86 Orientalism and Empirevillages responsible for crimes against Cossacks and Russian settlers
and recommended “military expeditions” against the “guilty vil-
lages” until the problem was resolved.^190 Commission members were
suspicious of the special mountain courts and the concessions of mili-
tary-native administration.^191 Such measures, including the prospect
of exile, were in the tradition of the Caucasus War. The immediate
background to the militaristic response of this commission was the
unexpected rebellion in Dagestan, Chechnia, and other mountaineer
regions in the fall of 1877, which coincided with the announcement of
another war between Turkey and Russia.
As a result of the recommendations of the commission, in 1888
Terek oblast was divided into three sections (the otdely of Piatigorsk,
Kizliar, and Sunzhen) and four districts (the okrugi of Vladikavkaz,
Khasav-Iurtov, Nal’chik, and Groznyi).^192 In 190 5 another section
(Mozdok) was added to the former group, and two more districts
(Nazranovsk and Vedeno) to the latter.^193 The three western adminis-
trative units of Terek oblast again corresponded more or less to the
Kabard, Ossetian, and Ingush populations, while the mountaineer
districts to the east were inhabited by the Chechens. This was far
from “Ingushetia for the Ingush,” of course, as numerous other
groups, such as Russians, Kabards, Ukrainians, and Kumyks also
lived in Sunzhen section. Cossacks made up roughly 50per cent of
the entire population of the sections of Sunzhen, Kizliar, and Piatig-
orsk.^194 But 99per cent of the Ingush population lived in the otdel of
Sunzhen, just as 96per cent of the Ossetians lived in Vladikavkaz dis-
trict.^195 The 1888 administrative realignment changed Vladikavkaz
district to include the Ossetian population previously in Sunzhen.^196
The administrative distinctions of the tsarist regime responded to the
ethnographic vision of narodnost’.
In contrast to Uslar or Zisserman, Butyrkin and the commission
were hostile rather than sympathetic, angry rather than curious. Even
for Butyrkin, however, the Russian Empire was a conglomeration of
peoples. His empire contained territorial distinctions that were borders
and boundaries of exclusion, intended to mark segregated prisons
rather than historic and legitimate homelands. He wanted mountain-
eers in distinct administrative groups in order to police them better.
Such a vision of cultural conflict rather than cultural cooperation ironi-
cally called into question the very military expansion that had brought
Russian rule to the region in the early nineteenth century. This was not
a workable vision of empire but a retreat from the problem posed by
the incorporation of non-Russian lands into the empire.
The boundaries of the west Caucasus did not need to be drawn so
neatly, although only because the mountaineer population was so