127 Russification and the Return of ConquestThe fears and concerns that prompted Russification in the border-
lands were numerous, although the impulse was not just an attempt
to return to tradition. For some officials, it was a product of their con-
tinuing effort to extend the authority and practices of their version of
the enlightened “well-ordered police state” to the edges of the em-
pire. “The All-Russian State is unitary and indivisible,” proclaimed
the first article to the Fundamental Laws (Osnovnyie Zakony) issued
on 23 April 1906. As. B.E. Nol’de pointed out before the revolution, in
fact, that claim illustrated the centralizing efforts of the modern Pet-
rine state to end previous forms of autonomy and privilege. The tsar
historically allowed “privileges and rights” to endure on the frontier,
in a way similar to the relationship of the early modern French mon-
archy to its provinces.^6
This history of negotiation and concession that accompanied the for-
mation of the empire left the “all-Russian” political order “vastly heter-
ogeneous,” as Kappeler wrote, a patchwork quilt created by many
hands.^7 Nobilities throughout the empire continued to exercise their
traditional forms of authority, universities such as the one in Dorpat
used German as the language of instruction until 1893, Bashkirs and
others served in special military squadrons, the Finns basically main-
tained their own army, native Siberians and other inorodtsy were ex-
empt from military service, colonies of Indian and German traders had
special privileges in Astrakhan, and peoples from the Kazakhs in
Central Asia to the Chechens practised customary legal traditions.^8 But
by the early twentieth century, officials in and from StPetersburg had
become impatient with the many administrative concessions and spe-
cial scholarly projects sponsored by the Caucasus administration in
Tbilisi. Reinke and other officials who attacked the customary law
courts in the North Caucasus perceived the region as undergoverned,
chaotic, and far too distant from the reach of StPetersburg. In search of
administrative “fusion” (sliianie), the Council of Ministers in
StPetersburg abolished the Caucasus Committee and the namest-
nichestvo (viceroyalty) itself, established for Vorontsov in 184 5.^9 The
model of unity and cultural and administrative conformity adopted by
nation-states both new and old, from Italy to Germany to France, influ-
enced the Russian outlook as well.^10 State-building in “Russia,” as in
France, meant administrative and central uniformity and the effort to
silence regional “savagery” from the frontier.^11
The drive for administrative fusion was bound to provoke prob-
lems in a distant region that remained basically unintegrated into the
imperial system in the first place. Mountain village elders maintained
a high degree of independence from Russian officials in the North
Caucasus, numerous crimes were still adjudicated according to