A version of this paper was originally presented at a conference sponsored by the Social Science Research Council, "Visions, Institutions, and Experiences of Imperial Russia," Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, September 1993.

1. von-Kliman, F., “Voina na vostochnom Kavkaze s 1824 po 1834 g. v sviazi s miuridizmom,” Kavkazskii sbornik, 15 (1894): 524.Google Scholar

2. Baddeley, John F., The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908)Google Scholar; Broxup, Marie Bennigsen, ed., The North Caucasus Barrier (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Gammer, Moshe, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan (Portland: Frank Cass, 1994 Google Scholar. See also Allen, W/E.D. and Muratoff, Paul, Caucasian Battlefields (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1953 Google Scholar. See also the following works on the image of the Caucasus in Russian literature and society, a subject more of the center than the frontier: Halbach, Uwe, “Die Bergvölker (gorcy) als Gegner und Opfer: Der Kaukasus in der Wahrnehmung Russlands,” in Kleine Völker in der Geschichte Osteuropas, eds. Alexander, Manfred, Kämpfer, Frank and Kappeler, Andreas (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991), 52–65 Google Scholar; Barrett, Thomas M., “The Remaking of the Lion of Dagestan: Shamil in Captivity,” Russian Review 53 (July 1994): 353–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Layton, Susan, “The Creation of an Imaginative Caucasian Geography,” Slavic Review 45 (Fall 1986): 470–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. I use “mountain people” (gortsy) in the same loose sense that Russians of the time did, to designate the mountain-and foothill-dwelling peoples of the north Caucasus. This term encompassed a bewildering array of ethnicities, ranging from the Adyge in the west to the numerous peoples of Dagestan in the east. Whenever possible, I will use a more precise ethnic designation. Of course the peoples of the north Caucasus were also steppe nomads, such as the Nogais. Further, many Ukrainians in the north Caucasus were classified as Russians; I am forced to use “Russian” to mean primarily Russians and Ukrainians.

4. The leading military historian of Russia in the Caucasus was probably V.A. Potto. See his Kavkazskaia voina v otdel'nykh ocherkakh, epizodakh, legendakh i biografiiakh, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia R. Golike, 1885–1891) and Utverzhdenie russkogo vladychestva na Kavkaze, 3 vols. (Tiflis: Tipografiia Ia.K. Libermana, 1901–1904).

5. For example, Bushuev, S.K., ed., Istoriia Severo-Osetinskoi ASSR (Moscow: Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1959)Google Scholar; Daniialov, G.D., ed., Istoriia Dagestana, 5 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1967–1969)Google Scholar; Kumykov, T.Kh., ed., Istoriia Kabardino-Balkarskoi ASSR s drexmeishikh vremen do nashikh dnei, 2 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1967 Google Scholar; Smirnov, N. A., Politika Rossii na Kavkazev XVIXVI1 w. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1958)Google Scholar; Kiniapina, N.S., Bliev, M.M. and V.V. Degoev, , Kavkaz i Srednaia Aziia vo vneshnei politike Rossii: Vtoraia polovina XVlIISOe gody XIXv. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1984)Google Scholar.

6. The best general Soviet histories are Piotrovskii, B.B., ed., Istoriia narodov Severnogo Kavkaza s drevneishikh vremen do kontsa XVIII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1988 Google Scholar; and Narochnitskii, A.L., ed., Istoriia narodov Severnogo Kavkaza (konets XVIII V.-1917 g.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1988 Google Scholar. Two bibliographies are Miansarov, M. M., Bibliographia Caucasica et Transcaucasica (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia O.I. Baksta i Gogenfel'den i Komp., 1874–76)Google Scholar; Gammer, Moshe, “Shamil and the Murid Movement, 1830–1859: An Attempt at a Comprehensive Bibliography,” Central Asian Survey 10, no. 1/2 (1991): 189–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Wieczynski, Joseph L., The Russian Frontier (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976 Google Scholar; Lantzeff, George V. and Pierce, Richard A., Eastward to Empire: Exploration and Conquest on the Russian Open Frontier to 1750 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dow, Roger, “Prostor: A Geopolitical Study of Russia and the United States,” Russian Review 1, no. 1 (November 1941): 7–8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Even a recent article by Denis Shaw uses Turner's frontier. See Pallot, Judith and Shaw, Denis J.P., Landscape and Settlement in Romanov Russia, 1613–1917 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 13–32.Google Scholar

8. Treadgold, Donald W., “Russian Expansion in the Light of Turner's Study of the American Frontier,” Agricultural History 26, no. 4 (October 1952): 147–52Google Scholar; Lobanov-Rostovsky, A., “Russian Expansion in the Far East in the Light of the Turner Hypothesis,” in The Frontier in Perspective, eds. Wyman, Walker D. and Kroeber, Clifton B. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), 79–94 Google Scholar. Intensive settlement in the lower Volga did not begin until the 1780s. See Kabuzan, V. M., Narody Rossii v XVIII veke. Chislennost’ i etnicheskii sostav (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 90.Google Scholar

9. Treadgold, Donald W., The Great Siberian Migration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fisher, Raymond, The Russian Fur Trade, 1550–1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943 Google Scholar; Armstrong, Terrence E., Russian Settlement in the North (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965 Google Scholar; McNeill, William H., Europe's Steppe Frontier, 1500–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964 Google Scholar; Druzhinina, E. I., Severnoe prichernomor'e v 1775–1780 gg. (Moscow: Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1959)Google Scholar; N.D. Polons'ka-Vasylenko, “The Settlement of the Southern Ukraine (1750–1775),” The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. 4–5 (Summer-Fall 1953); Bagalei, D. I., Materialy dlia istorii kolonizatsii i byta stepnoi okrainy Moskovskogo gosudarstva v XV1XVII stoletii, 2 vols. (Khar'kov: Tipografiia K.P. Schasni, 1890)Google Scholar. One of the few works on a non-Siberian frontier is Khodarkovsky's, Michael Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600–1771 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. While mostly interested in Kalmyk society and relations with the Russian state, Khodarkovsky briefly discusses (308–35) Russian colonization along the Volga and the resulting clashes with Kalmyks. Two other exceptions are Nolde, Boris, La Formation de I'Empire russe, 2 vols. (Paris: Institut d'Etudes slaves, 1952–53)Google Scholar and Kappeler, Andreas, Russlands ersle Nationalitäten: Das Zarenreich und die Völker der Mittleren Wolga vom 16. bis 19Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bohlau, 1982.Google Scholar

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11. For reviews of recent American frontier history see Cronon, William, Miles, George and Gitlin, Jay, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992)Google Scholar; Limerick, Patricia Nelson, Milner, Clyde A. II and Rankin, Charles E., eds., Trails: Towards a New Western History (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991 Google Scholar.

12. Cronon, Miles and Gitlin, Under an Open Sky, 12. The authors use the term “species shifting” in this article.

13. It is no accident that many of the classics of environmental history deal with frontiers. See Sauer, Carl Ortwin, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966 Google Scholar; Crosby, Alfred W., The Columbian Exchange (Westport: Greenwood, 1972 Google Scholar; and Cronon, William, Changes in the Land (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.Google Scholar

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15. Pronshtein, A.P., ed., Don i stepnoe Predkavkaz'e XVIII-pervaia polovina XIX v. (Rostov-on-Don: Izd. Rostovskogo universiteta, 1977), 60, 116.Google Scholar

16. Fadeev, Rossiia i Kavkaz, 35–41.

17. Tvalchrelidze, A., Stavropol'skaia guberniia v statisticheskom, geograficheskom, istoricheskom i sel'sko-khoziaistvennom otnosheniiakh (Stavropol': Tipografiia M.N. Koritskogo, 1897), 408.Google Scholar

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19. Kumykov, T.Kh., Vovlechenie Severnogo Kavkaza vo vserossiiskii rynok v XIX v. (Nal'chik: Kabardino-Balkarskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1962), 93–96 Google Scholar; Berzhe, A. P., Chechnia i chechentsy (Tiflis: Kavkazskii otdel Imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva, 1859), 89 Google Scholar; Baddeley, The Russian Conquest, xxxvi.

20. Ivanov, D. L., “Vliianie russkoi kolonizatsii na prirodu Stavropol'skago kraia,” Izvestiia Imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva 22, no. 3 (1886): 225–54Google Scholar; Tvalchrelidze, Stavropol'skaia guberniia, 62, 204.

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22. This is the title of Kumykov's book (see note 19) and a common frame of analysis for many Soviet historians of the Caucasus.

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25. Narochnitskii, Istoriia narodov Severnogo Kavkaza, 80; A.I. Akhverdov, “Opisanie Dagestana. 1804 g.” in Istoriia, geografiia i etnografiia Dagestana XVIII-XIX w. Arhhivnye materialy, eds. M.O. Kosven and Kh-M. Khashaev (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo vostochnoi literatury, 1958), 213.

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29. The few historians who have been interested in those who crossed the ethnicfrontier tend to use the notion of “co-optation.” By failing to explore why choices were made, this approach continues to turn those who should be subjects into manipulated objects of history. Would we see, for example, Gogol’ as a co-opted member of the elite from the Ukrainian frontier?

30. Vinogradov, V.B. and Magomadova, T.S., “Gde stoiali sunzhenskie gorodki?” Voprosy istorii 7 (July 1972): 20.Google Scholar; Potto, V. A., Pamiatniki vremen utverzhdeniia Russkago vladychestva na Kavkaze (Tiflis: Tipografiia shtaba kavkazskogo voennogo okruga, 1906), 1: 55–57.Google Scholar

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40. Romanovskii, D. I., Kavkaz i Kavkazskaia voina (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Tovarishchestva “Obshchestvennaia pol'za”, 1860)Google Scholar, appendix, iv; Pronshtein, Don i stepnoe Predkavkaz'e, 54–55; Zasedateleva, L. B., Terskie kazaki (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1974), 184–216 Google Scholar; Bentkovskii, Zaselenie Chernomoriia, 19–20.

41. Tvalchrelidze, Stavropol'skaia guberniia, 269, 399.

42. Narochnitskii, Istoriia narodov Severnogo Kavkaza, 59; Predtechenskii, A.V., ed., Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1826–1849 gg. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Sotsekgiz, 1961), 223–25Google Scholar; Varadinov, N., Istoriia Ministerstva vnutrennykh del (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Ministersvta vnutrennykh del, 1861), 3: book 2, 292 Google Scholar; Shcherbina, F, “Beglye i krepostnye v Chernomorii,” Kievskaia starina 16 (June 1883): 239, 244.Google Scholar

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44. Kabuzan, V. M., hmeneniia v razmeshchenii naseleniia Rossii v XVIIIpervoi polovine XIX v. (Moscow: Nauka 1971), 167–70.Google Scholar

45. Fadeev, A. F., Ocherki ekonomicheskogo razvitiia stepnogo Predkavkaz'ia v doreformennyi period (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1957), 168–69, 188–91Google Scholar; Narochnitskii, Istoriia narodov Severnogo Kavkaza, 76.

46. Wagner, Moritz, Travels in Persia, Georgia, and Koordistan (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1856), 1: 127.Google Scholar

47. Potto, Kavkazskaia voina, 2: part 1, 86–87; Wagner, Travels in Persia, 1: 129.

48. Butkov, Materialy, 1: 79; AKAK, 1: 84, 87–88.

49. Dvizhenie gortsev severo-vostochnogo Kavkaza v 20–50 gg. XIX veka. Sbornik dokumentov (Makhachkala: Dagknigoizdat, 1959), 356–57, 486.

50. AKAK, 12: 1398; Dvizhenie, 471, 498; Baddeley, The Russian Conquest, 397; Wagner, Friedrich, Schamyl and Circassia, trans. Mackenzie, Kenneth R.H. (London: G. Routledge and Co., 1854), 88 Google Scholar; von Haxthausen, Baron August, The Tribes of the Caucasus, trans. Taylor, J.E. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), 98 Google Scholar. There were also rumors that Shamil himself was Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, that he had joined a gortsy robber band, escaped to Persia or was living in the mountains with five wives. See Zisserman, A. L., Dvadtsat’ piat’ let na Kavkaze (1842–1867) (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia A.S. Suvorina, 1879), 1: 329 Google Scholar; Leighton, Lauren G., Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1975), 35.Google Scholar

51. Pushkin, Alexander, A Journey to Arzrum, trans. Ingermanson, Birgitta (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1974), 30–31 Google Scholar. An incredible fact that further testifies to the nativization of Russian forces is that Ermolov, the most repressive and chauvinistic Russian “hero” of the Caucasus, was “married” to three Moslem women. See Berzhe, A. P., “Aleksei Petrovich Ermolov i ego kebinnyia zheny na Kavkaze 1816–1827 gg.,” Russkaia starina 15 (September 1884): 523–28.Google Scholar

52. AKAK, 1: 88; Mavrodin, Krest'ianskaia voina, 76.

53. Samarin, “Dorozhnyia zametki,” 550; Potto, Kavkazskaia voina, 1: 76–79; Potto, Pamiatniki, 1: 19–20.