87 Russian Ethnographers and Caucasus Mountaineerstragically decimated. Sukhumi otdel, eventually Sukhumi okrug
(1883), became part of Kutaisi province, and the former Adygei lands
of the north Black Sea shore were part of Chernomorsk okrug. Be-
cause of the absence of the mountaineers, the primary issues of ad-
ministration in the west Caucasus were related to the difficulties of
settlement and to the many conflicts between the immigrant groups
mentioned above. Thus Dondukov-Korsakov’s commission recom-
mended attaching the northern portion of Chernomorsk okrug to
Kuban oblast, and its southern portion to Sukhumi okrug of Kutaisi
province (they were geographically divided by the Caucasus moun-
tain range), because from the point of view of the regime, these re-
gions presented similar administrative challenges.^197 In this case,
geography prevailed, and Chernomorsk okrug was left intact and
made a province. By the early twentieth century the population of
Chernomorsk province included 85 ,96 8 Russians, 12,334 Greeks,
11,236 Armenians, and numerous other immigrant nationalities, but
only 2,390 “Cherkes.”^198 The mountaineers of the west Caucasus
were gone.
Russia’s preoccupation with national and cultural identity (narod-
nost’), originality, and the cultivation of indigenous tradition was ex-
tended by borderland communities to non-Russian regions such as
the Caucasus. These interests were evident in the work of the local
branch of the Geographic Society and other smaller scholarly societ-
ies in Tbilisi, which played a key role in prompting new questions
about the purpose of expansion and the nature of imperial identity.
“Originality” on the frontier, in the imperial conception, meant a vi-
sion of historically authentic and indigenous culture untouched by
Islam. Georgian thinkers contributed to this debate by developing
similar Romantic notions about historic Georgian identity and by
depicting Islam as an impediment and threat to the flowering of the
Georgian nation. They were especially alarmed by Islamic incursions
into frontier regions that, in their view, had been inhabited by
“Georgians” since antiquity.
The imperial perception of Islam as an ethno-historical dilemma
stimulated the emergence of ethnography, which in turn contributed
to an alternative vision of the Russian Empire. The new vision con-
trasted sharply with the historic traditions of Russian militarism and
exile that had accompanied the expansion of the Russian state into
the southern borderlands. Romantic literature and travel writing,
while frequently criticized by ethnographers and other scholars for
its failure to conform to the dictates of what they understood as “sci-
ence,” in fact served as an important source of inspiration for their