151 Conclusion“God Save the Tsar.”^20 Russian readers lost interest in criticism of the
militaristic imperial conquest and instead wanted to learn about “the
glorious activities of [their] ancestors.”^21
In a frustrating search for stability, officials explicitly identified the
interests of the state with Russian colonists in the borderlands. In
ways similar to German efforts in the Polish lands of the eastern
marches, the Russian regime adopted settlement laws in 189 6 and
189 7 which declared that only “Orthodox settlers of native Russian
background” would be allowed to immigrate.^22 General Sheremetev
applauded the results of ethnic colonization and enthusiastically
claimed that certain regions of the North Caucasus were now little
different from many “native parts of the empire.”^23 Loris-Melikov,
the consummate imperial administrator from the region and veteran
of tough Terek oblast who had repeatedly doused fires as part of nu-
merous “special commissions,” was now suspect in the eyes of the
right, who considered him unlikely to understand that the imperial
state in fact belonged to Orthodox Russians.^24 This was not a promis-
ing development in a society where Russians composed only
44.3percent of the population according to the 1897 census, and only
2.3per cent of an oblast such as Dagestan.^25 Russification recalled the
disturbing history of conquest that had historically served as the foil
for the Orientalists and visionaries of imperial community. Richard
Wortman portrays the new “national myth,” which he dates from
188 1, as a frustrated response from the ruling house and its court to
the failures of the previous “European myth” to contain the emerging
world of modern political contestation.^26 Georgians too were victims
of this new trend, and could no longer so easily contribute as they
once had to the shared discourse on empire.
Multi-ethnic educated society in the borderlands visualized an
“imagined community” of the empire rather than the nation, although
“Orientalism” in the Caucasus, as we have seen, suggested a process of
nativistic culture-building that might be viewed as proto-nationalism.^27
Georgians in particular were adept at placing archaeological explora-
tion, the study of history, and new cultural institutions at the service of
a project of national recovery. Because of the perceived threat of Islam,
nativism was easily compatible with empire. With the support of the
regime, Georgians encouraged Georgian theatre, Georgian history
writing, and the “homeland’s tongue,” and their example was impor-
tant for the rest of the region.^28 In his work on Dagestan, Abdulla Oma-
rov wrote for those inspired by “patriotic and national feelings.”^29
Uslar considered the primary virtue of empire to be the granting of the
gift of literacy to the mountaineers, as the Russians had once received it
from Cyril and Methodius in the tenth century, or the Armenians from