129 Russification and the Return of Conquestprovinces and no doubt keenly aware of Polish dissent, exercised a
more careful censorship over non-Russian newspapers and closed sev-
eral Georgian newspapers (such as Droeba in 1885 and the smaller and
populist Imedi and Shroma in Kutaisi in 1883).^16 Even traditionally “co-
lonial” publications suffered. In 1898 the regime began to issue Kavkaz
directly from the office of the governor-general.^17 Chavchavadze, how-
ever, careful to distance himself from the emerging Georgian radical-
ism, was able to publish Iveria on a daily basis from 1886 , and several
other cultural and literary journals endured as well.^18
The extraordinary events surrounding the 1905 revolution for bor-
derland communities posed the prospect of imperial fragmentation.
Labour activism, peasant rebellion, the growing disillusionment of
educated society with the state, and other familiar developments
made for a dramatically different climate throughout the empire in
the years preceding the First World War. The question of empire was
now the “nationalities question,” and recently established newspa-
pers openly debated the dilemmas and viabilities of new forms of re-
gional arrangements such as separatism, autonomy, and national
independence.^19 Georgian intellectuals now recalled an oppressive
history of empire and colonial domination instead of the shared cul-
tural and social experience that had characterized the earlier period.
At a Duma meeting in January 1909, for example, G.D. Chkheidze
looked back to the inattention to the Georgian language in imperial
schooling as a history of “pedagogical terror.” Ignoring or offering a
different interpretation of the history of non-Russian participation in
the imperial service, he criticized the history of Georgian noble col-
laboration in the conquest of the Caucasus.^20
Incidents in precarious frontier regions such as the North Caucasus
complemented events in the Russian capital cities that contributed to
the fear felt by many regime administrators and members of educated
society at the prospect of the disintegration of the empire. For the impe-
rial educated community in the Caucasus, the mountaineer rebellion of
1877 was an important moment in the waning of their confidence in
their capacity to influence the future of the region. The rebellion and
subsequent pacification exacerbated an already fragile relationship,
perhaps similar to the “enduring bitterness and suspicion” left in the
wake of the Berber revolt in 1871 in Algeria.^21 And the Russian narod
itself appeared as the potential victim of this enduring mountaineer
savagery in the Caucasus, especially to those who remembered how re-
bellious mountaineers in 1877 had threatened Russian populations in
larger Dagestani cities such as Temir-Khan-Shura and appeared partic-
ularly intent on destroying all traces of Russian culture and the pres-
ence of the regime in the North Caucasus.^22