The Eurasian Triangle. Russia, the Caucasus and Japan, 1904-1945

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Introduction Ë 5


Diversity also meant fragmentation. Consequently the fragmented Caucasus was


historically at the mercy of neighboring empires’ intent to divide and conquer. In the


modern era it was the Russian Empire, succeeded by the Soviet Union, that came to


control the Caucasus. Russia’s contact with the area had begun much earlier: already


in the seventeenth century Russia (Muscovy) had reached the Northern Caucasus with


the help of Terek Cossacks. Under Peter I (1682–1725) and Catherine II (1762–96), Russia


rapidly expanded, opening the way to eventual incorporation of almost all the Cauca-


sus into the empire in the nineteenth century. There was a certain logic to this devel-


opment. In 1722–23 during the war Peter was conducting against Persia, for example,


both Armenia and Georgia joined Russia against Persia, considering the former as a


counterweight to the latter, a bigger and stronger neighbor than themselves. Apart


from Persia, the Caucasians had to contend with another neighbor, also a big empire,


that of the Ottomans which, like Persia, had invaded the Caucasus repeatedly.


In the late eighteenth century, Russia skillfully and forcefully began its conquest


of the Caucasus. Georgia became a Russian protectorate in 1783 with Persia serving


as a common enemy. Much as the Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 between Ukrainian Cos-


sackdom and Muscovy led to the annexation of Ukrainian land to Russia, so too did


the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk lead in 1801 to Georgia’s incorporation into Russia by


armed force. Georgia’s king was dethroned in violation of the 1783 agreement, result-


ing in an embittered Georgian population. Through numerous wars against Persia,


Russia continued to expand in the Caucasus, annexing much of today’s Azerbaijan by


1813 (Treaty of Gulistan) and part of Armenia by 1829.⁸It took much longer and more


brutal armed struggles, however, to incorporate certain areas of the Northern Cauca-


sus such as Circassia, Chechnia, and Northern Dagestan. Nearly half a century of war


elapsed before these areas were subdued by force.⁹In the process, Russian authorities


expelled numerous (possibly hundreds of thousands of) “mountaineers” from Circas-


sia to the Ottoman Empire, in a manner reminiscent of later deportations of national


groups in the 1930s and 1940s. Even today this Caucasian war, which ended in 1864,


remains the symbol of the Caucasians’ determined and unending resistance to Rus-


sian domination. Imam Shamil (1797–1871), who led the war against Russia not only


in the Dagestan-Chechnia area (the core of the Caucasian resistance), but, albeit to a


lesser extent, in the western Northern Caucasus (Circassia) as well, remains one of the


8 Later as a result of the war against Turkey in 1877–78, Russia also added Kars, Ardahan and Batumi
(Batum) to its already vast territory.
9 There is much work on this war in English alone. See, for example, Michael Khodarkovsky,Bitter
Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus(Ithaca-London: Cornell
University Press, 2011); Firouzeh Mostashari,On the Religious Frontier: Tsarist Russia and Islam in
the Caucasus(London-New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006); and Austin Jersild,Orientalism and Empire: North
Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 1845–1917(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 2002).

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