Caucasian War (1817-1864) - military actions of the Russian Imperial Army associated with the annexation of the mountainous regions of the North Caucasus to Russia, confrontation with the North Caucasus Imamate.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Georgian Kartli-Kakheti kingdom (1801-1810), as well as some, mainly Azerbaijani, Transcaucasian khanates (1805-1813), became part of the Russian Empire. However, between the acquired lands and Russia lay the lands of those who swore allegiance to Russia, but were de facto independent mountain peoples, predominantly professing Islam. The fight against the raiding system of the mountaineers became one of the main goals of Russian policy in the Caucasus. Many mountain peoples of the northern slopes of the Main Caucasus range showed fierce resistance to the growing influence of imperial power. The most fierce military actions took place in the period 1817-1864. The main areas of military operations are the Northwestern (Circassia, mountain societies of Abkhazia) and Northeastern (Dagestan, Chechnya) Caucasus. Periodically, armed clashes between the highlanders and Russian troops took place in the territory of Transcaucasia and Kabarda.

After the pacification of Greater Kabarda (1825), the main opponents of the Russian troops were the Circassians of the Black Sea coast and the Kuban region, and in the east - the highlanders, united in a military-theocratic Islamic state - the Imamate of Chechnya and Dagestan, headed by Shamil. At this stage, the Caucasian War became intertwined with Russia's war against Persia. Military operations against the mountaineers were carried out by significant forces and were very fierce.

From the mid-1830s. The conflict escalated due to the emergence in Chechnya and Dagestan of a religious and political movement under the flag of Gazavat, which received moral and military support from the Ottoman Empire, and during the Crimean War - from Great Britain. The resistance of the highlanders of Chechnya and Dagestan was broken only in 1859, when Imam Shamil was captured. The war with the Adyghe tribes of the Western Caucasus continued until 1864, and ended with the destruction and expulsion of most of the Adygs and Abazas to the Ottoman Empire, and the resettlement of the remaining small number of them to the flat lands of the Kuban region. The last large-scale military operations against the Circassians were carried out in October-November 1865.

Name

Concept "Caucasian War" introduced by the Russian military historian and publicist, a contemporary of the military operations R. A. Fadeev (1824-1883) in the book “Sixty Years of the Caucasian War” published in 1860. The book was written on behalf of the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, Prince A.I. Baryatinsky. However, pre-revolutionary and Soviet historians up until the 1940s preferred the term "Caucasian Wars of the Empire".

In the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the article about the war was called “The Caucasian War of 1817-64.”

After the collapse of the USSR and the formation of the Russian Federation, separatist tendencies intensified in the autonomous regions of Russia. This was reflected in the attitude towards the events in the North Caucasus (and, in particular, the Caucasian War), and in their assessment.

In the work “The Caucasian War: Lessons of History and Modernity,” presented in May 1994 at a scientific conference in Krasnodar, historian Valery Ratushnyak talks about “ Russian-Caucasian war, which lasted a century and a half."

In the book “Unconquered Chechnya,” published in 1997 after the First Chechen War, public and political figure Lema Usmanov called the war of 1817-1864 “ First Russian-Caucasian War" Political scientist Viktor Chernous noted that the Caucasian War was not only the longest in the history of Russia, but also the most controversial, to the point of its denial or assertion of several Caucasian wars.

Ermolovsky period (1816-1827)

In the summer of 1816, Lieutenant General Alexey Ermolov, who had won respect in the wars with Napoleon, was appointed commander of the Separate Georgian Corps, manager of the civil sector in the Caucasus and Astrakhan province. In addition, he was appointed ambassador extraordinary to Persia.

In 1816, Ermolov arrived in the Caucasus province. In 1817, he traveled to Persia for six months to the court of Shah Feth Ali and concluded a Russian-Persian treaty.

On the Caucasian line, the state of affairs was as follows: the right flank of the line was threatened by the Trans-Kuban Circassians, the center by the Kabardians (Circassians of Kabarda), and against the left flank across the Sunzha River lived the Chechens, who enjoyed a high reputation and authority among the mountain tribes. At the same time, the Circassians were weakened by internal strife, the Kabardians were decimated by the plague - the danger threatened primarily from the Chechens.

Having familiarized himself with the situation on the Caucasian line, Ermolov outlined a plan of action, which he then adhered to unswervingly. Among the components of Ermolov's plan were cutting clearings in impenetrable forests, building roads and erecting fortifications. In addition, he believed that not a single attack by the mountaineers could be left unpunished.

Ermolov moved the left flank of the Caucasian line from the Terek to the Sunzha, where he strengthened the Nazran redoubt and laid out the fortification of Pregradny Stan in its middle reaches in October 1817. In 1818, the Grozny fortress was founded in the lower reaches of the Sunzha. In 1819, the Vnezapnaya fortress was built. An attempt to attack it by the Avar Khan ended in complete failure.

In December 1819, Ermolov made a trip to the Dagestan village of Akusha. After a short battle, the Akushin militia was defeated, and the population of the free Akushin society was sworn to allegiance to the Russian Emperor.

In Dagestan, the highlanders who threatened the Shamkhalate annexed to Tarkov’s empire were pacified.

In 1820, the Black Sea Cossack Army (up to 40 thousand people) was included in the Separate Georgian Corps, renamed the Separate Caucasian Corps and reinforced.

In 1821, the Burnaya fortress was built in the Tarkov Shamkhalate not far from the coast of the Caspian Sea. Moreover, during construction, the troops of the Avar Khan Akhmet, who tried to interfere with the work, were defeated. The possessions of the Dagestan princes, who suffered a series of defeats in 1819-1821, were either transferred to Russian vassals and subordinated to Russian commandants, or liquidated.

On the right flank of the line, the Trans-Kuban Circassians, with the help of the Turks, began to further disturb the border. Their army invaded the lands of the Black Sea Army in October 1821, but was defeated.

In Abkhazia, Major General Prince Gorchakov defeated the rebels near Cape Kodor and brought Prince Dmitry Shervashidze into possession of the country.

To completely pacify Kabarda, in 1822 a series of fortifications were built at the foot of the mountains from Vladikavkaz to the upper reaches of the Kuban. Among other things, the Nalchik fortress was founded (1818 or 1822).

In 1823-1824. A number of punitive expeditions were carried out against the Trans-Kuban Circassians.

In 1824, the Black Sea Abkhazians, who rebelled against the successor of Prince, were forced to submit. Dmitry Shervashidze, book. Mikhail Shervashidze.

In 1825, an uprising began in Chechnya. On July 8, the highlanders captured the Amiradzhiyurt post and tried to take the Gerzel fortification. On July 15, Lieutenant General Lisanevich rescued him. 318 Kumyk-Aksaev elders were gathered in Gerzel-aul. The next day, July 18, Lisanevich and General Grekov were killed by the Kumyk mullah Ochar-Khadzhi (according to other sources, Uchur-mullah or Uchar-Gadzhi) during negotiations with Kumyk elders. Ochar-Khadzhi attacked Lieutenant General Lisanevich with a dagger, and also killed the unarmed General Grekov with a knife in the back. In response to the murder of two generals, the troops killed all the Kumyk elders invited to negotiations.

In 1826, a clearing was cut through the dense forest to the village of Germenchuk, which served as one of the main bases of the Chechens.

The Kuban coast began again to be raided by large parties of Shapsugs and Abadzekhs. The Kabardians became worried. In 1826, a series of campaigns were carried out in Chechnya, with deforestation, clearing, and pacification of villages free from Russian troops. This ended the activities of Ermolov, who was recalled by Nicholas I in 1827 and sent into retirement due to suspicion of connections with the Decembrists.

On January 11, 1827, in Stavropol, a delegation of Balkar princes submitted a petition to General George Emmanuel to accept Balkaria as Russian citizenship.

On March 29, 1827, Nicholas I appointed Adjutant General Ivan Paskevich as commander-in-chief of the Caucasian Corps. At first, he was mainly occupied with wars with Persia and Turkey. Successes in these wars helped maintain external calm.

In 1828, in connection with the construction of the Military-Sukhumi road, the Karachay region was annexed.

The emergence of muridism in Dagestan

In 1823, the Bukharan Khass-Muhammad brought Persian Sufi teachings to the Caucasus, to the village of Yarag (Yaryglar), Kyura Khanate and converted Magomed of Yaragsky to Sufism. He, in turn, began to preach a new teaching in his village. His eloquence attracted students and admirers to him. Even some mullahs began to come to Yarag to hear revelations that were new to them. After some time, Magomed began to send his followers - murids with wooden checkers in their hands and a covenant of deathly silence - to other villages. In a country where a seven-year-old child did not leave home without a dagger on his belt, where a plowman worked with a rifle over his shoulders, unarmed people suddenly appeared alone, who, meeting passers-by, struck the ground three times with wooden sabers and exclaimed with insane solemnity: “ Muslims are crazy! Gazavat! The murids were given only this one word; they answered all other questions with silence. The impression was extraordinary; they were taken for saints protected by fate.

Ermolov, who visited Dagestan in 1824, learned from conversations with the Arakan qadi about the nascent sect and ordered Aslan Khan of Kazi-Kumukh to stop the unrest excited by the followers of the new teaching, but, distracted by other matters, could not monitor the execution of this order, as a result of which Magomed and his murids continued to inflame the minds of the mountaineers and proclaim the proximity of gazavat, a holy war against the infidels.

In 1828, at a meeting of his followers, Magomed announced that his beloved disciple Kazi-Mulla would raise the banner of ghazavat against the infidels and immediately proclaimed him imam. It is interesting that Magomed himself lived for another 10 years after this, but apparently did not participate in political life anymore.

Kazi-Mulla

Kazi-Mulla (Shikh-Ghazi-Khan-Mukhamed) came from the village of Gimry. As a young man, he studied with the famous Arakanese theologian Seid Effendi. However, subsequently he met with the followers of Magomed Yaragsky and switched to a new teaching. He lived with Magomed in Yaraghi for a whole year, after which he declared him imam.

Having received the title of imam and blessing for the war against the infidels from Magomed Yaragsky in 1828, Kazi-Mulla returned to Gimry, but did not immediately begin military operations: the new teaching still had few murids (disciples, followers). Kazi-Mulla began to lead an ascetic lifestyle, praying day and night; He gave sermons in Gimry and neighboring villages. His eloquence and knowledge of theological texts, according to the recollections of the mountaineers, were amazing (the lessons of Seid-Effendi were not in vain). He skillfully hid his true goals: the tariqa does not recognize secular power, and if he had openly declared that after the victory he would abolish all Dagestan khans and shamkhals, then his activities would have immediately come to an end.

Within a year, Gimry and several other villages adopted muridism. The women covered their faces with veils, the men stopped smoking, and all songs fell silent except for “La-illahi-il-Alla.” In other villages he gained fans and the fame of a saint.

Soon the residents of the village of Karanai asked Kazi-Mulla to give them a qadi; he sent one of his students to them. However, having felt all the severity of the rule of Muridism, the Karanaevites kicked out the new qadi. Then Kazi-Mulla approached Karanai with armed Gimrinites. The residents did not dare to shoot at the “holy man” and allowed him to enter the village. Kazi-Mulla punished the residents with sticks and again installed his qadi. This example had a strong impact on the minds of the people: Kazi-Mulla showed that he was no longer only a spiritual mentor, and that having entered his sect, it was no longer possible to go back.

The spread of muridism went even faster. Kazi-Mulla, surrounded by disciples, began to walk around the villages. Crowds of thousands came out to see him. On the way, he often stopped, as if listening to something, and when asked by a student what he was doing, he answered: “I hear the ringing of the chains in which the Russians are being led in front of me.” After this, he for the first time revealed to his listeners the prospects for a future war with the Russians, the capture of Moscow and Istanbul.

By the end of 1829, Kazi-Mulla obeyed Koisub, Humbert, Andia, Chirkey, Salatavia and other small societies of mountainous Dagestan. However, the strong and influential Khanate - Avaria, which swore allegiance to Russia back in September 1828, refused to recognize his power and accept the new teaching.

Kazi-Mullah also encountered resistance among the Muslim clergy. And most of all, the most respected mullah of Dagestan, Said from Arakan, with whom Kazi-Mulla himself once studied, opposed the tariqa. At first, the imam tried to attract the former mentor to his side, offering him the title of supreme qadi, but he refused.

Debir-haji, at that time a student of Kazi-mullah, later Naib of Shamil, who then fled to the Russians, witnessed the last conversation between Said and Kazi-mullah.

Then Kazi-Mulla stood up in great excitement and whispered to me, “Seyid is the same giaur; “He stands across our road and should be killed like a dog.”
“We must not violate the duty of hospitality,” I said: “we’d ​​better wait; he may still come to his senses.

Having failed with the existing clergy, Kazi Mullah decided to create a new clergy from among his murids. This is how “Shikhas” were created, which were supposed to compete with the old mullahs.

At the beginning of January 1830, Kazi Mullah and his murids attacked Arakan in order to deal with his former mentor. The Arakanese, taken by surprise, could not resist. Under the threat of extermination of the village, Kazi Mullah forced all residents to take an oath to live according to Sharia. However, he did not find Said - at that time he was visiting the Kazikumykh Khan. Kazi Mullah ordered the destruction of everything that was found in his house, not excluding the extensive works on which the old man worked all his life.

This act caused condemnation even in those villages that accepted muridism, but Kazi Mullah captured all his opponents and sent them to Gimry, where they were seated in stinking pits. Some Kumyk princes soon followed there. The attempted uprising in Miatlakh ended even more sadly: having arrived there with his murids, Kazi-Mulla himself shot the disobedient qadi at point-blank range. Hostages were taken from the population and taken to Gimry, who should have been responsible for the obedience of their people. It should be noted that this no longer happened in “nobody’s” villages, but in the territories of the Mehtulin Khanate and the Tarkov Shamkhalate.

Next, Kazi-Mulla tried to annex the Akushin (Dargin) society. But the Akusha qadi told the imam that the Dargins already follow Sharia, so his appearance in Akusha was completely unnecessary. The Akushinsky qadi was at the same time the ruler, so Kazi-Mulla did not decide to go to war with the strong Akushinsky society (a society in Russian documents was a group of villages inhabited by one people and without a ruling dynasty), but decided to first conquer Avaria.

But Kazi-Mulla’s plans were not destined to come true: the Avar militia, led by the young Abu Nutsal Khan, despite the inequality of forces, made a sortie and defeated the army of the murids. The Khunzakhs chased them all day, and by evening there was not a single murid left on the Avar Plateau.

After this, the influence of Kazi-Mulla was greatly shaken, and the arrival of new troops sent to the Caucasus after the conclusion of peace with the Ottoman Empire made it possible to allocate a detachment for action against Kazi-Mulla. This detachment, under the command of Baron Rosen, approached the village of Gimry, where the residence of Kazi-Mulla was. However, as soon as the detachment appeared on the heights surrounding the village, the Koisubulins (a group of villages along the Koisu River) sent elders with an expression of humility to take the oath of allegiance to Russia. General Rosen considered the oath sincere and returned with his detachment to the line. Kazi-Mulla attributed the removal of the Russian detachment to help from above, and immediately called on the Koisubulin people not to be afraid of the weapons of the infidels, but to boldly go to Tarki and Sudden and act “as God directs.”

Kazi-Mulla chose the inaccessible Chumkes-Kent tract (not far from Temir-Khan-Shura) as his new location, from where he began to convene all the mountaineers to fight the infidels. His attempts to take the fortresses of Burnaya and Vnezapnaya failed; but General Bekovich-Cherkassky’s movement towards Chumkes-Kent was also unsuccessful: having become convinced that the strongly fortified position was inaccessible, the general did not dare to storm and retreated. The last failure, greatly exaggerated by the mountain messengers, increased the number of adherents of Kazi-Mulla, especially in central Dagestan.

In 1831, Kazi-Mulla took and plundered Tarki and Kizlyar and attempted, but unsuccessfully, to take possession of Derbent with the support of the rebel Tabasarans. Significant territories came under the authority of the imam. However, from the end of 1831 the uprising began to decline. The detachments of Kazi-Mulla were pushed back to Mountainous Dagestan. Attacked on December 1, 1831 by Colonel Miklashevsky, he was forced to leave Chumkes-Kent and again went to Gimry. Appointed in September 1831, the commander of the Caucasian Corps, Baron Rosen, took Gimry on October 17, 1832; Kazi-Mulla died during the battle.

On the southern side of the Caucasus ridge, the Lezgin line of fortifications was created in 1930 to protect Georgia from raids.

Western Caucasus

In the Western Caucasus in August 1830, the Ubykhs and Sadzes, led by Hadji Berzek Dagomuko (Adagua-ipa), launched a desperate assault on the newly erected fort in Gagra. Such fierce resistance forced General Hesse to abandon further advance to the north. Thus, the coastal strip between Gagra and Anapa remained under the control of the Caucasians.

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

On the Black Sea coast, where the highlanders had many convenient points for communication with the Turks and trading in slaves (the Black Sea coastline did not yet exist), foreign agents, especially the British, distributed anti-Russian appeals among the local tribes and delivered military supplies. This forced Baron Rosen to entrust General Velyaminov (in the summer of 1834) with a new expedition to the Trans-Kuban region to establish a cordon line to Gelendzhik. It ended with the construction of fortifications of Abinsky and Nikolaevsky.

Gamzat-bek

After the death of Kazi-Mulla, one of his assistants, Gamzat-bek, proclaimed himself an imam. In 1834, he invaded Avaria, captured Khunzakh, exterminated almost the entire khan’s family, which adhered to a pro-Russian orientation, and was already thinking about the conquest of all of Dagestan, but died at the hands of conspirators who took revenge on him for the murder of the khan’s family. Soon after his death and the proclamation of Shamil as the third imam, on October 18, 1834, the main stronghold of the Murids, the village of Gotsatl, was taken and destroyed by a detachment of Colonel Kluki-von Klugenau. Shamil's troops retreated from Avaria.

Imam Shamil

In the Eastern Caucasus, after the death of Gamzat-bek, Shamil became the head of the murids. The accident became the core of Shamil’s state, and all three imams of Dagestan and Chechnya were from there.

The new imam, who had administrative and military abilities, soon turned out to be an extremely dangerous enemy, uniting under his rule some of the hitherto scattered tribes and villages of the Eastern Caucasus. Already at the beginning of 1835, his forces increased so much that he set out to punish the Khunzakh people for killing his predecessor. Temporarily installed as the ruler of Avaria, Aslan Khan Kazikumukhsky asked to send Russian troops to defend Khunzakh, and Baron Rosen agreed to his request due to the strategic importance of the fortress; but this entailed the need to occupy many other points to ensure communications with Khunzakh through inaccessible mountains. The Temir-Khan-Shura fortress, newly built on the Tarkov plane, was chosen as the main stronghold on the route of communication between Khunzakh and the Caspian coast, and the Nizovoye fortification was built to provide a pier to which ships approached from Astrakhan. The communication between Temir-Khan-Shura and Khunzakh was covered by the Zirani fortification near the Avar Koisu River and the Burunduk-Kale tower. For direct communication between Temir-Khan-Shura and the Vnezapnaya fortress, the Miatlinskaya crossing over Sulak was built and covered with towers; the road from Temir-Khan-Shura to Kizlyar was secured by the fortification of Kazi-Yurt.

Shamil, more and more consolidating his power, chose the Koisubu district as his residence, where on the banks of the Andean Koisu he began to build a fortification, which he called Akhulgo. In 1837, General Fezi occupied Khunzakh, took the village of Ashilty and the fortification of Old Akhulgo and besieged the village of Tilitl, where Shamil had taken refuge. When Russian troops captured part of this village on July 3, Shamil entered into negotiations and promised submission. I had to accept his offer, since the Russian detachment, which had suffered heavy losses, was severely short of food and, in addition, news was received of an uprising in Cuba.

In the Western Caucasus, a detachment of General Velyaminov in the summer of 1837 penetrated to the mouths of the Pshada and Vulana rivers and founded the Novotroitskoye and Mikhailovskoye fortifications there.

Meeting between General Klugi von Klugenau and Shamil in 1837 (Grigory Gagarin)

In September of the same 1837, Emperor Nicholas I visited the Caucasus for the first time and was dissatisfied with the fact that, despite many years of efforts and major sacrifices, Russian troops were still far from lasting results in pacifying the region. General Golovin was appointed to replace Baron Rosen.

In 1838, on the Black Sea coast, fortifications of Navaginskoye, Velyaminovskoye and Tenginskoye were built and construction of the Novorossiysk fortress with a military harbor began.

In 1839, operations were carried out in various areas by three detachments. The landing detachment of General Raevsky erected new fortifications on the Black Sea coast (forts Golovinsky, Lazarev, Raevsky). The Dagestan detachment, under the command of the corps commander himself, captured a very strong position of the highlanders on the Adzhiakhur heights on May 31, and on June 3 occupied the village. Akhty, near which a fortification was erected. The third detachment, Chechen, under the command of General Grabbe, moved against the main forces of Shamil, fortified near the village. Argvani, on the descent to the Andian Kois. Despite the strength of this position, Grabbe took possession of it, and Shamil with several hundred murids took refuge in Akhulgo, which he had renewed. Akhulgo fell on August 22, but Shamil himself managed to escape. The highlanders, showing apparent submission, were in fact preparing another uprising, which over the next 3 years kept the Russian forces in the most tense state.

Meanwhile, Shamil, after the defeat in Akhulgo, with a detachment of seven comrades-in-arms, arrived in Chechnya, where, from the end of February 1840, there was a general uprising under the leadership of Shoaip Mullah Tsentaroyevsky, Javad Khan Darginsky, Tashev-Khadzhi Sayasanovsky and Isa Gendergenoevsky. After a meeting with the Chechen leaders Isa Gendergenoevsky and Akhberdil-Mukhammed in Urus-Martan, Shamil was proclaimed Imam of Chechnya (March 7, 1840). Dargo became the capital of the Imamate.

Meanwhile, hostilities began on the Black Sea coast, where the hastily built Russian forts were in a dilapidated state, and the garrisons were extremely weakened by fevers and other diseases. On February 7, 1840, the highlanders captured Fort Lazarev and destroyed all its defenders; On February 29, the same fate befell the Velyaminovskoye fortification; On March 23, after a fierce battle, the highlanders penetrated the Mikhailovskoye fortification, the defenders of which blew themselves up. In addition, the highlanders captured (April 1) the Nikolaev fort; but their enterprises against the Navaginsky fort and the Abinsky fortification were unsuccessful.

On the left flank, the premature attempt to disarm the Chechens caused extreme anger among them. In December 1839 and January 1840, General Pullo conducted punitive expeditions in Chechnya and destroyed several villages. During the second expedition, the Russian command demanded the surrender of one gun from 10 houses, as well as one hostage from each village. Taking advantage of the discontent of the population, Shamil raised the Ichkerians, Aukhovites and other Chechen societies against the Russian troops. Russian troops under the command of General Galafeev limited themselves to searching in the forests of Chechnya, which cost many people. It was especially bloody on the river. Valerik (July 11). While General Galafeev was walking around Lesser Chechnya, Shamil with Chechen troops subjugated Salatavia to his power and in early August invaded Avaria, where he conquered several villages. With the addition of the elder of the mountain societies in the Andean Koisu, the famous Kibit-Magoma, his strength and enterprise increased enormously. By the fall, all of Chechnya was already on Shamil’s side, and the means of the Caucasian line turned out to be insufficient to successfully fight him. The Chechens began to attack the tsarist troops on the banks of the Terek and almost captured Mozdok.

On the right flank, by the fall, a new fortified line along the Labe was secured by forts Zassovsky, Makhoshevsky and Temirgoevsky. The Velyaminovskoye and Lazarevskoye fortifications were restored on the Black Sea coastline.

In 1841, riots broke out in Avaria, instigated by Hadji Murad. A battalion with 2 mountain guns was sent to pacify them, under the command of General. Bakunin, failed at the village of Tselmes, and Colonel Passek, who took command after the mortally wounded Bakunin, only with difficulty managed to withdraw the remnants of the detachment to Khunza. The Chechens raided the Georgian Military Road and stormed the military settlement of Aleksandrovskoye, and Shamil himself approached Nazran and attacked the detachment of Colonel Nesterov located there, but had no success and took refuge in the forests of Chechnya. On May 15, generals Golovin and Grabbe attacked and took the position of the imam near the village of Chirkey, after which the village itself was occupied and the Evgenievskoye fortification was founded near it. Nevertheless, Shamil managed to extend his power to the mountain societies of the right bank of the river. Avar Koisu, the murids again captured the village of Gergebil, which blocked the entrance to Mekhtulin’s possessions; Communications between Russian forces and Avaria were temporarily interrupted.

In the spring of 1842, the expedition of General. Fezi somewhat improved the situation in Avaria and Koisubu. Shamil tried to agitate Southern Dagestan, but to no avail. Thus, the entire territory of Dagestan was never annexed to the Imamat.

Shamil's army

Under Shamil, a semblance of a regular army was created - Murtazeki(cavalry) and at the bottom(infantry). In normal times, the number of Imamat troops was up to 15 thousand people, the maximum number in a total assembly was 40 thousand. The Imamat artillery consisted of 50 guns, most of which were captured (Over time, the highlanders created their own factories for the production of guns and shells, however, inferior to European and Russian products).

According to the data of the Chechen Naib Shamil Yusuf Haji Safarov, the army of the Imamat consisted of Avar and Chechen militias. The Avars provided Shamil with 10,480 soldiers, who made up 71.10% of the total army. Chechens numbered 28.90%, with a total number of 4270 soldiers.

Battle of Ichkera (1842)

In May 1842, 4,777 Chechen soldiers with Imam Shamil went on a campaign against Kazi-Kumukh in Dagestan. Taking advantage of their absence, on May 30, Adjutant General P.H. Grabbe with 12 infantry battalions, a company of sappers, 350 Cossacks and 24 cannons set out from the Gerzel-aul fortress towards the capital of the Imamat, Dargo. The ten-thousand-strong royal detachment was opposed, according to A. Zisserman, “according to the most generous estimates, up to one and a half thousand” Ichkerin and Aukhov Chechens.

Led by Shoaip-Mullah Tsentaroevsky, the mountaineers were preparing for battle. Naibs Baysungur and Soltamurad organized the Benoevites to build rubble, ambushes, pits, and prepare provisions, clothing and military equipment. Shoaip instructed the Andians guarding the capital of Shamil Dargo to destroy the capital when the enemy approached and take all the people to the mountains of Dagestan. The Naib of Greater Chechnya, Javatkhan, who was seriously wounded in one of the recent battles, was replaced by his assistant Suaib-Mullah Ersenoevsky. The Aukhov Chechens were led by the young Naib Ulubiy-Mullah.

Stopped by fierce resistance from the Chechens at the villages of Belgata and Gordali, on the night of June 2, Grabbe’s detachment began to retreat. The tsarist troops lost 66 officers and 1,700 soldiers killed and wounded in the battle. The mountaineers lost up to 600 people killed and wounded. 2 cannons and almost all the military and food supplies of the tsarist troops were captured.

On June 3, Shamil, having learned about the Russian movement towards Dargo, turned back to Ichkeria. But by the time the imam arrived, everything was already over.

The unfortunate outcome of this expedition greatly raised the spirit of the rebels, and Shamil began to recruit troops, intending to invade Avaria. Grabbe, having learned about this, moved there with a new, strong detachment and captured the village of Igali in battle, but then withdrew from Avaria, where only the Russian garrison remained in Khunzakh. The overall result of the actions of 1842 was unsatisfactory, and already in October Adjutant General Neidgardt was appointed to replace Golovin.

The failures of the Russian troops spread in the highest government spheres the conviction that offensive actions were futile and even harmful. This opinion was especially supported by the then Minister of War, Prince. Chernyshev, who visited the Caucasus in the summer of 1842 and witnessed the return of Grabbe’s detachment from the Ichkerin forests. Impressed by this catastrophe, he convinced the tsar to sign a decree prohibiting all expeditions for 1843 and ordering them to limit themselves to defense.

This forced inaction of the Russian troops emboldened the enemy, and attacks on the line became more frequent again. On August 31, 1843, Imam Shamil captured the fort at the village. Untsukul, destroying 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, which interrupted communication with Temir Khan-Shura. From August 28 to September 21, the losses of Russian troops amounted to 55 officers, more than 1,500 lower ranks, 12 guns and significant warehouses: the fruits of many years of effort were lost, long-submissive mountain societies were cut off from Russian forces and the morale of the troops was undermined. On October 28, Shamil surrounded the Gergebil fortification, which he managed to take only on November 8, when only 50 of the defenders remained alive. Detachments of mountaineers, scattering in all directions, interrupted almost all communications with Derbent, Kizlyar and the left flank of the line; Russian troops in Temir Khan-Shura withstood the blockade, which lasted from November 8 to December 24.

In mid-April 1844, Shamil’s Dagestani troops, led by Hadji Murad and Naib Kibit-Magom, approached Kumykh, but on the 22nd they were completely defeated by Prince Argutinsky, near the village. Margi. Around this time, Shamil himself was defeated near the village of Andreevo, where Colonel Kozlovsky’s detachment met him, and near the village of Gilli the Dagestan highlanders were defeated by Passek’s detachment. On the Lezgin line, the Elisu Khan Daniel Bek, who had been loyal to Russia until then, was indignant. A detachment of General Schwartz was sent against him, who scattered the rebels and captured the village of Ilisu, but the khan himself managed to escape. The actions of the main Russian forces were quite successful and ended with the capture of the Dargin district in Dagestan (Akusha, Khadzhalmakhi, Tsudahar); then the construction of the advanced Chechen line began, the first link of which was the Vozdvizhenskoye fortification, on the river. Argun. On the right flank, the highlanders' assault on the Golovinskoye fortification was brilliantly repulsed on the night of July 16.

At the end of 1844, a new commander-in-chief, Count Vorontsov, was appointed to the Caucasus.

Dargin campaign (Chechnya, May 1845)

In May 1845, the tsarist army invaded the Imamate in several large detachments. At the beginning of the campaign, 5 detachments were created for actions in different directions. Chechensky was led by General Liders, Dagestansky by Prince Beibutov, Samursky by Argutinsky-Dolgorukov, Lezginsky by General Schwartz, Nazranovsky by General Nesterov. The main forces moving towards the capital of the Imamate were headed by the commander-in-chief of the Russian army in the Caucasus, Count M. S. Vorontsov.

Without encountering serious resistance, the 30,000-strong detachment passed through mountainous Dagestan and on June 13 invaded Andia. At the time of leaving Andia for Dargo, the total strength of the detachment was 7940 infantry, 1218 cavalry and 342 artillerymen. The Battle of Dargin lasted from July 8 to July 20. According to official data, in the Battle of Dargin, the tsarist troops lost 4 generals, 168 officers and up to 4,000 soldiers.

Many future famous military leaders and politicians took part in the campaign of 1845: governor in the Caucasus in 1856-1862. and Field Marshal Prince A.I. Baryatinsky; Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Military District and chief commander of the civilian unit in the Caucasus in 1882-1890. Prince A. M. Dondukov-Korsakov; acting as commander-in-chief in 1854 before the arrival of Count N.N. Muravyov to the Caucasus, Prince V.O. Bebutov; famous Caucasian military general, chief of the General Staff in 1866-1875. Count F. L. Heyden; military governor, killed in Kutaisi in 1861, Prince A.I. Gagarin; commander of the Shirvan regiment, Prince S. I. Vasilchikov; adjutant general, diplomat in 1849, 1853-1855, Count K. K. Benckendorff (seriously wounded in the campaign of 1845); Major General E. von Schwarzenberg; Lieutenant General Baron N.I. Delvig; N.P. Beklemishev, an excellent draftsman who left many sketches after his trip to Dargo, also known for his witticisms and puns; Prince E. Wittgenstein; Prince Alexander of Hesse, Major General, and others.

On the Black Sea coastline in the summer of 1845, the highlanders attempted to capture forts Raevsky (May 24) and Golovinsky (July 1), but were repulsed.

Since 1846, actions were carried out on the left flank aimed at strengthening control over the occupied lands, erecting new fortifications and Cossack villages and preparing further movement deep into the Chechen forests by cutting down wide clearings. Victory of the book Bebutov, who wrested from the hands of Shamil the inaccessible village of Kutish, which he had just occupied (currently included in the Levashinsky district of Dagestan), resulted in a complete calming of the Kumyk plane and the foothills.

On the Black Sea coastline, the Ubykhs, numbering up to 6 thousand people, launched a new desperate attack on the Golovinsky fort on November 28, but were repulsed with great damage.

In 1847, Prince Vorontsov besieged Gergebil, but due to the spread of cholera among the troops, he had to retreat. At the end of July, he undertook a siege of the fortified village of Salta, which, despite the significant siege weapons of the advancing troops, held out until September 14, when it was cleared by the highlanders. Both of these enterprises cost the Russian troops about 150 officers and more than 2,500 lower ranks who were out of action.

The troops of Daniel Bek invaded the Jaro-Belokan district, but on May 13 they were completely defeated at the village of Chardakhly.

In mid-November, Dagestan mountaineers invaded Kazikumukh and briefly captured several villages.

In 1848, an outstanding event was the capture of Gergebil (July 7) by Prince Argutinsky. In general, for a long time there has not been such calm in the Caucasus as this year; Only on the Lezgin line were frequent alarms repeated. In September, Shamil tried to capture the Akhta fortification on Samur, but he failed.

In 1849, the siege of the village of Chokha, undertaken by Prince. Argutinsky, cost the Russian troops great losses, but was not successful. From the Lezgin line, General Chilyaev carried out a successful expedition into the mountains, which ended in the defeat of the enemy near the village of Khupro.

In 1850, systematic deforestation in Chechnya continued with the same persistence and was accompanied by more or less serious clashes. This course of action forced many hostile societies to declare their unconditional submission.

It was decided to adhere to the same system in 1851. On the right flank, an offensive was launched 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 hostile Abadzekhs; in addition, the offensive in this direction was caused by the appearance in the Western Caucasus of Naib Shamil, Mohammed-Amin, who collected large parties for raids on Russian settlements near Labino, but was defeated on May 14.

1852 was marked by brilliant actions in Chechnya under the leadership of the commander of the left flank, Prince. Baryatinsky, who penetrated hitherto inaccessible forest shelters and destroyed many hostile villages. These successes were overshadowed only by the unsuccessful expedition of Colonel Baklanov to the village of Gordali.

In 1853, rumors of an impending break with Turkey aroused new hopes among the mountaineers. Shamil and Mohammed-Amin, the Naib of Circassia and Kabardia, having gathered the mountain elders, announced to them the firmans received from the Sultan, commanding all Muslims to rebel against the common enemy; they talked about the imminent arrival of Turkish troops in Balkaria, Georgia and Kabarda and about the need to act decisively against the Russians, who were allegedly weakened by the sending of most of their military forces to the Turkish borders. However, the spirit of the mass of the mountaineers had already fallen so low due to a series of failures and extreme impoverishment that Shamil could only subjugate them to his will through cruel punishments. The raid he planned on the Lezgin line ended in complete failure, and Mohammed-Amin with a detachment of Trans-Kuban highlanders was defeated by a detachment of General Kozlovsky.

With the beginning of the Crimean War, the command of the Russian troops decided to maintain a predominantly defensive course of action at all points in the Caucasus; however, the clearing of forests and the destruction of the enemy's food supplies continued, although to a more limited extent.

In 1854, the head of the Turkish Anatolian Army entered into negotiations with Shamil, inviting him to move to join him from Dagestan. At the end of June, Shamil and the Dagestan highlanders invaded Kakheti; The mountaineers managed to ravage the rich village of Tsinondal, capture the family of its ruler and plunder several churches, but upon learning of the approach of Russian troops, they retreated. Shamil's attempt to take possession of the peaceful village of Istisu was unsuccessful. On the right flank, the space between Anapa, Novorossiysk and the mouths of the Kuban was abandoned by Russian troops; The garrisons of the Black Sea coastline were taken to Crimea at the beginning of the year, and forts and other buildings were blown up. Book Vorontsov left the Caucasus back in March 1854, transferring control to the general. Read, and at the beginning of 1855, General was appointed commander-in-chief in the Caucasus. Muravyov. The landing of the Turks in Abkhazia, despite the betrayal of its ruler, Prince. Shervashidze, had no harmful consequences for Russia. At the conclusion of the Peace of Paris, in the spring of 1856, it was decided to use the troops operating in Asian Turkey and, strengthening the Caucasian Corps with them, to begin the final conquest of the Caucasus.

Baryatinsky

The new commander-in-chief, Prince Baryatinsky, turned his main attention to Chechnya, the conquest of which he entrusted to the head of the left wing of the line, General Evdokimov, an old and experienced Caucasian; but in other parts of the Caucasus the troops did not remain inactive. In 1856 and 1857 Russian troops achieved the following results: the Adagum Valley was occupied on the right wing of the line and the Maykop fortification was built. On the left wing, the so-called “Russian road”, from Vladikavkaz, parallel to the ridge of the Black Mountains, to the fortification of Kurinsky on the Kumyk plane, is completely completed and strengthened by newly constructed fortifications; wide clearings have been cut in all directions; the mass of the hostile population of Chechnya has been driven to the point of having to submit and move to open areas, under state supervision; The Aukh district is occupied and a fortification has been erected in its center. In Dagestan, Salatavia is finally occupied. Several new Cossack villages were established along Laba, Urup and Sunzha. The troops are everywhere close to the front lines; the rear is secured; vast expanses of the best lands are cut off from the hostile population and, thus, a significant share of the resources for the fight are wrested from the hands of Shamil.

On the Lezgin line, as a result of deforestation, predatory raids gave way to petty theft. On the Black Sea coast, the secondary occupation of Gagra marked the beginning of securing Abkhazia from incursions by Circassian tribes and from hostile propaganda. The actions of 1858 in Chechnya began with the occupation of the Argun River gorge, which was considered impregnable, where Evdokimov ordered the construction of a strong fortification, called Argunsky. Climbing up the river, he reached, at the end of July, the villages of the Shatoevsky society; in the upper reaches of the Argun he founded a new fortification - Evdokimovskoye. Shamil tried to divert attention by sabotage to Nazran, but was defeated by the detachment of General Mishchenko and barely managed to get out of the battle without being ambushed (due to the large number of tsarist troops), but avoided this thanks to Naib Beta Achkhoevsky who managed to help him, who broke through the encirclement and go to the still unoccupied part of the Argun Gorge. Convinced that his power there had been completely undermined, he retired to Vedeno, his new residence. On March 17, 1859, the bombardment of this fortified village began, and on April 1 it was taken by storm.

Shamil went beyond the Andean Koisu. After the capture of Veden, three detachments headed concentrically to the Andean Koisu valley: Dagestan, Chechen (former naibs and wars of Shamil) and Lezgin. Shamil, who temporarily settled in the village of Karata, fortified Mount Kilitl, and covered the right bank of the Andean Koisu, opposite Conkhidatl, with solid stone rubble, entrusting their defense to his son Kazi-Magoma. With any energetic resistance from the latter, forcing the crossing at this point would cost enormous sacrifices; but he was forced to leave his strong position as a result of the troops of the Dagestan detachment entering his flank, who made a remarkably courageous crossing across the Andiyskoe Koisu at the Sagytlo tract. Seeing the danger threatening from everywhere, the imam went to Mount Gunib, where Shamil with 500 murids fortified himself as in the last and impregnable refuge. On August 25, Gunib was taken by storm, forced by the fact that 8,000 troops were standing all around on all the hills, in all the ravines, Shamil himself surrendered to Prince Baryatinsky.

Completion of the conquest of Circassia (1859-1864)

The capture of Gunib and the capture of Shamil could be considered the last act of the war in the Eastern Caucasus; but Western Circassia, which occupied the entire western part of the Caucasus, adjacent to the Black Sea, had not yet been conquered. It was decided to conduct the final stage of the war in Western Circassia in this way: the Circassians had to submit and move to the places indicated to them on the plain; otherwise, they were pushed further into the barren mountains, and the lands they left behind were populated by Cossack villages; finally, after pushing the mountaineers back from the mountains to the seashore, they could either move to the plain, under the supervision of the Russians, or move to Turkey, in which it was supposed to provide them with possible assistance. In 1861, on the initiative of the Ubykhs, the Circassian parliament “Great and Free Session” was created in Sochi. The Ubykhs, Shapsugs, Abadzekhs, and Dzhigets (Sadzys) sought to unite the Circassians “into one huge wave.” A special parliamentary delegation headed by Ismail Barakai Dziash visited a number of European countries. Actions against the small armed formations there dragged on until the end of 1861, when all attempts at resistance were finally suppressed. Only then was it possible to begin decisive operations on the right wing, the leadership of which was entrusted to the conqueror of Chechnya, Evdokimov. His troops were divided into 2 detachments: one, Adagumsky, acted in the land of the Shapsugs, the other - from the Laba and Belaya; a special detachment was sent to operate in the lower reaches of the river. Pshish. In autumn and winter, Cossack villages are established in the Natukhai district. The troops operating from the direction of Laba completed the construction of villages between Laba and Belaya and cut through the entire foothill space between these rivers with clearings, which forced the local communities to partly move to the plane, partly to go beyond the pass of the Main Range.

At the end of February 1862, Evdokimov’s detachment moved to the river. Pshekha, to which, despite the stubborn resistance of the Abadzekhs, a clearing was cut and a convenient road was laid. Everyone living between the Khodz and Belaya rivers was ordered to immediately move to Kuban or Laba, and within 20 days (from March 8 to March 29) up to 90 villages were resettled. At the end of April, Evdokimov, having crossed the Black Mountains, descended into the Dakhovskaya Valley along a road that the mountaineers considered inaccessible to the Russians, and set up a new Cossack village there, closing the Belorechenskaya line. The movement of the Russians deep into the Trans-Kuban region was met everywhere by desperate resistance from the Abadzekhs, supported by the Ubykhs and the Abkhaz tribes of the Sadz (Dzhigets) and Akhchipshu, which, however, were not crowned with serious successes. The result of the summer and autumn actions of 1862 on the part of Belaya was the strong establishment of Russian troops in the space limited to the west by pp. Pshish, Pshekha and Kurdzhips.

Map of the Caucasus region (1801-1813). Compiled in the military historical department at the headquarters of the Caucasian Military District by Lieutenant Colonel V.I. Tomkeev. Tiflis, 1901. (The name “lands of mountain peoples” refers to the lands of the Western Circassians [Circassians]).

At the beginning of 1863, the only opponents of Russian rule throughout the Caucasus were the mountain societies on the northern slope of the Main Range, from Adagum to Belaya, and the tribes of the coastal Shapsugs, Ubykhs, etc., who lived in the narrow space between the sea coast, the southern slope of the Main Range, and the valley Aderba and Abkhazia. The final conquest of the Caucasus was led by Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, appointed governor of the Caucasus. In 1863, the actions of the troops of the Kuban region. should have consisted of spreading Russian colonization of the region simultaneously from two sides, relying on the Belorechensk and Adagum lines. These actions were so successful that they put the mountaineers of the northwestern Caucasus in a hopeless situation. Already from mid-summer 1863, many of them began to move to Turkey or to the southern slope of the ridge; most of them submitted, so that by the end of summer the number of immigrants settled on the plane in the Kuban and Laba reached 30 thousand people. At the beginning of October, the Abadzekh elders came to Evdokimov and signed an agreement according to which all their fellow tribesmen who wanted to accept Russian citizenship pledged no later than February 1, 1864 to begin moving to the places indicated by him; the rest were given 2 1/2 months to move to Turkey.

The conquest of the northern slope of the ridge was completed. All that remained was to move to the southwestern slope in order to, going down to the sea, clear the coastal strip and prepare it for settlement. On October 10, Russian troops climbed to the very pass and in the same month occupied the river gorge. Pshada and the mouth of the river. Dzhubgi. In the western Caucasus, the remnants of the Circassians of the northern slope continued to move to Turkey or the Kuban Plain. From the end of February, actions began on the southern slope, which ended in May. The masses of Circassians were pushed to the seashore and were transported to Turkey by arriving Turkish ships. On May 21, 1864, in the mountain village of Kbaade, in the camp of united Russian columns, in the presence of the Grand Duke Commander-in-Chief, a thanksgiving prayer service was served on the occasion of the victory.

Memory

May 21 is the day of remembrance of the Circassians (Circassians) - victims of the Caucasian War, established in 1992 by the Supreme Council of the KBSSR and is a non-working day.

In March 1994, in Karachay-Cherkessia, by a resolution of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of Karachay-Cherkessia, the republic established the “Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Caucasian War,” which is celebrated on May 21.

Consequences

Russia, at the cost of significant bloodshed, was able to suppress the armed resistance of the highlanders, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of highlanders who did not accept Russian power were forced to leave their homes and move to Turkey and the Middle East. As a result, a significant diaspora of immigrants from the North Caucasus has formed there. Most of them are Adyghe-Circassians, Abazins and Abkhazians by origin. Most of these peoples were forced to leave the territory of the North Caucasus.

A fragile peace was established in the Caucasus, which was facilitated by the consolidation of Russia in Transcaucasia and the weakening of the opportunities for Muslims of the Caucasus to receive financial and armed support from their coreligionists. Calm in the North Caucasus was ensured by the presence of a well-organized, trained and armed Cossack army.

Despite the fact that, according to historian A. S. Orlov, “The North Caucasus, like Transcaucasia, was not turned into a colony of the Russian Empire, but became part of it on equal rights with other peoples”, one of the consequences of the Caucasian War was Russophobia, which became widespread among the peoples of the Caucasus. In the 1990s, the Caucasian War was also used by Wahhabi ideologists as a powerful argument in the fight against Russia.

About the Caucasian War in brief

Kavkazskaya vojna (1817—1864)

The Caucasian War began
Caucasian War causes
Caucasian War stages
Caucasian War results

The Caucasian War, in short, is a period of prolonged military conflict between the Russian Empire and the North Caucasian Imamate. The war was fought for the complete subjugation of the mountainous regions of the North Caucasus, and is one of the most fierce in the 19th century. Covers the period from 1817 to 1864.

Close relations between Russia and the peoples of the Caucasus began after the collapse of Georgia in the 15th century. Since the 16th century, many oppressed states of the Caucasus range asked for protection from Russia.

The main reason for the Caucasian War, in short, was that Georgia, the only Christian state in the Caucasus, was constantly under attack and attempts to subjugate it from neighboring Muslim countries. Repeatedly, the rulers of Georgia asked for Russian protection. In 1801, Georgia formally became part of the Russian Empire, but was isolated from it by neighboring countries. There was a need to create the integrity of Russian territory. This was possible only with the subjugation of other peoples of the North Caucasus.

Some states became part of Russia almost voluntarily - Kabarda and Ossetia. The rest - Adygea, Chechnya and Dagestan - categorically refused to do this and put up fierce resistance.
In 1817, the main stage of the conquest of the North Caucasus by Russian troops began under the leadership of General A.P. Ermolova. It was after his appointment as commander of the army in the North Caucasus that the Caucasian War began. Until this time, the Russian authorities were rather lenient towards the mountaineers.
The difficulty of conducting military operations in the Caucasus was that at the same time the Russian Empire had to participate in the Russian-Turkish and Russian-Iranian war.

The second stage of the Caucasian War is associated with the emergence of a single leader in Chechnya and Dagestan - Imam Shamil. He managed to unite disparate peoples and start a “gazavat” - a liberation war - against the Russian troops. Shamil was able to quickly create a strong army and for 30 years waged successful military operations with Russian troops, who suffered huge losses in this war.

In 1817-1827, the commander of the Separate Caucasian Corps and the chief administrator in Georgia was General Alexei Petrovich Ermolov (1777-1861). Ermolov’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 Sunzhenskaya line. The campaigns of the Chechens (1819-1821) with the aim of destroying the Sunzhenskaya line were repulsed, Russian troops began advancing into the mountainous regions of Chechnya. In 1827, Ermolov was dismissed from his post for patronizing the Decembrists. Field Marshal General 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 governor, 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 Gazavat, was led by Shamil (1797 - 1871), who created a Muslim theocratic state - the imamate. 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 - the holy war against the Russians, captivated Shamil, who first became his student, and then his friend and ardent supporter. The followers of the new teaching, which sought salvation of the soul and cleansing from sins through a holy war for faith against the Russians, were called murids. When the people were sufficiently fanaticized and excited by descriptions of paradise, with its houris, and the promise of complete independence from any authorities other than Allah and his Sharia (spiritual law set out in the Koran), Kazi Mullah managed to to carry along Koisuba, Gumbet, Andiya and other small societies of the Avar and Andian Kois, most of the Shamkhaldom of Tarkovsky, the Kumyks and Avaria, except for its capital Khunzakh, where the Avar khans visited. Counting that his power would only be strong in Dagestan when he finally captured Avaria, the center of Dagestan, and its capital Khunzakh, Kazi Mullah gathered 6,000 people and on February 4, 1830 went with them against 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, Shamil in 1832 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 Mullah died, stabbed all over with 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 a collaborator, raising troops, obtaining material resources and commanding expeditions against the Russians and the enemies of the Imam. Having learned about the death of Gamzat-bek, Shamil gathered a party of the most desperate murids, rushed with them to New Gotsatl, seized the wealth looted by Gamzat there and ordered to kill the surviving youngest son of Paru-Bike, the only heir of the Avar Khanate. With this murder, Shamil finally removed the last obstacle to the spread of the imam's power, since the khans of Avaria were interested in ensuring that there was no single strong government 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 enormous forces of Russia. Less religious than Kazi Mullah, less hasty and reckless than Gamzat-bek, Shamil had military talent, great organizational abilities, endurance, perseverance, the ability to choose the time to strike and assistants to fulfill his plans. Distinguished by his strong and unyielding will, he knew how to inspire the mountaineers, knew how to excite them to self-sacrifice and obedience to his power, which was especially difficult and unusual for them.

Superior to his predecessors in intelligence, he, like them, did not understand the means to achieve his goals. Fear for the future forced the Avars to get closer to the Russians: the Avar foreman Khalil-bek came to Temir-Khan-Shura and asked Colonel Kluki von Klugenau to appoint a legal ruler to Avaria so that it would not fall into the hands of the murids. Klugenau moved towards Gotsatl. Shamil, having created blockages on the left bank of the Avar Koisu, intended to act against the Russians in the flank and rear, but Klugenau managed to cross the river, and Shamil had to retreat into Dagestan, where at that time hostile clashes occurred between contenders for power. Shamil's position in these first years was very difficult: a series of defeats suffered by the mountaineers shook their desire for ghazavat and faith in the triumph of Islam over the infidels; one after another, free societies expressed their submission and handed over hostages; Fearing ruin by the Russians, the mountain villages were reluctant to host murids. Throughout 1835, Shamil worked in secret, recruiting followers, fanatizing the crowd and pushing aside rivals or making peace with them. The Russians allowed him to strengthen, because they looked at him as an insignificant adventurer. Shamil spread the rumor that he was working only to restore the purity of Muslim law between the rebellious societies of Dagestan and expressed his readiness to submit to the Russian government with all the Khoisu-Bulin people if he was assigned special content. Thus putting the Russians to sleep, who at that time were especially busy building fortifications along the Black Sea coast in order to cut off the Circassians’ opportunity to communicate with the Turks, Shamil, with the assistance of Tashav-haji, tried to rouse the Chechens and assure them that most of the mountainous Dagestan had already accepted Sharia ( Arabic sharia literally - the proper path) and submitted to the imam. In April 1836, Shamil, with a party of 2 thousand people, with exhortations and threats forced the Khoisu-Bulin people 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 place of residence. Having occupied Irganay, Major General Reut was met with statements of submission from Untsukul, whose elders explained that they accepted Sharia only by yielding to the power of Shamil. Reut did not go to Untsukul after that 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. 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 Avar villages forced the governor of the Avar Khanate, Akhmet Khan Mehtulinsky, to offer the Russians to occupy the capital of the Khanate, Khunzakh. On May 28, 1837, General Feze entered Khunzakh and then moved to the village of Ashilte, near which, on the inaccessible cliff Akhulga, the family and all the property of the imam were located. 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 sent against him. Shamil tried to break through this barrier and on the night of June 7-8 attacked Buchkiev’s detachment, but after a hot battle he was forced to retreat. On June 9, Ashilta was taken by storm and burned after a desperate battle with 2 thousand selected fanatical murids, who defended every hut, 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 Ashiltip pogrom were repeated, when some did not ask and others did not give mercy. Shamil saw that the matter was lost and sent the envoy with an expression of humility. General Feze gave in to the deception 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 opportunity to take Shamil prisoner, General Feze dragged out the war for 22 years, and by concluding peace with him as an equal party, 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 mountaineers were shocked by the appearance of the Russians in the very heart of the most inaccessible part of Dagestan, and on the other, 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 time killed their energy. Soon 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 was able to recover from the blows inflicted on him and again win over some free societies to his side, acting on them either by persuasion or by force (end of 1838 and beginning 1839). Near Akhulgo, which was destroyed during the Avar expedition, he built New Akhulgo, where he moved his residence from Chirkat. In view of the possibility of uniting all the mountaineers of Dagestan under the rule of Shamil, the Russians during the winter of 1838-39 prepared troops, convoys and supplies for an expedition into the depths of 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 strong columns of all types of weapons had to be assigned to cover our transports between Temir-Khan-Shura, Khunzakh and Vnezapnaya. 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 Souk-Bulakh mountain, and, to divert attention, attacked on May 4 the submissive to Russia the village of Irganay and took its inhabitants to the mountains. At the same time, Tashav-haji, loyal to Shamil, captured the village of Miskit on the Aksai River and built a fortification near it in the Akhmet-Tala tract, from which he could at any time attack the Sunzha line or the Kumyk plane, and then strike in the rear when the troops will go deeper into the mountains when moving to Akhulgo. Adjutant General Grabbe understood this plan and, in a surprise attack, took and burned a fortification near Miskit, destroyed and burned a number of villages in Chechnya, stormed Sayasani, the stronghold of Tashav-haji, and on May 15 returned to Sudden. On May 21, he set out from there again.

Near the village of Burtunay, Shamil took a flank position on impregnable heights, but the Russian encircling movement forced him to go to Chirkat, and his militia dispersed in different directions. Working out a road along puzzling steep slopes, 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 battle for 12 hours, in which the highlanders and Russians suffered huge losses (the highlanders had up to 2 thousand people, we had 641 people), he left the village (June 1) and fled to New Akhulgo, where he locked himself up with his most devoted murids. Having occupied Chirkat (June 5), General Grabbe approached Akhulgo on June 12. The blockade of Akhulgo lasted for ten weeks; Shamil communicated freely with the surrounding communities, again occupied Chirkat and stood at our communications, bothering us from both 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 a ring of batteries near New Akhulgo. Anticipating the fall of his stronghold, Shamil tried to enter into negotiations with General Grabbe, demanding free passage 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 Akhulgos were taken, and most of the defenders died. Shamil himself managed to escape, was wounded on the way and fled through Salatau to Chechnya, where he settled in the Argun Gorge. The impression of this pogrom was very strong; many societies sent atamans and expressed their submission; former associates of Shamil, including Tashav-hajj, planned to usurp the imam’s power and recruited followers, but were mistaken in their calculations: like a phoenix, Shamil was reborn from the ashes and already in 1840 he 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 regaining his lost influence. Shamil intensified the dissatisfaction of the Chechens with a clever rumor that the Russians intended to turn the mountaineers into peasants and involve them in serving military service; The mountaineers were worried and remembered Shamil, contrasting the justice and wisdom of his decisions with the activities of the Russian bailiffs.

The Chechens invited him to lead the uprising; he agreed to this only after repeated requests, taking an oath from them and taking hostages from the best families. By his order, all of Lesser Chechnya and the villages near Sunzhenka began to arm themselves. Shamil constantly disturbed the Russian troops with raids by large and small parties, which moved 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 those who remained unprotected and submissive to Russia. society, subjugated them to his power and moved them to the mountains. By the end of May, Shamil had gathered a significant militia. Little Chechnya was completely deserted; its population abandoned their homes, rich lands and hid in the dense forests beyond the Sunzha and in the Black Mountains. General Galafeev moved (July 6, 1840) to Lesser Chechnya, had several heated clashes, by the way, on July 11 on the Valerika River (Lermontov took part in this battle, who described it in a wonderful poem), but despite huge losses, especially Valerike, the Chechens did not give up on Shamil and willingly joined his militia, which he now sent to northern Dagestan. Having won over the Gumbetians, Andians and Salatavites 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 sent home: he was waiting for a wider movement in Dagestan. Avoiding battle, he gathered a 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 battle near Gimry: he was defeated on his head and fled, Avaria and Koisubu were saved from plunder and devastation. Despite this defeat, Shamil's power was not shaken in Chechnya; All the tribes between Sunzha and Avar Koisu submitted to him, vowing not to enter into any relations with the Russians; Hadji Murat (1852), who betrayed Russia, went over to his side (November 1840) and agitated the Avalanche. Shamil settled in the village of Dargo (in Ichkeria, near the upper reaches of the Aksai River) and took a number of offensive actions. The cavalry party of 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, considered 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 mountaineers. Throughout the winter of 1840 - 1841, gangs of Circassians and Chechens broke through Sulak and penetrated even to Tarki, stealing cattle and plundering near Termit-Khan-Shura itself, communication with the line became possible only with a strong convoy. Shamil ravaged the villages that tried to resist his power, took his wives and children with him to the mountains and forced the Chechens to marry their daughters to Lezgins, and vice versa, in order to connect these tribes with each other. It was especially important for Shamil to acquire such employees as Hadji Murat, who attracted Avaria to him, Kibit Magoma in southern Dagestan, very influential among the mountaineers, a fanatic, brave and capable self-taught engineer, and Jemaya ed-Din, an outstanding preacher. By April 1841, Shamil commanded almost all the tribes of mountainous Dagestan, except Koisubu. Knowing how important Cherkey’s occupation was for the Russians, he fortified all the routes there with rubble and defended them himself with extreme tenacity, but after the Russians outflanked them on both flanks, he retreated deep into Dagestan. On May 15, Cherkey surrendered to General Feza. Seeing that the Russians were busy building fortifications and left him alone, Shamil decided to take possession of Andalal, with the impregnable Gunib, where he expected to set up his residence if the Russians drove him out of Dargo. Andalal was also important because its inhabitants made gunpowder. In September 1841, the Andalians entered into relations with the imam; Only a few small villages remained in government hands. At the beginning of winter, Shamil flooded Dagestan with his gangs and cut off communications with the conquered societies and with Russian fortifications. General Kluki von Klugenau asked the corps commander to send reinforcements, but the latter, hoping that Shamil would cease his activities in the winter, postponed this matter until spring. Meanwhile, Shamil was not at all inactive, but was intensively preparing for 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 Feze took Gergebil by storm. On March 2, he occupied Chokh without a fight and arrived in Khunzakh on March 7. At the end of May 1842, Shamil invaded Kazikumukh with 15 thousand militia, but, defeated on June 2 at Kyulyuli 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 1,800 people out of action, General Grabbe returned back without doing anything. This failure unusually raised the spirit of the mountaineers. 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 the construction of a fortification at Seral-Yurt (1842), and the construction of a fortification on the Assa River marked the beginning of the forward Chechen line.

Shamil spent the entire spring and summer of 1843 organizing his army; When the mountaineers removed the grain, he went on the offensive. On August 27, 1843, having made a journey of 70 versts, Shamil unexpectedly appeared in front of the Untsukul fortification, with 10 thousand people; Lieutenant Colonel Veselitsky, with 500 people, went to help the fortification, but, surrounded by the enemy, he died with the entire detachment; On August 31, Untsukul was taken, destroyed to the ground, many of its inhabitants were executed; The remaining 2 officers and 58 soldiers were taken prisoner from the Russian garrison. Then Shamil turned against Avaria, where General Klucki von Klugenau settled in Khunzakh. As soon as Shamil entered the Avaria, one village after another began to surrender to him; despite the desperate defense of our garrisons, he managed to take the Belakhani fortification (September 3), the Maksokh tower (September 5), the Tsatany fortification (September 6 - 8), Akhalchi and Gotsatl; Seeing this, the accident was abandoned from Russia and the inhabitants of Khunzakh were kept from treason 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 housed in small and poorly constructed fortifications. Shamil was in no hurry to attack Khunzakh, fearing that one failure would ruin what he had gained through victories. Throughout this campaign, Shamil showed the talent of an outstanding commander. Leading crowds of mountaineers who were still unfamiliar with discipline, self-willed and easily discouraged at the slightest failure, he managed in a short time to subjugate them to his will and instill a readiness to undertake the most difficult undertakings. After an unsuccessful attack on the fortified village of Andreevka, Shamil turned his attention to Gergebil, which was poorly fortified, and yet was of great importance, protecting access from northern to southern Dagestan, and to the Burunduk-kale tower, occupied by only a few soldiers, while it protected message Accidents with the plane. On October 28, 1843, crowds of mountaineers, numbering up to 10 thousand, surrounded Gergebil, whose garrison consisted of 306 people from the Tiflis regiment, under the command of Major Shaganov; after a desperate defense, the fortress was taken, almost the entire garrison was killed, only a few were captured (November 8). The fall of Gergebil was a signal for the uprising of the Koisu-Bulin villages along the right bank of the Avar Koisu, as a result of which Russian troops cleared the Avaria. Temir-Khan-Shura was now completely isolated; not daring to attack her, Shamil decided to starve her to death and attacked the Nizovoye fortification, where there was a warehouse of food supplies. Despite the desperate attacks of 6,000 highlanders, the garrison withstood all their attacks and was liberated by General Freigat, who burned the supplies, riveted the cannons and took the garrison to Kazi-Yurt (November 17, 1843). The hostile mood of the population forced the Russians to clear the Miatli blockhouse, then Khunzakh, the garrison of which, under the command of Passek, moved to Zirani, where it was besieged by the mountaineers. General Gurko moved to help Passek and on December 17 rescued him from the siege.

By the end of 1843, Shamil was the complete master of Dagestan and Chechnya; we had to begin the task of conquering them from the very beginning. Having started organizing the lands under his control, Shamil divided Chechnya into 8 divisions and then into thousands, five hundred, hundreds and tens. The duties of the naibs were to give orders for the invasion of small parties into our borders and to monitor all movements of Russian troops. Significant reinforcements received by the Russians in 1844 gave them the opportunity to take and ravage Cherkey and push Shamil from an impregnable position at Burtunay (June 1844). On August 22, the Russians began construction on the Argun River of the Vozdvizhensky fortification, the future center of the Chechen line; The mountaineers tried in vain to prevent the construction of the fortress, lost heart and stopped showing up. Daniel Bek, Sultan of Elisu, went over to Shamil’s side at this time, but General Schwartz took over the Elisu Sultanate, and the Sultan’s betrayal did not bring Shamil the benefit he expected. Shamil's power was still very strong in Dagestan, especially in the southern and left banks of the Sulak and Avar Koisu. He understood that his main support was the lower class of the people, and therefore tried by all means to tie them 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 instrument in his hands and strictly monitored the execution of his instructions. In February 1845, Shamil occupied the trading village of Chokh and forced neighboring villages to submit.

Emperor Nicholas I ordered the new governor, Count Vorontsov, to take Shamil's residence, Dargo, although all the authoritative Caucasian military generals rebelled against this as a useless expedition. The expedition, undertaken on May 31, 1845, occupied Dargo, abandoned and burned by Shamil, and returned on July 20, having lost 3,631 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 damaged, dug up and blocked by dozens of rubble and debris; all the villages had to be taken by storm or they were left destroyed and burned. The Russians took away from the Dargin expedition the conviction that the path to dominion in Dagestan goes through Chechnya and that they need to act not by raids, but by cutting roads in the forests, founding fortresses and populating occupied places with Russian settlers. This was started in the same 1845. In order to divert the government's attention from the events in Dagestan, Shamil harassed the Russians at various points along the Lezgin Line; but the development and strengthening of the Military-Akhtyn road here, too, gradually limited the field of his actions, bringing the Samur detachment closer to the Lezgin one. With a view to recapturing 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, defeated him completely: he fled, abandoning many badges, one cannon and 21 charging boxes. With the onset of spring 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 besieged the village of Salta, 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 huge losses (August 7). Shamil tried many times to help Saltam, but was unsuccessful; On September 14, the fortress was taken by the Russians. By constructing fortified headquarters in Chiro-Yurt, Ishkarty and Deshlagor, which guarded the plain between the Sulak River, the Caspian Sea and Derbent, and by constructing fortifications at Khojal-Makhi and Tsudahar, which laid the foundation for the line along Kazikumykh-Kois, the Russians greatly constrained Shamil’s movements, making it difficult him a breakthrough to the plain and blocking the main passages to middle Dagestan. Added to this was the discontent of the people, who, starving, grumbled that due to the constant war it was impossible to sow the fields and prepare food for their families for the winter; The naibs quarreled among themselves, accused each other and even reached the point of denunciation. In January 1848, Shamil gathered naibs, chief elders and clergy 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 was resigning from the title of imam. The meeting 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 also oblige themselves to his son, to whom, after the death of his father, the title of imam should pass.

On July 16, 1848, Gergebil was captured by the Russians. Shamil, for his part, attacked the fortification of Akhta, defended by only 400 people under the command of Colonel Roth, and the murids, inspired by the personal presence of the imam, numbered at least 12 thousand. The garrison defended itself heroically and was saved by the arrival of Prince Argutinsky, who defeated Shamil’s gathering near the village of Meskindzhi on the banks of the Samura River. The Lezgin line was raised to the southern spurs of the Caucasus, by which the Russians took away pastures from the mountaineers 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 rebellious to us, cutting deep into the mountains with the forward Chechen line, which so far consisted only of the fortifications of Vozdvizhensky and Achtoevsky, with a gap of 42 versts between them. At the end of 1847 and the beginning of 1848, in the middle of Lesser 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. With this we took away from the Chechens a rich plain, the breadbasket of the country. The population lost heart; some submitted to us and moved closer to our fortifications, others went further into the depths of the mountains. From the Kumyk plane, the Russians cordoned off Dagestan with two parallel lines of fortifications. The winter of 1858-49 passed calmly. In April 1849, Hadji Murat launched an unsuccessful attack on Temir-Khan-Shura. In June, Russian troops approached Chokh and, finding it well fortified, waged a 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 Polyana, the main breadbasket of Greater Chechnya and partly of Nagorno-Dagestan; to provide another route there, a road was cut from the Kurinsky fortification through the Kachkalykovsky ridge to the descent into the Michika valley. During four summer expeditions, Little Chechnya was completely covered by us. The Chechens were driven to despair, were indignant at Shamil, did not hide their desire to free themselves from his power, and in 1850, among several thousand, moved to our borders. The attempts of Shamil and his naibs to penetrate into our borders were unsuccessful: they ended in the retreat of the highlanders or even their complete defeat (the affairs of Major General Sleptsov at Tsoki-Yurt and Datykh, Colonel Maydel and Baklanov on the Michika River and in the land of the Aukhavits, Colonel Kishinsky on Kuteshin Heights, etc.). In 1851, the policy of ousting the rebellious 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 Bassy River, into a treeless plain. In January and February 1852, Prince Baryatinsky, in front of Shamil’s eyes, made a series of desperate expeditions into the depths of Chechnya. Shamil pulled all his forces into 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 enormous superiority in forces, he 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 living near Grozny for their departure to the Russians; but his plans were discovered, he was surrounded on all sides, and of the 2,000 people of his militia, many fell near Grozny, and others drowned in Sunzha (September 17, 1852). Shamil’s actions in Dagestan over the years consisted of sending out parties that attacked our troops and the mountaineers who were submissive to us, but did not have much success. The hopelessness of the struggle was reflected in numerous relocations to our borders and even the betrayal of the naibs, including Hadji Murad.

A big blow for Shamil in 1853 was the capture by the Russians of the Michika river valley and its tributary Gonsoli, in which lived a very large and devoted Chechen population, feeding not only themselves, but also Dagestan with their bread. He gathered about 8 thousand cavalry and about 12 thousand infantry for the defense of this corner; all the mountains were fortified with countless rubble, skillfully placed and folded, all possible descents and ascents were spoiled to the point of complete unsuitability 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 wake 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 did not now go over to his side. On August 10, 1853, he set out from Vedeno, along the way he gathered a militia of 15 thousand people and on August 25 occupied the village of Starye Zagatala, but, defeated by Prince Orbeliani, who had only about 2 thousand troops, he went into the mountains. Despite this failure, the population of the Caucasus, electrified by the mullahs, was ready to rise up against the Russians; but for some reason the imam delayed the whole winter and spring and only at the end of June 1854 he descended to Kakheti. Repelled from the village of Shildy, he captured the family of General Chavchavadze in Tsinondali and left, plundering 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 completely defeated and fled to the nearest forests. During 1855 and 1856, Shamil was little active, and Russia was not able to do anything decisive, since 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 energetically 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 place; The Chechens stopped obeying the naibs and moved closer to us.

On the Bassa River in March 1857, the Shali fortification was erected, extended almost to the foot of the Black Mountains, the last refuge of the rebellious Chechens, and opening the shortest route to Dagestan. General Evdokimov penetrated into the Argen valley, cut down the forests here, burned the villages, built defensive towers and the Argun fortification and brought a clearing to the top of Dargin-Duk, from which it is not far from Shamil’s residence, Vedena. Many villages submitted to the Russians. In order to keep at least part of Chechnya in his obedience, Shamil cordoned off the villages remaining 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 Shatoy and occupied the entire Shatoy plain; another detachment penetrated into 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, burdened by Shamil's despotism, asked for help from the Russians, expelled the murids and overthrew the authorities installed by Shamil. The fall of Shatoi struck Shamil so much that he, having a mass of troops under arms, hastily retired to Vedeno. The agony of Shamil's power began at the end of 1858. Having allowed the Russians to establish themselves unhindered on Chanty-Argun, he concentrated large forces along another source of the Argun, Sharo-Argun, and demanded the complete arming of the Chechens and Dagestanis. His son Kazi-Maghoma occupied the gorge of the Bassy River, but was driven out from there in November 1858. Aul Tauzen, strongly fortified, was outflanked by us.

Russian troops did not march, 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 gathered about 6 - 7 thousand people. Russian troops approached Veden on February 8, climbing mountains and descending them through liquid and sticky mud, covering 1/2 a mile per hour, with terrible effort. Beloved Naib Shamil Talgik came over to our side; residents of nearby villages refused to obey the imam, so he entrusted the protection of Veden to the Tavlinians, 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 carry out this order and came to our camp with complaints against Shamil, with expressions of submission and asking for protection. General Evdokimov fulfilled their wish and sent a detachment of Count Nostits to the Hulhulau River to protect those moving to 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 Veden in a series of trenches, General Evdokimov took it by storm on April 1, 1859 and destroyed it to the ground. A whole number of societies fell away from Shamil and came over to our side. Shamil, however, still did not lose hope and, appearing in Ichichal, gathered a new militia. Our main detachment moved forward freely, bypassing enemy fortifications and positions, which as a result were abandoned by the enemy without a fight; the villages we encountered along the way also submitted to us without a fight; It was ordered to treat the inhabitants everywhere peacefully, which all the mountaineers soon learned about and began to abandon Shamil even more willingly, who retired to Andalyalo and fortified himself on Mount Gunib. On July 22, Baron Wrangel’s detachment appeared on the banks of the Avar Koisu, after which the Avars and other tribes expressed submission 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, Dzhemal-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 peace and order among the societies that had submitted to the Russians.

The conciliatory mood swept Dagestan to such an extent that in mid-August the commander-in-chief traveled unhindered through the entire Avaria, accompanied only by Avars and Khoisubulins, all the way to Gunib. Our troops surrounded Gunib on all sides; Shamil locked himself there with a small detachment (400 people, including the village residents). Baron Wrangel, on behalf of the commander-in-chief, invited Shamil to submit to the Emperor, who would allow him free travel to Mecca, with the obligation to choose it as his permanent residence; Shamil rejected this offer. On August 25, the Absheronians climbed the steep slopes of Gunib, cut down the murids who were desperately defending the rubble and approached the aul itself (8 miles from the place where they climbed the mountain), where by this time other troops had gathered. 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, he was given Kaluga to live, where he stayed until 1870, with a short stay at the end of this time in Kyiv; in 1870 he was released to live in Mecca, where he died in March 1871. Having united under his rule all the societies and tribes of Chechnya and Dagestan, 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 the 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; He considered the basis of the life of the mountaineers, both private and public, to be Sharia, that is, that part of the Koran where civil and criminal regulations are set out. As a result of this, power had 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 all the wild and free societies of Dagestan with Islam, like cement, Shamil gave control into the hands of the spiritual and with their help established unified and unlimited power in these once free countries, and to make it easier for them to bear his yoke, he pointed to two great goals, which the mountaineers, by obeying him, can achieve: salvation of the soul and preservation of independence from the Russians. The time of Shamil was called by the mountaineers the time of Sharia, his fall - the fall of Sharia, since immediately after that ancient institutions, ancient elected authorities and the resolution of affairs according to custom, i.e. according to adat, were revived everywhere. The entire country subordinate to Shamil was divided into districts, each of which was under the control of a naib, who had military-administrative power. For the court, each naib had a mufti who appointed qadis. Naibs were prohibited from deciding Sharia matters under the jurisdiction of the mufti or qadis. Every four naibs were first subordinated 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 having been tested in courage and devotion to the holy war (gazavat), were entrusted with more important tasks.

The number of murids was uncertain, but 120 of them, under the command of a yuzbashi (centurion), constituted Shamil’s honorary guard, were with him constantly and accompanied him on all his trips. Officials were obliged to obey the imam without question; for disobedience and misconduct they were reprimanded, demoted, arrested and punished with lashes, from which the mudirs and naibs were spared. Everyone capable of bearing arms was required to perform military service; they were divided into tens and hundreds, who were under the command of tens and sots, subordinate in turn to naibs. In the last decade of his activity, Shamil created regiments of 1000 people, divided into 2 five-hundred, 10 hundred and 100 detachments of 10 people, with corresponding commanders. Some villages, as a form of atonement, were freed from military service, supplying sulfur, saltpeter, salt, etc. The largest army of Shamil did not exceed 60 thousand people. From 1842 - 43, Shamil started artillery, partly from guns 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 usable. Gunpowder was produced in Untsukul, Ganib and Vedene. Teachers of the mountaineers in artillery, engineering and combat were often fugitive soldiers, whom Shamil caressed and gave gifts. Shamil's state treasury was made up of random and permanent income: the first was delivered by robbery, the second consisted of zekyat - the collection of a tenth of the income from bread, sheep and money established by Sharia, and kharaj - taxes from mountain pastures and from some villages that paid the same tax to the khans. The exact figure of the imam's income is unknown.

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

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal state budget educational

institution of higher professional education

"Ufa State Oil

Technical University"

Branch of the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education USPTU in Salavat

"Caucasian War 1817-1864"

Russian history

Executor

student gr. BTPzs-11-21P. S. Ivanov

Supervisor

Art. teacher S. N. Didenko

Salavat 2011

1. Historiographical overview

Terminological dictionary

Caucasian War 1817 - 1864

1 Causes of the war

2 Progress of hostilities

4 Results and consequences of the war

1.Historiographical review

In the historical development of Russia, territorial expansion has always played a major role. The annexation of the Caucasus in this case occupies an important place in the formation of the Russian multinational state.

The establishment of Russian power in the North Caucasus region was accompanied by a long military confrontation with the local population, which went down in history as the Caucasian War of 1817 - 1864.

According to the chronological principle, all domestic historiography about the Caucasian War of 1817 - 1864 can be divided into three periods: pre-Soviet, Soviet and modern.

In the pre-Soviet period, the history of the Caucasian War of 1817 - 1864 was, as a rule, dealt with by military historians who participated in hostilities in the Caucasus. Among them, N.F. should be noted. Dubrovina, A.L. Zisserman, V.A. Potto, D.I. Romanovsky, R.A. Fadeeva, S.S. Esadze. They sought to reveal the causes and factors of the outbreak of the war in the Caucasus, to identify key points in this historical process. Various archival materials were also put into circulation and the factual side of the issue was highlighted.

The determining factor for a certain internal unity of pre-revolutionary Russian historiography is the so-called “imperial tradition”. At the heart of this tradition is the assertion that Russia was brought to the Caucasus by geopolitical necessity, and increased attention to the civilizing mission of the empire in this region. The war itself was seen as Russia’s struggle against Islamism and Muslim fanaticism that had established itself in the Caucasus. Accordingly, there was a certain justification for the conquest of the Caucasus, and the historical significance of this process was recognized.

At the same time, pre-revolutionary researchers raised in their works the problem of assessing this historical event by contemporaries. They paid main attention to the views of government officials and representatives of the military command in the Caucasus. Thus, historian V.A. Potto examined in some detail the activities of General A.P. Ermolov, showed his position on the issue of annexation of the North Caucasus. However, V.A. Potto, recognizing the merits of A.P. Ermolov in the Caucasus, did not show the consequences of his harsh actions against the local population and exaggerated the incompetence of his successors, in particular I.F. Paskevich, on the issue of conquering the Caucasus.

Among the works of pre-revolutionary researchers, the work of A.L. deserves great attention. Zisserman's "Field Marshal Prince Alexander Ivanovich Baryatinsky", which still remains the only full-fledged biography dedicated to one of the most prominent military leaders in the Caucasus. The historian paid attention to the assessment of the final period of the Caucasian War (II half of 1850 - early 1860s) by Russian state and military leaders, publishing their correspondence on Caucasian affairs as appendices in his monograph.

Among the works touching on the assessment of the Caucasian War by contemporaries, one can note the work of N.K. Schilder "Emperor Nicholas the First, his life and reign." In his book, he published the diary of A.Kh. as an appendix. Benckendorf, which records the memories of Emperor Nicholas I about his trip to the Caucasus in 1837. Here, Nicholas I assessed the actions of Russia during the war with the highlanders, which to a certain extent reveals his position on the issue of annexing the North Caucasus.

In the works of historians of the pre-Soviet period, attempts were made to show the points of view of contemporaries on the methods of conquering the Caucasus. For example, in the work of D.I. Romanovsky's notes were published as appendices by Admiral N.S. Mordvinov and General A.A. Velyaminov about methods of conquering the Caucasus. But it is worth noting that pre-revolutionary historians did not devote special research to the views of the participants in the events on the methods of integrating the Caucasus into the national structure of the Russian Empire. The priority task was to show directly the history of the Caucasian War. The same historians who turned to the assessment of this historical event by contemporaries concerned themselves mainly with the views of statesmen and military leaders of the Russian Empire, and only at a certain time stage of the war.

The formation of Soviet historiography of the Caucasian War was greatly influenced by statements about it by revolutionary democrats, for whom the conquest of the Caucasus was not so much a scientific as a political, ideological and moral problem. The role and authority of N.G. Chernyshevsky, N.A. Dobrolyubova, A.I. Herzen in the Russian social movement was not allowed to ignore their position. In this case, it is worth noting the work of V.G. Gadzhiev and A.M. Pickman, devoted to the consideration of the views on the problem of the Caucasian War by A.I. Herzen, N.A. Dobrolyubova, N.G. Chernyshevsky. The advantage of this work is that the authors were able to identify their assessments of the Caucasian War from the works of representatives of the democratic direction of socio-political thought in Russia. A certain drawback of the work is the desire to show the condemnation of the policies of tsarism in the Caucasus by the revolutionary democrats, hence a certain ideological stretch. If, A.I. Herzen really condemned the war in the Caucasus, then N.A. Dobrolyubov considered it expedient to annex the North Caucasus and advocated its integration into the national structure of the Russian Empire. But it can be noted that the work of V.G. Gadzhiev and A.M. Pickman is still of scientific interest in considering the problem of assessing the Caucasian War of 1817 - 1864 by representatives of revolutionary democratic thought, since it remains the only study of its kind in Russian historiography.

Soviet historiography also published works devoted to the views of representatives of Russian literature on the war between Russia and the mountaineers M.Yu. Lermontova, L.N. Tolstoy. These works were mainly an attempt to show that Russian writers condemned the war and sympathized with the mountaineers of the Caucasus, who were waging an unequal struggle against tsarism. For example, V.G. Gadzhiev only mentioned that P. Pestel could not understand the relationship between Russia and the mountain peoples, which explains his extremely harsh judgments about the mountain people of the Caucasus.

The gap in Soviet historiography was that the problem of annexing the Caucasus was practically not considered by state and military leaders of the Russian Empire, with the exception of a few personalities - A.P. Ermolova, N.N. Raevsky, D.A. Milyutina. Soviet works on the Caucasian War only indicated that the government's position was subordinated to the desire for conquest. At the same time, no analysis of the views of government officials was carried out. True, some works noted that among the Caucasian administration there were thoughts for the peaceful conquest of the Caucasus. So, for example, in the work of V.K. Gardanov quoted the statement of Prince M.S. Vorontsov about the need to establish peaceful and trade relations with the mountaineers. But as already noted, Soviet historiography does not provide a sufficiently complete analysis of the views of government and military leaders on the problem of the Caucasian War.

Despite the above, until the beginning of the 1980s, the study of the Caucasian War of 1817 - 1864 was in a state of deep crisis. A dogmatic approach to the interpretation of historical sources predetermined the further development of this issue: the process of the region’s entry into the Russian Empire turned out to be one of the least studied historical phenomena. As has already been noted, ideological restrictions affected primarily, and foreign researchers, naturally, did not have sufficient access to the necessary sources.

The Caucasian War turned out to be so complex and intractable for official historiography that for half a century of research, not even a factual history of this phenomenon has appeared, where the most important military events, the most influential figures, and so on would be presented in chronological order. Historians, having fallen under the ideological control of the party, were forced to develop the concept of the Caucasian War in relation to the class approach.

The establishment of a class-party approach to the study of history for the Caucasian War resulted in a shuffling of “anti-colonial” and “anti-feudal” accents in the 1930-1970s. The militant atheism of the 1920s-1930s had a noticeable influence on the historiography of the Caucasian War: historians had to look for a way to assess the liberation movement of the highlanders under the leadership of Shamil, in which the “anti-feudal” and “anti-colonial” components obscured the “reactionary-religious”. The result was a thesis about the reactionary essence of muridism, softened by an indication of its role in mobilizing the masses to fight the oppressors.

The term “tsarist autocracy” was introduced into scientific circulation, which united everyone who was associated with the colonial policy of tsarist Russia. As a result, the “depersonalization of the Caucasian War” was characteristic. This trend was observed until the second half of the 1950s. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 and the debunking of Stalin’s personality cult, Soviet historians were called upon to get rid of the dogmatism of the Stalin era. At the past scientific sessions of Soviet Caucasian historians in 1956 in Makhachkala and Moscow, the concept of the Caucasian War as a movement of the mountaineers of the North Caucasus against the colonialist policy of tsarism and the oppression of local feudal lords was finally accepted in Soviet historiography.8 At the same time, the class approach, of course, remained decisive in the consideration historical events.

The process of “incorporating” Shamil and the resistance of the mountaineers into the overall picture of the liberation movement in Russia turned out to be very difficult. In the 1930s, Imam Shamil, a fighter against the colonial policies of tsarism, was included in the list of national heroes of the liberation movement along with S. Razin, E. Pugachev, S. Yulaev. After the Great Patriotic War, Shamil’s status looked strange against the backdrop of the deportation of Chechens, Ingush and Karachais, and he was gradually relegated to “second-class” historical figures.

When, in the early 1950s, the solemn march of the thesis about the “progressive significance” of the annexation of national borderlands began through the pages of scientific literature, Shamil was transferred to the category of enemies of both his own and the Russian people. The Cold War environment contributed to the transformation of the imam into a religious fanatic, a British, Iranian and Turkish mercenary. It came to the point that the thesis about the agent nature of the Caucasian War appeared (according to some authors, it began due to the machinations of “agents” of world and, first of all, British imperialism, as well as under the influence of supporters of pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism).

In 1956-1957 In the course of scientific discussions about the nature of the Caucasian War, two groups of historians emerged quite clearly. The first included those who considered the activities of Imam Shamil to be progressive, and the war itself to be anti-colonial, an integral part of the fight against autocracy. The second group was formed by scientists who called Shamil’s movement a reactionary phenomenon. The discussions themselves turned out to be unproductive, typical of the era of the “Khrushchev Thaw”, when it was already possible to raise questions, but it was not yet possible to offer answers. A well-known compromise was reached on the basis of Lenin’s thesis about “two Russias” - one represented by tsarism and oppressors of all kinds, and the other, represented by advanced, progressive figures of science, culture and the liberation movement. The first was the source of oppression and enslavement of non-Russian peoples, the second brought them enlightenment, economic and cultural uplift.

One of the striking illustrations of the situation in the field of studying the Caucasian War that existed during the Soviet period is the fate of the monograph by N.I. Pokrovsky "Caucasian Wars and Shamil's Imamate". This book, written at the highest professional level and which has not lost its significance to this day, lay successively in three publishing houses from 1934 to 1950, and was published only in 2000. Publication seemed dangerous to publishing house employees - ideological attitudes changed dramatically, and participation in a publication that contained “erroneous views” could end tragically. Despite the real danger of repression and the need to carry out work in the appropriate methodological and ideological direction, the author was able to demonstrate the complexity of such a historical phenomenon as the Caucasian War. He considered the campaigns of the late 16th - early 17th centuries to be his starting point. and, recognizing the great importance of the military-strategic factor in the development of events, he spoke cautiously about the economic component of Russian expansion. N.I. Pokrovsky did not avoid mentioning the raids of the mountaineers, the cruelty shown by both sides, and even decided to show that a number of the actions of the mountaineers cannot be clearly defined as anti-colonial or anti-feudal. An extremely difficult task was to analyze the struggle between supporters of Sharia - the code of Muslim law - and adats - codes of local customary law, since a purely scientific text could be interpreted as propaganda of religious prejudices or remnants.

In the mid-1980s, the liberation of historians from ideological constraints seemed to create the conditions for a serious, balanced, academic approach to the problem. However, due to the aggravation of the situation in the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, the history of the inclusion of these regions into the Russian Empire has become painfully relevant. A superficial interpretation of the thesis about the significance of historical lessons is transformed into attempts to use the results of research in political struggle. In this case, the parties resort to an openly biased interpretation of evidence and an arbitrary selection of the latter. Incorrect “transfers” of ideological, religious and political structures from the past to the present and vice versa are allowed. For example, both from a formational point of view and from the position of Eurocentrism, the Caucasian peoples were at a lower stage of social development, and this was an important justification for their conquest in the 19th century. However, in modern literature there are absurd accusations of historians of “justifying colonialism” if they appropriately explained the actions of the tsarist government. There has been a dangerous tendency to hush up tragic episodes and various “sensitive” topics. One of these topics is the raiding component of the life of many ethnic groups inhabiting the Caucasus, the other is the cruelty of both sides in waging war.

In general, there is a dangerous growth in “nationally colored” approaches to studying the history of the Caucasian War, the revival of non-scientific methods, the translation of scientific controversy into a moral and ethical channel, followed by an unconstructive “search for the culprit.”

The history of the Caucasian War was greatly deformed during the Soviet period, since the study of this phenomenon within the framework of formational teaching was unproductive. In 1983 M.M. Bliev published an article in the journal History of the USSR, which was the first attempt to break out of the framework of the “anti-colonial-anti-feudal concept.” It was published in a situation when ideological restrictions were still unshakable, and the delicacy of the topic required maximum caution in formulation and emphasized correctness in relation to those whose point of view the author disputed. First of all, M.M. Bliev expressed his disagreement with the dominant thesis in Russian historical literature that the Caucasian War was of a national liberation, anti-colonial character. He focused attention on the powerful military expansion of the mountaineers of the North Caucasus in relation to their neighbors, on the fact that the capture of prisoners and booty, extortion of tribute became commonplace in relations between mountain tribes and inhabitants of the plains. The researcher expressed doubts about the validity of the traditional chronological framework of the war, putting forward the thesis about the intersection of two expansionist lines - the imperial Russian and the raiding mountaineers.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, a new stage can be noted in Russian historiography in considering the issues of the Caucasian War of 1817 - 1864. The modern period is marked by pluralism of scientific positions and the absence of ideological pressure. In this regard, historians have the opportunity to write more objective scientific works on the history of the annexation of the North Caucasus and conduct independent historical analysis. Most modern domestic researchers strive to find a “golden mean” and, moving away from ideological and political emotions, engage in purely scientific research on Caucasian issues. If we ignore frankly opportunistic works, the range of studies on this problem that have been published recently will be quite small. It consists of monographs by N.I. Pokrovsky, M.M. Blieva, V.V. Degoeva, N.S. Kinyapina, Ya.A. Gordina. In addition, a whole group of young scientists is currently successfully working on this topic, as evidenced by the materials of conferences, round tables, etc.

Article by V.V. Degoev’s “The Problem of the Caucasian War of the 19th Century: Historiographical Results” became a kind of summing up of the results of the study of the Caucasian War by the beginning of the 21st century. The author clearly identified the main flaw in most previous studies on the history of the Caucasus in the 19th century: “theoretical schemes and moral assessments prevailed over the system of evidence.” A significant part of the article is a demonstration of how domestic historians, who were in the grip of official methodology, who were constantly afraid that with the next change in the “course” they would find themselves under the gun of rabid and not at all scientific criticism, entailing tragic consequences for them, tried to construct something acceptable from the point of view of “the only true teaching” and from the point of view of professionalism. The thesis about refusing to recognize the anti-colonial and anti-feudal element as dominant in the Caucasian War looks very productive. The historian’s theses about the influence of geopolitical and natural-climatic factors on the development of events look important and very productive (the lot of all mountain tribes was constant war with each other, since geographical conditions and the peculiarities of the development of ethnic groups prevented their unification into a powerful proto-state.

From the east and west they were cut off from the rest of the world by the sea, in the south and north there were hostile ecosystems (steppe and arid highlands), as well as powerful states (Russia, Turkey, Persia), which turned the Caucasus into a zone of their rivalry).

In 2001, a collection of articles by V.V. was published. Degoev “The Great Game in the Caucasus: History and Modernity”, in three sections of which (“History”, “Historiography”, “Historical and Political Journalism”) the results of many years of scientific research and reflection of this scientist are presented. The article “Stepchildren of Glory: a man with a gun in the everyday life of the Caucasian War” is devoted to the everyday life of the long-term confrontation between the highlanders and the Russian army. What makes this work particularly valuable is that it is perhaps the first attempt in Russian historiography to analyze the life of a “colonial” type of war. The popular style of presentation of the material did not deprive another book by V.V. of scientific significance. Degoev "Imam Shamil: prophet, ruler, warrior."

A notable phenomenon in the historiography of the Caucasian War in recent years was the publication of the book by Ya.A. Gordin “Caucasus, Land and Blood”, which shows how a certain imperial set of ideas was implemented in practice, how these imperial ideas were transformed in accordance with the situation and external “challenges”.

Summarizing the analysis of scientific works on this topic, in general we can say that domestic historiography is represented by a small number of works on this issue, and ideology has had a strong influence on the study of the issue.

royal war imam shamil

2.Terminological dictionary

Dubrovin Nikolai Fedorovich (1837 - 1904) - academician, military historian.

Zisserman Arnold Lvovich (1824 - 1897) - colonel, participant in the Caucasian War, military historian and writer.

Potto Vasily Alexandrovich (1836<#"justify">3.Caucasian War 1817 - 1864

3.1 Causes of the war

“Caucasian War 1817 - 1864.” - military actions related to the annexation of Chechnya, Mountainous Dagestan and the North-West Caucasus by Tsarist Russia.”

The Caucasian War is a collective concept. This armed conflict lacks internal unity, and for its productive study, it is advisable to divide the Caucasian War into a number of fairly separate parts, separated from the general flow of events on the basis of the most important component of a given specific episode (group of episodes) of military operations.

The resistance of free societies, the military activity of the local elite and the activities of Imam Shamil in Dagestan are three different “wars”. Thus, this historical phenomenon is devoid of internal unity and acquired modern shape solely due to its territorial localization.

An unbiased analysis of the chronicle of hostilities in this region allows us to consider the Persian campaign of Peter the Great in 1722-1723 as the beginning of the conquest of the Caucasus, and the suppression of the uprising in Chechnya and Dagestan in 1877 as its end. Earlier military enterprises in Russia in the 16th - early 18th centuries. can be attributed to the prehistory of events.

The main goal of the Russian Empire was not just to establish itself in this region, but to subordinate the peoples of the Caucasus to its influence.

The immediate impetus that provoked the war was the manifesto of Alexander I on the annexation of Kartli and Kakheti to Russia (1800-1801). The reaction of the states neighboring Georgia (Persia and Turkey) was not long in coming - a long-term war. Thus, in the 19th century. In the Caucasus, the political interests of several countries converged: Persia, Turkey, Russia and England.

Therefore, the speedy conquest of the Caucasus was considered an urgent task of the Russian Empire, but it turned into problems for more than one Russian emperor.

3.2. Progress of hostilities

To illuminate the course of the war, it would be advisable to highlight several stages:

· Ermolovsky period (1816-1827),

· The beginning of gazavat (1827-1835),

· Formation and functioning of the Imamate (1835-1859) Shamil,

· End of the war: the conquest of Circassia (1859-1864).

As already noted, after the transfer of Georgia (1801 - 1810) and Azerbaijan (1803 - 1813) to Russian citizenship, the annexation of the lands separating Transcaucasia from Russia and the establishment of control over the main communications was considered by the Russian government as the most important military-political task . However, the mountaineers did not agree with this state of events. The main opponents of the Russian troops were the Adyghes of the Black Sea coast and the Kuban region in the west, and the highlanders in the east, united in the military-theocratic Islamic state of the Imamate of Chechnya and Dagestan, headed by Shamil. At the first stage, the Caucasian War coincided with Russian wars against Persia and Turkey, and therefore Russia was forced to conduct military operations against the highlanders with limited forces.

The reason for the war was the appearance of General Alexei Petrovich Ermolov in the Caucasus. He was appointed in 1816 commander-in-chief of the Russian troops in Georgia and on the Caucasian line. Ermolov, a European-educated man, a hero of the Patriotic War, carried out a lot of preparatory work in 1816-1817 and in 1818 suggested that Alexander I complete his policy program in the Caucasus. Ermolov set the task of changing the Caucasus, putting an end to the raiding system in the Caucasus, with what is called “predation.” He convinced Alexander I of the need to pacify the highlanders solely by force of arms. Soon the general moved from individual punitive expeditions to a systematic advance deep into Chechnya and Mountainous Dagestan by surrounding mountainous areas with a continuous ring of fortifications, cutting clearings in difficult forests, building roads and destroying “rebellious” villages.

His activities on the Caucasian line in 1817 - 1818. the general started from Chechnya, moving the left flank of the Caucasian line from the Terek to the river. Sunzha, where he strengthened the Nazran redoubt and founded the fortification of Pregradny Stan in its middle reaches (October 1817) and the Grozny fortress in the lower reaches (1818). This measure stopped the uprisings of the Chechens living between Sunzha and Terek. In Dagestan, the highlanders who threatened Shamkhal Tarkovsky, captured by Russia, were pacified; To keep them in submission, the Vnezapnaya fortress was built (1819). An attempt to attack it by the Avar Khan ended in complete failure.

In Chechnya, Russian troops destroyed auls, forcing the Chechens to move further and further from Sunzha into the depths of the mountains or move to a plane (plain) under the supervision of Russian garrisons; A clearing was cut through the dense forest to the village of Germenchuk, which served as one of the main defensive points of the Chechen army.

In 1820, the Black Sea Cossack Army (up to 40 thousand people) was included in the Separate Georgian Corps, renamed the Separate Caucasian Corps and also strengthened. In 1821, the Burnaya fortress was built, and the crowds of the Avar Khan Akhmet, who tried to interfere with Russian work, were defeated. The possessions of the Dagestan rulers, who united their forces against Russian troops on the Sunzhenskaya Line and suffered a series of defeats in 1819-1821, were either transferred to Russian vassals with subordination to Russian commandants, or became dependent on Russia, or were liquidated. On the right flank of the line, the Trans-Kuban Circassians, with the help of the Turks, began to disturb the borders more than ever; but their army, which invaded the land of the Black Sea army in October 1821, was defeated.

In 1822, to completely pacify the Kabardians, a series of fortifications were built at the foot of the Black Mountains, from Vladikavkaz to the upper reaches of the Kuban. In 1823 - 1824 The actions of the Russian command were directed against the Trans-Kuban highlanders, who did not stop their raids. A number of punitive expeditions were carried out against them.

In Dagestan in the 1820s. A new Islamic movement began to spread - muridism (one of the directions in Sufism). Ermolov, having visited Cuba in 1824, ordered Aslankhan of Kazikumukh to stop the unrest caused by the followers of the new teaching. But he was distracted by other matters and could not monitor the execution of this order, as a result of which the main preachers of Muridism, Mulla-Mohammed, and then Kazi-Mulla, continued to inflame the minds of the mountaineers in Dagestan and Chechnya and proclaim the proximity of gazavat, that is, a holy war against the infidels . The movement of the mountain people under the flag of Muridism was the impetus for expanding the scope of the Caucasian War, although some mountain peoples (Kumyks, Ossetians, Ingush, Kabardians, etc.) did not join this movement.

In 1825, there was a general uprising of Chechnya, during which the highlanders managed to capture the Amiradzhiyurt post (July 8) and tried to take the Gerzel fortification, rescued by the detachment of Lieutenant General D.T. Lisanevich (July 15). The next day, Lisanevich and General Grekov, who was with him, were killed by the Chechens. The uprising was suppressed in 1826.

From the very beginning of 1825, the coasts of the Kuban again began to be subject to raids by large parties of Shapsugs and Abadzekhs; The Kabardians also became worried. In 1826, a number of expeditions were made to Chechnya, cutting down clearings in dense forests, laying new roads and restoring order in villages free from Russian troops. This ended the activities of Ermolov, who in 1827 was recalled by Nicholas I from the Caucasus and sent into retirement for his connections with the Decembrists.

Period 1827-1835 associated with the beginning of the so-called gazavat - the sacred struggle against the infidels. The new Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Corps, Adjutant General I.F. Paskevich abandoned a systematic advance with the consolidation of the occupied territories and returned mainly to the tactics of individual punitive expeditions, especially since at first he was mainly occupied with wars with Persia and Turkey. The successes he achieved in these wars contributed to maintaining external calm in the country; but muridism spread more and more, and Kazi-Mulla, proclaimed imam in December 1828 and the first to call for ghazavat, sought to unite the hitherto scattered tribes of the Eastern Caucasus into one mass hostile to Russia. Only the Avar Khanate refused to recognize his power, and Kazi-Mulla’s attempt (in 1830) to take control of Khunzakh ended in defeat. After this, the influence of Kazi-Mulla was greatly shaken, and the arrival of new troops sent to the Caucasus after the conclusion of peace with Turkey forced him to flee from his residence, the Dagestan village of Gimry, to the Belokan Lezgins.

In 1828, in connection with the construction of the Military-Sukhumi road, the Karachay region was annexed. In 1830, another defensive line was created - Lezginskaya. In April 1831, Count Paskevich-Erivansky was recalled to command the army in Poland; in his place were temporarily appointed commanders of the troops: in Transcaucasia - General N.P. Pankratiev, on the Caucasian line - General A.A. Velyaminov.

Kazi-Mulla transferred his activities to the Shamkhal possessions, where, having chosen as his location the inaccessible tract Chumkesent (not far from Temir-Khan-Shura), he began to call all the mountaineers to fight the infidels. His attempts to take the fortresses of Burnaya and Vnezapnaya failed; but the movement of General G.A. was also unsuccessful. Emanuel to the Aukhov forests. The last failure, greatly exaggerated by the mountain messengers, increased the number of Kazi-Mulla’s followers, especially in central Dagestan, so that in 1831 Kazi-Mulla took and plundered Tarki and Kizlyar and attempted, but unsuccessfully, with the support of the rebel Tabasarans (one of the mountain peoples Dagestan) to capture Derbent. Significant territories (Chechnya and most of Dagestan) came under the authority of the imam. However, from the end of 1831 the uprising began to decline. The detachments of Kazi-Mulla were pushed back to Mountainous Dagestan. Attacked on December 1, 1831 by Colonel M.P. Miklashevsky, he was forced to leave Chumkesent and went to Gimry. Appointed in September 1831, the commander of the Caucasian Corps, Baron Rosen, took Gimry on October 17, 1832; Kazi-Mulla died during the battle.

Gamzat-bek was proclaimed the second imam, who, thanks to military victories, rallied around himself almost all the peoples of Mountainous Dagestan, including some of the Avars. In 1834, he invaded Avaria, treacherously took possession of Khunzakh, exterminated almost the entire khan’s family, which adhered to a pro-Russian orientation, and was already thinking about conquering all of Dagestan, but died at the hands of an assassin. Soon after his death and the proclamation of Shamil as the third imam, on October 18, 1834, the main stronghold of the Murids, the village of Gotsatl, was taken and destroyed by a detachment of Colonel Kluki von Klugenau. Shamil's troops retreated from Avaria.

On the Black Sea coast, where the highlanders had many convenient points for communication with the Turks and trading in slaves (the Black Sea coastline did not yet exist), foreign agents, especially the British, distributed anti-Russian appeals among the local tribes and delivered military supplies. This forced Baron Rosen to instruct General A.A. Velyaminov (in the summer of 1834) a new expedition to the Trans-Kuban region to establish a cordon line to Gelendzhik. It ended with the construction of fortifications of Abinsky and Nikolaevsky.

So, the third imam was the Avar Shamil, originally from the village. Gimry. It was he who managed to create the imamate - a united mountain state on the territory of Dagestan and Chechnya, which lasted until 1859.

The main functions of the imamate were the defense of the territory, ideology, ensuring law and order, economic development, and solving fiscal and social problems. Shamil managed to unite the multi-ethnic region and form a coherent centralized system of government. The head of state - the great imam, “father of the country and checkers” - was a spiritual, military and secular leader, had enormous authority and a decisive voice. All life in the mountain state was built on the basis of Sharia - the laws of Islam. Year after year, Shamil replaced the unwritten law of customs with laws based on Sharia. Among his most important acts was the abolition of serfdom. The Imamate had an effective armed force, including cavalry and foot militia. Each branch of the military had its own division.

The new commander-in-chief, Prince A.I. Baryatinsky, paid his main attention to Chechnya, the conquest of which he entrusted to the head of the left wing of the line, General N.I. Evdokimov - an old and experienced Caucasian; but in other parts of the Caucasus the troops did not remain inactive. In 1856 and 1857 Russian troops achieved the following results: the Adagum Valley was occupied on the right wing of the line and the Maykop fortification was built. On the left wing, the so-called “Russian road”, from Vladikavkaz, parallel to the ridge of the Black Mountains, to the fortification of Kurinsky on the Kumyk plane, is completely completed and strengthened by newly constructed fortifications; wide clearings have been cut in all directions; the mass of the hostile population of Chechnya has been driven to the point of having to submit and move to open areas, under state supervision; The Aukh district is occupied and a fortification has been erected in its center. In Dagestan, Salatavia is finally occupied. Several new Cossack villages were established along Laba, Urup and Sunzha. The troops are everywhere close to the front lines; the rear is secured; vast expanses of the best lands are cut off from the hostile population and, thus, a significant share of the resources for the fight are wrested from the hands of Shamil.

On the Lezgin line, as a result of deforestation, predatory raids gave way to petty theft. On the Black Sea coast, the secondary occupation of Gagra marked the beginning of securing Abkhazia from incursions by Circassian tribes and from hostile propaganda. The actions of 1858 in Chechnya began with the occupation of the Argun River gorge, which was considered impregnable, where N.I. Evdokimov ordered the foundation of a strong fortification, called Argunsky. Climbing up the river, he reached, at the end of July, the villages of the Shatoevsky society; in the upper reaches of the Argun he founded a new fortification - Evdokimovskoye. Shamil tried to divert attention by sabotage to Nazran, but was defeated by a detachment of General I.K. Mishchenko and barely managed to escape into the still unoccupied part of the Argun Gorge. Convinced that his power there had been completely undermined, he retired to Veden - his new residence. On March 17, 1859, the bombardment of this fortified village began, and on April 1 it was taken by storm.

Shamil fled beyond the Andean Koisu; all of Ichkeria declared its submission to us. After the capture of Veden, three detachments headed concentrically to the Andean Koisu valley: Chechen, Dagestan and Lezgin. Shamil, who temporarily settled in the village of Karata, fortified Mount Kilitl, and covered the right bank of the Andean Koisu, opposite Conkhidatl, with solid stone rubble, entrusting their defense to his son Kazi-Magoma. With any energetic resistance from the latter, forcing the crossing at this point would cost enormous sacrifices; but he was forced to leave his strong position as a result of the troops of the Dagestan detachment entering his flank, who made a remarkably courageous crossing across the Andiyskoe Koisu at the Sagytlo tract. Shamil, seeing danger threatening from everywhere, fled to his last refuge on Mount Gunib, having with him only 332 people. the most fanatical murids from all over Dagestan. On August 25, Gunib was taken by storm, and Shamil himself was captured by Prince A.I. Baryatinsky.

Conquest of Circassia (1859-1864). The capture of Gunib and the capture of Shamil could be considered the last act of the war in the Eastern Caucasus; but there still remained the western part of the region, inhabited by warlike tribes hostile to Russia. It was decided to conduct actions in the Trans-Kuban region in accordance with the system adopted in recent years. The native tribes had to submit and move to the places indicated to them on the plane; otherwise, they were pushed further into the barren mountains, and the lands they left behind were populated by Cossack villages; finally, after pushing the natives from the mountains to the seashore, they could either move to the plain, under our closest supervision, or move to Turkey, in which it was supposed to provide them with possible assistance. To quickly implement this plan, I.A. Baryatinsky decided, at the beginning of 1860, to strengthen the troops of the right wing with very large reinforcements; but the uprising that broke out in the newly calmed Chechnya and partly in Dagestan forced us to temporarily abandon this. Actions against the small gangs there, led by stubborn fanatics, dragged on until the end of 1861, when all attempts at indignation were finally suppressed. Then only it was possible to begin decisive operations on the right wing, the leadership of which was entrusted to the conqueror of Chechnya, N.I. Evdokimov. His troops were divided into 2 detachments: one, Adagumsky, operated in the land of the Shapsugs, the other - from Laba and Belaya; a special detachment was sent to operate in the lower reaches of the river. Pshish. In autumn and winter, Cossack villages are established in the Natukhai district. The troops operating from the direction of Laba completed the construction of villages between Laba and Belaya and cut through the entire foothill space between these rivers with clearings, which forced the local communities to partly move to the plane, partly to go beyond the pass of the Main Range.

At the end of February 1862, Evdokimov’s detachment moved to the river. Pshekh, to which, despite the stubborn resistance of the Abadzekhs, a clearing was cut and a convenient road was laid. All inhabitants living between the Khodz and Belaya rivers were ordered to immediately move to Kuban or Laba, and within 20 days (from March 8 to 29), up to 90 villages were resettled. At the end of April, N.I. Evdokimov, having crossed the Black Mountains, descended into the Dakhovskaya Valley along the road that the mountaineers considered inaccessible to us, and set up a new Cossack village there, closing the Belorechenskaya line. Our movement deep into the Trans-Kuban region was met everywhere by desperate resistance from the Abadzekhs, reinforced by the Ubykhs and other tribes; but the enemy’s attempts could not be crowned with serious success anywhere. The result of the summer and autumn actions of 1862 on the part of Belaya was the strong establishment of Russian troops in the space limited on the west by the rivers Pshish, Pshekha and Kurdzhips.

At the beginning of 1863, the only opponents of Russian rule throughout the Caucasus region were the mountain societies on the northern slope of the Main Range, from Adagum to Belaya, and the coastal tribes of Shapsugs, Ubykhs, etc., who lived in the narrow space between the sea coast and the southern slope Main Range, Aderby Valley and Abkhazia. The final conquest of the country fell to the lot of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, appointed governor of the Caucasus. In 1863, the actions of the troops of the Kuban region. should have consisted of spreading Russian colonization of the region simultaneously from two sides, relying on the Belorechensk and Adagum lines. These actions were so successful that they put the mountaineers of the northwestern Caucasus in a hopeless situation. Already from mid-summer 1863, many of them began to move to Turkey or to the southern slope of the ridge; most of them submitted, so that by the end of summer the number of immigrants settled on the plane in the Kuban and Laba reached 30 thousand people. At the beginning of October, the Abadzekh elders came to Evdokimov and signed an agreement according to which all their fellow tribesmen who wanted to accept Russian citizenship pledged no later than February 1, 1864 to begin moving to the places indicated by him; the rest were given 2 1/2 months to move to Turkey.

The conquest of the northern slope of the ridge was completed. All that remained was to move to the southwestern slope in order to, going down to the sea, clear the coastal strip and prepare it for settlement. On October 10, our troops climbed to the very pass and in the same month occupied the river gorge. Pshada and the mouth of the river. Dzhubgi. The beginning of 1864 was marked by unrest in Chechnya, stirred up by followers of the new Muslim sect of Zikr; but these unrest were soon pacified. In the western Caucasus, the remnants of the highlanders of the northern slope continued to move to Turkey or to the Kuban plane; from the end of February, actions began on the southern slope, which ended in May with the conquest of the Abkhaz tribe Akhchipsou, in the upper reaches of the river. Mzymty. The masses of native inhabitants were pushed back to the seashore and were taken to Turkey by arriving Turkish ships. On May 21, 1864, in the camp of the united Russian columns, in the presence of the Grand Duke Commander-in-Chief, a thanksgiving prayer service was served to mark the end of a long struggle that had cost Russia countless victims.

4 Results and consequences of the war

The process of integration of the North Caucasus was a unique event in its own way. It reflected both traditional schemes that corresponded to the national policy of the empire in the annexed lands, as well as its own specifics, determined by the relationship between the Russian authorities and the local population and the policy of the Russian state in the process of establishing its influence in the Caucasus region.

The geopolitical position of the Caucasus determined its importance in expanding Russia's spheres of influence in Asia. Most assessments of contemporaries - participants in military operations in the Caucasus and representatives of Russian society show that they understood the meaning of Russia's struggle for the Caucasus.

In general, contemporaries’ understanding of the problem of establishing Russian power in the Caucasus shows that they sought to find the most optimal options for ending hostilities in the region. Most representatives of government authorities and Russian society were united by the understanding that the integration of the Caucasus and local peoples into the common socio-economic and cultural space of the Russian Empire required some time.

The results of the Caucasian War were Russia’s conquest of the North Caucasus and its achievement of the following goals:

· strengthening the geopolitical position;

· strengthening influence on the states of the Near and Middle East through the North Caucasus as a military-strategic springboard;

· the acquisition of new markets for raw materials and sales on the outskirts of the country, which was the goal of the colonial policy of the Russian Empire.

The Caucasian War had enormous geopolitical consequences. Reliable communications were established between Russia and its Transcaucasian lands due to the fact that the barrier separating them, which was the territories not controlled by Russia, disappeared. After the end of the war, the situation in the region became much more stable. Raids and rebellions began to happen less frequently, largely because the indigenous population in the occupied territories became much smaller. The slave trade on the Black Sea, which had previously been supported by Turkey, completely ceased. For the indigenous peoples of the region, a special system of government, adapted to their political traditions, was established - the military-people's system. The population was given the opportunity to decide their internal affairs according to folk customs (adat) and Sharia.

However, Russia provided itself with problems for a long time by including “restless”, freedom-loving peoples - echoes of this can be heard to this day. The events and consequences of this war are still painfully perceived in the historical memory of many peoples of the region and significantly affect interethnic relations.

List of used literature

1.500 greatest people of Russia / author.-comp. L. Orlova. - Minsk, 2008.

.World history of wars: encyclopedia. - M., 2008.

.Degoev V.V. The problem of the Caucasian War of the 19th century: historiographical results // “Collection of the Russian Historical Society”, vol. 2. - 2000.

.Zuev M.N. Russian history. Textbook for universities. M., 2008.

.Isaev I.A. History of the Fatherland: A textbook for applicants to universities. M., 2007.

.History of Russia XIX - early XX centuries: Textbook for universities / Ed. V.A. Fedorov. M., 2002.

.History of Russia: Textbook for universities / Ed. M.N. Zueva, A.A. Chernobaeva. M., 2003.

.Sakharov A.N., Buganov V.I. History of Russia from ancient times to the end of the 19th century. - M., 2000.

.Semenov L.S. Russia and international relations in the Middle East in the 20s of the 19th century. - L., 1983.

.Universal school encyclopedia. T.1. A - L/chap. Ed. E. Khlebalina, leading Ed. D. Volodikhin. - M., 2003.

.Encyclopedia for children. T. 5, part 2. History of Russia. From palace coups to the era of the Great Reforms. - M., 1997.

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You should not think that the North Caucasus independently decided to ask for citizenship from Russia and became part of it without any problems. The cause and consequence of the fact that today Chechnya, Dagestan and others belong to the Russian Federation was the Caucasian War of 1817, which lasted about 50 years and was ended only in 1864.

The main reasons for the Caucasian war

Many modern historians call the main prerequisite for the start of the war the desire of the Russian Emperor Alexander I to annex the Caucasus to the territory of the country by any means. However, if you look at the situation more deeply, this intention was caused by fears for the future of the southern borders of the Russian Empire.

After all, such strong rivals as Persia and Turkey looked at the Caucasus with envy for many centuries. Allowing them to spread their influence over and take it into their hands meant a constant threat to their own country. That is why military confrontation was the only way to resolve the problem.

Akhulgo translated from the Avar language means “Alarm Mountain”. There were two villages on the mountain - Old and New Akhulgo. The siege by Russian troops, led by General Grabbe, lasted for a long 80 days (from June 12 to August 22, 1839). The purpose of this military operation was to blockade and capture the imam's headquarters. The village was stormed 5 times; after the third assault, terms of surrender were offered, but Shamil did not agree to them. After the fifth assault, the village fell, but the people did not want to give up and fought until the last drop of blood.

The battle was terrible, women took an active part in it with weapons in their hands, children threw stones at the attackers, they had no thought of mercy, they preferred death to captivity. Huge losses were suffered by both sides. Only a few dozen companions, led by the imam, managed to escape from the village.

Shamil was wounded, in this battle he lost one of his wives and their infant son, and his eldest son was taken hostage. Akhulgo was completely destroyed and to this day the village has not been rebuilt. After this battle, the mountaineers briefly began to doubt the victory of Imam Shamil, since the aul was considered an unshakable fortress, but despite its fall, resistance continued for about 20 years.

From the second half of the 1850s, St. Petersburg intensified its actions in an effort to break the resistance; generals Baryatinsky and Muravyov managed to encircle Shamil and his army. Finally, in September 1859, the imam surrendered. In St. Petersburg he met with Emperor Alexander II, and then was settled in Kaluga. In 1866, Shamil, already an elderly man, accepted Russian citizenship there and received hereditary nobility.

Results and results of the campaign of 1817-1864

The conquest of the southern territories by Russia took about 50 years. It was one of the country's longest wars. The history of the Caucasian war of 1817-1864 was long; researchers are still studying documents, collecting information and compiling a chronicle of military actions.

Despite the duration, it ended in victory for Russia. The Caucasus accepted Russian citizenship, and Turkey and Persia henceforth had no opportunity to influence local rulers and incite them to unrest. Results of the Caucasian War of 1817-1864. well known. This:

• consolidation of Russia in the Caucasus;
• strengthening the southern borders;
• elimination of mountain raids on Slavic settlements;
• the opportunity to influence Middle Eastern policy.

Another important result can be considered the gradual fusion of Caucasian and Slavic cultures. Despite the fact that each of them has its own characteristics, today the Caucasian spiritual heritage has firmly entered into the general cultural environment of Russia. And today the Russian people live peacefully side by side with the indigenous population of the Caucasus.