Russo-Centric Historiography and its implications for the Caucasus
By Thomas Hodgson. Thomas is a second year Modern History and Russian student from County Durham, England. This piece was awarded an Honourable Mention in the sub-honours category of our recent essay competition. This essay excellently deals with the core themes of this competition and provides an interesting example of the problems of imperial histories.
Introduction
In the Russian literary conscience, the Caucasus has perennially occupied a place of esoteric curiosity. Leo Tolstoy described it as a place of “Circassian maids, mountains, fearsome torrents and dangers” [1], Pushkin likewise attested to its ‘warlike raiders’ and ‘wild imagination’. [2] Lermontov illustrated its “mysterious chasms” [3], and Vasily Grossman wrote of it’s being ‘awash with light’ [4]. Within this article, I seek to sketch the transformational trends concerning the writing of history in Russia in relation to the Caucasus in a periodised framework, spanning from pre-conquest indigenous traditions, the Tsarist regime, throughout the existence of the Soviet Union, up to the inception of the Russian Federation and the present day. It is pertinent, at this stage, to outline and define the meaning of Russo-centrism as a historiographical concept. As Sarah Davies argues in her monograph Us Against Them, Russian national identity has, as a rule, been defined in implicit opposition to other national groupings, yet was usually not articulated in a more positive way. [5] With the emergence of a singular unitary Russian identity artificially stunted first by Tsars fearful of any potential threat to their monarchical authority, and thereafter a Marxist ideological opposition to Great Power Chauvinism; when political circumstance prompted a cynical turn to Russian nationalist imagery around 1937, Russians were left with little more in common than their prejudice toward the non-Russian peoples who comprised a significant proportion of the Soviet empire. The same popular sentiment is conveyed within the writing of history by Russians in respect of the Caucasus, as well as, notably, the permeation of ‘Russianness’ into the mentality of native Caucasian writers. Therefore, history writing in Russia in respect of the Caucasus has been broadly motivated by a desire to subjugate and Russify.
Writing History in Pre-Russian Conquest Central Asia
Up to the time of its Russification, the Caucasian elements of Central Asia held a significant stake in the wider Muslim world – its literary culture and historiographical traditions are therefore intimately intertwined with comparable patterns existent in the broader Islamic sphere. The historical profession prior to Russian rule, it comes as no surprise, is dominated by works of the Persian [6] dynastic tradition, practiced under royal patronage, with a divergent strain existent now termed ‘sacred history’ [7]. Dynastic histories were produced at court, and broadly derived influence from the epic-poem structural model of the Shahnameh. These were commissioned by court power-elites, whose influence is tangible in the florid, glorifying, content of the pieces. On the flipside is the ‘sacred’ model of pre-conquest writing, which primarily concerns hagiography of Islamic prophets, and hadith pertinent to popular faith. This historical imagination laid the groundworks for the expression of group, and later national, identities – pre conquest history sought to find genealogical markers of distinction for regional power elites and to provide coherent ties to bind together members of these communities over shared ancestries. Neither the market nor accessibility played an important role in pre-conquest authors motivations; their activities were intrinsically tied to centres of patronage, where their works were read aloud at court gatherings to exhibit the “magnificence of their patron” [8].
History, as it was taught to Caucasian cultural elites, formulated a component of their broad education, synthesising both streams of contemporary writing – evidence of a common historical imagination, and providing an early structure for regionalised group identities based upon these ‘origin stories’, offering markers of distinction between communities.
History Writing in the Russian Empire and the Role of the State
Thomas Sanders, writing in 1999, effectively surmised the essence of pre-revolutionary history writing in the Russian Empire to be that of the struggle between two parallel processes: ‘maturation and alienation’ [9]. The study reveals an ever-expanding sophistication and adoption of European standards, simultaneously transpiring alongside academic isolation and alienation from the very government that had previously supported them. The Tsarist censor limited dissenting perspectives and prevented their finding of an institutional home, leaving a sustained impression upon the profession, subsequently laying the cultural foundations for Soviet practice thereafter.
In the wake of Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, the mainspring of what now can be identified as modern ‘non-chronical’ [10] historical writing in eighteenth century Russia, state-generated demand for qualified historians led to the expansion of centrally funded universities and sponsorships for Russian scholars to study abroad in European institutions. Gradually, historians of the Empire acquired European methodologies, imitating, for example, post-enlightenment French archival techniques and Germanic pedagogical methods; each development in turn driving up standards in Russian history writing to a level comparable to that of Western Europe.
The clear and obvious trend is the precedent set for the servile role of the historian in relation to the interests of state, one which continued under Soviet rule and has persisted in the aftermath of 1991.
The Impact of the Russian Conquest on Writing Histories in Central Asia
In the early years of Russian dominion, one could be forgiven for suggesting that foreign rule had little to no impact upon the cultural output of the region. Various Khanates, such as that of the Khivan peoples, were allowed to exist broadly independently as autonomous, self-governing protectorates, thereby meaning the continuation of the aforementioned system of dynastic patronage. The impact of the printing press, even with express monarchical permission to publish in ‘foreign languages, including oriental ones’ [11], was minimal – with actors persisting down the line of Islamic genealogy infused with fantastic mysticism evidence of the hold the traditional school maintained over the popular conscience.
This was, naturally, of some fascination to the Orientalist sentiment emerging in Muscovite and St Petersburg intellectual circles. As the biologist and habitual oriental scholar Aleksandr Kun penned a Persian language edition of his biography of Peter the Great, the Turkic-language, Moscow published Turkistan Gazette entered circulation for the first time, indicative of a nascent colonial intrusion into the native conscience.
The phenomenon of institutionalised Orientalism in the Russian Empire has been directly consequent in the dominance of Russo-centric historiography throughout the 20th century – the steady stream of Russian intelligentsia into the provinces in search of the exotic progressively eroded the grip of the ‘Persian’ school upon the region, instead homogenising the historical profession in the image of insurgent Russian writers. Antique dynastic manuscripts were appropriated by Muscovite scholars, analysed in the European style based upon their veracity and corroboration with other sources rather than any divine or sacrosanct value invested within them. Caucasians came into contact with Imperial historians as aides yet contributed little of note to the field in their own right. The primacy Qur’anic historiographical model was incrementally diminished, replaced by a Russian-approved framework.
1917 and Beyond: The People of the Caucasus in the Russian Soviet Imagination
The history writing profession in the aftermath of the demise of the Romanov’s served to construct a cosmopolitan, Russo-centric understanding of belonging to the Soviet nation; with the Caucasus becoming a peripheral frontier, with its people becoming ‘peripheral subjects’ [12] – receivers of Soviet civilisation and advancement. The popular Bolshevik caricature of the Caucasian bandit Kamo offers microcosmic insight into this. Characterised by the émigré David Shub as “exotic” and “adventurous” [13], and by Maxim Gorki as “insane” and a “madman” [14], these descriptions attest to the maintenance of the Tsarist tradition of exoticizing Caucasians being a habit of some longevity. Recent research into popular depictions of Caucasian supercentenarians likewise reaffirms the notion of the persistence of Orientalist sentiment under communism. Literature proclaimed the Caucasus to be home to the world’s oldest people, some of whom were alleged to have lived 180 years. This became the regions ‘cultural trademark’ [15], with troupes of Abkhasian long-lifers touring the USSR and abroad, even permeating the American cultural zeitgeist at the height of Cold War tensions in the form of a Dannon yoghurt advertisement featuring Soviet Georgian supercentenarians. Such figures served to favourably distort the imperial hangover of Caucasians in Soviet popular culture as being of Lermontov’s “evil Chechen sharpening his knife” [16] typecast, the wild, untameable, highwaymen of the provincial frontier, transformed into pacified, genteel, touristic curiosities. Such a narrative invariably benefitted the state – a key component of Soviet historiography and narrative construction – in that it cast a favourable perspective of the Soviet multi-ethnic Empire, demonstrated their imperialism to be civilising, and the rhetoric of a healthy Caucasus masked the darker truth of imposed Sovietisation as a means of taming an unpredictable place for Russian consumption.
The Impact of Early Bolshevism on Caucasian Intellectual Life
As well as impacting external perceptions of the Caucasus, the revolution was consequent in a wholesale paradigm shift in domestic Caucasian history writing. Marxist vocabulary and methodology were rapidly assimilated into the discourse of revolution propagated by the Young Bukharans, deriving influence from, yet crucially remaining distinct from Moscow’s comparable output. ‘Sacred history’ was replaced by the application of Marx to the political-cultural decline of Central Asia – essentially spelling the end for traditional historiography. With Islamic rule overthrown, the writing of history assumed a new purpose: the legitimisation of the new regime through the discrediting of its forerunner, and the cultivation of a reshaped Caucasian identity fit for the post-revolutionary age.
This was, of course, of some importance in respect of the Caucasus’ answer to the perennial Soviet national question. Almost overnight, members of a population who had scarcely been permitted to question the mandate of the Emir were compelled to write histories describing the old regime in the harshest possible terms, of a land ruled by tyrannical despots and plundered by unscrupulous elites – a stark contrast with the hagiography of antiquity. What is particularly staggering is the speed at which Caucasian historians adopted ‘history from below’ as standard fare; a marked departure from the annalistic ‘dynastic’ model. Faizulla Khodzhaev’s On the History of the Revolution in Bukhara – penned prior to his assuming office as first Prime Minister of Uzbekistan – offers substantial insight into this transformation, condemning the despotism and backwardness of Manghit domination through a Marxist framework.
Caucasian Identity and Great Russian Chauvinism
The year 1947 marks a significant sea change in the writing of history in the Caucasus – korenizastsya had been long since abandoned, national leaderships of satellite republics were liquidated en masse, Cyrillic script was imposed for a number of Central Asian languages, Russian became an essential component of the education of every Soviet citizen. Where korenizastsya sought to pacify and placate, the new era of Russification explicitly made a goal of transforming the psyche and self-identity of non-Russian peoples to that of ethnic Russians.
The case study of Shamil and Muridism [17] in Soviet history textbooks serves as an excellent illustration of the aforementioned transformation. Two examples are as follows:
“Shamil’s activities in this period (1834-45) were directed not only against Tsarism, but against the local feudal lords, and were of a democratic, progressive character.“
- A. M Pankratova, 1947 [18]
“The mountain peoples’ movement, led by Shamil, was not a national liberation and democratic movement, but was a reactionary and nationalistic movement, which came into the service of British capitalism and the Turkish Sultan.“
- A. M Pankratova, 1950 [19]
A wealth of scholarship has been devoted to these quotations from successive editions of the most widely distributed history textbooks in the Soviet Union on account of their effective illustration of the ‘reversal of opinion’ [20] so typical of the historical profession in accordance with the demands of the regime. Prior to 1950, the former viewpoint prevailed in textbooks – in 1949 no less than two monographs were published in praise of Shamil, their authors being natives of the Caucasus. With the content of their work being inappropriately nationalistic, by 1950 both Rasul Magomedov and Guzhenov would fall victim to state-orchestrated character assassination. As the exotic Caucasian became the “Chechen problem” [21] under Stalin, eventually materialised within wholesale population transfers and forced resettlements, political circumstance demanded historiography move in accordance with the needs of the state.
Shamil’s embryonic proletarian dictatorship of the old party line, wherein he had been elected imam by popular consensus, was replaced by his appointment ‘by leaders and people of rank’. [22] His campaign against Tsarist annexation was no longer that of a freedom fighter, but was, in fact, a hindrance to the civilising function of the annexation upon the peoples of the Caucasus.
In declaring the annexation to be progressive, the historically parallel campaign of terror enacted by Stalin was justified in the party canon, and therefore in the social memory of the Soviet citizen.
Contested Memories of the Deportation in Post-Soviet Chechnya and Russia
In December 2008, masked police raided the offices of Memorial, a St. Petersburg based NGO that documents crimes against humanity committed in the USSR. Among other things, hard drives containing 20 years of archive material documenting Stalinist repression in the Caucasus, as well as records of contemporary abuses of political prisoners in the North Caucasus, were seized by the state. This comprises a minute fraction of the historical disinformation campaign perpetrated by the Putin regime in relation to the Caucasus: in 2014 Crimean Tatars were forbidden from marking the 70th anniversary of their deportation, the same year in which Ordered to Forget, a film about the Chechen and Ingush clearances, was banned on account of its being ‘historically false’. [23]
In the mind of the ethnic Russian under Putin, the Chechen remains the traitor to the native homeland during the Great Patriotic War, the ‘Mujahadeen’, ‘mafioso’ or ‘madman’ of the state endorsed narrative that has persisted since the days of the conquest.
In direct contrast, the internal disintegration of the Soviet Union provoked a wholesale renaissance in domestic Chechen history writing. 1991 saw the main square in Grozny renamed in honour of Mansur – the anti-Russian insurgent of the 18th century. In the same square the statue of Lenin was toppled months later. By 1992 Chechen President Yandarbiev had explicitly declared the deportation “genocide” [24]. In 1993 came Tak eto bylo, or ‘Thus it was’, a collection of first-hand accounts given by deportation victims, offering fascinating insight into the oral histories that shaped collective memory.
In the end, the writing of history in the Caucasus has matured out of the imposed alienation of the Russian state.
In Conclusion:
In order realise the material effects of the Russian centric historiography on the present, one must only look to the condition of the Putin regime in 2022. History, as a tool abused by the Russian state, has been consequent in Razman Kadyrov’s committal of Chechen fighters to the ‘denazification of Ukraine’ as penance for the alleged collaboration of their ancestors with German invaders circa 1945 – a myth first perpetuated by Stalin that has been maintained in the Kremlin canon. Conversely, the Kadyrovists opposite numbers in the pro-Ukrainian Sheikh Mansur battalion can be identified to be the product of the renaissance in Chechen intellectual life in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. As such, the purpose of history writing in Russia in respect of the Caucasus, in all its forms and iterations, has been subjugation and the imposition of Russianness.
References
[1] Tolstoy, Leo, “The Cossacks”, Random House (2006) 12
[2] Pushkin, Alexander, “A Prisoner in the Caucasus”, Wordsworth Editions (2005)
[3] Lermontov, Mikhail, “A Hero of Our Time”, Dover Publications (2021) 29
[4] Grossman, Vasily, “An Armenian Sketchbook”, MacLehose Press (2013) 18
[5] Davies, Sarah, “Us Against Them: Social Identity in Soviet Russia 1934-1941”, The Russian Review (1997) 71-73
[6] Khalid, Adeeb, “The Emergence of a Modern Central Asian Historical Consciousness”, Routledge (2015) 434
[7] Igmen, Ali, “Speaking Soviet With an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan, University of Pittsburgh Press (2012) 94
[8] Khalid, Adeeb, “The Emergence of a Modern Central Asian Historical Consciousness”, Routledge (2015) 436
[9] Sanders, Thomas, “Historiography of Imperial Russia”, University of Pittsburgh (1999) 3
[10] Ibid.
[11] Decree on Free Press, 1783
[12] Kassymbekova, Botakoz, “Exotic Bodies in Soviet Culture: The Caucasus, Empire and Revolutionary Old Age, The Russian Review (2022)
[13] Shub, David, “Kamo: The Legendary Old Bolshevik of the Caucasus”, The Russian Review (1960) 227
[14] Gorki, Maxim, “The October Storm and After: Stories and Reminiscences”, Progress (1967) 300
[15] Kassymbekova, Botakoz, “Exotic Bodies in Soviet Culture: The Caucasus, Empire and Revolutionary Old Age, The Russian Review (2022)
[16] Lermontov, Mikhail, “Cossack Lullaby”, Trad. (1838)
[17] Shamil, often referred to as Imam Shamil, was a Muslim leader in Dagestan who organised the Caucasian resistance to the Imperial Russian regime. He was born in 1797 and died in 1871. Muridism combined politics and religion, underpinning national sentiment in the 19th-century Caucasus.
[18] Tillett, Lowell, “Shamil and Muridism in Recent Soviet Historiography”, The American Slavic and East European Review (1961) 253
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Werth, Nicholas, “The ‘Chechen Problem’: Handling an Awkward Legacy, Contemporary European History (2006) 348
[22] Gammer, Moshe, “Shamil in Soviet Historiography”, Middle Eastern Studies (1992) 745
[23] Tarasov, E.F, “Letter to the Director of ‘Ordered to Forget”, The Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, (2014)
[24] Williams, Brian, “Commemorating the Deportation in Post-Soviet Chechnya”, History and Memory (2000) 116
Bibliography
Primary Sources (In Order of Appearance)
Ferdowsi, Abolqasem, “Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings”, Penguin (2016)
Dirr, Adolf, “Caucasian Folk Tales”, J.M Dent & Sons (1925)
“Russian Proceedings in Central Asia: Mr Fedchenko’s Letters to the Turkestan Gazette”, National Archives of India (1872)
Lermontov, Mikhail, “Cossack Lullaby”, Trad. (1838)
Bogomolets, Alexksandr, “Prodlenie Zhizni”, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1940)
“Tak Eto Bylo: Natsionalye Repressi v SSSR 1919-1952”, Isnan (1993)
Tarasov, E.F, “Letter to the Director of ‘Ordered to Forget”, The Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, (2014)
Secondary Sources
Davies, Sarah, “Us Against Them: Social Identity in Soviet Russia 1934-1941”, The Russian Review (1997)
Gorki, Maxim, “The October Storm and After: Stories and Reminiscences”, Progress (1967)
Gammer, Moshe, “Shamil in Soviet Historiography”, Middle Eastern Studies (1992)
Grossman, Vasily, “An Armenian Sketchbook”, MacLehose Press (2013)
Igmen, Ali, “Speaking Soviet With an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan, University of Pittsburgh Press (2012)
Karamazin, Nikolai, “Istoriya Gosudarstva Rossiskava”, Medpitskoi (1816)
Kassymbekova, Botakoz, “Exotic Bodies in Soviet Culture: The Caucasus, Empire and Revolutionary Old Age, The Russian Review (2022)
Khalid, Adeeb, “The Emergence of a Modern Central Asian Historical Consciousness”, Routledge (2015)
Lermontov, Mikhail, “A Hero of Our Time”, Dover Publications (2021)
Pushkin, Alexander, “A Prisoner in the Caucasus”, Wordsworth Editions (2005)
Sanders, Thomas, “Historiography of Imperial Russia”, University of Pittsburgh (1999)
Shub, David, “Kamo: The Legendary Old Bolshevik of the Caucasus”, The Russian Review (1960)
Tolstoy, Leo, “The Cossacks”, Random House (2006)
Tillett, Lowell, “Shamil and Muridism in Recent Soviet Historiography”, The American Slavic and East European Review (1961)
Werth, Nicholas, “The ‘Chechen Problem’: Handling an Awkward Legacy, Contemporary European History (2006)
Williams, Brian, “Commemorating the Deportation in Post-Soviet Chechnya”, History and Memory (2000)