64 Orientalism and Empireofficials such as Mikhail Speransky and Mikhail Vorontsov were de-
termined to use this emerging scholarship in order to promote the
social and cultural transformation of the inhabitants of the realm. In-
fluenced by notions of the role of the enlightened monarchy as a pro-
moter of social change, these officials believed that the task of
government was to provide the foundations for the eventual social
and political maturing of the population.^35 The scholarly reconfigu-
ration of empire included a strong civilizing mission.
Catherine the Great extended this vision beyond St Petersburg and
Moscow with her Fundamental Law on provincial town life, which
was intended to develop provincial centres of “government, com-
merce, and civilized social life.”^36 Nineteenth-century Russian scholars
such as N. Chechulin and M.I. Demkov emphasized that provincial so-
ciety had barely existed before Catherine. The cities were tiny and their
inhabitants impoverished, the streets were dangerous and filthy, the
bridges were dilapitated, administration was non-existent, and drug-
stores, doctors, and post offices were nowhere to be found.^37 The emer-
gence of provincial town life since the late eighteenth century was thus
a source of pride and a mark of progress to Russians in the nineteenth
century, who were now, at least in their view, bestowing a similar gift
on the borderland regions of the empire.
Vorontsov’s attention to the growth of public life in Tbilisi was in
the spirit of this Enlightenment project of provincial uplift. His at-
tention to questions of public hygiene and sanitation, for example,
put him in correspondence with the St Petersburg Water Filtration
Company and its French suppliers. A water filtration system, a cer-
tain M.de L’Thomas informed Vorontsov, would “benefit the entire
city of Tiflis” and was a “matter of great importance for public well-
being” (de la plus haute importance pour la salubrité publique).^38
Vorontsov and his administration debated matters of policy with a
strong sense of the values of the Enlightenment and its optimistic vi-
sion of cultural change for barbarous and frontier lands outside the
realm of public life and civilization. An Italian opera yearly per-
formed in Tbilisi from 185 1, and in late 1853 the first full-scale ballet
was performed on the Tbilisi stage.^39 “How can one not be joyful at
such a rising, developing social life in Tiflis, which still carries upon
itself the imprint of Asia,” the editorial staff of Kavkaz exclaimed.^40
Artists, Russians in Georgia reported with enthusiasm, were making
the move from Nevskii Prospect in St Petersburg to Erevan Square in
Tbilisi.^41 A young Leo Tolstoy was one of the many who applauded
the efforts of Tbilisi to imitate StPetersburg.^42 Enlightened high cul-
ture was to play an integrative function on the diverse frontier, as
the efforts of the Tiflis Theatre to encourage Georgian and Armenian
participation and productions suggest.^43 As late as 1893, Giorgi