143 Russification and the Return of Conquestmoral wildness [odichanie] and exposed to the harmful influence of
those of other faiths and sectarians.”^106 Russian peasants, in the eyes
of officialdom apparently close to being “savages” themselves, were
especially in need of guidance on the distant frontier.
Golitsyn’s successor, Viceroy Vorontsov-Dashkov, continued to
bring attention to this issue and even feared that new immigrants
might adopt the “religious views and mistakes” of their non-Russian
and non-Orthodox neighbours.^107 Potential conversion to Islam stood
at the end of this path of cultural betrayal. Settlement villages grew
rapidly in the early twentieth century, from the 54 in 1902 (as noted
above) to 288 by 1910, containing a population of more than 62,000.^108
Funding for church construction from the Ministry of Finance, the
Holy Synod, or other ministries of the government could not keep up
with this remarkable growth. Pobedonostsev allocated 10,000 rubles
per year for church construction in the new settlements, and this fig-
ure was increased to 20,000 per year in 1906.^109 Such an amount could
support only a handful of churches, prayer houses, and combination
school–prayer houses, however, and Viceroy Vorontsov-Dashkov
pushed the Holy Synod to increase the yearly allocation to 60,000.^110
His request was rejected in 1913.^111 A State Duma law of 3 December
that year allocated a mammoth increase in such support, from 20,000
rubles yearly to 341,500 rubles, and authorities even planned to in-
crease this sum to 550,000 in 191 4, 725,000 in 1915 , and 900,000 in
1916.^112 Such measures were not forthcoming because of the demands
of the First World War, and in retrospect they appear as a somewhat
desperate means of attempting to influence the future of the Caucasus.
This version of Orthodox missionary work, tied to the question of
increased ethnic settlement, evoked medieval Rus’ in conflict with
hostile Muslims on its many frontiers. The Russian community in
Vedeno and its concerned supporters resorted to military imagery in
their requests for the construction of an Orthodox church.^113 After
many appeals to different Russian institutions and officials, the
Russian inhabitants of Vedeno wrote directly to Grand Princess
Elisaveta Fedorovna in 1915. They supported their request with refer-
ences to the price that Russia had already paid for securing Vedeno –
the “Russian blood” that had flowed in its capture; the many battles
which “brought to their graves thousands of Russian warriors” – and
by emphasizing the paucity and isolation of Russians in Vedeno dis-
trict and hence the significance of a strong or increased cultural pres-
ence of the Russian state and Russian culture.^114 “Living among the
Chechen Muslims, in villages with beautifully painted mosques, we
Russians, Orthodox people, cut off by a large distance from the
Russian population, are embarassed in front of the Chechens by our