140 Orientalism and Empireconquest. Butyrkin and Bereznikov drew new kinds of borders, but
within the empire. Such distinctions were fraught with peril in the
Caucasus, historically recognized by everyone including Russians as
a place of inconceivable diversity. The state’s open advocacy of
Russians in the business of settlement was one of the many fateful
and mistaken aspects of Russification.
the dilemma of russian ethnic
settlement
Russification as ethnic Russian settlement disappointed even the
Russian officials who formulated and implemented the policy. They
were dismayed to discover that Russian settlers in the North
Caucasus themselves needed frequent reminders about the values
and characteristics of Russian culture and the tasks and duties of col-
onization. As the Ministry of Agriculture pointed out in 189 5, the
tasks of the “pacification” and “cleansing” of the former Adygei
lands of savage mountaineers had been successfully accomplished by
Russian soldiers in the 1860s, but the secondary tasks of settlement
and the “reviving” (ozhivlenie) of the Black Sea shore were yet to be
realized.^92 Russians fought with Russians, Russians impeded the de-
velopment of the Cossack settlements, and Russians competed with
other immigrant communities often better able to adapt to the new
conditions. New settlers to Kuban oblast in particular suffered from
landlessness.^93 The different origins of the peasants sometimes led to
confusion in the villages. Russians clashed with Ukrainians, peasants
from wooded regions with peasants from the steppe. Cattle brought
from Russia quickly died in the Caucasus from the climate or from
predators, and many of the agricultural implements useful in Russia
proved useless in the new situation. Daunted by the mountains,
many peasants clung to the foothills and settled on the shores of the
Black Sea or on the rivers that fed it, exposing themselves to fever.^94
Frequently one-third to even one-half of the population of many of
the new emigrant villages either died or left for other prospects
within a few years of their founding.^95 Lands granted at reduced
prices to Russian officials and military officers serving in the region,
the fate of some of the best Adygei lands, sat unused and unproduc-
tive – a real estate investment for Russians uninterested in living so
far from Tbilisi.
Russian rule, as Ministry of Agriculture officials painfully admitted,
had been a disaster for the agricultural productivity of the Black Sea
littoral. When the Adygei ruled themselves, numerous mountain
villages were surrounded by rich gardens and fruit orchards, and