121 The Russian Shamilgeneration, he was proud to report, as a result of their exposure to
Russia, began to understand that women need not play the role of a
“pack animal” (v’iuchnyi skot) in the household, veil their faces, or be
ignored by and excluded from male society.^77 Numerous Russian
travellers, ethnographers, and administrators in the Caucasus at this
time also drew attention to the situation of Muslim women within the
household. The promise, to their own minds at least, of alleviating
the domestic injustices of Muslim culture served as a partial justifica-
tion of the Russian colonial presence, as we discussed in the previous
chapter. On one occasion Runovskii took up the matter with Shamil,
who affirmed that female inferiority in all respects was ordained by
Allah. Runovskii countered with his version of domestic gender rela-
tions: the man was to protect and defend the woman, from danger as
well as from hard labour, and the woman was charged with the “rais-
ing of children, looking after the domestic household, [and] loving
her husband.”^78 Like most other Russians, he upheld a version of fe-
male propriety and domesticity as a mark of progress and civiliza-
tion. To Russian thinking, this image of the oppressed Muslim
woman was complemented by the aggressive sexual threat posed by
the male mountaineer. Both characteristics were absent from the fam-
ily life of civilized cultures.
Imperial educated society was highly optimistic in its 1859 vision
of Shamil in the process of cultural change. In reality, he tried to
maintain contact with Sufi leaders in the North Caucasus throughout
his stay in Kaluga and consistently pressed various Russian officials
and the tsar himself regarding his request to visit Mecca before his
death.^79 Shamil concluded that pristav Pavel Przhetsslavskii was ob-
structing his efforts to arrange a trip to Mecca. In the fall of 1863 he
informed the Kaluga governor of his “extreme dissatisfaction” with
the work of Przhetsslavskii and claimed that the Polish pristav was
informing him of events in Poland in 1863.^80 Kazi-Magomet ap-
proached the Russians with a request from Shamil that
Przhetsslavskii be replaced with an officer of “pure Russian back-
ground,” and General Kartsov was concerned enough to suggest that
Przhetsslavskii be replaced with a “Russian officer of Orthodox
faith.”^81 That Shamil would make such a claim, and that Russian offi-
cials would respond so quickly, is an indication of the fears and sensi-
tivities of Russian officials about their rule in the borderlands.
Przhetsslavskii was eventually exonerated of the charge, but not be-
fore several anxious moments when he was forced to emphasize that
he and all of his family had left the Polish provinces twenty-five years
earlier and that he held “nothing in common with my compatriots
[sootechestvenniki].”^82