113 The Russian ShamilAleksandr Chavchavadze, married Aleksandr Griboedov, author of
Woe from Wit.^17 Their gravesite on the side of the mountain overlooking
Tbilisi (Mtatsminda) stood, as the Georgian press often reminded its
readers, as a monument to these links of nobility and culture.^18
Aleksandr was the son of Gersevan Chavchavadze, the diplomatic rep-
resentative to Russia at the time of the 1783 treaty marking the incorpo-
ration of Georgia into the empire, another reminder of the historic links
between Russia and Georgia in the formation of the empire on the
southern frontier. The preface to this literary encounter with mountain-
eer savagery thus pointed to the cultural world of the reader, which
was the high culture of multi-ethnic educated society. The setting for
the story was the wealthy Chavchavadze family estate at Tsinandali in
Kakheti, Georgia. In this idyllic setting the Chavchavadze children
learned to play the piano and to speak foreign languages.
Vulnerable women left unprotected by their husbands was one of
the central themes of Vederevskii’s story. When the mountaineers de-
scended upon the Chavchavadze estate, they found only a large
number of women and children. The frightened group awaited their
capture in the belvedere and heard only “the smashing of glass, and
the thumping of the robbers’ fists on the keys of the pianoforte when-
ever it attracted the attention of a fresh party.”^19 When Prince
Chavchavadze returned to his burning and looted mansion, no one
remained save an elderly wet nurse, who cried, “David, David, ...
Why are you not here to help your family?”^20 Madame Dranse, the
governess from France who had only been in the Caucasus eighteen
days but who was to gain fame by telling this story to a Parisian audi-
ence, found herself “in the arms of a man with a bare shaven head, a
red face, and an indescribable odour.”^21 The mountaineers were par-
ticularly savage in their destruction of icons, bibles, and religious
works. The pursuit of Captain Khitrov of the Caucasus Army was too
late and caused Princess Chavchavadze tragically to drop Lydia, her
four-month-old child, who died under the horses of the mountain-
eers. In transit, Nino, a young servant girl, was separated from the
group and sinisterly disappeared, in spite of repeated assurances
from a “benevolent” mulla.^22 Such were the central themes of this
drama: mountaineer savagery and its threat to domesticity, female
sexual vulnerability, the failure of men to protect this domestic and
feminine world, and duplicitous Islam and its threat to Christianity.
Such themes resonated with Vederevskii’s Russian reading audience
and with many government and church officials, who described the
Chavchavadze episode in a similar way.^23
Georgians reproduced this material in their press throughout the late
nineteenth century with particular poignancy. Georgian domesticity