On the Religious Frontier: Tsarist Russia and Islam in the Caucasus by Firouzeh Mostashari (review)

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

728 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 In chapters organized by genre ? comedies, historical plays, and comic operas ? O'Malley also tries tomaintain a chronological approach in order to highlight the emotional, intellectual and policy concerns that informed Catherine's dramatic writings. She begins with five comedies written around 1772 and thenmoves on to discuss the later comedies, including three anti Masonic plays, written in the period 1785-90. In the comedies, Catherine emerges as an Enlightenment moralist adept in the application of neo-classical artistic forms. From the comedies and French dramatic proverbs, O'Malley shifts our gaze to the Shakespearean plays of 1786 ? one comedy and two historical plays ? which reveal a Catherine open to artistic innovation (willing to abandon neo-classical symmetries), appreciative ofRussian cultural traditions, and skilled in the use of baroque pageantry to assert political power. Finally, in the last chapter of thebook, O'Malley examines Catherine's comic operas, written between 1786 and 1790,which pay 'homage toRussian folk forms by stitching together fairy tales, byliny, popular songs, and even a witch' (p. 200). In the comic operas, Catherine's ability towrite Russian verse also becomes evident, as does her talent for treating serious, even disturbing, subject matter with humour and grace. O'Malley's study isbased on a close reading ofCatherine's published plays, and she makes good use of secondary sources, letters, diaries, memoirs and a smattering of archival documents. Her main point is to show the centrality of Catherine's theatrical activities to her life and reign. Present-day readers can all too easily dismiss the dramatic works of eighteenth-century Russia as stilted,moralistic, imitative, and unoriginal. Only a handful of eighteenth century plays ? for example, the comedies ofDenis Fonvizin ? are today read with any pleasure. But in the course ofO'Malley's insightfuland unob trusive analysis, the dramatic works of Catherine the Great come to life. Catherine's technical talent as a playwright and social acumen as a moralist assume their rightfulplace alongside her many other recognized gifts.As O'Malley notes, the plays of Catherine convey a message of hope, optimism and good sense. When we enter the empress's presence, whether through scholarship or direct reading of her works, it is impossible not to feel the power of themyths that she (and her panegyrists) so ingeniously constructed. Although Catherine liked to downplay the significance of her own writings, and she would not have thought of herself as a modern propagandist, O'Malley reminds us that in reality the empress's plays were 'fullof purpose' (p. 185). Department of History E. K. Wirtsghafter California StatePolytechnic University, Pomona Mostashari, Firouzeh. On theReligious Frontier:Tsarist Russia and Islam in the Caucasus. International Library of Historical Studies, 32. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2006. xvi + 203 pp. Maps. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. ?45.00. This is a welcome addition to the growing monograph literature on the non Slavic areas of theRussian Empire before 1917. Mostashari's focus is on the REVIEWS 729 region which now constitutes Azerbaijan between the period of theRusso Persian wars of 1804-13 and the 1917Revolution. As such it complements Tadeusz Swietochowski's pioneering Russian Azerbaijan igoj-ig20 (Cambridge, 1985), but Mostashari has had access to archives in Baku, Moscow and St Petersburg which Swietochowski was unable towork with, and her study is more concerned with the nature ofRussian imperialism in the region rather than thedevelopment ofAzerbaijani national consciousness and revolutionary feeling, although she does not neglect these areas. The book will serve as a strong corrective to those historians who stillbelieve that theRussian Empire was an administrative unity, with no distinction made between Russian and non-Russian regions as in the other European empires. Although she occa sionally contradicts herself (p. 11),ingeneral Mostashari argues firmlythat this was not so, and that Russian policies inMuslim Transcaucasia must be under stood as distinctively colonial (pp. 3-4, 28-35) ? her language on thispoint at times seems a little intemperate. After an excellent account of the Russo Persian Wars, the conquest ofAzerbaijan and local resistance to it (pp. 8-25), Mostashari describes in detail the policy debates and dilemmas which confronted the fledglingRussian administration in the region...