152 Orientalism and EmpireSt Mesrob Mashtots in the fifth century. Greek (Byzantine) missionar-
ies in the early centuries after Christ had failed to encourage literacy in
the native languages of the Caucasus, and hence had failed to respect,
Uslar emphasized, the important issue of “national independence.”^30
In a secular fashion he envisioned local expressions of culture as a
mark of progress and a sign of the benevolent and modern character of
imperial Russian rule. Missionaries, by contrast, like Il’minskii in the
Middle Volga and Central Asia, viewed the use of local languages as a
more effective means to provide access to the Christian message. What-
ever the motivation, the imperial regime was quite serious about its
promotion of native language literacy among the “small peoples” of
the frontier, an interesting contrast to its restrictive policies in the west-
ern borderlands. And Georgian officials participated in the promotion
of literacy and education for frontier peoples such as the Abkhaz and
Ossetians who in the past decade have sought greater autonomy from
Georgia. The “national question,” however, remained on the distant
horizon. Educated society in the borderlands throughout the nine-
teenth century was thinking through the problem of empire, and the
question of cultural “originality” was compatible with – indeed, fos-
tered by – imperial rule. Most Russians and non-Russians, especially
before 1905, were primarily interested in a nativistic cultivation of cus-
tom and tradition, rather than political statehood and independence.
Reformist visionaries of empire were proud of Russia’s leading and
guiding role within the empire. And obviously, the many small peo-
ples of the empire were not “nationalities.” They did not possess the
extended histories of statehood, military conquest, and written na-
tional literary and administrative languages that excluded even many
European peoples from consideration for this status.^31 Imperial edu-
cated society on the Caucasus frontier in its own way drew on Russia’s
encounter with the West and its location between West and East to
imagine a multi-ethnic imperial community. This imagined commu-
nity was invariably a product of the concerns of the educated, of
course, as was common in such encounters throughout the globe.
“What is denied is the existence of a human substance truly other,”
suggests Tzvetan Todorov of the attitudes of Columbus toward the
Natives of the Americas, “something capable of being not merely an
imperfect state of oneself.”^32 If Russians once emerged from the closed
and limited life of the family to develop “civic connections” in public,
as the historian Nikolai Karamzin wrote, so too might the Abkhaz.^33
The captive Shamil and his large extended family might cultivate new
attitudes and interests in their new home of Kaluga. The Chechens
might have been without a nobility, but nonetheless officials would
locate “people who by virtue of their position should naturally exer-
cise the rights of this estate.”^34 Russian villages and administrative