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Завершение Кавказской войны на Северо-Восточном Кавказе в монументальной практике имперских властей XIX–начала ХХ вв.
Purpose: The article addresses an attempt of Russian experience studying in the case of memorials erecting on Caucasus in the eve of 20th c. The particular focus of the paper is to study the ways of honouring the Imperial victory in the Caucasus War gained in August 1859 when the insurgents’ leader Shamyl was captured on the Mount of Gunib by A. Baryatinsky’s troops in the days of his counter-insurgency operation in Chechnya and Dagestan.
Tools of assessment (Methods): This paper explores the Caucasus materials in the shade of West anthropological approach to History and Commemoration. The works of David Gobel and Daves Rossel, especially the book ‘Commemoration in America’
gave a good point to explore the same issues on the vague primary sources base collected in Russian central archives vaults. The author scrutinised the documents from three Central and one regional archives together with some notes of contemporaries of events and tourists’ guide-books of the early 20th c. that provide a lot of support to the study.
Discussion: One of the very base idea of the military authorities’ activity in the far-away region was the empire positive image promoting among the locals. The other pole of the Imperial commemoration was to honour the participants of the Caucasus quelling – the servicemen of the regiments that took part in counter-insurgency. The latter issue was always in the top tier of any effort of the local authorities. The most celebrated market on the Caucasus victory was memorial complex ‘Baryatinsky Arbour’ built in the birch thatches of Gunib above the historical stone. The latter was celebrated as a rest place for Russian commander to wait for the captured Shamyl. Being intended to pay a tribute to the heroic event in the history of ‘pacifying the Caucasus’ the memorials were either in the mood ‘to remind the locals who was the boss’ – as Jeremy Paxman had put it. Thus, the whole purpose of promoting the idea of an empire via monuments erecting looked highly ambiguous for the natives who were in fact inclined to take a memorial as a recall to the negative highhanded experience the militaries once practiced in a region.
Results: The research underlines the importance of the scrutinized studying of the regional issues in the memorial activities. Although the Empire promoted the victory monument erecting and celebrated its heroes via memorialisation, after the autocracy overthrowing all the facts and even prominent people, inconvenient for the natives’ version of history tended to be erased out of the historical memory.
Tools of assessment (Methods): This paper explores the Caucasus materials in the shade of West anthropological approach to History and Commemoration. The works of David Gobel and Daves Rossel, especially the book ‘Commemoration in America’
gave a good point to explore the same issues on the vague primary sources base collected in Russian central archives vaults. The author scrutinised the documents from three Central and one regional archives together with some notes of contemporaries of events and tourists’ guide-books of the early 20th c. that provide a lot of support to the study.
Discussion: One of the very base idea of the military authorities’ activity in the far-away region was the empire positive image promoting among the locals. The other pole of the Imperial commemoration was to honour the participants of the Caucasus quelling – the servicemen of the regiments that took part in counter-insurgency. The latter issue was always in the top tier of any effort of the local authorities. The most celebrated market on the Caucasus victory was memorial complex ‘Baryatinsky Arbour’ built in the birch thatches of Gunib above the historical stone. The latter was celebrated as a rest place for Russian commander to wait for the captured Shamyl. Being intended to pay a tribute to the heroic event in the history of ‘pacifying the Caucasus’ the memorials were either in the mood ‘to remind the locals who was the boss’ – as Jeremy Paxman had put it. Thus, the whole purpose of promoting the idea of an empire via monuments erecting looked highly ambiguous for the natives who were in fact inclined to take a memorial as a recall to the negative highhanded experience the militaries once practiced in a region.
Results: The research underlines the importance of the scrutinized studying of the regional issues in the memorial activities. Although the Empire promoted the victory monument erecting and celebrated its heroes via memorialisation, after the autocracy overthrowing all the facts and even prominent people, inconvenient for the natives’ version of history tended to be erased out of the historical memory.
Военно-мемориальная деятельность, монументальные практики, коммеморация, Гуниб, Ша- миль, А.И. Барятинский, российская военная администрация, историко-культурные памятники, Кавказская армия, историческая память.