45 The Society for the Restoration of OrthodoxyIdol worship, fortune-telling rituals, and superstitions about faith
healing were extremely popular. Their lack of literacy in the past
had prevented them from reading the holy books, and in the view of
Dubrovin, “they lost the genuine idea of religion.”^44 They remained,
as Dimitri Bakradze said, an “enigmatic tribe” for whom a history
of religion needed to be written.^45 Rapiel Eristavi depicted the
Tushin, Pshav, and Khevsur as neither Christian, Muslim, nor pa-
gan. They performed Christian rituals, but also a festival on Satur-
day as if they were Jewish, and a number of Armenian practices,
and like many of their Muslim neighbours, “whom they hate and
despise,” they refrained from pork, shaved, and practised polyg-
amy.^46 They worshipped a variety of gods, yet they believed in a
single God. Orthodox revival had to be quick: “the long neglected
spark of Christianity is close to going out, if it is not ignited by the
pastors of Christianity. The priest needs a lot of energy and a little
courage as well, if he is to lead these mistaken creatures to the path
of truth.”^47
Imperial rule, then, was a remedy for religious confusion, and the
cure was to be found in the study of the past. “Several centuries ago
the majority of the Caucasus mountaineers, today cursed enemies of
Christianity, were illuminated by the light of the true faith,” pro-
claimed one of the early founding statements of the society.^48 History
was thus so important that it could not be left to historians. Ethnogra-
phers explained the present via extended discussion of the ancient
past, travellers and archaeologists searched for the physical traces of
the Christian heritage, and both the Russian and the Georgian press
frequently devoted extended attention to the religious history of the
Caucasus. P. Khitsunov’s essays in Kavkaz in 18 46 were a typical
Russian contribution. History began in the sixth century bc, when
early Greek colonists settled the eastern shore of the Black Sea and al-
lowed for an eventual Christian presence in the region in the form of
subsequent Byzantine Greeks and then the Georgians. Russia partici-
pated in this tradition: Prince Mstislav Udaloi baptized the sons of an
Adygei prince in the late tenth century, an Abkhaz prince accepted
Christianity in 133 3, numerous Adygei and Kabard tribes sought
Russia’s protection in the time of Ivan the Terrible, and the Ossetian
Spiritual Commission was founded during the reign of Elizabeth in
the eighteenth century.^49 This religious history was far from a schol-
arly matter. V.O. Gurko was leading a Russian military expedition
into Chechnia in August 1844 when his regiment came upon an enor-
mous stone cross almost seven feet high on the left bank of the Argun
River near the village of Chakhkirin. This counted as an archaeologi-
cal discovery, a remnant of the past that provided a clue to the true