158 Orientalism and Empirepreceded and allowed for an eventual contribution to “universal”
Soviet culture.
The ambiguities and contradictions of imperial policy continued
through the Soviet era, as repression and exile were combined with the
promotion of non-Russian cultures and literatures. In the tradition of
Berzhe, Uslar, Bakradze, and many others who had rethought the char-
acter and purpose of the Russian Empire, Soviet officials promoted
“nativization” (korenizatsiia) and took measures to facilitate the in-
creased cultural expression of the peoples of the North Caucasus.
Opportunity, advancement, and cultural growth, however, uneasily co-
existed with the tradition of conquest and the tragedy of exile.^25 Stalin
was simultaneously capable of drawing on several traditions from the
history of the empire on the southern frontier. The tradition of conquest
and exile in the southeastern borderlands also cast its shadow over the
Soviet era. In 1943–44, 397,966 Chechens and Ingush, 32,248 Balkars,
and 60,656 Karachais were deported, the Chechen-Ingush assr was
abolished, the Karachai autonomous province was also abolished (re-
sulting in an enormous gain of territory for the republic of Georgia),
and the Kabardino-Balkar assr was relieved of the Balkars and be-
came the Kabard assr.^26 The Meskhetians of southern Georgia,
strongly influenced by Islam and Turkish culture, were also sent to
Central Asia.^27 Over 2,000 Georgians were settled in what was previ-
ously Karachai territory, now called the Klukhori district of the
Georgian Republic.^28
The 1944 exile reports testify not to the vision of imperial commu-
nity but to the heritage of conquest and exile, the very tradition that
Raevskii feared would leave a “bloody legacy” to Russian history.
The reports from the nkvd (secret police responsible for internal se-
curity) might have been produced by angry officers in the Caucasus
Army at the time of the Caucasus War. Officials implicated entire peo-
ples in their version of a betrayal of “poddanstvo,” with the dreaded
foreign influence now posed by Germans and Turks. “Terrorist
groups,” “bandits,” and “hostile elements” haunted the Soviet imag-
ination on the frontier.^29 Georgian and Kabard officials sometimes of-
fered their special “knowledge of the customs and habits” of the
North Caucasus peoples to the nkvd.^30 Soviet practice and the fero-
cious twentieth century were obviously the immediate context to the
194 4 exile. Lavrenti Beria (from Mingrelia), for example, made ex-
plicit references in a July 1944 letter to Molotov to the regime’s previ-
ous experience with the deportation of the kulaks.^31 But the impact of
the imperial background was just as significant. In actions similar to
the events of 1864, roughly 600,000 mountaineers were driven to an
early death or, at best, a precarious existence in a foreign land.