52 Orientalism and Empireespecially belligerent officials who considered “savage” mountain-
eers beyond the reach of any civilizing or Christianizing mission, mil-
itary and church officials in the North Caucasus welcomed the end of
the war as an opportunity to implement their vision. When the coun-
cil of the Restoration Society met in 186 8, it invited Generals
Bartolomei and Starosel’skii to contribute to the formulation of a set
of basic goals in education for the society. Bartolomei and
Starosel’skii were both scholars as well as generals. Bartolomei had
completed his Abkhaz Reader in 1865, and Starosel’skii worked in the
Caucasus Mountain Administration. Military officials and missionar-
ies met to coordinate their efforts and clarify their goals, which in ed-
ucation were reading and writing in the local language; reading and
writing in Russian; the mastering of religious history and Orthodox
liturgy (in Russian); and basic arithmetic, also taught in Russian. By
this time the group was already making use of readers and primers in
Svan, Ossetian, Chechen, and Abkhaz, which “facilitated the gradual
weakening in the Caucasus of Arabic and the Qur’an – the sources of
Muslim fanaticism and antagonism to us from among the mountain
population.”^90 In 1865 the official printing house of the main admin-
istration of the viceroy in Tbilisi had cooperated with the Restoration
Society to issue 2,400 copies of Bartolomei’s Abkhaz Reader, 1,500 cop-
ies of the Bible in Ossetian, and 3,000 copies of a prayer book in
Ossetian, as well as 1,200 copies of the teachings of Episkop Gabriel
in Georgian. The financing of the project was handled by Prince
Orbeliani, a general and imperial official, which meant that Georgian
officials were heavily involved in this imperial project of encouraging
Ossetian and Abkhaz literacy.^91 Georgian priest M.Iluridze, to pro-
vide another example, applauded the increasing use of Ossetian over
Russian in Restoration Society schools in a church journal in 1889.^92
Native language instruction in Restoration schools put a premium
on the training and development of a cadre of native instructors. The
society was learning from experience as well in this matter. As
Beliaev attested, unable “even to get a piece of bread,” the missionary
post demanded a hardy mental and physical constitution. Teachers
and missionaries frequently complained about the absence of support
and funding which made their service almost impossible and pre-
vented them from appearing as an example of “imperial” and civi-
lized culture on the savage frontier. One teacher wondered how he
could serve as role model “of the entire village, and not just of the
school,” when inadequate pay and administrative support made it
difficult for the villagers to distinguish the teachers from the sur-
rounding villagers.^93 Teachers struggled with dilapidated classrooms,
insufficient teaching materials, collapsing tables, broken chairs, and