God! How come it did not strike him before: Transcaucasia, you know, is a colony! (1) --Yuri Tynianov The project of Russian Transcaucasian was written in 1828 in Tiflis by Alexander Griboedov, who at time served as Russian minister plenipotentiary in Persia, and Petr Zaveleisky, vice-governor of Tiflis. (2) The text of project is lost except for two surviving pieces: Note on Founding of Russian Transcaucasian Company and Introduction to Project of Charter of Russian Transcaucasian Company. (3) However, General Mikhail Zhukovsky's critique of project on ethical and economic grounds, entitled Comments on Note about Founding of Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Trade Company, gives us a good idea of project's main points. (4) The authors of project were seeking governmental assistance in founding a chartered company in Transcaucasia that would have privileges similar to ones British East India enjoyed at time of its beginning. In return they promised to promote economic and cultural development in region and bring high revenues into empire's treasury. Their critic, however, thought that authors' plans to monopolize trade and production in Transcaucasia would benefit neither empire nor region, while undermining principles of social justice. So far scholars have either criticized project as colonialist and oppressive or justified it as one that would have hastened advance of capitalism in Caucasus and thus would have contributed to historical progress. This article seeks to provide a more complex account of both Griboedov and of project. In doing so, it will situate project within context of Russian discourse from that time about imperial expansionism in Caucasus and also within context of Enlightenment thinking about human equality, subjugated peoples, and Other. Together, project and Zhukovsky's criticism read as an ongoing polemic about proper management of colonies, where each side's argument continues along a thread of thought coming down from thinkers of eighteenth century. Zhukovsky criticizes authors of project from viewpoint of a supporter of free trade and free enterprise, whose negative opinion on monopolies and chartered companies was modeled on ideas of Adam Smith. Griboedov and Zaveleisky's position is close to that of French Enlighteners, Raynal, Diderot, and other contributors to A Philosophical and Political History of Settlements and Trade of Europeans in East and West Indies, whose discussion of Russia's potential role in East-West trade constituted a brief for imperial expansion. (5) The latter, like Adam Smith, denounced many colonial practices, among them founding of exclusive chartered companies, as economically ineffective and oppressive towards inhabitants of colonies. Yet at same time Raynal and his collaborators occasionally revealed enthusiasm for colonial trade as a stimulator of industrial development worldwide and showed admiration for British successes in this type of endeavor. They encouraged their own country not to give up on its involvement with colonies, but to seek new mutually beneficial ways of collaborating with them. In some passages, Raynal actually argues in favor of big trading companies, while Diderot goes further to specify certain circumstances when, in his opinion, successful trade requires existence of a monopoly. The authors of project for Russian Transcaucasian share French thinkers' desire for their own country to successfully compete with British. National pride, which was long recognized as one of important features of Griboedov's personality, contributed to his ambition to become an entrepreneur who knew the art of making all other nations tributary to his own. …