At the Edge of Empire: The Terek Cossacks and the North Caucasus Frontier, 1700-1860 by Thomas M. s> Barrett (review)

Abstract

344 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 unfortunately not all the maps have been provided with scales. There is a usefulsummaryin English. London J. E. 0. SCREEN Barrett, Thomas M. At theEdgeof Empire.The TerekCossacks and theNorth CaucasusFrontier,I700-i86o. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, I999. xv + 243 pp. Plates. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. ?42.50: $55.00. UNTILthe end of the eighteenth century Russian army garrisoning and peasant colonization of the Northern Caucasus were limited and tentative. The taskof holding the Caucasusfrontierreliedmostlyupon the serviceof the TerekCossacks,who had been registeredin Russianserviceand subordinated to the War College in 1720. In return for certain privileges and immunities theypatrolledand defended the region againstraidingChechens, Ingush, and other unsubjugated'mountainpeoples'. Thomas Barrett'slucid and exhaustively researched book examines these Terek Cossacks as a distinct culture, subaltern to the Russian state but preservingsignificantautonomy and drawnto the materialcultureand values of the Muslimmountain peoples theywere commanded to fight.Barretttreats the Northern Caucasus as a 'middle ground', an edge habitat in which cossacksandMuslimmountaineersinteractednot only througharmedconflict but throughtrade,defection, intermarriage,religiousconversion,and cultural imitation. Under these circumstances the Terek Cossacks developed only 'weak attachment to the institutions, economy, and culture that supposedly defined Russia' (p. I90). Fornearly a centurythe imperialgovernment had to accommodate to this fact in variousways, as reliance upon cossackcolonization was the most cost-effectivestrategyforholding the Caucasusfrontierthen available to it;but once the Georgian MilitaryHighway had been completed (i 8o i) the government shifted to a new strategy of brutal warfare by the Russian army, which ultimately resorted to tactics of ethnic cleansing and even eco-warfarein order to breakthe Chechen and Ingush resistanceled by Shamil (1859). The author makes extensive use of materials from the Russian State Historical Archive and Russian State Military History Archive as well as published sources to explain why the Terek Cossacks had reason to be ambivalent servantsof the Empire. The Terek Cossacks'strongestallegiances were to regiment and village; their collective identity as members of a Terek Host and loyalty to the Empire and Orthodox church were less firm because their population had been formed from such diverse ethnicities, estates, and confessions: free immigrants, fugitives and drifters, the forcibly resettled; Russian and Ukrainians, Chechens, Ingush, and Kabardians;Orthodox and Old Believers. Their ability to establish a viable agriculturaleconomy was hampered not only by the challenging environment of the lower Terekbut by the policies of the Imperial government. The state imposed on them a heavy militaryserviceburdenleavingthemwith too littletime andlabourto cultivate their lands;its excise taxes ultimatelydestroyedtheirviticultureand distilling industry; its campaign of deforestation -a tactic in its war against the REVIEWS 345 Chechens led to soil erosion, siltation, and the spread of malaria; and its efforts to provision the cossack settlements with grain from the lower Volga were inadequate.This forcedthe TerekCossackstojoin in the more developed economy of their ostensible enemies, the Muslim mountain peoples, for their grain, lumber, livestock, cloth, and even their horses and guns, which they obtained throughlegal tradeaswell asthroughsmugglingand raiding.Barrett shows how such exchange 'drewthe Cossacksinto the world of the mountain people, nativized their materialculture, and occasionally led them to subvert state policy', as when cossack trade and smuggling undermined the government 's effortsto tame the mountain people by making them dependent upon the state saltmonopoly (p. II4). Barrett'saccount turnsespeciallypoignant when it describesthe change in Russian military strategy on the North Caucasus frontier in the early nineteenth century. The traditional mode of mountain warfarepractised by the Terek Cossacksagainstthe mountain peoples had been waged for limited objectives containment, retribution, booty, and ransoms. By contrast the war of conquest waged by General Ermolov's army denied mountain communities the opportunity to choose neutrality or mediation and it employed increasingly savage tactics against an ever-widening range of enemies united in defense of theirfaithand culture. Department ofHistory BRIAN DAVIES University ofTexas atSanAntonio Bolkhovitinov, N. N. (ed.) IstoriiaRusskoiAmeriki,I732-I867. Mezhdunarodnyeotnosheniia ,Moscow,3 vols. 1997, 1999, I999. 479, 470, 558 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Price unknown. ACADEMICIAN Nikolai Nikolaevich Bolkhovitinov, the doyen of historians of Russian America, acts as general editor for this large-scalecoverage of a vast theme as well as introducing all three volumes and writingsome of the text in all three. All the contributors,includingJames R. Gibson from Canada...