"Keeping Solid Memoirs About the Performed Exploits": a Case for the Caucasus Military-Historical Department's Role in the Establishment of the Regimental Historiography in the Late XIX c.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to consider the experience of saving the military sector of the historical memory. It is particularly concern with the issue of the foundation of so-called ―regimental historiography‖ – a corpus of investigations, performed by the militaries about their regiment’s deeds. The article attempts to bring in a number of general questions, related to the history of the troops of the Caucasus Army of the XIX c. The investigation is devoted specifically to the role of the Military-Historical department of the Caucasus Military District General Stuff. The research is based on either newspapers (as the ―Caucasus Journal‖) or primary sources, collected in Federal and regional archives with a particular focus on published ―regimental histories‖ of certain troops. Based on the approach offered by research direction of the ―intellectual history‖, the author came to the conclusions, that all regiment histories were written by non-professional historians. Their historical plot was determined by the official ideological background and by the wish for keeping the memory about the war exploits and traditions of their regiment. The work existence depended not only on the author subjective will, but either on financial issues – money need for the papers printing. The Caucasus Military-Historical department’s participation in this process allowed achieving extremely high results. Many printed and edited papers contained much more than making the dry roll-call of battles and military events. They included either reviews of political, historical, cultural and ethnological context, making some shift to mastering the base for the further scientific Caucasus studies.