Caucasian Captives on the Imperial Frontier

Abstract. The article is devoted to the Russian discourse about the Caucasus. This discourse was constructed as orientalist. It was formed in its considerable part by the Russian classical literature of the XIX century, which gave the Caucasus the features of the romanticized topos – the space of freedom and captivity. The plot of the prisoner of the Caucasus is presented in the works of A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, L. Tolstoy, A. Bestuzhev-Marlin, M. Liventsov, D. Mordovtsev remained relevant to Russian culture after the end of the Caucasian war. The way to describe and understand the Caucasus set in the framework of this discourse retains a certain meaning in the contemporary cultural situation. Professional historiography has developed an understanding of the Caucasus as a socio-cultural integrity – “Caucasian superethnos” or "Caucasian civilization". The article critically examines the grounds for distinguishing the Caucasian civilization and analyzes the possibilities of considering the Caucasus as a frontier – mobile zone of intensive interaction between different cultures, states and civilizations, in which intensive human contacts, intercultural exchange take place, new behavioral norms are borrowed or arise, identities are formed, different loyalties and lifestyles are encountered, through which internal and external migration takes place, where new communities are formed and old ones are renounced. The practice of studying the Caucasus as a frontier substantially complements and corrects the traditional narrative of Caucasian history.

Keywords: history of the Caucasus, socio-cultural characteristics of the Caucasus, Caucasian civilization, frontier, the concept of Caucasian captive in Russian culture, Orientalism.