Although Russia’s expansion into the Caucasus was aimed at its pivotal econom-
ic location, the area posed a persistent ethical challenge to Russia as well. Since the
times of Herodotus, the Caucasus had been the source of a bustling slave trade that
continued unabated as the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires successively
took over control of the Black Sea and its slave markets. Poor in resources, slaving
provided necessary income to warrior tribes in the northern Caucasus and to
Georgian princes and nobles in the south. In what Liubov d’Herlugnan calls a
“ritualized”pattern of raiding and warfare, neighbors raided neighbors for slaves
and cattle in seasonal campaigns, sending the booty immediately along slave routes
that led to the great emporia of Crimea. Many of these slaves were Christian, posing
an ethical dilemma for Russia as it pushed into the Caucasus. Governors were told
to shelter Christians seeking refuge from slavers, to ransom or forcibly seize any
Christian slaves they encountered. With the capture of Crimea in the 1770s, its
slave emporia were shut down, but markets simply moved and Russia battled the
Caucasus slave trade well into the next century.
East Slavic presence in the northern Caucasus provinces in the eighteenth
century joined a diverse society of peoples, cultures, and political economies. In
Kizliar in the 1770s, for example, 92 percent of the population was non-Russian,
and the town featured more mosques and Armenian churches than Orthodox.
Different groups specialized economically: Georgians and Armenians were active in
viticulture and sericulture; mountain people (Ingush, Chechen, Ossetian) provided
labor or artisan work, and some practiced animal husbandry on the steppe.
The Kuban valley with its black earth supported rich farming. The valley of the
Terek increased in fertility as one moved upstream into black earth territory,
supporting wine, vegetables, and animal husbandry at the Caspian end andfield
crops farther west.
As Cossacks and non-military settlers multiplied, they demanded farm labor and
followed local custom in practicing indentured servitude, which existed here long
after it had been outlawed in the Russian center (1718). Cossacks interacted with
their surrounding societies much as the Line Cossacks did with the Kazakhs; they
crossed fortified lines to trade, they adopted local technologies of farming and
husbandry. Despite Russian efforts to Christianize and Russianize Cossacks in the
northern Caucasus, they met relatively little success in the eighteenth century.
Many who were Christian adhered to the Old Belief; others were Islamic; there was
much intermarriage with native peoples. From the late eighteenth into the nine-
teenth century, as with Line Cossacks, Russia tried to build their identification with
Russia, empire, and tsar by creating honors, banners, standards, and special
imperial regiments, but Terek and Black Sea Cossacks persistently identified
more with Cossack independence. They sang of Stepan Razin’s rebellion and the
Old Belief; they identified locally, not even regionally, let alone with the entire
empire.
Russia’s economic and political focus in the northern Caucasus remained
Astrakhan, still a major trade center even after Orenburg diverted Silk Road trade
at mid-century. Astrakhan was an urban metropolis claimed by Russia but sur-
rounded by semi-autonomous lands of Kalmyks, Nogais, and Kazakhs. A diverse
98 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801