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Continued
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TSAR NICHOLAS AND
VICEROY VORONTSOV: 1832-55
The Murids of Daghestan--Russian
reverses--Georgian feudalism and Russian serfdom--Deus ex machina--Attempts
at reform--Formation of the Caucasian Viceroyalty--Industrial
progress--Decline of the old aristocracy--Literature and the theatre—The
Crimean War--Passing of an autocrat
The Murids of Daghestan
IT WAS a misfortune for Georgia
that the Russian government, in view of the Polish uprising of 1830, had
found it necessary in the following year to recall Prince Paskevich-Erivansky
from the Caucasus and send him to take charge of operations in Poland.
Paskevich was an exceptionally talented man, who enjoyed--a rare
advantage--the confidence of his captious imperial master. To quote a British
observer, Paskevich possessed an instinctive knowledge of character, and he
completely trusted those whom he employed.
'In his attention to the civil administration he was
indefatigable, and he put a stop to the abuses which had so long disgraced
and ruined Russian affairs. Men of every rank and class had free access to
him; they might bring their own interpreter, and be sure of having justice
quickly administered. His loss was deeply felt in Georgia, which he was
rapidly getting into order, and he had nearly succeeded in bringing the
tribes of the Caucasus into pacific relations with the Russian Government by
employing a portion of their troops and not interfering with their internal
government--the only system of policy, as I often heard from his own lips,
that he thought likely to succeed.' 37
Paskevich's successor, Baron Grigory Vladimirovich Rosen,
was a run-of-the-mill general officer, with no special talent for
administration, and no direct access to the emperor. He took over
responsibility for both the military command and the civil administration of
the Caucasus at a crucial moment; knowing
little or nothing about the country, he found himself plunged immediately
into a sea of difficulties. The government at St. Petersburg was at this time disturbed
by the abuses revealed by the report of Senators Kutaysov and Mechnikov,
extracts from which have been quoted already. Then came the abortive
conspiracy of the Georgian nobles in 1832, the main victim of which was to
have been Rosen himself. On top of this came intensified hostile activity
among both the Muslim tribes of the eastern Caucasus, and the Circassians
towards the Black Sea.
The Russian annexation of Transcaucasia
in the early decades of the nineteenth century helped to excite the militant
religious faith of the motley clans of Daghestan. In their Holy War against
the Russian invaders, these tribes became involved in a politico-religious
movement with puritanical features which, under the name of Muridism, united
for a time the majority of the inhabitants of Daghestan and neighbouring Chechnya.
Ermolov's ruthless policy of war and extermination helped to instil in these
wild mountaineers the courage of desperation; the infidel foreigner became the
alien oppressor, and the desire for spiritual reformation was heightened by
the urge for temporal liberty.
The first militant leader of the Murids of Daghestan was
the Imam Qazi Mullah, who issued in 1829 a general appeal in favour of a Holy
War. He set Avaria alight, invaded the northeastern Caucasus by way of Tarku,
and laid siege to the Russian stronghold of Vnezapnaya in Chechnya. He soon afterwards
defeated a Russian army under General Emanuel. South of the mountains, Hamzat
Bek, afterwards the second Imam of Daghestan, was stirring up rebellion among
the Jaro-Belakanis on the borders of Georgia. The Russians under
General Strekalov were severely defeated at Zakatali, and some units were
seized with panic and fled for their lives. In 1831, Qazi Mullah and his
followers laid siege to Derbent, and then made a daring and successful raid
on the town of Kizlyar on the Lower Terek. As Rosen reported to the Russian War
Minister, 'I arrived here at a time of very great disturbances. Never were
the mountain tribes so insolent or so persistent in their undertakings. They
are exasperated at what has taken place, and the fact that our actions either
resulted in failure, or, when successful, were not followed up, has
emboldened them and given scope to Qazi Mullah's false teaching.'
Taking the offensive in 1832, the Russians raided the
important aul or mountain village of
Dargo, on the borders of Chechnya
and Daghestan. Qazi Mullah met his death in a Russian attack on the Murid
stronghold of Gimri, and was succeeded as Imam by Hamzat Bek. Two years
later, in 1834, the new Imam sought to extend his authority by massacring the
ruling khans of Avaria and making himself master of their capital, Khunzakh.
But retribution soon overtook Hamzat, who was shot down in a mosque by a
party of loyal Avars intent on avenging their dead rulers. 38
Russian reverses
Hamzat was succeeded by a yet more formidable leader, the Imam
Shamil, who was to keep the armies of Russia at bay for a quarter of a
century. Shamil was a leader whose puritanism and insistence on obedience and
sacrifice inspired his followers with fanatical courage. At the same time,
the native population not numbered among the Elect often grumbled at being
exposed to Russian reprisals, while Shamil's radicalism alarmed the
conservative beks or tribal chiefs of Daghestan, some of whom were driven out
of their estates by the Murids and forced to seek refuge with the Russians.
Shamil began his rule by strangling the boy prince of
Avaria and throwing his body over a cliff. Early in 1837, his followers
inflicted a severe reverse near Gimri, on a detachment under General Kluge
von Klugenau. In the summer, Baron Rosen decided to send an expedition
against Shamil's headquarters at Ashilta, which the Russians took in face of
the Murids' desperate resistance. A truce was then concluded between the
Russians and Shamil. But while the Russian commander alleged that Shamil himself
begged for a respite, in reality it was the Russians who were compelled to
withdraw owing to the disorganization of the expeditionary corps, the
enormous loss in personnel, and the want of ammunition. However, such glowing
accounts of this campaign were sent to St. Petersburg
that the Emperor Nicholas, when he visited the Caucasus
in the autumn of 1837, quite expected to be met by a suppliant Shamil in
person. The letter which eventually arrived from the Murid leader was a rude
disappointment. 'From the poor writer of this letter, Shamil , who leaves all
things in the hand of God. . . . This to inform you that I have finally
decided not to go to Tbilisi even though I were cut in pieces for refusing,
for I have ofttimes experienced your treachery, and this all men know.' 39 The
Tsar was annoyed at this fiasco, responsibility for which he laid at poor
Rosen's door.
Rosen's period of command coincided also with a marked
revival of anti-Russian activity among the Circassians, in the north-western Caucasus region. Any hope that the Treaty of Adrianople
had put an end to Turkish ambitions in that area were speedily dispelled.
Although the British Foreign Office refrained from adopting an openly
anti-Russian policy, successive British ambassadors to the Sublime Porte,
such as Ponsonby ( 1833-41) and Stratford Canning ( 1842-58) were on the
alert to stir up trouble for Russia
all round the Black Sea and in areas
adjacent. The Turks were well versed in the intricate politics of the
mountain tribes and succeeded in interesting influential Englishmen in the
struggle waged by the Circassians against the spread of Russian domination.
The British adventurers Longworth and Bell
made several trips across the Black Sea to
establish contact with the Circassians, to whom they held out hopes of
material help and diplomatic support from the British government. Arms and
ammunition were smuggled in from Turkey
under the noses of Russian gunboats, while the impetuous British diplomat
David Urquhart helped to set up a Cherkess political centre in Istanbul.
The Russian governor of Western Georgia, with some 12,000
troops, joined forces in 1835 with General Velyaminov, the commander in
northern Caucasia, in an expedition to
subdue the Abkhazians and Circassians, and prevent the Turks from landing
arms and launching pirate raids on Russian shipping. The effectiveness of the
Russian Army in this sector was weakened by the presence within it of
thousands of deported Poles who, abominably treated, were constantly on the
verge of mutiny. In 1836, the Russians proved unable to protect Kislovodsk in
North Caucasia from a raid by some eight hundred Circassians, who also
attacked the town of Pyatigorsk.
Foreign observers commented on the extravagant losses in blood and in money
which the Russians incurred in their efforts to subdue these freedom-loving
clansmen by force of arms, when better results could have been secured with
time by conciliation and peaceful penetration.
Nor was Baron Rosen very successful in improving the
economic and social condition of the Caucasian peoples. He was handicapped,
of course, by the withdrawal of the special tariff concession granted for Georgia
by the Russian government in 1821. Rosen's attempts to have this renewed met
with failure. Thus, instead of being the hub of a trade network connecting
Europe with Asia via the Black Sea and the Caspian, Tbilisi became for the time being a
commercial backwater, and the Caucasian market served mainly as an outlet for
the inferior products of Russian manufacturers. Although a Society for the
Encouragement of Rural and Manufacturing Industries and Trade was set up in Tbilisi in 1833, the French Consul there calculated that
the total imports of Russia's
Trancaucasian provinces sank in value from 12,000,000 francs in 1830 to
5,610,000 in 1834, while exports declined from 5,000,000 francs in value to
1,150,000.40
Georgian feudalism and Russian serfdom
As Georgia
was a predominantly agricultural country, the peasant question, serfdom, and
problems of land tenure were always to the fore. Following the report of
Senators Kutaysov and Mechnikov, and the enquiry arising from the abortive
conspiracy of 1832, the Russian government tried hard to conciliate the landed
proprietors, whom they regarded as the most reliable bulwark of the Russian
autocratic system in Georgia.
Baron Rosen unfortunately proved incapable of implementing
intelligently the measures decreed by the authorities in St. Petersburg. An example of this occurred
in 1834, when the Russian Senate decided that peasants from Western Georgia
(Imereti and Mingrelia) who had run away from their masters and taken refuge
in Eastern Georgia should, after due investigation, be handed back to their
owners. Now the majority of the Imeretian peasants in Eastern
Georgia had been there for nearly thirty years. Many had come
there during the famine and plague which ravaged their country in 1811-12,
often with the active encouragement of their then lords, who had no means of
feeding them. In spite of these factors, Rosen carried out the Senate's
orders to the letter. Peasant families settled in Eastern
Georgia for more than twenty years were forcibly uprooted from
their homes by landlords whom they had never met in their lives, and dragged
off into a country they had never seen.
'The Imeretian proprietors and the agents of the ruler of
Mingrelia, taking advantage of the strict implementation of the
abovementioned measures, resorted during the removal of Imeretian and Mingrelian
peasants from Georgia to the most oppressive methods, reducing them to
complete ruin through the loss of their property and possessions, so that the
majority of these resettled peasants were without clothing or footwear, and
were dragged along in winter time together with their wives, babes in arms
and other offspring.' 41
In this way, the Russian authorities endeared themselves
to the landed gentry of Western Georgia,
though at the expense of the wretched serfs.
As a result of wars, raids and economic stagnation, Georgia
was still very under-populated. To remedy this, as well as to rid Russia of
troublesome sectarians, the government settled in Transcaucasia a number of
dissenting communities such as the Molokans or 'drinkers of milk'. Some of
these were exiled to the Black Sea area of Western
Georgia, and condemned to certain death in the murderous
malarial climate of Mingrelia. Later on, the Molokans were joined by several thousand
of the famous sect of the Dukhobors, some of whom settled down near
Akhalkalaki, in a region only lately recovered from the Turks. Until the
disturbances and persecutions which afflicted the Dukhobor colonies at the
end of the nineteenth century, they did sterling work in reclaiming land
which had been little better than a wilderness.
In spite of the painful incidents we have cited, the life
of the Georgian peasantry at this period was not one of unrelieved oppression
and misery. A French observer wrote in 1835 that 'if slavery is a state
contrary to nature, and in opposition to modern ideas, in Georgia at least it is
fortunately mitigated by the humane character of the masters, who in general
treat their men with extreme mildness'. This writer added that Georgian lords
hardly ever beat their serfs, since such behaviour was condemned by public
opinion; it was even rarer for a Georgian nobleman to have one of his vassals
punished by the Russian police, as national pride forbade him to subject his
fellowcountrymen to chastisement at the hands of foreigners. 42
At its best, indeed, the old Georgian feudal system could
provide a benevolent, patriarchal way of life. The Georgian poet, Prince
Akaki Tsereteli ( 1840-1915) writes in his autobiography:
'The relationships which had been introduced long ago in
connexion with the system of serfdom had entered into the people's very
marrow and were treated as law, the breaking of which was deemed a sin. In
our country, in contrast to other lands, the feudal relationship was
conditional and limited. Serfs knew what their obligations were, masters,
what they could require of their serfs, and both sides carried out their
duties meticulously. Not all serfs were taxed the same amount by way of
quitrent. Some peasant families paid less, some more; certain ones, having
paid off their quitrent, received manumission. For instance, the quitrent of
one of our peasants was equivalent to half an egg. This peasant used to
arrive in the courtyard at the beginning of Shrovetide, would cook his egg in
the kitchen, peel off the shell, cut the egg into two equal halves with a
horse hair, and hand one half to his lord as his quitrent. This half-egg
quitrent so burdened the peasant that he more than once begged his lord:
"Let me off the quitrent, and I will bring you a cow."
'But his master retorted: "The quitrent was fixed by
our forefathers. I will not cancel it for the sake of a cow, or everyone will
say that I was inspired by greed. . . . But if you show your devotion in some
other way, perhaps I will remove this quitrent. . . ."
'The peasants themselves firmly insisted on the precise
fulfilment of mutual obligations--they were ready to die rather than pay
anything extra.' 43
Other landowners were less indulgent. Among the various
dues and services which might be required of the peasant were working a
stipulated number of days on the lord's private land, helping to build the
lord's house or barns, handing over a share of the harvest or of flocks and
herds, offering hospitality to the lord's guests and their retinue, gathering
and delivering firewood, and providing food for the lord's table at weddings
and church festivals. Serfs were debarred from selling property or incurring
debts without their master's permission, though this applied only to such
transactions as the sale or leasing of houses, fields, and so on, and not to
the marketing of farm or garden produce. Particularly irksome was the need to
secure the master's consent before a serf was allowed to marry. No journey,
needless to say, could be undertaken without the master's permission.
In spite of all this, the Georgian feudal system had its
positive features, especially in times of insecurity. Every serf or vassal
was to some extent a member of the lord's family or household. When raiding
and oppression were rife, this fact helped to compensate for the absence of
any effective police system. In sickness or want, it was considered shameful
for any landowner not to provide for the dependents of his men. In some
cases, both landlords and peasants united in face of the unpopular Russian
administration. Baron Rosen once urged some of the Georgian princes to free
their vassals, offering them a cash indemnity as inducement. The princes,
however, refused to comply, alleging the undertaking given by Tsar Alexander
I to respect and preserve Georgia's
traditional institutions. They suspected, not without good grounds, that one
object of this proposal was to introduce into Georgia the Russian system of
conscription, which would be easy to put into effect once the liberated serfs
had no lord to defend their interests. Up to that time, the Georgian peasant
was called upon to take up arms only when his own village was menaced, and
then solely when summoned to battle by his own prince. Faith in the Russian
government's sincerity in regard to the abolition of serfdom was somewhat
impaired by the behaviour of Baron Rosen himself, who purchased negro slaves
in Egypt and brought them to Tbilisi to wait on him in his palace.
Moral questions apart, a charge which could be brought
against serfdom in Georgia,
as indeed against serfdom generally, was that it impeded the growth of the
economy. A French consular report on the commerce and agriculture of Georgia during the year 1836 stresses the
continuing lack of agricultural manpower, due to wars, to raids by the Turks
and the Caucasian mountaineers, and to the persistence in Western Georgia of
trade in captives who were exported to Turkey. Serfdom, the consul
considered, encouraged idleness and lack of enterprise, while the primitive
construction of Georgian ploughs and other agricultural implements hampered
the oxen and retarded improvement in farming methods. The Russian provincial
governors and their subordinates were 'vampires who sucked the blood of the
peasants, and often that of the hard-pressed local princes'. Government
subsidies to agriculture were squandered and misappropriated, and corruption
was rife. Areas inhabited by the Caucasian Muslims were better cultivated
than those belonging to the Georgian Christian population, perhaps because
serfdom had never taken root in the Islamic world. 44
Observers of the time unite in characterizing Baron
Rosen's administration as a period of venality and self-indulgence. The
general, a good-natured bon viveur, was powerless to check the
rapacity of his subordinates. Among the greediest of these was Rosen's own
son-in-law, the Georgian prince, Alexander Dadiani, who commanded the Erivan
Regiment. This officer made a fortune by hiring out his soldiers as forced
labourers and pocketing their wages. In the local offices of the justice
department, a regular tariff of bribes existed, nicely graduated in
accordance with the value of the service required.
'What can one expect of an administration in which the
subordinate officials have no other aim but to enrich themselves, and in
which besides there is never the least question of supervision? Each district
or province is a satrapy destined to augment its governor's private fortune,
just as each regiment is, for its colonel, a collection of men whose various
skills he exploits for his own benefit.' 45
Deus ex machina
Rumours about this state of affairs eventually reached the
central government in St. Petersburg.
In 1837, the Senator Baron Paul von Hahn, a learned German who had been
Governor of Courland, was sent to Georgia on a tour of inspection.
In the same year, to the horror of Rosen and his associates, it was learnt
that Hahn would soon be followed by his imperial master in person.
The impending arrival of Tsar Nicholas in Tbilisi
had an effect similar to that produced on the corrupt mayor and officials in
Gogol comedy Revizor by the visit of the Inspector-General from St. Petersburg. Houses
were painted, roads hastily mended. In anticipation of the Tsar's arrival,
large buildings were swiftly run up to complete unfinished squares. The
Georgian princes and notables wanted to arrange a grand ball in the emperor's
honour, but found themselves short of 18,000 rubles, which Rosen declined to
lend them.
At the end of September 1837, Baron Rosen and his suite
set off to meet the Tsar at the little Black Sea port of RedutKaleh.
Nicholas soon showed that this visit was to be no formal parade. He was
determined to see everything and go everywhere himself. So rapid were his
movements that his companions found time neither to eat nor to sleep.
According to a British visitor,
'The road which leads through the marshy forests of
Mingrelia being axle deep in mud, the Emperor had become impatient, and,
ordering the escort of Cossacks to dismount, had mounted with his own staff,
and proceeded on horseback, riding on a Cossack-saddle, and wearing the black
felt yaponcha of the natives. All his suite, and the poor old Baron
Rosen, had to accompany him. I heard also that the Mingrelian fleas had not
respected the person of the Emperor, and had driven him, on one occasion, to
take refuge for the night in his carriage.' 46
After visiting Kutaisi, the
capital of Imereti, the Tsar turned southwards towards the city of Akhaltsikhe, taken from
the Turks during the war of 1828-29. Near this place, the inhabitants of an
entire village were seen kneeling on the road in silence as the emperor drove
past, and this circumstance recurred several times. Nicholas enquired of the
people what this signified. They replied that the Russian officials had
forbidden them to approach him with petitions or complaints. Nicholas told
them that this ban was quite unauthorized, and that they might fearlessly
present him with their petitions. Thereupon the people poured forth to meet
the Tsar in such numbers that during his journey between Akhaltsikhe and Erivan alone, about 1,400 formal complaints were
proffered to him.
From Erivan, the chief city in Armenia,
Nicholas proceeded to Tbilisi,
where he received from Baron Hahn a report highly critical of Rosen and his
methods. Amid the festivities and parades arranged in his honour, the Tsar
performed. an act designed to strike terror into malefactors in high places.
After the dress parade held on 11/23 October 1837, Nicholas formed up all the
officers in a circle, into which he summoned Rosen's son-in-law, Prince
Alexander Dadiani, colonel of the Erivan Regiment, who was an imperial
aide-de-camp and one of the chief profiteers. 'Colonel,' exclaimed the Tsar,
'I am acquainted with all your infamies. You have dishonoured your
aide-decamp's aiguillettes, and are henceforth unworthy to bear them.'
Turning to the military governor, Nicholas said: 'General, tear off his
aiguillettes, take his sword from him, and have him sent off within two hours
to the fortress of Bobruisk.'
To the petrified company, the Tsar declared: 'Gentlemen, mark well that this
is my first act of justice in Georgia;
and it will not be my last.'
Petitions from the nobility and common people continued to
pour in. An extent of corruption and injustice was revealed which induced the
Tsar to arrest the Tbilisi
chief of police and dismiss several generals. Shortly after Nicholas's visit,
Rosen was himself relieved of his command, which was entrusted to General
Golovin. Baron Hahn stayed behind in Georgia to prepare a scheme for a
reorganization of the civil administration of the Caucasian provinces.
During the administrations of Rosen and Golovin, progress
was made towards absorbing the remaining autonomous principalities of Western Georgia. In 1833, Michael (Tatarkhan) and
Nicholas (Tsiokh) Dadeshkeliani, mtavars or ruling princes of Western
Upper Svaneti, signed a treaty of protectorate with Russia. Seven years later, in
1840, Eastern Upper Svaneti (the so-called Free Svaneti) also became a
Russian protectorate. The districts of Dsibelda and Samurzaqano, on the
border between Mingrelia and Abkhazia, were also taken over in 1840.
Samurzaqano had since 1758 constituted a separate principality, and its last
ruling prince was Manuchar Sharvashidze. Not long afterwards, the Dadian or
ruling prince of Mingrelia was deprived of his powers of criminal
jurisdiction, which he had retained since becoming a vassal of the Tsar in
1803. The criminal code of Mingrelia involved the physical mutilation of
offenders. All this was now abolished, and Mingrelian criminal cases were
from then onwards dealt with by the Russian tribunal in Imereti at Kutaisi.
Attempts at reform
Baron Hahn returned in due course to St.
Petersburg and secured imperial approval for his new scheme of
government for Georgia
and adjoining provinces. In 1840, he returned to the Caucasus
with a mandate to put his system into operation. He stayed for several months
and did what he could to cleanse the Augean stables left behind by the
previous régime. Unfortunately, Hahn's ideas on administration were
ill-adapted to the outlook of the local people. Bred in the traditions of
German and Russian bureaucracy, Hahn was all for administrative uniformity
and adherence to protocol and procedure. He abolished the use of the Georgian
code of King Vakhtang VI as a guide for civil actions, and forced everyone to
be governed by Russian laws which were unintelligible to the people. Some of
Hahn's ideas were praiseworthy in themselves, but their execution was
paralysed by a lack of honest functionaries capable of putting them into
effect. The rogues whom Hahn purged were replaced by still worse ones. The
new commander-in-chief, General Golovin, was reputed to be an honest man, but
was constantly hoodwinked by his underlings. 'It is a state of general
pillage,' the French consul reported in despair. 47
Hahn's attempt to regulate and standardize the amount of dues
to be rendered by peasants to their feudal masters proved unpopular. Hahn
tried to replace payments in kind and compulsory labour by a cash levy of
some seven rubles per head. This measure helped to provoke a general uprising
in the Western Georgian province
of Guria. The reigning
princess of Guria, Sophia, had been driven out by the Russians during the war
of 1828-29, and took refuge in Turkey. The principality was
annexed to Russia,
but the Gurians were far from reconciled to the new order. They now rose en
masse, expelled the Russian officials, and were only subdued after a
violent struggle against 3,000 Russian troops. Tsar Nicholas soon became as
impatient with poor Hahn as he had been with old Baron Rosen. Hahn's system
was in part abandoned, and its deviser disgraced. Hahn retired in dudgeon to
his native Germany, while
the Tsar set up in St. Petersburg
a special Transcaucasian Committee, the members of which included the Grand
Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (the future Tsar Alexander II) and the Minister of
War.
During the five years of General Golovin's command, little
progress was made in the fierce struggle against the Caucasian mountaineers.
In Circassia, forts were built along the coast to cut off the tribesmen from
their outlets to the Black Sea. However,
almost every month brought news of some Russian detachment that had been cut
to pieces by these intrepid horsemen. A general insurrection flared up in
1840, and was not put down without heavy Russian casualties. Further to the
east, Shamil's struggle against the Russians continued. There were also
rebellions in Kuba and the Karabagh. Between 1840 and 1842, the Russians lost
about 5,000 men in numerous encounters with the fanatical Murids. General
Grabbe made a successful raid on Shamil's headquarters at Ahulgo, but the
Imam made his escape and was able in 1843 to resume the initiative. By that
time, General Golovin's army in Daghestan was being depleted through
casualties at the rate of 12,000 men a year, apart from the loss of scores of
guns and other valuable equipment. The emperor, thoroughly vexed at the
course of events, recalled Golovin in December 1842. The Caucasian command
was entrusted to the Governor of Moscow, General Neidhardt, an officer who
proved no more capable than his predecessor of mastering Shamil and his
dogged followers.
Formation of the Caucasian Viceroyalty
Weary of all these muddling mediocrities, as the fuming
Tsar regarded his long-suffering Caucasian generals, Nicholas decided at long
last that the time had come to appoint a firstclass man to take over both
military and civil responsibility for the entire area. His choice fell in
1844 upon Count Michael Vorontsov, who had been since 1823 Governor-General
of New Russia (i.e. the Ukraine
and Crimea) and Bessarabia. Vorontsov was
appointed to be both commander-in-chief of the Russian armies on the
Caucasian front, and Viceroy of the Tsar with overall administrative
authority over the Caucasus. He was the
first of Georgia's
governors to be officially invested with the viceregal title.
By his character, reputation and past record, Michael
Vorontsov towered above most of his contemporaries. His father, Count Simon
Vorontsov, had been for many years Russian ambassador to England, and was noted for his
adherence to British Tory principles and his attachment to the younger Pitt.
Brought up in London,
Michael Vorontsov was a complete Westerner in outlook and education. He won
his spurs as a young officer in the Caucasus
under Prince Tsitsianov, and went on to distinguish himself against the Turks
and in the Napoleonic wars. After Napoleon's defeat, Vorontsov commanded the
Russian occupation force in France.
Later, as Governor-General of Russia's Black Sea provinces, he was
responsible for the rapid development of Odessa. His appointment was well calculated
to restore the faith of the Russian public in the prospects of bringing the
Circassians and Shamil's highlanders to heel, as well as to instil
much-needed confidence into the Georgians and other Caucasian peoples who had
suffered under the rule of Vorontsov's mediocre forerunners.
But first Nicholas demanded of Vorontsov some spectacular
military action against the insufferable rebels of the mountains. The Tsar's
impetuosity drove the viceroy to undertake an ill-fated expedition to
Shamil's stronghold of Dargo. The Imam lured the unwieldy Russian force into
the ravines and forests of southern Chechnya. Vorontsov occupied
Dargo without much difficulty. But he had ventured into a trap. When, without
having brought his foe to battle, he attempted to return through the beech
forests of Chechnya to his
base at Grozny,
he found Chechen sharpshooters lurking behind every tree. Horses and baggage
were abandoned, and the numbers of wounded and dead grew daily. When finally
Vorontsov extricated himself and the famished and threadbare survivors of his
force from enemy territory, it was with a loss of 4,000 men, including three
generals and zoo other officers. However, he had punctually carried out the
orders of his august sovereign, for which he was awarded the title of Prince
of the Russian Empire.
Emboldened by this Russian fiasco, Shamil took the
offensive himself. His idea was to invade the Kabarda and effect a junction
with the Circassians in north-western Caucasia.
To do this, he needed to cut the Georgian military highway which led over the
Caucasus Range
through the Daryal Pass and down to Tbilisi. In the spring of 1846, Shamil set
out in force from his highland fastnesses, and crossed the military highway
and the River Terek to the north of Vladikavkaz. The Kabardians, however,
failed to respond as Shamil had hoped, and their anticipated rising en
masse against the Russians did not materialize. Owing to the hostility of
the local Ossete clansmen, who remained loyal to Russia,
the Murids were unable to occupy the Daryal Pass
itself. When Shamil and his followers had almost reached Nalchik, the arrival
of a Russian force under the vigorous command of General Freitag forced him
to retreat south-eastwards to his home base, though without much loss of life
on the Murid side. For the next few years, both the Russians and Shamil's men
were more or less on the defensive. Shamil remained in possession of most of
Daghestan, including Avaria, and of the greater part of Chechnya. Prince Vorontsov, aware
that he was not strong enough to deal the Murids a mortal blow in existing
conditions, contented himself by strengthening his lines on all sectors
pending resumption of a more aggressive policy.
Arms of Georgia
(in fact, the Caucasus) in the Big Arms of
Russia
Industrial Progress
Meanwhile, he turned his great ability and energy to
reforming the civil administration of the Caucasus,
in which he achieved notable success. Recalling the period around 1860, it
was said by one of Georgia's
foremost poets that 'in these years the lustrous memory of Vorontsov lived on
still in the hearts of the Georgians.' 'Until the memory of Georgia itself
vanishes from the earth, the name of Vorontsov will remain alive,' was a
phrase which he had often heard repeated in conversation in the Georgia of those
days.48 Members of the Georgian aristocracy would go out of their way to
visit Odessa and call on Prince Vorontsov's widow, née Countess Elizabeth
Branitskaya, a gracious lady who had in her youth attracted the admiration of
the poet Pushkin.
To what, it may be asked, did the Vorontsovs owe this
devotion which they inspired among the Georgians, who had usually so little
affection for Russian proconsuls sent to govern them in Tbilisi?
The answer is that Vorontsov was one of those few
highlyplaced Russians who genuinely enjoyed being in Georgia, derived pleasure from
the company of Georgians, and evinced a real interest in their language,
culture and national past. ' Georgia,'
he said on one occasion, 'is a garden, but one which is not like other
gardens. A gardener of special talents is needed to tend the flowers which
grow in this garden.' Again, he would declare: 'This little Georgia will become in time the most
beautiful, the most durable piece of gold brocade woven into the many
coloured patchwork of mighty Russia.
We must simply give her the chance to develop freely as well as guiding and
helping her, but without infringing her primordial customs.' 49 He
would receive deputations from the various peoples and communities dwelling
under his aegis, listen patiently to their point of view, and do his best to
satisfy their grievances and aspirations. All the Georgian nobility was
assured of a warm welcome at the viceregal palace. In 1848, that same
Georgian aristocracy which had plotted together less than two decades
previously to exterminate the Russian garrison and administration was sending
a loyal address to the Tsar, protesting undying attachment to the Russian
fatherland.
Vorontsov was no social reformer. The iron hand of Tsar
Nicholas the autocrat gave him no scope in this direction, even had he been
so inclined. But more than reform, Georgia needed justice,
prosperity, order, education. Here Vorontsov excelled. He instilled some efficiency
into the Russian bureaucratic machine, and punished corruption. He built
bridges and roads, and improved communications. He patronized schools, had a
theatre built in Tbilisi,
and vastly increased the output of journals, newspapers and books, both in
Russian and in Georgian. He encouraged the founding of the Tbilisi Public
Library and the Caucasian branch of the Russian Geographical Society.
Vorontsov devoted much attention to commerce. He persuaded
the Russian Finance Ministry to restore the customs concessions facilitating
transit trade through Georgia
between Europe and the East. He supported
the merchant and craft guilds of Tbilisi
and Gori, while at the same time enabling entrepreneurs to start up several
modern factories. A trading depot was established at Tbilisi in 1847 by a syndicate of Russian
manufacturers, as well as warehouses and showrooms. The number of industrial
organizations in Georgia
grew between 1843 and 1850 by 94 per cent., while their total output went up
by 105 per cent. There thus existed in Georgia in 1850 some 132
industrial enterprises, with a total production valued at 256,000 rubles.
Growth over the next few years continued at a rapid rate, so that by 1864,
when serfdom was abolished in Georgia,
there existed 465 factories and industrial concerns of various kinds, with a
production worth over 860,000 rubles. 50 Vorontsov
also tried to improve methods of farming, viniculture, cotton planting and
silk raising. A branch of the Russian Agricultural Society was founded in Tbilisi.
Decline of the old aristocracy
As usually occurs during the transition from an
agricultural and pastoral to an industrial society, the landed proprietors
began to feel the pinch. In 1852, Prince Vorontsov reported that 'the
nobility have constantly had to sell their estates because of inability to
pay extortionate rates of interest on debts incurred with private usurers, so
that many of the most ancient and honoured of the local aristocratic houses
have gradually sunk into poverty'. Prince Vorontsov was himself sometimes
accused of having deliberately sapped the power and prosperity of the
Georgian nobility by encouraging them to attend balls, theatrical displays
and public functions, and by introducing into Georgia all manner of European
luxuries which they could not afford. It is doubtful, however, whether the
convivial Georgians required much inducement to engage in social activities
and enjoy the good things of life. In reality, the causes of their
impoverishment lie far deeper, being bound up with the economic evolution of
the Russian Empire, indeed of Europe as a
whole. It was during the reign of Nicholas I, which lasted from 1825 to 1855,
that the industrial revolution really got under way in Russia. Landed property ceased to
be the sole source of wealth and influence. In spite of the shortage of free
labour, and the shackles of serfdom, Russia's industrial production
quadrupled in thirty years.
It was industrial progress as much as humanitarian
considerations which made feudalism and serfdom appear burdensome relics of a
vanishing age.
The landed gentry in Georgia were not equipped, either
by temperament or by upbringing, to cope with the changing order of things.
The traditional occupations of a gentleman were hunting and fighting. The
amassing of money and attention to household or industrial management were
beneath his dignity, while a rustic simplicity characterized the lives of
even the most exalted families. The satirical book by Prince Ioane Bagration
( 1772-1830), called Kalmasoba or The Alms-Collecting Tour,
contains an account of a visit to the Dadian or ruling prince of Mingrelia,
who liked to spend the fishing season in a roofless, floorless house by the
River Rioni, which afforded him shelter only from the wind. The Dadian
observing that sixty days' more rain fell in Mingrelia than in any other
country, one of the characters exclaims: 'Sir Dadian! In that case you, the
ruler of this land, are excused from building any bathhouses!' In the good
old days, a Georgian noble was provided with all necessities of life by the
resources of his own estates and the offerings of his vassals and serfs.
Without spending a penny in hard cash, he received unlimited food, drink, clothing,
footwear, arms, cattle, furniture and so on. Some landed proprietors even
numbered among their followers Armenian and Jewish hawkers, who supplied them
gratis with tea, sugar, coffee, rice, candles and olive oil. The possession
of money was considered plebeian. Akaki Tsereteli the poet relates in his
reminiscences how, as a young cadet, he once rejected out of pride a
pocketful of gold ducats offered to him as a gift by Princess Vorontsov
herself. It is scarcely surprising that the wealth of the country passed as
time went on into the pockets of the new middle-class merchants and
entrepreneurs, including many Armenians, Russians, Muslims and Jews, who were
burdened by no such delicate scruples.
Symptomatic of the social and economic trends of the time
is the remarkable novel Solomon Isakich Mejghanuashvili by Lavrenti
Ardaziani ( 1815-70). The hero, a Caucasian Scrooge or Shylock living in the
Tbilisi Armenian milieu, starts modestly as a small tradesman, and then turns
to money lending. 'Six years went by,' he says, 'and through all Kartli, on
both banks of the Kura, there was not one
village left which did not owe me money.' Later, the aristocracy also fell
into his clutches. From then on, Solomon became an honoured pillar of the
establishment. Like Molière's Monsieur Jourdain, his aim was now to become
accepted in high society and have his daughter marry a prince. The story of
his chequered career, with its realistic portrayal of social life in old Tbilisi, is full of
satirical touches. A contrast to the character of Solomon is provided by the
well-bred aristocrat, Prince Alexander Raindidze, an enlightened man who
believes in treating serfs humanely, but cannot bring himself to favour
freeing them altogether.
Literature and the theatre
The decline of old patriarchal and heroic patterns of
life, the imposition of alien rule, and the growth of a new economic order
fostered the nostalgic, elegiac mood characteristic of several of the
outstanding Georgian poets of this period. The all-pervading cult of
Byronism, combined with pride in Georgia's glorious past, produced
a spirit of defiant, romantic patriotism, tinged at times with morbid gloom,
at others with radiant hope in a better future.
The poetic genius of the Georgian romantics shines brightest
of all in the work of the young bard Nicholas Baratashvili ( 1817-45), whose
verse is full of profound philosophical thought and a deep sadness, inspired
both by the destiny of his country and his own unhappy life. His soul melts
in tears in his poems, the vanity of life drives him almost to despair. But
he is no passive fatalist, no pessimist; his faith in a better future stands
out clearly in his verse. Most famous of his works, perhaps, is My Steed
( Merani), in which the poet's mood of restless turmoil finds vigorous
expression.
It runs; it
flies; it bears me on; it heeds no trail nor spoor;
A raven black behind me croaks with ominous eyes of doom.
Speed thee on and onward fly with a gallop that knows no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts in raging darkness found.
Go onward!
onward! cleaving through the roaring wind and
rain
O'er many a mount and many a plain, short'ning my days of pain.
Seek not shelter, my flying steed, from scorching skies or storm;
Pity not thy rider sad, by self-immolation worn.
I bid
farewell to parents, kin, to friends and sweet-heart dear
Whose gentle voice did soothe my hopes to a hot and bitter tear.
Where the night falls, there let it dawn, there let my country be;
Only the heavenly stars above my open heart will see.
The sighs
that burn, that rend the heart to violent waves I hurl;
To thy inspired, wild maddened flight love's waning passions
whirl.
Speed thee on, and onward fly with a gallop that knows no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts, in raging darkness found.
In foreign
lands thou lay me low, not where my fathers sleep,
Nor shed thou tears, nor grieve, my love, nor o'er my body weep;
Ravens grim will dig my grave and whirlwinds wind a shroud
There, on desert plains where winds will howl in wailings loud.
No lover's
tears but only dew will moist my bed of gloom;
No dirge but vultures' shrieks will sound above my lowly tomb.
Bear me far beyond the bounds of fate, my Merani,
Fate whose slave I never was, and henceforth-ne'er shall be!
By fate
repulsed, oh bury me in a dark and lonely grave.
My bloody foe, I fear thee not--thy flashing sword I brave.
Speed thee on and onward fly with a gallop that knows no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts in raging darkness found.
The yearnings
of my restless soul will not in vain have glowed.
For, dashing on, my steed has paved a new untrodden road.
He who follows in our wake, a smoother path will find;
Daring all, his fateful steed shall leave dark fate behind.
It runs; it
flies; it bears me on; it heeds no trail nor spoor;
A raven black behind me croaks with ominous eyes of doom.
Speed thee on and onward fly with a gallop that knows no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts, in raging darkness
found. 51
From this period also dates the birth of modern Georgian
drama. In 1845, a Russian theatre with professional repertory company was
opened in Tbilisi.
This stimulated the Georgians to emulation. With the encouragement of Prince
Vorontsov, a Georgian amateur dramatic society was formed, under the
direction of the talented playwright Giorgi Eristavi. On 2 January 1850, in
the great hall of the Tbilisi
High School, the
company made its debut in Eristavi's comedy The Share-out ( Gaqra),
a play which gave a humorous satirical view of life among the Georgian
squirearchy. This venture was greeted with great enthusiasm, so that in May,
Eristavi staged another of his comedies, The Lawsuit (Dava). Eristavi
then formed a professional company, which was granted a subsidy of 4,000
rubles a year, and the use of the Russian theatre building. The professional
company's first night took place on 1 January 1851. Later on, it was able to
stage its performances in the fine new theatre in Erivan Square, which held seven hundred
spectators. The repertoire was composed largely of original plays by Eristavi
and other contemporary Georgian writers, as well as a few dramas translated
from the Russian, and an adaptation of Molière Le Médecin malgré lui.
The bold satirical tone of some of the original plays put
on by the young Georgian troupe annoyed diehards among both the Georgian
landowners and the Russian bureaucrats. Eristavi eventually resigned. After
Prince Vorontsov's departure from Tbilisi
in 1854, the company fell on evil days. Two years later, official coolness
and the clamour of unpaid creditors brought this first Georgian professional
theatrical company to an untimely end. But its period of activity marks an
important stage in Georgian literary and social history, as well as in the
reawakening of Georgian national consciousness.
Another significant trend in Georgian intellectual life at
this period was the revival of scholarly interest in the country's historical
past. Among the pioneers in this movement were Prince Ioane Bagration and his
brother Teimuraz, sons of the last King of Eastern Georgia, Giorgi XII.
Prince Teimuraz ( 1782-1846) composed a history of Iberia
(i.e. Georgia), and was
elected an honorary member of the Im perial Academy
of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He was a friend and
collaborator of the French scholar Marie-Félicité Brosset ( 1802-80), who
worked for over forty years in Russia and placed the study of
Georgian and Armenian history on a scholarly footing. Brosset translated and
edited Prince Vakhushti's classic geographical description of Georgia,
as well as the entire corpus of the Georgian annals. He visited Georgia
during the viceroyalty of Prince Vorontsov, who joined with local notables in
encouraging his work, helping him to search out and edit ancient charters and
record inscriptions on churches and ancient monuments.
Other noteworthy Georgian scholars of the time included
David Chubinashvili or Chubinov ( 1814-91), Professor of Brosset in editing
the Georgian annals; also Platon Ioseliani, the Tbilisi antiquary, who wrote
a brief history of the Georgian Church, a life of King Giorgi XII, and
studies of ancient Georgian cities. On a broader plane, interest in the
history and civilization of Georgia
was stimulated by the launching of the Georgian magazine Tsiskari (The
Dawn), the Russian magazine Kavkaz (The Caucasus), and the
invaluable annual almanach Kavkazsky Kalendar (Calendar of the Caucasus). These Tbilisi periodicals set a very high
standard.
The Crimean War
In 1853, during the last months of Vorontsov's
viceroyalty, Georgia
was once more involved in the alarums of battle. The inadequacies of Russia's
military machine and backward economic and social system were now to be
revealed in a conflict with a rearmed Ottoman Empire supported, albeit
inefficiently, by a concert of Western powers. In the Crimean War, as in
other Russo-Turkish wars, events on the Caucasian front played an important,
if secondary role. In anticipation of the outbreak of armed conflict, the
Turks had fortified Trebizond, Erzurum and Batumi. Special
attention was paid to Kars,
which, commanded by Colonel Fenwick Williams of the Royal Engineers, was
turned into a fortified camp of great strength. During the summer of 1853,
the Turks concentrated substantial forces along their Caucasian frontier. In
addition to keeping watch on this line, the Russians had large bodies of
troops tied down in north-western Caucasia, to counter activity by the
Circassians, and in the eastern Caucasus, in expectation of renewed forays by
Shamil and his Murids against the Russian garrisons in Chechnya and Daghestan, and against the
Eastern Georgian province
of Kakheti.
The first important engagement was in fact an attack on
Kakheti by the Imam Shamil with 10,000 or more mountaineers in August 1853,
but this was beaten off by a Russian force under Prince
Argutinsky-Dolgorukov. At the end of October, the Turkish offensive began in
earnest. Parts of Guria were occupied, but attacks on the towns of Akhaltsikhe,
Adsquri and Akhalkalaki were repulsed. On 1 December, Prince V. O. Bebutov
with 10,000 men, including a large contingent of Georgian troops, signally
defeated a Turkish army some 36,000 strong, and sent the survivors streaming
back into Kars.
This engagement occurred the day after Admiral Nakhimov destroyed the Turkish
fleet at Sinope on the Black Sea, thus precipitating the entry of Britain and France into the war.
As the new year of 1854 opened, the septuagenarian viceroy
felt his physical powers to be waning. In March, Vorontsov left on sick leave
for Western Europe, never to return. He submitted
his resignation to the emperor the following October, and died, full of
honours, in 1856.
On the Russo-Turkish border, the campaign of 1854 was
largely indecisive, except for a defeat inflicted by the Russians on the
Turks at the village of Kurudere, between Kars and Alexandropol. At the eastern end
of the Caucasus, Shamil and his Murids were
emboldened to launch another assault on Kakheti. They descended into the
Alazani valley, but failed to capture any of the Russian posts guarding the
Lezghian line. On 16 July, Prince David Chavchavadze routed the Murid horde
at Shilda. Shamil's only success in this operation was his raid on Prince
Chavchavadze's mansion at Tsinandali, whence he abducted the prince's wife
and her sister, Princess Orbeliani, as well as slaughtering or kidnapping
other members of their family and entourage. A few months later, the
surviving captives were handed back in exchange for Shamil's own son
Jamal-al-Din, who had been taken prisoner by the Russians in 1839 and brought
up at St. Petersburg with honour and distinction. The young man had been made
colonel of a regiment and aide-de-camp to the Tsar; restored reluctantly to
the savage life of his primitive compatriots, he soon pined away and died.
Under the new viceroy, Count N. N. Muraviev, military
operations on the Caucasian front in 1855 took on a more active look. After
bloody and desperate fighting, the great fortress of Kars capitulated to the Russians in
November. But meanwhile the Russians had been taken in the rear by Turkish
forces under Omar Pasha, who landed at Sukhumi
in Abkhazia and occupied a strip of Western Georgia's Black
Sea littoral. Omar Pasha occupied the Mingrelian capital of
Zugdidi and prepared to advance on the main city of Western Georgia, Kutaisi. But he had
reckoned without the torrential rain and pestilential vapours typical of the
Mingrelian climate. Soon his troops were without bread and his animals
without forage, and his army was bogged down in the Mingrelian quagmire. The
local princes and their predominantly Christian peasantry showed no
inclination to rise in revolt against the Russians and join the Turks, from
whom they had suffered much tyranny in earlier periods. In spite of the
incompetence of the local Russian commander, who was the Georgian prince
Ivane Bagration-Mukhransky, Omar's campaign gradually petered out. The
signing of the Treaty of Paris, which concluded the Crimean War in 1856,
prevented Muraviev from following up his success at Kars,
and redeeming the disgrace inflicted on Russia
by the fall of Sebastopol in the Crimea.
Passing of an autocrat
Nicholas I, martinet that he was, claimed to have given Russia prosperity and good order at home,
power and prestige abroad, and predominance in the affairs of Europe and the world. The disasters of the Crimean War
dissipated these fond illusions. 'War,' a contemporary remarked, 'opened our
eyes, and things appeared to us in their true guise.' In February 1855, the
autocrat caught a chill; on March 2, he was dead. As Nicholas admitted on his
death-bed, he was handing over command to his successor in a pretty bad
state.
Thanks largely to Prince Vorontsov, the closing years of
the reign had, for Georgia
at least, their brighter side. Now that most of the country had been
thoroughly subjugated from a military viewpoint, it could be peacefully
assimilated into the Tsarist system, and the old arbitrary methods of
military government replaced by more civilized methods of administration.
These years, viewed in historical perspective, mark a turning point in the
country's economic and social life. The decay of the old feudal system became
daily more apparent. The growth of capitalism, combined with changes in
public opinion produced by contact with European ideas, showed that
traditional forms of agrarian and manorial economy, based on serf labour and
the individual craftsman, were doomed. The spread of education combined with
resurgence of national pride to produce a new and vigorous Georgian
intellectual life which was to manifest itself increasingly during the second
half of the century.
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37. Lieutenant-General
William Monteith, Kars and Erzeroum,
London 1856,
p. 301.
38. On Hamzat Bek,
see Lieutenant-General A. A. Neverovsky's short book, The slaughter of the
Avar khans in 1834, St.
Petersburg 1848.
39. Quoted from
Baddeley. The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus,
pp. 310-11.
40. Archives of the
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris, Correspondance Commerdale,
Tiflis, Vol. II, pp. 84-85.
41. Report of
General Golovin to Russian Minister of War, 8 October 1838, in Akty,
Vol. IX, Tbilisi
1884, pp. 6-10.
42. Archives of the
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris, Correspondance Commerciale,
Tiflis, Vol. II, p. 109.
43. Akaki
Tsereteli, Perezhitoe (Reminiscences), trans, into Russian by E.
Ghoghoberidze, and edition, Moscow
1950, pp. 47-49.
44. Correspondance
Commerciale, Tiflis, Vol. II, pp.
291-302.
45. Report of the
Comte de Ratti-Menton, French Consul in Tbilisi,
dated 7/19 February 1834.
46. R. Wilbraham, Travels
in the Trans-Causian Provinces of Russia,
London 1839,
p. 223.
47. Correspondance
Commerciale, Tiflis, Vol. II, pp.
517-18.
48. Tsereteli, Perezhitoe,
pp. 87-88.
49. Tsereteli, Perezhitoe,
pp. 89, 94.
50. G. K. Bakradze,
Vozniknovenie i razvitie kapitalisticheskoy promyshlennosti v Gruzii v XIX
veke (The rise and development of capitalist industry in Georgia in the 19th century), Tbilisi 1958, pp.
25-26.
51. Quoted in the
English rendering by Venera Urushadze, from Anthology of Georgian Poetry,
2nd edition, Tbilisi
1958, pp. 50-51.
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