11 The Discourse of Empirethe peoples of the region, reminding us that the empire was indeed
“rossiiskii” rather than “russkii.”^40 Russians and non-Russians to-
gether served the tsar, fought wars, conducted archaeological expedi-
tions, propagated the Christian faith, transcribed alphabets, founded
schools and worked as teachers, read about Shamil and mountain
crime, and did numerous other things. Like Russians in the Far East,
in the depiction of Bassin, Georgians too were particularly sensitive
about their relationship to the idea of “Europe.” As long as Russia
was perceived, and as long as Russians perceived themselves, as the
bringer of European civilization and progress to backward peoples
beyond the reach of civilization and society itself, the colonial im-
pulse familiar to the West remained strong and persuasive. But that
same impulse continued to be uniquely a product of the “Russian”
empire, shaped by its multi-ethnicity, contiguous expansion, imperial
competition, historically charged and ambiguous relationship to
European civilization, and encounter between Christianity and Islam.