115 The Russian Shamil40,000rubles in silver from the Chavchavadze family. He lamented
the end of his exposure to a European education and the twists of fate
that were now to leave him in “the midst of ignorance,” where he
would forget what he had learned and “go backwards like a crab.”^31
Kazi-Magomet, Verderevskii claimed, was greatly influenced by
Dzhemaledin’s respect for a European education and was secretly
imitating his brother. “May it be attended with success!” Verderevskii
exclaimed.^32 The early infective influence of Europe was to be planted
within Shamil’s very household, though Vederevskii’s enthusiasm
was not warranted. Dzhemaledin soon died in 1858 of tuberculosis
(“galloping consumption”), in spite of Shamil’s attempt to enlist a
Russian doctor to administer to him, and years later Kazi-Magomet
left for Turkey and eventually returned to oppose the Russians in the
war of 1877–78.^33 The significance attached to the household’s expo-
sure to “civilization” was obviously overrated by Verderevskii and
his Russian readers, yet the images contributed significantly to
Russian ideas about the famous imam and his family.
the journey of 1859
Russian writing about Shamil in 1859 celebrated his introduction to
the world of progress, technological advance, consumer prosperity,
the high culture of the Western world, and different notions of gender
and the family. Russian culture and standards of behaviour, as writ-
ers emphasized in the newspaper accounts of the 1859 journey, were
more humane and elevated than the savage and fanatical traditions
of the mountaineers.^34 This difference impressed Shamil immediately
after the capture, Russians reported, as observers claimed he was vis-
ibly transformed upon hearing Viceroy Aleksandr Bariatinskii an-
nounce the tsar’s benevolent sparing of his life.^35 In the tradition of
mountain culture, he expected to be executed on the spot. Not long
after the capture, Colonel Karl Kh. Trampovskii, part of the entourage
that accompanied Shamil to StPetersburg, intervened to settle the
“explosion of Asian passion” that surrounded the conflict over the
fate of Kerimat, the wife of Kazi-Magomet (now Shamil’s eldest liv-
ing son, who was also headed to Kaluga), but also the daughter of
Daniel-Bek, who was present at Shamil’s capture in the role of an in-
terpreter for the Russians.^36 Daniel-Bek threatened to cut off the
hands of his own daughter. The paternal presence of a Russian served
to resolve the irrational and violent domestic dispute of mountain-
eers who were now to live in the Russian Empire.
Newspaper and pamphlet writers emphasized that Shamil’s en-
counter with the material and technological aspects of Russian culture