The Sixty-Year Caucasian War E-Book

Rostislav Fadeev

• Herausgeber: Antelope Hill Publishing LLC
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

For sixty years, the armies of the tsar fought a multi-generational ethnic and religious war against the mountain peoples of the Caucasus, leaving a deep cultural impact on the participants and their descendants which resounds to this day. Translated into English for the first time, The Sixty-Year Caucasian War is the seminal account of this tumultuous contest. Through the clear and experienced eyes of the 19th century chronicler Rostislav Fadeev, who was himself a distinguished multi-decade veteran of the war, this work provides a comprehensive analysis of the key players, battles, and political dynamics that shaped this decisive period in Russian history.

Until the appointment of Prince Baryatinsky to commander-in-chief of the Russian forces in 1856, the brutal and complex conflict seemed locked in a stalemate after decades of heroic resistance by the Caucasian tribes. In just three years’ time, Baryatinsky was able to break the spine of Caucasian resistance, kill or capture its leadership, and subdue the entirety of the eastern Caucasus. This pivotal work bears witness to the courage and martial prowess of both the Caucasians and their Russian conquerors.

Antelope Hill Publishing is proud to present The Sixty-Year Caucasian War as a must-read for anyone interested in the intricacies of 19th century warfare, the nature of ethnic and religious struggle, and the enduring legacy of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus.

Leseprobe

The Sixty-Year Caucasian War

The Sixty-Year Caucasian War

By Rostislav Fadeev

Translated by Harko Sked

A N T E L O P E H I L L P U B L I S H I N G

English Translation Copyright © 2024 Antelope Hill Publishing

Originally published as Шестьдесятъ лѣтъ Кавказской Войны by Военно-Походная Тип. Главного Штаба Кавказской Армии,1860.

First Antelope Hill edition, first printing 2024.

Translated by Harko Sked, 2024. 

Cover art by Swifty.

Edited by Harlan Wallace.

Proofread by Christopher Jolliffe.

Layout by Sebastian Durant.

Antelope Hill Publishing | antelopehillpublishing.com

Paperback ISBBN-13: 979-8-89252-018-8

EPUB ISBN-13: 979-8-89252-019-5

CONTENTS

General Overview1

Muridism13

Conquest of the Caucasus47

Conclusion99

GENERAL OVERVIEW

L

ast September, Russia could hardly believe its eyes when it read Prince Baryatinsky’s telegraphic dispatches to the tsar, which informed him “that the eastern Caucasus is subdued from the Caspian Sea to the Georgian Military Road,” that “Shamil has been taken and sent to St. Petersburg”; Russian society knew, however dimly, that lately the situation in the Caucasus was going well, but did not expect such a rapid outcome yet.

The Caucasian War had gone on for sixty years. Russia had become accustomed to the idea that this state of affairs was natural and could last virtually forever, especially as the Caucasus region had remained in the shadows for about half a century, and the public opinion of it stemmed from a handful of stories and the accounts of people who traveled to take in the waters of Pyatigorsk. In 1845, the newspapers began to publish accounts of the relations, but they could only enlighten the matter for a person already familiar with the Caucasus. Considering the extraordinary variety of this vast country, the most mature experience gained on one of its military theaters did not necessarily afford a correct judgment on another; from a distance everything merged into one murky image, the most radical changes in the situation were smoothed out, and the thinking Russian man who was not personally familiar with the Caucasus could not connect the divergent events and arrived, in his search for solutions to this problem, at the most improbable conclusions. Our society, for the most part, did not even understand why the state worked so hard, made so many sacrifices, to conquer these mountains. Although the countries comprising the Caucasian Governorate were rich in natural resources and situated in a geographical position that would allow for remarkable future development, from a purely economic perspective they could not repay the sacrifices made to gain possession of them. It was not an economic question that was being decided in the Caucasus. Understandably, this issue, lacking a straightforward angle, remained confusing to most of the public. At most, the conquest of the eastern mountains satisfied Russian patriotism as a victory over a stubborn enemy, while the enormous significance of the event was more clearly understood abroad than within Russia itself. The establishment of Russian sovereignty on the Caucasian isthmus has so many consequences, both definite and probable, direct and indirect, that it is still impossible to grasp them all; they will reveal themselves, one by one, in such a long chain of events that only the next generation will know the full scope of the events of 1859.

It is not yet possible to write a history of Russian dominion in the Caucasus. For the history of such a long and complex period, it is essential to study the materials that have been piling up in the archives for sixty years; a special commission has only recently undertaken this task. One day Russia will read the complete history of the Caucasian War, which is one of the greatest and most captivating episodes in our history, not only because of the significance of the issues resolved by Russian arms in this isolated corner of the empire, but also because of the extraordinary exertion of the human spirit that marked the struggle on both sides; because of the unprecedented persistence with which it persisted for decades, continuously changing its character; and because of the unique moral character, if one may say, of those soldiers who were relocated to the Caucasus. It is wrong to embark on such a study with only a partial understanding, but it is possible to illustrate the significance of the Caucasian War in its causes, progression, and results. That is the aim of this book. Every Russian should know, at least in the most basic sense, what is being done in the Caucasus, where two hundred thousand of his countrymen are fighting.

The beginning of the Caucasian War coincided with the first years of the current century, when Russia brought the Georgian Kingdom under its rule. This development defined the new attitude of the state toward the half-wild tribes of the Caucasus; once foreign and alien, they became domestic. Now Russia had to subordinate them to its authority. Thus arose a long and bloody struggle which remains unfinished to this day. The Caucasus demanded great sacrifices; yet, whatever the cost, no Russian has the right to complain, because the occupation of the Caucasian regions was neither an accidental nor an arbitrary event in Russian history. It had been centuries in the making, prompted by the great needs of the state; a prophecy which fulfilled itself. As early as the sixteenth century, when the Russian people developed in solitude on the banks of the Oka and Volkhov rivers, separated from the Caucasus by a vast wilderness, sacred duties and great aspirations drew the attention of the first tsars to this region. The domestic struggle with Islam, which had been pressing Russia from all sides, had been resolved. Through the ruins of the Tatar kingdoms that had been founded on Russian soil, a vast horizon to the south and east opened to the Muscovite state; there, in the distance, were free seas, abundant commerce, and like-minded peoples—Georgians and Caucasian highlanders, then still half-Christians, who extended their hand to Russia. On one side the Volga led the Russians to the Caspian Sea, surrounded by wealthy nations who had not a single boat between them—to a sea without a master; dominance on this sea was necessary to secure dominion over the weak and fragmented territories of the Pre-Caspian Caucasus. European trade, seeking access to the golden countries of the East, tried to force its way through the Muscovite state and its neighboring deserts, and carried the Russians along on the road already indicated by the natural position of their land.

On the other side, the groans of Orthodox Georgia, trampled by barbarian invasions and exhausted by endless struggle—fighting at that time not for the right to be an independent nation, but only for the right not to deny Christ—reached Russian ears. Islamic brutality, fueled by the new doctrine of Shi’ism, was in full swing.1 Desperate to overcome the steadfastness of Christian tribes, the Persians systematically slaughtered the populations of entire regions. Since the sixteenth century, almost every Georgian family could pray to the martyrs of their own blood. One after another, Georgian shrines were brought to Moscow to preserve them from desecration by the Muslims. Tsar and commoner alike listened with equal sorrow to the stories of infidel violence committed against the Orthodox population of Georgia; the people’s deepest sentiments were affected, pulling the Russians to the path already indicated by politics and trade. Indeed, from the sixteenth century onward, the Russian tsars began their attempts to simultaneously support deteriorating Georgia and to assert their commercial and political dominance in the Caspian countries. These attempts continued, ever increasing in scale, until the end of the eighteenth century.

At first, the obstacles appeared to be almost insurmountable. Russia did not yet border the Caucasus; between them lay a vast desert, filled with roaming predators and gangs of reckless daredevils, almost impassable. But in the meantime, the Russian people grew, communities spread out, and the desert gradually gave way to settlements. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the whole area from the Oka to the mouth of the Don, and from Kazan to Astrakhan, was occupied by a chain of villages and towns. From that time, a series of Caucasian campaigns began under Peter the Great, Catherine I, Anna Ivanovna, Catherine the Great, and Paul I; they became more and more frequent as Russia advanced toward the Caucasus. By the end of the century, the Russian people had reached the European frontiers of their land—the Black Sea and the foothills of the Caucasus. The Transcaucasian territories were no longer in such a remote geographical position in relation to Russia as Khiva is now; Peter the Great’s plans could be carried out without the difficulties they encountered in 1722.

At the same time, a new pogrom and renewed violence on the part of the Muslims befell Georgia. Now, standing on the Terek and Kuban rivers, Russia could no longer confine itself to fruitless lamentations, as it had in the sixteenth century, while listening to stories of Persians forcing Orthodox Christians to spit on the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary on the Kursk bridge in Tiflis, throwing the disobedient (and all were disobedient) into the Kura river, soon dammed with bodies; or hearing how two thousand worshipers from the David Gareja monastery were brought under the axe during the observance of Matins on Palm Sunday. Aside from the most significant interests, wherein the possession of the Caucasus was already a matter of paramount importance for the empire, the religious matter meant that Russia could not refuse to defend Orthodox Georgia without ceasing to be Russia. With the Manifesto of January 18th, 1801, Paul I accepted Georgia as a Russian province in accordance with the will of the last Georgian king, George XII.

At that time, only Turkey disputed Russian supremacy on the Black Sea. However, Turkey had already been declared politically insolvent; she was under the care of Europe, which jealously guarded her integrity, because she could not take an equal part in the dispute alone. In spite of this artificial equilibrium which teetered on the point of a needle, a struggle began between the two great powers for the dominant influence over Turkey and all that belonged to her. Europe was penetrating the backward mass of Asia from two sides, from the west and south; for some European nations, Asiatic concerns were of paramount and exceptional importance. Within Turkey’s diplomatically assumed—if not actual—domain lay the Black Sea and Transcaucasia; this state extended its claims to the shores of the Caspian Sea and could easily enforce them on the basis of its first success over the Persians. But the vaguely delineated mass of the Turkish empire was already beginning to drift from one influence to another. It was evident that the dispute over the Black Sea, over all the waters and lands over which the Turkish claims extended, would sooner or later, at the first convenient political opportunity, become a European dispute and be turned against us, because questions of Western influence in Asia do not tolerate partition; a rival there is a mortal threat to European power. Whichever influence or dominion extended over these countries (among which were lands which had no masters, such as the whole of the Caucasian isthmus), it would become hostile to us. Meanwhile, dominion over the Black and Caspian seas, or at the very least the neutrality of these seas, is a vital question for the whole southern half of Russia, from the Oka River to the Crimea, where the principal forces of the empire, both personal and material, are becoming increasingly concentrated. One could say that this half of the state is created by the Black Sea. Before Catherine’s conquest, it was in the same position as the Ural region and southern Siberia: a settlement pushed into the impassable steppe; possession of the coast made it an independent, wealthy part of the empire. In a few years, with the construction of the Transcaucasus Railway (which will necessarily attract to itself vast trade with the Trebizond Empire of upper Asia), with the rapid development of the Volga and sea shipping, and with the establishment of Asian trade, the desolate Caspian Sea will create for southeastern Russia the same conditions that the Black Sea has already created for southwestern Russia. However, Russia can only protect its southern basins from the Caucasian isthmus; a continental state like ours can neither maintain its importance nor make its will respected where its cannons cannot reach by solid ground. If Russia’s horizon were closed to the south by the snowy peaks of the Caucasus range, the entire western mainland of Asia would be completely beyond our influence and, given the present impotence of Turkey and Persia, would not have to wait long for a master or masters. If this has not happened or will not happen, it is only because the Russian army, standing on the Caucasian isthmus, can embrace the southern shores of these seas, stretching its arms in both directions.

The hostile influence would not stop at the Caucasian isthmus. A series of water basins pushed deep into the Asian mainland—from the Dardanelles to the Aral Sea—with its navigable tributary, the Amu Darya, cutting across Central Asia almost to the Indian border, is too tempting a route for the trade now making its way across the roadless ridges and high plains of Armenia and Azerbaijan. European trade with Asia had been conducted along this route for thousands of years; interrupted by the Turks when they took Constantinople and sealed the Black Sea, trade would have been resumed at the beginning of this century if the Caucasian isthmus had remained without a ruler. But who does not know the true nature of European trade in Asia? The coming together of two such unequal powers begins with chintzes and ends with the creation of a subject empire of 150 million inhabitants. If some European trade had established itself in the interior Asiatic basins, before or in addition to our dominion over the Caucasus, its path would have defined the limit of our relations with Asia. Everything lying beyond the line stretching from the mouth of the Kuban to the northern shore of the Aral Sea would have merged into one group hostile to us, and our only gain would have been that the entire southern frontier of the empire, for several thousand kilometers from the Crimea to China, would have become a frontier in the full sense of the word, requiring fortresses and an army for its protection. The defense of the Caucasian line would probably require the same troops that now occupy it, but without any hope of ending this situation. European trade with Persia and inland Asia, passing through the Caucasian isthmus, subordinate to Russian control, promises positive benefits to the state; the same trade, passing through the Caucasus independent of us, would create for Russia an endless series of losses and threats. The Caucasian army holds in its hands the key to the East; this is so well known to our adversaries that during the past war it was impossible to open an English pamphlet without finding therein talk of a means of cleansing the Transcaucasus of the Russians. While the relations to the East are a matter of the highest importance for others, for Russia they fulfill a historical necessity that we are powerless to evade.