66 Orientalism and Empireissued its Zapiski Kavkazskago Otdela Imperatorskago Geograficheskago
Obschestva (Memorandum of the Caucasus Branch of the Imperial
Geographic Society). As several scholars have recently explained, the
Geographic Society was at the centre of a series of debates about re-
form, expansion, and Russian nationalism.^50 “Science” (nauka) would
be put to the service of the “fatherland,” explained Vorontsov at the
opening meeting.^51 There were numerous other avenues for research
on the North Caucasus as well. The Caucasus Society of Agriculture
sponsored exhibits, a museum, and its own publication from 18 50,
and Vladimir Sollogub, Adol’f Berzhe, G.A. Tokarev, and others pro-
vided the initiative for the opening of the Caucasus Museum of
Regional Studies in 18 56, an outgrowth of the work of the local
branch of the Geographic Society.^52 This rapidly became a repository
for the efforts of collectors throughout the region, and in 1867 the col-
lection formed the basis for the Caucasus Museum, led by Gustav
Radde, a German transplanted to Tbilisi after a childhood in Danzig
and participation in a Siberian expedition sponsored by the
Geographic Society. Other sponsors of Orientalist research and schol-
arship included the Caucasus Statistical Committees, founded in the
186 0s and issuing the Sbornik statisticheskikh svedenii o Kavkaze (Collec-
tion of statistical information about the Caucasus), and the Caucasus
Mountain Administration, headed by Dmitrii S. Starosel’skii
throughout the 1870s and producing the Sbornik svedenii o Kavkazskikh
gortsakh (Collection of information about the Caucasus mountain-
eers). Later in the century other state-sponsored institutions contrib-
uted to this tradition, such as the Caucasus Education District and its
Sbornik materialov dlia opisaniia mestnostei i plemen Kavkaza (Collection
of materials toward the description of the regions and tribes of the
Caucasus), and the Main Staff of the Caucasus Military District, the
publisher of Kavkazskii sbornik (Caucasus collection).^53
The question of the purpose of imperial expansion informed the
growth of the Geographic Society in the borderlands. Supporters of
Vorontsov’s initiatives in St Petersburg such as Fedor Petrovich Litke
(Ferdinand Lütke) viewed the collection of artifacts and information,
“although isolated,” as “valuable for that very reason, because after
they are gathered into a whole they will serve as important material
for a knowledge of Russia.”^54 Litke was enthusiastic about the pros-
pect of provincial supporters of the “fatherland’s enlightenment”
from around the empire who might participate in this communal ef-
fort to clarify the imperial purpose.^55 And just as collectors situated in
St Petersburg envisioned the borderlands in this way, so scholars gath-
ered in Tbilisi and made similar calls to the smaller cities, forts, and
villages of the Caucasus. At present, material in private libraries from