Those who Transformed the Caucasus: Personalities, Institutions, Images

Abstract

The processes of integration of the North Caucasus into the political, economic and socio-cultural space of Russia had a deep and long history, reflecting the interaction of various internal and external factors. Those factors were not limited to the annexation of the region to the Russian Empire with the spread of imperial norms and management technologies, but were also accompanied by internal transformations in various fields, overcoming the former isolation of the peoples inhabiting it, the emergence of new industrial and cultural centers, transport hubs, the formation of a single market for goods and services, changes in public consciousness and everyday life. Therefore, Metamorphoses was chosen as the literary allusion of the issue. As in Ovid’s poem various transformations took place in a certain sequence, so the Caucasus has been systematically changing for more than two centuries, and this transit had its own logic, albeit sometimes quite contradictory, with a change in development vectors. Continuing the main theme of the issue, the participants of the discussion focus on the personalities that reformed the Caucasus, those who initiated and carried out these changes, as well as on their reflection in various forms of historical memory. The authorities and individuals who offered their answers in the search for ways to develop the region, both representatives of the Russian Empire, and then the Soviet state, and their opponents, act as transformers. In the collision of various projects with each other and with historical realities, the selection of optimal forms of transformation of the North Caucasus took place. Particular attention is paid to the politics of memory and memorial practices, which make it possible to reveal the relationship between individuals and their historical images, reconstructed using various means.