Belirsizlik Hatları: Kuzey Kafkasya Sınır Bölgeleri

Abstract

The type of frontier history needed fort the North Caucasus, and for other Russian frontiers as well, should draw upon developments in the historiography of the American frontier in the last twenty years. Turnerian type of frontier history has finally been abandoned, with its free White settlers moving west to “vacant” lands and gloriously creating American individualism and democracy in the process. In its place, historians are writing about a more complicated process, involving people of various colors and nations, environmental manipulation, cultural mixing, social stratification and grand myth making. Three trends in American frontier historiography are particularly promising for Russian historians, generally fitting under the rubrics of environmental history, social history and ethnohistory. The purpose of this paper is not to explore any one of these in great depth, but to justify a frontier conceptualization for one borderland region of Russia and to sketch out what such a history might entail.