Кавказско-Каспийский регион в политике Российской империи в первой трети XVIII в.

Abstract

The article focuses on the latest findings of the study on the Caspian foreign policy direction of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great. The heuristic work in the federal and regional archives of Russia helped to identify and introduce to academia over 300 original documents that allow to study the Russian policy in the south-western areas of the Caspian Sea in the first third of the 18th century, which became Russian territories after the Persian campaign. Detailed analysis of sources on the Persian campaign and stationing of Russian troops in the Caspian region, first in historiography, revealed the most unrenowned subjects and allowed to study those using newly discovered documented data with the application of new methodological approaches.
 The author studies the administrative practice in the Russian Empire in the Caspian region in 1722–1735, showing the challenges of governing the region associated with the natural and geographical aspects, the remoteness of the region from the main part of the state and the ethno-political structure of the annexed territories. The Persian campaign of Peter the Great resulted in the emergence of a Russian-Turkish frontier in the eastern Transcaucasia,
 which separated the historically developed Caucasian and Persian communities disregardi­ng their economic traditions and ethnocultural contacts, leading to a complex and volatile frontier situation in the region. The study of the behavioural actions of various actors in the frontier region allowed to determine their attitude to the emergence of the Russian and Ottoman empires in the Western Caspian region. The author analyses the specifics of the dual administrative system established in Derbent after it was annexed to Russia in 1722, where both a representative of the local authority via the naib and the imperial commandant performed administrative functions. For the first time in Caucasian studies, the article reconstructs the image of Peter the Great in the historical memory of Dagestanis of the present and of the time of the campaign.
 As a result of the project, two these and a collection of archive documents and materials have been published.