Why did Russia capture the Caucasus and continue to feed it. The history of the conquest of the Caucasus Brief description of the theater of operations

Caucasian War of 1817-64, hostilities associated with the annexation of Chechnya, Mountainous Dagestan and the North-Western Caucasus by tsarist Russia. After the annexation of Georgia (1801) and Azerbaijan (1803), their territories turned out to be separated from Russia by the lands of Chechnya, Mountainous Dagestan (although legally Dagestan was annexed in 1813) and the North-Western Caucasus, inhabited by warlike mountain peoples who raided the Caucasian fortified line, interfered with relations with Transcaucasia. After the end of the wars with Napoleonic France, tsarism was able to intensify hostilities in the area. Appointed in 1816 as commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General A.P. Yermolov moved from separate punitive expeditions to a systematic advance deep into Chechnya and Mountainous Dagestan by surrounding the mountainous regions with a continuous ring of fortifications, cutting clearings in difficult forests, laying roads and destroying "recalcitrant" auls. This forced the population either to move to the flat (plain) under the supervision of the Russian garrisons, or to go into the depths of the mountains. The first period of the Caucasian War began with the order of May 12, 1818, by General Yermolov to cross the Terek. Yermolov drew up a plan of offensive operations, at the forefront of which was the widespread colonization of the region by the Cossacks and the formation of "layers" between hostile tribes by resettling loyal tribes there. In 1817 the left flank of the Caucasian line was moved from the Terek to the river. Sunzha, in the middle reaches of which, in October 1817, the fortification of Barrier Stan was laid, which was the first step in a systematic advance deep into the territories of the mountain peoples and actually marked the beginning of K.V. In 1818, the Groznaya fortress was founded in the lower reaches of the Sunzha. The continuation of the Sunzha line were the fortresses Vnepnaya (1819) and Burnaya (1821). In 1819, the Separate Georgian Corps was renamed the Separate Caucasian Corps and reinforced to 50,000 men; Yermolov was also subordinate to the Black Sea Cossack army (up to 40 thousand people) in the North-Western Caucasus. In 1818, a number of Dagestan feudal lords and tribes united and in 1819 began a campaign against the Sunzha line. But in 1819-21. they suffered a series of defeats, after which the possessions of these feudal lords were either transferred to the vassals of Russia with subordination to Russian commandants (the lands of the Kazikumukh Khan to the Kyurinsky Khan, the Avar Khan to the Shamkhal of Tarkovsky), or became dependent on Russia (the lands of the Karakaytag Utsmiya), or liquidated with the introduction of Russian administration ( khanate of Mekhtuli, as well as the Azerbaijani khanates of Sheki, Shirvan and Karabakh). In 1822-26 A number of punitive expeditions were carried out against the Circassians in the Trans-Kuban region.

The result of Yermolov's actions was the subjugation of almost all of Dagestan, Chechnya and Trans-Kuban. General I.F., who replaced Yermolov in March 1827. Paskevich abandoned the systematic advance with the consolidation of the occupied territories and returned mainly to the tactics of individual punitive expeditions, although the Lezgin line was created under him (1830). In 1828, in connection with the construction of the Sukhumi military road, the Karachaev region was annexed. The expansion of the colonization of the North Caucasus and the cruelty of the aggressive policy of Russian tsarism caused spontaneous mass uprisings of the highlanders. The first of these took place in Chechnya in July 1825: the highlanders, led by Bei-Bulat, captured the post of Amiradzhiyurt, but their attempts to take Gerzel and Groznaya failed, and in 1826 the uprising was crushed. At the end of the 20s. in Chechnya and Dagestan, a movement of highlanders arose under the religious shell of muridism, an integral part of which was the ghazavat (Jihad) "holy war" against the "infidels" (i.e. Russians). In this movement, the liberation struggle against the colonial expansion of tsarism was combined with a speech against the oppression of local feudal lords. The reactionary side of the movement was the struggle of the elite of the Muslim clergy for the creation of a feudal-theocratic state of the imamate. This isolated the adherents of Muridism from other peoples, kindled fanatical hatred of non-Muslims, and, most importantly, preserved the backward feudal forms of social organization. The movement of the highlanders under the banner of Muridism was the impetus for the expansion of the scale of K.V., although some peoples of the North Caucasus and Dagestan (for example, Kumyks, Ossetians, Ingush, Kabardians, etc.) did not join this movement. This was explained, firstly, by the fact that some of these peoples could not be carried away by the slogan of Muridism due to their Christianization (part of the Ossetians) or the weak development of Islam (for example, the Kabardians); secondly, the “carrot and stick” policy pursued by tsarism, with the help of which he managed to win over part of the feudal lords and their subjects. These peoples did not oppose Russian domination, but their situation was difficult: they were under the double yoke of tsarism and local feudal lords.

The second period of the Caucasian War is a bloody and formidable period of Muridism. At the beginning of 1829, Kazi-Mulla (or Gazi-Magomed) arrived in the Tarkov Shankhalstvo (a state on the territory of Dagestan in the late 15th - early 19th centuries) with his sermons, while receiving complete freedom of action from the shamkhal. Gathering his comrades-in-arms, he began to go around aul after aul, calling on “sinners to take the righteous path, instruct the lost and crush the criminal authorities of the auls.” Gazi-Magomed (Kazi-mullah), proclaimed imam in December 1828 and put forward the idea of ​​uniting the peoples of Chechnya and Dagestan. But some feudal lords (Khan of Avar, Shamkhal of Tarkovsky, etc.), who adhered to the Russian orientation, refused to recognize the authority of the imam. Gazi-Magomed's attempt to capture the capital of Avaria Khunzakh in February 1830 was not successful, although the expedition of the tsar's troops in 1830 to Gimry failed and only led to an increase in the influence of the imam. In 1831, the Murids took Tarki and Kizlyar, laid siege to Stormy and Vnepnaya; their detachments also operated in Chechnya, near Vladikavkaz and Grozny, and with the support of the rebel Tabasarans, they laid siege to Derbent. Significant territories (Chechnya and most of Dagestan) were under the authority of the imam. However, from the end of 1831, the uprising began to decline due to the departure from the murids of the peasantry, dissatisfied with the fact that the imam did not fulfill his promise to eliminate class inequality. As a result of large expeditions of Russian troops in Chechnya, undertaken by General G.V. Rosen, the detachments of Gazi-Magomed were pushed back to Mountain Dagestan. The imam with a handful of murids took refuge in Gimry, where he died on October 17, 1832 during the capture of the village by Russian troops. Gamzat-bek was proclaimed the second imam, whose military successes attracted almost all the peoples of Mountainous Dagestan to his side, including some of the Avars; however, the ruler of Avaria, Khansha Pahu-bike, refused to oppose Russia. In August 1834, Gamzat-bek captured Khunzakh and exterminated the family of the Avar khans, but as a result of a conspiracy of their supporters, he was killed on September 19, 1834. and Nikolaev.

Shamil was proclaimed the third imam in 1834. The Russian command sent a large detachment against him, which destroyed the village of Gotsatl (the main residence of the Murids) and forced Shamil's troops to retreat from Avaria. Believing that the movement was largely suppressed, Rosen did not conduct active operations for 2 years. During this time, Shamil, having chosen the village of Akhulgo as his base, subjugated some of the elders and feudal lords of Chechnya and Dagestan, brutally cracking down on those feudal lords who did not want to obey him, and won wide support among the masses. In 1837, the detachment of General K.K. Fezi occupied Khunzakh, Untsukul and part of the village of Tilitl, where Shamil's troops retreated, but due to heavy losses and lack of food, the tsar's troops were in a difficult situation, and on July 3, 1837, Fezi concluded a truce with Shamil. This truce and the withdrawal of the tsarist troops were in fact their defeat and strengthened Shamil's authority. In the North-Western Caucasus, Russian troops in 1837 laid the fortifications of the Holy Spirit, Novotroitskoye, Mikhailovskoye. In March 1838, Rosen was replaced by General E.A. Golovin, under whom the fortifications Navaginskoe, Velyaminovskoe, Tenginskoe and Novorossiyskoye were created in the North-Western Caucasus in 1838. The truce with Shamil turned out to be temporary, and in 1839 hostilities resumed. Detachment of General P.Kh. Grabbe, after an 80-day siege on August 22, 1839, captured the residence of Shamil Akhulgo; wounded Shamil with murids broke into Chechnya. On the Black Sea coast in 1839, the Golovinskoye and Lazarevskoye fortifications were laid and the Black Sea coastline was created from the mouth of the river. Kuban to the borders of Megrelia; in 1840, the Labinskaya line was created, but soon the tsarist troops suffered a number of major defeats: in February-April 1840, the rebellious Circassians captured the fortifications of the Black Sea coastline (Lazarevskoye, Velyaminovskoye, Mikhailovskoye, Nikolaevskoye). In the Eastern Caucasus, an attempt by the Russian administration to disarm the Chechens sparked an uprising that engulfed all of Chechnya and then spread to Mountainous Dagestan. After stubborn battles in the area of ​​the Gekhinsky forest and on the river. Valerik (July 11, 1840) Russian troops occupied Chechnya, Chechens went to Shamil's troops operating in North-Western Dagestan. In 1840-43, despite the strengthening of the Caucasian Corps with an infantry division, Shamil won a number of major victories, occupied Avaria and established his power in a significant part of Dagestan, more than doubling the territory of the imamate and bringing the number of his troops to 20 thousand people. In October 1842 Golovin was replaced by General A. I. Neigardt also transferred 2 more infantry divisions to the Caucasus, which made it possible to push back Shamil's troops somewhat. But then Shamil, again seizing the initiative, occupied Gergebil on November 8, 1843 and forced the Russian troops to leave Avaria. In December 1844, Neigardt was replaced by General M.S. Vorontsov, who in 1845 captured and destroyed the residence of Shamil, the village of Dargo. However, the highlanders surrounded Vorontsov's detachment, who barely managed to escape, having lost 1/3 of the composition, all the guns and the convoy. In 1846, Vorontsov returned to Yermolov's tactics of conquering the Caucasus. Shamil's attempts to disrupt the enemy's offensive were not successful (in 1846, the failure of a breakthrough to Kabarda, in 1848, the fall of Gergebil, in 1849, the failure of the assault on Temir-Khan-Shura and a breakthrough in Kakheti); in 1849-52 Shamil managed to take Kazikumukh, but by the spring of 1853 his troops were finally driven out of Chechnya to Mountain Dagestan, where the situation of the highlanders also became difficult. In the Northwestern Caucasus, the Urup line was created in 1850, and in 1851 an uprising of Circassian tribes led by Shamil's governor, Muhammad-Emin, was suppressed. On the eve of the Crimean War of 1853-56, Shamil, counting on the help of Great Britain and Turkey, stepped up his actions and in August 1853 tried to break through the Lezgin line near Zakatala, but failed. In November 1853, the Turkish troops were defeated at Bashkadyklar, and the attempts of the Circassians to capture the Black Sea and Labinsk lines were repelled. In the summer of 1854, Turkish troops launched an offensive against Tiflis; at the same time, Shamil's detachments, breaking through the Lezgin line, invaded Kakheti, captured Tsinandali, but were detained by the Georgian militia, and then defeated by Russian troops. Defeat in 1854-55 Turkish army finally dispelled Shamil's hopes for outside help. By this time, deepened began in the late 40s. internal crisis of the Imamate. The actual transformation of Shamil's governors, the naibs, into greedy feudal lords, who aroused the indignation of the highlanders with their cruel rule, aggravated social contradictions, and the peasants began to gradually move away from Shamil's movement (in 1858, an uprising against Shamil's power even broke out in Chechnya in the Vedeno region). The weakening of the imamate was also facilitated by ruin and heavy casualties in a long unequal struggle in the face of a shortage of ammunition and food. The conclusion of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856 allowed tsarism to concentrate significant forces against Shamil: the Caucasian Corps was transformed into an army (up to 200 thousand people). The new commanders-in-chief, General N. N. Muravyov (1854 56) and General A.I. Baryatinsky (1856 60) continued to tighten the blockade around the imamate with a strong consolidation of the occupied territories. In April 1859, the residence of Shamil, the village of Vedeno, fell. Shamil fled with 400 murids to the village of Gunib. As a result of the concentric movement of three detachments of Russian troops, Gunib was surrounded and stormed on August 25, 1859; almost all the murids died in battle, and Shamil was forced to surrender. In the North-Western Caucasus, the disunity of the Circassian and Abkhazian tribes facilitated the actions of the tsarist command, which took fertile lands from the highlanders and transferred them to the Cossacks and Russian settlers, carrying out the mass eviction of the mountain peoples. In November 1859, the main forces of the Circassians (up to 2 thousand people) capitulated, led by Mohammed-Emin. The lands of the Circassians were cut by the Belorechenskaya line with the Maykop fortress. In 185961 clearings, roads and the settlement of lands seized from the highlanders were carried out. In the middle of 1862, resistance to the colonialists intensified. To occupy the territory left by the highlanders with a population of about 200 thousand people. in 1862, up to 60 thousand soldiers were concentrated under the command of General N.I. Evdokimov, who began to advance along the coast and deep into the mountains. In 1863, the tsarist troops occupied the territory between the river. Belaya and Pshish, and by mid-April 1864 the entire coast to Navaginskoye and the territory to the river. Laba (on the northern slope of the Caucasus Range). Only the highlanders of the Akhchipsu society and a small tribe of Khakuches in the valley of the river did not submit. Mzymta. Pushed back to the sea or driven into the mountains, the Circassians and Abkhazians were forced to either move to the plains or, under the influence of the Muslim clergy, emigrate to Turkey. The unpreparedness of the Turkish government to receive, accommodate and feed a mass of people (up to 500 thousand people), the arbitrariness and violence of the local Turkish authorities and difficult living conditions caused a high death rate among the settlers, a small part of whom returned to the Caucasus again. By 1864, Russian administration was introduced in Abkhazia, and on May 21, 1864, the tsarist troops occupied the last center of resistance of the Circassian Ubykh tribe, the Kbaadu tract (now Krasnaya Polyana). This day is considered the date of the end of K.V., although in fact hostilities continued until the end of 1864, and in the 60-70s. anti-colonial uprisings took place in Chechnya and Dagestan.

In 1817-1827, General Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov (1777-1861) was the commander of the Separate Caucasian Corps and the chief administrator in Georgia. Yermolov's activities as commander-in-chief were active and quite successful. In 1817, the construction of the Sunzha line of cordons (along the Sunzha River) began. In 1818, the fortresses of Groznaya (modern Grozny) and Nalchik were built on the Sunzha line. Chechen campaigns (1819-1821) with the aim of destroying the Sunzha line were repulsed, Russian troops began to advance into the mountainous regions of Chechnya. In 1827, Yermolov was dismissed for his patronage of the Decembrists. Field Marshal Ivan Fedorovich Paskevich (1782-1856) was appointed to the post of commander-in-chief, who switched to the tactics of raids and campaigns, which could not always give lasting results. Later, in 1844, the commander-in-chief and viceroy, Prince M.S. Vorontsov (1782-1856), was forced to return to the cordon system. In 1834-1859, the liberation struggle of the Caucasian highlanders, which took place under the flag of the ghazavat, was led by Shamil (1797 - 1871), who created the Muslim-theocratic state - the imamat. Shamil was born in the village of Gimrakh around 1797, and according to other sources, around 1799, from the Avar bridle Dengau Mohammed. Gifted with brilliant natural abilities, he listened to the best teachers of grammar, logic and rhetoric of the Arabic language in Dagestan and soon began to be considered an outstanding scientist. The sermons of Kazi-mullah (or rather, Gazi-Mohammed), the first preacher of ghazavat - a holy war against the Russians, captivated Shamil, who became first his student, and then his friend and ardent supporter. The followers of the new doctrine, which sought the salvation of the soul and cleansing from sins through a holy war for the faith against the Russians, were called murids. When the people were sufficiently fanatized and excited by the descriptions of paradise, with its houris, and the promise of complete independence from any authorities other than Allah and his Sharia (the spiritual law set forth in the Koran), Kazi-mullah managed to to carry along Koisuba, Gumbet, Andia and other small communities along the Avar and Andi Kois, most of the Shamkhalate of Tarkovsky, Kumyks and Avaria, except for its capital Khunzakh, where the Avar khans visited. Expecting that his power would only be strong in Dagestan when he finally took possession of Avaria, the center of Dagestan, and its capital Khunzakh, Kazi-mulla gathered 6,000 people and on February 4, 1830 went with them against the khansha Pahu-Bike. On February 12, 1830, he moved to storm Khunzakh, with one half of the militia commanded by Gamzat-bek, his future successor-imam, and the other by Shamil, the future 3rd imam of Dagestan.

The assault was unsuccessful; Shamil, together with Kazi-mullah, returned to Nimry. Accompanying his teacher on his campaigns, in 1832 Shamil was besieged by the Russians, under the command of Baron Rosen, in Gimry. Shamil managed, although terribly wounded, to break through and escape, while Kazi-mulla died, all pierced by bayonets. The death of the latter, the wounds received by Shamil during the siege of Gimr, and the dominance of Gamzat-bek, who declared himself the successor of Kazi-mullah and imam - all this kept Shamil in the background until the death of Gamzat-bek (September 7 or 19, 1834), the main of which he was an employee, gathering troops, obtaining material resources and commanding expeditions against the Russians and the enemies of the imam. Upon learning of the death of Gamzat-bek, Shamil gathered a party of the most desperate murids, rushed with them to New Gotsatl, seized the wealth plundered by Gamzat and ordered the surviving youngest son of Paru-Bike, the only heir to the Avar Khanate, to be killed. With this murder, Shamil finally removed the last obstacle to the spread of the power of the imam, since the khans of Avaria were interested in the fact that there was no single strong power in Dagestan and therefore acted in alliance with the Russians against Kazi-mullah and Gamzat-bek. For 25 years, Shamil ruled over the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya, successfully fighting against the huge forces of Russia. Less religious than Kazi-mullah, less hasty and reckless than Gamzat-bek, Shamil possessed military talent, great organizational skills, endurance, perseverance, the ability to choose the time to strike and helpers to fulfill his plans. Distinguished by a firm and unbending will, he knew how to inspire the highlanders, knew how to excite them to self-sacrifice and to obedience to his authority, which was especially difficult and unusual for them.

Exceeding his predecessors in intelligence, he, like them, did not consider the means to achieve his goals. Fear for the future forced the Avars to get closer to the Russians: the Avarian foreman Khalil-bek appeared in Temir-Khan-Shura and asked Colonel Kluki von Klugenau to appoint a legitimate ruler to Avaria so that it would not fall into the hands of the murids. Klugenau moved towards Gotzatl. Shamil, having arranged blockages on the left bank of the Avar Koisu, intended to act on the Russian flank and rear, but Klugenau managed to cross the river, and Shamil had to retreat into Dagestan, where at that time there were hostile clashes between contenders for power. Shamil's position in these early years was very difficult: a series of defeats suffered by the highlanders shook their desire for ghazavat and their faith in the triumph of Islam over the infidels; one by one, the Free Societies submitted and handed over hostages; fearing ruin by the Russians, the mountain auls were reluctant to host the murids. Throughout 1835, Shamil worked in secret, gaining adherents, fanaticizing the crowd and pushing back rivals or putting up with them. The Russians let him get stronger, because they looked at him as an insignificant adventurer. Shamil spread a rumor that he was only working on restoring the purity of the Muslim law between the recalcitrant societies of Dagestan and expressed his readiness to submit to the Russian government with all the Koisu-Bulins if special maintenance was assigned to him. Putting the Russians to sleep in this way, who at that time were especially busy building fortifications along the Black Sea coast in order to cut off the Circassians from communicating with the Turks, Shamil, with the assistance of Tashav-hadji, tried to raise the Chechens and assure them that most of the mountainous Dagestan had already adopted sharia ( Arabic sharia literally - the proper way) and obeyed the imam. In April 1836, Shamil, with a party of 2,000 people, exhorted and threatened the Koisa Bulins and other neighboring societies to accept his teachings and recognize him as an imam. The commander of the Caucasian Corps, Baron Rosen, wishing to undermine the growing influence of Shamil, in July 1836 sent Major General Reut to occupy Untsukul and, if possible, Ashilta, Shamil's residence. Having occupied Irganai, Major General Reut was met with statements of obedience from Untsukul, whose foremen explained that they accepted Sharia only yielding to the power of Shamil. After that, Reut did not go to Untsukul and returned to Temir-Khan-Shura, and Shamil began to spread the rumor everywhere that the Russians were afraid to go deep into the mountains; then, taking advantage of their inaction, he continued to subjugate the Avar villages to his power. In order to gain greater influence among the population of Avaria, Shamil married the widow of the former imam Gamzat-bek and at the end of this year achieved that all free Dagestan societies from Chechnya to Avaria, as well as a significant part of the Avars and societies lying south of Avaria, recognized him power.

At the beginning of 1837, the corps commander instructed Major General Feza to undertake several expeditions to different parts of Chechnya, which was carried out with success, but made an insignificant impression on the highlanders. Shamil's continuous attacks on the Avar villages forced the governor of the Avar Khanate, Akhmet Khan Mekhtulinsky, to offer the Russians to occupy the capital of the Khunzakh Khanate. On May 28, 1837, General Feze entered Khunzakh and then moved to the village of Ashilte, near which, on the impregnable cliff of Akhulga, there was the family and all the property of the imam. Shamil himself, with a large party, was in the village of Talitle and tried to divert the attention of the troops from Ashilta, attacking from different sides. A detachment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Buchkiev was put up against him. Shamil tried to break through this barrier and on the night of June 7-8 attacked Buchkiev's detachment, but after a heated battle he was forced to retreat. On June 9, Ashilta was taken by storm and burned after a desperate battle with 2,000 selected murid fanatics, who defended every saklya, every street, and then rushed at our troops six times to recapture Ashilta, but in vain. On June 12, Akhulgo was also taken by storm. On July 5, General Feze moved troops to attack Tilitla; all the horrors of the Ashiltipo pogrom were repeated, when some did not ask, while others did not give mercy. Shamil saw that the case was lost, and sent a truce with an expression of humility. General Feze was deceived and entered into negotiations, after which Shamil and his comrades handed over three amanats (hostages), including Shamil's nephew, and swore allegiance to the Russian emperor. Having missed the chance to capture Shamil, General Feze dragged out the war for 22 years, and by making peace with him, as with an equal side, he raised his importance in the eyes of all of Dagestan and Chechnya. Shamil's position, however, was very difficult: on the one hand, the highlanders were shocked by the appearance of the Russians in the very heart of the most inaccessible part of Dagestan, and on the other hand, the pogrom carried out by the Russians, the death of many brave murids and the loss of property undermined their strength and for some time killed their energy. Soon the circumstances changed. Unrest in the Kuban region and in southern Dagestan diverted most of the government troops to the south, as a result of which Shamil could recover from the blows inflicted on him and again attract some free societies to his side, acting on them either by persuasion or by force (the end of 1838 and the beginning 1839). Near Akhulgo, destroyed by the Avar expedition, he built New Akhulgo, where he moved his residence from Chirkat. In view of the possibility of uniting all the highlanders of Dagestan under the rule of Shamil, the Russians during the winter of 1838-39 prepared troops, convoys and supplies for an expedition deep into Dagestan. It was necessary to restore free communications along all our routes of communication, which were now threatened by Shamil to such an extent that to cover our transports between Temir-Khan-Shura, Khunzakh and Vnepnaya, it was necessary to appoint strong columns from all types of weapons. The so-called Chechen detachment of Adjutant General Grabbe was appointed to act against Shamil. Shamil, for his part, in February 1839 gathered an armed mass of 5,000 people in Chirkat, strongly fortified the village of Arguani on the way from Salatavia to Akhulgo, destroyed the descent from the steep mountain Souk-Bulakh, and to divert attention on May 4 attacked the obedient Russia the village of Irganai and took its inhabitants to the mountains. At the same time, Tashav-hadji, who was devoted to Shamil, captured the village of Miskit on the Aksai River and built a fortification near it in the tract of Akhmet-Tala, from which he could at any moment attack the Sunzha line or the Kumyk plane, and then hit the rear when the troops go deep into the mountains when moving to Akhulgo. Adjutant General Grabbe understood this plan and, with a sudden attack, took and burned down the fortification near Miskit, destroyed and burned a number of auls in Chechnya, stormed Sayasani, the stronghold of Tashav-hadzhi, and on May 15 returned to Vnezpnaya. On May 21, he again spoke from there.

Near the village of Burtunaya, Shamil took up a flank position on impregnable heights, but the enveloping movement of the Russians forced him to leave for Chirkat, while his militia dispersed in different directions. Developing a road along puzzling steepness, Grabbe climbed the Souk-Bulakh pass and on May 30 approached Arguani, where Shamil sat down with 16 thousand people to delay the movement of the Russians. After a desperate hand-to-hand fight for 12 hours, in which the mountaineers and Russians suffered huge losses (the mountaineers have up to 2 thousand people, we have 641 people), he left the village (June 1) and fled to New Akhulgo, where he locked himself with the most devoted to him murids. Having occupied Chirkat (June 5), General Grabbe approached Akhulgo on June 12. The blockade of Akhulgo continued for ten weeks; Shamil freely communicated with the surrounding communities, again occupied Chirkat and stood on our messages, harassing us from two sides; reinforcements flocked to him from everywhere; the Russians were gradually surrounded by a ring of mountain rubble. Help from the Samur detachment of General Golovin brought them out of this difficulty and allowed them to close the ring of batteries near New Akhulgo. Anticipating the fall of his stronghold, Shamil tried to enter into negotiations with General Grabbe, demanding a free pass from Akhulgo, but was refused. On August 17, an attack occurred, during which Shamil again tried to enter into negotiations, but without success: on August 21, the attack resumed and after a 2-day battle, both Akhulgo were taken, and most of the defenders died. Shamil himself managed to escape, was wounded on the way and disappeared through Salatau to Chechnya, where he settled in the Argun Gorge. The impression of this pogrom was very strong; many societies sent chieftains and expressed their obedience; former associates of Shamil, including Tashav-Hajj, conceived to usurp the imam's power and recruit adherents, but they made a mistake in their calculations: Shamil was reborn from the ashes of a phoenix and already in 1840 again began the fight against the Russians in Chechnya, taking advantage of the discontent of the mountaineers against our bailiffs and against attempts to take away their weapons. General Grabbe considered Shamil a harmless fugitive and did not care about his pursuit, which he took advantage of, gradually returning the lost influence. Shamil strengthened the dissatisfaction of the Chechens with a deftly spread rumor that the Russians intended to convert the highlanders into peasants and enlist them in military service; the highlanders were worried and remembered Shamil, opposing the justice and wisdom of his decisions to the activities of the Russian bailiffs.

The Chechens offered him to lead the uprising; he agreed to this only after repeated requests, taking an oath from them and hostages from the best families. By his order, the whole of Little Chechnya and the Sunzha auls began to arm themselves. Shamil constantly disturbed the Russian troops with raids of large and small parties, which were transferred from place to place with such speed, avoiding open battle with the Russian troops, that the latter were completely exhausted chasing them, and the imam, taking advantage of this, attacked the obedient Russians who were left without protection society, subjected them to his power and resettled in the mountains. By the end of May, Shamil gathered a significant militia. Little Chechnya is all empty; its population abandoned their homes, rich lands and hid in dense forests beyond the Sunzha and in the Black Mountains. General Galafeev moved (July 6, 1840) to Little Chechnya, had several hot clashes, by the way, on July 11 on the Valerika River (Lermontov participated in this battle, describing it in a wonderful poem), but despite huge losses, especially when Valerika, the Chechens did not back down from Shamil and willingly joined his militia, which he now sent to northern Dagestan. Having won over the Gumbetians, Andians and Salatavians to his side and holding in his hands the exits to the rich Shamkhal plain, Shamil gathered a militia of 10-12 thousand people from Cherkey against 700 people of the Russian army. Having stumbled upon Major General Kluki von Klugenau, Shamil's 9,000-strong militia, after stubborn battles on the 10th and 11th mules, abandoned further movement, returned to Cherkey, and then part of Shamil was disbanded to go home: he was waiting for a wider movement in Dagestan. Evading the battle, he gathered the militia and worried the highlanders with rumors that the Russians would take the mounted highlanders and send them to serve in Warsaw. On September 14, General Kluki von Klugenau managed to challenge Shamil to fight near Gimry: he was beaten on the head and fled, Avaria and Koysubu were saved from looting and devastation. Despite this defeat, Shamil's power was not shaken in Chechnya; all the tribes between the Sunzha and the Avar Koisu obeyed him, vowing not to enter into any relations with the Russians; Hadji Murad (1852), who had betrayed Russia, went over to his side (November 1840) and agitated Avaria. Shamil settled in the village of Dargo (in Ichkeria, at the headwaters of the Aksai River) and took a number of offensive actions. The equestrian party of the naib Akhverdy-Magoma appeared on September 29, 1840 near Mozdok and took several people captive, including the family of the Armenian merchant Ulukhanov, whose daughter, Anna, became Shamil's beloved wife, under the name Shuanet.

By the end of 1840, Shamil was so strong that the commander of the Caucasian Corps, General Golovin, found it necessary to enter into relations with him, challenging him to reconcile with the Russians. This further raised the importance of the imam among the highlanders. Throughout the winter of 1840 - 1841, gangs of Circassians and Chechens broke through Sulak and penetrated even to Tarki, stealing cattle and robbing under the Termit-Khan-Shura itself, the communication of which with the line became possible only with a strong convoy. Shamil ruined the villages that tried to oppose his power, took his wives and children with him to the mountains and forced the Chechens to marry their daughters to the Lezgins, and vice versa, in order to link these tribes with each other. It was especially important for Shamil to acquire such collaborators as Hadji Murad, who attracted Avaria to him, Kibit-Magom in southern Dagestan, a fanatic, brave and capable self-taught engineer, very influential among the highlanders, and Dzhemaya-ed-Din, an outstanding preacher. By April 1841, Shamil commanded almost all the tribes of mountainous Dagestan, except for the Koysubu. Knowing how important the occupation of Cherkey was for the Russians, he fortified all the roads there with blockages and defended them himself with extreme stubbornness, but after the Russians bypassed them from both flanks, he retreated deep into Dagestan. On May 15, Cherkey surrendered to General Fese. Seeing that the Russians were engaged in the construction of fortifications and left him alone, Shamil decided to take possession of Andalal, with impregnable Gunib, where he expected to arrange his residence if the Russians ousted him from Dargo. Andalal was also important because its inhabitants made gunpowder. In September 1841, the Andalal people entered into relations with the imam; only a few small auls remained in government hands. At the beginning of winter, Shamil flooded Dagestan with his gangs and cut off communication with the conquered societies and with the Russian fortifications. General Kluki von Klugenau asked the corps commander to send reinforcements, but the latter, hoping that Shamil would stop his activities in the winter, postponed this matter until spring. Meanwhile, Shamil was not at all inactive, but was intensively preparing for the next year's campaign, not giving our exhausted troops a moment's rest. Shamil's fame reached the Ossetians and Circassians, who had high hopes for him. On February 20, 1842, General Fese took Gergebil by storm. Chokh occupied March 2 without a fight and arrived in Khunzakh on March 7. At the end of May 1842, Shamil invaded Kazikumukh with 15 thousand militiamen, but, defeated on June 2 at Kulyuli by Prince Argutinsky-Dolgoruky, he quickly cleared the Kazikumukh Khanate, probably because he received news of the movement of a large detachment of General Grabbe to Dargo. Having traveled only 22 versts in 3 days (May 30 and 31 and June 1) and having lost about 1800 people who were out of action, General Grabbe returned back without doing anything. This failure unusually raised the spirits of the highlanders. On our side, a number of fortifications along the Sunzha, which made it difficult for the Chechens to attack the villages on the left bank of this river, were supplemented by a fortification at Seral-Yurt (1842), and the construction of a fortification on the Asse River marked the beginning of the advanced Chechen line.

Shamil used the whole spring and summer of 1843 to organize his army; when the highlanders removed the bread, he went on the offensive. August 27, 1843, having made a transition of 70 miles, Shamil suddenly appeared in front of the Untsukul fortification, with 10 thousand people; lieutenant colonel Veselitsky went to help the fortification, with 500 people, but, surrounded by the enemy, he died with the whole detachment; On August 31, Untsukul was taken, destroyed to the ground, many of its inhabitants were executed; from the Russian garrison, the surviving 2 officers and 58 soldiers were taken prisoner. Then Shamil turned against Avaria, where, in Khunzakh, General Kluki von Klugenau sat down. As soon as Shamil entered the Accident, one village after another began to surrender to him; despite the desperate defense of our garrisons, he managed to take the fortification of Belakhany (September 3), the Maksokh tower (September 5), the fortification of Tsatany (September 6 - 8), Akhalchi and Gotsatl; seeing this, Avaria was separated from Russia and the inhabitants of Khunzakh were kept from betrayal only by the presence of troops. Such successes were possible only because the Russian forces were scattered over a large area in small detachments, which were placed in small and poorly constructed fortifications. Shamil was in no hurry to attack Khunzakh, fearing that one failure would ruin what he had gained with victories. Throughout this campaign, Shamil showed the talent of an outstanding commander. Leading crowds of highlanders, still unfamiliar with discipline, self-willed and easily discouraged at the slightest setback, he managed in a short time to subdue them to his will and inspire readiness to go on the most difficult enterprises. After an unsuccessful attack on the fortified village of Andreevka, Shamil turned his attention to Gergebil, which was poorly fortified, but meanwhile was of great importance, protecting access from northern Dagestan to southern, and to the Burunduk-kale tower, occupied by only a few soldiers, while she defended plane crash message. On October 28, 1843, crowds of mountaineers, up to 10 thousand in number, surrounded Gergebil, the garrison of which was 306 people of the Tiflis regiment, under the command of Major Shaganov; after a desperate defense, the fortress was taken, the garrison almost all died, only a few were captured (November 8). The fall of Gergebil was a signal for the uprising of the Koisu-Bulinsky auls on the right bank of the Avar Koisu, as a result of which the Russian troops cleared Avaria. Temir-Khan-Shura was now completely isolated; not daring to attack her, Shamil decided to starve her to death and attacked the Nizovoe fortification, where there was a warehouse of food supplies. Despite the desperate attacks of 6000 highlanders, the garrison withstood all their attacks and was released by General Freigat, who burned supplies, riveted cannons and withdrew the garrison to Kazi-Yurt (November 17, 1843). The hostile mood of the population forced the Russians to clear the Miatly blockhouse, then Khunzakh, whose garrison, under the command of Passek, moved to Zirani, where he was besieged by the highlanders. General Gurko moved to help Passek and on December 17 rescued him from the siege.

By the end of 1843, Shamil was the full master of Dagestan and Chechnya; we had to start the work of their conquest from the very beginning. Having taken up the organization of the lands subject to him, Shamil divided Chechnya into 8 naibs and then into thousands, five hundred, hundreds and tens. The duties of the naibs were to order the invasion of small parties into our borders and to monitor all movements of the Russian troops. Significant reinforcements received by the Russians in 1844 gave them the opportunity to take and ravage Cherkey and push Shamil out of the impregnable position at Burtunai (June 1844). On August 22, the construction of the Vozdvizhensky fortification, the future center of the Chechen line, began on the Argun River; the highlanders tried in vain to prevent the construction of the fortress, lost heart and ceased to show themselves. Daniel-bek, the Sultan of Elisu, went over to the side of Shamil at that time, but General Schwartz occupied the Elisu Sultanate, and the betrayal of the Sultan did not bring Shamil the benefit he had hoped for. Shamil's power was still very strong in Dagestan, especially in the south and along the left bank of the Sulak and the Avar Koisu. He understood that his main support was the lower class of the people, and therefore he tried by all means to tie him to himself: for this purpose, he established the position of murtazeks, from poor and homeless people, who, having received power and importance from him, were a blind tool in his hands and strictly observed the execution of his instructions. In February 1845, Shamil occupied the trading village of Chokh and forced the neighboring villages into obedience.

Emperor Nicholas I ordered the new governor, Count Vorontsov, to take Shamil's residence, Dargo, although all authoritative Caucasian military generals rebelled against this, as against a useless expedition. The expedition, undertaken on May 31, 1845, occupied Dargo, abandoned and burned by Shamil, and returned on July 20, having lost 3631 people without the slightest benefit. Shamil surrounded the Russian troops during this expedition with such a mass of his troops that they had to conquer every inch of the way at the cost of blood; all the roads were spoiled, dug up and blocked by dozens of blockages and fences; all the villages had to be taken by storm or they got destroyed and burned. The Russians learned from the Dargin expedition the belief that the path to dominion in Dagestan went through Chechnya and that it was necessary to act not by raids, but by cutting roads in the forests, founding fortresses and populating the occupied places with Russian settlers. This was started in the same 1845. In order to divert the attention of the government from the events in Dagestan, Shamil disturbed the Russians at various points along the Lezgin line; but the development and strengthening of the Military Akhtyn road here also gradually limited the field of his actions, bringing the Samur detachment closer to the Lezgin one. Having in mind to recapture the Dargin district, Shamil moved his capital to Vedeno, in Ichkeria. In October 1846, having taken a strong position near the village of Kuteshi, Shamil intended to lure the Russian troops, under the command of Prince Bebutov, into this narrow gorge, surround them here, cut them off from all communications with other detachments and defeat or starve them to death. Russian troops unexpectedly, on the night of October 15, attacked Shamil and, despite stubborn and desperate defense, smashed him on his head: he fled, leaving a lot of badges, one cannon and 21 charging boxes. With the onset of the spring of 1847, the Russians besieged Gergebil, but, defended by desperate murids, skillfully fortified, he fought back, supported in time by Shamil (June 1 - 8, 1847). The outbreak of cholera in the mountains forced both sides to suspend hostilities. On July 25, Prince Vorontsov laid siege to the village of Salty, which was heavily fortified and equipped with a large garrison; Shamil sent his best naibs (Hadji Murad, Kibit-Magoma and Daniel-bek) to the rescue of the besieged, but they were defeated by an unexpected attack by Russian troops and fled with a huge loss (August 7). Shamil tried many times to help the Salts, but had no success; On September 14, the fortress was taken by the Russians. The construction of fortified headquarters in Chiro-Yurt, Ishkarty and Deshlagora, which guarded the plain between the Sulak River, the Caspian Sea and Derbent, and the construction of fortifications at Khojal-Makhi and Tsudahar, which laid the foundation for the line along the Kazikumykh-Koys, the Russians greatly hampered Shamil’s movements, making it difficult him a breakthrough to the plain and locking up the main passages to central Dagestan. To this was added the displeasure of the people, who, starving, grumbled that, as a result of constant war, it was impossible to sow the fields and prepare food for their families for the winter; Naibs quarreled among themselves, accused each other and reached denunciations. In January 1848, Shamil gathered naibs, chief elders and clerics in Vedeno and announced to them that, not seeing help from the people in his enterprises and zeal in military operations against the Russians, he resigned the title of imam. The assembly declared that it would not allow this, because there was no man in the mountains more worthy to bear the title of imam; the people are not only ready to submit to Shamil's demands, but are obligated to obedience to his son, to whom, after the death of his father, the title of imam should pass.

On July 16, 1848, Gergebil was taken by the Russians. Shamil, for his part, attacked the fortification of Akhta, defended by only 400 people under the command of Colonel Rot, and the murids, inspired by the personal presence of the imam, were at least 12 thousand. The garrison defended heroically and was saved by the arrival of Prince Argutinsky, who defeated Shamil's crowd at the village of Meskindzhi on the banks of the Samur River. The Lezgin line was raised to the southern spurs of the Caucasus, which the Russians took away from the highlanders pastures and forced many of them to submit or move to our borders. From the side of Chechnya, we began to push back the societies that were recalcitrant to us, cutting deep into the mountains with the advanced Chechen line, which so far consisted only of the fortifications of Vozdvizhensky and Achtoevsky, with a gap between them of 42 versts. At the end of 1847 and the beginning of 1848, in the middle of Little Chechnya, a fortification was erected on the banks of the Urus-Martan River between the above-mentioned fortifications, 15 versts from Vozdvizhensky and 27 versts from Achtoevsky. By this we took away from the Chechens a rich plain, the breadbasket of the country. The population was discouraged; some submitted to us and moved closer to our fortifications, others went further into the depths of the mountains. From the side of the Kumyk plane, the Russians cordoned off Dagestan with two parallel lines of fortifications. The winter of 1858-49 passed quietly. In April 1849, Hadji Murad launched an unsuccessful attack on Temir-Khan-Shura. In June, Russian troops approached Chokh and, finding it perfectly fortified, led the siege according to all the rules of engineering; but, seeing the enormous forces gathered by Shamil to repel the attack, Prince Argutinsky-Dolgorukov lifted the siege. In the winter of 1849 - 1850, a huge clearing was cut from the Vozdvizhensky fortification to the Shalinskaya glade, the main granary of Greater Chechnya and partly of Nagorno-Dagestan; to provide another way there, a road was cut through from the Kura fortification through the Kachkalykovsky ridge to the descent into the Michika valley. Little Chechnya was covered by us during four summer expeditions. The Chechens were driven to despair, they were indignant at Shamil, did not hide their desire to free themselves from his power, and in 1850, among several thousand, they moved to our borders. The attempts of Shamil and his naibs to penetrate our borders were not successful: they ended in the retreat of the highlanders or even their complete defeat (the cases of Major General Sleptsov near Tsoki-Yurt and Datykh, Colonel Maidel and Baklanov on the Michika River and in the land of the Aukhavians, Colonel Kishinsky on Kuteshinsky heights, etc.). In 1851, the policy of ousting the recalcitrant highlanders from the plains and valleys continued, the ring of fortifications narrowed, and the number of fortified points increased. The expedition of Major General Kozlovsky to Greater Chechnya turned this area, up to the Bassa River, into a treeless plain. In January and February 1852, Prince Baryatinsky made a number of desperate expeditions into the depths of Chechnya before Shamil's eyes. Shamil pulled all his forces to Greater Chechnya, where on the banks of the Gonsaul and Michika rivers he entered into a hot and stubborn battle with Prince Baryatinsky and Colonel Baklanov, but, despite the huge superiority in strength, was defeated several times. In 1852, Shamil, in order to warm up the zeal of the Chechens and dazzle them with a brilliant feat, decided to punish the peaceful Chechens who lived near Groznaya for their departure to the Russians; but his plans were open, he was engulfed from all sides, and out of 2,000 people of his militia, many fell near Grozna, while others drowned in Sunzha (September 17, 1852). Shamil's actions in Dagestan over the years consisted in sending out parties that attacked our troops and mountaineers who were submissive to us, but did not have much success. The hopelessness of the struggle was reflected in numerous migrations to our borders and even the betrayal of the naibs, including Hadji Murad.

A big blow for Shamil in 1853 was the seizure by the Russians of the valley of the rivers Michika and its tributary Gonsoli, in which a very numerous and devoted Chechen population lived, feeding not only themselves, but also Dagestan with their bread. He gathered for the defense of this corner about 8 thousand cavalry and about 12 thousand infantry; all the mountains were fortified with innumerable blockages, skillfully arranged and folded, all possible descents and ascents were spoiled to the point of complete unfitness for movement; but the swift actions of Prince Baryatinsky and General Baklanov led to the complete defeat of Shamil. It calmed down until our break with Turkey made all the Muslims of the Caucasus start up. Shamil spread a rumor that the Russians would leave the Caucasus and then he, the imam, remaining a complete master, would severely punish those who now did not go over to his side. On August 10, 1853, he set out from Vedeno, gathered a militia of 15 thousand people on the way, and on August 25 occupied the village of Old Zagatala, but, defeated by Prince Orbeliani, who had only about 2 thousand troops, went into the mountains. Despite this failure, the population of the Caucasus, electrified by the mullahs, was ready to rise against the Russians; but for some reason the imam delayed the whole winter and spring, and only at the end of June 1854 did he descend to Kakhetia. Repulsed from the village of Shildy, he captured the family of General Chavchavadze in Tsinondala and left, robbing several villages. On October 3, 1854, he again appeared in front of the village of Istisu, but the desperate defense of the inhabitants of the village and the tiny garrison of the redoubt delayed him until Baron Nikolai arrived from the Kura fortification; Shamil's troops were utterly defeated and fled to the nearest forests. During 1855 and 1856, Shamil was not very active, and Russia did not have the opportunity to do anything decisive, as it was busy with the Eastern (Crimean) war. With the appointment of Prince A. I. Baryatinsky as commander-in-chief (1856), the Russians began to vigorously move forward, again with the help of clearings and the construction of fortifications. In December 1856, a huge clearing cut through Greater Chechnya in a new location; the Chechens stopped listening to the naibs and moved closer to us.

In March 1857, the Shali fortification was erected on the Basse River, which advanced almost to the foot of the Black Mountains, the last refuge of the recalcitrant Chechens, and opened the shortest route to Dagestan. General Evdokimov penetrated the Argen valley, cut down the forests here, burned the villages, built defensive towers and the Argun fortification and brought the clearing to the top of the Dargin-Duk, from which it was not far from the residence of Shamil, Veden. Many villages submitted to the Russians. In order to keep at least part of Chechnya in his obedience, Shamil cordoned off the villages that remained loyal to him with his Dagestan paths and drove the inhabitants further into the mountains; but the Chechens had already lost faith in him and were only looking for an opportunity to get rid of his yoke. In July 1858, General Evdokimov took the village of Shatoi and occupied the entire Shatoev plain; another detachment entered Dagestan from the Lezgin line. Shamil was cut off from Kakheti; the Russians stood on the tops of the mountains, from where they could at any moment descend to Dagestan along the Avar Kois. The Chechens, weighed down by Shamil's despotism, asked for help from the Russians, drove out the Murids and overthrew the authorities set by Shamil. The fall of Shatoi so impressed Shamil that he, having a mass of troops under arms, hastily withdrew to Vedeno. The agony of Shamil's power began at the end of 1858. Having allowed the Russians to establish themselves without hindrance on the Chanty-Argun, he concentrated large forces along another source of the Argun, the Sharo-Argun, and demanded that the Chechens and Dagestanis be completely armed. His son Kazi-Magoma occupied the gorge of the Bassy River, but was ousted from there in November 1858. Aul Tauzen, heavily fortified, was bypassed by us from the flanks.

Russian troops did not go, as before, through dense forests, where Shamil was the complete master, but slowly moved forward, cutting down forests, building roads, erecting fortifications. To protect Veden, Shamil pulled together about 6-7 thousand people. Russian troops approached Veden on February 8, climbing mountains and descending from them through liquid and sticky mud, making 1/2 a verst an hour, with terrible efforts. Beloved naib Shamil Talgik came over to our side; the inhabitants of the nearest villages refused obedience to the imam, so he entrusted the protection of Veden to the Tavlins, and took the Chechens away from the Russians, into the depths of Ichkeria, from where he issued an order for the inhabitants of Greater Chechnya to move to the mountains. The Chechens did not comply with this order and came to our camp with complaints about Shamil, with expressions of humility and with a request for protection. General Evdokimov fulfilled their desire and sent a detachment of Count Nostitz to the Khulhulau River to protect those moving within our borders. To divert enemy forces from Veden, the commander of the Caspian part of Dagestan, Baron Wrangel, began military operations against Ichkeria, where Shamil was now sitting. Approaching a number of trenches to Veden, General Evdokimov on April 1, 1859 took it by storm and destroyed it to the ground. A number of societies fell away from Shamil and went over to our side. Shamil, however, still did not lose hope and, having appeared in Ichichal, gathered a new militia. Our main detachment freely marched forward, bypassing the enemy fortifications and positions, which, as a result, were left by the enemy without a fight; the villages encountered on the way submitted to us without a fight, too; the inhabitants were ordered to be treated peacefully everywhere, which all the highlanders soon learned about and even more willingly began to fall away from Shamil, who retired to Andalalo and fortified himself on Mount Gunib. On July 22, a detachment of Baron Wrangel appeared on the banks of the Avar Koisu, after which the Avars and other tribes expressed their obedience to the Russians. On July 28, a deputation from Kibit-Magoma came to Baron Wrangel, announcing that he had detained Shamil's father-in-law and teacher, Jemal-ed-Din, and one of the main preachers of Muridism, Aslan. On August 2, Daniel-bek surrendered his residence Irib and the village of Dusrek to Baron Wrangel, and on August 7 he himself appeared to Prince Baryatinsky, was forgiven and returned to his former possessions, where he set about establishing calm and order among the societies that had submitted to the Russians.

A conciliatory mood seized Dagestan to such an extent that in mid-August the commander-in-chief traveled unhindered through the whole of Avaria, accompanied by some Avars and Koisubulins, as far as Gunib. Our troops surrounded Gunib from all sides; Shamil locked himself there with a small detachment (400 people, including the inhabitants of the village). Baron Wrangel, on behalf of the commander-in-chief, suggested that Shamil submit to the Sovereign, who would allow him free travel to Mecca, with the obligation to choose her as his permanent residence; Shamil rejected this offer. On August 25, the Apsheronians climbed the steep slopes of Gunib, slew the Murids desperately defending the rubble and approached the aul itself (8 versts from the place where they climbed the mountain), where other troops had gathered by that time. Shamil was threatened with an immediate assault; he decided to surrender and was taken to the commander-in-chief, who received him kindly and sent him, along with his family, to Russia.

After being received in St. Petersburg by the emperor, Kaluga was assigned to him for residence, where he stayed until 1870, with a short stay at the end of this time in Kyiv; in 1870 he was allowed to live in Mecca, where he died in March 1871. Having united all the societies and tribes of Chechnya and Dagestan under his rule, Shamil was not only an imam, the spiritual head of his followers, but also a political ruler. Based on the teachings of Islam about the salvation of the soul by war with the infidels, trying to unite the disparate peoples of the Eastern Caucasus on the basis of Mohammedanism, Shamil wanted to subordinate them to the clergy, as a generally recognized authority in the affairs of heaven and earth. To achieve this goal, he sought to abolish all authorities, orders and institutions based on age-old customs, on adat; the basis of the life of the highlanders, both private and public, he considered Sharia, that is, that part of the Koran that contains civil and criminal decisions. As a result, power was to pass into the hands of the clergy; the court passed from the hands of elected secular judges to the hands of qadis, interpreters of sharia. Having bound by Islam, as with cement, all the wild and free societies of Dagestan, Shamil gave control into the hands of the spiritual and with their help established a single and unlimited power in these once free countries, and in order to make it easier for them to endure his yoke, he pointed out two great goals, which mountaineers, obeying him, can achieve: the salvation of the soul and the preservation of independence from the Russians. The time of Shamil was called by the highlanders the time of Sharia, his fall - the fall of Sharia, since immediately after that, ancient institutions, ancient elected authorities and the decision of affairs according to custom, i.e. according to adat, revived everywhere. The entire country subordinate to Shamil was divided into districts, each of which was under the control of the naib, who had military-administrative power. For the court in each district there was a mufti who appointed qadis. The naibs were forbidden to solve Sharia affairs under the jurisdiction of the mufti or qadis. At first, every four naibs were subject to a mudir, but Shamil was forced to abandon this establishment in the last decade of his rule, due to constant strife between the mudirs and naibs. The assistants of the naibs were the murids, who, as experienced in courage and devotion to the holy war (ghazavat), were assigned to perform more important tasks.

The number of murids was indefinite, but 120 of them, under the command of a yuzbashi (centurion), constituted the honorary guard of Shamil, were always with him and accompanied him on all trips. Officials were obliged to unquestioning obedience to the imam; for disobedience and misdeeds, they were reprimanded, demoted, arrested and punished with whips, from which the mudirs and naibs were spared. Military service was required to carry all able to bear arms; they were divided into tens and hundreds, which were under the command of the tenth and sot, subordinate in turn to the naibs. In the last decade of his activity, Shamil led regiments of 1000 people, divided into 2 five-hundred, 10 hundred and 100 detachments of 10 people, with respective commanders. Some villages, in the form of atonement, were exempted from military service, to supply sulfur, saltpeter, salt, etc. Shamil's largest army did not exceed 60 thousand people. From 1842 to 1843, Shamil started artillery, partly from cannons abandoned by us or taken from us, partly from those prepared at his own factory in Vedeno, where about 50 guns were cast, of which no more than a quarter turned out to be suitable. Gunpowder was made in Untsukul, Ganiba and Vedeno. The highlanders' teachers in artillery, engineering and combat were often runaway soldiers, whom Shamil caressed and gave gifts. Shamil's state treasury was made up of random and permanent incomes: the first were delivered by robbery, the second consisted of zekat - the collection of a tenth of the income from bread, sheep and money established by Sharia, and kharaj - tax from mountain pastures and from some villages that paid the same tribute to the khans. The exact figure of the imam's income is unknown.

"From Ancient Russia to the Russian Empire". Shishkin Sergey Petrovich, Ufa.

The concept of "Caucasian war", its historical interpretations

The concept of "Caucasian War" was introduced by the pre-revolutionary historian Rostislav Andreevich Fadeev in the book "Sixty Years of the Caucasian War", published in 1860.

Pre-revolutionary and Soviet historians until the 1940s preferred the term "Caucasian wars of the empire"

"Caucasian war" became a common term only in Soviet times.

Historical interpretations of the Caucasian war

In the huge multilingual historiography of the Caucasian War, three main directions stand out, which reflect the positions of the three main political rivals: the Russian Empire, the great powers of the West and the supporters of the Muslim resistance. These scientific theories determine the interpretation of the war in historical science.

Russian imperial tradition

The Russian imperial tradition is represented in the works of pre-revolutionary Russian and some contemporary historians. It originates from the pre-revolutionary (1917) lecture course of General Dmitry Ilyich Romanovsky. The supporters of this trend include the author of the well-known textbook Nikolai Ryazanovsky "History of Russia" and the authors of the English-language "Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History" (under the editorship of JL Viszhinsky). The work of Rostislav Fadeev, mentioned above, can also be attributed to the same tradition.

In these works, we often talk about "pacifying the Caucasus", about Russian "colonization" in the sense of developing territories, focuses on the "predation" of the highlanders, the religiously militant nature of their movement, emphasizes the civilizing and reconciling role of Russia, even taking into account mistakes and " kinks".

In the late 1930s-1940s, a different point of view prevailed. Imam Shamil and his supporters were declared proteges of the exploiters and agents of foreign intelligence services. Shamil's prolonged resistance, according to this version, was allegedly due to the help of Turkey and Britain. From the late 1950s - the first half of the 1980s, the emphasis was on the voluntary entry of all peoples and border regions without exception into the Russian state, the friendship of peoples and the solidarity of workers in all historical eras.

In 1994, Mark Bliev and Vladimir Degoev's book "The Caucasian War" was published, in which the imperial scientific tradition is combined with an orientalist approach. The vast majority of North Caucasian and Russian historians and ethnographers reacted negatively to the hypothesis expressed in the book about the so-called "raid system" - the special role of raids in mountain society, caused by a complex set of economic, political, social and demographic factors.

Western tradition

It is based on the premise of Russia's inherent desire to expand and "enslave" the annexed territories. In Britain of the 19th century (fearing Russia's approach to the "pearl of the British crown" India) and the USA of the 20th century (worried about the approach of the USSR / Russia to the Persian Gulf and the oil regions of the Middle East), the highlanders were considered a "natural barrier" on the way of the Russian Empire to the south. The key terminology of these works is "Russian colonial expansion" and the "North Caucasian shield" or "barrier" that opposes them. The classic work is the work of John Badley, "The Conquest of the Caucasus by Russia", published at the beginning of the last century. At present, adherents of this tradition are grouped in the "Society for Central Asian Studies" and the journal "Central Asian Survey" published by it in London.

Anti-imperialist tradition

Early Soviet historiography of the 1920s - the first half of the 1930s. (the school of Mikhail Pokrovsky) considered Shamil and other leaders of the resistance of the highlanders as leaders of the national liberation movement and spokesmen for the interests of the broad working and exploited masses. The raids of the highlanders on their neighbors were justified by the geographical factor, the lack of resources in conditions of almost impoverished urban life, and the robberies of the abreks (19-20 centuries) were justified by the struggle for liberation from the colonial oppression of tsarism.

During the Cold War, Leslie Blanch emerged from among the Sovietologists who creatively reworked the ideas of early Soviet historiography with his popular work Sabers of Paradise (1960), translated into Russian in 1991. A more academic work, Robert Bauman's Unusual Russian and Soviet Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, speaks of Russian "intervention" in the Caucasus and the "war against the highlanders" in general. Recently, a Russian translation of the work of the Israeli historian Moshe Gammer "Muslim resistance to tsarism. Shamil and the conquest of Chechnya and Dagestan" has appeared. A feature of all these works is the absence of Russian archival sources in them.

periodization

Background of the Caucasian War

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti (1801-1810), as well as the Transcaucasian khanates - Ganja, Sheki, Cuban, Talyshinsky (1805-1813) became part of the Russian Empire.

Treaty of Bucharest (1812), who ended the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812, recognized Western Georgia and the Russian protectorate over Abkhazia as Russia's sphere of influence. In the same year, the transition to Russian citizenship of the Ingush societies, enshrined in the Vladikavkaz Act, was officially confirmed.

By Gulistan Peace Treaty of 1813, which ended the Russian-Persian war, Iran renounced in favor of Russia sovereignty over Dagestan, Kartli-Kakheti, Karabakh, Shirvan, Baku and Derbent khanates.

The southwestern part of the North Caucasus remained in the sphere of influence of the Ottoman Empire. The hard-to-reach mountainous regions of Dagestan and Chechnya, the mountain valleys of Trans-Kuban Circassia remained outside Russian control.

Since the power of Persia and Turkey in these regions was limited, the mere fact of recognizing these regions as a sphere of influence of Russia did not at all mean automatic subordination of the local population to it.

Between the newly acquired lands and Russia lay the lands of de facto independent mountain peoples, predominantly Muslim. The economy of these regions to a certain extent depended on raids on neighboring regions, which, precisely for this reason, could not be stopped, despite the agreements reached with the Russian authorities.

The Russian government, in a hurry to restore order in the North Caucasus as soon as possible and considered it unnecessary to delve deeply into local subtleties, decided to simply cut the Gordian knots of mountain politics with a sword. It can be said that, in addition to well-known reasons, the war was based on an intercivilizational conflict, which was much less pronounced in the more developed Transcaucasia and therefore did not lead to such serious consequences.

Thus, from the point of view of the Russian authorities in the Caucasus at the beginning of the 19th century, there were two main tasks:

• The need to join the North Caucasus to Russia for territorial unification with Transcaucasia.
• The desire to stop the constant raids of the mountain peoples in the territory of Transcaucasia and Russian settlements in the North Caucasus.

It was they who became the main causes of the Caucasian War.

Brief description of the theater of operations

The main centers of war were concentrated in hard-to-reach mountainous and foothill areas in the North-Eastern and North-Western Caucasus. The region where the war was fought can be divided into two main theaters of war.

Firstly, it is the North-Eastern Caucasus, which mainly includes the territory of modern Chechnya and Dagestan. The main opponent of Russia here was the Imamat, as well as various Chechen and Dagestan state and tribal formations. During the hostilities, the highlanders managed to create a powerful centralized state organization and achieve noticeable progress in armament - in particular, the troops of Imam Shamil not only used artillery, but also organized the production of artillery pieces.

Secondly, this is the North-Western Caucasus, which primarily includes the territories located south of the Kuban River and which were part of historical Circassia. These territories were inhabited by the numerous people of the Adygs (Circassians), divided into a significant number of sub-ethnic groups. The level of centralization of military efforts throughout the war here remained extremely low, each tribe fought or put up with the Russians on its own, only occasionally forming fragile alliances with other tribes. Often during the war there were clashes between the Circassian tribes themselves. Economically, Circassia was poorly developed, almost all iron products and weapons were purchased on foreign markets, the main and most valuable export product was slaves captured during raids and sold to Turkey. The level of organization of the armed forces corresponded approximately to European feudalism, the main force of the army was the heavily armed cavalry, consisting of representatives of the tribal nobility.

Periodically, armed clashes between the highlanders and Russian troops took place on the territory of Transcaucasia, Kabarda and Karachay.

The situation in the Caucasus in 1816

At the beginning of the 19th century, the actions of Russian troops in the Caucasus had the character of random expeditions, not connected by a common idea and a definite plan. Often, conquered regions and sworn-in peoples immediately fell away and became enemies again as soon as the Russian troops left the country. This was due, first of all, to the fact that almost all organizational, managerial and military resources were diverted to waging war against Napoleonic France, and then to organizing post-war Europe. By 1816, the situation in Europe had stabilized, and the return of occupying troops from France and European states gave the government the necessary military force to launch a full-scale campaign in the Caucasus.

The situation on the Caucasian line was as follows: the right flank of the line was opposed by the Trans-Kuban Circassians, the center - by the Kabardian Circassians, and against the left flank behind the Sunzha River lived Chechens, who enjoyed a high reputation and authority among the mountain tribes. At the same time, the Circassians were weakened by internal strife, and a plague epidemic raged in Kabarda. The main threat came primarily from the Chechens.

Politics of General Yermolov and the uprising in Chechnya (1817 - 1827)

In May 1816, Emperor Alexander I appointed General Alexei Yermolov as commander of the Separate Georgian (later Caucasian) Corps.

Yermolov believed that it was impossible to establish a lasting peace with the inhabitants of the Caucasus due to their historically established psychology, tribal fragmentation and established relations with the Russians. He developed a consistent and systematic plan of offensive operations, which provided for the creation of a base and the organization of bridgeheads at the first stage, and only then the beginning of phased, but decisive offensive operations.

Yermolov himself characterized the situation in the Caucasus as follows: "The Caucasus is a huge fortress, defended by a half-million garrison. You must either storm it or take possession of the trenches. The assault will cost a lot. So let's lay a siege!" .

At the first stage, Yermolov moved the left flank of the Caucasian Line from the Terek to the Sunzha in order to get closer to Chechnya and Dagestan. In 1818, the Nizhne-Sunzhenskaya line was strengthened, the Nazranovsky (modern Nazran) redoubt in Ingushetia was strengthened, and the Groznaya fortress (modern Grozny) in Chechnya was built. Having strengthened the rear and created a solid operational base, the Russian troops began to move deep into the foothills of the Greater Caucasus Range.

Yermolov's strategy was to systematically move deep into Chechnya and Mountainous Dagestan by surrounding the mountainous regions with a continuous ring of fortifications, cutting clearings in difficult forests, laying roads and destroying recalcitrant auls. The territories liberated from the local population were settled by Cossacks and Russian and Russian-friendly settlers, who formed "layers" between the tribes hostile to Russia. Yermolov responded to the resistance and raids of the highlanders with repressions and punitive expeditions.

In Northern Dagestan, in 1819, the Vnezapnaya fortress was founded (near the modern village of Endirey, Khasavyurt district), and in 1821, the Burnaya fortress (near the village of Tarki). In 1819-1821, the possessions of a number of Dagestan princes were transferred to the vassals of Russia or annexed.

In 1822, the Sharia courts (mekhkeme), which had been operating in Kabarda since 1806, were dissolved. Instead, a Provisional Court for Civil Cases was established in Nalchik under the full control of Russian officials. Together with Kabarda, the Balkars and Karachays, dependent on the Kabardian princes, came under Russian rule. In the interfluve of Sulak and Terek, the lands of the Kumyks were conquered.

In order to destroy the traditional military-political ties between the Muslims of the North Caucasus hostile to Russia, on the orders of Yermolov, Russian fortresses were built at the foot of the mountains on the rivers Malka, Baksanka, Chegem, Nalchik and Terek, which formed the Kabardian line. As a result, the population of Kabarda was locked in a small area and cut off from the Trans-Kuban region, Chechnya and mountain gorges.

Yermolov's policy was to severely punish not only the "robbers", but also those who did not fight them. Yermolov's cruelty towards the recalcitrant highlanders was remembered for a long time. Back in the 1940s, Avar and Chechen residents could tell Russian generals: "You have always ruined our property, burned villages and intercepted our people!"

In 1825 - 1826, the cruel and bloody actions of General Yermolov caused a general uprising of the highlanders of Chechnya under the leadership of Bei-Bulat Taimiev (Taymazov) and Abdul-Kadyr. The rebels were supported by some Dagestan mullahs from among the supporters of the Sharia movement. They called on the highlanders to rise up in jihad. But Bey-Bulat was defeated by the regular army, the uprising was crushed in 1826.

In 1827, General Alexei Yermolov was recalled by Nicholas I and dismissed due to suspicion of having links with the Decembrists.

In 1817 - 1827, there were no active hostilities in the North-Western Caucasus, although numerous raids by Circassian detachments and punitive expeditions of Russian troops took place. The main goal of the Russian command in this region was to isolate the local population from the Muslim environment hostile to Russia in the Ottoman Empire.

The Caucasian line along the Kuban and the Terek was shifted deep into the Adyghe territory and by the beginning of the 1830s went to the Labe River. The Adygs resisted with the help of the Turks. In October 1821, the Circassians invaded the lands of the Black Sea troops, but were driven back.

In 1823-1824 a number of punitive expeditions were carried out against the Circassians.

In 1824, the uprising of the Abkhaz was suppressed, forced to recognize the authority of Prince Mikhail Shervashidze.

In the second half of the 1820s, the coasts of the Kuban again began to be subjected to raids by the Shapsugs and Abadzekhs.

Formation of the Imamat of Nagorno-Dagestan and Chechnya (1828 - 1840)

Operations in the Northeast Caucasus

In the 1820s, the muridism movement arose in Dagestan (murid - in Sufism: a student, the first stage of initiation and spiritual self-improvement. It can mean a Sufi in general and even just an ordinary Muslim). Its main preachers - Mulla-Mohammed, then Kazi-Mulla - propagated in Dagestan and Chechnya a holy war against infidels, primarily Russians. The rise and growth of this movement was largely due to the brutal actions of Alexei Yermolov, as a reaction to the harsh and often indiscriminate repression of the Russian authorities.

In March 1827, Adjutant General Ivan Paskevich (1827-1831) was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Corps. The general Russian strategy in the Caucasus was revised, the Russian command abandoned the systematic advance with the consolidation of the occupied territories and returned mainly to the tactics of individual punitive expeditions.

At first, this was due to the wars with Iran (1826-1828) and Turkey (1828-1829). These wars had significant consequences for the Russian Empire, establishing and expanding the Russian presence in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia.

In 1828 or 1829, the communities of a number of Avar villages elected as their imam an Avar from the village of Gimry Gazi-Muhammed (Gazi-Magomed, Kazi-Mulla, Mulla-Magomed), a student of the Naqshbandi sheikhs Muhammad Yaragsky and Jamaluddin Kazikumukh, who were influential in the North-Eastern Caucasus. This event is usually considered as the beginning of the formation of a single imamate of Nagorno-Dagestan and Chechnya, which became the main focus of resistance to Russian colonization.

Imam Gazi-Mohammed developed an active activity, calling for jihad against the Russians. From the communities that joined him, he took an oath to follow the Sharia, abandon local adats and break off relations with the Russians. During the reign of this imam (1828-1832), he destroyed 30 influential beks, since the first imam saw them as accomplices of Russians and hypocritical enemies of Islam (munafiks).

In the 1830s, Russian positions in Dagestan were fortified by the Lezgin cordon line, and in 1832 the Temir-Khan-Shura fortress (modern Buynaksk) was built.

Peasant uprisings took place from time to time in the Central Ciscaucasia. In the summer of 1830, as a result of the punitive expedition of General Abkhazov against the Ingush and Tagaurians, Ossetia was included in the administrative system of the empire. Since 1831, Russian military administration was finally established in Ossetia.

In the winter of 1830, the Imamat launched an active war under the banner of defending the faith. Ghazi-Mohammed's tactic was to organize swift surprise raids. In 1830, he captured a number of Avar and Kumyk villages subject to the Avar Khanate and Tarkov Shamkhalate. Untsukul and Gumbet voluntarily joined the imamate, and the Andians were subjugated. Gazi-Mohammed tried to capture the village of Khunzakh (1830), the capital of the Avar khans who accepted Russian citizenship, but was repulsed.

In 1831, Gazi-Muhammed sacked Kizlyar, and the next year besieged Derbent.

In March 1832, the imam approached Vladikavkaz and laid siege to Nazran, but was defeated by a regular army.

In 1831, Adjutant General Baron Grigory Rozen was appointed head of the Caucasian Corps. He defeated the troops of Gazi-Mohammed, and on October 29, 1832, he stormed the village of Gimry, the capital of the imam. Gazi-Mohammed died in battle.

In April 1831, Count Ivan Paskevich-Erivansky was recalled to put down the uprising in Poland. In his place were temporarily appointed in Transcaucasia - General Nikita Pankratiev, on the Caucasian line - General Alexei Velyaminov.

Gamzat-bek was elected the new imam in 1833. He stormed the capital of the Avar khans Khunzakh, destroyed almost the entire family of the Avar khans and was killed for this in 1834 by right of blood feud.

Shamil became the third imam. He pursued the same reform policy as his predecessors, but on a regional scale. It was under him that the state structure of the imamate was completed. The Imam concentrated in his hands not only religious, but also military, executive, legislative and judicial powers. Shamil continued the massacre of the feudal rulers of Dagestan, but at the same time tried to ensure the neutrality of the Russians.

Russian troops were actively campaigning against the Imamate, in 1837 and 1839 they destroyed Shamil's residence on Mount Akhulgo, and in the latter case, the victory seemed so complete that the Russian command hastened to report to St. Petersburg about the complete appeasement of Dagestan. Shamil with a detachment of seven comrades-in-arms retreated to Chechnya.

Operations in the Northwest Caucasus

On January 11, 1827, a delegation of Balkarian princes petitioned General Georgy Emmanuel to accept Balkaria as Russian citizenship, and in 1828 the Karachaev region was annexed.

According to the Peace of Adrianople (1829), which ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829, Russia recognized a large part of the eastern coast of the Black Sea, including the cities of Anapa, Sudzhuk-Kale (in the area of ​​modern Novorossiysk), Sukhum, as the sphere of interests of Russia.

In 1830, the new "proconsul of the Caucasus" Ivan Paskevich developed a plan for the development of this region, practically unknown to Russians, by creating an overland communication along the Black Sea coast. But the dependence of the Circassian tribes inhabiting this territory on Turkey was largely nominal, and the fact that Turkey recognized the North-Western Caucasus as a Russian sphere of influence did not oblige the Circassians to anything. The Russian invasion of the territory of the Circassians was perceived by the latter as an attack on their independence and traditional foundations, and met with resistance.

In the summer of 1834, General Velyaminov made an expedition to the Trans-Kuban region, where a cordon line was organized to Gelendzhik, and the Abinskoye and Nikolaevskoye fortifications were erected.

In the mid-1830s, the Black Sea Fleet of Russia began to blockade the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. In 1837 - 1839, the Black Sea coastline was created - 17 forts were created under the cover of the Black Sea Fleet for 500 kilometers from the mouth of the Kuban to Abkhazia. These measures practically paralyzed coastal trade with Turkey, which immediately put the Circassians in an extremely difficult position.

At the beginning of 1840, the Circassians went on the offensive, attacking the Black Sea line of fortresses. On February 7, 1840, Fort Lazarev (Lazarevskoye) fell, on February 29, the Velyaminovskoye fortification was taken, on March 23, after a fierce battle, the Circassians broke into the Mikhailovskoye fortification, which was blown up by a soldier Arkhip Osipov due to his inevitable fall. On April 1, the Circassians captured the Nikolaevsky fort, but their actions against the Navaginsky fort and the Abinsky fortifications were repelled. Coastal fortifications were restored by November 1840.

The very fact of the destruction of the coastline showed how powerful the Circassians of the Trans-Kuban region had a powerful resistance potential.

The heyday of the Imamat before the start of the Crimean War (1840 - 1853)

Operations in the Northeast Caucasus

In the early 1840s, the Russian administration made an attempt to disarm the Chechens. Regulations for the surrender of weapons by the population were introduced, and hostages were taken to ensure their implementation. These measures caused a general uprising at the end of February 1840 under the leadership of Shoip-mulla Tsentoroyevsky, Dzhavatkhan Dargoevsky, Tashu-khadzhi Sayasanovsky and Isa Gendergenoevsky, which, upon arrival in Chechnya, was headed by Shamil.

On March 7, 1840, Shamil was proclaimed Imam of Chechnya, and Dargo became the capital of the Imamat. By the autumn of 1840, Shamil controlled the whole of Chechnya.

In 1841 riots broke out in Avaria, instigated by Hadji Murad. The Chechens raided the Georgian Military Highway, and Shamil himself attacked a Russian detachment located near Nazran, but was unsuccessful. In May, Russian troops attacked and took the position of the imam near the village of Chirkey and occupied the village.

In May 1842, Russian troops, taking advantage of the fact that the main forces of Shamil set out on a campaign in Dagestan, launched an attack on the capital of the Imamat Dargo, but were defeated during the Ichkerin battle with the Chechens under the command of Shoip-mullah and were driven back with heavy losses. Impressed by this catastrophe, Emperor Nicholas I signed a decree banning all expeditions for 1843 and ordering to be limited to defense.

The troops of the Imamat seized the initiative. On August 31, 1843, Imam Shamil captured the fort near the village of Untsukul and defeated the detachment that was going to the rescue of the besieged. In the following days, several more fortifications fell, and on September 11, Gotsatl was taken and communication with Temir-khan-Shura was interrupted. On November 8, Shamil took the Gergebil fortification. Detachments of mountaineers practically interrupted communication with Derbent, Kizlyar and the left flank of the line.
In mid-April 1844, the Dagestan detachments of Shamil under the command of Hadji Murad and Naib Kibit-Magoma launched an attack on Kumykh, but were defeated by Prince Argutinsky. Russian troops captured the Darginsky district in Dagestan and set about building the advanced Chechen line.

At the end of 1844, a new commander-in-chief, Count Mikhail Vorontsov, was appointed to the Caucasus, who, unlike his predecessors, possessed not only military, but also civil power in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. Under Vorontsov, hostilities in the mountainous areas controlled by the imamate intensified.

In May 1845, the Russian army invaded the Imamat in several large detachments. Without encountering serious resistance, the troops passed the mountainous Dagestan and in June invaded Andia and attacked the village of Dargo. From July 8 to July 20, the Dargin battle lasted. During the battle, Russian troops suffered heavy losses. Although Dargo was taken, but, in essence, the victory was Pyrrhic. Due to the losses suffered, the Russian troops were forced to curtail active operations, so the battle at Dargo can be considered a strategic victory for the Imamate.

Since 1846, several military fortifications and Cossack villages have appeared on the left flank of the Caucasian Line. In 1847, the regular army besieged the Avar village of Gergebil, but retreated due to a cholera epidemic. This important stronghold of the imamate was taken in July 1848 by Adjutant General Prince Moses Argutinsky. Despite such a loss, Shamil's detachments resumed their operations in the south of the Lezgin line and in 1848 attacked the Russian fortifications in the Lezgi village of Akhty.

In the 1840s and 1850s, systematic deforestation continued in Chechnya, accompanied by periodic clashes.

In 1852, the new head of the Left flank, Adjutant General Prince Alexander Baryatinsky, drove the militant highlanders out of a number of strategically important villages in Chechnya.

Operations in the Northwest Caucasus

The offensive of the Russians and Cossacks against the Circassians began in 1841 with the creation of the Labinsk Line proposed by General Grigory von Zass. The colonization of the new line began in 1841 and ended in 1860. During these twenty years, 32 villages were founded. They were settled mainly by the Cossacks of the Caucasian linear army and a certain number of non-residents.

In the 1840s - the first half of the 1850s, Imam Shamil tried to establish contacts with the Muslim rebels in the Northwestern Caucasus. In the spring of 1846, Shamil made a rush to Western Circassia. 9 thousand soldiers crossed to the left bank of the Terek and settled in the villages of the Kabardian ruler Mukhammed-Mirza Anzorov. The imam counted on the support of the Western Circassians led by Suleiman Effendi. But neither the Circassians nor the Kabardians joined forces with Shamil's troops. The Imam was forced to retreat to Chechnya. On the Black Sea coastline in the summer and autumn of 1845, the Circassians tried to capture the Raevsky and Golovinsky forts, but were repulsed.

At the end of 1848, another attempt was made to unite the efforts of the Imamat and the Circassians - the naib of Shamil appeared in Circassia - Mohammed-Amin. He managed to create a unified system of administrative management in Abadzekhia. The territory of the Abadzekh societies was divided into 4 districts (mehkeme), from the taxes from which detachments of riders of Shamil's regular army (murtaziks) were kept.

In 1849, the Russians launched an offensive to the Belaya River in order to move the front line there and take away the fertile lands between this river and Laba from the Abadzekhs, as well as to counter Muhammad Amin.

From the beginning of 1850 until May 1851, the Bzhedugs, Shapsugs, Natukhais, Ubykhs and several smaller societies submitted to Mukhamed-Amin. Three more mekhkemes were created - two in Natukhai and one in Shapsugia. The naib ruled over a vast territory between the Kuban, Laba and the Black Sea.

Crimean War and the end of the Caucasian War in the North-Eastern Caucasus (1853 - 1859)

Crimean War (1853 - 1856)

In 1853, rumors of an impending war with Turkey caused a rise in the resistance of the highlanders, who counted on the arrival of Turkish troops in Georgia and Kabarda and on the weakening of Russian troops by transferring part of the units to the Balkans. However, these calculations did not come true - the morale of the mountain population dropped noticeably as a result of the long-term war, and the actions of the Turkish troops in the Transcaucasus were unsuccessful and the mountaineers failed to establish interaction with them.

The Russian command chose a purely defensive strategy, but the clearing of forests and the destruction of food supplies from the mountaineers continued, albeit on a more limited scale.

In 1854, the commander of the Turkish Anatolian army entered into relations with Shamil, inviting him to move to connect with him from Dagestan. Shamil invaded Kakhetia, but, having learned about the approach of Russian troops, he retreated to Dagestan. The Turks were defeated and driven back from the Caucasus.

On the Black Sea coast, the positions of the Russian command were seriously weakened due to the entry of the fleets of England and France into the Black Sea and the loss of dominance at sea by the Russian fleet. It was impossible to defend the forts of the coastline without the support of the fleet, in connection with which the fortifications between Anapa, Novorossiysk and the mouths of the Kuban were destroyed, the garrisons of the Black Sea coastline were withdrawn to the Crimea. During the war, Circassian trade with Turkey was temporarily restored, allowing them to continue their resistance.

But the abandonment of the Black Sea fortifications did not have more serious consequences, and the allied command was practically not active in the Caucasus, limiting itself to the supply of weapons and military materials to the Circassians at war with Russia, as well as the transfer of volunteers. The landing of the Turks in Abkhazia, despite its support from the Abkhaz prince Shervashidze, did not have a serious impact on the course of hostilities.

The turning point in the course of hostilities came after the accession to the throne of Emperor Alexander II (1855-1881) and the end of the Crimean War. In 1856, Prince Baryatinsky was appointed commander of the Caucasian corps, and the corps itself was reinforced by troops returning from Anatolia.

The Paris Peace Treaty (March 1856) recognized Russia's rights to all conquests in the Caucasus. The only point limiting Russian rule in the region was the prohibition to maintain a military fleet on the Black Sea and build coastal fortifications there.

End of the Caucasian War in the Northeast Caucasus

Already at the end of the 1840s, the fatigue of the mountain peoples from the many years of war began to manifest itself, the fact that the mountain population no longer believed in the achievability of victory. Social tension grew in the Imamate - many highlanders saw that Shamil's "state of justice" was based on repressions, and the naibs were gradually turning into a new nobility, interested only in personal enrichment and glory. Dissatisfaction with the rigid centralization of power in the Imamat grew - Chechen societies, accustomed to freedom, did not want to put up with a rigid hierarchy and unquestioning submission to Shamil's power. After the end of the Crimean War, the activity of the operations of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya began to decline.

Prince Alexander Baryatinsky took advantage of these sentiments. He abandoned punitive expeditions to the mountains and continued the systematic work of building fortresses, cutting through clearings and resettling Cossacks to develop the territories taken under control. In order to win over the highlanders, including the "new nobility" of the Imamate, Baryatinsky received significant sums from his personal friend, Emperor Alexander II. Peace, order, the preservation of the customs and religion of the highlanders in the territory subject to Baryatinsky allowed the highlanders to make comparisons not in favor of Shamil.

In 1856-1857, a detachment of General Nikolai Evdokimov drove Shamil out of Chechnya. In April 1859, the imam's new residence, the village of Vedeno, was stormed.

On September 6, 1859, Shamil surrendered to Prince Baryatinsky and was exiled to Kaluga. He died in 1871 during the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca and is buried in Medina (Saudi Arabia). In the Northeast Caucasus, the war is over.

Operations in the Northwest Caucasus

Russian troops launched a massive concentric offensive from the east, from the Maykop fortification founded in 1857, and from the north, from Novorossiysk. Military operations were carried out very cruelly: the auls that resisted were destroyed, the population was expelled or moved to the plains.

Former opponents of Russia in the Crimean War - primarily Turkey and partly Great Britain - continued to maintain ties with the Circassians, promising them military and diplomatic assistance. In February 1857, 374 foreign volunteers landed in Circassia, mostly Poles, under the leadership of the Pole Teofil Lapinsky.

However, the defense capability of the Circassians was weakened by traditional tribal conflicts, as well as disagreements between the two main leaders of the resistance - the Shamilevsky naib Muhammad-Amin and the Circassian leader Zan Sefer-bey.

The end of the war in the Northwestern Caucasus (1859 - 1864)

In the North-Western, hostilities continued until May 1864. At the final stage, hostilities were distinguished by particular cruelty. The regular army was opposed by scattered detachments of the Adygs, who fought in the hard-to-reach mountainous regions of the North-Western Caucasus. Circassian auls were massively burned, their inhabitants were exterminated or expelled abroad (primarily to Turkey), partly moved to the plain. On the way, they died by the thousands from hunger and disease.

In November 1859, Imam Mohammed-Amin admitted his defeat and swore allegiance to Russia. In December of the same year, Sefer Bey suddenly died, and by the beginning of 1860, a detachment of European volunteers had left Circassia.

In 1860, the Natukhai resistance ceased. The struggle for independence was continued by the Abadzekhs, Shapsugs and Ubykhs.

In June 1861, representatives of these peoples gathered for a general meeting in the valley of the Sashe River (in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bmodern Sochi). They established the supreme body of power - the Mejlis of Circassia. The government of Circassia tried to achieve recognition of its independence and negotiate with the Russian command on the conditions for ending the war. For help and diplomatic recognition, the Majlis turned to Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire. But it was already too late, with the prevailing balance of power, the outcome of the war did not raise any doubts and no help was received from foreign powers.

In 1862, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, the younger brother of Alexander II, replaced Prince Baryatinsky as commander of the Caucasian army.

Until 1864, the highlanders slowly retreated further and further southwest: from the plains to the foothills, from the foothills to the mountains, from the mountains to the Black Sea coast.

The Russian military command, using the "scorched earth" strategy, hoped to generally clear the entire Black Sea coast of recalcitrant Circassians, either exterminating them or driving them out of the region. The emigration of the Circassians was accompanied by the mass death of the exiles from hunger, cold and disease. Many historians and public figures interpret the events of the last stage of the Caucasian War as the genocide of the Circassians.

On May 21, 1864, in the town of Kbaada (modern Krasnaya Polyana) in the upper reaches of the Mzymta River, the end of the Caucasian War and the establishment of Russian rule in the Western Caucasus were celebrated with a solemn prayer service and a parade of troops.

Consequences of the Caucasian War

In 1864, the Caucasian War was formally declared over, but separate pockets of resistance to the Russian authorities remained until 1884.

For the period from 1801 to 1864, the total losses of the Russian army in the Caucasus amounted to:

• 804 officers and 24,143 lower ranks killed,
• 3,154 officers and 61,971 lower ranks wounded,
• 92 officers and 5915 lower ranks captured.

At the same time, servicemen who died from wounds or died in captivity are not included in the number of irretrievable losses. In addition, the number of deaths from diseases in places with an unfavorable climate for Europeans is three times higher than the number of deaths on the battlefield. It is also necessary to take into account that civilians also suffered losses, and they can reach several thousand killed and wounded.

According to modern estimates, during the Caucasian wars, the irretrievable losses of the military and civilian population of the Russian Empire, incurred during hostilities, as a result of illness and death in captivity, amount to at least 77 thousand people.

At the same time, from 1801 to 1830, the combat losses of the Russian army in the Caucasus did not exceed several hundred people a year.

Data on the losses of the highlanders are purely estimated. Thus, estimates of the population of the Circassians at the beginning of the 19th century range from 307,478 people (K.F.Stal) to 1,700,000 people (I.F. Paskevich) and even 2,375,487 (G.Yu. Klaprot). The total number of Circassians who remained in the Kuban region after the war is about 60 thousand people, the total number of Muhajirs - immigrants to Turkey, the Balkans and Syria - is estimated at 500 - 600 thousand people. But, in addition to purely military losses and the death of the civilian population during the war years, the devastating plague epidemics at the beginning of the 19th century, as well as losses during the resettlement, influenced the population decline.

Russia, at the cost of significant bloodshed, was able to suppress the armed resistance of the Caucasian peoples and annex their territories. As a result of the war, many thousands of local people who did not accept Russian power were forced to leave their homes and move to Turkey and the Middle East.

As a result of the Caucasian War, the ethnic composition of the population was almost completely changed in the Northwestern Caucasus. Most of the Circassians were forced to settle in more than 40 countries of the world; according to various estimates, from 5 to 10% of the pre-war population remained in their homeland. To a large extent, although not so catastrophically, the ethnographic map of the North-Eastern Caucasus has changed, where ethnic Russians settled large areas cleared of the local population.

Huge mutual resentment and hatred gave rise to inter-ethnic tension, which then resulted in inter-ethnic conflicts during the Civil War, which turned into deportations of the 1940s, from which the roots of modern armed conflicts largely grow.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the Caucasian War was used by radical Islamists as an ideological argument in their fight against Russia.

XXI century: echoes of the Caucasian war

The question of the genocide of the Adygs

In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, in connection with the intensification of the search for national identity, the question arose of the legal qualification of the events of the Caucasian War.

On February 7, 1992, the Supreme Council of the Kabardino-Balkarian SSR adopted a resolution "On the condemnation of the genocide of the Circassians (Circassians) during the years of the Russian-Caucasian war." In 1994, the Parliament of the KBR addressed the State Duma of the Russian Federation with the issue of recognizing the genocide of the Circassians. In 1996, the State Council - Khase of the Republic of Adygea and the President of the Republic of Adygea addressed a similar issue. Representatives of Circassian public organizations have repeatedly applied for recognition of the genocide of the Circassians by Russia.

On May 20, 2011, the Georgian Parliament adopted a resolution recognizing the genocide of the Circassians by the Russian Empire during the Caucasian War.

There is also an opposite trend. Thus, the Charter of the Krasnodar Territory says: "The Krasnodar Territory is the historical territory of the formation of the Kuban Cossacks, the original place of residence of the Russian people, who make up the majority of the population of the region". Thus, the fact that before the Caucasian War the main population of the territory of the region was the Circassian peoples is completely ignored.

Olympics - 2014 in Sochi

An additional aggravation of the Circassian issue was associated with the holding of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.

Details about the connection of the Olympics with the Caucasian War, the position of the Circassian society and official bodies are set out in the reference prepared by the "Caucasian Knot" "The Circassian question in Sochi: the capital of the Olympics or the land of genocide?"

Monuments to the heroes of the Caucasian War

An ambiguous assessment is caused by the installation of monuments to various military and political figures of the times of the Caucasian War.

In 2003, in the city of Armavir, Krasnodar Territory, a monument was unveiled to General Zass, who in the Adyghe space is commonly called "the collector of Circassian heads." Decembrist Nikolai Lorer wrote about Zass: "In support of the idea of ​​fear preached by Zass, Circassian heads constantly stuck out on peaks on the mound at the Strong Trench under Zass, and their beards developed in the wind". The installation of the monument caused a negative reaction of the Circassian society.

In October 2008, a monument to General Yermolov was erected in Mineralnye Vody of the Stavropol Territory. He caused a mixed reaction among representatives of various nationalities of the Stavropol Territory and the entire North Caucasus. On October 22, 2011, unknown people desecrated the monument.

In January 2014, the mayor's office of Vladikavkaz announced plans to restore a pre-existing monument to Russian soldier Arkhip Osipov. A number of Circassian activists spoke out categorically against this intention, calling it militaristic propaganda, and the monument itself - a symbol of empire and colonialism.

Notes

The "Caucasian War" is the longest military conflict involving the Russian Empire, which dragged on for almost 100 years and was accompanied by heavy casualties from both the Russian and Caucasian peoples. The pacification of the Caucasus did not happen even after the parade of Russian troops in Krasnaya Polyana on May 21, 1864 officially marked the end of the subjugation of the Circassian tribes of the Western Caucasus and the end of the Caucasian war. The armed conflict that lasted until the end of the 19th century gave rise to many problems and conflicts, the echoes of which are still heard at the beginning of the 21st century.

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The Caucasian war became a pretext for many accusations against the Russian Empire. But, sorry, but how did it start? Why? Most of us today sincerely believe that with the onset of Russian troops in the Caucasus. This is not true.

According to contemporaries, to whom those events seemed incomparably closer than to us, "the Caucasian war grew out of the raiding system."

It is difficult to say when the raiding system was formed, at least not later than the 16th-17th centuries. Russian officers and generals, even in war conditions, were ready to treat the highlanders sympathetically. They quite rightly considered the raiding system of “children of poverty”, but at the same time (and also rightly) a manifestation of the savagery and lack of culture of the highlanders. For a long time, our statesmen sincerely believed that it was only necessary to "arrange" the life of the mountaineers, make it "secured from hardships", stable, and the raids would end by themselves.

To some extent they were right, these benevolent Russian people. At that time, rapid population growth occurred even in the poorest valleys of the North Caucasus. Population growth sooner or later led to the fact that food began to be scarce. Theoretically, it was possible to move on to some more intensive farming technologies ... How much this theory could turn into reality is the second question.

In reality, the highlanders could settle in other territories (preferably with a similar climate and living conditions); but there were already Russians on the plains. Gradually, the highlanders themselves left the zones of Russian settlement, "stretched" to the mountains. There were more and more people, less and less land.

Previously, it would have been possible to conquer already inhabited lands in order to exploit their tributaries or subjects. But the Russians also prevented this.

Still, of course, the highlanders could make the surrounding population smaller ... The raids did not fully solve this problem, but they solved it. Even with the Russians. An excellent illustration is a reproduction of an old painting by one artist that somehow caught my eye in an album, it seems, under the title “Circassian Goods”. In this painting, painted in the second half of the 18th century, the Circassians offer rich Arabs their goods - stolen Slavic girls.

And since some part of young men always died in raids, the raiding system helped at the same time regulate the size of its own population; after all, it did not grow so fast, and in some periods it could shrink, and the rest even had enough food.

The raiding system has evolved over the centuries as a reaction to the problems of mountain society. But, having taken shape, it, in turn, formed a completely specific type of society, a certain human character.

The need to participate in the eternal war of all against all has shaped the type of people who are aggressive, extremely cruel, indifferent both to their own suffering and to the suffering of others. For centuries and generations, readiness for military action, for combat at any moment, was encouraged. Militancy at the level of the individual against a true or contrived "offender", at the level of the family against other families, as part of a detachment of one's clan or tribe against other clans and tribes - this is the type of behavior, the nature of the mountain peoples.

The raid was not only a profitable economic event, but also an important social institution, a form of preparation for life and a test of the younger generation. Only by taking part in the raid, the young man, both in his own eyes and among his fellow tribesmen, turned from a boy into a member of the community of adult men, the master of the house.

In all ages and among all peoples, the duty of an adult man was to feed his family. In the raiding system, the ability to fight, raid foreign land and return, rob a defeated enemy, kidnap and sell slaves were the most valuable qualities of the owner, no less than in the society of farmers was the ability to be a zealous rural owner, and in modern society - the ability to fulfill qualified work.

So the raid turned out to be the most important thing not only from an economic, but also a moral point of view. It was the cornerstone for any moral and ethical assessments. Like the Russians - agricultural work, construction or "state service."

In 1804, Chechens for the first time raided Russian settlers in the Kuban. The Russians fired back. They lined up in a square, old men, women, children inside, and left the village. Bursting into the village, the Chechens found pots and pans with freshly cooked cabbage soup in the stoves or on the tables. And the first thing they did was eat these cabbage soup. The mountains. Hunger.

Again, the Russians were sincerely convinced for a long time: the highlanders could be persuaded not to raid! After all, the advantages of a peaceful life are obvious. Only, probably, the highlanders simply did not know about it yet. And Nicholas I himself, and very many educated Russian people firmly believed: it is worth telling the savages intelligibly about civilization, and they will take the side of progress.

The civilizing pathos brought to the mountains the most educated man, the head of the Black Sea line, General Anrep, who sincerely intended to pacify the highlanders with the power of his eloquence.

“With him was an interpreter and about ten peaceful highlanders, escorts. They drove through the enemy territory for a dozen or two versts. One Lezghin on foot, behind a wattle fence, shot at Anrep almost point-blank. The bullet pierced the frock coat, pantaloons and linen, but did not even make a shell shock. The escorts seized the Lezghin, who, of course, expected to die; but Anrep, having forced him to make sure that he was unharmed, ordered him to be released. The news of this spread throughout the neighborhood. Some old man, probably an important person among the natives, rode up to him and entered into a conversation to find out what he wanted? “I want to make you people so that you believe in God and do not live like wolves!” - “Well, do you want to make us Christians?” - “No, stay the Magomed faith, but not in name, but fulfill the teachings of your faith” . After a rather lengthy conversation, the highlander got up from his cloak and said very calmly: “Well, General, you are crazy, it is useless to talk to you.”

I guess that it was this conviction that saved Anrep and all his companions from certain death: the highlanders, like all savages, have a religious respect for madmen. They returned safely, although of course without any success. An attempt to eloquently convince the highlanders not to run, in general, says one thing: the Russians simply had no other choice but to war.

The Russian army could not fail to respond to the raids of the highlanders, because never a single state could and cannot allow its subjects to be robbed and turned into slaves on their own territory with impunity.

At first, Russia was also unable to conquer the lands of the mountaineers, to occupy the gorges of the Caucasus with its troops. In reality, the Russian army could only try to intercept during the raid the “evil Chechen crawling ashore” or carry out retaliation operations - to respond with a raid for a raid, destroying the dwellings and crops of the highlanders, dooming them to starvation.

Thus began the Caucasian War, one of the bloodiest, longest and most difficult wars that Russia has ever waged in its long-suffering history. During this war, 70 thousand Russian soldiers will die, about the same number of Georgian militias and several hundred thousand highlanders of different tribes. Colossal material resources and unimaginable efforts on both sides will be expended.

Gordin Ya.A. Caucasus: earth and blood. SPb., Zvezda, 1999.