193193 rgia, Biblioteka, op. 1, 1884–1909, d. 99, Report for 1909, by General
Mikheev, l. 42.
194 rgia, f. 37, op. 55, 1892–99, d. 69, l. 44.
195 Volkova, Etnicheskii sostav, 245.
196 rgia, f. 560, op. 41, 1883, d. 143, Journal, 23 February 1884, l. 44.
197 Ibid., 8 February 1884, l. 38. Also see rgia, f. 1276, op. 21, 1895–97, d. 45,
Delo “Materialy o Chernomorskom naberezh’i Kavkaza,” Memoran-
dum, ll. 1–10 (this rgia file is mistakenly dated 1917).
198 rgia, f. 1276, op. 17, 1911, d. 165, Delo “Otchety gubernatorov za 1 909
god,” Report of Chernomorsk governor for 1909, ll. 95–6.
199 Thus many ethnographers are viewed favourably by Soviet scholars,
who portray their critiques of Russian militarism as early examples of
“democratic enlightenment” work that paved the way for the revolu-
tionary radicalism of the early twentieth century and the events of 1917.
For example, on Nikolai I. Voronov see Leiberov, Tsebel’dinskaia nakhodka,
17, 25, 55–6, 84. Voronov offers a tempting target for this common Soviet
teleology. He criticized Russian rule and studied mountaineers; his
daughter, Liudmila Voronova, joined the Bolshevik Party in 1903. To the
revolutionary teleology, Soviet scholars also added a respect for tsarist
Russia as the “lesser evil” of the imperial powers in the region.
“Progressive” officials at least introduced backward mountaineers to
modern forms of schooling, administration, transportation, economy,
and so on. See Shteppa, “The ‘Lesser Evil’ Formula.” For the formula ap-
plied to the North Caucasus, see Narochnitskii, Istoriia narodov severnogo
Kavkaza (konets xviiiv.-1917 g.), 5, 30, 60; and Tsulaia, “Iz istorii
Kavkazovedeniia,” 76.
200 Dostoyevsky, The Possessed, 255.
chapter five1 Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, 57.
2 The reference is to Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition.
3 Roberts and Mann, “Law in Colonial Africa,” in Mann and Roberts, Law
in Colonial Africa, 4.
4 Ibid., 3.
5 See Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order. The contrasting method,
which was prevalent in both Soviet scholarship and traditional Western
social science, was to treat colonial compilations of customary law as
faithful expressions of an unchanging and historic culture. Soviet schol-
ars in particular used the compilations as guides for their detection of
“feudal relationships” and “patriarchal remnants.” For example, see
Edieva, “Formy zemlevladeniia i zemlepol’zovaniia po obychnomu
pravu Karachaevtsy v pervoi polovine xix veka”; Azamatov,Notes to pages 86–9