Social Alchemy on the Black SeaCoast, 186065

Dana Sherry

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

1, Winter 2009 (New Series), pp. 7-30 (Article)
Published by Slavica Publishers
DOI: 10.1353/kri.0.0068

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Articles
Social Alchemy on the Black Sea Coast,
186065
Dana Sherry

The Russians had forcibly removed Muslim peoples in order to

replace them with Christians.
Justin McCarthy
To drive the mountain tribes from their thickets and to settle the
western Caucasus with Russianssuch was the military plan for the
last four years.
Rostislav Fadeev

Massive demographic changes took place on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus
in the early 1860s. From 1860 to 1865, at least 370,000 people indigenous to
the region departed for the Ottoman empire, another 74,000 to 100,000 were
resettled in the lowlands among Cossack stanitsy, and over 100,000 Russians
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, the editorial board at Kritika, the reading group
formerly known as the kruzhok at Stanford, and especially Peter Holquist for their insightful
comments on earlier versions of this article.

Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 18211922
(Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 1995), 40.

Cited in R. U. Tuganov, ed., Tragicheskie posledstviia Kavkazskoi voiny dlia adygov: Vtoraia
polovina XIXnachalo XX veka. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Nalchik: El-Fa, 2000), 157.

The affected area reached approximately from the Bzib River in the south to the Kuban River
in the north, encompassing part of todays Abkhazia and neighboring territory in Krasnodar
krai.

Most recent studies state that 450,000 people left the western Caucasus for the Ottoman
empire from 1858 to 1865, but this number includes all Muslim groups who left the region
between the close of the Crimean War and the official conquest of the Black Sea coast in June
1864. It also exceeds Russian estimates at the time, which put the total emigrants from 1858 to
1865 at 400,000. Some 30,000 Nogai left in 1858 and 1859, prior to the new policy. Emigration
in response to the rise in Russian military activity in the western Caucasus began in 1861 and
reached its height in 1864, when Russian officials estimated that some 320,000 left (Tragicheskie
posledstviia, 15557).

This number is rarely cited, but a Russian report of 1864 states that 73,686 Cherkess remained in the Kuban under Russian rule (ibid., 121). A higher number appeared in December
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, 1 (Winter 2009): 730.

 dana sherry

arrived to fill the emptied space. The epigraphs cited above strongly articulate
what has become the conventional wisdom about these shifts: the Russian state
drove out Muslims, while bringing in Russian settlers. The relatively few scholars who have studied these events have tended to view them as an illustration
of a general principle of governance in imperial Russia: namely, that Muslims
made undesirable subjects and ideally should be replaced by Russians or other
Christian groups. According to this vision, the state aimed to create an ethnically, or at least religiously, homogenous population.
I argue that, on the contrary, the Caucasus administration pursued a civilizing mission that aimed at transforming the peoples under its rule. Social
engineering remained beyond its reach, and with its limited ability to mold the
local population in new directions, Tiflis relied on theoretical calculations that
I term social alchemy. These formulas reflected current ideas of social science,
drawing on knowledge of ethnicity in the abstract and given ethnic groups in
particular, and it promised to deliver marvelous results in transforming imperfect social elements into an ideal society. As practiced along the Black Sea
coast, this alchemy involved two key steps. First, officials aimed to refine the
indigenous population, removing elements deemed fanatical, relocating those
who could accept Russian rule to the more accessible lowlands along the Kuban
River, and subjecting those who remained to close administration. Western
Circassians, once brought under control, would help provide the manpower to
develop the resources of the Kuban lowlands. Next, by repopulating the coastal
1865 in a letter from Kartsov to Miliutin, in which he stated that some 80,000 to 100,000
indigenous peoples remained under Russian administration (ibid., 205).

A report from 1864 states that 106,000 Russians had settled in the region by 1863 (ibid.,
121), and I have been unable to find a figure that covers settlement through 1865.

All the sources used in this article were written by members of the civil and military administration in the region in their official capacities. The boundaries between the civil and the military were porous, as civilian officials frequently joined in military expeditions and individuals
moved freely between posts in Tiflis and in the army, and accordingly I have not distinguished
between the types of imperial service. I have focused deliberately on official correpondence and
literature published under the auspices of the viceroy in order to address the views advanced by
the administration in its efforts to improve the population under its rule. I do not seek to make
claims about what opinions officials may have held as individuals, a fascinating question to the
extent that it can be answered but one that goes beyond the limits of the present article.

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

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 

highlands with the right combination of geographically appropriate peoples, the

administration hoped to create a prosperous new society. Due to their historical connection with the geography of the Russian heartland, Russian nationals alone lacked the necessary skills to flourish in such an environment; and
officials sought to attract colonists from a variety of geographical and ethnic
backgrounds to populate the region and develop its resources.
Officials thought in terms of the transformation and utilization of the human elements at their disposal, and they aspired to integrate all but the most
noncompliant individuals into the imperial order. Usable human capital was in
short supply, so making use of the population at hand made pragmatic sense.
Moreover, they claimed that controlled diversity would generate modernity and
drive the regions development. In this view, all ethnic groups could participate
productively in empire, and unity would come through devotion to the tsar
(or at least submission to Russian rule and participation in the local economy).
This liberal project was profoundly hierarchical, and the place allocated to highland communities was unenviable. Nevertheless, to say that officials intended
to expel hundreds of thousands of potential subjects greatly misrepresents how
Caucasus officials approached empire-building.
In the event, however, both stages of the experiment failed. Officials managed to force highland communities along the Black Sea coast to leave their
homes, expecting that they would submit, relocate to the lowlands, and contribute to the emerging agricultural economy. In the event, the highlanders
could not remain in place, but they could and did choose to reject Russian rule
and depart for the Ottoman empire. Geographically suitable colonists proved
impossible to find in the 1860s. Perforce the administration relied primarily on
the Cossacks who had helped conquer the region for settlers. As predicted, these
colonists proved unable to adapt to the new environment and, alarmingly, began to adopt some of the least desirable habits of the regions previous residents.
Ultimately, like true alchemists, Caucasus officials did not succeed in generating gold and struggled to control the unstable composite they had created.
Ethnicity and Enlightened Imperialism
Ethnicity, not religion, dominated the debates over who should inhabit the
Black Sea coast, a preference that stemmed from the liberal bias of Caucasus
officials at mid-century. Scholarship over the last 15 years has revealed the salience of ethnicity in Soviet governance, and it is emerging as a significant category of governance in the borderlands in the imperial period as well. To be
sure, religious and ethnic categories overlap both in terms of their content and
their usage, yet by the mid-19th century the choice of terms implied different

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


10 dana sherry

understandings of empire.10 Daniel Brower argued that in Turkestan, conservative officials relied primarily on religion to emphasize the impossibility of
fully incorporating the local populations into imperial structures. Islam, they
argued, constituted an immutable obstacle to civility (grazhdanstvennost); and
as Muslims, the peoples of Turkestan could never overcome their backwardness. An alternate view of empire, however, drew on Enlightenment principles
to promote modernity through diversity. Knowledge of the population would
enable these enlightened officials to introduce progress, modernity, and capitalH History to backward peoples. Accordingly, these officials categorized their
subjects in ethnic terms and emphasized the need to transform them. Ethnic
diversity and empire dovetailed neatly in this picture. Brower wrote:
reformers who sought the association of Turkestans peoples within the
imperial order were persuaded (and argued so publicly) that recognition of
ethnic differences was compatible with (and for some was a prime condition of) progress and modernity. They minimized the uniqueness alleged
by conservatives to mark the entire Turkestan Muslim population and argued that social and institutional evolution was both feasible and desirable.
Paternalistic guidance by enlightened colonial rulers and collaboration
with compliant elected native elites were the preferred means.11

This enlightened view of empire dominated in the Caucasus as well, and

Governor-General Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman may well have brought
these views with him to Turkestan from his service under Caucasus Viceroy
Mikhail Sergeevich Vorontsov.12 Like their later counterparts in Central Asia,
Caucasus officials in the mid-19th century publicly espoused a vision of empire
that celebrated ethnic diversity and the shared devotion of all the peoples of the
region to the tsar. Resistance to Russian rule was attributed in official publications to the malevolence and fanaticism of a few individuals, who succeeded
in tricking the gullible masses into revolt. While conservative voices deplored
the inherent savagery of highland communities, state publications consistently
espoused the liberal argument that all ethnic groups could experience devotion
to the tsar and earn a place in the new social order. Hierarchical inclusion, not
exclusion, was their ideal and the key to modernizing the region.
Talal Asad offers a systematic analysis of the intersection of secular and religious categories
in Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2003).
11
Daniel Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London: RoutledgeCurzon,
2003), 10.
12
Elsewhere, Brower argued that Kaufman in part drew on his experiences in the Caucasus in
deciding to ignore Islam: that is, to disregard its private aspects while limiting its impact in
public (Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy in Turkestan, in Russias Orient: Imperial
Borderlands and Peoples, ed. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini [Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1997], 11537).
10

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 11

The nation may have been the protagonist of modernity for conservatives,
to modify Nathaniel Knights pithy formulation, but Caucasus officials argued
that ethnic diversity itself would ultimately provide the key to modernizing the
region.13 Devotion to Russian values would draw the fragmented peoples out of
their backward somnolescence and integrate them into the empire, where their
specific aptitudes could be put to good use. Indeed, the entire hierarchy posited
for the local population was essentially an occupational structure, and officials
saw work and participation in the colonial economy as markers of membership
in both the Russian empire and the modern world. Officials speculated that
groups who did not work, like the nomads, fell outside the universal laws of
progress and even outside the realm of humanity.14 Such groups seemed destined to die out as ignoble savages, but the remainder of the indigenous population worked, or should work, to build a stronger empire.
Officials confidently assigned a role in this occupational hierarchy to each
ethnic group. Russians and foreigners would remain a minority and help guide
the region into the modern age. Aristocratic Georgians would best be used as a
managerial class, whether they served the state directly in civil or military positions,15 while the Georgian peasants, who were not strangers to hard work,
could become good agricultural workers under the direction of an intelligent
landowner.16 Conforming to stereotypes, Armenians would form a merchant
class, aiming toward the acquisition of wealth (though not capitalmodern
industry belonged to Europeans).17 Tatars18 naturally engaged in agriculture
and animal husbandry, and constituted perhaps the most important productive working element of Transcaucasia,19 though their work could be made
more efficient only if the necessary shepherds traveled with their herds and the
rest stayed home to work.20 What kind of work they would perform at home
remained unclear, but providing wage labor was a clear option. Persian migrant labor contributed significantly to the Caucasian economy, but the official
Nathaniel Knight, Ethnicity, Nationality, and the Masses: Narodnost and Modernity in
Imperial Russia, in Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, ed. David L. Hoffmann
and Yanni Kotsonis (New York: St. Martins, 2000), 42.
14
Male Kurds, whose martial abilities and flashy clothes gained them the attention of many
chroniclers of official processions, formed an exception to the rule. Sustained discussions of entire nomadic communities focused on the Kalmyks. For a representative article in this vein, see
Rasskaz Kalmykov, slyshannyi v Stavropolskoi gubernii, Kavkaz, 13 May 1862, 3739.
15
Predislovie, Zapiski Kavkazskogo otdela Imperatorskogo russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva
1 (1852): xix. A similar picture of the ethnic composition of Tiflis itself appeared in Pisma v
Sankt-Peterburge 30, Kavkaz, 30 July 1861, 59.
16
Osnovnye promyshlennye sily Zakavkazia, Kavkazskii kalendar (Tiflis: n.p., 1846): 140.
17
Predislovie, xix.
18
The problematic term Tatar can refer to almost any Turkic-speaking Muslim group in the
Caucasus, but here it seems to mean pacified Turkic-speakers throughout the region.
19
Predislovie, xix.
20
Osnovnye promyshlennye sily Zakavkazia, Kavkazskii kalendar (1846): 139.
13

12 dana sherry

preference for keeping close control over border crossings made developing a
domestic labor force desirable.
Caucasus officials viewed the highlanders, unlike the nomads, as peoples
possessed of natural intelligence and well able to adapt to civilized life, once they
accepted Russian rule. The process of acculturation might not move quickly,
but even pessimistic voices did not judge it impossible, after much time had
passed, for the highland masses to appreciate the virtues of Russian civilization.
Optimists argued that this moment lay close at hand. Once highlanders entered
the imperial family, officials proclaimed that Russia itself would take up their
cause:
Through the establishment of civility, the spread of civilization [obrazovanie], and the desire to master technical labor, the government will
endow the highlanders with a most happy life. The grandchildren of
our grandchildren will record in the annals of Caucasian history the name
of the great man who brought civilization to a wild country abandoned by
God: Dagestan.21

The god-forsaken Dagestanis would need this introduction to the ways of

technical labor, for like the Tatars, they were destined to fill the lowest level
in the hierarchy as members of the working class. The true conquest of the
Caucasus would be achieved when the highlanders understand that which is
earned through labor is better and more safe than that which is taken at knife
point.22 The highlanders would fill a similar function to that allocated to all
Tatars in the general plans for the region and become laborers, whether working their own land or for wages on imperial projects (roads, wood-felling) or on
lowland plantations.23 The two latter options were more likely, as officials drew
on familiar colonial tropes to argue that the highlanders did not deserve to have
land because they did not make use of its bounty.
Other authors argued that the highlanders themselves embraced the opportunity to become wage laborers on construction projects or agricultural establishments. The administration, for its part, proposed to foster the seeds of
civilization and labor that it had sown and rejoiced at the great softening
of the native character and mores that had already taken place, seen in the drop
in raiding and the rise in the number of wage laborers.24 As one author enthused,
agriculture and trade would occupy the many hands of lazy highlanders. What
Petrovsk, Kavkaz, 12 December 1863, 97.
Fedor Bannikov, Zavod Alagriskii, 8 oktiabria 1850, Kavkaz, 15 November 1850, 90.
23
This transition from martial activities to wage labor mirrors the fate of the highland Chotanagpur peoples in British India, as described by Kaushik Ghosh, A Market for
Aboriginality: Primitivism and Race Classification in the Indentured Labor Market of Colonial
India, Subaltern Studies 10, ed. Gautam Bhadra, Gyan Prakash, and Susie Tharu (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 848.
24
Pavel Przheslavskii, Ulli-Kala, Kavkaz, 10 July 1860, 53.
21

22

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 13

can pacify a people, accustomed to idleness and theft, if not trade and industry!
A clear example of this is presented by the natives of southern Dagestan and its
environs, who have grown wealthy [!] on the madder plantations.25
The main problem with the highlanders before pacification lay not in their
idleness but in their rebelliousness, though dependence on wages would help
curb that quality as well. Civilized life consistently meant a life of labor, and
both entailed making the highlanders more compliant.
Using the indigenous population to develop the region made sense in an
underpopulated state like the Russian empire, yet that choice also reflected
current views on the intimate relationship between the terrain and the peoples who inhabited it. Caucasus officials adhered to the Romantic belief that
land and national identity were inextricably intertwined, and that resettling
geographically unsuitable colonists would have tragic consequences.26 Ethnic
groups had uniquely adapted to their physical surroundings, and they would
suffer if artificially placed in a new, unfamiliar location. Russians could not
survive easily in the topographically unfamiliar lands of the Caucasus, and
therefore they would play a supervisory role and make use of the local human
capital to pursue their goals.
In this vein, V. A. Frankini, the military advisor to the Russian consul in
Istanbul, argued passionately for the need to retain as many of the highland
Circassian communities as possible in order to realize Russias economic and
social goals along the Black Sea coast. A loss of large numbers of potential subjects would work against Russias true interests in the Caucasus itself, which he
described at length:
The full and complete conquest of the Caucasus should not mean only an
empty land but a land together with its original [pervobytnoe] population.
The Caucasus War represents the struggle of enlightenment with savagery,
rational material power with banditry. But those bandits are people inextricably bound with the land, and they hide within themselves a wealth
of mental and physical activity. Let our selfless care for them show
Iz Petrovska, Kavkaz, 16 May 1863, 37. Madder is a plant that is used in making dyes.
Madder plantations appear frequently in discussions of the highlanders migrant labor, though I
have seen no discussion of it as part of the larger plans to develop the region, which focus more
on cotton, wine, and honey. Some official correspondence waxed lyrical about raising leeches
as a way to make money in the western Caucasus, but fortunately the highlanders seem to have
avoided this unpleasant occupation. The notion that the highlanders grew wealthy through their
labor is absurd, as the descriptions of their lamentable working conditions confirm (Derbent,
Kavkaz, 16 December 1862, 99; and Derbent, Kavkaz, 23 December 1862, 101). For more on
the fate of the gortsy of the eastern Caucasus, see Dana Sherry, Imperial Alchemy: Resettlement,
Ethnicity, and Governance in the Russian Caucasus, 18281865, especially chap. 3.
26
Montesquieu laid the groundwork for this view, but Johann Gottfried Herders vision of
ethnicity had the greatest direct impact on this thinking. For Herders understanding of geographys impact on nationality, see Johann Gottfried Herder, Reflections on the Philosophy of the
History of Mankind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), especially chap. 1.
25

14 dana sherry

even in our punishment; let us love them and they will be transformed.
Russia cannot be content with only the naked mountains and valleys of the
Caucasus. Russian blood was spilled in vain, if it did not save the population itself from the moral denigration in which it stagnates, and its final
civilization [okonchatelnoe obrazovanie] is necessary for Russia to justify
before the enlightened world the harshness with which it struggled for 60
years in such a cruel war.27

Frankinis call to love the savage residents of the region went far beyond
the more typical calls for hierarchical integration, yet his belief that the regions
development depended on the control of its residents as well as its territory held
general currency among Caucasus officials. The final conquest of the Caucasus
lay in the final civilization of its inhabitants; and without the submission of
indigenous peoples, the conquest itself would be empty. Their physical absence
would make Russia unable to achieve a more crucial victory.
Expulsion or Emigration?
Given the prevalence of these views, how did it happen that hundreds of
thousands of Western Circassians fled to the Ottoman empire from 1860 to
1865? One of the key debates in the historiography of Russias presence on the
Black Sea coast revolves around the exodus of the indigenous population and
whether this movement should be seen as expulsion (they were driven out by
the Russians) or emigration (they chose to go). Contemporary Western scholarship favors the former explanation.28 Justin McCarthy polemically presents the
maximalist view: all states seek religious homogeneity, and all subjects seek to
be ruled by a state that shares their religion. The Russian state was Christian;
and the Circassians, like all the communities addressed in his study, identified
themselves as Muslims, were classified as Muslim by their government, and
were persecuted because they were Muslim.29 Specifically, the Russians had
Tragicheskie posledstviia, 11617.
In the interest of brevity, I have chosen to focus on three recent works that embody distinct approaches to the question. Other studies of the topic in English include Mark Pinson,
Demographic Warfare: An Aspect of Ottoman and Russian Policy, 18541866 (Ph.D. diss.,
Harvard University, 1970); Pinson, Ottoman Colonization of the Circassians in Rumeli after
the Crimean War, tudes Balkaniques 8, 3 (1972): 7185; Willis Brooks, Russias Conquest and
Pacification of the Caucasus: Relocation Becomes a Pogrom in the PostCrimean War Period,
Nationalities Papers 23, 4 (1995): 67586; Paul Henze, Fire and Sword in the Caucasus: The
Nineteenth-Century Resistance of the North Caucasian Mountaineers, Central Asia Survey
2, 1 (1983): 544; and David Cuthel, The Circassian Srgn, in Ab Imperio, no. 2 (2003):
13968. Russian scholarship is underdeveloped, as the many post-Soviet volumes devoted to the
topic are collections of documents rather than analyses of the material they present. Georgianlanguage scholarship is not accessible to me, but discussions with Georgian scholars suggest that
they present the movement as a voluntary exodus, a stance that is intimately linked to Georgian
claims to Abkhazia today.
29
McCarthy, Death and Exile, 3.
27

28

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 15

forcibly removed Muslim peoples in order to replace them with Christians.30

Most scholars of the exodus share this general view, though they do not express
it in such strong terms.
An alternate argument suggests that the emigration stemmed in part from
compulsion by the Russian state and in part from the tradition of hijra, whereby
Muslims would leave for Muslim-ruled lands to avoid Christian domination.
Austin Jersild, in his brief discussion of these events, offers this model to explain
departures up to 1858, but he uses the term exile for all subsequent departures
without explaining the change in terminology.31 After noting that the initial
plan to pacify the western Caucasus entailed resettlement within the empire
or in Ottoman lands, Jersild states: Many regime officials and other Russians
in the Caucasus and throughout Russia quite simply believed that the Adygei
[Circassians] and the mountaineers in general did not belong in the empire.32
He argues that the Russians chose to cleanse the region of mountaineers; that
is, force them from the body politic. The bulk of the sources he cites to support
this conclusion were written after it became clear that many of the Circassians
had already left or were waiting for transport on the coast, by which time it
remained only to justify and naturalize the exodus. This justification came over
time, however, legitimizing rather than driving events.33
Yet another approach to the question seeks to locate the resettlement in
the context of European and Russian notions of governance. Peter Holquist
argues that from the 19th century on, European administrators generally came
to think in terms of population; that is, to define the social body in quantifiable
ethnic units through the use of statistics.34 By the early 20th century, he suggests, Russians accepted developments in West European thinking about governance and began to see ethnic homogeneity as the surest guarantee of social
well-being. Holquist views the western Caucasus as one of the first places where
officials attempted to create a homogenous population on a mass scale. His argument rests on three key figures: Dmitrii Alekseevich Miliutin (chief of staff
in the Caucasus from 1856 to 1860 and minister of war from 1861 to 1881),
Rostislav Andreevich Fadeev (adjutant to Viceroy Bariatinskii and a prominent
publicist), and Count Nikolai Ivanovich Evdokimov (commander of Russian
Ibid., 40.
Austin Jersild, Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian
Frontier, 18451917 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002), 2227.
32
Ibid., 25. For a full discussion of conditions on the Black Sea coast in the final years of the
war, see 2227.
33
In contrast, Jersilds interpretation of the smaller movement of Chechens to the Ottoman empire in 1865 bears much in common with my analysis of developments on the Black Sea coast.
See Jersild, From Savagery to Citizenship, in Russias Orient, 10114.
34
Peter Holquist, To Count, to Extract, to Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population
Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia, in A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making
in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 11144.
30
31

16 dana sherry

forces in the Kuban region, 1860 to 1865). Miliutin and Fadeev presented
in retrospect the view that non-Russians should be removed from the region,
which would then be colonized by Russians. Miliutin played a major role in
events surrounding the emigration, namely in developing the military policies
that laid the foundation for the exodus and in setting the guidelines to colonize
the coastal mountains after the Western Circassians had left (and as I show
below, he did not propose simply introducing a Russian population), but he had
little to do with the emigration itself. For his part, Fadeev took part in military
activity in the eastern Caucasus, wrote articles promoting the administrations
viewpoints, and composed reports with suggestions for how to administer highland communities throughout the region. The last responsibility brought him
closest to the emigration, as he visited the highlanders who had been settled
along the Kuban.35 Evdokimov was the only one of the three directly involved
in the forced relocation, and his writings confirm that he did not propose simply
to replace the Circassians with Cossacks. As I show below, Evdokimov in fact
planned to remove what he presumed to be the rebellious minority from the
boundaries of the Russian empire, but he, like most other Caucasus administrators, sought to relocate as many Circassians as possible to the lowlands where
they could contribute to the colonial economy. This argument takes conservative polemics written after the fact for policy, which can be summarized as aiming [t]o cleanse undesirable populations in the Caucasus.36
I argue that the existing scholarship on the Circassian emigration has
mistaken the origins and goals of the movement and that the exodus should
be understood as an unintended, if unsurprising, consequence of draconian
Russian military practices in the region. Before 1860, the Caucasus Army had
limited activity in the mountains along the Black Sea coast, given the more
pressing resistance offered by Shamil in the eastern Caucasus and the difficulty in reaching the western region.37 After Shamils capture in August 1859,
however, stamping out resistance in the west became the final step in the final
conquest (okonchatelnoe pokorenie) of the Caucasus as a whole. Evdokimov
presented a plan for conquest that expanded on old policies of encirclement
For a summary of Fadeevs service in the Caucasus, see O. V. Kuznetsov, R. A. Fadeev:
General i publitsist (Volgograd: Izdatelstvo Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta,
1998), chap. 1. Kuznetsov presents Fadeev as a moderate who promoted the gradual, attentive
integration of highland communities into the empire, an uncommon view to say the least, but
the account of Fadeevs service seems reliable.
36
Holquist, To Count, to Extract, to Exterminate, 118.
37
Shamil established an imamate in the eastern Caucasus that claimed to introduce a pure
Islamic order into the region and fought with remarkable success against the Russians for 25
years (183459). For more on Shamils life and career, see V. V. Degoev, Imam Shamil: Prorok,
vlastitel, voin (Moscow: Russkaia panorama, 2001); Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the
Tsar (London: Frank Cass, 1994); Lesley Blanch, The Sabres of Paradise (New York: Viking,
1960); and Thomas M. Barrett, The Remaking of the Lion of Dagestan: Shamil in Captivity,
Russian Review 53, 3 (1994): 35366.
35

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 17

and resettlement. Conquest meant removing the unpacified population from

the highlands, where it had so effectively resisted Russian control. This relocation would become irrevocable through the systematic destruction of emptied villages and fields. Official reports improbably presented this process as
a bloodless one that did not involve fatalities, but they did claim the diseases
and hunger that came in the wake of this destruction as an intended result of
the campaigns. As one official wrote unapologetically, these hardships act
on them [the highlanders] morally, leading them to the awareness that only
under our protection can they find contentment and well-being, and only we
can provide them with a calm and peaceful life.38 Communities that surrendered could migrate to lands set aside behind the line of Cossack stanitsy or, as
a concession to demands from below, they could emigrate to Ottoman lands.
The violence of the campaigns and the forced relocation doubtless fueled the
Western Circassians desire to emigrate to the Ottoman empire, but Russian
planners in the early 1860s anticipated that most Western Circassians would
relocate to the lowlands.
Emptying the Highlands
Yet by 1863, the administration began to consider alternatives to relocation to
the Kuban region, as the highland communities continued to resist the imposition of Russian rule despite the increasing hopelessness of their cause. A. P.
Kartsov, then commander in chief of the Caucasus Army, explained to Miliutin,
then war minister, that the communities of the western Caucasus realized the
weakness of their position and would surrender immediately if they could remain in their present locations. Surrender on such terms would, however, contradict the plan for conquest.
The nature of the coastal strip and the habits of the population occupying it
are so incompatible with what we can offer the mountain tribes that we
will have to destroy the majority of this population by force of arms before
it will agree to satisfy our demands. Under these circumstances, it would
be most profitable for us to make use of their [the Western Circassians]
widespread desire to emigrate to Turkey.39

Kartsov improbably cast emigration as a humanitarian move: by allowing the local inhabitants to leave, Russia would spare Circassian lives. He then
arrived at the main point of his letternamely, more money to facilitate their
departure. In short, it would be cheaper and easier to help them move than to
exterminate them.
At the same time, once it became apparent that the majority of the Western
Circassians preferred emigration, few officials lamented their departure.
Vesti s Linii: Pismo k priiateliu, Kavkaz, 19 January 1855.
Kartsov to Miliutin, 10 November 1863, in Tragicheskie posledstviia, 81.

38
39

18 dana sherry

Evdokimov expressed a widespread view when he concluded that, as for the

threat that the entire population [along the coast] may leave, even if that happened, it would bring us both satisfaction and a real benefit by freeing us of a
people [narod] that does not wish us well.40 At most, officials derived satisfaction from the emigration of unwilling subjects, an attitude that falls far short of
actively driving the Western Circassians from the empire entirely.
The war officially ended on 9 June 1864, when all the mountain communities had evacuated the highlands. The newspaper Kavkaz claimed that
the entire Caucasus and Russia rejoiced at the great feat, which marked the
beginning of an era of peace, public welfare [blagoustroistvo], and development in lands that are generously endowed with natural wealth.41 Before these
lands could be developed, however, it remained to finish the process of destruction. The report of an onsite official recorded 8 June 1864 as the last day when
the Circassians could leave. Many villages were burned that day, and over the
succeeding days troops reconnoitered the villages and burned buildings that
remained standing.42
Yet, unintentionally echoing the anarchist Mikhail Aleksandrovich
Bakunin, Caucasus officials argued that this destruction served as a creative
force, marking the dawn of a new era of peace. In September 1864, Evdokimov
wrote confidently that the military era had passed and a new peaceful era had
begun. He dwelled at length on what this new era could mean for the indigenous population:
The not insignificant matter remains of bringing peace to the region completely and laying a firm foundation for the development of well-being
and a peaceful life for the natives, and to make them forever harmless for
Russia. If the mountain tribes had a clear understanding of civic life [grazhdanskaia zhizn] and truly wanted only peaceful occupations, clearly the
matter [of establishing a new order] would be resolved without particular
trouble. They could come to us when it was time to work the fields and
would find in the lands designated for their use a free space, because there
is still much unoccupied land in the Kuban district. But the savagery of
their manners, their complete distrust of us, and their desire for unlimited
freedom will long serve as an impediment to the rapid establishment of
civility and loyalty to our government.43

See Evdokimov to Orbeliani, 3 June 1860, in ibid., 27.

Kavkaz, 18 June 1864.
42
Georgian State Historical Archive (SSSA) f. 416 (Kavkazskii arkheograficheskii Komitet),
op. 3 (Materialy k izdaniiu XII toma Aktov), d. 144 (Raport nachalnika malo-labinskogo
okruga komanduiushchemu Kubanskoi oblasti o khode vyselenii Pskhuvtsev), l. 1.
43
Ibid., d. 139 (Otzyv komanduiushchego voiskami Kubanskoi oblasti nachalniku Glavnogo
Shtaba Kavkazskoi armii ob iziavlenii gortsami Kubanskoi oblasti pokornosti pri uslovii pereseleniia ikh v Turtsiiu na kazennyi schet), l. 4.
40
41

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 19

Evdokimov thus asserted that interests of state called for promoting civility and domestic security, and that the governmen had alloted a place for the
Western Circassians in the empire. It would take time for the local inhabitants
to abandon their savage freedom to become useful agricultural laborers, an unenviable fate, to judge by the poverty that Russian rule brought to the eastern
highlands. Caucasus officials envisioned a place for Western Circassians alongside the highlanders of the eastern Caucasus at the lowest rungs of the emerging
social order, not outside it. This projected future, combined with the years of
suffering at the hands of the Russian army, could explain any distrust and desire
for freedom on the part of the Western Circassians far more than allegations of
savagery.
To integrate the remaining Circassians into their allotted place in the order,
Evdokimov proposed further culling the population. In his view, the communities on the whole were too large, and even careful surveillance would not suffice to keep them pacified. Therefore, it [was] necessary to weaken the native
population to the point where it could not present a serious threat to security, and reducing the population by 10,000 families should achieve this goal.44
Thus Evdokimov, the man credited with authoring the plan for exile, estimated
in September 1863 that removing some 60,000 individuals from a population
of over 400,000 would be enough to achieve the states purpose. This plan
alone called for a significant reduction in the population, but it paled next to
the scope of the actual emigration. When the number of emigrants proved six
times larger, the situation caught officials off-guard and put great strain on both
Russian and Ottoman resources.
The management of a vast number of migrants required the creation of
a new bureaucracy to oversee their itinerary and their minimal well-being en
route. The state had to ensure that the migrs did not attempt to return to their
devastated homes or disrupt the communities they passed. To this end, officials
established three points of departure, to which communities traveled under
Cossack escort from February 1864.45 By the late summer of 1864, the exodus
from the mountains was complete, but conditions at the coast worsened daily.
The situation of the Circassians in the fall and winter of 186465 was
nothing short of disastrous. Two weeks of heavy rain impeded the Western
Circassians progress, meaning that they arrived largely after the clear summer
weather had ended. Moreover, they arrived in a weakened condition, exhausted
and vulnerable to disease. Continued storms delayed their departure from the
port cities, and restless seas destroyed at least one vessel. Of that ships 370
passengers, 250 died despite rescue efforts. In late 1864, the Ottomans asked

Ibid., l. 5.
Western Circassians could depart from the ports of Taman, Konstantinovsk, and
Novorossiisk.
44
45

20 dana sherry

that the migration stop until spring for humanitarian reasons.46 The Russian
administration concurred, and officials in the port cities struggled to meet the
needs of the migrs. Almost 11,000 Circassians wintered in Novorossiisk, filling the small town to overflowing. Officials expressed dismay at the poverty
of the emigrants and their woefully inadequate preparations for the winter.
Despite efforts by the Caucasus administration to ameliorate the emigrants
suffering, they lacked food and had neither heat nor privacy in their lodgings,
and according to one official there was no way to know how many had died.47
Another reported that 1,480 graves had been dug for Circassians that winter in
Novorossiisk alone.48 Nevertheless, the situation remained calm, leading one
official to marvel at the patience and unusual order of the emigrants despite
their suffering.49 The steamers resumed their routes in the late spring, but arrival
at their destination would not immediately improve the lot of the highlanders.
Ottoman officials attempted to maintain public order and provide for the
empires new subjects upon their arrival. They determined set points of arrival
and received notification of when to expect the vessels and how many arrivals
to expect, again in the interest of ensuring order. Just as Russian officials could
not cope with the massive number of migrants, however, Ottoman officials also
proved incapable of making adequate preparation for the hundreds of thousands who arrived. Between the sides, officials estimated that a quarter of those
who left died.
The emigration came to a quick close. Viceroy Mikhail Nikolaevich issued
an edict ending the emigration within three weeks of the official end of the
war, though those individuals who had left for the coast before that time would
be allowed to leave when the weather permitted in the spring. From that point
forward, the Caucasus administration insisted on retaining its subjects.
Civilizing Those Who Stayed
The Circassians who resettled in the Kuban became the objects of plans intended to transform their daily practices while claiming to accommodate religious difference. Officials proclaimed that the Russian state would address the
true (istinnye) needs of these groups, give them sharia and adat courts, work
through local elders, and thereby earn their trust to prevent future uprisings.
They could remain Muslim, so long as that fit within the framework set out by
the administration, and the officials predicted confidently that this arrangement should satisfy all parties involved. In the long run, officials anticipated
that the fact that the Western Circassians were settled among and outnumbered
46
SSSA f. 416, op. 3, d. 145 (Otzyv nachalnika Glavnogo Shtaba Kavkazskoi armii nachalniku
Kubanskoi oblasti ob ustanovlenii nadzora za pereseleniem gortsev), l. 15.
47
Ibid., d. 149 (Perepiska o pereselenii Kavkazskikh gortsev v Turtsiiu), l. 13.
48
Tragicheskie posledstviia, 19295.
49
SSSA f. 416, op. 3, d. 142, ll. 14.

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 21

by Russian settlers50 would lead to the establishment of civic virtues and the
restructuring of Circassian society and daily life.51 This exposure to Russian
culture would attract and transform those Circassians capable of this transmutation and make them productive members of the empire.
For those communities who did not benefit from direct exposure to
Russians, however, a good Russian administration could also suffice. Once the
Circassians were relocated, appropriate government could instill grazhdanstvennost and create good subjects, and administrators initially believed that the
groups who stayed would recognize the advantages of this project. As early as
the spring of 1861, Evdokimov wrote that pacified Circassians should be settled
along the Kuban in large auls, and in this way they could be kept under close
observation and we could best attend to the civic development [grazhdanskoe
razvitie] of the mountain peoples. By 1864, Evdokimovs views had changed
little, though he now wrote of good administration rather than directly of observation. Writing confidently that resettled Circassians would not respond to a
Turkish call for continued emigration, he concluded, in any case, we must now
work on building a proper administration among the natives, in keeping with
the views of the administration and the demands of the time, so that solicitude
about the improvement of their daily life would retain those natives who truly
want to be Russian subjects and not attract censure for failing to attend to their
situation.52
These improvements, which included the establishment of sharia courts,
aimed in time to Russify them [the Western Circassians] more than other natives.53 Attention to the needs of non-Russian communities and Russification
were linked goals in this scheme. Officials proclaimed that this transformation would benefit the Western Circassians, and good administration would
create a good society with this social material, with or without the admixture
of ethnic Russians. Evdokimov did not explain exactly what Russification entailed, but these comments and his earlier vision of what Russian rule offered
the Circassians suggested that Russification meant agricultural pursuits and
living according to Russian notions of civilitythe elusive ideal of grazhdanstvennost. Those who remained under Russian supervision could eventually lose
their savagery and attain this state through careful supervision. Although this
process did not run smoothly, officials refused to relinquish their belief in the
viability of the transformation or in its supposedly self-evident appeal.
These reports reveal that the administration meant to transform the
Circassians who remained into productive subjects. The ethnic cleansing model
Russian here includes both peasant settlers and Cossacks, who officials believed would
exercise the same beneficial influence over their savage neighbors.
51
SSSA f. 416, op. 3, d. 114 (Polozhenie ob upravlenii gortsami Kubanskoi oblasti), l. 1.
52
Ibid., d. 109 (Prikaz po voiskam Kubanskoi oblasti o vvedenii novogo upravleniia mezhdu
tuzemtsami Kubanskoi oblasti), l. 2.
53
Ibid., l. 2.
50

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would call for a push to remove or assimilate these groups entirely, whereas the
Caucasus administration emphatically insisted that it could provide for and
transform the Western Circassians while keeping key aspects of their identity
intact. Official correspondence and periodical literature generated in the region
unanimously supported this goal. I have focused on Evdokimovs statements
because of his centrality to this project as commander of the Kuban region and
because he has gained misleading renown as a proponent of ethnic cleansing.
As seen here, he allowed malcontents to leave but for the rest relied on a gradual
process of integration into imperial structures, assuming that the remaining
Circassians would themselves see the value of Russian civilization and embrace
it of their own accord. At no point did Caucasus officials brand the Western
Circassians as inherently incompatible with empire, though it would take great
patience and external discipline to teach them the value of civility. These requirements in turn necessitated their relocation so that they could be properly
administered, transformed, and ultimately incorporated into the body politic.
At the same time, officials believed that the highlanders must retain certain
features of their ethnic identity in order to contribute to the local economy.
Becoming Russians would defeat the states purposes.
Social Alchemy in Practice
Once the Western Circassians had left the highlands, it remained to repopulate
the region. Russian settlers had entered the region in small numbers since the
1840s, primarily settling in the environs of Anapa and the newly constructed
port Eisk, but the question of colonization gained new importance as the end
of the war came into sight. At first, the ideal solution seemed to be a population
that could provide defense against any Circassians who had evaded Russian
troops, engage in agriculture, and pursue maritime industry. The Cossacks first
came to mind, though officials recognized that they were ill suited to fill this
role on the coast. The Cossacks came primarily from the steppe and thus had
little experience with life at sea or in the mountains. In the highlands, the terrain favored agriculture practiced by small farms, as the Western Circassians
had maintained, not by communities with shared land as in Russia proper.
The coast, in contrast, required a population that could engage in trade and
maritime industry. To turn Cossacks into prosperous residents of the region,
however, Viceroy Mikhail Nikolaevich wrote optimistically in December 1863,
they needed only the freedom to pursue maritime and mountain economic
activities and some state support at the outset. Allow nature to take its course,
he argued, and the Cossacks would adapt to their new environment. Ultimately,
Mikhail Nikolaevich aimed to create Coastal Cossacks (beregovye kazaki)
from a mix of Azov Cossacks, retired sailors, and some Ural Cossacks.54 Getting
Ibid., d. 216 (Otnoshenie namestnika Kavkazskogo voennomu ministru o zaselenii vostoch
nogo berega Chernogo moria russkimi poselentsami), l. 4.

54

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 23

the Cossacks there would not be easy, however. In a letter written on the same
day in December 1863, the viceroy complained to Miliutin, then war minister,
that not one Azov Cossack responded to the call for volunteers to colonize the
region, and those who were settled against their will kept up a steady stream of
petitions to be allowed to leave. He continued to ask Miliutin to send the entire
Azov host or at the very least 500 families.55
Few Caucasus officials shared Mikhail Nikolaevichs preference for
Cossacks, and the serious debates over the right path to colonization in the
fall of 1864 moved decisively away from this approach. In July 1864, Kartsov,
then head of the civil division of the Caucasus administration, left for a series of
meetings in Petersburg to discuss the question of the colonization of the Black
Sea coast. Upon his departure, he asked the officials most directly involved in
the process to give information on the state of settlements and to make recommendations for the future goals of the administration.56 Each report drew on
notions of geographical determinism and social alchemy in their schemes for
development, though they reached little consensus on what combination of ethnicities would generate the desired result.
Evdokimov proved the strongest proponent of prioritizing military concerns to protect civilian development. His plan called for a combination of
Cossack and diverse civilian groups: Cossacks and married soldiers to defend
the region, peasants to cultivate the land, and wealthy investors to develop
industry. For Evdokimov, a combination of social estates drawn from other
parts of the empire would create the desired community. He did not address
questions of ethnicity or religion explicitly, though Russians could easily fill
all the roles he listed.57 The commander of the Kuban Cossacks, Count F. N.
Sumarokov-Elston, submitted a laconic report that, like Evdokimovs, did
not comment on religious or ethnic affiliations.58 He expressed concern, however, about combining different estates, which he feared would create conflict
and administrative complications in proportion with the quantity of heterogeneous [raznorodnye] composite elements. He proposed instead the careful
selection of peasant settlers, allowing only successful agriculturalists to enter.
As we will see, his concerns about the potential tensions arising among ethnically homogenous but legally diverse groups within the communities soon
proved well founded, but at this point he alone saw legal status as a potential

Ibid., d. 247 (Otnoshenie namestnika Kavkazskogo voennomu ministru o vodvorenii russ

kogo naseleniia na vostochnom beregu Chernogo moria), ll. 78.
56
Ibid., d. 254 (Perepiska o zaselenii i ustroistve severo-vostochnogo berega Chernogo moria
mezhdu rekoiu Tupase i Gagrinskim khrebtom), l. 1.
57
Ibid., ll. 216.
58
On a trivial note, F. N. Sumarokov-Elstons grandson, Feliks Feliksovich Iusupov, would
eventually gain renown for participating in the murder of Grigorii Rasputin.
55

24 dana sherry

source of conflict and as a more significant factor than national or religious

identity.59
Most other officials argued that an exclusively Russian population could
not prosper in the region and called for the addition of other ethnic communities. The governor-general of Kutaisi, D. I. Sviatopolk-Mirskii, invoked
national and economic principles in his presentation. He argued that although
Russian settlers would serve to anchor Russias claim to the territory, they alone
could not create the kind of society that the administration needed. He acknowledged that Cossacks could be useful for strictly military purposes, but
he maintained that they would inhibit economic and civil development and
could serve as an unnecessary provocation to other powers. Finally, a military
population could not achieve the true goal of rule on the coast: the creation of
a Russian population engaged in maritime industry and the development of a
Russian commercial fleet. Since Russians were not sailors and were unfamiliar with the type of agriculture suitable for this region, however, he found it
necessary to add a dash of another [population], which could serve as an example and an encouragement to the Russian population. Sviatopolk-Mirskii
saw the Trapezond Greeks as the best group for this, as they were familiar with
the region, had already expressed an interest in settling there, and engaged
in the sorts of activities that the state should encourage. Russian consuls would
evaluate potential immigrants to make sure that they were distinguished by
good mores [nravstvennost] and industriousness. In his view, Russian civilians, with the addition of some Greeks, would best serve to develop the coast
in the right direction.60
The caveat about verifying the Greeks good values and work ethic reflected
difficulties with other Greek settlers. A report on the status of Greek immigrants in Stavropol maintained that very few of the Greeks who came to the
Caucasus were distinguished by their industriousness. Instead, it claimed that
most of them had arrived utterly impoverished and subsequently did nothing
at all, relying on government support for their sustenance. Even worse, by
nature they are all lazy, careless, crude, unreliable, and antisocial. It concluded
by pleading that no more Greeks be sent to Stavropol, or at least that they be
properly supplied with cattle and money before arriving.61 Yet despite these difficulties, officials did not rule out Greeks as potential colonists; they simply had
to be chosen carefully.
This connection between nationality and economic activities stemmed directly from ideas about geography and its influence on national character, a
point made more explicitly in another report. Baron L. Nikolai, head of the civil
administration, argued against Cossacks as an unnecessary defensive element
SSSA f. 416, op. 3, d. 254, ll. 2629.
Ibid., ll. 1719.
61
Ibid., d. 187 (Predstavlenie Stavropolskoi palaty gosudarstvennogo imushchestva po voprosu
poseleniia v Kavkazskom krae grecheskikh pereselentsev iz Turtsii), l. 3.
59

60

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 25

now that the land had returned to its primeval [pervobytnoe] state of emptiness [bezliudnost]. He echoed Sviatopolk-Mirskiis argument about the need
for a civilian population, then began a long discussion of historical geography
and its impact on the development of national character. He reasoned that the
coast should be inhabited by groups familiar with its topographical specificities
and only in areas that had previously supported human habitation. Other communities would take generations to adapt to the new environment, with high
mortality in the process, or simply leave. Nikolai then turned to the issue of who
would be best suited to the task of colonization:
Is it necessary to settle an exclusively Russian or exclusively Christian population, or is it possible to open the country indiscriminately to any who
want to settle there, whatever their extraction or faith may be? There is no
doubt that state interests would be best served if the newly acquired country were settled exclusively by the Russian nation [narodnost]. The question is whether the Russian nation can settle there. The Russian people
[narod] has its own specific economic character, stemming from the topography of Russia. From this it is clear that the Russian people cannot
distill from itself any elements for a maritime or mountain population. To
summon it to do so artificially would be to violate nature, which does not
surrender itself to political considerations or regulations.62

Geography, economics, and laws of nature came together to determine the

future of the region. Abstract goals of state played a secondary role to the demands of space and its impact on national identity. The space of the Black Sea
coast fundamentally differed from Russian space and required settlers fundamentally different from Russians, even though state interests would demand
Russian colonists. The right colonists would come from a similar geographical
region and therefore provide the necessary elements for a maritime or mountain population.
The question was then where to look for such colonists, and Nikolai was
guided by both national and religious principles in his choices. Nikolai proposed
the following candidates, ranked in order of preference, in place of Russians.
First, he looked to coreligionists within the empire, namely Georgians; then
to Orthodox Slavs from outside the empire (Montenegrins, Nekrasovtsy); and
finally Orthodox non-Slavs from outside the empire (the Trapezond Greeks).
He further noted that the delicate process of placing the right people required
flexibility and, above all, prudence. In this case, prudence meant allowing only
Orthodox colonists to enter, though only communities familiar with mountainous and maritime environments could settle productively. He also recognized
the desirability of bringing in settlers from within the empire, and movement
within the Caucasus itself would be the most administratively simple solution.
62

Ibid., d. 254, l. 23.

26 dana sherry

Nikolai also sounded the sole cautionary note that the region had never been
wealthy in the past, and that it could prove as difficult to develop as it was to
conquer.63
In December 1864, Kartsov wrote to Mikhail Nikolaevich to inform him
of the policy on colonization as determined in his meetings with Miliutin
and the emperor. The population would be civilian, with a battalion stationed
along the ridge to defend them from any Circassians who remained in the
mountains. As for the question of colonists, considering recent events and
the situation of the country, it is recognized to be absolutely impossible to allow Muslims to settle there. Due to the very nature of the Muslim religion,
Russia, like any Christian power, cannot rely on the loyalty and unwavering
fidelity of a Muslim population.64
While none of the Caucasus officials had actually proposed settling
Muslims along the coast, none of them saw it necessary to forbid this option
outright. I would suggest that this difference in tone between Petersburg and
Tbilisi reflected the more liberal view that dominated in the provincial capital.
Caucasus officials did not envision a prominent place for their highland Muslim
subjects, but they did insist that the highlanders had become loyal after accepting Russian rule. They might require additional supervision to guard against
the agitation of figures whom officials described as alienated malcontents,
but the Muslim masses belonged in the empireand would be kept there by
force when necessary. I would emphasize that a liberal view of empire did not
equate to a gentler view of how to relate to imperial subjects, but it did diverge
from the more conservative line emerging from Petersburg in its vision of a hierarchically integrated and heterogeneous empire. This distinction is particularly
noteworthy at a historical moment when central control was weak and local
actors enjoyed significant control over the implementation of policy.
Although regarding nationality [natsionalnost], it would be most desirable
to see a purely Russian population here, Petersburg recognized that Russians
alone could not be responsible for colonizing the region.65 Kartsov continued
that all Christian settlers, except those who were hostile to Orthodoxy, could
be allowed to enter. While Russian immigration would be encouraged, foreign
colonists would be needed, predominantly from those parts of Germany where
residents predominantly are engaged in horticulture and viticulture. The longstanding faith in the German colonist endured in Petersburg, even if it did
not seem a practical option in the region. Germans were not the only alternative, however, and geography paired with religion to determine the range of
other possible colonists. Georgians from the neighboring provinces of Imeretia
and Mingrelia were the second choice, on the basis of geographical similarities
Ibid., ll. 2026.
Ibid., l. 40.
65
Ibid., l. 41.
63

64

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 27

(and implicitly religious ones as well). Finally, Greeks could settle in the region,
but Petersburg viewed them with some suspicion. They could settle only in areas set aside for the development of trade, in known and limited quantities; and
each settler needed to have a recommendation from the Russian consul in his
area. The Greek presence would encourage the development of maritime trade,
as they present a ready-made element that can be used to create, so to speak,
a cadre of future mariners and on the part of the government it is necessary to
take all measure to ensure that that cadre be filled with Russians. The Greeks
were thus viewed as a volatile element requiring additional supervision as they
acted as a positive catalyst upon the surrounding Russian population.66
The reports from the various local officials and the imperial center differed
in many respects, yet certain points remained constant throughout. First, the
region needed to develop economically, and this required a civilian population.
Any military presence would be limited and would serve only to ensure the
safety of the civilians. Second, despite the unspecified advantages of Russian
settlement, Russians did not suit this environment and other, more geographically appropriate groups should be brought in to promote economic development and impart necessary skills to Russian settlers. Third, all parties agreed
that good colonists would develop the regions maritime potential, engage in
agriculture, and develop industry, and that an ethnically heterogeneous population would best meet these needs.
The New Highlanders
In the event, none of this worked out smoothly. Settlers from abroad and from
outside the region arrived only in small numbers, and the administration had to
make do with the Cossacks who had served in the region and a mixture of willing and unwilling Russian peasant colonists. The 1864 debates led to the formation of a commission to oversee colonization, and this commission issued its
findings on the state of the new settlements in 1865.67 It found that they lacked
the necessary economic and cultural (nravstvennye) skills to survive, let alone
flourish. The Cossacks had adapted poorly to life in the mountains, as feared in
the earlier debates, and the commission suggested that the best solution to this
weakness was to bring back some of the Western Circassians, at least for a while:
It would be useful to settle among [the Cossacks] a few families of Western
Circassians who are good agriculturalists.... This measure is necessary for the
stanitsy on the lowlands as well. If it is inconvenient to settle the Circassians,
then at least allow them to work some small plots near the stanitsy. This would
bring significant benefit [polza], particularly if they do so under the direct
observation of the local officials themselves.68
Ibid., ll. 4042.
Ibid., d. 261 (Zakliuchenie Komissii po uluchsheniiu byta poselentsev v stanitsakh, vodvo
rennykh v gornoi polose na Severnom sklone Kavkazskogo khrebta), ll. 123.
68
Ibid., l. 4.
66
67

28 dana sherry

The Russians would still provide surveillance over the Circassians, but now
the flow of knowledge had reversed. The administration aimed not at teaching
them but at learning from them. Immediate exposure to the Circassians would
benefit the Russians, who could thus adopt their ways directly, but in need, local
officials could act as intermediaries and transfer needed skills to the Russians.
Sumarokov-Elston used stronger terms, claiming that the administration must
aim to recast all the inclinations and capacities of our steppe dweller and make
him into a highlander [gorets].69 By this he meant above all that the colonists
should adapt to their new environment, but his use of the term gorets, normally
reserved for the often defiant Muslim residents of the mountains, made a strong
rhetorical point. This plan to resettle a small number of Western Circassians in
the region was approved and implemented in 1866.70
The Western Circassians could help with developing agriculture, but the
problem of nravstvennostremained. The commission knew what qualities good
colonists should possess: love for work and order, energy in striving toward
this goal, fortitude in the face of failure, the ability to adapt to new situations.
The report went on, however: It is self-evident that these qualities could not be
developed to the same extent in all the settlers, as they were gathered from various estates [sosloviia], from various places and on various terms.71 Some settlers
came willingly, others were sent by their communities, and others still were sent
by the state as a punishment, and communities thus composed failed to thrive.
Although the settlers seem to have been ethnic Russiansat any rate, the commission did not note anything to the contrarymixing estates now proved to be
as disruptive as Sumarokov-Elston had feared in his 1864 report. Almost every
stanitsa contained diverse elements,
combining in a single stanitsa people who are more or less foreign [chuzhie]
to one other, sometimes hostile, suspicious, with different rights, and not
always of the best culture [and this] could not but have a negative effect
on the well-being of the stanitsy and their development. A throng of people,
brought together by chance, mechanically, could not immediately create a
society in the true meaning of the word; a society infused with civic spirit.
In such a society, any wholesome idea is taken suspiciously, any good beginning is met by envy and malevolence.72

The careless combination of elements created not a civilized society but

a suspicious throng. Ethnic unity did not suffice to create a coherent, orderly
community in the absence of legal equality and a common cause. Chance alone
could not create the desired society. Such an important task required planning
Ibid., d. 259, l. 5.
Ibid., l. 5.
71
Ibid., d. 261, l. 8.
72
Ibid., d. 260, l. 16.
69
70

social alchemy on the black sea coast, 186065 29

and careful selection, particularly when the harsh environment itself contributed to the volatility of the interactions. The colonists found themselves in an
extremely impoverished state and, according to the report, wanted nothing but
to leave the mountains. Worst of all, lacking the means to support themselves,
some of the settlers turned to banditry, horse theft, and robbery, the very social
ills the administration most associated with the regions previous inhabitants.73
The Russians were becoming highlanders only in the most negative sense of the
term.
Conclusion
From 1860 to 1865, the population along this section of the eastern Black Sea
coast underwent a massive shift as Western Circassians departed and died in
vast numbers and were partially replaced by Slavic settlers. Yet did the administrations population policy regarding the Black Sea coast constitute an example
of Russification? The instability of the term has been well documented, yet even
at its most elastic, it would mispresent the views of the Caucasus administration
at this point to refer to this process as Russification.74 The officials insistence
on the maintenance of difference, while claiming to instill modern practices
and values among the regions subjects, points to a colonial, not a nationalist,
mode of governance. The administration aimed to transform many practices of
indigenous peoples, including the Western Circassians, a process that resembled
Russification. At the same time, however, it insisted that they retain, on the one
hand, their affinity with the land and, on the other, the stereotypical economic
aptitudes that would fit them neatly into an ethnically defined occupational
structure. Like their counterparts in other colonial enterprises, Caucasus officials at mid-century envisioned a system that maintained and managed difference under the careful supervision of an imperial elite.
This deliberate maintenance and use of ethnic difference moves beyond
the binary of inclusion and exclusion from the body politic. Hierarchical inclusion and diversity, not equivalence and homogeneity, drove their vision of
modernization.75 The administration enacted extremely harsh measures toward
the highland population in pursuit of its ideal, yet it ultimately aimed not at
excluding them from the body politic but at forcibly including them at the base
of the hierarchy. The flight of the Western Circassians came as a clear result of
Ibid., d. 261, l. 18.
The literature on this question is vast, and I do not attempt to cover it in a footnote. However,
recent articles that focus explicitly on the nature of Russification can indicate the status of the
term. See A. I. Miller, Russifikatsiia: Klassifitsirovat i poniat, Ab Imperio, no. 2 (2002):
13348; and the forum on Reinterpreting Russification in Late Imperial Russia, Kritika 5, 2
(2004): 24598.
75
This approach parallels the co-optation or creation of religious institutions for Muslim
communities as a way to integrate them into the imperial polity, as Robert Crews argues in
For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006) reviewed in Kritika 9, 2 (2008): 40731.
73
74

30 dana sherry

Russias brutal military policies, yet it also marked the states failure to retain
a potentially productive human resource. In retrospect, it is hardly surprising
that the governments efforts to realize a feat of social alchemy rendered such
disastrous results. Subsequently, the administration did turn to more conservative measures, but at mid-century, enlightened officials still dreamed of creating
cultural gold with the human elements at their disposal.
Introduction to the Humanities Program
Main Quad, Building 250
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2020 USA
dsherry@stanford.edu