PERSONAL CONTACTS OF PETER THE GREAT WITH THE RULING ELITES OF DAGESTAN

Abstract

A historiographical analysis of the events of the Petrine era in the Caucasus demonstrates that the problem of personal contacts of Tsar Peter I with the ruling elites of Dagestan during his campaign in 1722 remains one of the poorly developed historical aspects. The tsar’s personal contacts with foreign elites were part of his imperial policy of expanding the territories of the Russian state, involving new subjects in the sphere of the political and legal space of the empire, ensuring their loyalty in the conditions of multi-ethnicity and political fragmentation of the Caucasus. Such ensuring was achieved by involving local elites in the social structure of the empire, in its economic system. Peter the Great’s contacts with the Dagestan rulers took place during the Persian expedition – his last major foreign policy campaign, as a result of which the southwestern Caspian region was briefly conquered and annexed to the Russian Empire. The conducted study made it possible to identify the reason that determined the pro-Russian position of one or another Dagestan ruler, their attitude to Peter I, in particular. The contacts of the parties were accompanied by giving each other expensive gifts, awarding ranks to the ruling elite that had passed into Russian citizenship, confirmation in positions, assignment of salaries to its representatives, etc. The study is based on the analysis of retrospective documentary information collected from documents of scientific archives of Russia and historiographical sources. The source base of the study, in addition to archival documents, are the materials of direct participants and eyewitnesses of the meeting of Peter I and a number of Dagestani rulers: “The War Diary of 1722”, compiled in the middle of the XIX century based on the diary entries of Peter I, travel notes of the Scottish doctor J. Bell and Artillery Captain Peter Bruce. The last two sources in this study are used in the original.