, pp 431 439, here pp 433435; Michaela Pohl, It cannot be that our graves will be here: the survival of Chechen and Ingush deportees in Kazakhstan, 1944 1957, Journal of Genocide Research Vol 4, No 3, 2002, pp 401 430, here pp 404 407. Naimark, Fires, p 98; Francine Hirsch, Race without the practice of racial politics, Slavic Review Vol 61, No 1, Spring 2002, pp 3043; Weiner, Introduction, p 15; A. Weiner, Nothing but certainty, Slavic Review Vol 61, No 1, Spring 2002, pp 4453. Weiner does state that the Soviet belief in the malleability of human nature waned in the wake of World War II, and that Soviets never resolved for themselves the tension between social and biopolitical categorizations but he still thinks that [p]urication did not engage collectivities as such but rather the individuals who comprised them, and that [e]xcision, even when totalized, did not emanate from a genocidal ideology and was not practiced through exterminatory institutions, see Amir Weiner, Nature, nurture, and memory in a socialist utopia: delineating the Soviet socio-ethnic body in the age of socialism, The American Historical Review Vol 104, No 4, Oct, 1999, pp 11141155, especially pp 1115 and 1155, and Weiner, Nothing but Certainty, pp 5253. Approaches stressing the destructive character of Soviet nationality policy in the Caucasus are J. Otto Pohl, Stalins genocide against the repressed peoples, Journal of Genocide Research Vol 2, No 2, 2000, pp 167293; Eric D. Weitz, Racial politics without the concept of race: reevaluating Soviet ethnic and national purges, Slavic Review Vol 61, No 1, Spring 2002, pp 1 29. I tend to side more with Pohls and Weitzs analysis focusing on the Caucasus than with Hirschs, Weiners and Martins more general argument. Even if the latter are correct to the extent that Soviet policy was not based on notions of race, this does not automatically validate the argument that Soviet authorities were bent upon reeducation instead of annihilation. Naimark, Fires, p 106. Martin, Origins, p 816, see also Hirsch, Empire of Nations, p 9, where Hirsch states that the party-state could be both high-minded and vicious at the same time. D.A. Miliutin, in the very act of proposing the re-settlement of the Transkuban population, had written: The Europeans colonization of America brought in its wake the extermination of almost all the original inhabitants there; but in our age, obligations to humankind require that we take measures in good time for securing the existence of even those tribes that are hostile to us, which for reasons of state we force from their lands (RGVIA, f. 38, op.7,d. 351, l.70 ob). On the Soviet distancing from eugenics see Hirsch, Empire of Nations, pp 231272; Hirsch, Race Without. On Soviet pressure on excluding political groups from the UN-genocide denition see Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), cited according to Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State, pp 45 and 216. It thus seems more probable to me that the most serious inhibition to descending into genocidal dynamics arose from the need to set oneself off from Nazi Germany, and not from some kind of primordial convictions inherent to Soviet ideology. On this technique of soliciting the cooperation of the victims as a widespread characteristic of genocide, see Bauman, Modernity and Holocaust, pp 117 150, especially p 130. Weiner (Weiner, Introduction, p 9) in a similar context speaks of the expanding welfare state and the cleansing state as opposite ends of the inclusionary-exclusionary axis, which became the trademark of transformative modern politics.
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Notes on contributor Irma Kreiten studied Cultural Anthropology and History of Eastern Europe at the bingen, Germany. She graduated in 2004 with an MA thesis on University of Tu Russian imperial ethnography in nineteenth-century Caucasus. She is currently enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Southampton and is preparing a dissertation on the Russian nal subjugation of Western Caucasus (185665). Her main areas of interest are Postcolonial Studies, the Ottoman Empire and the Black Sea region.
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A colonial experiment in cleansing: the Russian conquest of Western Caucasus, 1856-65

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