Fadeev's letters from the Caucasus

These letters were originally published in the Moscow Gazette in 1864 and 1865, and later compiled into a separate book in 1865 with additions, from which they are reprinted in this edition. These letters serve as an explanation of the events outlined in the general essay Sixty Years of the Caucasian War.

The source in Russian language: https://rusneb.ru/catalog/000199_000009_003568069/

First letter

The year 1864 was one of the happiest milestones in our thousand-year history. The Russian people, united as one during those memorable months, witnessed the simultaneous suppression of the Polish uprising and the conclusion of the century-long Caucasian struggle. The names of Poland and the Caucasus are mentioned together not by chance. There is no apparent connection between them; materially, these regions form two entirely separate centers of action. However, an inner connection not only exists but is quite evident. Recently, a prominent European diplomat in Constantinople remarked: "Europe cannot view the conquest of the Caucasus with indifference. An independent Caucasus is as desirable to it as an independent Poland would be. The independence of the Caucasus could even greatly contribute to Poland's independence at an opportune moment." Indeed, for Russia, the issue in the Caucasus was the same as in Poland; the same moment in our history manifested itself identically on two frontiers of the empire. Almost simultaneously, the Russian people encountered two obstacles in their natural growth, obstacles they could not bypass without abandoning half the path already traveled: one on the European frontier, the other on the Asian. In both cases, the necessity to overcome these obstacles led to a century-long struggle—sometimes overt, sometimes covert, but continuous and allowing no compromises, to the extent that any compromise, as experience proved, positively harmed the final outcome. In both cases, the subjugation of adversaries was not the goal but merely a means to permanently secure against hostile encroachments and firmly establish what undeniably belongs to us. For nearly an entire century, the Caucasus was, for us, literally an "Asian Poland."

It is well known that it was not ambition but honor and compassion that compelled the Russian government to annex Georgia to its domains. Nevertheless, the occupation of the Transcaucasian regions cannot be considered a random event. Russia was led to this by its history and geographical position; had it not occurred in 1800, it would have happened later, but it would have happened undoubtedly. A state bordering the Black and Caspian Seas cannot remain indifferent to what transpires on the Caucasian isthmus, which, in the truest sense, commands these seas. The geographical contours of a country are one of the primary elements in creating the constantly acting, fateful force of a nation’s history, which, beyond all incidental events, draws it predominantly in one direction rather than another. In the 16th century, the Caspian Sea and the Volga connected the Muslim kingdoms from Persia to the mouth of the Oka into a single political world. When the Russian people settled on the ruins of the northern Tatar kingdoms and seized the key to this vast basin in Astrakhan, they directly assumed the Muslim legacy: Russia’s main trade route, the Volga, led us to the desolate Caspian Sea—a sea without masters or ships, yet along whose shores stood populous cities inhabited by industrious and wealthy peoples. We know from Eastern historians the terror that gripped the Muslims of the Caspian coast when they learned of the fall of Kazan and Astrakhan. Linked by daily interactions with these regions, considering themselves almost one people, they could not understand why the Russians would stop at the Volga’s mouth. In their view, the Shirvan kingdom should have immediately suffered the fate of Astrakhan, and they were right: when Cossack atamans acted as they pleased along the entire Caspian coast, this would not have been too difficult for the Moscow tsar. At the same time, our co-religionist Georgia, ravaged by Muslim invasions, pleaded for our salvation. At the same time, Cossacks were settling along the Terek; the Circassians of the Five Mountains swore allegiance to Russia. Had the brilliant period of Ivan the Terrible’s activity continued, the Caucasian isthmus might have been occupied three centuries earlier. Be that as it may, from the 16th century, the idea of dominion over the Caucasus became hereditary in Russian history; during periods of weak governance, it seemed to fade, but every strong reign brought it to the forefront again. Immediately after Ivan the Terrible, Godunov sent musketeers to Georgia. Then, the Time of Troubles set Russia back many years, forcing it to focus solely on recovering what was lost. But then Peter ascended the throne, and, having just concluded the war for the Baltic Sea, he immediately began one for the Caspian; had God granted him a few more years, Russian dominion would have been firmly established in the Caucasus then. Between Peter and Catherine, the government pursued almost nothing systematically in foreign policy outside Polish affairs. Thoughts of the Caucasus resurfaced only under Catherine. Although Catherine hesitated and did not wish to permanently occupy Transcaucasia, she nonetheless sent Count Zubov to the Caspian regions, and had it not been for the empress’s death, Russian troops would not have returned beyond the Terek. From the moment the empire, which had long possessed the Caspian Sea, finally reached the Black Sea, it could be predicted with certainty that, sooner or later, the Caucasian isthmus would be occupied by Russians. One can only say "thank God" that this occupation occurred under Paul; had it been delayed by three or four years, then, during the continuous European wars of the first half of Alexander’s reign, the Caucasus would have been the least of concerns; and from 1815, any move on our part toward this region would have sparked a Caucasian question on the scale of the European question.

The Russian government’s aspirations toward the Caucasus, nurtured over centuries, were not always fully conscious; but that is beside the point. They existed and were passed down from generation to generation, as evidenced by the fact that every favorable moment, every vigorous reign, brought them to life again. Were the convictions of today’s Russian society regarding the Polish question clearly understood during the times of the tsars, Peter, or Catherine? Yet the resolution of this issue progressed toward its natural conclusion; and surely, the majority of Russian actors involved in resolving this international dispute, however much they grasped the ideas now developed, acted more or less in their general spirit, as that is precisely how the matter evolved and was ultimately resolved. The continuity of history rests on the fact that such half-conscious ideas still contain the full range of motives necessary for persistent action. The same was true of the Caucasian question. Even now, Russian society judges it as vaguely as it did the Polish question twenty years ago; for over half a century, it looked with indifferent astonishment at the unending Caucasian struggle, becoming so accustomed to it that it no longer expected a resolution. Thousands of Russian families mourning relatives fallen in the Caucasus did not even ask themselves what god these sacrifices were offered to. Who among us has not heard household arguments that Transcaucasia should be abandoned as not worth the war’s cost, or foreign assertions that we deliberately prolong the Caucasian war to train our army? It can be said with certainty that not all Russian statesmen of the 19th century who influenced Caucasian affairs, each in their own sphere, understood the purpose of this persistent struggle. But the government pursued its goal steadfastly, sparing no sacrifices, especially during the last two reigns, under Emperor Nicholas I and the current sovereign—and it achieved its goal. The bitter outcries with which statesmen, newspapers, and public gatherings in England, France, and Austria greeted the fall of Shamil in 1859 and the final conquest of the Caucasus in 1864 should finally enlighten Russian society to the truth that something highly significant is being decided in the Caucasus. In 1859, an address was presented to Queen Victoria accusing the ministry of treason for abandoning Shamil, who was defending access to Asia. Last year, a torrent of all manner of curses was unleashed upon us for our success and upon their governments for their alleged weakness toward us. The final barrier to the Russians from Asia has fallen, orators declared at rallies. The oppression of the Circassians became as public a topic as the oppression of the Poles. But it was not for the Circassians’ well-being that compassionate hearts grieved; they did not forgive us the outcome of the struggle, which expanded not only the Russian Empire but the Russian people as far as Abkhazia. "Can Europe look on indifferently," said one European envoy in Constantinople, "as the Black Sea geographically becomes Russian?" "Now the dominant role in Turkey belongs again to the Russians," said another, "and at the first disturbance in Europe, from their Asian frontiers, they will do as they please!" "Can Europe look on indifferently!" was the common cry.

Of course, these are merely words of initial alarm. Their very frankness reveals the emotional turmoil that provoked them. But it must be noted that people who make a craft of evaluating certain things often end up understanding them quite well.

From the outset of this letter, I called the Caucasus the Poland of the Russian-Asian frontier; I mean this expression literally. Russia has only two borders—European, spanning 3,000 versts, and Asian, spanning 10,000 versts, from the mouth of the Danube to the mouth of the Amur (in a political sense, Turkey must be counted as part of Asia). It is now firmly rooted in Russia that we cannot abandon Poland without exposing our western border to all manner of contingencies; Russian society must also fully grasp the obvious truth that the security of the empire’s entire southern border, from Odessa to the Chinese frontier, lies in possessing the Caucasian isthmus, not to mention the possibility of a great future, the seed of which lies there as well.

The geographical position of the Caucasian isthmus gives this region a commanding, global significance, both political and commercial—a significance that would be doubled if it fell into the hands of a naval power.

Second letter

In the previous letter, I spoke of the extraordinary significance of the Caucasian isthmus for Russia, a significance that has so far been clear only to the government. During the Eastern War, when the attention of Russian society and the people was exclusively focused on Sevastopol, despite the need for troops across all the empire’s borders, and despite the fact that by the winter of 1855 our Crimean army was outnumbered by the allied forces, the government maintained 280,000 troops in the Caucasus. Not only did it not consider withdrawing a single soldier from there, even in the most critical moments, but it continually reinforced their numbers. Yet it is evident that maintaining such a mass of troops in the Caucasus—irreplaceable by millions of reserves and militias, and costing twice as much as troops in Russia—greatly weakened the state’s military power. It can be said with certainty that in 1855, due to the diversion caused by the Caucasus, Russia became weaker than in 1815, despite its population nearly doubling in that time. But as long as Transcaucasia was separated from Russia by a continuous population of unsubdued mountaineers, losing it for even an hour meant losing it forever. It was better to abandon the troublesome region outright than to weaken the Caucasian army. Necessity forced us to always be victors in this region, no matter the disparity in forces, without even dreaming of reaping the fruits of victory, solely to avoid destruction. The mountaineer war so distracted our forces that out of the 280,000 troops stationed in the Caucasus, only 9,000 could be fielded at Bashkadyklar and 17,000 at Kuryuk-Dara, despite the fact that the fate of the entire Caucasus was decided on these battlefields. No amount of strategic ingenuity could remedy this situation. It was necessary to keep the unsubdued mountaineers under tight blockade with a continuous chain of independent detachments, each strong enough to meet and defeat the most significant mountaineer gatherings in time. If even a single gap formed in the blockade line, the mountaineers could flood onto the plains, rallying the sympathetic foothill population and placing us between two fires. With the enemy’s overwhelming numerical superiority advancing on the border, such a turn of events would have put us in an extreme position, and thus, naturally, we preferred to face the danger head-on rather than risk it from the rear.

Both groups of unsubdued mountains, the Caspian and the Black Sea, were equally dangerous to us, though for different reasons. The mountaineers of the Caspian group, united under Shamil’s leadership through muridism, could, at the slightest misstep on our part, ignite a fire from the Terek to the Araks, rallying the Sunni population, sufficiently primed for rebellion by the preaching of the reformist tariqa. An uprising in this region, if not suppressed immediately, threatened us with the loss of communications with the Caspian Sea and possibly the severance of the Military-Georgian Road, as, in the event of a widespread Muslim uprising, even Kabarda could not be relied upon. The mountaineers of the western group, surrounded by Christian peoples except on one side where they bordered the subdued Muslim tribes of Karachay and Kabarda, could not rally their neighbors and were not dangerous in this regard. However, the territory they occupied, stretching 300 versts along the coast and penetrating deep into the northern Caucasus like a wedge, could serve as an open gate for enemy invasion from the sea. A European landing, supported by a horde of mountaineers, could safely penetrate so far into our domains that a single unsuccessful engagement at the first point where we could offer resistance would expose the Caucasian army to the unavoidable danger of losing all communications with Russia. There is no doubt that in such an invasion, the mountaineers of Eastern Caucasus would have rushed onto the plains with all their forces, and both dangers would have struck us simultaneously. The fear of such a landing in 1855 paralyzed all the forces of the Northern Caucasus, forcing them to stand idle, rifle in hand, for an entire year, awaiting a danger that never materialized.

Such was the state of the Caucasus as long as the mountaineer war continued. With the first appearance of an enemy on the Black Sea, a century of gigantic efforts amounted to nothing on the scales of fate. A numerous, battle-hardened army, assigned solely to this specific purpose—an army whose absence left a glaring shortfall in the total of Russia’s active forces—proved insufficient for the defense of the Caucasus in the event of an external war. The troops had to be so fragmented, with no communication between them, that at any point where the enemy chose to strike, they could always be far stronger than us. We had to rely not on proportionate strength, as in any war, but solely on heroic feats and luck. During the Eastern War, a single lost battle—whether on the Turkish border, the Kutaisi coast, the Kuban, the Alazani, or in Dagestan—would have been equally disastrous for us; all the more so because, with the extreme fragmentation of the troops, there was almost no possibility of recovering afterward. In his most brilliant campaigns, Napoleon suffered partial setbacks that did not hinder his ultimate triumph; the Caucasian army, however, was forced to win everywhere, always, at all costs—or perish. Unlike a hundred-headed hydra, it was a body mortally vulnerable at every point. As long as the mountaineer war continued, Russian dominion in the Caucasus was not dominion but merely a temporary occupation until the first failure.

If it was necessary for Russia, in view of great national interests, to retain the Caucasian isthmus, it was equally necessary to subdue the mountaineers; one without the other was meaningless.

In Europe, just as in Russia, the reasons for the endlessness of the Caucasian War were not understood. Everyone found it astonishing that a mighty state like Russia could not, for over half a century, overcome a few hundred thousand barbarians. Generally, it was thought that our advance in the Caucasus was persistent and continuous, and people could not comprehend how we failed to reach our goal, even step by step.

It must be stated from the outset that nothing of the sort was true in reality. Systematic and continuous advance, with a firm resolve to conclude the matter, began only in the autumn of 1856 and ended in May 1864 with the unconditional subjugation of the mountains, lasting a mere 7.5 years.

Until then, our efforts against the mountaineers were only disjointed attempts. The Caucasian War changed its character several times, was repeatedly interrupted entirely, and after these interruptions took on such a new form that all prior efforts seemed nonexistent; each time, it was necessary to start anew.

The mountaineer war proper began only in 1817, upon General Yermolov’s return from Persia. At that time, Western Caucasus was still nominally under Turkish control; our efforts could only be directed against the eastern group of mountains, but these efforts lacked the character later imparted to them. Neither in documents nor in memoirs of that time is there even a hint of any systematic plan for the general subjugation of the mountains; the forces of the Caucasian Corps were so inadequate for this purpose that it was unthinkable. All military actions of that period were incidental, provoked by the movements of the mountaineers themselves. General Yermolov did what was possible with his forces; but this was inevitably limited to subduing certain plains and foothills necessary for our communications, while the main mass of the mountains remained untouched. The idea of systematically subduing the mountains and assembling the necessary means for it belongs to the reign of Emperor Nicholas.

However, besides the government’s firm resolve to end the mountaineers’ resistance and the means proportionate to that goal, two more things were needed for complete success: a thorough understanding of the obstacles to be overcome and an unwavering pursuit of the chosen objective. Both, of course, depended on local executors. But much time passed before the peculiarities of the Caucasian War were understood, and even more time before the goal was pursued directly.

I do not intend to write a history of the Caucasian War in these essays, except for the latest events, which are the actual subject of these letters. But to vividly demonstrate in a few words how long the Caucasian War lacked a clearly defined goal, I will remind readers of the main efforts thought to overcome the mountaineers and the subsequent years of lull.

From late 1825 to 1830, due to the Persian and Turkish campaigns, there was a complete interruption in the mountaineer war. In 1830, large-scale operations took place at two opposite ends of the Caucasus: in the land of the Circassians, newly acquired under the Treaty of Adrianople, and in the land of the Jar Lezgins, on the southern slope of Eastern Caucasus.

In 1831, the doctrine of muridism swept the entire Dagestan into a general uprising against us, and we had to defend ourselves on the Caspian coast.

In 1832, the danger from muridism forced us to focus all attention on Eastern Caucasus. Operations were directed toward Chechnya and Northern Dagestan. But after a one-year expedition, which fortunately ended in our favor, the main forces were again transferred to the Kuban.

From 1832 to 1839, for seven years, Eastern Caucasus under Shamil was left to itself, and during this time, muridism spread across all the mountains. In this period, only a few military excursions were made in Dagestan with weak forces, more for show than for effect. Serious efforts were directed to the opposite end of the Caucasus, where the Black Sea Coastline was established with great effort and losses, only to be abandoned at the first appearance of an enemy on the Black Sea. Simultaneous land expeditions in Western Caucasus also yielded no material results, as we never advanced systematically anywhere.

In 1839, the main forces returned to Eastern Caucasus, capturing the village of Akhoulgo after a bloody siege, only to abandon it later; at the same time, other troops conducted an expedition to the southern edge of this region.

The uprising in the following year of the semi-subdued Chechnya drew the main efforts of the Caucasian troops there. The years 1840 and 1841 were spent realizing the impossibility of subduing this region through mere troop movements.

In 1842, two expeditions in Chechnya and Dagestan resulted in heavy defeats for us. Shamil’s invasion was repelled in Southern Dagestan.

In the same year, War Minister Prince Chernyshev arrived in the Caucasus and, seeing that the mountaineer war had led to nothing but loss of men and time, halted all operations. But this peace proved even less successful than the preceding war. Untroubled by Russians, Shamil overcame the last resistance from certain tribes and, in the following year, launched an offensive against us with the full force of the united mountaineers, capturing our Dagestani fortifications and seizing the entire region up to the Caspian Sea, forcing us to send the 5th Infantry Corps from Russia to reclaim what had long been ours.

With the appointment of Prince Vorontsov as commander-in-chief, Shamil’s further successes ceased; he made no further advances. Our fruitless expeditions also ended. The war took on the character of a constant blockade with very cautious offensive movements.

No one in the Caucasus will forget the great merits of Prince Vorontsov as a warrior and statesman, merits that left their mark on everything. But it must be said that even in this period, we advanced almost not at all. Here is a brief list of the main expeditions under Prince Vorontsov:

In 1845, the Dargo expedition, still conceived in the old manner of operations, was not repeated.

In Dagestan, three summer offensives from 1847 to 1849 resulted in the capture of three border villages, which were subsequently abandoned.

Several movements into the mountains from the Lezgin Line, which were mere raids and could not lead to any consequences.

From 1846, regular winter expeditions in Chechnya to gradually clear the region, lasting about six weeks a year and generally crowned with good success.

In Western Caucasus, occupied by small forces necessary to defend our lines, from 1839 until the last Turkish war, military affairs, aside from the gradual settlement of the Labinsk Line, made no progress at all. During the Eastern War, there was another three-year interruption in offensives against the mountaineers.

It is only natural that with such disconnected actions as those from 1830 to 1845, and such cautious ones as from 1845 to 1853, it was impossible to subdue a rugged terrain 1,200 versts long and 200 versts wide, defended by an extremely warlike population, often more dangerous in their strongholds than the best European troops could be.

Moreover, as already mentioned, the Caucasian War changed its character several times. The fanatical murid sect, which we had to confront from 1830, required an entirely different approach than offensives against the disjointed and often mutually hostile tribes of Yermolov’s time. Likewise, the war against the state founded by Shamil in the mountains from 1840 no longer fit the conditions of pursuing murid gatherings of the previous decade. The war in Western Caucasus, in the land of the Circassians, presented entirely different circumstances. Every ten years, we had to change our objective and adapt our means accordingly. Unfortunately, the overall sum of our Caucasian experience was always ten years behind reality: we fought the initial muridism as one could only have fought in Yermolov’s time; against Shamil, as one should have fought the initial muridism; and finally, against Shamil of the 1850s, when the mountaineer population was beginning to cool toward muridism, as one should have fought Shamil of the 1840s, when the mountaineers fought for their faith with fervor. Naturally, the results were less than successful.

It must also be said that in the two main periods into which the Caucasian War naturally divides—before and after 1845—one particular trait of our, I’m not sure whether to call it national or societal, but in a word, Russian character, was expressed: boasting before the deed and baseless distrust in ourselves after initial failures, for which we ourselves were to blame; the same frivolous shift that occurred in public opinion regarding the Eastern War and persisted for quite some time. Until the 1840s, our military actions in the Caucasus were based on the axiom “how could the Russian Empire not crush the mountaineers at once,” and later, on the opposite axiom, “the mountaineers cannot be crushed at all.” Clearly, both were extremes.

Meanwhile, a whole series of highly talented military men passed through the Caucasus. Russia still remembers many names that resounded in bygone times; for success, only unity was lacking—that is, a correct assessment of the situation and the direction of all efforts toward a single goal.

Thus, 33 years passed in intermittent efforts, never even bringing us close to the goal. In constant skirmishes, with no end in sight, we gradually reached 1853.

The thunder of the Eastern War forced us Russians to cross ourselves, not only in the Caucasus.

We must recall the matter as it was. From the distance separating us from those events, they are very clear. In 1855, the issue at Sevastopol was only about national honor and the influence that the energy of the defense could have on diplomatic negotiations; everything else had already been decided in 1854. In the Caucasus, however, the issue was one of survival.

I do not know to what extent I have succeeded in highlighting the significance of the Caucasus for the Russian Empire. Personally, I am convinced that the Caucasus constitutes half of Russia’s entire political future, and thus, naturally, I view the matter from this perspective.

Now ask any Caucasian soldier of 1855 or any native of Transcaucasia what our situation was in the Caucasus during the winter of 1854–1855, during Omar Pasha’s invasion, when Russian banknotes were refused at the Tiflis bazaar. This is not the place to paint that picture, which would require ten additional letters, but ask, and everyone will tell you that at that time, the defense of the Caucasus against the European alliance rested on 10,000 soldiers without provisions, gathered around Kutaisi. If, at that time, even a small reinforcement had been sent to Omar Pasha from the 200,000 allied troops standing idle amidst the ruins of Sevastopol, the outcome of the war would have been beyond doubt. We could not unite. The ten thousand Kutaisi fighters would have surrounded themselves with enemy corpses and fallen themselves. And then the Caucasus would have been irretrievably lost to Russia.

Why the allies did not send reinforcements to Omar Pasha is now well known. England intended to shift military operations to the Caucasus in the spring and, even after the capture of Sevastopol, reinforced its army as much as possible; France, having achieved its goals at that time, decided to end the war and concluded peace. It is to this circumstance alone that we owe the salvation of the Caucasus.

Yet the Caucasian army, in its full strength, was sufficiently strong to deliver decisive blows to a first-class European power.

There was no need to wait for a second Eastern War. A few months after the conclusion of the Paris Peace, we resumed the Caucasian War with maximum energy, but this time to finish it. A continuous and resolute seven-year offensive began, concluding last spring with an outcome that no future contingencies can alter.

It must be said, however, that while the lesson of 1855 was fresh in everyone’s memory, and all felt the necessity to end the mountaineers’ resistance at all costs, this shared sentiment did not in the least ease the resolution of the matter. I appeal to all Caucasians of 1856 without exception: were there even ten men in our army who believed in the possibility of a swift subjugation of the mountains? Yet the Caucasian army knew the enemy’s situation and could rely on itself. Russian society must remember that the subjugation of the Caucasus was achieved through a long series of military exploits; that it was not fate or exhaustion, as some claimed, but the precise and energetic direction given to affairs by Prince Baryatinsky, sustained by the consistency of actions under his successor, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, that decided the fate of the Caucasus; that in this case, the impossible, by the judgment of the most battle-hardened army in the world, was accomplished with uninterrupted success, testifying to the correctness of the plan and the energy of its execution. Do we really need to be reminded of the names of those who rendered such great services to the fatherland?

The conquest of Eastern Caucasus was completed in three years. The capture of Shamil and the subjugation of the Caspian mountains relieved us of a terrible internal danger that gnawed at the Caucasus like an ulcer. As long as an armed enemy stood amidst the Muslim population subject to Russia, enjoying their full sympathy, we were not secure for a single day of peace and had to strain the forces of an entire army in peacetime just to restrain the enemy’s incursions. Having dealt with the internal danger, it was necessary to address the other Caucasian danger—the external one, the land of the Circassians, which beckoned Russia’s enemies like an open gate into the heart of the Caucasus. In three and a half years, this last enemy stronghold fell as well.

Third letter

Before proceeding to the account of the events that decided the fate of Western Caucasus, I consider it necessary to outline the unique character of the Caucasian War—the extraordinary combination of all kinds of material and moral obstacles that, for half a century, thwarted the efforts of a mighty empire. The tenacity of the resistance exceeded all expectations. Until 1830, Europe was convinced of the insurmountable superiority of its arms over the rest of the world. The subsequent training of Asians in regular formations did not shake this conviction; regular regiments—Persian, Turkish, and Indian—could no more withstand the European onslaught than the Asian hordes of old. It became clear that the decisive advantage of European troops depended not only on their tactical superiority but, far more, on an immeasurable moral superiority. Naturally, in light of such results, the rest of the world seemed almost defenseless before Europe; it was considered incapable of serious resistance. Thus, in the 1830s, the Algerian War greatly astonished everyone. Witnesses and participants of the Napoleonic Wars could not understand how the French army was unable to overcome the resistance of semi-savage mountaineers and nomads, how even its victories remained fruitless, how today’s success did nothing to ease tomorrow’s, how the occupation of any points did not pacify the land between them. After a century and a half of crushing superiority, Europeans finally encountered, outside their continent, serious opponents and steadfast resistance. The matter was entirely new but simply explained. Amid the decayed states of the Asian world known to Europe until then, there remained, in hard-to-reach regions, fragments of ancient populations untouched by the plague that poisoned the East—simple, warlike tribes, strong precisely because of their lack of centralization, which made it impossible to crush them with a single blow, requiring instead their conquest man by man. These people matched Europeans in courage, and the superiority of regular arms often proved fruitless in wild terrain where closed formations could not operate. Much time passed, and many failures were endured, before adapting to the new conditions of war. The Caucasus, like Algeria, was a military discovery of a special kind; we encountered Asians here who, as warriors, were not Asians at all, combined with such complex local conditions that they confounded even the most experienced military men. It must also be remembered that Algeria is merely a miniature of the Caucasus. In our Algeria, everything—nature and people—far surpasses the dimensions of the French one. There, the sea served as the foundation for all operations; here, everything had to be transported across the steppe. There, a coastal plain allowed regular troops to retain their advantages, followed by a narrow strip of the Atlas, not even reaching the height of the Caucasus’s secondary spurs. The main mountain center of Algeria, Greater Kabylia, which the French dared not enter until everything around it was subdued, despite its name, is no larger than the separate group of Tabasarani and Kaitag, which we did not even conquer—it fell on its own once Eastern Caucasus was defeated. From the Caucasian peaks fall icy avalanches rivaling any Atlas mountain in mass; instead of Algerian groves, the slopes of the Caucasus are shaded by dark primeval forests, dozens of versts wide and hundreds long. There are neighboring regions so separated by eternal snows, an entire Lapland risen to the sky, that they know nothing of each other. Always icy passes; valleys so deep that it takes a whole day to descend to their bottoms; mountain rivers carrying stone blocks like pebbles, so wide that only a rope bridge can span them; thousands of hollows accessible only by goat paths hanging between heaven and earth—this is the theater of operations for the Caucasian army, a theater 1,200 versts long from the Black Sea to the Caspian and over 200 versts wide. The Caucasian mountaineers are as much more formidable than Algerian Arabs and Kabyles as their surrounding nature is grander than Africa’s. One fact suffices: the Algerians, no matter how they tried, could never take a single blockhouse or wooden tower defended by two dozen soldiers. Caucasian mountaineers took fortresses garrisoned by entire battalions doomed to fight to the last man. The Russians encountered in the Caucasus a combination of all imaginable obstacles in both people and nature, as if the Caucasus was deliberately placed on Asia’s northern frontier to forever shield this part of the world. From the southern slope of the Caucasus begins the true, decayed, and defenseless Asia.

The subjugation of the Caucasian mountains, both eastern and western, required great talent and extraordinary energy from the leaders, and not only courage and experience but boundless self-sacrifice from the troops. Any sensible person can judge how difficult it was to accomplish a task that, for forty years, exhausted the ever-increasing efforts of a vast empire, despite the government’s resolute will to end it as quickly as possible. For three decades, we advanced several times only to be forced to retreat before the desperate and often highly skillful resistance of the enemy. It can be said with certainty that in 1856, when the continuous seven-year offensive began, culminating in the unconditional subjugation of the mountains, we were in the same position as during the Persian War, not having advanced a single step. Meanwhile, the enemy made enormous strides: it developed forces never anticipated, gained firm confidence in itself, and the Caucasian army was tasked with a mission ten times more difficult than it had been initially.

The Russian press speaks little of the Caucasus, not knowing it; but for this same reason, it occasionally issues baseless judgments on Caucasian events. More than once, I have read fragmentary opinions about the exhaustion of the mountaineers, about a panic that spread among them after the Eastern War, facilitating their subjugation. In reality, we saw nothing of the sort; the mountaineers resisted with all their strength. Even in 1863, a mountaineer, accidentally cut off from his own and surrounded by an entire detachment, did not surrender and died with weapon in hand. Mountaineer gatherings were as numerous as before. If, toward the end, panic did indeed seize them and they surrendered en masse, it was only because they were driven to the point where defense was impossible. I do not know whether, in the 1830s or 1840s, the military plans of Prince Baryatinsky and Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich would have met resistance or not. But I know for certain, and all of the Caucasus knows with me, that if we had acted in recent times as we did in the 1830s or 1840s, the Caucasus would still be far from subdued.

The peculiarities of the Caucasian War were so sharp and numerous that they constantly perplexed, one might say, threw off even the most experienced generals, who had earned just reputations in European wars. The question, “What must be done to deliver a decisive blow to the enemy?” remained an unsolvable riddle for a long time. People know only two systems of offensive in enemy territory: rapid invasion to defeat the enemy’s active forces and seize the main centers of their land, after which resistance should collapse on its own, and methodical war, in which the enemy’s land is gradually stripped away, with firm establishment in the conquered parts, pushing the enemy from the periphery to the center until they are finally rendered powerless. Both systems were tried in the Caucasian War and long yielded no results. The Ichkerian expedition, for example, belonged to the invasion system. Our troops rushed en masse into the mountains to occupy Shamil’s residence and other points deemed most important. The expedition’s specific goal was achieved, but it became clear that such a success led nowhere. It produced no moral shock, as the enemy knew that the farther we advanced, the sooner we would have to retreat. There could be no material results either, as our detachment controlled only the ground it stood on. The traversed space closed behind us in a hostile belt: a hundred sazhens from the forest road along which the column moved, the enemy was safe. Penetrating deep into the mountains, we could not remain in the occupied points, as the enemy stood on our communications; the country itself offered no means to provision the troops, and sending separate columns for supplies in the face of mountaineers watching our every step often meant sending them to their doom, as experience repeatedly proved. Invasions into the mountains, even with numerous troops, consistently proved fruitless military excursions, each costing thousands of lives. From 1846, we adopted the system of methodical, gradual conquest. But here another difficulty arose. As soon as we began operating under this plan, concentrating a mass of mobile troops at one point, the enemy, untroubled across the rest of their territory, could also muster all their forces against us, and a struggle for the contested point ensued, costing disproportionate sacrifices; from 1847 to 1849, the siege of a single village occupied an entire summer. We took mountaineer villages one after another, knowing that beyond them lay rows of new villages, for which new rivers of blood would be shed. Conquest of the Caucasus by this system would have required geological epochs. But it had to be considered that while this domestic struggle tore at the Caucasus’s core, Russian dominion in the region depended on every contingency.

Yet the Caucasian War, for all its peculiarities, was not something entirely exceptional; it only required that the general, well-known principles of warfare be accurately applied to local circumstances, as in any war. The application here, however, was far more difficult than anywhere else. The influence of local conditions so complicated the matter that establishing a correctly devised system of operations required great talent, solid experience, and a strong character—qualities that rarely combine in one person—and demanded unrelenting energy and unwavering consistency of execution over seven years, which is even rarer. Fortunately, all this was realized.

The two commanders-in-chief, one who began and the other who concluded this war, acted as one, with the same energy, never deviating from the chosen plan of conquest—an example almost unique.

Under these conditions, the subjugation of the mountains required only a definite period of time, as the outcome clearly proved.

With our undeniable tactical superiority, whenever we knew precisely what we wanted to do and thus calculated our means to the goal in advance, we could always reach our destination; we could clear the terrain on the march, cut paths, build roads, construct fortifications—in short, open up the enemy’s country so that it could later be traversed with less effort. The enemy, deprived of their natural cover, had to either submit or flee deeper into the mountains. The specific objective of a campaign could always be achieved within a defined, limited space. But it was also clear that clearing all the gorges and occupying all the villages of such a vast region exceeded the means of even the largest army or would require centuries to accomplish. The question of subjugating the Caucasus thus boiled down to a purely strategic one: without dispersing forces or scattering efforts on local objectives important only to local commanders, to identify the enemy’s most vulnerable points and strike them with concentrated force. It was necessary to choose lines of advance and movement into the enemy’s territory that would most divide and constrain the enemy while allowing us to operate with concentrated forces and most reliably secure subsequent movements. To begin subjugating the mountains, every step, from first to last, had to be thought out with sufficient accuracy in advance, because as long as the mountaineers held firm, changing operational lines was unthinkable; we had to stick to the chosen direction. In the mountains and forests, roads are built slowly, especially when everything, down to the last biscuit and measure of oats, had to be brought along. A mistaken choice of direction for even one detachment could cost a year of wasted time and many needless sacrifices. To achieve the goal, one had to avoid errors and see several years ahead. Correct strategic direction was not only the main but the exclusive condition for success. Herein lay the difficulty. Looking at a map of the Caucasus makes one’s eyes blur. It is hard to discern anything in this labyrinth of gorges and ridges, this chaos of cliffs and forests, where crossing a few versts from one valley to another requires not only a route but consideration of the season and time of day when the journey can be undertaken—where all conditions of troop movement, communications, and provisioning are infinitely more complex than in any other military theater. Strategy in the Caucasus remained strategy, only it was far harder to achieve. Even eyes well-versed in warfare from maps of Europe or Persia and Turkey lost their acuity when gazing at the variegated map of the Caucasus.

Besides great talent, this war required extraordinary energy. A prerequisite for success was to act without pause. Facing an enemy whose strength lay not in an army but in the population itself, in every adult male, we had to force them to remain constantly armed, depriving the country of workers, and thus of means of sustenance and the ability to maintain strong gatherings before our outposts. In earlier times, when we acted and rested periodically, at convenient times, the mountaineers, generally modest in their needs, had time to secure provisions for the year and then faced us not only boldly but cheerfully. The war took on the appearance of a tournament, entertaining both sides. It took on an entirely different character when we advanced without stopping. Constantly pushed back by our offensive, with no time to work their fields, losing a portion of their arable land and pastures each month, driven out in winter with their families into the cold, the mountaineers began to see the war not as a gallant sport but as a calamity. The relentless advance of Russian detachments forced mountaineer communities to retreat ever deeper into the highest and most barren mountains, like a slow but steadily rising flood. Unceasing pursuit, growing deprivation, the loss of families, and, above all, the realization that their situation would only worsen each day, finally broke the mountaineers’ resistance. But to bring them to this realization required an unprecedented feat in military history—seven years of continuous offensive, without a single day’s rest, and this is meant literally. The second half of the war against the Circassians of the Kuban region, from 1861 to the summer of 1864, cannot even be divided into campaigns; it was a single four-year campaign, unrelenting in any season, in frost or mud. As a result, the Circassian tribes did not even manage to form a solid alliance, despite their efforts, and fell separately under our blows; as a result, England’s declaration that it did not recognize Russian dominion in the Caucasus was rendered null by the speed of our successes, as Palmerston admitted in a full parliament (Session of May 26, 1864). A non-military reader who has not endured many campaigns cannot grasp what seven years of continuous campaigning means, during which troops are constantly bivouacked in the open, always in combat, on the march, or working with a loaded rifle, seeing neither roof nor settled family; seven years of a life where, soaked by cold rain, one cannot dry off except by waiting for a sunny day, and seven winters during which one never feels warmth throughout the body, warming the chest by a fire while the back freezes, then warming the back while the chest grows cold; in the intervals of battle, digging frozen earth or hauling logs under the midday sun, considering rest only those hours spent as a target for mountaineer rifles. Only the Russian soldier is capable of such hardships and self-sacrifice. But to make even the Russian soldier endure such a life, commanders of all ranks had to share it with them, sparing themselves nothing, and above all, every hour and detail of this colossal labor had to be precisely calculated to avoid prolonging the term beyond human endurance and laying the army to waste before achieving the goal. In this war, one could not err without consequence in either material calculations of labor or purely military considerations; every rifle and every axe had to be in its place at the right time; every detail had to be foreseen and its execution vigilantly overseen. Without the utmost exertion of human energy, from commander-in-chief to soldier, success could not be expected. Only at such a price could the Caucasus be ours before some chance circumstances overturned the entire situation.

Moreover, for the success of operations, it was necessary to overhaul the entire order of force distribution and management of the Caucasian army from top to bottom. In 1856, the Caucasian military theater presented a strange mosaic reflecting all the previous systems, abandoned in theory but leaving traces in all institutions and the very subdivision of the region. The army’s structure thus reflected the needs not of the present but of long-past years. Almost the entire foothill region was fragmented into small administrative cells, each under a separate, independent commander, so that, despite the enormous number of troops, we were never strong enough at any point for persistent offensive or even reliable defense in extreme cases. Rivalry among local commanders led each to rely only on their own forces: overarching commands, such as the commander of the Caucasian Line troops, became merely nominal. Actual control over all troop details and administration was concentrated in the Main Headquarters, which could not possibly oversee the proper conduct of such a multitude of diverse matters. Naturally, such an organization of authority could not but result in disjointed actions. Finally, there was no general plan for managing the subdued and newly submitting mountaineers, for balancing the various societal elements struggling within them—elements, some favorable, others hostile to us, toward which we could not and should not remain indifferent, especially since the state of the peaceful population greatly influenced the minds of the unsubdued and the degree of their resistance’s ferocity. We operated solely by force of arms, without policy, and thus encountered only enemies and not a single well-wisher, although all people of the old order among the mountaineers, suppressed but not yet entirely destroyed by muridism, could have provided us with significant support.

From 1856, the direction of affairs changed abruptly, and everything proceeded differently. Prince Baryatinsky secured a new division of the region into independent districts, fully aligned with the country’s topography and strategic goals, endowed with means for independent action on a large scale, and entrusted them to experienced commanders, placed in a position and thus obliged to unfailingly contribute to the execution of the general plan. Under the new arrangement, duties were distributed in proportion to responsibility, so that each, as far as possible, signed only for matters they could thoroughly understand and for which they were thus seriously accountable. Instead of the fragmented expeditions of the past, a general, continuous offensive began, immediately revealing the advantage of a standing army over mountaineer gatherings, which could not sustain overly prolonged campaigns because they had to support themselves with fieldwork. A rational system of managing the subdued was established, securing their fate and, as a result, attracting to us those elements in the mountaineer alliance that were not irreconcilably hostile, as became evident during the subjugation of Chechnya and later in Dagestan. At the same time, a deeply conceived strategic system—consisting of bypassing the impregnable Dagestan, which had until then thwarted our efforts, penetrating its unprotected depths from the more accessible Chechen mountains, and then concluding everything with a single, precisely calculated blow—crowned our hopes. Half of the unconquerable Caucasus was subdued. But the other half remained, to which, one might say, we had not yet even approached. The path to subjugating Western Caucasus seemed even more enigmatic than that to Eastern Caucasus. Prince Baryatinsky outlined the general plan for this new conquest but had not yet begun its execution when his health, undermined by the labors of a martial and constantly intense life to which he had dedicated himself from youth, faltered. But fate had already decreed an end to this heavy trial for Russia. The work in the Caucasus did not halt. The new commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, carried out Prince Baryatinsky’s hopes with rare consistency and resolve, forever establishing Russian dominion over the Caucasian isthmus.

Russia can take pride in the subjugation of the Caucasus not only as a great state achievement but even more as a moral feat, demonstrating the extent of spiritual exertion it can expect from its sons. The Caucasian army and its leaders proved worthy of each other. The Caucasian soldier displayed to the world a combination of all the qualities of an incomparable warrior, eliciting genuine astonishment from foreign officers visiting our detachments; and beyond that, an unyielding resilience in the struggle against both people and nature, a daily, never-faltering heroism far more reliable than fervor or enthusiasm, which, in capable hands, makes an army assuredly invincible. On the other hand, these exemplary troops were employed in the matter, indisputably, in the best possible way. Rarely does one see difficult enterprises executed with complete mastery, where every step aligns with the intended goal, without corrections, without looking back, without wasting strength; where every detail of execution is deliberate, and nothing is left to chance. Such were the last seven years of the Caucasian War. We can be confident that Europe will confirm this conclusion when the history of this war is systematically presented. Such exceptional episodes of fully conscious, impeccably skillful management of a great public endeavor are pleasing even in foreign history; in our own, they fortify the soul, as they can serve as a guarantee of a people’s justified confidence in its strength.

Fourth letter

In 1859, Eastern Caucasus fell. The central mountains between the Terek and Kuban, half-populated by Christian tribes, had been subdued under Yermolov and Prince Paskevich. Only the present-day Kuban region remained independent—a vast territory stretching from the upper Kuban almost to the Kerch Strait, inhabited by two warlike and predatory peoples: the Adyghe (whom we called Circassians) and the Abaza, totaling about half a million souls (Abadzekhs 140,000, Shapsugs 120,000, Natukhais 60,000, Mokhoshevtsy, Yegerukhayevtsy, Temirgoevtsy, Besleneyevtsy, and free Kabardians 40,000, Bzhedukhs 30,000, Ubykhs 25,000, Abazins on both sides of the Main Range 40,000), excluding the subdued tribes living between the Laba and Kuban. The population beyond the Kuban was divided into four main tribes and several smaller ones. The four main tribes were: 1) Abadzekhs, occupying a central position on the northern slope of the range from the sources of the Belaya River to the Shebsh; 2) Shapsugs, west of the Abadzekhs, extending to the Adagum River in the west and the Psezuapse River in the south, on both slopes of the range; 3) Natukhais, further west, in the triangle between the Adagum, Kuban, and the sea; 4) Ubykhs, on the southern slope opposite the Abadzekhs, between the Psezuapse and Mzymta Rivers. Smaller societies were scattered around these larger ones: Bzhedukhs between the Abadzekhs and the middle Kuban; Mokhoshevtsy, Yegerukhayevtsy, Temirgoevtsy, Besleneyevtsy, and other Adyghe tribes between the Belaya and Laba, in front of our military line, shielding the Abadzekhs. The mountainous strip between the subdued Karachay at the Kuban’s sources and the Belaya’s sources was occupied by Abazins of various names. Finally, the area between the Ubykh land and Abkhazia was inhabited by several small Abazin-origin societies: Jigets, Pskhu, Akhchipsou, and Aibga. The unsubdued mountaineers controlled 300 versts of coastline, making their land accessible to the entire world. Our Black Sea forces, limited by the Paris Treaty, were far from sufficient to maintain an effective blockade of the eastern coast. All of Russia’s adversaries took full advantage of this situation. Turkey officially recognized the Caucasian mountaineers as Russian subjects but constantly suggested otherwise to them. Turkish authorities allowed visiting mountaineers to appeal to them as legitimate rulers; Turkish emissaries flooded the Trans-Kuban region; every pasha appointed to a Black Sea coastal province considered it a duty to issue a proclamation to the mountaineers; Turkish steamships delivered gangs of adventurers, assembled in Constantinople from various nationalities and factions hostile to Russia, to the Caucasian shores. Public opinion in England encouraged these unlawful actions. Through these English efforts, material supplies, rifled cannons, and gunpowder were repeatedly prepared for the mountaineers. With English money and under Turkish patronage, the main actors were, naturally, Poles. There was even a plan to form Polish troops on the Caucasian coast, and in 1861, a stockpile of Polish national uniforms, equipment, and rifles was unloaded in Tuapse; they intended to recruit regiments from Polish deserters of the Caucasian army under the leadership of arriving émigrés. However, no deserters appeared, and the mountaineers plundered the stockpiles; the bands of filibusters landed on the Caucasian coast melted away and scattered. Nevertheless, everything malicious that could be conceived against Russia was conceived and partly executed. Europe was gradually becoming acquainted with the unsubdued Caucasus. In the event of war, serious threats were to be expected from this direction.

The efforts of Russia’s adversaries were so far paralyzed by the disorder prevailing among the Trans-Kuban and coastal mountaineers. These peoples, who once had a strong aristocratic organization, had overthrown their nobility through successive uprisings starting at the end of the last century and had not yet developed a new social structure. (Of course, no European participated in the Trans-Kuban domestic revolutions, and they had not even heard of what was happening simultaneously in Europe. But this coincidence is striking. It’s as if, at certain epochs, similar ideas spread through the atmosphere of our planet. This coincidence of phenomena among peoples with no contact is far from unique in history.) Every free man did as he pleased, recognizing no authority above him; like in the Polish Republic, a single voice had equal weight to the verdict of the entire society. Decisions of popular assemblies remained ineffective due to entrenched anarchy. The only action a society could take against a disobedient individual was to strip him of the protection of collective responsibility, declaring him outside the law that set the price of blood; but since the mountaineers were bound by kinship, and the numerous families they were divided into considered themselves collectively responsible for each member, regardless of public decrees, an outlaw cared little for the verdict: the support of numerous relatives, each obliged to avenge him, was sufficient guarantee of his safety. Clearly, with such a social structure—or rather, lack thereof—there could be no political cohesion among the tribes. The existence of a tribe was sustained only by the awareness of blood unity, as the families composing it considered themselves kin and formed a tighter circle. The overthrown nobility’s status varied among tribes. Generally, it had lost all privileges and could demand nothing from the people except certain ceremonial etiquette, strictly preserved in custom. Politically, it was insignificant; but in some tribes, nobles retained the luster of ancient names and some moral influence; in others, like among the Bzhedukhs, nobles were expelled from villages, alienated from the people, and forced to live in separate settlements. The one right that survived all upheavals unchanged among the Trans-Kubans was the worst of all: the right of serfdom. A third of the population was enslaved. Every free man could own slaves, and a noble could not exist without them, as personal labor was considered shameful and tarnished his entire lineage. The wealth of prominent families was measured solely by the number of slaves.

At the height of his power, Shamil attempted to subdue the Trans-Kubans to his authority. His efforts long remained fruitless. His agents could not bring troops, as the Trans-Kuban region was separated from the eastern mountains by a vast area long subdued by Russians; the preaching of muridism also had little effect on people who remained Muslims only in name; social anarchy and the sanctity of individual rights long prevented the Circassians from uniting in any meaningful way. But Shamil’s last agent, his naib Mehmet-Amin, was more successful than his predecessors. He skillfully exploited the disorder and tribal rivalries among the mountaineers, building a strong party among the Abadzekhs; later expelled from there, he took refuge among the Ubykhs, who, though never submitting to him, provided auxiliary troops that helped him maintain his party among the Abadzekhs and ultimately forced this people to recognize his supreme leadership. Until Shamil’s fall and the subsequent events, Mehmet-Amin ruled, albeit in a limited sense, the territory from the Shebsh to the Laba, over the Abadzekhs, Bzhedukhs, and small Abazin societies east of the Belaya. He tried to establish a religious murid state modeled on Shamil’s but achieved only half of this ideal. Muridism, with its all-consuming and all-replacing fanaticism, did not take root among the Trans-Kubans. The executions carried out by Mehmet-Amin were not sacrificial offerings, as Shamil’s were, before whose divine authority victims willingly bowed, but rather sudden murders. With his party’s support, Mehmet-Amin politically destroyed the remnants of Circassian nobility, introduced some murid rituals among the Abadzekhs, collected the sharia-mandated religious tax for the mosque, and raised an army against the Russians: this was the extent of his power. Later, his preaching began to influence the Shapsugs and Natukhais, binding them more closely in resistance against us; perhaps Mehmet-Amin’s authority would have gradually expanded, but Turkey, considering it a primary interest to support the unsubdued Caucasian mountaineers, made an unforgivable mistake against its own policy by pitting a rival against Mehmet-Amin in the form of the Natukhai prince Sefer-Pasha. This man, who once held influence among his tribesmen, had lived for about thirty years in Adrianople. The Turkish government, unsatisfied with the murids recognizing the sultan’s supreme imamate, sought more tangible control over the Circassians; during the Eastern War, it unearthed this man and sent him to the Circassians with the title of pasha. The humiliated Trans-Kuban nobility seized this new authority, hoping to restore some of their rights. In a short time, Sefer-Pasha gained nominal leadership over the Shapsugs and Natukhais. An internecine war broke out between him and Mehmet-Amin, resulting in the final weakening of both their authorities. After Sefer-Pasha’s death, his son did not inherit his fleeting rights. Mehmet-Amin, whose authority was already shaken by this rivalry, was further struck by Shamil’s fall and its consequences. As Shamil’s naib, his power derived from his imam; with the latter’s fall, its source dried up, or he would have had to assume the title of imam himself, a supreme ruler, at the most inopportune moment when even his naib rights were undermined by internal strife. The new Shamil was in a most uncertain position at the very moment when all the free forces of the Caucasian army were gathering on the Kuban for a decisive offensive. He seized the first pretext to extricate himself from this situation, leading to the well-known treaty with the Abadzekhs. A year later, Mehmet-Amin abandoned his former naibship and moved to Turkey, rewarded with a Russian pension. Through its intrigues, the Turkish government achieved only that the Trans-Kuban mountaineers, the object of its most anxious concern, were left, at the critical moment when the full force of the Caucasian army was about to descend upon them, more divided and discordant than ever.

The empire’s efforts to subdue the Trans-Kuban region began immediately after its annexation from Turkey under the Treaty of Adrianople. Until then, we occasionally raided Circassian lands in retaliation for their raids, and that was the extent of it. The war opened with a campaign in 1830 under the personal command of the Caucasian Corps commander-in-chief, Prince Paskevich. For the next eight years, the main forces operated continuously in Circassian lands. The offensive proceeded from both land and sea. From the Kuban side, troops traversed the entire Circassian forested plain and even parts of the mountains from Gelendzhik to Anapa; they burned many villages, which were rebuilt the next day; they established several fortifications, soon abandoned because supplying them through hostile territory diverted too many forces; they lost many men and achieved not even the slightest result. The second, third, or tenth campaign in the same places met the same resistance from the same enemy living in the same locations. General Velyaminov’s brilliant campaigns, tactically brilliant as a military school, remained utterly fruitless in terms of their goal and would have remained so for another twenty years, due to the very nature of the matter, as I tried to depict in the previous letter. From the sea, our troops, with the Black Sea Fleet’s support, gradually occupied the mouths of the main gorges on the eastern coast and built a series of coastal fortifications. The sea offensive proved as unsuccessful as the land one; sixteen battalions stationed along the coast in seventeen fortifications and forts could not step beyond their ramparts, dwindled from disease, and, bringing no benefit, could be considered nonexistent in the tally of Caucasian forces. The appearance of an enemy fleet in the Black Sea forced a hasty withdrawal of these troops and the destruction of fortifications that had cost so much effort, money, and lives. The ultimate result of significant efforts in Western Caucasus from 1830 to 1839 was merely that in the eastern mountains, almost forgotten during this time, muridism spread to such an extent that it established a state threatening to drive us from the Caucasus. From 1839 to 1859, for twenty years, all efforts were directed against Shamil. Western Caucasus, except for the coastal line troops absorbed by garrisons, was left to local Cossack forces and a few battalions. When the new Caucasian division was formed in 1846, only one infantry regiment remained in the Kuban region.

For lack of troops for expeditions, from 1840, this part of the region resorted to the system of settling forward lines, whose modest results soon proved far more positive than the noisy and fruitless campaigns of the previous period. By moving with a definite purpose, thus able to accurately select the necessary means, gradually occupying positions not too distant from our operational base, we gave the enemy no chance of success and risked no major losses; yet we steadily advanced. Over time, a camp turned into a stanitsa (Cossack settlement), which could later defend itself. When several stanitsas grew in one direction, they formed a forward military line; the occupied part of the region became Russian. This was also the historical expansion of the Russian people, led always by Cossacks, who gifted the state nine-tenths of its territory, from the Oka to the Black Sea, Syr Darya, and Amur, but now directed and supported by the government. Establishing stanitsas on enemy land required a special detachment each time, and the military resources of the Kuban region were limited in the 1840s and early 1850s, so progress was slow. In 1840, the settlement of the Labinsk Line began, significantly shortening our cordons and securing a vast area populated by semi-subdued societies. By the time Prince Baryatinsky was appointed commander-in-chief, this part of the region was not yet fully settled: but 15 stanitsas had been established, and a new Labinsk Cossack brigade, consisting of two regiments, was formed. Allow me a brief digression. Our press has repeatedly stated that forming new Cossacks today is impossible, that it could only happen organically in earlier times, and that government measures in this case produce only armed peasants, not true Cossacks. Clearly, those who say this are unfamiliar with those who currently most deserve the name of Cossacks—the Line Cossacks. I mention this in connection with the aforementioned new Labinsk brigade and another new one, the Sunzhensk, not to speak of the most recently settled regiments, which are still too new. Both these brigades grew before our eyes. Their core consisted of Line Cossacks, selected by lot from old regiments whose population had exceeded the designated proportion; but a much larger part of the settlers were married soldiers, state peasants, and various unsettled people seeking a new way of life; the Line Cossacks served only as the leaven, without which, as is known, bread does not rise. Within a few years, the new Cossacks became exemplary. No amount of effort can turn a Western European into a Cossack. French officers sent by their government to the Caucasus to study our cordon lines for application in Algeria admitted that such a system was inapplicable there, that a Frenchman could not endure such a life and lacked the spark from which a Cossack soul is forged. Even Poles stationed over the steppe did not become Cossacks. But the Russian character still retains so much of the nomadic, daring spirit, is so drawn to bold adventures, so akin to wide spaces and free rein, that a Russian who wanders to one of our frontiers awakens as a Cossack. Russians do not go to tame wild fields alone, like Americans in the Far West; our nature is communal, we live in swarms; but these swarms are ready to go to the ends of the earth and, acting collectively, instantly bring Russia into the most alien and hostile land. Russia’s wings would be clipped if the source of its Cossack spirit dried up. We still face too many nomadic hordes and vast spaces where future Russian provinces slumber, like an infant in its mother’s womb. Fortunately, true Cossacks still emerge on Russia’s frontiers. The Sunzhensk and Labinsk Cossacks have not only become universally daring and spirited horsemen but, as the true test of a combat-ready force, have developed a distinct appearance, recognizable to the experienced eye, and a unique character among other Line regiments, both in peaceful life and martial habits. The Sunzhensk and Labinsk are now true-blooded Cossacks. Some Line regiments surpass them in one aspect or another, but none outdo them in the sum of military qualities. Returning to the subject. From the annexation of the Trans-Kuban region to Russia under the 1829 treaty until 1856, we advanced only from the Kuban to the Laba, occupying two-thirds of this river’s course. From 1856, progress accelerated, but it still resembled preparatory work. While the war in Eastern Caucasus absorbed the army’s available forces, the Trans-Kuban region had to manage with local resources and focus only on establishing a solid foundation for future decisive actions. To occupy the Kuban region, called the Right Wing, the 19th Infantry Division was formed; additionally, there were five Line battalions and Cossack troops. These limited forces had to be divided into three parts to carry out three operations required for future plans. Operations began simultaneously in the fall of 1857 at both ends and in the center of the Trans-Kuban region: given the vastness of the military theater, several starting points had to be prepared. All three operations were completed by 1860, coinciding with the conquest of Eastern Caucasus, when the army’s main forces concentrated on the Kuban.

The eastern detachment, split into several columns, opened the foothill strip between the Kuban and Laba with roads, settled it with stanitsas forming the new Urupsk Cossack brigade, and through a series of military actions forced the small Abkhaz tribes nestled in the mountains behind this brigade, at the sources of the two Zelenchuks, Urup, and Laba, to submit. Most of these newly subdued mountaineers, who had constantly harassed the Labinsk Line from the rear, then left for Turkey. Our lines between the Laba and Kuban thus formed a tightly enclosed, internally secure triangle, from which an offensive could be launched without further concern for the rear.

The central detachment, under General Kozlovsky’s command, moved from the lower Laba to the Maikop area, where the Belaya River emerges from the foothills, and established a fortified headquarters for the Kuban Infantry Regiment, right before the heart of the Abadzekh population. The mountaineers resisted fiercely; this enterprise cost us significant losses. However, controlling Maikop later allowed us, bypassing many preparatory actions, to bring the war directly into Abadzekh land, the most powerful Circassian tribe.

The western detachment, called the Adagum, advanced from the lower Kuban. Through continuous actions winter and summer for three years, this detachment seized the line from the Kuban to Novorossiysk Bay, along the Adagum River and Neberdzhai Gorge, thus cutting off the Natukhais, confined in the corner between the Kuban and the sea, from their Shapsug neighbors. Two devastating winter expeditions broke the resistance of this isolated tribe. In January 1860, the Natukhais submitted. Additionally, during this period, the Bzhedukhs, previously considered semi-peaceful but siding with the enemy at the start of the Eastern War, were subdued. Their pacification greatly eased the defense of the Middle Kuban Line. When Eastern Caucasus fell, we had three solid bases in Western Caucasus from which to undertake the conquest of the unsubdued land: the Labinsk Line in the east, the Adagum Line in the west, and Maikop in the center.

To reinforce the Kuban region’s troops, 16.5 rifle battalions, all dragoon regiments, and later 8 battalions of the reserve Caucasian division were moved from Eastern Caucasus and Transcaucasia. Subsequently, 4 rifle battalions were recalled from the Kuban region to restless Chechnya, but the remaining 8 battalions of the reserve division replaced them. The troops remained at this strength until the end of 1863.

Concentrating troops and preparing the vast material resources needed for the scale of planned operations required time. Preparations could not be completed before the following year. Until then, the war had to continue with existing resources. In the fall of 1859, General Filipson, replacing General Kozlovsky as commander of the Kuban region’s troops, advanced from the Labinsk Line to the upper Fars (between the Laba and Belaya). Shamil’s fall had already had an effect, if not on the mass of Trans-Kuban mountaineers, then on their more astute leaders, especially Mehmet-Amin. The Abadzekhs were not so intimidated as to seek salvation in unconditional submission, but naturally wished to avoid the impending blows, if only temporarily, to prepare for defense and coordinate with neighbors. Added to this were Mehmet-Amin’s personal difficulties, mentioned earlier. He saw the fragility of his seized power, doubted the outcome of a struggle that had crushed even Shamil, and feared for his considerable wealth. Mehmet-Amin had little trouble persuading the elders to negotiate a truce with the Russians, which, without obliging the Abadzekhs to anything significant, would halt the impending offensive; another question is how advantageous it was for us to accept submission from the Abadzekhs on terms they dictated.

Nevertheless, the commander of the troops agreed to these burdensome conditions, which, in exchange for forced inaction and an indefinite delay in pacifying the Caucasus, offered only nominal submission. On November 20, 1859, in the Homasty area, General Filipson accepted the oath of allegiance from Mehmet-Amin and the Abadzekh elders on the following terms (summarized briefly but in their original wording):

The Abadzekhs swear eternal loyalty to the Russian emperor.

They undertake the obligations:

1. To obey the authorities appointed over them.
2. To refrain from banditry within Russia’s borders and to expose those guilty of it.
3. Not to participate in hostile actions against Russians with unsubdued tribes.
4. Not to harbor disloyal individuals.
5. To return Russian fugitives.

They provide several hostages. (This last measure had long been abandoned in the Caucasus as ineffective.)

They secure for themselves the rights:

1. Inviolability of faith and free travel to holy places.
2. Permanent exemption from all taxes, conscription duties, and conversion to Cossack status.
3. Those who wish may serve in Russia, assured that their service will be rewarded.
4. The rights of all Abadzekh social classes remain inviolable.
5. The land remains their property forever, and no part of it will be taken for stanitsas.
6. Serfs remain in their masters’ possession, and if any escape, Russian authorities must return them.
7. The Abadzekhs are allowed to establish governance according to their ancient customs; a special Russian overseer will be appointed for them.
8. This overseer may intervene in public affairs only if he detects treasonous actions or receives complaints against the council of elders governing them.

The treaty said nothing about the thousands of Russian captives and fugitives in Abadzekh land.

The terms concluded with the Abadzekhs were described in the oath document as a mercy General Filipson granted them on his own behalf. Negotiations lasted only three days. The commander-in-chief received a report of the treaty’s conclusion along with the already signed oath document.

Clearly, in this treaty, the Abadzekhs’ submission was merely a title; the other terms showed no sign of submissiveness. One could doubt whether even such lenient conditions would be honored by the Abadzekhs, whether, contrary to all their societal norms, they would consider themselves bound by Mehmet-Amin’s and a few elders’ signatures. The commander of the troops argued that even a superficial pacification of this people would ease the conquest of the region by securing the Labinsk Line, allowing all forces to focus on the unsubdued Shapsugs. But such a plan could not form the basis for systematic operations. It was hard to expect the Abadzekhs to remain indifferent spectators to the destruction of their neighbors, only to later surrender unconditionally to the victor’s mercy; their uprising during a war based on trust in their submission would force a sudden and extremely difficult shift of our military and supply base from the lower Kuban to the Laba, abandoning all progress made during the war. This happened even without an Abadzekh uprising, as soon as a rational plan of action was implemented. Advancing while exposing a flank to a numerous tribe that could suddenly turn hostile was entirely un-military. Finally, conquering the eastern Black Sea coast, the war’s main goal, would be unthinkable with an untouched Abadzekh force, armed and standing in the rear.

As long as the Caucasus was fought in this manner—neglecting strategic considerations, tackling secondary matters while bypassing the primary, relying solely on tactical superiority, and advancing without regard for obstacles left in the rear and on the flanks—the Caucasus remained unconquerable. This truth had long been recognized by the mass of troops operating in Eastern Caucasus. The Kuban region, at that time, still lived by old traditions.

From any perspective, the November 20 treaty was only a burden and a two-year delay for us. But concluding the Abadzekh treaty was one thing, and rejecting it after it was made was another. At that moment, the inconvenience of nullifying the agreed terms far outweighed the disadvantage of recognizing the exaggerated rights it granted the Abadzekhs. First, rejecting a solemnly concluded treaty, signed by the commander of the troops, even if he exceeded his authority, meant permanently losing the mountaineers’ trust. Second, it would not have been honest to renounce the oath of allegiance just sworn by the Abadzekhs and force them to fight; such conduct, though justified by circumstances, would inevitably cause great perplexity in Russia. (The French government once faced a similar situation: Marshal Bugeaud, the conqueror of Algeria, then a mere general and governor of Oran, concluded a treaty with the fledgling Abd al-Qadir, much like the Abadzekh one. The government was highly displeased but ratified it.) Third, one could not entirely dismiss the treaty’s sole benefit: ending the role Mehmet-Amin had played in the Trans-Kuban region and further dividing the mountaineers he led. Finally, and most importantly, the treaty’s drawbacks did not affect the present moment. The plan for conquering the western mountains, later executed with such rare consistency, was still a project; its execution, the field marshal intended to entrust to Count Evdokimov, who was then occupied with organizing the newly subdued Chechnya. Preparations for a strong offensive were far from complete. There was no need to rush into war; the task could be eased until it was placed in the capable hands of a proven commander with all resources ready. The commander-in-chief deemed it better not to reject the concluded terms and instead turn the active troops against the Shapsugs for the time being. The original conquest plan was not altered, but its execution was deferred. One could calmly wait for the Abadzekhs to break the terms themselves, meanwhile using their inaction to strike the Shapsugs as hard as possible, without attaching too much importance to this operation, treating it as temporary.

(Note: General Filipson published an objection in the Moscow Gazette to this letter immediately after its printing. Unfortunately, I cannot change a single word of what I’ve written, as it is not only true but known to the 200,000-strong army and the entire region as well as to me. The Abadzekhs never submitted but concluded terms with the commander of the troops that were advantageous to them and burdensome to us, delaying the conquest of the Caucasus by two years, which could have been disastrous had war broken out in 1863, as was widely expected. The Abadzekhs, in the old Caucasian phrase, “made peace,” i.e., ceased open warfare against us; in this way, Shamil was “pacified” several times, of course, only on paper; such treaties, called maslagats, have long become proverbial. In reality, the Abadzekhs were in no way subject to Russian authority, as will be clear from the following brief facts: 1) They did not allow a single Russian into their land, least of all the overseer appointed to them. 2) They did not permit even the chief of the Caucasian army’s Main Staff to approach the border and fired at him. 3) Their land remained, as before, a haven for our deserters, Turkish emissaries, and various European vagrants. 4) After the treaty, General Filipson’s adjutant and later a topographer, sent to survey a small border piece of the “subdued” land, could only pass through disguised, via forest trails, and escorted by bribed scouts. 5) A year and a half later, a delegation of Abadzekh elders, which I personally accompanied to Tiflis, firmly told the supreme authorities that their people could not yield an inch beyond the terms offered to and accepted by General Filipson. 6) During the emperor’s visit to the Kuban region, Abadzekh elders personally presented the same terms to the mightiest monarch in the world, our great sovereign, adding a request that Russians clear the entire region up to the Kuban and Laba; they did not even respond to demands to return our captives and fugitives. It is unlikely the Abadzekhs were more compliant with General Filipson than during this great occasion, if the above facts left any room for doubt.

General Filipson tries to prove the possibility of conquering the Trans-Kuban region based on his proposed plan—i.e., bypassing the Abadzekhs—by claiming that Shapsug detachments later crossed the mountains via his intended routes, whereas what happened was the exact opposite: the Abadzekhs were first broken, enabling the safe movement of Shapsug detachments to the sea. Such reasoning could prove anything.

His reference to the field marshal’s approval is true only to the extent that the plan for conquering Western Caucasus, formed at the same time, did not even consider the November 20 treaty or the supposed Abadzekh submission.

Finally, what was the point of the bloody war against the Abadzekhs, which decided Western Caucasus’s fate, if the submission of November 20, 1859, was anything more than paper?

The conquest plan did not even account for it. Why fight the entire Trans-Kuban population if we could fight only half? One of two things: either Prince Baryatinsky’s plans, the plans and feats of the Grand Duke and Count Evdokimov, supported by the conscious conviction of an entire army, were driven by insatiable ambition that valued Russian blood at nothing; or the Abadzekhs never truly submitted and had to be forced to do so. A series of clear facts and General Filipson’s baseless assertions cannot stand on equal footing. I would gladly have skipped this episode if possible; but the supposed Abadzekh submission weighed on our affairs in the Caucasus for two years, shaping all our actions during that time. I could not write a fantastical history.

I include this footnote only for readers entirely unfamiliar with the Caucasus. Polemics can concern opinions, not facts, which those interested can verify in the Military Journal or ask the hundred thousand Russian troops operating in the Trans-Kuban region, if the great state measure of the Abadzekh war is not proof enough to decide who is right.)

At the site where the treaty was concluded, in the Khamkety area, a fortification was built, later of considerable strategic importance. The Abadzekhs complained about its occupation as a treaty violation but did not obstruct the work.

Operations against the Shapsugs continued for several months until Count Evdokimov’s appointment as commander of the Kuban region’s troops, yielding little fruit. Of the numerous operations in this period, only the opening of the area from Ekaterinodar to the mountains along the Afips and Shebsh, with the establishment of the Grigoryevskoye and Dmitriyevskoye fortifications, remained a lasting result. Several clearings were cut in Shapsug land, but their systematic connection into a single line, opening a path along the foothills from the Adagum to the Shebsh, was achieved only in the winter of 1860–1861 under Count Evdokimov by the detachments of Generals Kartsev (now chief of the army’s Main Staff) and Prince Mirsky.

The Abadzekhs’ behavior during this time was ambiguous, though not hostile; nonetheless, it became clear that no further plans could be based on their nominal submission. In the first months after the treaty, the Abadzekhs indeed restrained their bandits, their influence also curbed the small Adyghe tribes between the Laba and Belaya, and both our lines—Upper Kuban and Labinsk—became much calmer. But gradually, the Trans-Kubans returned to their habits, and banditry intensified, especially from the smaller tribes, though the Abadzekhs insisted these were included in the treaty; Abadzekhs also began appearing in Shapsug bands. Moreover, even officially, the Abadzekh elders showed that they considered restraining bandits the only binding treaty clause. They closed their side to us, admitting no Russians without exception, not even the appointed overseer; they allowed no interference in their public affairs; meanwhile, they continued to harbor, as before, all manner of people hostile to us—our fugitives, Turkish emissaries, and European adventurers. Demanding concessions from the elders would have been futile; they could not control their people.

In September 1860, General-Adjutant Count Evdokimov was appointed commander of the Kuban region’s troops, and the plan for conquering and settling Western Caucasus with Russians, later executed, was finalized. The enormity of this enterprise required extensive material preparations, delaying the start of operations for several months. Moreover, we held a strong respect for our given word, which the French or English, dealing with barbarians, would not have hesitated over for five minutes; we awaited an incident that would clearly demonstrate the Abadzekhs’ hostility, unwilling to either fight or submit.

Fifth letter

The goal and method of the planned war were entirely different from those in the conquest of Eastern Caucasus and all previous campaigns. The unique geographical position of the Circassian land on the shore of a European sea, connecting it to the entire world, made it impossible to limit ourselves to subduing its peoples in the usual sense. There was no other way to indisputably secure this land for Russia than to make it truly Russian. Measures suitable for Eastern Caucasus were unfit for Western. The bitter experience of a sixty-year war taught us caution. For a long time, Caucasian authorities limited themselves to taking hostages from mountain tribes and appointing a Russian overseer. It consistently proved that such submission was a mask, more harmful to us than open enmity. Mountain societies swore allegiance to avoid an unequal struggle when our superiority became evident. Then they were called peaceful; their elders received salaries and gifts; but their youth constantly raided our borders alongside overt enemies and aided the unsubdued against us. After every engagement, wounded appeared in peaceful villages from unknown sources. Our administration was always powerless against the collective responsibility that formed the basis of mountain social life. Worst of all, this feigned submission lulled Russian authorities, diverting attention from populations called peaceful but not truly secured to us. Any lapse on our part, any event distracting our forces, always signaled an uprising among the peaceful. Submissive during lulls, when rebellion could be swiftly crushed, they became extremely dangerous in our difficult moments, precisely when their calm was most needed to freely deploy troops. Every uprising, however small, was equally dangerous, like a fire in a gunpowder factory; its limits could not be predicted, or rather, they depended only on our energy; otherwise, every spark would ignite a general blaze. All Caucasian Muslims were bound by one guarantee, permeated through and through, under the name of muridism, with the most incendiary teachings, combining religious fanaticism, mystical Freemasonry, and revolutionary democratism—the fury of early Muslims, 1793, and Carbonarism combined. It was no easy task to restrain the monster of muridism by open force, which still shows undeniable signs of life. With several million people so disposed, the flame of rebellion found combustible material everywhere, so an explosion could be expected at any moment, at any point. You saw from previous letters what it cost us to hold the Caucasus during the Eastern War. A battle-hardened, 280,000-strong army, ready for anything, capable of crushing the entire continent from Egypt to Japan, was rendered null on the scales of European politics by the hostile independence and duplicitous submission of Caucasian populations. Clearly, the mountains had to be conquered once and for all, whatever the cost to us and the native population. The submission of mountaineers left armed amid rocks and forests offered no guarantee for the future without the harshest measures, requiring a constant military presence; otherwise, the first external war could rouse them, restoring the previous situation, which would be all the more dangerous for being unexpected. In the Caucasian mountains, there is hardly a society that has not been peaceful several times and trampled its oath just as often. To achieve a lasting result, a fundamental distinction had to be drawn between pacification and conquest; not only the population but the land serving as their fortress had to be conquered. In this regard, as in everything else, the situation in Western Caucasus was entirely different from Eastern. To begin with, the Lezgins and Chechens were already accustomed to obedience, united into a societal body by Shamil’s authority: the Russian state needed to defeat the imam and take his place to rule these peoples. In Western Caucasus, we had to deal with each individual separately; we would have had to subdue the Trans-Kubans one by one and, while subduing, establish a civil order they did not know. Moreover, the Caspian mountain group lies deep within our domains, far from the border, in a backwater, so to speak. The Lezgin and Chechen populations have nowhere to relocate en masse. The small free land plots along the Terek and in the eastern Stavropol province cannot accommodate a third of the Chechen tribe; around Lezgistan, there isn’t even a patch of unoccupied land. Besides, settling Dagestan with Russians was unthinkable. Only natives can endure the extraordinarily wild nature of this land, exceptional even among Caucasian mountains. Chechnya and Dagestan are not washed by a sea through which a subdued population could gradually leave for other places. Finally, Eastern Caucasus’s geographical position allowed the government to be far more lenient with its populations than with Black Sea coast residents. Dagestan and Chechnya are internal regions, shielded by a wide belt of Russian domains from any hostile incursion; no enemy army will come to incite them. Even during the Eastern War, despite the precarious state of affairs in the region, while we feared Shamil’s ventures against our rear, we had no concern that an external enemy could join hands with him, or he with them: it’s too far from the Black Sea or even the Turkish border to Dagestan. For all these reasons, simple submission of the Lezgins and Chechens sufficed, without requiring mass relocation from their homes, nor could it have been otherwise. However, within limited areas, the need for such relocation was recognized during the conquest of the eastern mountains; in 1858–1859, the pacified population of Greater and Lesser Chechnya was moved from the foothills to the plains where they had lived before. General relocation was prevented by the terrain and unrequired by circumstances. It must also be said that in these mountains, when our forces were divided between Eastern and Western Caucasus, when even the most experienced did not yet believe the mountain war’s end was near, and the plan for the final conquest of the Caucasus was maturing in one man’s mind, the extermination or mass expulsion of mountaineers instead of conquest was still unthinkable. In Eastern Caucasus, we necessarily limited ourselves to occupying the conquered land; we established reasonable governance over the mountaineers, tailored to the country’s and Russian authority’s actual needs; we drew the best youth into our service, began opening the mountains with good roads, occupying key strategic points with strong fortifications, leaving it to time, beneficial labor, emerging needs, and constant contact with civilization to tame the mountaineers’ wild nature and turn them into peaceful, industrious people. This system leads to the goal surely, though slowly; it requires a sustained military presence to crush any rebellion attempt immediately. But in Eastern Caucasus’s mountains, it is the only feasible approach. Some population segments may still need to be relocated, but only as a localized measure confined to specific areas. The bulk of the population will always remain in their ancestral lands. Western Caucasus was an entirely different matter. The same commander-in-chief, Prince Baryatinsky, who settled for subduing the Lezgins and Chechens, set the goal in Western Caucasus as the unconditional expulsion of Circassians from their mountain strongholds. The new commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, fully shared this view and achieved a completeness of result perhaps never seen before. The fundamental difference between Eastern and Western Caucasus was that the Circassians, due to their coastal position, could not be securely bound to Russia while remaining in their native land. It would have required a bloody, prolonged, extremely costly war only to subject the Trans-Kubans to Russian governance during peacetime, with the certainty that the first shot in the Black Sea would rouse them against us, nullifying all prior efforts. Re-educating a people is a centuries-long task, and in conquering the Caucasus, time was the critical factor, perhaps given to us in short measure, perhaps for the last time, to fulfill one of Russian history’s vital tasks. It would have been reckless to hope to reshape the sentiments of nearly half a million barbaric, historically independent, historically hostile, armed people, protected by impregnable terrain and constantly exposed to the full array of interests hostile to Russia. After England’s denial of our right to rule the Caucasus, after Turkey’s countless intrigues and attempts, after the open favoritism shown to the Circassians by the French embassy in Constantinople, we could not count on time. Subduing the mountaineers to Russian authority would not have shielded us from foreign intrigues in this region. We could not monitor every village, and even in peacetime, the mountaineers would only nominally be Russian subjects. In wartime, the Kuban region would become an open gate for enemy invasion into the heart of the Caucasus. At the first rumor of war, we would have to place the Caucasian army on the same footing as in 1855, seeing it just as paralyzed and powerless as then. Such a conquest was not worth the great sacrifices required to achieve the goal; it was not worth any sacrifice. We needed to turn the eastern Black Sea coast into Russian land and thus clear the coast of mountaineers. To execute this plan, other masses of the Trans-Kuban population blocking access to the coastal mountaineers had to be broken and displaced. Naturally, a war waged for such a purpose could provoke desperate resistance, requiring doubled energy from us—we had to destroy a significant part of the Trans-Kuban population to force the rest to unconditionally lay down arms—but victory would settle everything at once. Undertaking this colossal task, Count Evdokimov said: “The first philanthropy is to our own; I consider myself entitled to grant the mountaineers only what remains after satisfying the last of Russian interests.” And so it was done. The expulsion of mountaineers from their strongholds and the settlement of Western Caucasus with Russians—this was the war’s plan for the final four years. Russian settlement was not only to crown the region’s conquest but to serve as a primary means of conquest; rows of stanitsas were to advance directly behind the troops. Combat regiments were to drive the enemy from their strongholds, build roads, construct stanitsa defenses, and, if time allowed, even houses for settlers; Cossack settlers were to defend the new Russian land behind their barricades and till fields still stained with fresh blood. Every step forward was to be accompanied by establishing new stanitsas. The mountaineers immediately understood the danger posed by this new approach. They said: “A fortification is a stone thrown into a field; wind and rain will wash it away; a stanitsa is a plant that roots into the ground and gradually envelops the field.” Undoubtedly, executing the plan of general settlement in a country under the fire of a fierce enemy involved immense difficulties, which could only be overcome with flawless foresight. With the annual plan of military operations and the vastness of the land to be wrested from the enemy, it was necessary to calculate, a year in advance, the proportional population, its sources, the right balance of elements to ensure the seeds of strong military development, the material resources needed for settlement, financial means, the method of movement across vast and dangerous spaces, provisions, medical aid—all on an unprecedented scale for tens of thousands of souls at once. The untamed land had to be developed in advance according to the planned population distribution. Upon settlers’ arrival, they needed vigilant protection from the enemy for a considerable time, as one could not travel between stanitsas without a column or work fields without cover. Meeting the most vital needs in new settlements had to be constantly aligned with military operations and troop movements. The task was gigantic and demanded unceasing care. The regulation on settling the Western Caucasus foothills was imperially approved on May 10, 1862; but its execution began a year earlier. Before this, the Line regiments in the Kuban region were merged with the Black Sea Cossacks into a single force called the Kuban Cossack Host. Initially, it was planned to advance entire regiments’ populations from rear lines long removed from the enemy. Besides special aid to settlers, compensation was provided for immovable property they could not sell privately within a set period. In earlier times, forward lines were settled this way: a Cossack regiment was ordered to move forward by imperial decree. In 1861, the 1st Khopersky Regiment and some Black Sea Host stanitsas were designated for relocation. To expedite matters, the government’s will was announced to those slated for resettlement before the imperial decree was issued. For Cossacks who had lived in their places for decades, mass relocation seemed ruinous, despite its military advantages and generous government compensation; they resisted, citing the absence of the tsar’s signature. In the 1st Khopersky Regiment and the Black Sea region, unrest arose, though of very different natures. Among the Khopersky, it was a purely popular movement, noisy and short-lived; in the Black Sea region, resistance was a calculated plan, artificially incited by the upper class. In this region, instigators of sudden opposition to new orders were those profiting from old abuses, unwilling to leave the closed, almost isolated status of the former Black Sea Host. The unrest subsided quickly on its own without major measures; the benefits offered to settlers were substantial, and the necessity of relocation to complete a cause dear to every Caucasian was so evident that it had to open the Cossacks’ eyes. Within weeks, they could have been moved to their designated places without resistance. Nevertheless, a halt occurred due to the government’s magnanimous decision, secured by the Caucasian authorities themselves on behalf of the dissenters. The local authority, vested with near-full power and all means to swiftly suppress fleeting defiance without inflating its significance to the government, saw that in some respects, the dissenters were right, though not all their motives were pure—and voluntarily admitted its error. However advantageous the proposed measure was militarily, however urgent the relocation, and though the dissenters submitted unconditionally after a few days, mass relocation was postponed until a new regulation could account for the private interests overlooked by the previous decree. Recognizing the validity of some complaints, the dissenters were no longer deemed criminal; apart from a few temporary arrests, no punishments followed. History abounds with scenes of strength yielding to a greater force it carelessly provoked; but rarely do we see strength voluntarily admitting its mistake—a trait no European nation is accustomed to. Under the new regulation, it was decided to settle the Trans-Kuban region from its northern limits to the Main Range and the Mokupse River, flowing into the Black Sea. The disposition of Ubykh and Abazin lands south of this line was not included in the initial project, whose execution already seemed, and rightly so, immense. The designated area was divided into two parts: the southern strip, in the foothills and mountains, 1.36 million dessiatines suitable for farming, was allocated for Cossacks; the northern strip, bordering the Kuban and Laba, 1.014 million dessiatines, for mountaineers to be displaced to the plains. The project reasonably assumed, as events later proved, that many mountaineers would refuse to submit to Russian authority and leave for Turkey. Those remaining, settled in designated open areas, could no longer pose a threat. The vast lands newly allocated to Cossacks surpassed the empire’s best in fertility and abundance of resources. The land allotment was 20 to 30 dessiatines per person. Settling the Cossack-designated land required 17,000 families, over 100,000 souls of both sexes. Their recruitment was distributed as follows: Kuban Host: 12,400 families

Azov Host: 800 families

Don Host: 1,200 families

State peasants: 2,000 families

Married soldiers of the Caucasian army: 600 families

Total: 17,000 families

Additionally, 170 officer Cossack families and an unspecified number of volunteers, and if needed, even the entire Azov Host, as there was ample excess land. Settlement was to occur over several years, initially planned for six. Each year, based on our military success, a set number of settlers was to be designated for the following year and sent out in spring, arriving by May 15. It was decided to first call for volunteers and only then assign the remaining families by lot from the Cossack population, with the right to hire substitutes. Immovable property settlers could not sell privately was acquired by the Host at valuation. Aid to settlers was allocated from the State Treasury and the Kuban Host’s capital. Combined, it amounted to, including armament aid: Officer family: 435 rubles, 71.5 kopecks

Cossack family: 156 rubles, 42.86 kopecks

Peasant family: 122 rubles, 14.5 kopecks

Soldier family: 121 rubles, 43.14 kopecks

Additionally, 6 rubles 40 kopecks per person was granted for public funds; settlers received travel rations; each stanitsa church received 10,000 rubles. Volunteers settling received, beyond the public land allotment, full hereditary ownership of up to 50 dessiatines for officers and 10 for Cossacks. New Cossacks received state provisions and allowance money at the highest rate for three years. After the first year’s field work, every 300 families had to provide a mounted hundred (143 riders), funded by the government but limited to internal service in their district during the grace period. To cover resettlement costs, 8.045 million rubles were allocated from the State Treasury and 2.094 million from the Host’s capital, totaling 10.139 million rubles. The state’s expenditure on settling the Trans-Kuban region was to benefit from savings from the immediate reduction of the Caucasian army, excluding only troops operating in Western Caucasus. Besides reduced costs following the eastern mountains’ conquest, a significant army reduction occurred in 1862; however, this briefly eased the State Treasury, as the army had to be restored to wartime footing the next year, like the empire’s other forces. With the Caucasus’s final conquest, these costs paid for themselves. The Host’s capital was to be replenished by selling excess rear-line lands into private ownership after population relocation. As noted, the regulation on foothill settlement became law in 1862, but resettlement began earlier on the outlined principles. The planned settlement of hostile land was, of course, only a conquest project, which alone decided nothing. Everything depended on execution. The newly devised strategic plan sharply differed from the system of previous campaigns. The vast Trans-Kuban region is bisected lengthwise, from Elbrus to near Anapa, by the Main Caucasian Range, which, for half its length from the Kuban’s sources to the Pshish’s, is a chain of snowy peaks, impassable eight months a year; but from the Pshish’s source, it lowers into a steep forested ridge. The range’s opposite slopes—northern, descending to the Kuban, and southern, falling to the sea—formed, while the land was enemy-held, two entirely separate operational spheres, like two distinct worlds with no contact. It suffices to say that the nearest route to transfer troops from the northern to the southern slope lies hundreds of versts eastward in Central Caucasus. With our current Black Sea Fleet’s size, these two theaters could not be linked by sea. Thus, to avoid splitting forces, all available military resources were concentrated in the Kuban region; in the Kutaisi governor-generalship, which included the Circassian lands of the southern slope, only a small force was left for defensive actions. An offensive from the south was to gain significance later, toward the war’s end, as initially planned. The vast region, over 300 versts long and up to 150 wide in places, belonging to the mountaineers between the range and the Kuban, divides lengthwise into two distinct strips: the one near the range is very mountainous, though not fully so; the one closer to the Kuban is a plain; both are covered with dense but not continuous forest, often interspersed with fields. The region is crossed widthwise, from mountains to Kuban, by numerous rivers, many impassable without bridges. The main rivers, from east: Belaya with its left tributaries Kurdzhips and Pshekha, then Pshish, Psekups, Afips with its Shebsh tributary, Il, Khabl, and Adagum. The Main Range spans several dozen versts wide, gradually rising in ridges from the north and descending to the sea in steep gorges from the south. Dense Circassian populations occupied the plains and foothills; the mountains themselves had few residents. This fact created a fundamental difference between the war in Eastern Caucasus, where the mountains themselves had to be taken by force, and Western, where the population had to be driven primarily from the foothills. Tactically, this eased matters little: the main difficulty in mountain warfare lies not in nature’s grandeur but in small obstacles—forests, rocks, ravines, and lack of roads; but strategically, operations could be coordinated more easily in a region where we chose road directions, unlike in Dagestan, where we had to climb the only stone crevice serving as a path; it required only understanding the terrain accurately and using it aptly, as was done in the war’s final years. The mountains themselves posed obstacles as great, if not greater, as elsewhere in the Caucasus; but fortunately, the battlefield lay not in the mountains themselves. In Eastern Caucasus, our operational lines always radiated from the periphery to the center, dictated by the region’s topography. In previous Western Caucasus campaigns, our detachments also operated perpendicularly to their main bases—the Kuban and Laba. But in this region, such a direction was not forced by the terrain and was in no way advantageous. The primary task of the Circassian war was to drive the enemy population from the forested plain and hilly foothills into the mountains, where they could not sustain themselves long, and then shift our operational base to the mountain base. This was done in Eastern Caucasus, where all efforts first focused on conquering the Chechen plain and foothills. But the Trans-Kuban theater was far larger than Chechnya; its length and width made it impossible to traverse at once. Our detachments, no matter how numerous, moving perpendicularly from the Kuban and Labinsk Lines to the mountains, could not advance as a solid wall, mutually supporting each other. Each operated separately, relying only on itself, and thus was exposed; its rear and flanks were at the enemy’s mercy. An expedition, instead of systematically carving away the enemy’s land, resembled past invasions that never yielded results. Cleared paths remained, but the unsubdued mountaineers, as if mocking us, sowed grain in them, and in their rear, before our cordon lines, continued to maintain farmsteads. The Trans-Kuban region’s vastness prevented establishing a military line along the entire mountain base from the Laba to Novorossiysk, cutting off the plain from the unsubdued mountaineers. Directing operations perpendicularly from the Kuban and Laba to the mountains to eventually block every gorge’s exit to the plain would have been an immense, endless task. The commander-in-chief adopted a nearly opposite plan, initially proposed by Count Evdokimov—to advance not perpendicularly to the Main Range but parallel to it; to move gradually from one Kuban tributary to the next, slicing the enemy’s land lengthwise. Two separate operations were to be directed: one main, from the Laba westward; the other secondary, from the sea eastward, converging toward each other. Our eastern base was the Cossack-settled Labinsk Line; in the west, the firmly held Adagum Line from the Kuban to the sea. Advancing from both toward the next nearest Kuban tributaries significantly reduced the enemy’s land from both ends. The second step reduced it further; the converging troops were to meet in the heart of the mountain lands. By concentrating all active forces on a transverse line along one Kuban tributary, relatively short, we could hold it firmly, shielding the area behind as with a wall, if not from petty bandits, then from mass enemy incursions. The native population could not remain in a land strip enclosed by our cordons on both sides; its settlement then proceeded unhindered. In this approach, all advantages were ours. The newly occupied line restrained the displaced enemy masses; those remaining in mountain hideouts could only commit banditry, militarily negligible; in short, we advanced with sure steps. Only one question arose. Moving from the Laba along the Trans-Kuban region, from one transverse line to another, we inevitably pressed against the Main Range. Beyond it, toward the sea, lived other numerous, hostile tribes. Did the Main Range reliably shield our flank and rear from their assault? Until then, the peoples of the southern and northern slopes, though in constant contact, were entirely separate worlds in our eyes. But here, we had to determine infallibly whether the Main Range truly separated southern and northern mountaineers; if it later proved not a real barrier, the entire operation would rest on a false foundation; our transverse lines would be so vulnerable to being outflanked that they could not support further actions. Most likely, such a turn was to be feared; but Count Evdokimov, deeply knowing the mountaineers’ character, believed otherwise, as we shall see, on what grounds. Events proved him entirely correct. The offensive was to begin in spring 1861. The settlement project was already outlined, troops concentrated, and material supplies from the previous year’s lower Kuban operations moved to the Laba. The field marshal oversaw all details of the planned campaign, despite a severe illness afflicting him for months. By spring’s start, his condition worsened. By the emperor’s firm will, in March 1861, Prince Baryatinsky went abroad for treatment; but his health did not recover for long. Nevertheless, the operation proceeded; the foundations were laid. The conquest was later completed by another commander-in-chief, in the same spirit and with the same energy that marked this extraordinary series of campaigns since 1856; despite the change in commanders, there was no interruption, not only in the operations’ internal coherence but even in their external conduct. In the field marshal’s absence, General-Adjutant Prince Orbeliani remained army commander. The Kuban region’s command was in Count Evdokimov’s hands.

Sixth letter

By the spring of 1861, everything was ready for the immediate commencement of military operations. The truce with the Abadzekhs had not yet been broken on our side; however, the behavior of this people, in all fairness, absolved us of our obligations. Before his departure, Prince Baryatinsky authorized demanding unconditional submission from the Abadzekhs and, in case of refusal—which was hardly in doubt—to bring war into their territory. According to the plan, the operations of 1861 were to cover, from the east, the entire region between the Laba and Belaya rivers, which was intended to be settled with Cossack stanitsas; and from the west, the area beyond the Adagum Line and the Natukhai District, where Cossack populations were also to be introduced. The sudden resistance of the Cossacks designated for resettlement, which I mentioned in the previous letter, abruptly halted the plan’s execution. In the adopted system of operations, conquest and settlement were tightly intertwined, meant to proceed hand in hand. While the regulations for Cossack relocation were being revised, only a small number of settlers, chosen by lot in the old manner, could be utilized; thus, it was necessary to pause the advance. The entire summer of 1861 passed under the influence of this unfavorable circumstance, but it was not fruitless. Count Evdokimov skillfully used this period of forced inactivity to his advantage. Unable to initiate operations immediately, he resolved not to show even a hint of displeasure toward the Abadzekhs until winter, taking advantage of their inaction to clear the approaches to their territory without fighting, while completing many important tasks made significantly easier by the lull. Since the number of settlers chosen by lot that year was insufficient to establish a forward line along the Belaya, they were assigned to reinforce existing lines with new stanitsas. Most of the Laba detachment’s troops were directed to this purpose. As a result, the Kuban Line extended to the river’s exit from the mountain gorge, and the Laba Line was prolonged into the mountains themselves; its outermost stanitsa, Psemenskaya, marked the first attempt to settle Russians in the mountains. Additionally, the upper part of the Laba Line was protected by three stanitsas established on the hostile left bank, temporarily pacified only by the shaky treaty with the Abadzekhs. Strengthening the forward lines allowed for a significant reduction in the cordons guarding the security of the Kuban region.

The area between the Laba and Belaya, once densely populated, had become largely deserted in recent years, serving as a grazing ground for the mountaineers. On the right bank of the Belaya, significant populations remained only near the Abadzekhs, under their protection: the Mokhoshevs and Yegerukhayevs in the local thickets upstream from Maikop, and the mountain communities of Dakhovskoe and Khamysheyskoe higher up, at the river’s sources. Several small, highly predatory, and warlike groups, among whom the Besleneyevs and fugitive Kabardians held the foremost place, lived scattered in the upper foothill region of this area and in the neighboring mountains up to the Urup. After the Abadzekh treaty, these groups nominally submitted but continued incessant petty raids. With the start of military actions against the Abadzekhs, these smaller tribes occupying the intermediate region would have been a strong support for the enemy and a significant obstacle for us; however, without Abadzekh backing, they were too weak to resist, especially individually. Knowing that the Abadzekhs were eager to prolong the status quo, which was so advantageous to them, and would not openly start a war without direct provocation from us, Count Evdokimov, ignoring their protests, began expelling these intermediate tribes one by one from their strongholds. Our detachments positioned themselves around the area occupied by a defiant community, cleared the forest cover, and then suddenly surrounded the mountaineers, offering them the choice to settle behind our lines or flee beyond the mountains. After such an example, their neighbors submitted without resistance. Thus, the Besleneyevs were driven to the Urup and from there fled to Turkey; the free Kabardians and Temirgoys were settled within sight of the Laba Line; the Barakays, Bagovs, and other Abazin tribes were pushed to the southern side of the snowy ridge. By autumn, except for the Mokhoshevs, Yegerukhayevs, and Dakhovtsy, who formed a single entity with the Abadzekhs and lived in fortified positions along the Belaya, the region between this river and the Laba was entirely cleared of mountaineers. During the autumn period, similar bloodless actions yielded even more significant gains, which I will describe later.

The excellent quality of the lands beyond the Laba, once known, attracted many volunteers—settlers from the same Cossacks who had resisted in the spring. This opened the possibility of expanding operations. Volunteers populated three more stanitsas, completing the establishment of military lines from the Laba to Maikop and Khamkety.

Seeing our settlements steadily approaching their border, the Abadzekhs repeatedly threatened to intervene on behalf of their neighbors but took no action. In August, Count Evdokimov advanced from Khamkety to the Mamryukogoy tract, a site revered in ancient pagan traditions, right on the Abadzekh frontier. Their elders requested a pause to send a preliminary delegation to Tiflis. Nothing came of this delegation; the Abadzekh representatives reiterated the same terms as the previous treaty. It was clear that the elders could offer no more, that the people did not grasp their situation and would not permit concessions.

In other detachments positioned against the Shapsugs, the war continued. From the sea, it was decided to occupy the Natukhai District for stanitsas and proceed with Cossack settlement of Shapsug land from river to river along the foothills. The Natukhais were allocated lands along the Kuban. The disruption of the year’s operational plan due to the unexpected Cossack resistance affected this region as well: for the time being, there were no settlers for the Natukhai District. While awaiting the new regulations, the Adagum detachment, under General Babich (who had long commanded this unit, secured the Adagum Line, and subdued the Natukhais), spent the summer surveying and ravaging Shapsug territory. He established a fortified camp at Abin, 15 versts beyond the Adagum Line, on the site of a fort abandoned by us at the start of the Eastern War. From this point, intended as a base for future operations, a series of movements was undertaken across the plain and into the mountains toward Gelendzhik. During the last campaign, our troops passed through the ruins of the Nikolaevsky fort, captured by the mountaineers in 1840 and unseen by Russians since. A burial rite was performed over the garrison’s remains, 21 years after their heroic death. In the winter of 1861–1862, the Adagum detachment finally began establishing stanitsas in Natukhai land, for which settlers had already been designated and were awaiting spring.

The Shapsug detachment, occupying the Grigoryevskoe fort, established reliable communication with Ekaterinodar that summer. The Grigoryevskoe fort served no significant operational purpose at the time and thus held little military value. However, it was retained for the future as a central point between the detachments operating from the east and west of the Kuban region. Later, it would gain considerable importance as a staging point for crossing into the coastal Shapsug lands.

In the autumn of 1861, the Emperor undertook a journey through the Kuban region. For the Caucasian troops, always far from the sovereign’s presence and enduring superhuman labors in endless campaigns, the Emperor’s visit and his exceptionally gracious, heartfelt demeanor with the Caucasian army doubled their strength. Moreover, this imperial journey held great significance for the region’s ultimate fate. Though the need to end the internal war in the Caucasus once and for all was keenly felt, the immense sacrifices tied to the proposed plan of expelling the mountain populations from their strongholds, and even the apparent cruelty of such a measure, dampened the resolve to carry it out. The Emperor personally confirmed on the ground that no other measure would suffice. Both submissive and defiant mountaineers were informed of His Majesty’s imminent arrival, and all tribes, even the most distant, sent deputies. They were not opposed to submission under a treaty like the Abadzekhs’, which would shield them from our incursions while leaving their actions unrestricted. At the camp near Khamkety, the Emperor graciously received the mountain deputies, promising mercy and protection, offering to preserve their customs and property, exemption from duties, and generous land exchanges for any needed for our military lines, with the sole condition of immediately surrendering all Russian captives and deserters. The mountain elders responded evasively to this last demand; it was clear they could not comply, that they lacked the power to compel their people. The next day, the elders presented a petition. Expressing in the most submissive terms their desire to come under Russian rule, they concluded with a request—delivered directly to the hands of the world’s mightiest monarch—“not to forget to immediately withdraw Russian troops beyond the Kuban and Laba” and dismantle our fortresses. What negotiations were possible with such people?

The most prominent figure among the mountaineers, Karabatyir Zanoko, son of Sefer Pasha, informed General Babich that he would not come to pay respects to the Emperor out of regard for his person; he could not allow himself to offer empty words to the Russian Emperor on behalf of a people lacking any public authority, for whom no one could answer. After the Emperor’s departure, operations resumed immediately. The Abadzekhs were still left untouched, allowed to fire the first shot. Taking advantage of the waning but not yet expired truce, Count Evdokimov moved to cut off the Mokhoshevs and Yegerukhayevs, who lived in the dense thickets on the right bank of the Belaya, from the Abadzekhs. A clearing had already been cut along the northern edge of their territory, and a military line established from the Laba to Maikop. In autumn and winter, troops cleared a wide path behind the Mokhoshev thicket from Khamkety to Maikop, establishing four stanitsas linked by a cordon line; thus, the forward tribes were severed from the main mountain population. Work continued despite Abadzekh threats, who still hesitated. Finally, in January, the Abadzekhs launched their first attack on our troops after a 26-month truce; but by then, the deed was done. The forested stronghold where the warlike Mokhoshevs and Yegerukhayevs, the Abadzekhs’ strongest bulwark, resided was encircled by military lines and was, so to speak, in our hands.

From spring 1861 to spring 1862, 35 stanitsas were established in the Kuban region, with a population of 5,482 families, forming four cavalry regiments.

The year 1861 was not marked by brilliant military feats; shots rang out only in the Adagum detachment and along the cordon lines, constantly harassed by raiders. Yet, during this year, a solid foundation was laid for all subsequent successes. Without fighting, with axes and shovels in hand, we occupied and settled a vast area that would not have been yielded freely under other circumstances, bringing us face-to-face with the Abadzekhs; at their first shot, we could carry the war into the heart of their land. To the east, everything was already ours. A significant stretch of the northern slope of the ridge, from the Urup nearly to the Belaya, lay empty after the expulsion of the small tribes living there; only a few farmsteads remained hidden in the most inaccessible spots. The populations beyond the mountains began to grow anxious: it was no longer people but only snows that shielded them from the north.

Of course, the peaceful conquests of 1861 are notable only as a skillful use of adverse circumstances. The savings were in lives; in all other respects, the successes of this year were as costly as they would have been in the bloodiest war. To keep the Abadzekhs observing the truce for so long, we had to remain in constant readiness to repel them instantly. The Laba detachment’s troops bore all the hardships of combat service without its glory and thus welcomed the start of war with joy.

It was decided to advance as swiftly as possible, building nothing but stanitsas and posts, abandoning old headquarters that consumed manpower, moving all troops and their staffs to the forward lines, and pushing onward at the first opportunity—in short, not wasting a day beyond the time needed for the most urgent tasks. Count Evdokimov spared neither himself, his commanders, nor his soldiers, declaring at the outset that no one would rest until the war was over, and he followed through on this program to the letter.

On January 3, 1862, the Abadzekhs launched their first attack on our troops. From that day, all endeavors had to be carried out by open force; however, the enemy initially acted hesitantly. The full fury of the war erupted only in early spring.

The first priority was to seize the enemy’s last strongholds on the Belaya—the Mokhoshev forests and the mountainous Dakhovskaya Valley—and establish control over both banks of the river. While deep snows still lay, all preparatory work was completed: a military line was established from Maikop to Khamkety, bypassing the Mokhoshevs; clearings were begun from Khamkety into the mountains toward Dakho and another up the Belaya to the Stone Bridge, the main Abadzekh tribunal. A crossing was secured over the Belaya at Khansky Ford, below Maikop. Additionally, a separate detachment under Kuban ataman General Ivanov was sent from the Kuban up the Pshish for a dual purpose: to divert the enemy away from where blows were being prepared and to cut a path along the Pshish for future operations.

From the first days of March, a fierce war erupted. The Abadzekhs were yet to face the new troops gathered at their borders, drawn from the most battle-hardened, experienced regiments of the Caucasian army, far superior in military prowess to the recently formed units they had previously encountered. For their first move, they resolved to breach the line established around the Mokhoshevs. A large host of mountaineers, sworn not to retreat, seized the most impassable section of this line, known as Seven Knees. That same day, the Apsheron rifle battalion, burdened with a large convoy, arrived there. The desperate clash at Seven Knees could have served as an omen of the fate awaiting the Abadzekhs. They kept their oath, refusing to retreat, but the battalion still broke through their vastly superior numbers with bayonets, as a cannonball would have torn through them. The attempt to rupture our line failed.

Following this engagement, our columns surged into the Mokhoshev forests from all directions, destroying villages and hacking through the densest parts of the thicket. Cut off from the Abadzekhs, the Mokhoshevs and Yegerukhayevs could not hold out long and gradually fled across the Belaya. By the end of March, the vast Mokhoshev forest, spanning up to 40 versts across, was cleared of the enemy.

The detachment that crossed the Belaya below Maikop was long delayed by the raging river’s floods, which swept away bridges; supplying it was fraught with immense difficulties. Nevertheless, the position was held, and the forest on the left bank was cleared.

By April, the preliminary clearings toward Dakho were completed; meanwhile, the snow had melted on the high mountains guarding the valley. At the end of the month, Count Evdokimov advanced on Dakho, a place hitherto unseen by Russians and almost unknown. The Abadzekhs amassed large forces to defend this naturally formidable position. But since the start of the conquest, from the Chechen campaigns, the mountaineers had never managed to give Count Evdokimov a true, stubborn battle in a pre-chosen position; he always succeeded in falling upon them like snow from an unexpected direction, swiftly deciding the matter with bold, precisely calculated maneuvers. For the mountaineers, being defeated without a proper fight was the greatest humiliation. So it happened here. Regrettably, I am not writing a military treatise and cannot detail the fascinating maneuvers that decided so many engagements in this war; space permits me only to outline the general sequence of operations. After three days of resistance in the most impassable terrain, the host defending Dakho, constantly outmaneuvered by our movements, unable to deliver a decisive stand, and finally outflanked, scattered. The Dakhovskaya Valley was occupied; a stanitsa was established in its depths; two roads were cut into the valley—one along the detachment’s route, the other down the Belaya to the Stone Bridge. With the capture of this last point, direct communication by river opened between Dakho and Maikop. The mountaineers, however, could still fire on this latter road, now the main route to Dakho, from the heights of the cliffs for some time.

By June 1, the entire course of the Belaya, on both banks, was under our control. Only at its very sources, above Dakho, lingered the small Khamyshki community.

This series of rapid successes deeply unsettled not only the Abadzekhs but the entire Kuban population. The mountaineers saw that the war was being waged differently than before and understood that, unless they found a way to halt the advance, their fate would soon be sealed. Their first instinct was to unite for a concerted defense. The Abadzekhs turned to their neighbors for aid. From this moment, the Ubykhs took the stage, assuming leadership in mountain affairs. The Kutaisi governor-general, N.P. Kolyubakin (now a senator), captured this mood in his report to the army commander. He wrote:

“The operations of the troops under General-Adjutant Count Evdokimov, characterized by an energy and consistency born not of fleeting enthusiasm but of a deeply considered and firmly adopted plan, have convinced the unsubdued mountaineers that the final hour of their independence is near. Yet, justice must be given to our adversaries: the Circassians have not lost their composure or courage; on the contrary, they have resolved to defend their autonomy not only with arms but through internal reforms and vigorous appeals to foreign powers. While the primary burden of armed struggle has inevitably fallen on the Abadzekhs, the Ubykhs, no less fervent in the common cause, have taken the initiative in directing administrative and diplomatic measures aligned with their resolve. Thus, they first turned attention to their internal order, seeking to replace debilitating feuds with strong centralization, a form of societal organization that, in times of great peril, has always emerged everywhere. To restore aristocratic authority and safeguard independence, all Circassians were invited to a council. They unanimously resolved to form an extraordinary alliance and adhere to it, maintaining internal order and punishing defectors. In Circassian territory, a mejlis of 15 members was established, named the ‘Great and Free Assembly.’ The appearance of Count Evdokimov’s troops at the foot of the Main Ridge, just two marches from Ubykh land, prompted an extraordinary session of the mejlis. It was decided: a) to send an embassy to Constantinople, Paris, and London to request intervention, funding the mission with a tax on the entire population; b) to proclaim a call for holy war and dispatch several thousand warriors to Abadzekh territory for the summer; c) to compel the Jigets (southeast of the Ubykhs), who have shown lukewarm commitment to the cause, to contribute. By late May and early June, the mejlis’s resolutions were enacted. The embassy to foreign powers was dispatched. Four to five thousand Ubykhs, led by seasoned commanders, were sent to aid the Abadzekhs. An armed attempt was made to force the Jigets to provide their contingent.”

Despite the mountaineers’ efforts, forming a general alliance proved insurmountably difficult. It was easy for tribal elders to gather and agree on joint action, and not hard to rouse the entire population to fight, shame the indifferent, or execute traitors. A fervent popular will, stirred to enthusiasm, substituted for formal law. But how could the assembled masses be governed, how could utterly free men be made to obey, and whom should they obey? How could a system be established within each tribe to truly command its forces? We, raised in societies organized since time immemorial, cannot fathom the weight of centuries-old habits on our collective actions. The Circassians experienced what it means for a social contract, even one driven by the greatest enthusiasm, to lack the anchor of historical tradition. Their will was adrift. All wished to obey, all demanded leaders, but ten men could not agree unanimously on whom to follow, to what extent, or in what matters. In our Russian view, the Ubykh Haji-Gagamuk-Berzek briefly played the role of chief leader; but it soon became clear that his fruitless efforts led nowhere. Banners of commanders were seen in the mountaineers’ ranks; they came at us in dense throngs; yet each mountaineer fought, died, or left the field as he pleased. So it continued until the end. The history of the final struggle and fall of this bravest people remained devoid of prominent names. Likely, this was better for the mountaineers. No unity of command could have saved them from our blows; it would only have increased the already ample toll of victims.

During the approaching summer, the advance had to slow by necessity. The time for haymaking and gathering fodder for winter operations arrived, halving the ranks of active troops. Moreover, securing the occupied region required extensive work: clearing paths, linking stanitsas with roads, fortifying these roads with posts, and completing bridges and crossings. The last remnants of mountaineers on the northern slope of the ridge from the Urup to the Belaya also had to be driven out. Diverting a significant number of troops to these tasks and to guard the forward lines, the remaining forces undertook only one summer operation in the eastern Kuban region: to open the forested plain between the Belaya and Pshish. A line drawn west from Maikop roughly marks the foot of the foothills and the edge of the plain stretching between the Kuban and the first heights. This plain, cloaked in dark forests and densely populated by Abadzekhs, needed to be occupied up to the Pshish’s banks during the summer, so that by autumn, the war could be carried into the foothills and the entire Psekha River, flowing between the Pshish and Belaya, could be seized.

In summer, the Kuban region’s troops were divided into five detachments: the Adagum was to act against the Shapsugs; the Shebsh was to secure the central line between Grigoryevskoe and Ekaterinodar; the Pshish and Psekha detachments were assigned to the aforementioned offensive operation; the Dakho detachment was tasked with protecting the newly settled region from the upper Belaya and the Stanovoy Ridge. The mountaineers also gathered in large numbers. Though their attempts at a general alliance did not unite them fully, they sparked intense enthusiasm, putting the entire region under arms. To divert the mountaineers’ attention from the planned advance, two devastating raids were conducted in May and early June into the foothills around Maikop, home to a dense Abadzekh population.

In June, the Psekha detachment, under General Tikhotsky, launched an offensive beyond the Belaya from Khansky Ford, secured earlier in spring. A large host of mountaineers boldly engaged them, only to be defeated and flee, leaving 600 dead; but victory in the Caucasian war did not spare us from fighting daily, hourly. Dogged by the enemy, the detachment reached the Psekha, a major western tributary of the Belaya, and established a stanitsa with a redoubt on its bank. Building the stanitsa, clearing the surrounding area, and harvesting hay, all amid constant skirmishes, took three and a half months. Meanwhile, the Pshish detachment, led by General Kukharanko (whose remarkable fate illustrates the nature of the Caucasian war better than long tales—having brilliantly executed his expedition, he traveled to Stavropol for new orders, only to be captured by mountaineers on a long-safe postal road and die weeks later, tortured in a pit serving as their prison), advanced along a spring-cut path and founded the first stanitsa of the new Pshish Line, 25 versts from the Kuban. As yet unconnected, these two detachments marked only the endpoints of the planned conquest.

The summer operations were meant to end with this expedition. Suddenly, the situation shifted dramatically. The mountaineers launched a powerful counteroffensive against our occupied territory.

While the Abadzekhs kept our troops occupied with ceaseless skirmishes on the forward lines, the coastal mountaineers, led by the Ubykhs, surged into our flank and rear through the Main Ridge’s passes, thawed enough by summer sun. Troops and settlers were stunned to face masses of unfamiliar foes, wearing pointed felt caps instead of papakhas, coming from a direction where no enemy was expected. The mountain folk furiously struck the rear of our forward lines, attacking stanitsas and forts. One group stormed the Khamkety fort, seizing the walled suburb; the brave garrison barely held the stronghold. Another group assaulted Psemenskaya stanitsa, anchoring the southern Laba Line and occupied by infantry alongside residents, taking it by storm and carrying off half the inhabitants; arriving troops struggled to save the rest. Days later, the mountaineers struck Psemenskaya again, completing its ruin. They then unsuccessfully stormed Bagovskaya stanitsa, held by a strong garrison. The Shapsugs, vying with their neighbors in the common cause, attacked from their side. Large hosts assaulted the Grigoryevskoe and Dmitrievskoe forts, hoping to clear the heart of their land of Russians. The Grigoryevskoe assault was repelled easily, but Dmitrievskoe’s fate hung by a thread until aid arrived. Later, the Sh派遣ugs invaded the Natukhai District, stormed Bakanskaya stanitsa, but were repelled, suffering heavy losses in retreat; success here could have sparked a dangerous uprising among the recently pacified Natukhais behind the Adagum Line. Beyond mass assaults, the mountaineers scattered in raiding parties across the newly settled land. Though the cordon lines were reinforced with three dragoon regiments, several Cossack units, and ample infantry, these proved insufficient against the raiders’ numbers and audacity, clearly unable to withstand such pressure long. The dragoons’ and Cossacks’ horses were exhausted, unable to gallop. There was fear that maintaining the cordons would ruin the cavalry before further successes could shift the situation. Moreover, widespread fevers, the perennial scourge of Caucasian campaigns in late summer, so weakened the troops that companies and squadrons barely mustered fifty men; soldiers served only on fever-free days. There were too few to properly hold the forward lines. Yet, despite the cordons’ astonishing, exhausting efforts, even at full strength, they could not shield the settlements behind them, constantly besieged by enemies lurking in every ravine and wood. Without government provisions, these settlements faced starvation, as fieldwork and travel between stanitsas were nearly halted by raiders. Despair spread among the settlers. Shapsug raids grew so bold that major attacks struck stanitsas guarded by the Kuban, as in the 1820s.

The situation seemed dire, and it can now be said that it rattled nearly everyone. Strong resistance and bold raids from the mountaineers were expected, but something worse emerged: the Main Ridge, along which we were to advance, offered no protection to our flank and rear from the mountain folk. If this proved constant, it could upend the entire conquest plan. The further we advanced, settling the land, the larger the rear area vulnerable to attack became; our forward lines hung exposed, always open to being outflanked. We would need to leave so many troops to guard the rear that soon there would be none to press forward. This seemed the outcome of the situation by summer 1862.

Yet, while most were indeed shaken, Count Evdokimov remained unshaken. War has two sides—material and moral—so intertwined that no sound military decision can be made without seeing both clearly. Any strategy professor could be a commander if war were fought between abstract forces. In living reality, the question “What can be done?” follows “With whom and against whom?”—not just in terms of national character but the state of affairs and spirit of the moment, for people are not always true to themselves. Count Evdokimov knew the mountaineers thoroughly and struck with certainty. He knew their zeal would not last, that it would falter against adversity, and that the Ubykhs and other mountain folk would not act on the unfamiliar northern side of the ridge without strong Abadzekh support. With the means to hold his position until new snows closed the passes, Count Evdokimov vowed to reduce the Abadzekhs by the next summer to a state where their aid would be unreliable; thus, the mountain folk, preoccupied with their own survival, would no longer threaten our rear. This came to pass exactly as foreseen. A noted Caucasian general, a clever and capable soldier who then disagreed with Evdokimov, later told me: “It’s clear how Count Evdokimov waged war skillfully; but I cannot fathom how he climbed into the mountaineer’s soul to know, even then, every phase it would pass through.”

To climb into the enemy’s soul—that is the task of a military leader.

Seventh letter

The period of summer activities lasted until the end of September. The troops building the Psekha and Gabukaevskaya stanitsas remained in position, so from July, our operations in the eastern part of the region took on a purely defensive character, except for a few raids conducted from the forward lines. The incessant attacks by the mountaineers forced us to keep the troops, already burdened with labor and weakened by illness, in constant readiness. But gradually, the enemy’s pressure, consistently repelled, began to wane. Bands of Ubykhs and Akhchipsou still lingered under the passes on the northern side of the ridge, compelling us to remain cautious; however, cooled by a series of failures, the coastal mountaineers only threatened and bided their time. The season was approaching when the first blizzards, very early at such heights, would once again shield our rear with an impassable wall. With the first autumn chill, the troops recovered from fevers; the forest began to shed its leaves (in Caucasian campaigns, except in Dagestan, the forest was the enemy’s main defense. Fighting in skirmish lines, invisible behind dense foliage, the mountaineers could resist with great tenacity. Therefore, we always preferred to launch offensives when the forest was bare). By late September, we could move forward again.

Until the next summer, the plan was to occupy and prepare for settlement the vast foothill region from the Belaya to the Psekha gorge, drive the Circassians from the plain between the Psekha and Pshish, and advance up the latter river. Occupation meant, as before, opening the mountain lands with clearings and roads, expelling the native populations, extending cordon lines, and building stanitsas, whose settlers were to arrive in May to fortified enclosures and, if possible, ready homes.

This operation would be considered complete when the Dakho and Psekha detachments converged on a line drawn from the upper Psekha to the Pshish’s exit from the foothills.

In this way, we would seize half of the Abadzekh lands and advance far westward along the ridge, to the point where the chain of snowy peaks ends and convenient passes open to the southern side.

In late September, we moved forward; command of the troops beyond the Laba was entrusted to General Preobrazhensky.

The Dakho detachment was to advance from the Belaya to the upper Psekha via the Kurdzhips, after first clearing the intermediate region, which would take time. The Psekha detachment made a diversion up the river to distract the mountaineers from its initial moves, then returned to the plain. From then on, it operated throughout the winter, alternating between the Psekha basin and the plain between the Psekha and Pshish. Initially, it moved toward the Pshish detachment, which thereafter ceased to exist separately and merged into its ranks. The combined detachments cut a clearing up the Pshish, establishing a cordon line along it, then bent it toward Psekha stanitsa; thus, the entire plain between the Psekha and Pshish fell into our hands. Next, the detachment operated in the Psekha basin, cutting a path and road up its course. In mid-December, when frosts set in and deep snows filled the gorge, the detachment returned to the plain, drove out the remaining mountain population from the strip of land between the lower Psekha and Pshish, crisscrossed it with roads, and by late January resumed its labors in the Psekha gorge, where it established two new stanitsas. Heavy work in the harshest season and constant, sometimes bloody, clashes with the mountaineers went hand in hand.

Meanwhile, the Dakho detachment, under Colonel Geiman, moved from the Belaya to the Kurdzhips, into the heart of the densest Abadzekh population, built a stanitsa in the river’s valley, and opened direct communication to Maikop. In early November, in the presence of Prince Albert of Prussia, who was visiting the Caucasus, the Dakho detachment’s troops reached the Psekha for the first time. But the time had not yet come to establish a foothold at the river’s headwaters. The detachment returned to the Kurdzhips and, through relentless campaigns throughout November, opened its basin with clearings; after futile attempts at resistance, the mountain population had to abandon their most cherished places and retreat to the Psekha or higher, into barren cliffs at the river’s sources. In December, operations on the Kurdzhips were halted. The detachment regrouped in Dakho to seize the mountaineers’ last stronghold on the Belaya, the Khamysheyskaya basin, nestled just below the pass. This valley had served the previous summer as the main hideout for mountain bands striking our rear. Nothing could be more inaccessible than this fearsome terrain at the Belaya’s sources, yet the expedition succeeded completely; our troops outmaneuvered the mountaineers, descending from cliffs where no path existed even for those who had made their home below the Caucasian pass. In Khamyshki, a small detachment was later formed to build a fort and develop a permanent road through the Belaya gorge. The remaining troops returned to the Kurdzhips and in January resumed pursuing the mountaineers hiding in its upper reaches. Through January and February, our columns thoroughly cleared the river’s basin, up to places where no human could dwell. They then marched from the Kurdzhips to the Psekha, establishing a stanitsa halfway along the route.

While these operations unfolded in the eastern Kuban region, the Adagum detachment, operating from the west by the sea, after winter and spring work in the Natukhai District, advanced further into Shapsug territory. After once more ravaging the plain from Abin to Khabl, where displaced mountaineers kept returning from their gorges for fieldwork, General Babich founded a stanitsa at Khabl’s exit from the mountains. Work on the stanitsa and a direct road to the Kuban continued until October, interspersed with frequent raids by both sides. This was the war’s fiercest period, when mountaineers surged into our territory in droves. In autumn, the Adagum detachment began relentless pursuit of the mountaineers. Through October and November, the Shapsug population was wholly driven from the mountain expanses—on the northern slope to Antkhyr, and on the southern, along the coast, to Mzybi. In the following winter months, the Shapsugs were also pushed out of the long strip of forested foothills between Antkhyr and Shebsh. Some fled further, partly to mountain gorges, partly across the ridge to their kin; others resettled with us; only scattered farmsteads remained in the foothills, tucked in the most remote spots. At the same time, a road up the Khabl was begun. From this side, we could already glimpse the prospect of operations beyond the mountains.

In the east, crossing the mountains was still far off. But in the area entirely cleared of the enemy, between the Kuban and Khodz, preliminary work could begin on a road through the pass. A road from the Laba to the sea, if nature could be tamed, would be a vital strategic route. The Emperor himself emphasized the special importance of this endeavor. In fulfillment of His Majesty’s command, from October 1862, a Malolaba detachment was formed to develop the mountain gorges in this direction.

That autumn, Field Marshal Prince Baryatinsky, returning to the Caucasus, was again halted by severe illness. During his twenty-month absence, he could only follow events from afar and outline the broadest measures. Nevertheless, his vision was realized as far as time allowed, though this was a difficult era for the Caucasus, especially at the start. Beyond managing the newly subdued eastern mountaineers and other vast regions, the conquest of Western Caucasus brought many labors and concerns to the army commander and his chief of staff. Temporary administration is far harder than permanent. Yet, despite obstacles that seemed to arise deliberately, progress continued unabated.

Appointed commander-in-chief of the Caucasian army and viceroy of the Caucasus, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich arrived in the Caucasus in mid-February.

The Grand Duke found affairs in Western Caucasus in good order but still far from a final resolution. The mountaineers’ resistance was at its peak; no one could yet predict how the coming summer would unfold. The Abadzekhs, driven from the Belaya and Kurdzhips, still held firm between the Psekha and Shebsh; every step forward cost us dearly. Masses of Shapsugs were retreating toward the mountains and partly beyond the ridge, but the forested thickets of the foothills remained dotted with scattered farmsteads. If clearing the plain demanded such effort—if we had to race back and forth across it to destroy, time and again, dwellings that kept reappearing in the same spots—one can imagine how difficult it was to achieve the complete, irreversible expulsion of the mountaineers from barely passable terrain where every stone fought for them. The higher we pushed the mountaineer masses toward the ridge, the stronger they could hold in their lofty refuges, as long as they had means to survive. Behind them lay an untouched, numerous, and warlike coastal population, incited and aided by all who hated Russia, supported—sometimes with brazen openness—by powerful European governments. Europe did not believe the Caucasian drama would end soon; the more persistently we acted, the more unitedly Russia’s foes worked against us. In Trebizond, a veritable “Circassian aid committee” formed, comprising all European consuls except the Prussian. Its soul, almost its acknowledged head, was the Pole Podaevsky, dragoman of the French consulate. Every adventurer wishing to aid the Circassians against “Russian barbarism” was equipped and dispatched at the expense of anonymous benefactors. Powder, munitions, uniforms, rifled cannons, and more were sent to the eastern coast on their account. With growing zeal for the Circassians and the circumstances of 1864, it was easy to expect these same unknown benefactors would not hesitate to supply the beleaguered Circassian population with substantial provisions. This support would have been far more effective than sending adventurers, who only schemed, boasted, and hid from our bullets, such that none were ever wounded. We had to prepare for anything and not rely too heavily on hunger as a means to break the mountaineers’ resistance. The closer we drove the mountain population to the coast, the easier it was for our rivals to extend a helping hand; the southern slope’s terrain was even more impregnable than the northern; and in 1863, naval operations could not be counted on. In short, behind the numerous, courageous mountain population still holding firm on the northern slope stood an untouched reserve of coastal mountaineers—confident, morally and materially backed by Turkey and nearly all of Europe. Our adversaries clearly vowed not to repeat the mistake they made with an independent Caucasus during the Eastern War. Meanwhile, the entire Muslim population of the Caucasus was stirred by fiery religious preaching and frequent promises of imminent aid. Over this scene loomed 1863, with the Polish rebellion, diplomatic notes, and general armament. Such was the situation Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich inherited in early spring 1863.

The conquest of Western Caucasus had to be completed swiftly, before interference could thwart us. All recent efforts were directed to this end.

The Grand Duke made no changes to the war plan established under Prince Baryatinsky, which had since guided all operations in Western Caucasus. This plan was undoubtedly the best under the circumstances; it resolved the matter more surely and completely than any other. Nevertheless, almost everyone in the Caucasus expected changes, and some, not yet convinced by results, even desired them. Voices for and against were nearly equal, with perhaps more of the latter. The Grand Duke faced not merely following an established order but choosing—and he chose the best. I know of no instance where a change in commander-in-chief did not bring major shifts in the character of operations. It is exceedingly difficult to adopt another’s vision and develop it consistently: this, too, is a form of creation; few vested with authority will follow another’s path simply because it is superior. The Grand Duke embraced another’s plan because it was the surest for the task ahead and carried it to a stunningly complete result. I dare express the view of all my comrades—this decision reflects both sound military judgment and a noble heart.

But while operations continued under the established plan, their execution accelerated markedly. By early 1863, much had been achieved, yet no one dreamed of an imminent end to the war, especially since its goal was not subjugation but the expulsion of the Circassians from the mountains, promising desperate resistance. Meanwhile, external events allowed no delay. From the moment of His Highness’s appointment as commander-in-chief, the advance proceeded with extraordinary speed, operation following operation without pause, until the last remnants of the mountaineers, pinned against the sea, laid down their arms.

The first campaign against the mountaineers, personally led by the Grand Duke, took place in late February and early March, from the Khabl and Psekha rivers, parallel to the Kuban but far from it, through a forested, trackless region, much of which Russian troops had never traversed. On February 25, the Grand Duke set out from the Khabl stanitsa’s entrenchment along a clearing at the mountains’ base. The next day, the Adagum detachment was joined by the Shebsh detachment on the Ubin River. Skirmishes with the Shapsugs continued throughout the march. On the 27th, moving from Grigoryevskoe fort, the detachments penetrated an area where the enemy still held firm. The Abadzekhs relieved the Shapsugs and tried to halt the advance, but, attacked by cavalry, they were routed. On the 28th, leaving part of the troops to guard the convoy, which hindered movement in this remote region, His Highness advanced with the rest to the Psekups River. The Abadzekhs occupied a strong position across the route in a forested ravine, but, suddenly outflanked by cavalry, they were caught in crossfire and suffered a heavy defeat; the field was strewn with their dead. At the Psekups, part of the Psekha detachment awaited, having arrived lightly equipped via a circuitous route. The Grand Duke released the troops that had accompanied him and continued through enemy territory with the Psekha detachment. On March 1, the troops marched in constant combat: the right flank and cavalry twice had to dislodge mountaineers from the forest edges. On March 2, crossing the Pshish opposite the newly founded Bzhedukhovskaya stanitsa loomed. The Abadzekhs gathered in force, hoping to avenge the previous day’s defeat; they built a strong barricade parallel to the causeway the detachment had to traverse. The barricade was taken in a swift assault, but fierce fighting raged in the forest throughout the crossing. On March 3, moving from Bzhedukhovskaya to Psekha stanitsa, the march ended with another cavalry charge, again inflicting significant losses on the enemy. Upon reaching Psekha stanitsa, the troops were back on Russian soil. After this brief but bloody expedition—especially for the mountaineers, who suffered heavily several times—the detachments returned to their positions.

Through March and April, the Psekha detachment built new stanitsas on the Pshish and in the Psekha gorge, cutting roads between them. Meanwhile, the Dakho detachment carved a new upper clearing from the Kurdzhips to the Psekha and began constructing a stanitsa on the river’s upper reaches. The operational zones of the two detachments drew so close that they could connect. The troops beyond the Laba were then commanded by General Zotov. Under him, the Psekha detachment advanced from its district’s edge up the Psekha gorge, through lands still held by the enemy. The mountaineers living along the Psekha, increasingly hemmed in daily, resolved to stand firm to prevent the two detachments’ junction. They blocked the gorge with formidable barricades, which did not save them from defeat. The Psekha detachment marched over their bodies and joined the Dakho detachment. The entire Psekha, except its very sources, was in our hands. By May, a cordon line stretched along the river from the Dakho detachment’s position to its lower reaches. Returning from this brief advance, the Psekha detachment continued building stanitsas up the Pshish. Finally, a critical operation was launched to link the military lines of these two rivers directly, completing the series of actions begun the previous autumn. A clearing and road were cut along the Tukh River, a Psekha tributary, to the Khadyzhi tract on the upper Pshish. From Khadyzhi, the detachment fought its way down the river and then to Psekha stanitsa. Our lines encircled a vast region from the Pshish’s mouth to the upper Psekha, and from there via the Kurdzhips’ headwaters to Dakho. The plan set the previous autumn was executed precisely.

After the Grand Duke’s passage, the Adagum detachment drove the enemy population from the forested foothills between the Afips and Shebsh. Roads up the Khabl and Abin through the mountains were developed intensively to open access to the southern slope and coastal Shapsugs by the appointed time. In the long strip of forested foothills from Abin to Shebsh, only village ruins remained. From May, the Adagum detachment, split into columns, established a series of stanitsas from the Adagum to the Il, for the future Abin Cossack regiment.

Summer returned, but it brought none of last year’s difficulties. The relative positions of us and the mountain tribes had changed entirely. The Abadzekhs, bolstered by smaller tribes hiding among them, still stood in force on the northern ridge and showed no inclination to yield, fiercely defending every inch; but their situation grew more desperate daily. Crowded into the narrow space between the upper Psekha and Shebsh, half-homeless after fleeing from across their vast region, they were besieged on three sides by Russian detachments in this last refuge. The Shapsugs, wholly driven from the plain and foothills, partly hid in barren mountain gorges, partly crossed to their coastal kin; unable to establish new livelihoods and having lost the old, they heavily burdened their hosts. Though the operational line of our active detachments from the Laba had doubled in length, exposing a larger rear to coastal mountaineers’ flanking, all passes through the ridge in this rear were in our hands—along the Malaya Laba, Khodz, and Belaya. Most crucially, unease was spreading among the mountain populations. Seeing the steady, unstoppable advance of Russian columns nearing their borders, they began to fear for themselves. The Ubykhs and other mountain folk did not abandon the common cause; they fought bravely alongside the Abadzekhs, but only in their land. Independent actions against our rear, among the stanitsas and forts since erected, no longer crossed their minds. Nothing like the previous summer’s events recurred.

Eighth letter

From my last letter, you saw how the troubling political events of 1863 doubled the Caucasian army’s efforts. From spring, military operations unfolded with extraordinary speed. Yet material needs could not be ignored. With summer’s approach, a significant number of troops had to be allocated for haymaking and to protect settlers—some newly established, others still on the move. The advance was paused, but activity did not wane; it merely shifted direction for the time being. The scale of work completed in this summer period defies belief. So many roads needed finishing, so many stanitsas and bridges built, all while constantly repelling the enemy, and so many supplies transported to various points along dangerous routes open only to armed force, that two and a half months could suffice only with redoubled effort. The work accomplished that summer greatly influenced the subsequent course of military operations. With the completion of lines, stanitsas, and cordons along the Shapsug foothills and the Pshish and Psekha riverbeds, we stood on firm ground deep in enemy territory and could advance to the sea without risk. By late August, the troops were ready to act again.

To end the war on the northern side of the mountains, two tasks remained: to crush the Abadzekhs gathered between the upper Psekha and Shebsh tributaries, and to drive out the multitude of mountaineers hiding in forested gorges along the ridge’s length. These people, scattered by the thousands in the remotest places after the retreat of larger groups, though not a cohesive hostile population, were still dangerous enough that we could not call the region they hid in subdued. These two tasks required entirely different approaches. The first, a serious military endeavor, demanded concentrated action by large forces; the second required splitting troops into many small, mobile detachments to scour every secluded valley in the mountain labyrinth one by one.

The final subjugation of the Abadzekhs was no easy feat, potentially costing much blood and, crucially at that time, much time. The numerous Abadzekh population was crowded into a relatively confined space. If time were as plentiful as in years past, we might have tried starving them into submission. But how could we count on time or engage in a prolonged blockade in 1863? Leaving aside the year’s political events, ever since Europe began openly taking the independent Caucasus under its wing, time had to be excluded from our calculations—especially since a blockade would be a half-measure when the Abadzekhs had open access to the sea.

In direct combat, the doubled population density doubled their defensive strength. Conquering the remaining Abadzekh territory by open force, with systematic advances, clearing every forest, opening every valley, and building stanitsas everywhere, would also take too much precious time. The Abadzekh war was resolved suddenly, with minimal loss, through a brilliant strategic maneuver. Instead of breaking them by force, we outflanked and trapped them, as in a cage.

The Abadzekhs’ remaining territory resembled an elongated trapezoid along the ridge; its sharp angles lay at the lower end on the watershed spur between the Psekups and Sheps, and at the upper end on the ridge itself at the Goitkha Pass, corresponding to the Pshish’s sources. The northern, eastern, and western sides of the trapezoid were hemmed in by our troops. The southern side, formed by the ridge, bordered the coastal Shapsugs, who were already faltering and would soon fall completely under our blows. The Abadzekhs’ main and longstanding support came from the Ubykhs, whose land also tapered to the Goitkha Pass, making it the point of contact between the two peoples.

The Abadzekhs expected an assault into the heart of their land. Instead, all our forces were abruptly turned against the edge of their territory, between the Psekha and Pshish, toward the Goitkha Pass. In late August, the Dakho detachment concentrated between these rivers at the Shekadze stream, and the Psekha detachment at the Khadyzhi fort on the Pshish. Reconnaissance to the Tkhukha peak and intelligence gathered clarified the topography of the upper region and Goitkha Pass, unseen by any of us until then. The operational zone for the two detachments was defined by the Tkhukha’s course. Colonel Geiman, with the Dakho detachment, was tasked with clearing the strip south of this stream between the Psekha and Pshish; the Psekha detachment, under Colonel Grabbe, handled the north. They acted with utmost speed. By October 1, the upper interfluve was opened in all directions, and the native population driven beyond the Pshish; as elsewhere, mountain farmsteads remained in the gorge headwaters. Then, without wasting a day, both detachments converged on Khadyzhi, where a main supply base was set up for the planned operation. The strike had to fall immediately. Yet our enemies were not discouraged; the further we advanced, the fiercer their foreign backers acted. A flood of new adventurers arrived on the eastern coast, where, seeing no Russians, they grew confident our successes were a myth, sustaining this view in Europe, to their advantage. With them came the mountain émigré Ismail Pasha, bringing, among other aid, four rifled cannons. The Ubykhs wrote to the Abadzekhs in a public letter, urging them not to submit, to hold out to the last, promising a swift change in fortunes. Backing words with action, they sent a strong force to their aid. Ismail Pasha informed the Abadzekhs that a detachment of French and Poles with cannons was assembling on the coast to reinforce them, also imploring them to stand firm.

Meanwhile, the combined Psekha and Dakho detachments swiftly advanced up the Pshish to the Goitkha Pass, cutting a clearing through the gorge. The Ubykh host marching to aid the Abadzekhs along this sole road, encountering our detachments, realized where we aimed and rushed to fortify the pass but was preempted: a rapidly deployed flanking column seized the pass on October 9. The detachments then concentrated at this decisive point and immediately began building a temporary fort.

At this time, the Adagum detachment was already beyond the mountains, among the coastal Shapsugs, ravaging their dwellings; the Djuba detachment was advancing there via the Shebsh Pass. It was clear that within a month, this stretch of coast would be fully subdued. The Abadzekhs saw themselves surrounded from the south and, worse, cut off from the Ubykhs. Throughout the war, they had acted in concert with the Ubykhs; now they faced the Russians alone. Moreover, communication was vital for supplying the crowded population, even minimally. As soon as we seized the upper lands between the Pshish and Psekha, their link to the Ubykhs, even before taking the Goitkha Pass, the Abadzekhs grasped their fate and submitted. At the Melgaship tract, in the presence of Count Evdokimov, who personally oversaw these final operations, their elders signed an oath of unconditional surrender. The Abadzekhs were allowed to remain in their lands only until February 1 of the next year, after which they had to move either to the Kuban lowlands or to Turkey. They surrendered exactly four years after the treaty with General Filipson. They had endured two years of the most stubborn war.

The Goitkha Pass was taken in a swift strike; it needed fortifying and linking to rear lines with a reliable, cordon-guarded road. This task, undertaken in early winter at a fearsome height amid brutal weather, occupied both detachments through October and November. The Ubykhs, however, refused to accept the Abadzekhs’ submission as final, hoping to dislodge us from the pass and rekindle their resistance. A strong Ubykh host, with a band of European filibusters and rifled cannons, camped near the pass at Chilips and prepared to build batteries. On November 8, Colonels Grabbe and Geiman stealthily approached their camp and scattered the new allies, though they failed to capture the cannons, hastily carted to the coast. Beyond this clash, the detachments constantly dispatched mobile columns to destroy villages in high mountain valleys and forested gorges along the Pshish and Psekha tributaries. Though the bulk of the Abadzekhs had submitted, some living under the passes in the remotest basins still held out, trusting in their terrain’s strength. These mountaineers drew desperate men and those opposed to peace from across the mountains. As noted before, expelling such scattered settlers posed immense challenges everywhere. To complete this task, the entire Psekha detachment was sent in late November to the upper Pshish basin, burning small villages until December’s unimaginable mountain blizzards forced its withdrawal to Khadyzhi. The Dakho detachment alone finished the Goitkha fort and, for the same purpose, descended to the Psekha’s headwaters. Both detachments’ work and searches continued through January. Meanwhile, a mobile detachment, largely Kabardian militia, scoured the long-occupied region between the Belaya and Psekha, finding many settlements tucked among inaccessible cliffs even there.

In the Psekha basin’s headwaters, two small communities remained unsubdued and hitherto unknown. One, the Tubinskoye, was half-destroyed by General Geiman; heavy blizzards halted the operation. The other, the Khakuchinskoye, small but fiercely hostile to neighbors and occupying a strong position, was bypassed for now. Its minor conquest would have diverted troops from serious enemies, so it was deferred until the region’s general pacification.

While the Abadzekhs were being crushed, the Adagum and Djuba detachments (the latter formed in late August at Grigoryevskoe fort under Kuban ataman Count Elston-Sumarokov) relentlessly pressed the Shapsugs. After cutting a road along the Adyrbey to Gelendzhik and once more clearing gorges behind the newly formed Abin Cossack regiment of scattered mountaineers, the Adagum detachment advanced, building a road, to the coast, reaching Pshada—formerly Novo-Troitskoye fort—by mid-October. We began reoccupying old coastal forts, but not as before; where a Russian soldier’s foot now tread, the land became Russian. Leaving part of the force at Pshada in a fortified camp, General Babich moved parallel to the coast toward Djuba (formerly Tenginskoye fort), where the Djuba detachment, named for its intended goal, was also heading; en route, the Adagum detachment cut a road and burned Shapsug villages. In November, it developed two mountain passes, then moved southwest along the coast, coordinating with the Djuba detachment, and seized the Shapsugo River’s mouth. Throughout, the detachment constantly sent mobile columns that crisscrossed the region, razing countless villages. With the last campaign’s end, the Adagum detachment’s mission was complete; no enemy remained before it, and all was subdued up to the Djuba detachment’s operational zone. In early December, it was disbanded. Its commander, the veteran General Babich, who led troops in this region from the first Russian crossing of the Kuban in 1857 to the final day, earned the right to be called the conqueror of the Shapsugs. He achieved much while sparing his soldiers’ strength and justly won high esteem among the troops.

The Djuba detachment began operations in late August. For a month and a half, until mid-October, it cut a road up the Shebsh through the pass, drove out the population of its basin, and built a stanitsa on its bank. In autumn, when coastal Shapsugs focused solely on the Adagum detachment, Colonel (now General) Levashov, temporarily commanding the Djuba detachment, made a swift raid on Djuba, capturing five cannons from the mountaineers. By November 1, the Shebsh basin’s opening and devastation were complete; upon Count Sumarokov’s return, operations shifted to the southern side. Pressed by both detachments, the Shapsugs retreated deeper into their land but found no refuge; our columns dogged their heels. Driven to desperation, they began surrendering entire villages, which were promptly escorted by troops to settle on the lower Kuban. In mid-November, Count Sumarokov shifted operations to the Shapsugo River’s mouth, previously taken by the Adagum detachment. From this position, he cut a road back, expelling the native population wherever our columns reached. In December, the Djuba detachment marched through the upper reaches of rivers whose lower courses the Adagum detachment already held, burning villages; meanwhile, its detached columns cleared the northern plain’s left Psekups bank. The vast region from the Kuban’s mouth to the Psekups and Shapsugo rivers was ours. Following the war’s guiding rule—securing every step forward immediately—a new cordon line was begun along the Psekups and Shapsugo, from the Kuban to the sea, over 150 versts. This was completed during winter by part of the Djuba detachment’s troops.

The deadline for the Abadzekhs’ eviction approached. Per the agreement, they could stay in their lands only until February 1. From mid-January, Count Evdokimov sent the Psekha detachment into their territory, opening several valleys with clearings; the residents offered no resistance. At the deadline, the Abadzekhs were granted a seven-day grace period to gather belongings; after this, they had to move en masse, with families, either to the allotted lowland territories or to designated Black Sea ports. On February 8, three detachments were sent into Abadzekh lands simultaneously, ordered to burn villages and drive stragglers. The Psekha detachment cleared the area between the Pshish and Marte rivers; the Djuba detachment, from the Marte to the Psekups; the Dakho detachment, the Pshish headwaters. The Abadzekh tribe split nearly evenly: one half headed to the Belaya lowlands to settle; the other to Taman for sea passage to Turkey; several thousand fled to Turkey through free mountain lands. Those not following the main groups faced the fate of prisoners of war. Roughly, about 70,000 Abadzekhs were displaced or fled—half their pre-war population, though bolstered by many smaller tribes that had joined them.

With the Abadzekhs’ departure, the war on the northern side of the mountains could be considered over. The entire region from the Kuban to the ridge was subdued, as was part of the coast up to the Shapsugo River. The coastal Shapsugs, Ubykhs, and Abkhaz tribes south of them remained independent. Subsequent operations in the foothill country took on, if I may say, the character of polishing work done roughly until then. After the mountain masses were displaced—whether retreating before our assaults or leaving by agreement—many stubbornly lingered in the thickets. To expel these remaining Abadzekhs from the Psekups headwaters, units from the Dakho and Djuba detachments continued searches until March 1. From then, the region between the Shebsh and Pshish tributaries, where the Abadzekhs had hidden, was fully cleared; Russian settlers could move in by late spring.

But sweeping the native population entirely from the mountains was nearly as hard as draining the sea. Achieving this required Count Evdokimov’s extraordinary persistence. No sooner were the last Abadzekh remnants expelled than new groups of mountaineers began returning from the coast, where they had gone for passage to Turkey; knowing their land intimately, they scattered to the remotest places, hardest to find. Again, mobile columns had to be sent across the mountains to drive fugitives either to the coast or to designated settlement areas. Searches, with interruptions, continued until mid-summer. It even became necessary to form a special detachment at the Psekups headwaters to block mountaineer fugitives from these hidden spots.

The Psekha detachment was long occupied with similar searches. By then, operations had opened on the southern slope. Initially, it coordinated with troops crossing to the southern side, razing villages beyond the ridge at the Tuapse River’s headwaters. But as mountain roads thawed and the remnants of the Circassian population in the Psekha headwaters, against whom General Geiman had acted in winter, gained access to the plain, it became necessary, for the safety of our settlements, to utterly destroy these bandit nests. In mid-March, General Grabbe’s detachment was recalled to the northern side and, by month’s end, sent to the upper Psekha basin, where it operated until mid-April. It finished destroying the Tubinskoye community, drove its residents from the mountains, along with many scattered settlers, and, circling the ridge’s southern side, returned north via the Belorechensky Pass. Through the rest of spring, the Psekha detachment built a solid road from the upper Pshish to Goitkha, establishing the main link to coastal detachments; then it was disbanded. Some of its troops reinforced other detachments; others were placed under the Kuban ataman to build stanitsas in the desolate land left by the Abadzekhs. With the Psekha detachment’s dissolution, operations on the northern side ended.

The mountaineers suffered a terrible calamity; there’s no denying it, for it could not have been otherwise. They rejected the gracious terms offered personally by the Emperor and proudly accepted the challenge of war. No treaties were possible thereafter, nor was there anyone to negotiate with amid their chaos. The mountaineers resisted with extraordinary tenacity, not only in open battle but even more through the inertia of their masses: they met our blows with a kind of numbness; just as a lone man in the field did not surrender to an entire army but died fighting, so the people, after their villages were razed for the tenth time, clung stubbornly to their places. We could not abandon the conquest of the Caucasus simply because the mountaineers refused to submit. Half had to be destroyed to force the other half to lay down arms. But no more than a tenth of the dead fell by the sword; the rest succumbed to privation and harsh winters spent under blizzards in forests and on bare cliffs. Women and children suffered most. When the mountaineers crowded the coast for departure to Turkey, a glance revealed an unnaturally low proportion of women and children to adult men. During our assaults, many fled alone into the woods; others hid in places no human foot had trod. Mobile detachments found people wholly feral from long solitude. Most such loners perished, but what could be done? I permit myself to repeat a few words from Count Evdokimov on this matter. He once told me: “I wrote to Count Sumarokov, why does he mention frozen bodies littering the roads in every report? Do the Grand Duke and I not know this? But can anyone prevent this calamity?”

With the northern side’s conclusion, all active detachments were to shift to the southern slope.

Ninth letter

The conquest of the coastal mountaineers required special measures. In my fifth letter, I mentioned that the original conquest plan envisioned, once the Kuban region was pacified, launching an offensive from the Kutaisi Governor-Generalship to place the coastal population between two fires. The Caucasian high command kept this idea in view throughout the war. In 1862, when the forward lines in the Kuban region faced temporary difficulties, the notion of immediate parallel operations in Abkhazia arose. But the difficulties soon passed, and sufficient forces for a southern detachment were not yet available; weakening the Kuban troops by recalling units was impossible. In 1863, as our columns increasingly pressed the Abadzekhs and Shapsugs, the idea of simultaneous actions from south and north emerged naturally; when the Abadzekhs submitted, it became reality. Preparations began for the following spring. At that time, conquering the coastal mountaineers from the north alone seemed unlikely to happen quickly. The Shapsug war continued with tenacity and could have dragged on far longer than it did. Everything hinged on the mountaineers’ morale—a shaky calculation! The Ubykhs not only showed no sign of submission but vigorously supported their neighbors, urging them not to make peace; their land became a hub of foreign intrigue. Adventurers flocked there, bringing cannons, military supplies, and more. The Trebizond committee and its discordant patrons worked with doubled zeal. War with the Ubykhs and other mountain folk was no easy task, even after subduing the northern region. Their land was always deemed the most impregnable in the Caucasus. Deep gorges, cloaked in lush but nearly impassable forests, descending steeply from eternal snows to the warm sea, formed an endless labyrinth where every inch was a natural fortress. In this unique terrain lived peoples renowned as the fiercest in the Caucasus. Their numbers were still ample for a stubborn defense of these impregnable places; throngs of refugees from surrounding lands doubled the coastal population. The struggle’s duration depended on their spirit, which showed no sign of breaking. Naturally, doubts arose about provisioning detachments over the snowy ridge as they descended into the coastal region. Thus, as soon as external threats of an immediate European war subsided, a strong expedition from the south, by sea and land, became an obvious necessity. It could only be launched in spring.

By late 1863 and early 1864, due to general mobilization in the empire, three new infantry divisions were formed in the Caucasus, greatly bolstering the Kuban region’s forces. Rifle battalions stationed there since 1859 could be recalled. In spring, the Kutaisi Governor-Generalship amassed nine battalions of the Grenadier Division alongside local troops. Provisions were stockpiled on the coast for immediate sea transport as needed. Black Sea Fleet ships and merchant steamers were ready at a moment’s notice. The Grand Duke, commander-in-chief, personally led the troops designated for southern operations. With these measures, spring could be awaited confidently, certain that no matter the enemy’s resistance, unexpected obstacles, or efforts by our adversaries, by summer 1864, the entire Caucasus would be a subdued Russian province.

The plan against the Ubykhs and their neighbors was ambitious. To crush these warlike peoples’ resistance in the shortest time through simultaneous force, five detachments were to advance concentrically. Two would move from the south: one overland from Gagra to the Bzyb’s headwaters, the other by sea, landing at a central point in Ubykh land. Three were to enter the unsubdued territory from the Kuban region: one from troops operating in Shapsug land, along the coast; another from the Belaya’s headwaters; the third from the Malaya Laba. A sixth detachment from the Bolshaya Laba was considered, but the Labinsky Pass was impassable that season. These five were to encircle the enemy’s land and converge in the center.

Pending spring, operations from the Kuban region continued as planned. Though the Kuban troops faced much material labor—expelling scattered mountaineers from forests, finishing roads, building dozens of stanitsas—this work now occurred in a pacified region, allowing some troops to be diverted for further action. The northern advance never paused. In mid-February, as soon as the Abadzekhs departed, the Dakho and Djuba detachments—concentrated at the Goitkha Pass and Grigoryevskoe fort, respectively—were sent beyond the mountains. They were to operate together from the edge of our conquests to the Tuapse River and seize its course. The goal was to finish the Shapsugs by May to then focus all forces on the Ubykhs and Jigets, but this could not be firmly mandated. The further advance of both detachments, of only local significance, depended on the Tuapse operation’s success.

But then the mountaineers suffered a collapse akin to the French at Waterloo fifty years earlier. Having exhausted their energy in desperate struggle, they lost all resolve in the final moments as fortune turned against them. Here’s how it unfolded.

The Djuba detachment left Grigoryevskoe fort on February 19, crossed the mountains, and advanced, cutting a road and razing villages along the way. By March 4, it reached the Tenginsky post. Meanwhile, the Dakho detachment under General Geiman, with Count Evdokimov present, descended from the Goitkha Pass to Chilips on February 21, where a Ubykh host was defeated the previous year; it too cleared a road and burned villages. Reaching the Tuapse’s course, Count Evdokimov sensed the enemy’s faltering spirit from their weak resistance and, ignoring the mountains and forests, swiftly occupied the Tuapse’s mouth on February 28, site of the former Velyaminovskoye fort. The Shapsug population between the Tuapse and Shapsugo rivers was cut off by this move; some free Shapsug land remained beyond the Tuapse, but this people, exhausted by unbroken war since 1857 and devastating losses in the last winter campaign, saw the sudden appearance of Russian troops in their final refuge’s heart and deemed resistance futile. The day after the detachment reached Velyaminovskoye’s ruins, Shapsug elders came to Count Evdokimov, and the entire coast from the Shapsugo to the Psezuapse River, the border with the Ubykhs, submitted. The Shapsug remnants were ordered to head immediately either to the lower Kuban for settlement or to coastal ports for passage to Turkey. The Djuba detachment, now in pacified land, was sent back and soon disbanded.

Only the Ubykhs and Jigets remained unsubdued, and not for long.

After Count Evdokimov’s departure, General Geiman, left with the detachment on the coast, first secured communications. The route from the Goitkha Pass to the Tuapse’s mouth was traversed but not opened; the Dakho detachment began developing this road. But the need to hasten the eviction of the surrendered Shapsugs, who, like all mountaineers, swore to comply but moved only under open force, soon compelled him to advance to the Psezuapse. By March 18, the Dakho detachment forced the Shapsugs to depart as ordered. Facing no resistance from the Ubykhs, though standing at their border, the enterprising General Geiman crossed the Psezuapse and moved along the coast, then up the Shakhe River. The Ubykhs had long prepared to resist; a large force held a strong position on the Gadlik stream, blocking our advance. On the first day, March 18, General Geiman spotted the enemy, attacked swiftly with three columns, and routed them utterly. Pursuing the fleeing foe, the Dakho detachment occupied the former Golovinskoye fort on the 19th. By the 25th, our troops stood in Sochi, once Navaginskoye fort. At the Dagomys River, Haji-Dagamuk-Berzek, whom I mentioned as briefly seeming a new Shamil in our eyes, arrived at the detachment. The Ubykhs, left alone against the Russians and crushed on the first day of war in their land, lost all hope. Their elders came to General Geiman, declaring submission. With the Ubykhs’ pacification, the smaller tribes around them could no longer resist.

The Caucasus was conquered, but the task of evicting the newly surrendered tribes remained—an operation, as you’ve seen, often far harder than conquest itself, especially for peoples untouched by war’s ravages, living in impregnable, unspoiled terrain, never knowing invasion. Such were the Pskhu, Akhchipsou, Aibga, Jigets, and even most Ubykhs, except the coastal ones our troops had crossed. Settling for their submission without displacing them was unthinkable. We fought the Abadzekhs for three years to reach the coast and clear it of enemies. Mountaineers on the coast meant a new Caucasian war looming at the first cannon shot on the Black Sea. But evicting these newly surrendered from their wild refuges required the same force needed to conquer them without any prior submission.

The Grand Duke, commander-in-chief, arrived in Sochi on April 2. His Highness accepted the submission of the Ubykh and neighboring elders but ordered preparations hastened for the planned expedition with five concentric detachments into the newly surrendered land.

This decision was grounded in serious reasons, later fully justified by events. The Ubykhs and Jigets submitted not to force but to panic—not to the Dakho detachment but to the six that broke the Abadzekhs and Shapsugs, striking terror into their hearts, and to the known preparations for a southern assault. But while the main troops remained beyond the mountains, this impression could fade, and the Dakho detachment’s forces sufficed only to defeat a coastal host if attacked, not to subdue and expel resurgent Ubykhs, Jigets, Akhchipsou, and others. That required a far greater force. Resistance during eviction was certain. Without sufficient strength, a general uprising could erupt, with dangerous consequences. Consider that the Black Sea coast from the Psezuapse to Taman was then crowded with mountaineers awaiting ships to Turkey. These people had lost nearly all possessions but kept their weapons and ammunition, which a mountaineer parts with only in death. Amid their panic, they were docile as sheep, but a spark could ignite these crowds. At that time, and long after until the region’s complete clearing, intense foreign intrigue targeted our Caucasian successes. Though the Turkish government officially agreed to accept Caucasian emigrants and made arrangements, the commander-in-chief knew our “friends” had not abandoned their schemes, pressing Turkey to deny the mountaineers refuge, forcing the crowded coastal population back into the mountains; they were backed by hundreds of European adventurers who fled the eastern coast in haste during General Geiman’s rapid advance. Turkey’s policy was unreliable. If this happened while skirmishes with bandits continued in the Kuban region, the returning mountaineer throngs would pose a major challenge initially. Had we lacked sufficient forces and war flared beyond the Psezuapse, it could have spread across the Caucasus again. Gambling on the crowning of sixty years of immense sacrifice and labor was beyond reckless. The planned concentrated advance had to proceed to avoid risking all that was achieved at the last moment.

April passed in preparations. Northern detachments hacked through snowbound passes to the southern slope with picks and shovels. In Abkhazia, ships were gathered and loaded. Meanwhile, the Dakho detachment built a road up the Tuapse and, as a precaution, established the Ubykh cordon line from the Dagomys’s mouth to the Shakhe’s source.

The first detachment to advance, the Pskhu under General Shatilov, moved from Gagra fort in early April, first cutting a road along the coast to Adler, then up the Bzyb to the Pskhu community. On April 29, the Kutaisi governor-general, Prince Mirsky, landed at Adler (formerly Holy Spirit fort) with a Grenadier Division detachment; its horses were brought from Gagra along Shatilov’s coastal road. The detachment took position at the Akshtyrkh tract in Adler. Newly arriving troops were deployed to firmly hold the region and begin evicting mountaineers at once. General Geiman was sent with part of his forces up the Sochi River, then to the Mzymta’s headwaters. In early April, the Khamysheisky detachment, the right column, advancing south via the Belaya pass, linked with the Dakho detachment. Then General Grabbe’s detachment, the middle column, crossed from the Malaya Laba to Akhchipsou. The Grand Duke arrived at the Grenadier detachment (Prince Mirsky’s) at Akshtyrkh on April 6 and the next day sent an advance guard to the Psaga tract to cut a road toward Akhchipsou.

Then came the very shift in the newly surrendered tribes’ mindset that the Grand Duke foresaw, prompting him to maintain the planned troop concentration. As soon as the mountaineers realized the eviction they had lightly agreed to in words was becoming an unavoidable reality, they took up arms again. A desperate band from all tribes gathered in the impregnable Aibga valley and, with the local residents—long reputed bandits—blocked mountain paths with barricades, halting General Shatilov. The Pskhu detachment, having cleared the road and left its baggage, marched toward Aibga but was stopped by this obstacle. Repeated attempts to storm the barricades failed due to the terrain’s extreme strength. The detachment suffered notable losses and, from May 7 to 11, could not advance a step. Had the coastal region not been held by several detachments, this resistance and the rebels’ success would have sparked a general uprising with all its consequences. In the Caucasus, the slightest favorable moment always sufficed to lift mountaineer spirits. With the forces holding the region in early May, a fleeting setback meant nothing. The population was contained everywhere. On May 9, His Highness sent a detachment under General Batizatula to flank Aibga. After weak resistance, the outmaneuvered mountaineers abandoned the barricades, and the Aibga valley was taken. Our columns forced the native population everywhere to leave their homes and head to the sea, facing either Turkey or designated settlement areas.

On May 16, the Grand Duke moved with his detachment to Psaga along the advance guard’s road. The path to Akhchipsou still needed opening. On May 20, His Highness entered this community’s land, where, besides the Grenadier detachment, the Pskhu, Akhchipsou, and Dakho detachments converged. On the 21st, 23 battalions, 10 cannons, 6 Cossack hundreds, and 6 militia hundreds assembled on Akhchipsou’s sole clearing. In the Grand Duke’s presence, a thanksgiving prayer was held before the troops, celebrating the great victory granted by God.

From Akhchipsou, His Highness reported the event to the Emperor with this telegraphic dispatch:

May 21, Akhchipsou.

I have the honor to congratulate Your Majesty on the conclusion of the glorious Caucasian War. Henceforth, no unsubdued tribe remains. Yesterday, the detachments of Prince Mirsky, Major-General Shatilov, Major-General Geiman, and Major-General Grabbe converged here. Today, a thanksgiving prayer was held in the presence of all detachments. The troops are in splendid condition and suffer no illness. Losses in these final movements do not exceed one hundred men.

MIKHAIL

This dispatch was the last military report in an endless series of Caucasian dispatches. The fighting with powder and iron ended. But there could be no rest on laurels while armed mountaineer populations crowded the coast, awaiting departure.

The resettlement of Caucasian tribes to Turkey, much debated and misunderstood in Europe, was not our choice; it happened despite us. The government’s sole aim in the Western Caucasian war was to displace the mountaineers from the Black Sea’s eastern coast and settle it with Russians—a measure essential for our territories’ security. There was no need to drive them to Turkey. We had ample land for them: first, a million desyatins along the Kuban’s left bank, reserved solely for this purpose; second, 300,000 desyatins of good land in the Pyatigorsk district, freed after some nomadic Nogais left for Turkey in 1860; third, Cossack lands vacated by populations moved to forward lines. The total land available nearby for mountaineers was about 1.5 million desyatins. The mass that left for Turkey in 1863 and 1864 did not exceed 250,000 of both sexes; about 70,000 settled in our territories. This was the entire surviving unsubdued mountaineer population. Thus, for 160,000 males, there were roughly 10 desyatins per person—a generous proportion. Settled on plains, surrounded by stanitsas, these mountaineers posed no threat. The calamity that struck them broke their spirit so thoroughly that a mountaineer’s demeanor is now unrecognizable. For future security, only one condition was needed: they must not border the sea, with at least a few dozen versts separating them from the coast. Hence, leaving the Natukhais in their initially assigned spots on the lower Kuban was indeed risky; yet they were kept there to honor our word. Others were far enough from the sea. Thus, there was no reason to fear them or force their exodus beyond our borders.

Nor was there reason to hold them against their will. The Caucasian war might have lasted another year had the commander-in-chief not allowed those wishing to leave for Turkey to do so. The Circassians and Abazins were, in every sense, barbarians, with all the noble and childish traits of a barbaric nature. Of all the world’s peoples, they knew only us and the Turks—us as enemies and infidels, the Turks as friends and a holy people. (Their notions of other nations are vividly illustrated by this anecdote: during the Eastern War, a French ship’s crew landed on the Shapsug coast, then allies, to buy cattle. While the mountaineers fetched oxen, the French caught frogs in a marsh and cooked soup. Seeing this, the Shapsugs told their guests: “We fought the Russians only because they eat pork; now we’ll urge our people to join the Russians to wipe your nation out to the last man.”) When enemies prevailed, they naturally sought refuge with friends, especially since they left behind only stones in their homeland, their possessions largely destroyed by war. The mountaineers fiercely defended their land, but had we insisted on conquering not just their territory but their persons, resistance would have been twice as stubborn. In submitting, they always demanded free passage to Turkey as the first condition. Readers may recall the terms of the last Abadzekh treaty. The state needed the Kuban region’s land, not its people. For generating wealth, ten Russian peasants outproduced a hundred mountaineers; settling the Kuban lands with our own was far more profitable. There was no cause to spill Russian blood to forcibly keep barbarians unwilling to be subjects within our borders.

The first mountaineer exodus from the Caucasus began after Shamil’s fall. This showed that many Caucasian Muslims endured Russian rule only hoping their co-religionists would soon free them; when that hope died, they chose to abandon their enslaved homeland. Most emigrants were nomadic Tatars from Stavropol’s steppes and peaceful Kuban region communities. The Caucasian authorities not only avoided encouraging emigration but legally opposed it; however, they wisely refrained from banning departure to Turkey outright, lest they later have to constantly monitor openly hostile people. Emigration continued yearly in small waves. In 1859 and 1860, most Abazins from the mountain strip between the Kuban and Urup left. In 1861, the entire Besleney tribe and some smaller groups departed. None occurred in 1862, as mountaineers hoped to defend their homeland. But as they weakened, emigration surged. By December 1, 1863, Trebizond held up to 4,000 mountaineers; by late February, 20,000 had arrived in Turkey; by mid-March, over 40,000. This happened beyond our control, from free coasts, on dozens of contraband Turkish schooners fetching mountaineers. Naturally, the journey was rife with inhumanity and suffering. Turkish shipowners, used to trading slaves on the eastern coast, brought the same spirit to transporting free people. Without money or goods, payment was often women and children. For Circassian women, this hardly mattered, as they were sent to markets in droves regardless of status upon reaching Turkey.

As Russian troops advanced along the coast, emigration changed character. Two years earlier, foreseeing mass emigration at the war’s end, Count Evdokimov petitioned the government for means to transport them to Turkey en masse. No firm decision was made then. But Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, when the issue arose, authorized chartering the needed steamers and sailing ships. With navigation opening in 1864, three commissions were established for departing mountaineers: in Taman, Novorossiysk, and Tuapse. Turkey sent several disarmed naval steamers for them. The process became orderly. Destitute mountaineers were to be transported at state expense; those able to pay received a 1-ruble silver subsidy, including children except infants. Private shipowners could charge no more than 3 rubles on steamers or 1.75 rubles on sailing ships, so even wealthier mountaineers paid only 2 rubles or 75 kopecks extra. Government-hired freight steamers carried them free. Beyond commissions, the Grand Duke’s aides oversaw safe departures; naval officers ensured ships weren’t overcrowded. State provisions were provided for the poorest; hospitals were set up for the sick at state expense. The opposite shore saw different scenes. Though Turkey spared no aid, it was siphoned off, and mountaineers suffered, half dying within weeks. Foreign newspapers, naturally, blamed us for the miseries their correspondents saw on Turkish soil.

Following the newly surrendered, many who had lived under Russian rule for some time also left for Turkey. Some were driven by fanaticism, others by ties to kin, others followed the crowd; all expected lavish favors from the sultan, seen as the epitome of omnipotence and boundless wealth. To whatever was said, their reply was: “We fare well here, but we want to lay our bones in the Holy Land.” Thus, all Natukhais and Shapsugs left. They weren’t held back, as there was no need, as I’ve explained.

The 1864 mountaineer emigration totals were:

• By mid-March from free coasts: 60,000
• Thereafter on schooners beyond our oversight: ~15,000
• Through Taman: 27,000
• Through Novorossiysk by June 1: 63,000
• After June 1: 25,000
• Through Tuapse: 21,000
• Total: ~211,000
• (In 1865, ~40,000 more, totaling 250,000)

This emigration did not strengthen Turkey. The sultan’s government, however, used the Circassian influx astutely. Instead of letting them blend into Asia Minor’s Tatar masses, as the Circassians wished, it relocated them to Europe, bolstering the Muslim element in Christian regions. Russia could not prevent Turkey’s handling of its new subjects, though this was disadvantageous to us. But Turkey won’t gain the benefit it hopes. Circassians in Turkey rush to embrace anyone in a Russian uniform. Russians subdued them harshly but treated them as humans; they understand this well. Consul reports show how Circassians dwindle in Turkey; half are gone, women are scarce, and new ones cost money. Turkish Circassians will last one generation, and in war, if handled right, we might rely on them as much as Turkey. Figuratively, by taking Circassians, Turkey patched a rotten garment with rotten cloth.

In the Kuban region, ~70,000 surrendered mountaineers settled; with prior peaceful ones, the native population reached 130,000. After further emigration, it’s ~80,000. Settled natives are in good condition, under sensible military-native administration, as across the Caucasus. In the first half of summer 1864, the Black Sea’s eastern coast was an extraordinary sight. No coast was ever emptier than the Caucasian. Populated by bandits trading only slaves, under constant blockade by our cruisers, it seemed uninhabited from the sea. No hut, no wisp of smoke on the green shore; no skiff in the blue bays. Only at night, in storms or fog, might one glimpse a schooner stealing along the coast. Approaching, it carried military contraband; departing, slaves. No legitimate trading ship dared approach. At sea, our cruisers’ cannons awaited; on land, mountaineer rifles and daggers. It was an enchanted shore, like in a fairy tale, forbidden to human feet. Then everything changed. The coast brimmed with ships and people. Along its 400 versts, sails gleamed, masts rose, steamers puffed; our pickets’ flags waved on every cape; bazaars and crowds filled every ravine. From the sea, no English or Dutch shore ever showed such bustle, such life. True, these were the funeral rites of a vanishing people; the activity thinned as the coast emptied. But it emptied briefly. On the abandoned ashes of the doomed Circassian tribe rose the great Russian tribe; in one summer, 12 stanitsas sprang up along the sea. Above all, the eastern coast, with its magnificent beauty, is now part of Russia. Its spell is broken. The coastal strip awaits, like an untapped mine, only people to harness its natural riches. No need to lament its current emptiness. The weeds are uprooted; wheat will grow.

Tenth letter

In 1864, Western Caucasus was settled for the first time without force. This land, an impregnable fortress and vast bandit haven for millennia, unapproachable by any conqueror without retribution, transformed instantly, as if by a magic wand, into an uninhabited expanse rightfully open to every industrious Russian. From the start of military settlement in the Kuban region, volunteers always exceeded the required quota. No one was turned away; anyone who enlisted in their province or reached the Kuban on their own was accepted, with formalities set aside as much as possible. The Russian population in the Kuban region expanded remarkably fast, accelerating the conquest. With a secure rear of stanitsas, we could boldly advance. Instead of the six years projected by the 1862 Imperial Decree, the conquest was completed in three and a half years. Now the state can freely deploy the hundred-thousand-strong army previously tied to Western Caucasus, effectively nonexistent in the empire’s political strength. An entire local army is no longer dead capital, nor a financial burden of inevitable sacrifice. The Kuban Cossack Host is not only sufficient to defend the conquered region but can operate beyond its borders, becoming a new source of imperial power. Shortening the war by two and a half years spared the State Treasury from maintaining a hundred-thousand-strong army in the Kuban, saving no less than 25 million rubles.

Since 1861, settlers have poured into this region. Despite generous Cossack land allotments and the selection of prime agricultural sites for stanitsas, much land between them remains vacant. Yet, even now, new settlers have not filled the region to its limits. The newly conquered area matches the size of Volhynia Governorate. Excluding the highest, uninhabitable mountains, its arable land rivals Kyiv Governorate in extent. With unparalleled soil fertility—mostly still virgin—abundant and diverse natural resources, and a prime geographic position between a major navigable river and a never-freezing sea, the Kuban region could one day support twice Kyiv Governorate’s population. Undoubtedly, this newly subdued province is the richest in natural gifts not only among Russian but all Caucasian regions. Its current population is merely the vanguard of its future.

By spring 1864, most northern slope lands were already lined with populated stanitsas, stretching in rows along the foothills, between the ridge and a line 25–30 versts from the Kuban’s bank. The lowland between the Kuban and this line, reserved for mountaineers, remained half-empty after so many tribes left for Turkey, forming a vast reserve of arable land at the government’s disposal. That spring, stanitsas formed a continuous chain from the Laba to the Pshish and from the sea to the Shebsh, but a gap remained between the Shebsh and Pshish, recently cleared of the last Abadzekhs. In 1864, the task was to settle this gap and the newly conquered coast. The planned number of settlers was far too small to occupy all the land abandoned by the mountaineers. Mass relocation is complex, requiring extensive preparations, so efforts focused on settling the gap in our lines and part of the coast from Novorossiysk to Tuapse.

With no enemy left, settlers entered a peaceful land, prompting a change in settlement patterns. Residents were grouped solely for economic convenience. The practice of building large, fortified stanitsas with ramparts, palisades, and cannons was abandoned; new Cossacks were placed in ordinary villages without defenses. In the upland gorges, thick with impenetrable forests, arable land isn’t contiguous—settlers had to use scattered plots cleared by former inhabitants—so dispersing into farmsteads was most practical here. During the war, isolated farmsteads were unthinkable, but peace arrived just as these uplands needed settling. By spring’s end, all available forces could focus on work, with no need to guard laborers. As calm settled, the tireless Kuban troops linked main military routes with cross-roads and populated the desolate region astonishingly fast. By mid-summer, the western and eastern stanitsa lines, once broken in the middle, stretched unbroken. Columns crossing the mountains in late spring saw a lifeless desert between the Shebsh and Pshish, inhabited only by forest beasts; weeks later, returning north, they stepped into a Russian province, passing populated villages and meeting kin at every crossroad. Even those accustomed to the near-magical transformation of hostile Caucasus into Russia paused in awe at this fairy-tale change, scarcely believing their eyes.

The 1864 settlers were especially fortunate, inheriting ready farms. The war’s turning point came so swiftly that mountaineers, expecting no submission in autumn and tending their fields as usual, vanished by spring, leaving all crops to Russian settlers, who could live without sowing that first year.

In the land abandoned by the Abadzekhs, 40 stanitsas were built and settled; along the coast from Gelendzhik to Tuapse, 12.

Under Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich’s command:

• 1863: 24 stanitsas with 3,867 families
• 1864: 52 stanitsas with 4,374 families
• Total: 76 stanitsas with 8,241 families

Including 1861 and 1862 settlements, from the start of systematic war, this totals 111 stanitsas with 14,233 families.

The population drawn to the newly conquered region over these four years is estimated at 85,000 souls, formed into nine cavalry regiments so far.

The total Kuban region population, including stanitsas founded from 1840 to 1861 and remaining natives, reaches 220,000 souls: 150,000 Russians and 60,000 natives. The latest emigration reduced this to 240,000, with the overall population at 530,000. The Kuban Host spans from the Kuban’s mouth near the Don to Abkhazia, and from the Kerch Strait to the Kuma, with a total population of about 440,000 souls, or 520,000 including scattered Circassian remnants.

The Kuban Host’s final organization awaits government decision. As key questions have been thoroughly discussed, grounded in reality—unchanging topography and well-known Cossack life—it’s likely to take shape soon. Thus, I’ll offer a few words on the Kuban Host’s role as a military force among Russia’s armies and as a region among its provinces (written in 1864).

Many view special military regions like Cossack hosts with prejudice, seeing them legally as states within a state, disrupting national equality, and economically as diverting hands from productive labor. But this view, rooted in abstract principles of law and political economy, errs by ignoring local and temporal conditions that reframe the issue. Cossackdom is a purely Russian phenomenon, a formative force in our history—past, present, and future. It disrupts equality and reduces productivity, true; but one sacrifices willingly if the gain justifies it. Russia, with its vast borders, cannot do without Cossacks. As Russians naturally become Cossacks, their growth on distant frontiers is a great internal strength. History hasn’t altered this dynamic. The fifteenth century persists on Russia’s edges, not historically but geographically. Cossack farming, needing vast space, doesn’t fully exploit the land, but on the ten-thousand-verst Russo-Asian frontier, only Cossacks turn wild deserts or hostile bandit dens into populated Russian lands. There’s no fear of Cossack over-expansion. They’re the surf of the Russian people, eroding its boundaries; when the shore shifts, the surf’s place becomes calm sea. When Cossack populations fall far behind forward lines, they merge with the masses, as in Little Russia. Thus has the Russian wave always spread. From Peter to Nicholas I’s reign, Cossackdom was restrained, resulting in tasks in the mid-nineteenth century that would have resolved naturally in the eighteenth. Evidence abounds, from the Kuban’s mouth to the Amur’s. Beyond the natural expansion of Russians, led by Cossacks, flowing where resistance is weakest, even maintaining the status quo without Cossacks is impossible. Cossacks guard borders not only with active regiments—costing a third of regular troops, their numbers instantly doubled or tripled—but with an armed populace. Whether farming or at home, they stand watch on perilous frontiers. Replacing their strength with regular cavalry would bankrupt state finances. Diverting hands would be worse: Cossacks produce less than free populations, but armies produce nothing. As a combat force in the state’s arsenal, Cossack hosts are vital. I won’t delve into their military specifics but must note my firm belief: Linear Cossacks, while retaining the character forged by the Caucasian War (a regimental trait lasting centuries), if deployed en masse in European campaigns, could introduce a new element, offering extraordinary advantages. Though Cossacks have joined Russian armies, they’ve served mainly as outpost guards, and those were different Cossacks with different arms. (I don’t dispute the Don Cossacks’ fine qualities—none respect them more—but, from countless examples, I believe they’re better as the world’s finest regular cavalry than partisans.) I’m convinced, as are many experienced soldiers, that Cossack strength as a military asset is far from fully valued or utilized.

Conversely, a Cossack takes pride in his title and wants nothing else. Traditions and clan customs are stronger among Cossacks than other Russians. I’ve seen a baseless rumor of conversion to taxable status enrage them—not for material loss, as peasant duties are lighter, but for clan pride. Cossacks are necessary, content, and proud. These reasons suffice to value this quintessential Russian trait, even if it defies theories of equality and optimal labor.

The Kuban region could only become Russian as a Cossack host. Only Cossacks lived on its edges, only they could advance to seize enemy land, only warriors could settle facing numerous, bold foes. Outside settlers were needed for numbers and boldly filled Cossack ranks, experience showing how easily Russians become daring horsemen in the right setting. But Cossacks were the core; by its nature, the Kuban region could pass from hostile mountaineers only to Cossacks. Every commander-in-chief told Line Cossacks, touring forward edges: “Conquer the enemy’s land, lads—what you take is yours.” Cossacks alone couldn’t have subdued the impregnable Caucasus—unconquered by Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, or Suleiman the Magnificent—but without them, it was impossible.

Military settlement of the Kuban was not just a moment’s need but a future necessity to secure the Caucasian isthmus from the Black Sea. The Eastern War starkly revealed our military position in the Caucasus—not just from what happened but what could have, dreaded daily. The western mountains’ strategic weight became clear. While held by enemies, splitting our forces across the ridge, Transcaucasia’s links to Russia were perpetually at risk in external war. Shielded by mountains, an enemy could strike from the Black Sea along the southern or northern slopes, in the Kuban or Rioni basins; one success there would place them in our rear, amid scattered detachments, divided by mountain warfare, impossible to concentrate. An enemy’s mere appearance in either basin paralyzed our troops in Asian Turkey; a serious setback would force their immediate recall. Prince Baryatinsky countered this danger by shifting Transcaucasian troops’ base from the Georgian Military Road to the Caspian Sea, inaccessible to enemies and linked to the state’s heart via the Volga; he prioritized Caspian shipping and supply depots for the Caucasian army for this reason. Until the western mountains were conquered, danger could only be mitigated by changing the military base; their conquest allowed its elimination, but only by holding Western Caucasus so firmly it became as impregnable against external foes as it was against us under Circassians, entrusted to people who could defend themselves without regular troops. Now, with Line Cossacks in the Kuban and coastal valleys, the Kuban and Rioni basins are barred to enemies. They cannot advance up these rivers without exposing their rear. If they move up the Kuban, the warlike transriver population cuts them off from the sea; up the Rioni, regiments crossing the mountains hit their rear. In war, we won’t need to fragment troops. Cossacks will hold the mountains as well as Circassians did; regular troops can maneuver from this fortress in any direction without looking back. A small detachment, backed by Cossacks, can shield the Caucasian isthmus from any Black Sea incursion. With Cossacks settling Circassian mountains, no external enemy can approach the Caucasus by sea.

The question of who should settle the Kuban region was never posed; necessity decided it. Yet, the region’s splendid nature and inexhaustible riches—unrivaled among Russian provinces—called for safeguarding its future development without undermining the primary goal. The Grand Duke strove to balance both. The Kuban Host’s Decree builds on the Line Cossack Host’s current structure but aligns with emerging zemstvo institutions, frees Cossacks from past historical constraints, and maximizes economic benefits. The new Cossack life will echo their ancient roots more than recent times; they could say, as Moscow Old Believers did: “In Your reign’s innovations, we hear our old ways.”

The Decree retains the Line Host’s core lifestyle, as Line Cossacks form the Kuban Host’s backbone and offer the best military conditions. Our Cossack hosts differ greatly in character and structure. Line Cossacks lack a distinct upper class. Their unity lies in administration, not daily life; each regiment or brigade forms a distinct community with notable traits. A Line regiment isn’t a random mix, like Don or Ural ones, gathered from a region, rotating each term, unconnected outside service. A Line regiment is a land unit. Its Cossacks and officers are kin, neighbors, and villagers, rotating only by turn, never changing banners. This sets Line regiments apart. They have a deep regimental spirit, essential for a true army. The regiment is both banner and homeland; its glory is dear as warriors and citizens. This structure crossed the Kuban with Line Cossacks and extended to former Black Sea Cossacks, previously unaware of it. The Kuban Host will divide into independent regimental districts, preserving storied regimental names. Not long ago, Line Cossacks enjoyed near-total domestic freedom; in the 1820s, Grebentsy elected their regimental commander, called ataman. Though self-governance forms persisted, the war’s seriousness from the 1830s demanded strict discipline and subordination to military authorities. With peace, the new Decree restores broad self-governance. Beyond the regimental district chief and small staff, all posts are elected; local matters are decided by the community. Collegiate governance under elected officials, existing until now, is preserved and expanded.

The Decree particularly aims to reduce Cossack insularity, which alienated them from other imperial populations. Cossacks may leave their status with light conditions, and outsiders can join with community consent, making the Cossack population not just hereditary but a type of Russian. Cossacks and officers can acquire personal property, easing the communal yurt system’s constraints. I can’t detail the still-draft Decree but have highlighted its key features.

Militarily, each district fields two full regimental rotations with one officer set, alternating service. In peacetime, few are called, easing burdens; in need, entire regiments mobilize. Thus, in calm times, the region won’t lose labor; in crisis, the Kuban Host can double its forces. Officer shortages won’t hinder, as Line officers aren’t a separate class—just the best Cossacks. If needed, the first regimental set can join Russian armies, while the second defends the mountains, backed by the populace, strong enough to make them impregnable.

The Kuban Host’s active forces include 18 cavalry regiments, 18 rifle companies, 2–3 coastal marine regiments, and 5 batteries, all in two equal rotations except artillery. Until now, two or three hundred Line Cossacks were valued outside the Caucasus; what power will 18 Line regiments bring, plus 10 Terek ones—28 total—joining active forces? That’s over 25,000 relentless Line Cossacks, equally fearsome as cavalry or infantry. Nor should we forget 18 plastun companies (36 in double rotation), each man a Cooper’s Pathfinder, marching 100 versts daily, crossing wide rivers without boats, stalking forest beasts like cats, slipping through enemy lines, ready to snatch an enemy general from his tent.

Coastal regiments serve not on horse but at sea. Coastal valleys lack pastures for local cavalry, but the shore needs sailors. A mix of Azov Cossacks, married sailors, and settlers was chosen to foster maritime traits, quickly becoming sailors as others became Line Cossacks. Coastal Cossacks will mainly patrol shores, serving as both sailors and riflemen, in active and reserve rotations. Their institutions aim to tie them to the sea. The coastal population’s framework allows future growth, potentially a reserve for a future Black Sea Fleet.

The Grand Duke seeks to preserve the Line Cossacks’ martial spirit, rooted in tradition and superb combat organization, while granting the Host’s population full means for economic growth. Despite Cossack life’s quirks, these goals don’t conflict, though they mutually limit each other slightly. The new Decree minimizes this. By ending Cossack insularity, granting property rights, and allowing service exemptions for extensive business or specialized trades, Cossacks can pursue productive labor freely. But it goes further. The Kuban region’s vast riches must be fully harnessed. Lands beyond direct Cossack allotments, though within Host boundaries, won’t be Host property like on the Don, burdened with restrictive halves. They remain government-owned, open to private enterprise on standard terms. These free lands, roughly two million desyatins, include half-occupied Kuban native lands, the coast from Tuapse to Abkhazia (its fate undecided but partly open to private labor), and scattered plots among stanitsas. With these conditions, the region’s brilliant future needs no prophecy.

Russia doesn’t yet fully grasp the Kuban region’s value. Beyond its immense political impact, its material benefits are priceless. Its riches aren’t fabled tales of antipodes. This bountiful, virgin land, washed by a European sea, lies a day’s sail from Rostov and Trebizond, a few from Odessa, Constantinople, Marseille, and Trieste. Yet it’s as pristine as the Amur’s shores. The former half-million native population barely touched it, like a nomad horde. Cyclopean ruins exist, but from a mythical era’s people; otherwise, it’s untouched land, primeval forests, with cultivated clearings the exception. Lush vegetation quickly reclaims fields here without upkeep, and fertile soil let natives farm small plots, but the untouched natural wealth—a slice of Brazilian wilderness—on a steamer-filled European sea is staggering.

The Kuban region has enduring fertility. Eternal snows and Greenland-like glaciers amid warm lands melt into countless streams, flooding rich soil warmed by a hot sun. Water erodes rocks, layering foothills with minerals plants need; every stream is to this region what the Nile is to Egypt. Between the ridge and Kuban, fertile fields alternate with dark forests—timber or fruit trees, many not wild but yielding fine produce, already carted out by settlers. Wet soils grow fodder grasses half a man’s height. Foothill fields shimmer with flowers, scattering rainbows at each breeze. Space abounds; in a warm, healthy climate, fields, pastures, forests, and water are at hand. The southern slope’s vegetation is un-Europeanly lush. The Caucasian coast isn’t a narrow strip like Crimea’s; it’s a greenhouse province, shielded from north winds, open to southern ones. Deep valleys from snows to sea fan into hills at the shore, forming a land of unmatched beauty. The southern slope’s impenetrable forests are a third precious furniture woods—boxwood and rot-proof timber, fetching 3–4 rubles per pood if brought to shore. Giant chestnuts and walnuts, draped in vines, cloak valleys in green canopies; higher stretch oak and plane-tree forests. The highland between slopes differs but will richly reward labor. Lands at the snows’ base bloom with lush summer grasses, fattening herds until they waddle by autumn, as with Circassians. Upper valleys grow ship-grade pine; rich ore veins surface in places; mineral springs bubble from cliffs. Across northern, highland, and southern belts, the Kuban region’s nature is equally splendid, each with unique beauty. Animal life matches the flora. Countless boars and deer roam the northern slope; ibex and wild bulls inhabit mountains; leopards leap in the southern forests. This lush, near-newfound land lies not on the Pacific but the Black Sea. Endless fields, ancient forests, orchards, vineyards, and ores sit between a river navigable but for one frozen month and a never-freezing sea. Once the Black Sea railway is built, a Muscovite will reach the eastern shore in three days.

The Kuban region will breed a people unheard of even in tales. We’ll see Russian mountaineers. A rosy-cheeked, fair-haired Russian boy will drive a tourist’s donkey along sheer mountain paths to watch the sun rise over snows, its shadow stretching across the province.

Eleventh letter

The account of Western Caucasus’s conquest is complete. Yet, some matters, though not directly flowing from these letters’ subject, are so closely tied that a reader’s understanding would be incomplete without them. These are the new position the Caucasus’s conquest places us in regarding the broader Asian question and the Caucasian Army—not just a part of Russia’s forces but an organic whole, a distinct type of Russian soldiery shaped by the Caucasus. Let’s start with the army.

With the mountains’ conquest, the Caucasian Army, previously comprising about a third of the state’s active forces, became mobile. Beyond any expansionist aims, this event’s moral impact is profound; it shifts the balance of European forces as if a population equal to Prussia’s, with all its military means, joined Russia. The state’s material resources haven’t grown, but they’ve consolidated—amounting to the same effect.

I said: as if Prussia joined Russia. Indeed, the Caucasian Army’s size closely matches Prussia’s active troops, counting regular and irregular regiments and battalions, plus attached divisions. But not all of it is mobile yet. I’ve expressed a general idea whose realization is advancing swiftly. The fact has occurred; consequences are inevitable. Eastern Caucasus still ties down some forces. Populations remain in its mountains and forests, requiring troops to restrain them until fully disarmed. Last year saw flare-ups in Chechnya and among foothill Lezgins; restless muridism lingers in their hearts. This poses no political danger. The murid war was a complex outcome of unique circumstances that won’t recur; a general mountain uprising is impossible. Still, Chechnya and Dagestan need garrisons for now. Two Caucasian divisions and 13 line battalions are tied to mountain security. But this year opened the possibility of resolving this final hurdle soon. The devastating blow to Western Caucasus struck the Caspian mountaineers’ souls as powerfully as their own subjugation in 1859. This summer, the Caucasus was conquered anew—morally this time—securing our hold on the eastern mountains better than the first, material conquest. Now, a series of measures can reduce Chechens and Lezgins to the same peaceful state as the shattered Circassian remnants. Soon, the Caucasian Army will be, in the fullest sense, an active force.

Even now, its mobile forces suffice for our aims, dramatically altering prior dynamics—more isn’t needed yet. The hundred-thousand-strong army in the Kuban region is free. I count a hundred thousand by rolls, as while some local units stay home, they can be replaced by other mobile Caucasian troops, like the Grenadier Division, veterans of Asian campaigns. Kuban Cossacks in their active roster aren’t local either. A hundred thousand on paper means at least 70,000 under arms. The Kuban never fielded that many in ranks; local war wasn’t fought there—regiments stayed in quarters, many hands diverted to logistics. On campaign, these men will fill ranks, making the mobile army’s strength no less than 70,000, even without Kuban Cossacks’ active roster. Today, a 70,000-strong Russian army, tomorrow 100,000, forged in battles and marches, stands ready on the Caucasian isthmus to reach anywhere. This fact, realized while Europe fretted over Poland, surely displeases those who see calamity in Russia’s every success. The Eastern War’s futility for Europe is clear.

This mustn’t be overlooked when assessing today’s political affairs.

Great hopes were pinned on the Caucasus. The phrase “Russia is chained to the Caucasus, unable to deploy its troops” became a European diplomatic proverb in Asia. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the outlook changed—unruly mountaineers vanished as if they never were, leaving only a mobile Russian army on the isthmus. And what an army!

Whatever sixty years of local war cost, there’s no regretting the sacrifice when Russia gained the Caucasian Army. Alongside sparse Algerian units, it’s the only European force able to endure deep campaigns in barbaric lands without breaking. The British achieve this only by crawling, burdened with endless convoys; their regiments never adapt to Asian campaigns. Their government, at immense cost, transplants England into Asian wilds, carrying an artificial English atmosphere their soldiers need to survive. Such conditions limit them to small forces—enough to scare foes who flee at the sight of Europeans but inadequate against serious opponents. Sustaining numbers and morale while marching relentlessly, living on whatever comes—only troops honed by long campaigns gain this, essential even in European wars amid abundance, and critical for Asian ones. We saw this starkly with three infantry divisions sent to reinforce the Caucasian Corps during the Turkish war. They later toughened, becoming battle-hardened after six years, but initially, though near our borders and supplied from depots, these “Russian regiments” struggled on campaign, needing meticulous care. Over half filled hospitals; survivors, used to ready provisions, couldn’t meet basic needs with ingenuity, requiring spoon-feeding like children. They couldn’t be sent on detachments or forward posts—so inexperienced were they. Had we ventured further, relying on local resources, they’d have been partly paralyzed. The French army shows the same divide between Algerian and mainland units. A Zouave captain, pointing to a pristine line regiment, told me: “These gentlemen can’t pitch tents on a slope without us.” Leading Asian campaigns with fresh European barracks troops repeats Crusader debacles—losing countless men without success. A state’s relative power in Asian affairs hinges on its fleet and seasoned campaign troops. Fleets matter only for linking distant lands; thus, England and France alone among Western Europe care deeply about Asia. We lack a strong fleet but have direct access to Asia’s heart, outweighing their advantage. The three powers’ strength in Asian matters rests on troops fit for distant campaigns. I estimate France’s at no more than 30,000 Algerian veterans; their government would hesitate to commit a full corps to a purely Asian war. Recall how Europe deemed France paralyzed by Mexico. In serious Asian conflict, European tensions would demand effort too. The Crimean campaign isn’t a precedent—an entirely European war where France and England focused all forces on one coastal point. France can only ship troops to Asia by sea, limiting them to half-land expeditions short on cavalry and logistics, viable only in Asia Minor and Syria. East of the Euphrates, reliant on the Indian Ocean, they’d field half that number. The British lack true campaign troops, creating them at huge cost with cumbersome convoys—an Indian soldier costs more than our officer. Such expense limits numbers. Their last Persian war showed how they cling to coasts, weak in land campaigns. Even in India, at peak crisis, they never mustered over 12,000 British troops; beyond India or coastal zones, even that’s generous. Against Europeans, sepoys count for little, so Britain’s real strength for Asian mainland ventures, far from European seas, is at most 15,000. The Caucasian Army, with just its veteran five-battalion regiments, cavalry, artillery, and some Cossacks—excluding attached divisions and line battalions—numbers at least 100,000. Much is now mobile, and soon all will be. With western mountains settled by Cossacks and eastern ones disarmed, the Caucasus needs few troops; three attached divisions will suffice for defense and occupation. I know little of our Syr Darya or Siberian line troops, but their setting suggests they’re campaign-ready. With them, Russia’s Asian war forces, without diverting a man from Europe, total at least 120,000 under arms—triple the combined strength of England’s 15,000 and France’s 30,000. Holding Asia’s inner basins and central positions, merging seamlessly with independent Asia over thousands of versts, reaching from Trebizond to Korea, Russia wields this force on its Asian frontier. This is the position the Caucasus’s conquest created. Don’t read conquest schemes into my words—I wish no Alexandrian plans for my homeland. I merely state the reality. Before the conquest, European diplomats were right: in Asia, Russia was chained to the Caucasus. Our meager forces in the last Turko-Asian war proved it. Now, it’s different. Against native Asian states, even with European aid, their forces are negligible before the unshackled Caucasian Army. No upheaval can alter this balance, now fatefully ours. Asian questions matter as much to maritime or East-adjacent powers like Austria—key European players—as top-tier European ones. Take Turkey: it holds Europe only because it’s strong in Asia; three-quarters of its army is Asian, without which its European lands wouldn’t last a day. All Asia ties to Europe like keys to strings; each Asian land links to a major European interest. If needed, Russia can now press those keys. The conquest, making the world’s fiercest army mobile and Asian, is undeniable reality. As Napoleon said of the French flag: “It’s like the sun—too bad for those who don’t see it.” The Caucasus’s conquest vastly boosts Russia’s strength; beyond conquest aims, Russia must grasp its true meaning.

As a fighting force, the Caucasian Army is unmatched in any war, Asian or European. Candid French officers admit their Crimean success owed almost entirely to 20,000 seasoned Algerian troops, always at the fore, delivering key blows. We could’ve beaten France’s line army; we had brave regiments ready for desperate fights, but bravery can’t replace battle-hardening, absent from our Crimean theater. Russia had 70,000 veteran Caucasian soldiers then—superior to Algerians, we believe—but local war consumed them. Not one Caucasian battalion joined the European clash at Sevastopol. Only individuals transferred, quickly earning fame.

I write not for military readers, but I must say a bit about the Caucasian Army’s traits distinguishing it from others. Some military matters every citizen should know, precisely as a citizen, part of the public interest, not an isolated individual. For a great nation, reliant on its own strength, military might in today’s world is like personal independence for an individual—the willpower and standing to avoid wrong, defend rights, and hold convictions firm. A crushed person’s talents wither; a cowed nation, fearing anyone in grave international moments, breeds nothing great. God’s gifts bloom only in people and nations who dare hold their heads high. A state’s military foundations are a top public concern for every citizen. These aren’t too specialized for public opinion to engage, just as it does other national life questions. The best organization of a nation’s forces is practical, flowing from its people’s traits; in broad strokes, it merges with their way of life. A military system’s alignment with a nation’s character shapes all national endeavors and determines state power. Thus, the public shouldn’t shy from this great matter, leaving it to specialists prone to theoretical views, sometimes forgetting the people forming the army. Society must approach it consciously. Many military questions seem obscure to the public only because they’re not presented or properly illuminated.

In noting the Caucasian Army’s distinct traits, I don’t mean local color. Its unique homeland left many outward marks, but its core distinction—its military mindset and spirit—reflects not the land but the Russian nature, left to itself. In the Caucasian Army, the Russian soul shines fully; this is its chief strength. Its battle experience comes second. The former matters more. They relate as ability to knowledge—a capable person learns easily.

The sharp shift in troop training begun under this reign aims for the same. General Lebedev detailed how the Gatchina garrison seeded a mechanical drill from Friedrich II’s school, dulling our soldier’s spirit. The troops of Peter I, Elizabeth, and Catherine were different—Russian in character, close to today’s Caucasian Army. Years after Catherine’s death, Jomini, speaking as Napoleon, wrote of our army: “Many saw only disagreeable rigidity. I never liked automaton armies; yet I was struck by this infantry’s precision and poise”—as if describing German or English troops. This view of our army persists in Europe. But anyone who’s seen a Caucasian soldier or Black Sea Fleet sailor, or grasped Rumyantsev’s and Suvorov’s troops, knows nothing is more alien to Russian nature than mechanistic automation, a purely German trait. The Russian soldier isn’t as lively or quick as the French but is not only tougher but far more independent. He acts consciously, adapts swiftly and accurately to new situations, reads foes keenly. He’s ambitious for military honor, values comrades’ and commanders’ opinions, and cherishes regimental glory. Turning him into a machine costs most of his qualities. All Russia knows Catherine’s troops by lore—swift, decisive, always attacking. Suvorov’s battles, even against the French, were offensive. Once the Prussian school took hold, with officers boasting that sparrows perched on bayonets at “attention,” this spirit waned. Troops stayed brave—Russians need no lessons to face death—but lost enterprise, becoming positional. Our wars against the French, whom Suvorov always attacked, became mostly defensive. This is debatable but undeniable. In these wars, our offensive attempts turned defensive at critical moments, even in 1814 with vastly superior allied numbers; battles from Austerlitz—our last offensive—to 1815 prove it. The Crimean War confirmed this—our strength was in defense. In the Turko-Caucasian war, alongside Russia-sent regiments, we saw the same. Caucasian infantry had flintlocks; new regiments from Russia had percussion caps, yet the latter, steadfast in position, were less reliable on the attack. Defensive victories can break and pursue foes—we’ve won many this century—but needing to fight defensively shows a troop’s limits. It’s clear why: in an offensive against a serious foe, where both sides strain every wit and strength, a mechanical regiment rarely prevails. Tidy battalions marching under grapeshot, crushing foes like granite walls, are cabinet tacticians’ dreams. Approaching an enemy’s front, units become crowds; even at distance, command falters—each company is on its own. Mechanical troops without orders are lifeless. For a successful charge against stiff resistance, every company commander, even non-commissioned officer, needs initiative, independent judgment, and readiness to act without explicit orders for success. Defending in place requires only bravery and discipline.

Thus, adopting Friedrich’s mechanical drill forced us to abandon offensive fighting. I know we never consciously did so, but the consistent outcome speaks louder.

Caucasian troops were thrust to the empire’s edge as the Prussian school began, affecting only marching, not the soldier’s character. When Suvorov’s Ochakov grenadiers drove the French from Italy, other Russian troops took Tiflis. For 64 years, they campaigned ceaselessly. New units arriving in the Caucasus soon adopted its spirit. A Russian regiment came Suvorovian and stayed so. The Caucasian Army’s chief strength and distinction is its development in the spirit most natural to Russians, making it the most Russian of our forces. Russia now has 100,000 such soldiers. The ongoing transformation of our army’s training is, at its core, a return to the spirit of Suvorov’s and Caucasian troops.

The gap in mindset between these and mechanically trained troops is vast. Mechanical training isn’t just artificial drill; it permeates military life, culminating in the idea that a good army should be a perfect machine, obeying every turn of the mechanic’s hand—like a proposed artillery device firing thousands of barrels at once. But like that device, a mechanical army risks sudden breakdown. Achieving this ideal erases soldiers’ individuality. Such a system yields no standout personalities or independent minds—they’re not just unneeded but harmful. It promotes modest, detail-focused men—admirable but hard to reconcile with true fighters’ energy. These men become commanders, from whom opposite traits can’t be demanded. Uniformity stamps everything; individuality and the moral bonds within units vanish, leaving only formal ties.

Some armies naturally reflect such a societal mold. But the Russian soldier, developing freely, is different. The Caucasian Army proves it.

Its first striking feature is regimental character, absent elsewhere. A Caucasian regiment isn’t a numbered group distinguished only by collar color; it’s an organism, a small nationality with one spirit, its own customs and values, cherishing traditions, and a unique combat style—sometimes starkly unlike another’s—as befits people not just existing but living together, morally fused. Each veteran Caucasian regiment has distinct military virtues, as natural growth breeds uniqueness. One is fiery, bold to recklessness, charging at a run, excelling in skirmish and forest fights; another, less lively but flint-hard, doggedly stubborn, cohesive, climbing sheer slopes steadily, deliberate yet resolute. In non-Caucasian Russian regiments, soldiers don’t keep regimental lore; it fades with eyewitnesses. In the Caucasus, traditions are sacred, known and boasted by all. For Caucasian officers, a slight against their regiment, even its past, is a duel-worthy offense—naturally, as the regiment is a living entity, not a collection. A distinct regimental character is the touchstone of a troop’s combat quality, proving its maturity and moral cohesion. Without a unifying spirit, no group excels in war or peace.

This cohesion in Caucasian regiments stems from free relations among men, formed naturally. Constant war helped sort people by ability—daily trials let them know and rank each other justly. But had these regiments not kept their primal, Catherine-era character, this wouldn’t have happened. Development was possible only because the foundation held. Public opinion influenced not just officers but the whole regiment. Before the rifle school slightly shifted proportions, non-commissioned officers rose by company consensus. A commander avoided arbitrary picks, as unfit non-coms would falter in the first skirmish.

This cohesion in Caucasian regiments stems from free relations among men, formed naturally. Constant war helped sort people by ability—daily trials let them know and rank each other justly. But had these regiments not kept their primal, Catherine-era character, this wouldn’t have happened. Development was possible only because the foundation held. Public opinion influenced not just officers but the whole regiment. Before the rifle school slightly shifted proportions, non-commissioned officers rose by company consensus. A commander avoided arbitrary picks, as unfit non-coms would falter in the first skirmish.

Every army reflects its people’s character and values. In Russia’s army, as in its society, a sharp line divides the foreign-molded upper class from commoners, rarely allowing direct moral sway over the masses, led instead by trusted peers—strong personalities from within. These emerge instantly in any group; in crises, the crowd follows them unthinkingly. If our army, mirroring this, doesn’t let units choose non-coms—passing authority not to these trusted figures but to others arbitrarily picked—the moral link between leaders and soldiers weakens, leaving only discipline. The Caucasian Army’s strength lies in its natural relations, unforced. With public opinion’s weight at every level, most took roles they earned, so seniors were followed willingly as trusted guides. This bred serious discipline—conscious, dutiful fulfillment of military obligations. Only essentials were demanded, but those were met unfailingly, seen or unseen.

I don’t claim the Caucasian Army is perfect. It can improve vastly; much remains to be honed. Constant campaigns left no time for systematic volley firing or mass maneuvers. For European war, they’d need three to four months of camp drills, as the French did with Algerians before the Eastern War. The reasoning Caucasian soldier learns four times faster than others—we’ve seen it. But these are outward aspects, only part of military craft. The vital, irreplaceable thing is an army not as uniformed men, even superbly trained, but as an organic whole, steeped in martial spirit, where habits, values, and relations grow naturally from military life.

Equally critical is a system rooted in true national spirit, not borrowed artifice. Each person best represents themselves. In this core, veteran Caucasian regiments are unmatched—purely Russian and military in the highest sense. Each soldier trusts himself as a fighter and his comrade; the unit has one soul. Their organic growth and battle traditions are so firm that years of peace won’t dull their edge. Russia has in them an elite fighting force, reliable because they never deem anyone stronger while armed. We can say with certainty, proven by external and local wars: a Caucasian battalion can be broken by overwhelming force or stopped by impassable barriers, but no fire can repel it. All Russian soldiers brave fire, but an attack has a moment only supremely confident troops endure. When a stubborn foe doesn’t yield to the charging mass, it comes as the attacker, under fire, nears the enemy’s front—so close the dark mass becomes flesh and blood, grim faces bent over barrels. In that moment, the deadliest point-blank fire must be crossed to reach bayonets. If the attacker, always disordered then, doubts victory in close combat, they’ll halt, then recoil after a pause. If the defender stands firm, nine of ten attacks falter at this range, with heavy loss. For veteran Caucasian regiments, this moment doesn’t exist—they’re so sure of themselves, they count only the time to reach the enemy’s front. Not just personal experience but the regiment’s battle legacy breeds this; every veteran teaches recruits that lingering under fire worsens it—run through it fast. Beyond decisive charges, Caucasian troops excel in the chaos of battle’s climax, when command fails and all’s at stake; each company seizes every chance without waiting for orders. If not the commander, a junior officer, sergeant, or old soldier will lead. In such moments, only personal moral strength prevails, and in Caucasian troops, individuality thrives with many seasoned men. They’ll take half the losses of others in equal fights, approaching foes smarter. Foreign officers in Caucasian campaigns openly admitted this edge. At Kyuryuk-Dara, seven Caucasian battalions broke a 22-battalion enemy center with strong artillery, advancing loosely to cut losses, then tightening for the strike—moves impossible for command-driven troops, as no orders hold under battalion fire, and even a commander-in-chief can’t rally a scattered unit unless it knows its purpose and acts as one.

All arms of veteran Caucasian troops match each other. Among dragoon regiments, Nizhny Novgorod and Seversky—twin brothers from the same stock—never faltered against infantry fire in the last war and always shattered any square they charged, if not at once, then in time. New dragoon units, trained in this school, will follow suit. Who doesn’t know Line Cossacks? Caucasian artillery, still on wooden axles, goes where other cavalry can’t, its steady speed and cool daring a sight to behold. Caucasian sappers know their craft practically, earning as much glory as their comrades.

In Asia, the Caucasian Army alone among Russian and most regular world forces can wage war without pause or ruin. In European war, it brings to our splendid army unmatched battle experience and organic cohesion, irreplaceable by bravery or tactical skill—vital when critical tasks fall to small forces or a great battle hangs in the balance. The Caucasian Army embodies the rational might of Russian nature. With its versatile experience, it’s among the rare battle-hardened forces, forged by long wars, that don’t swear to win or die but pledge victory—and keep it.

Twelfth letter

It remains to address the other side of the matter: the unique position the conquest of the Caucasus places us in regarding the broader Asian question, thus concluding this series of letters. Subduing the mountaineers—recognized de jure as Russian subjects by all Europe except England—was our domestic affair, concerning no one else. By abandoning the Circassians and Shamil to their fate in 1856, the allies could foresee the outcome of an unequal struggle. Yet, when it came to pass, the serious unease gripping not just public opinion but diplomatic circles, especially in the East, showed the result wasn’t expected—at least not so soon—and that hopes lingered to thwart it. Clearly, Western Europe deemed this event momentous but was unprepared for it. Judging by French agents’ actions in Turkey last summer, France—less engaged in Asian affairs in 1856 but since markedly more so—now views the Caucasus as England does. Both powers saw its conquest as laden with great consequences, thus troubling them. But consequences lie in the future; they can only be awaited, not countered now. Hence, it ended in talk and feeble attempts by minor agents to harm us. Significant in global politics for its potential future impact, the conquest is presently a Russian domestic matter. Its direct value lies in sparing the state ruinous costs, freeing an unmatched fighting army—hitherto as if nonexistent—and securing our southern borders. This dual nature—tangible now, potential later—must hold for us the same meaning it does for foreigners. While prudently reaping victory’s immediate fruits and not hastening consequences, we shouldn’t ignore them. The situation has fundamentally changed, and Russians shouldn’t grasp this shift less than the English or French. Possibility isn’t necessity, but significant possibilities shape calculations and thus actions; they must be accurately gauged. I’ll speak not of facts but of the situation from which unique facts may arise. Practical outcomes never fully match theoretical ones; the facts people draw from a situation never equal its full potential. I hope no reader confuses a theoretical framing, drawn from the general state of affairs, with its practical historical results, shaped by countless contingencies. Better to know where you’re sailing than drift blindly with the current.

You may have noticed that from these letters’ start to finish, the influence of Caucasian events on our Asian relations kept surfacing, as if woven into the local narrative. I repeated this theme unwittingly, not seeking it, drawn by the subject’s essence. The more I reflect, the firmer my conviction grows. Over sixty years of relentless war on the Caucasian isthmus, the great Asian question was indeed—if not wholly consciously—decided. I’ll explain my view of this question shortly. It wasn’t fully conscious because it transcended temporary political systems, stemming from the Russian people’s geographic placement and historical aspirations. It revealed that primal historical force—nameless to many, yet to be renamed—guiding generations’ unconscious, fragmented efforts toward a goal fully clear only to their descendants: the force of circumstances, understood only in hindsight. I’m convinced the Caucasus’s conquest will unlock unexpected resolutions to many major questions. Like all pivotal historical events, it holds far more than the aims its generation sought. The government clearly knew its goals: undisputed Russian dominion over inner Asian basins and a secure southern frontier, as I detailed in the first letter. The state achieved this, but new horizons opened instantly, shifting perspectives in ways we can’t arbitrarily ignore. Circumstances always assert themselves.

I must note one point, open to interpretation but which I see as purely historical fate, call it what you will. Establishing Russian dominion in the Caucasus isn’t just a historical outcome but a historical aim, so perfectly timed that earlier or later it wouldn’t carry today’s weight. Before, with a 30-million population, Russia couldn’t spare vast forces for a remote corner, especially when Muslim Asia wasn’t yet as decayed as now. Starting this struggle too early risked total failure, forever sealing Russia’s southern horizon behind the Caucasus’s snowy wall. Later, we might’ve found the matter lost, Asian affairs settled against us, and faced unbeatable foes on the isthmus without sea supremacy. Either could’ve happened. Had Russian troops not been recalled from Caspian regions under Anna Ioannovna’s careless rule, we’d likely have taken Georgia then, sparking a fight for the Caucasus when our strength was insufficient and wild steppes lay between our settled lands and the mountains. Raising the Caucasian question too soon probably would’ve doomed us. Had we not seized the isthmus amid the French Revolution’s chaos, before the first Napoleonic war, the great wars of the century’s start would’ve been too late; claiming vast Turkish lands, vital for guarding Asian holdings and Western interests, would’ve made the Caucasus a European question. Likewise, had our internal war dragged into a new European rupture after 1855’s schemes, our hold on the isthmus could’ve been at stake again. That the war’s start and end aligned unconsciously with such uniquely favorable moments suggests an extraordinarily rational chance guided it.

The Caucasus’s conquest is as decisive for the Russo-Asian question as the conquests of Kazan and Astrakhan were. Russian history is largely one endless Asian question, from when Slavic communities pushed east, displacing or absorbing Asian tribes. Europe once ended at the Vistula and Danube’s mouth; Russian Slavs extended it far eastward and continue to, driven by the same historical impulse seen first in Kyiv, then Murom, Kazan, Siberia, and now the Araks, Syr Darya, and Amur. The European race, humanity’s vanguard, spreads irresistibly—westward via seas, eastward via steppes and mountains. As America, Africa, and Oceania bend to Western Europe’s historical march, Asia’s modern fate ties to the eastern tribe’s destiny. If Europeans reach this continent’s edges, we press its centers with our vast, growing mass. One conquers by force; the other absorbs steadily. Last century, Russians reached seeming natural bounds—the Caucasus’s base and Ural’s shore—yet didn’t stop. Had other Europeans preempted us on the isthmus, extending influence to Transcaspian Asia, the Ural, Kuban, and Terek would’ve been our eternal limits; Russians would’ve played a global role like a hemmed-in Germany, its growing population fueling others’ colonies. But the opposite occurred, and no theorist can now set bounds our tribe “shalt not pass,” especially as none exist on the map. Natural barriers, if only geographic, may slow a great people’s growth but not halt it; only collision with another vibrant nation stops it fully. Where are such neighbors on our Asian frontier? A living nation expresses ongoing vitality, not a fossilized imprint of past life, like a well-preserved mummy’s face. Weak or crude life can revive or transform, but life is needed. Are today’s Asian peoples living organisms or fossils crumbling into dust? That’s the Asian question. For living forces, a dead people is like uninhabited land—no eternal historical boundary.

Personally, I’m firmly convinced, by clear evidence, that today’s Muslim Asian peoples lack any vital societal force, existing as a mechanical collection of unlinked units. I know some who lived long in Asia and think otherwise, even fond of local ways. Seeing living people with shared passions, they missed society’s deadness. (The late Senkovsky brilliantly sketched such “converted” Europeans regarding China.) But no keen observer falls into this error. All sharp-eyed witnesses say the same of Asians. Muslim peoples reached their current decay over centuries, step by step; its depth emerged suddenly this century upon constant European contact—like a corpse preserved in a tomb until fresh air hits it. They’re truly crumbling to dust.

Islam eradicated not just awareness but even the sense of nationality in Asian peoples. It’s so exclusive and external a religion that it hunts, as a mortal foe, anything not directly from it—not just in ideas but in life’s smallest material habits. When muridism, now Islam’s sole spiritual spark, grows strong enough to act, it punishes any trace of nationality—songs, tales, customary governance, or law—as reminders of a people’s character. It forces men into alien 7th-century Arab molds. In old Asia, Islam long achieved this—people became wholly Muslim, ceasing to be human. All bear one stamp, uniform to the tiniest detail. Nationality lingers as language or sometimes dress but not as a concept; it forms no social bond or conscious value. Endless upheavals shuffled Asian tribes randomly, so they no longer feel cuts to their living flesh. The state as a nation is meaningless there. As Islam is not just religious but a fixed political, civil, and financial code, covering all societal and family life, progress in a purely Muslim society is impossible except as a grafted patch. What can a Muslim develop when he lacks a national foundation to grow from and faces an unyielding religious law scripting personal and social life?

He has no ground beneath nor space above; his thought starts from nothing, only to hit an impassable barrier—7th-century Arab notions ruling everything, beyond which all is sin and falsehood.

Naturally, he forgets how to live morally, as a long-chained man forgets walking; his moral faculties wither like unused legs. The early caliphate isn’t a counterexample—a fevered man can do wonders, but once cooled, Muslims were left shackled in soul, unable to move. Their only uniting force is fanaticism. This is so true that now, crushed by Europe and sensing its inner weakness, Islam’s quest for renewal birthed only muridism, a web of secret societies across Asia (these societies, feared by Asian governments, are tightly linked—Abdelkader sent banners to Ismail-Effendi, muridism’s Caucasian founder, for blessing before his holy war against France), a mystical Islam pushed to extreme zealotry. A 150-million Muslim mass produced nothing else, as it contains nothing else.

How can such people, blind to societal purpose, form a society? They exist under external force. Asian state populations are dry sand in a box, held by walls. Today’s Asian despotism isn’t rooted in customs or values; it’s a mechanical force ruling a dead body. Asians’ sole relation to government is avoiding it; who holds power matters not. Foreign or native rulers are the same external force. Once, religious zeal hindered infidel rule, when men were less bound and could afford whims; governments were cheap, and despite efforts, masses breathed freely. Now, with governments’ growing needs and regular armies—even in Bukhara—subjects’ lives are so unbearable that Asian masses want only lighter oppression, careless of its source. Bordering Transcaucasia, Turkish and Persian subjects, with a comparison point, openly wish Russians would ease their crushing yoke. Today’s Asian masses—nationless, indifferent to authority, hopeless, ever more oppressed—live day to day, cursing their lot; most would welcome any change, whatever it brings. This doesn’t mean we should care for unneeded lands, but it’s reason enough not to see this state as stable, not to view geographic neighbors as historical ones, to expect anything, and be ready always.

No internal renewal of Muslim societies is possible. Transformation’s source is the human soul, powerless without a natural or crafted ideal urging it upward. Islam erased all primal roots, filling the soul wholly, yet offers no ideal, even narrowly defined. It’s a naturalistic religion with supernatural trappings, justifying man as is, demanding no inner elevation, sanctifying all passions—from polygamy to vendettas—saving him through external law alone. Its otherworldly realm isn’t a soul’s ideal but a reward for law-keeping: the same sensual world, brighter painted, filled with the same people, just as shahs, not subjects. Islam took spirit-and-world from Christianity but kept pagan meanings. What earthly ideal can a Muslim seek when even heaven offers none? Permeated by a religion encompassing all—family, civil, criminal, financial laws—he’s Muslim to his fingertips, recognizable from Morocco to Borneo by how he dines or holds a knife, trapped in a fixed circle. For eight centuries, mighty figures strained to widen Islam’s horizon, but all efforts were variations on one theme, like Asian music. No genius can draw from a theme what it lacks. So it was, so it will be. Islam’s world is barren at its core. Personal spirit’s sterility became societal death, existing only mechanically.

Asia’s European-style reforms are well-known: they mix incompatible elements, like water and fire—water evaporates, but not before quenching the flame. The result is people who learned nothing, lost all conviction, and believe only in money, whoever pays. Official classes, even near thrones, eagerly serve European interests for cash, openly selling their lands, surprising no one, showing utter indifference to what we call homeland or dynasty—for them, a fleeting union under random rule. They view public good as a Persian grandee in Hajji Baba did: “The English prate of homeland and common good; what’s it to me if the state’s strong and the shah rich, when the money’s his, not mine? What gain if my countrymen prosper—their wealth isn’t mine.” In Asia, no one’s more or less corrupt; this is plain sense. Islam stripped Muslims of societal ground and moral sense; its morality is a few legal precepts. That grandee might’ve been pious, praying five times daily, giving alms, shunning wine, pilgriming to the Kaaba, and once joining holy war. Likely, he was a mystic, debating faith’s metaphysics, as clever Muslims often do in age; he might’ve died for faith. But none of this brought him closer to notions of homeland or civic duty.

The Muslim world long sank thus; its people became a numbered mass, from which lucky bandit chiefs carved states every few centuries, living day to day until Europe struck. That clash broke their rotten machinery. Governments and masses dimly felt hopeless weakness, inner and outer. Governments mimicked European state forms, thinking them strength’s source, but these crushed subjects’ means, unable to bear new demands. Masses, once apathetic to rule, now loathe it doubly—as faith’s betrayer, swayed by infidels, and merciless oppressor. Religious hatred of the straying elite fueled secret sects—murids in Sunnism, Babis in Shiism—taking sharp political form. Murids especially built states within states across Muslim Asia, threatening futile upheavals, as all Islam’s inner stirrings are. Material oppression bred formless but universal hatred of power. All became foes of the order—some seek salvation in vain self-strength, able only to destroy; others, aware of weakness, await deliverance from anyone, even infidels, for relief. Though shallow, Asian-European contact sufficed to plant in Asians a vague sense of their impotence, a flickering awareness that today’s world belongs to infidels. With eastern fatalism and societies’ mechanical life, this feeling, growing slowly, dooms Asian autonomy.

This century’s close Europe-Asia contact was, as in the fable, an iron pot striking a clay one.

Such, without exaggeration, is Muslim Asia’s state. I know little of pagan Asia, but signs suggest it’s even deader. This age, the East’s stagnation turned to decay; even habit’s bond crumbles. Meanwhile, Europeans invade this rotting mass from all sides—yesterday via India and Africa, today through Turkey and China. The outcome holds no mystery, though its timing is unclear. Every village Europeans seize in Asia seeds a subject realm, growing inevitably unless countered by other Europeans, like a stone sinking in a swamp to solid ground. Today’s Asian masses have only inertia’s force; they can’t renew internally; they face the fate of any mass under living forces. Asia will be carved up by Europeans. What history makes of this—how Asians might be reshaped or revived—is idle speculation. But the carving is plain; doubting its further effects is impossible, as nothing in nature sets a limit.

Had Russia stopped at the Caucasus and Ural, sealing itself as a local state, shunning the global role of maritime powers, the Asian question would still concern it more directly than others. What’s convenience and profit for Western Europe is life for Russia. It relates to Asia as the pre-Civil War United States did to America. Merged with Asia over 10,000 versts, touching its cores, living under one roof with its peoples, Russia is bound to them by necessity. Even if confined geographically, we couldn’t ignore political shifts on our weak, open southern border; Asian events would be not political but vital. But Russia couldn’t stop at the Caucasus or Ural. Offense was easier than defending this awkward position; even before the need was conscious, events took the first, irreversible step.

From the day Russia entered core Asia, merging wholly, it had to treat the Asian question as domestic. We didn’t stumble into Asia like other Europeans. Russia’s vast body grew into this dying, crumbling, seized world and, beyond whim or policy, must act like a magnet on iron filings.

Thirteenth letter

Russia’s relation to Asia differs wholly from that of Western nations. Asian affairs aren’t a luxury, whim, or pursuit of excess strength for us—nor a chase for specific aims like trade or influence. They are Russian affairs, inescapable. Like Janus, Russia has two faces: one toward Europe, one toward Asia. We didn’t choose this; we were born a state fused equally with both. England holds India by chance capture; without it, England remains itself, its island untouched by Asian events. For Russia, the upheaval beginning in Asia is a vital question. The fate of peoples along our vast southern border—from the Black Sea to the Pacific—is our personal concern. In their current state, these peoples can’t sway our affairs and would remain negligible alone. But as allies of a foreign power, their geographic position could make them critical. As Asian states’ autonomy—sustained only by isolation—crumbles, European influences gain weight, outstripping local governments. Europeans wield allied Asian states as neighbors once did Poland, with a key difference: Poland’s chronic anarchy made it a weak tool, while Asian despotism, though inept at true governance, commands a country’s resources. When Europeans seize such a government, they become its unchecked masters, organizing its forces at its expense and using them freely. Such a protectorate is the inevitable fate of all Asian native states—the first phase of Europe’s dominion over this continent. Only the blind miss this. Any European influence, once dominant in an Asian domain, takes this form. Eastern governments, thrust suddenly from seclusion into European proximity, hated by their masses, trembling before rival claimants, must lean on someone for defense against internal and external threats. A European ally can’t trust a seraglio torn by intrigue, so to secure it, they surround it with their men, turning alliance into guardianship. This tightens daily, making the ally a tributary. The last Asian states with nominal independence are visibly sliding into European vassalage. Persia, Afghanistan, and China teeter on full vassalage; Central Asian states will soon follow, whoever dominates. Vast eastern empires, enduring until now, will likely collapse in our lifetime—hastening their European subjugation. Western powers, entrenched in Asia, can’t stop halfway or cap their rule—direct or indirect, it’s the same. Neighbors’ ceaseless upheavals force intervention to secure borders; ephemeral Asian domains collapse at Europe’s touch like card houses, extending guardianship ever further. In the 1820s, after the Maratha war, the British swore off expansion; yet now their protectorate reaches Herat and Balkh. Afghanistan and Persia matter more to them than Denmark or Italy. French influence now joins England’s in Asia. Beyond China and Cochinchina, who forgets Syria’s events? England’s jealousy then halted French plans and still curbs the Suez Company—a purely French venture with Syrian expedition undertones. The rivalry between these maritime powers is serious when face-to-face. But when it concerns us, Russians, and our interests, France and England will align in Asia as in Europe.

Each would yield ten concessions to the other before one to us. From their view, they’re not entirely wrong. Beyond our tribal, social, and religious divergence from Europe—making us a strange, half-understood world—the consequences of success in eastern affairs differ. Eastern gains benefit England and France but don’t strengthen their European metropoles; they sap them, remaining alien lands, never sources of new strength. Our gains, made at our empire’s edge, soon fuse with it, directly boosting its might. Punjab’s conquest didn’t strengthen England here; the Caucasus’s conquest markedly strengthened Russia, even in Europe. Foreign diplomats may not consciously follow this logic, but instincts, hunches, and biases in politics rival ideas. Clearly, in Asian affairs even more than European, we can expect neither sympathy nor indulgence. Others may take our aid, as they have, but where our interests lie, none will help. Like the fable’s reapers, we rely only on ourselves. For Russia, whose southern border slices Asia’s length, the fate of neighboring Asian peoples is, in a sense, its own. A glance at Asia’s map shows our plight if a hostile protectorate reached our borders—if unfriendly influence touched the Caspian shore or even one point of the nomad masses filling Central Asia from the Ural to the Amur’s mouth. Central Asia’s nomadic hordes, history’s devastators, remain unchanged; centuries don’t alter their patriarchal ways. Only now, regular troops of a mighty nation—few but terrifying, like Cortés’s Spaniards to Americans—line their desert’s edge. This moral force ratio, we must guard carefully. I doubt we can rely on Kyrgyz, Turkmen, or Mongol timidity. The Caucasus recalls when, under Yermolov, two companies seemed invincible in Dagestan, yet later twenty battalions with siege guns barely sufficed for one village. Those same Turkmen, ten fleeing one Russian, face ten regular Persians armed with bayonets alone—proof their fear of us isn’t physical but moral, tied to our perceived invincibility. Opinions shift. If a European power extended its Asian holdings to the steppe’s southern edge, touching nomad masses, the balance could flip. Incitement and modern firearms could spark grave danger. We’ve seen muridism’s miraculous effect on Muslim masses, turning meek shepherds into fearless zealots overnight. In the Caucasus, muridism’s bloody work is done, but even crushed, it stirs. Across the Caspian, it could ignite a blaze—first, because Bukhara, Turkestan’s holy hub, is muridism’s nest; second, because Christian rule in Muslim lands initially sparks fanaticism, which now always morphs into muridism, its final form. Combining European influence’s material means with muridism’s fervor forms a complex threat we mustn’t allow. Such a feasible Asian upheaval could push us to rear lines, demanding vast sacrifices to guard our endless southern borders. As I said in the first letter, a similar mountain upheaval forced us to hold the Caucasian Line with disproportionate troops. This is the first danger, requiring Russia to extend its influence far beyond its borders to block hostile contact where it could occur. The second, graver danger is foreign European influence reaching Asia’s inner basins—the Caspian and Aral Seas, where we rule only one side. European influence quickly turns allies into tributaries, harnessing their forces. If it dominated Persia or Bukhara, reaching even the upper Amu Darya, our hold on these “our” seas would again be contested. Without vigilance, this adverse outcome is plausible. During the last Eastern War, we anxiously eyed Persia; earlier, Anglo-Indian troops entered Balkh, in the Amu Darya basin. Such risks vanish in global peace, but in a European war, they could easily arise, then hard to fix. Until these seas are ringed by Russian lands or domains where our dominance is unshakable, we can’t call them ours or rest easy. The Caucasus’s conquest shields them from direct European grabs, but they remain open to southern and eastern encirclement—not by armies, impractical over such distances, but by slow, growing influences organizing local means, later easily reinforced. If foreign influence settled in Persia, Bukhara, or Khiva, or a European steamer appeared on the Amu Darya, the Caspian would be flanked, our rule contested. No Russian doubts that rivalry on the Caspian—our Volga’s outlet—is as unthinkable as on the Dnieper or Dvina. The Caucasus’s hard-won victory would be squandered, thrusting Russia back to Ivan the Terrible’s era, hemmed by foes on west, south, and east. One touch of another European power, direct or indirect, on the Caspian would upend our affairs from Kuban to Amur. We’ll never see this, as Russia is strong enough to counter any contingency, but these measures should unfold gradually, not awaiting crises when action doubles in difficulty and haste yields half-success. Until a Russian can land anywhere on the Caspian or Aral as at home, the task isn’t done. To be at home there, to tame border nomads, to avoid a narrow horizon, to let our tribe’s natural eastward growth turn deserts into European lands for humanity’s good, Russia must rule neighboring Asian states wholly—by arms or influence.

Beyond politics, Russia’s southeastward growth, as state and tribe, is historically inevitable. The force that absorbed Tatar and Nogai hordes in southern Russia now engulfs Kyrgyz and Turkmen in the east; the same Cossacks lead peaceful settlers. Imagining a great tribe’s spread can be capped by a preset line misunderstands human history. Guiding this flow is government’s role; setting its measure exceeds human power. Where generations act in sequence, our view is too narrow to gauge circumstances’ force—we can only see their direction, steer it, and clear visible obstacles.

In this and all else, we can’t let artificial eastern barriers be raised against us. Beyond distant southern peninsulas, on Asia’s mainland, Russia plainly can’t tolerate even a hint of adverse political alignments without clear harm.

In the old realm of Genghis Khan—Asian Turkey, Persia, Turkestan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and northern China—no European influence turning dominant can be borne. By Russia’s geographic position, excluding Western influence here must be our political axiom. Until now, this was theoretical. The Caucasus’s conquest lets us defend it against all.

See the matter plainly. Since the Russian Empire crossed its natural Asian bounds, it can’t limit its actions to a preset sphere. The future lies with fate. Amid a decaying Asian world, where surprises may erupt daily, we must be ready for anything. Our Asian dominion faces the same fate as any European one; we can’t predefine its final bounds. Countless contingencies may push us forward—neighbors’ upheavals, fanatic sects like murids threatening our borders, countering rival European dominance, or securing influence over neighbors, endlessly. This happens in Europe too, but European wars don’t kill foes. In today’s Asia, a native state may crumble at one blow, forcing the victor, sometimes unwillingly, to guard its ruins. Asia’s moral bankruptcy bends it irresistibly under living nations’ protectorates. Balancing European influences diplomatically over eastern governments auctioning their policies is impossible; to sway them, you need gold or a sword. It’s either one European power’s protectorate or another’s—no other choice. To block hostile aims where they’re intolerable, there’s one way: hold exclusive, force-backed influence, placing your men around seraglio governments.

Hoping diplomacy alone can achieve this is self-deception. Fortunately, the Caucasian War ended timely. Given the clear balance of Russian and Western forces in Asia, with firm will and consistent action, Russia can achieve needed results without upheaval or great strain. Securing Russian dominion in the Caucasus must decisively shape all Asian affairs, except Chinese ones tied to Eastern Siberia. By its central position, the Caucasian isthmus commands Muslim Asia, save India and Arabia’s southern peninsulas, which don’t concern us. Transcaucasia, with the Caspian’s inner Russian basin, wedges between Asian Turkey, Persia, and inner Asia. The Caucasian Army’s direct strategic theater, reachable in one or more campaigns from its initial base—recruit depots, commissariats, arsenals, labs—spans western Asia’s half, from the Bosporus to Suez, the Persian Gulf, and the Himalayas. By direct theater, I mean one an army can cross, holding supply bases, to its edges. Thus, from the Himalayas to Constantinople’s straits is the Caucasian Army’s direct field. For clarity, India would be an indirect theater if attacked—unlikely, as it lies outside Russian interests. Despite Napoleon I’s odd scheme, a Caspian-launched invasion is impossible, first for distance, but more for India’s mountain barrier, severing operational spheres. Crossing the Hindu Kush, the Caspian army would be like Robinson Crusoe—soon out of powder, shells, gear, with broken artillery, forced to surrender. Attacking India needs a base under the Hindu Kush, firmly held and equipped. Hence, India isn’t in the Caucasian Army’s direct theater and is currently inaccessible. But by the same logic, lands from the Hindu Kush to the Bosporus and Suez fall squarely in our army’s reach, based on solid military data. This vast theater splits by terrain into three spheres, matching Asia’s political divisions. The Caucasian Army can move west to Asian Turkey, south to Persia, or east to Transcaspian Asia—Turkestan. (In Moscow News, I briefly outlined each sphere’s strategic traits but won’t repeat, as it’s tangential.)

Eastward, our policy gains independence and initiative. Relations with Turkey, a recognized European state, tie to broader political systems, inseparable from them. Persia offers more room, letting national aims unfold faster, as we face only England, not all Europe as on the Bosporus or Anatolia. In the third sphere, Transcaspia, we’re unhindered, meeting no rivalry but the muted, constant antagonism of British coexistence in Asia—unavoidable, no matter our actions, so it shouldn’t bind us alone. Fortunately, these spheres’ importance to Russian interests reverses this order: circumstances demand more initiative in the east, where we act freely, than in Persia, where freedom is limited, or the west, tied to pan-European questions. Our prime need—securing the inner Asian seas forever—focuses on Transcaspia, where we’re unchecked. Holding the Caspian’s eastern and Aral’s southern shores would make us unassailable, ready for any event. Undisputed Caspian dominion requires eliminating all political rivalry in Persia, aligning it so closely that its shore equals ours. But Persia’s regular, recognized government secures our interests better than the masterless Transcaspian edge, needing less urgent action. Western Asia, entwined with European interests, concerns the Caucasian Army only in major war, not otherwise.

In all three directions, covering Muslim Asia, the Caucasus’s conquest opened our freedom to act. By its strength, traits, and position, the Caucasian Army is not just Russia’s main but only lever to shape Asian affairs to our interests. Our other Asian troops east of the Caucasus are too few for major ventures. Expanding them would mean a second Asian army, bloating an already high military budget needlessly, as the Caucasian Army’s size and centrality suffice for Muslim Asia’s interests—especially since it can’t be weakened much. Experience shows distance prevents quick reinforcement of Caucasian regiments during surprises; they must repel initial blows alone. At its current strength, the army can detach forces for serious ventures in its natural sphere, including the inner seas, at equal cost on any shore, while remaining formidable on the Black Sea, Turkey’s, or Persia’s borders. These are the world’s toughest, most campaign-hardened men. Daring mountain youths—thousands of abreks, living by arms, now impoverished by peace, causing trouble at home—are born warriors, loyal under banners, surviving weeks on corn cakes. They’re a reliable war force, best kept busy abroad. Sixty years of war amassed Caucasian military stores—outdated for Europe, ideal for Asia. The army’s commander holds authority no serious venture can lack, unlike other local chiefs on our borders; his administration is staffed with men seasoned in Asian dealings. Without such power and experience, eastern affairs, needing unique methods, falter. On the Caspian-washed Caucasian isthmus, all means for decisive action—across the sea and beyond—are ready. Without ample forces in Asia, systematic goals are unattainable. Circumstances marked the Caucasus as Russia’s action center, creating an Asian army and dominant position. Though Asian affairs tie to state policy, their distinctness demands a dedicated organ. The Caucasian commander, by position, best grasps Asian matters, naturally centralizing conditions to lead Russo-Asian policy.

Scattered efforts on our southern borders yield disjointed results. For Russia, the Asian question is one, woven of varied threads, at least in the Muslim world, requiring a single policy, however diversely applied. In eastern affairs, where minute events matter, where rulers act on fleeting personal whims, not state need, where situations shift suddenly, often without cause, and opportunities must be seized instantly or lost, a border chief needs vast authority. Only the Caucasian viceroy holds this; other local officials don’t.

Lands under the Caucasian Army’s strategic sway naturally fall in the viceroy’s direct or indirect orbit. This sphere defines itself. Where our interests don’t clash with pan-European ones, where deep Eastern knowledge—alien, even inaccessible to Europe-bred diplomats—can guide affairs with some autonomy, the organ best versed should lead. The Caucasian viceroy, by role, must study eastern peoples, govern them wisely, and keep peace; practical experience brings this knowledge naturally. Our autonomous Asian policy begins at Turkey’s eastern edge, covering Persia and Transcaspia. Persia matters to us only because we hold the Caucasus and Caspian, its affairs relevant for the sea’s control; only from the Caucasus can they be watched closely, day by day. Transcaspian Asia lies equally in the army’s and viceroy’s sphere. The split in managing affairs across the Caspian stems from our incomplete sea dominion—a gap we must close to forestall future risks. In 1857, Caucasian authorities flagged this, proposing measures to link the Caspian and Aral, fed by Central Asia’s main navigable rivers. Occupying the Caspian’s eastern shore and connecting to the Aral—neither costly nor complex—would pull Turkestan into the army’s direct reach, unifying our Asian affairs, now wholly lacking cohesion. Executing this simple 1857 plan would’ve given us, without war, commanding influence over vast Asian expanses; strength’s mere presence settles eastern questions faster and fuller than half-measured actions. It would also end any question over the inner seas, securing their shores for Russia. This step, I believe, is today’s task.

But we must firmly grasp that conquest can never be our eastern policy’s aim. Near our borders lie no densely peopled, resource-rich lands like southern peninsulas to tempt conquerors. Beyond key points to guard our inner seas, we seek not dominion but firmly rooted influence across accessible Asia, barring foreign rivalry forever. Russia’s clear need, as state and people, is diplomatic mastery over continental Asia—nothing more. The advantageous position from absolute Caucasian rule and the army’s strength and qualities are vital tools for this. Without them, such a goal was unthinkable, as Asian diplomatic success never comes, nor lasts, by diplomacy alone. In Asia, only the strong are right, only the exclusive influence—eternal axioms. A government under dual influences, even unequal ones, with one far stronger, isn’t a reliable friend. An Asian government’s neutrality is empty. Leaving eastern councils to whim, open to temptation, is handing a child a knife. No chain of favors, self-interest, or even fear—if punishment delays—guards against a bribed eunuch’s intrigue flipping state policy in a day. In calm times, with a European patron’s wrath imminent, an Asian ally stays cautious; but in crises, when the patron’s strength turns elsewhere and betrayal goes unpunished briefly, a dangerous, unexpected shift looms. The British know this eastern trait so well they bar foreign agents from governments in their sphere, even nominally independent ones, smashing any council admitting an outsider—and rightly so. A European power can’t tolerate a neutral Asian neighbor; only an allied one will do. Securing such an alliance requires not just force’s use but its clear presence—nothing works without it. For reliability, an ally must follow its patron’s will wholly, always. Such loyalty, essential for stable ties, can’t be shielded from sudden betrayal by gain or fear. The only way is placing your man as grand vizier, controlling all affairs, and watching him closely. He’ll set his men around, aligning governance. To ensure this power’s support, give native troops your instructors, barring all foreigners. Then ties grow firm; a protectorate becomes easier, more profitable than direct rule. Other powers won’t waste agents on a government sealed against them. You can wield the country’s resources, maintained at its cost, dodging daily governance hassles and direct responsibility, while reaping economic benefits for your citizens’ trade and industry without offending neighbors. Only a protectorate offers Asia’s benefits over burdens, unthinkable without force’s edge, achieved simply by steady policy and sharp judgment of its agents.

Today, Russian society must hold as clear and settled a view on Asian affairs as on European ones. What society doesn’t know, the government—drawn from it—often can’t either, leading to arbitrary views that can stall everything. Russia is bound to Asia, far more invested than any European power, yet oddly, every Western state with eastern ties has more specially trained men than our homeland, fused with Asia over 10,000 versts. Our total such men are a few diplomats in Turkey and Persia. No officer in our staffs is systematically trained for oriental roles. In the Caucasus, where need is great, we rely on natives knowing eastern languages practically but often lacking European education or sentiment, making them half-fit for tasks. This explains why our material strength hasn’t yet matched our eastern influence, why our grasp of eastern matters, even officially, was so muddled. Modern Russia needs not deep orientalists for scholarship (they emerge naturally) or a few consular specialists, but a mass of officers versed enough in oriental affairs to serve capably in administration, diplomacy, our Asian regiments’ front lines, or as instructors in neighboring states’ armies, consciously advancing our interests across our Asian border. This need isn’t met by an eastern faculty (though useful with demand), but a cadet corps prioritizing oriental studies. I say cadet corps because we need not high scholarship but many prepared men. Talents among them will grow in practice. Field Marshal Prince Baryatinsky, whose mind systematized the Asian question, long cherished this idea in the Caucasus. His initiatives passed to Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, on whom our hopes now rest. The Caucasus’s conqueror will fully realize them.

Fourteenth letter

In my last two letters, I endeavored to establish a proper perspective on the very fact of the conquest of the Caucasus, outlining in general terms its material consequences, as far as could be done in a newspaper article. I focused solely on the political and military nature of the new relations our homeland has entered with Asia through this conquest. However, the issue is far from exhausted by these aspects. The dominance of the Russian people in the East may, over time, yield results far broader and more significant than purely political ones. I hold certain convictions on this matter and feel compelled to express them, as, despite the abstract nature of such a question, a host of practical consequences depend on one’s perspective, particularly the system of governing Asian populations. First, one must clearly understand where one is headed; second, every possession in Asia must pay for itself, otherwise it becomes senseless, as the dominant nation is its own end and cannot make acquisitions at its own expense. Both aspects are closely intertwined. Undoubtedly, Russia has no need for conquests in Asia. A firmly established protectorate over a territory where hostile influences cannot be tolerated fully suffices. Yet, one cannot forget that the Asian question, like all monumental shifts in history, resolves itself far more than it is deliberately resolved. The parties involved are subject to necessities that often cannot be avoided. Despite the advantages of a protectorate, considering the general decay of the Asian world, one might assume that the current, entirely arbitrary border of the empire may yet be pushed further, and then new territories will need to be governed in a way that ensures dominion over them is not burdensome for Russia itself. We see in practice that no European power with possessions in the East treats its Asian subjects as its own citizens. Nor could it be otherwise. Beyond the fact that European subjects are the very purpose of the state, while Asian subjects are a political means to other ends; beyond the fact that the former voluntarily support the state with all their strength, while the latter must be forcibly kept in obedience; what is even more significant is that the entire world of ideas and needs, the entire spiritual makeup of people there and here, is so profoundly different that transplanting European forms of governance to Asia would be an obvious and glaring absurdity. Western nations, like the British and Dutch, who rule eastern lands, understand very well that such rule makes sense only as long as it is profitable. They govern their subjects, of course, with adherence to general principles of justice, but primarily in their own interests, without even contemplating the impossible task of re-educating Muslim or pagan subjects in the spirit of European civilization. They preserve intact all local forms of governance and taxation in the subjugated country; the European power, taking the place of the Asian government, retains only a political role, overseeing the native administration but not replacing it. The subject peoples thus perceive foreign rule as an abstract supreme authority, the kind they have always submitted to, without direct contact with it, so it does not grate on them as an alien, infidel yoke. Under such a system, political oversight of a conquered country always proceeds successfully. European agents in these regions, unburdened by petty tasks, can devote all their time to studying the country, its economic resources, and the spirit of its people, enabling them to monitor any hostile manifestations among the populace that could develop into a threat to the ruling power (when dealing with Asians, such vigilance cannot be relaxed for a moment). Few in number and thus chosen with strict scrutiny, European officials carry out their duties conscientiously, taking to heart the moral and material interests of the metropole. In the native administration beneath them, local governance proceeds as it always has in Asia; the governed remain within their way of life, striving to settle all matters among themselves to have as little interaction with the authorities as possible; the administrators, on the other hand, seek every opportunity to profit. But all this domestic filth, petty bribery, and extortion remains a family matter for the population; the natives can only complain about their own kin and know that this has been the case since time immemorial. As a result, no blame falls on the European power; the inevitable filth of Asian governance does not tarnish the sacred name of the ruling nation. The native sees the European official as a last resort in extreme cases. This official, representing political authority, bound by instructions rather than formalities, resolves matters satisfactorily and understandably for the Asian, who needs only a “yes” or “no,” as he understands authority solely as power, not as an institution. For its part, the central administration can fearlessly entrust broad powers to its agents, who are few, carefully selected, well-provided for, and guided by a strict and established system. The shortest formula for this type of governance can be expressed thus: “the replacement of the despotic arbitrariness of native rulers with the enlightened arbitrariness of European agents, bound by the spirit, not the letter, of the system.”

Beyond the rationality of this approach to governing Asian territories, it is grounded even more in necessity—an unavoidable, absolute necessity. The economic resources of Asian lands, even the richest ones, are negligible compared to European ones. An Englishman pays around 15 rubles per capita in taxes, while an English subject in India pays less than 2 rubles; a Russian pays 5 rubles, a Transcaucasian native—1 ruble 60 kopecks. The figure of state revenues, divided by population, amounts to less than 2 rubles per capita across all of Asia, yet eastern governments maintain administrations and armies just as in Europe. How do they manage? Quite simply, because the administration—all ministries, except the military, in European terms—costs them very little. Beyond external policing and the pursuit of bandits, Asian populations neither want nor need any administration, avoiding it like the plague; to their utmost despair, the administration sometimes meddles in their affairs for profit. For an Asian, going to court or appealing to an agent of authority means closing their shop or workshop, shutting their home to neighbors, as no one will want to deal with such a litigious, dangerous person who might drag an entire neighborhood into a tangle with the authorities. For Asians, the best government is the one they hear about the least. Arbitration is the common form of settling disputes throughout Asia; its purpose is clear: to avoid contact with the government. An Asian, unless a scoundrel, only complains to an official about another official, almost never about a fellow common subject. The Asian’s ideal is to interact with the authorities only when paying taxes. Naturally, with such a disposition among the population, administration is cheap. One governor, as the political representative of the government, one treasurer, one qadi (judge), usually unoccupied, and a few sanjak-beys for external policing—that is the entire administration of a region, with everything else in the hands of village elders. Moreover, salaries, if they exist at all, are typically high in Asia. But with such a lean staff, governance, even with high salaries, is extremely inexpensive. The government can manage, maintain an army, and spend lavishly on external pomp with an income not exceeding 2 rubles per capita. And note, as Asia stands, no one has yet complained that the government is inattentive to the people’s needs; there, they complain about its attentiveness, and administrative reform in the European style provokes universal outcry. European rule, taking the place of native government, inherits only the scope of action that belonged to its predecessor. This scope is defined not by an arbitrary system but by the age-old, entrenched force of things, the spiritual makeup of the people over whom it begins to reign. European power cannot change the forms of local administration, first, because it would create an intractable and purposeless confusion that would first confound itself, making it impossible to discern anything in its own affairs; second, because it would deprive it of the means for self-sustainability. Only the cheapness of Asian governance allows military expenses to be covered with the low budget of an eastern country. There is no escape from this cycle, unless some philanthropic European nation, like the pelican at the gates of an orphanage, decides to feed foreign fledglings with its own blood. An Asian possession that does not cover all its expenses, military and civilian, and requires subsidies from the metropole is sheer nonsense, unless it is a necessary strategic point rather than a vast territory. In Asian governance, one can only succeed through the cheapness of administration, making it impossible to consider replacing its forms with expensive European ones.

But is this any more feasible in any other respect? Would any reasonable person believe in the possibility of re-educating Asian masses in the European mold, in their entire political structure? They can be absorbed by a European nationality—history provides examples, which I will address in due course—but re-educated, never. Three thousand years have passed between the forms into which the human spirit has evolved in the East and the West; there is no longer any kinship between them, and thus no union that could bear fruit or produce something intermediate. How can an Asian pagan or Muslim, living by a dead tradition into which modern life contributes nothing, understanding nothing beyond the starkest reality, having shaped all their concepts from philosophy to family relations in this vein, living in society as an isolated unit rather than a living member, having inherited this disposition, how can they connect their concepts in any way with those of a European, which are based on principles inaccessible to them? How can they, remaining Asian, gradually infuse European thought into their worldview, which is long complete and closed, incapable even of conceiving the questions to which European civilization offers answers? Reforms undertaken by a European government in the East can only have the same outcome as those of Asian governments, which, before our eyes, destroy the last bond—the bond of habit—that has so far held their decrepit states together. But Asian reforms so far have only been small-scale experiments. How much greater would be the delusion of a European nation that wholly transplanted its institutions to the East, suddenly imposing on Asians the complex forms of European judicial and administrative systems, developed by an entirely different life, responding to diametrically opposed needs, contradicting the religion, age-old character, and family life of the governed; a nation that, setting itself as an example, created in an illiterate, immoral, indifferent mass of eastern populations a noble Asian aristocracy, despite the fact that Asians lack concepts of honor and personal rights, have neither a true family nor familial traditions due to polygamy? If, moreover, this nation introduced such institutions not at the expense of others but at its own cost, reaching the point where a single Civil Administration, unsuited to the needs or means of the governed and least of all to the needs of the authority itself, consumed all the region’s revenues without remainder? The consequences are obvious. First, by replacing simple Asian governance with a complex administration that the inhabitants neither understand nor can understand, we would introduce the most monstrous arbitrariness, in many ways worse than purely Asian: when people cannot even guess what is being done to them, anything can be done under the cover of forms alien to them. Second, such an administration entirely fails to achieve its purpose. Legal procedures cannot catch a single culprit in a country where a hundred of the most honest people, by their own standards, will unhesitatingly swear an oath to clear a notorious villain to save him from the hands of infidels. The law’s impotence forces the authority to constantly bypass it and act arbitrarily based on conviction.

Third, by taking on lower-level administration and cloaking it in European formality, the foreign ruler constantly reminds subjects of the alien yoke, grates on their eyes, and gathers upon itself all the curses for oppression and grievances—curses that would remain mutual recriminations among natives if the ruler stood above. Fourth, under such a system, European officials can no longer be carefully selected, secured, or held to high standards; they must be recruited en masse, taking anyone who cannot find a place at home, and then displaying this motley crew to the native populations, disgracing the inviolable name of the ruling nation in every way. Officials accustomed to such an order care only about shielding themselves with formalities and neglect political oversight of the populations—storm clouds may gather over their heads, and they will not see them. And finally, the last point: such an application of European forms to an Asian country, equally inconvenient for the authority and the governed, yet consuming all the region’s revenues without leaving anything for its defense, can only exist on a very limited scale, as a curious specimen, like the Scottish wine Lord Elgin produced in his greenhouse, costing him 300 francs a bottle. Such a possession can only be indulged at the expense of one of the core provinces, diverting its resources to cover the costs of the former. But imagine that, due to particular circumstances, this possession expands, triples, quadruples—now four provinces must be enslaved to it, when the matter could have been handled simply, to the mutual benefit of both sides. What kind of governance is this? For whose pleasure, for what necessity, can such a contradiction exist? Who benefits from this?

I would not dwell on such an untenable theory if it remained merely a theory; but with the conquest of the Caucasus, the Asian question looms before Russia in all its vastness and inevitability. The system of governing Asian territories may soon become a matter of paramount importance for us; this aspect cannot be ignored. Over centuries, Russia has absorbed several Muslim kingdoms and organically fused them with itself; it has proven in practice an innate ability to rule over Asia, to a far greater degree than any other European nation. So it has been. But when, in the first year of the century, Russians occupied Transcaucasia, for sixty years, no one even posed the question: what is this region, and how should the state relate to it? It became a land of scientific experiments, subjected to trials of all sorts of administrative systems, without regard for the soil on which they were meant to grow. As long as the Transcaucasian region counts no more than two million inhabitants, the burden of a flawed system does not weigh heavily on the state. But this circumstance is significant as a lesson for the future.

The meridian of the Georgian Military Highway divides Transcaucasia into two parts, entirely opposed to each other: Christian and Muslim. With the expulsion of the Circassians, this division has extended to the entire viceroyalty; the western half is akin to core Russia and requires only good governance, free of any political considerations; the eastern half is pure Asia, submissive thus far only to the force of bayonets, and, it must be added, perhaps the most fanatical part of Asia. What was said above about the conditions for rational governance in Asia has no bearing on the Georgians, a Christian and progressive people who voluntarily merged with Russia, but applies fully to the eastern regions. Can both halves of the Caucasus be governed by the same system when the goals of governance in each are entirely different? These lands were separate until 1841. In Georgia, a more developed system existed, with general Russian judicial procedures; in the Muslim regions, governance was purely administrative, concentrated in the hands of a few trusted individuals called commandants—the only suitable form of authority for an Asian country. The latter governance was unsatisfactory; the reasons for its shortcomings were obvious. Such an order, still in place in areas under military authority, can function successfully only under two conditions: a strictly established system that knows precisely what to demand from administrators, and the proper selection and preparation of people appointed as leaders in the Asian region. In the mountain administration, reformed under Prince Baryatinsky, these conditions are now observed, and it functions excellently. But in the 1830s, neither was considered; there was no system, and commandants were appointed who were entirely unprepared for such a task. Instead of correcting this flaw, in 1841, the general provincial Statute, with minor modifications, was extended to the entire Transcaucasian region, regardless of local differences. Courts, prosecutors, formal investigations, and standardized petitions were introduced not only in Georgia but also in the Muslim regions. In Georgia, the new institutions far exceeded the needs of a society still almost patriarchal, merely doubling the costs of governance without purpose; in the eastern half, they also plunged affairs into a chaotic state, clarified only on official paper. Administrators and the governed, as after the Tower of Babel, ceased to understand each other. The complexity and costliness of governance, unsuited to the region’s capacities and needs, became increasingly apparent every day. But a structure in the European formal style had been laid, and its expansion continued of its own accord.

The overall result was, on one hand, that the Civil Administration, perfectly organized in theory but utterly alien to the populations in spirit, now operates like a flawlessly built machine that has not been brought into contact with the material it was meant to process; on the other hand, that the Transcaucasian regions, in financial terms, constitute not a benefit but a burden for the state. Yet the primary condition for a system of governing an Asian country, the very possibility of possessing it, lies in it not being a burden to the metropole. The nature of things has arranged this matter so wisely that the most rational governance of an Asian region is also the cheapest.

Misfortune, like trouble, never comes alone. Following the same theory, by extending Russian forms of governance to the Muslim regions, a Tatar nobility was also created there. In nobility, a nation expresses itself with conscious strength: under foreign rule, it becomes the bulwark of the defeated people’s national life. In an Asian country, where the working masses have forever been rayah—a flock, a herd, eternally living under a yoke, indifferent to the origin of authority as long as it does not crush them too heavily—moral resistance to foreign rule can only come from a higher class, if such a class existed. But no such class exists in all of Muslim Asia: we ourselves created it. In Transcaucasia, there were khan families of recent origin. Their descendants numbered barely 30, easily provided for with pensions. But under the khans served nukers, mostly from the common folk, who, during their service, received part of the income from some village—a common form of Asian compensation. From this element, against direct state interests, an impossible nobility was created in the 1840s, and not only created but granted state lands and villages. What peasants previously paid to the treasury, they were now forced to pay, with exorbitant interest, to a former fellow villager, their equal until that day, who suddenly became their landlord. Understandably, such a measure alienated and continues to alienate the popular masses from Russian authority, who had briefly found respite under its wing from Persian oppression; at the same time, it could not provide any support in the fictitious nobility, scraped together from the rabble, existing only under the protection of Russian bayonets. The creation of a nobility in the Muslim regions significantly reduced state revenue at a time when new institutions, constantly growing more complex, demanded ever greater resources from the region. I will not dwell on another measure—the conversion of all in-kind taxes to money—unsuitable in its full scope for an Asian region, not least because it doubles the cost of maintaining troops. I refrain from this because otherwise, I would never finish. The absence of a system led to constant restructuring of institutions, which continuously and arbitrarily expanded, consuming newly tapped sources of revenue. When, finally, in 1860, with the separation of Transcaucasian finances, the accounts of thirty years of such collections were tallied, the result showed that all the region’s revenues were entirely consumed by the maintenance of a single Civil Administration.

If the Transcaucasian regions belonged to Persia or British India, by proportion of inhabitants, after all expenses for governance, they would support 20,000 troops—nearly the same number required here in peacetime. They would not be a burden on the state.

No one can be personally blamed for this state of affairs; if anything, the poverty of ideas in Russian society in the first half of this century is at fault. This was precisely a transitional period when our society definitively lost the traditions of old Rus, which knew how to deal with Asians, and had not yet developed new perspectives. But at the very least, a correct view of the matter must now be established, upon which depends the possibility or impossibility of resolving the first of the world’s questions in our favor.

Until now, European rule in Asia has been purely political, consisting of military occupation of a country and passing without a trace. Since the time of Alexander the Great, Europeans have repeatedly held vast kingdoms in the East, encompassing half of Asia; their rule left behind coins of European dynasties but not even a hint of any moral influence of the former victors on the vanquished. If the nature of things allowed for the renewal of eastern societies by the European spirit, it would have manifested at least once, somewhere, in some form. But the history of 22 centuries shows not even a trace of anything like it. The victorious civilization of Europe lay upon Asian civilization like oil on water, never mixing. The empires founded in our day by the British and Dutch in Asia have the same character of external domination and, in all likelihood, will meet the same fate, no matter how long they endure. But the calling of Russian rule may be different: I say this not conjecturally. History knows no eastern societies renewed and called to new, independent life by Europe; but it offers two examples of the complete absorption of Asian peoples by European civilization and nationality: in Western Asia after the Macedonian conquest, and in eastern Russia since the time of Ivan the Terrible. The Greeks did not displace the vanquished, as savages are displaced in America, yet under Roman rule, Asia Minor and Syria were already purely Greek lands—meaning the conquered had vanished into a foreign civilization. In eastern Russia, the Tatar nobility became Russified; there has long been no higher Muslim class, no independent Muslim enlightenment with its distinct views; only scattered Tatar villages populated by commoners remain. One need only compare a Russian Tatar with an Asian one to understand to what extent the former is no longer a Muslim or Asian in mindset, despite retaining the ritual. Such a transformation is possible. An Asian pagan or Muslim cannot graft onto their concepts the alien ideas of the West and produce anything from such a combination; but as a human being, they can understand and fully embrace European spiritual principles and become entirely European. Under Greek and Russian rule over eastern lands, direct contact between the masses greatly facilitated the task. But beyond that, there seems to be in our Russian nature a capacity for this task that Western Europeans lack. They surpass us in the combination of qualities needed to settle empty lands—America and Australia bear witness to this; but the same energetic, rigid, self-reliant, and thus insular character that spread Spanish and English settlements across the New World hinders their rapprochement with conquered eastern peoples. The Spanish only knew how to expel their Moors; the English live in India as alien sojourners. Russians, by their nature, are not isolationists; they live as a community, like bees. This single trait sufficiently expresses the softness of character and sociability that constitute our strength in a conquered Asian land, provided the administration does not interfere. A Russian does not look down on an Asian or despise them as a Western European does; they have grown close enough to see them as human. The Russian population arising in a conquered Asian region immediately enters the closest relations with the natives, drawing them into its sphere and gradually reshaping them in the spirit of a higher civilization, higher religion, and higher nationality. What has already happened on the banks of the Volga may repeat itself further. Beyond the horizon of purely political relations binding us to the contemporary eastern world—relations on which all our attention must currently focus—in the mist of the distant future, the true historical resolution of the Asian question glimmers, at least in the countries bordering Russia. Such an understanding of things is not merely the philosophy of history, for it gives rise to practical consequences.

Centuries may pass before a societal form, shaped by history with all its spiritual makeup, fully merges into another. But there is no need for this. A hundred and fifty years ago, the Volga region was already essentially Russian, no longer recalling its independence. Where Russian enlightenment takes hold—where one cannot rise from the laboring crowd except by becoming Russified—there Russia will be forever. The crowd long retains its concepts, and even longer its customs; but when it forms a heap of ruins of a bygone life, incapable of further development, it no longer holds any strength. If there is moral communion between victors and vanquished, real life shifts to the layers of the population drawn to the higher enlightenment of the ruling nation; from these layers, whatever their origin, the higher—educated and prosperous—classes of the people must gradually emerge. For such classes, when they assert their existence, European forms of justice, administration, and all societal life will become not only suitable but necessary; the economic resources of the country, expanded with enlightenment, will permit more complex institutions; as always in the world, what is truly needed will become feasible. Only through such a gradual course of events, not through the abrupt transplantation of unsuitable forms, can enlightenment be brought to an eastern country. At the same time, if in a Russo-Asian possession the higher class must form gradually from Russified individuals, we must in no case artificially create a Tatar higher class. The goal dictates the means. These are the practical consequences.

With this proposition, naturally flowing from the above, I conclude my series of letters. I had no pretension of writing a history of the final years of the Caucasian War, which, due to its complexity and immense importance to the state, demands an extensive work and will undoubtedly inspire one in the future; literature must erect its monument to the conqueror of the Caucasus and the brave troops with whom he achieved this glorious conquest. But I considered it useful to present to Russian society, still little acquainted with the Caucasus, at least a brief sketch of this great event and its direct, evident consequences. I could not sufficiently illuminate all aspects of the subject in this sketch, but I had to at least point to them, so that the reader, if they wish, may later explore them more closely and draw their own conclusions.