Twenty-First-Century Prisoners of the Caucasus: Scapegoats and Sacrificial Lambs in Aleksei Uchitel's Captive

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines the "Prisoner of the Caucasus" story as it has evolved over the past two centuries, culminating in a discussion of Aleksei Uchitel's 2008 film Captive ( Plennyi ). As part of its analysis it will use the concept of "scapegoating" in modern war literature as described by David A. Buchanan in Going Scapegoat: Post-9/11 War Literature, Language and Culture . According to Buchanan, scapegoating characters in war narratives is a way for people to simultaneously create a shared identity through the language of colonial conquest while shedding themselves of their shared guilt for wars of questionable moral purpose. This article argues that in this long-running "Prisoner of the Caucasus" narrative, both the Circassian/Chechen character who dies, and the Russian haunted by that death, serve as scapegoats for the guilt of a Russian public anxious to disavow itself of culpability in Russia's wars of colonial expansion.