138 Orientalism and Empireadmit the possibility of primarily allowing the Russian element [to
immigrate]?”^74 At his initiative the administration tried to advertise
the advantages of settlement to the interior provinces of the empire.
“With the final conquest of the Caucasus a beautiful and rich country
fell into the hands of the government,” announced the administration
in 1867 to those “wishing to resettle to Chernomorsk district.”^75
The problem was that Russian settlers were not up to the task. Af-
ter the expulsion of the Adygei, most Russian administrators in the
Caucasus were reluctant to allow even Russian peasants to attempt to
colonize the northwest Caucasus since they often were unable to nav-
igate the unfamiliar conditions of mountain geography and either
died from fever or ended up in need of government care in Tbilisi.
Even decades after the conquest, officials were still warning the inte-
rior that Russians needed to be of “strong spirit and body” to handle
the experience.^76 Instead, administrators in Tbilisi found Armenians,
Greeks, Czechs, Moldavians, and Chukhovs more likely to adapt to
the cattle-raising, wine-growing, and beekeeping traditions of the
northwest Caucasus.^77 They enticed Greeks and Chernogortsy from
the Ottoman Empire, who were at least “religiously sympathetic to
us,” and offered them freedom from military service and an eight-
year exemption from taxation.^78 Especially valuable, reported
General Murav’ev, were “mountain tribes that professed Christian-
ity,” by which he meant people from mountain Imeretia and Guria
(Georgia).^79 Officials granted the Georgian migrants from Kutais
province 20 rubles per family to purchase provisions for the trip, pro-
vided food for the travellers and their livestock along the way, and
guided them through Sukhumi, the Gagra fortress, and then on to
river valleys in Abkhazia, where they supplied them with food for
the first year.^80 The politics of the imperial state inadvertently had a
strong hand in encouraging Georgian colonization of Black Sea re-
gions such as Abkhazia.
The tide was turning in favour of strictly Russian colonization,
however, especially after the rebellion of 1877 made “loyalty to the
government” a critical criterion in the minds of officials.^81 Ivan
Zolotarev, an official close to the issue of colonization, complained
that Germans maintained their schools and churches and passed on
their “Germanness” to subsequent generations.^82 Ministry of Agricul-
ture officials lamented that Armenians and Greeks “preserved their
tribal peculiarities” and proved “hostile to all things Russian.” They
“lived separately” from the Russian population, “not assimilating
with it but only exploiting it for their own use.”^83
The imperial state openly declared its preference for the Russians.
By the turn of the century only Russian settlers were welcome. On