147 ConclusionRussian-language newspaper such as Kavkaz and its obschestvo of
readers sometimes directly appealed to a Georgian-language newspa-
per such as Droeba and its community of sazogadoeba. “It is good and
useful when our genuinely intelligent and interesting (societies) join
forces,” affirmed the editorial staff of Droeba in 1870.^8 The possibilities
of cooperation especially concerned matters of education, learning, and
institutions of high culture such as theatres and libraries. Georgian ed-
ucated society identified civilizing projects of uplift that were similar to
the concerns of educated society throughout the empire.^9 The shared
concerns among Russians and Georgians about civilization and culture
found especially fertile soil in the North Caucasus highland regions,
long famous for their remoteness and distance from civilized society.
Georgians not only served in the imperial administration but proved to
be important contributors to imperial discussions about Christian an-
tiquity, customary law, Shamil, Islam, and other topics that especially
pertained to the North Caucasus.
The idea of “Europe” was a powerful notion affecting not just
Russians on the frontier but also Georgians and many other smaller
peoples in the Caucasus. Even the children of Shamil were to be in-
corporated into not just this world of privilege but also a world
united by their common assumptions about Enlightenment and the
prospect of progress in Russia and the transformation of its backward
frontier in particular.^10 Mikhail Shervashidze, the Abkhaz ruler-
administrator, was deeply sensitive to the hierarchy of civilization
that separated Europeans from Russians, Russians from Georgians,
Georgians from Abkhaz, and even Abkhaz from Adygei. “[I]n his
words, he had been driven out of Abkhazia like some sort of Ubykh,”
he complained.^11 Russians were proud of the assimilation of
“Enlightenment” on the part of the Georgian nobility, evident, for ex-
ample, in their attendance at the new Tiflis Theatre, and Georgians in
turn felt this distinguished them from their frontier peoples. “Try to
imagine what sort of life is here,” complained a Georgian teacher in
Abkhazia in 1872. “Where is polite society? Where is the theatre?”^12
The Tiflis Theatre established by Vorontsov symbolized Russia’s be-
nevolent extension of the fruits of the Enlightenment to its southern
frontier and offered a location where the cohesive and integrative role
of Enlightenment (i.e., “imperial”) culture might contribute to the
work of empire-building. In 1869 Loris-Melikov, the Armenian com-
mander of Terek oblast, established a theatre in Vladikavkaz.^13
“[A]lready hundreds of us, thanks to the government, have joined the
ranks of obshchestvo,” claimed Adygei Khan-Girei already in 1846.^14
Like Europe, obshchestvo too was an idea, with integrative and cohe-
sive possibilities in the multi-ethnic borderlands.