In the middle of the Caucasus mountains, not too far from the northern slopes of the Cross Pass, where the Georgian Military Highway reaches its highest point, the traveller comes into a wide high-mountain valley, which suddenly opens up after a long stretch of narrow gorges and canyons. Its barren landscape is quite typical for this part of the mountains, which is usually battered by heavy snowstorms and avalanches in winter and scorched by the sun during summer time. Yet in the middle of this valley, next to the few houses that make up the village of Kazbegi, a few trees have managed to survive under these rough conditions. Surrounded by the rock-strewn sandbanks of the river Terek, they provide the backdrop for a monument, which one would hardly have expected in this wild and inhospitable location: the poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) sitting on a bench (fig. 4.1).

Pushkin statues abound in the former Soviet Union. Usually they can be found on central squares, in parks, or on streets named after the famous poet. The remarkable monument in the Caucasian wilderness, however, has a quite specific reference. It recalls Pushkin's journey to Arzrum in eastern Turkey, which he undertook during the war between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires in 1829. During this trip, he travelled along the banks of the Terek, crossed the Caucasus, and, for the first time in his life, set foot on foreign soil.