Published in Russian, see Russian pages of this website.

SUMMARY:

Vladimir Bobrovnikov, an editor of the volume North Caucasus within the Russian Empire, recounts how that volume was written, commenting on its composition and overall historiographic mission as well as responding to criticism by reviewers. Bobrovnikov begins by listing what he would have done differently with respect to the published volume. He laments that the volume does not cover the whole of the Caucasus region, which would have been a more adequate analysis of the region’s history. At the same time, Bobrovnikov explains the peculiarity of the region inhabited by mountaineer societies vis-à-vis the whole of the Caucasus, highlighting the fact that historians should be critical toward the regional divisions of the Empire’s territory as demarcated by the imperial government, even though this geographic and administrative map might seem to be historic and authentic. Reflecting on both the North Caucasus and other volumes in the series, he suggests how the interwoven fabric of social experience and imperial governance might have been better addressed by linking the regions together (the Caucasus and Central Asia, for instance), rather than separating them as was done in the series. Responding to criticism of the volume by reviewers, Bobrovnikov defends the volume's positing of diverse historical experiences of the Caucasian War (or Caucasian wars). That is to say the history of imperial presence in the region cannot be reduced to military confrontations and subjugation by military means and should encompass the gradient of loyalties of North Caucasian peoples to the Empire, as well as trade and collaboration. Reflecting on the diametrically opposed reviews of the volume by Russian and western specialists, Bobrovnikov contends that this difference is rooted in the divergence of paradigmatic historical narratives through which the history of the region is perceived. He emphasizes that the volume on the North Caucasus was written with the explicit task of introducing new methodological paradigms. These paradigms include both new interpretations of the religious history of the region’s Muslim communities and new historical approaches to Orientalism and colonialism in the history of the Russian Empire. In conclusion, Bobrovnikov assesses the series Borderlands of the Russian Empire as a successfully accomplished project because the published volumes thwarted the initial design to write the history of the Empire according to a single analytical framework and thus revealed the manifold phenomenon of imperial diversity.