when Gudovich heard rumors that Aqa Mohammad planned to sub-
due the eastern Caucasus in 1795, the general belittled the threat be-
cause he considered the Qajar army weak, primitive, and disorganized.
Although Aqa Mohammad enjoyed a number of successes in the cam-
paign, they were against much smaller armies from the same military
tradition. Thus, Russians had little cause to modify their assessment
of the Qajar forces. Officials of Catherine's reign and later repeatedly
underestimated the number of soldiers needed to fight the "Persians."
With the single exception of Catherine's son Paul, no high-ranking
government figure realized how unsuccessful the 1796 campaign had
been. No one in St. Petersburg knew how much trouble the guerilla
raids be Sheikh 'Ali of Derbent-Qobbeh caused Zubov, tying down
about 2,000 Russian soldiers and harassing the Russians until their
complete withdrawal in May 1797. Yet St. Petersburg thought the
campaign was a triumph. Valerian Zubov claimed, shortly after he
had reached Baku, that he had taken all the territory to the Aras and
along the Caspian coast to Gilan, and he was believed. Derzhavin put
the official assessment of the expedition into poetic form in his ode,
"On the Return of Count Zubov from Persia," in which the hero
strides effortlessly from victory to victory.^31
Zubov's exaggerated claims point to a salient characteristic of Rus-
sian involvement in the Iranian borderlands during and after Cathe-
rine's reign—officials in the field repeatedly evaded or directly diso-
beyed the wishes of their superiors. St. Petersburg was not averse to
allowing considerable leeway to its officers in the field. That seemed
a reasonable thing to do in light of the slowness of communications
and their limited knowledge of exotic lands. However, the effect was
to eliminate many of the restraints St. Petersburg had built into its
policies. During the 1780s, this excessive aggressiveness had made an
enemy of Aqa Mohammad at a time when he might have become an
ally. The negative consequences of such behavior were not discern-
able in the 1796 campaign because of its abrupt termination. Unrec-
ognized, the problem continued unchecked as Russia pursued its
expansionist goals.
Russian Expansion under Catherine the Great 45