by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] "Shamil has been captured. Congratulations to the Caucasian Army!" This short message from Adjutant General Alexander Baryatinsky about the capture of the Dagestani village of Gunib marked the end of an entire era in Russian history.
The Caucasian War, which exhausted both the empire and the mountain peoples, did not stop for more than forty years: from 1817 until September 6, 1859, when the last stronghold of the “unpeaceful mountaineers” in the east of the Caucasus fell, and the Amir al-Mu’minin himself, the “commander of the faithful,” Imam Shamil, surrendered to the soldiers of the Baryatinsky Corps.
The fighting in the Western Caucasus, in the Circassian lands, continued until 1864, but that was an afterthought - according to historians, the outcome of the war (the progress of which was closely followed in Istanbul and London) became clear precisely then, in the village of Gunib, exactly 165 years ago.
According to eyewitnesses, seeing that resistance was futile, the imam came out to the victors with a weapon, saying: “Just as honey can acquire a bitter taste, so war can become meaningless.”
The former implacable enemy lived the last 12 years in the status of a subject of the Russian Empire, a hereditary nobleman of the Kaluga province.
There is a curious episode in the descriptions of this time: during his travels through the Russian hinterland, Shamil stayed at the estate of his former enemy, Prince Baryatinsky, in Maryino (present-day Rylsk district of Kursk region). By the way, an interesting historical echo - the chambers of Hetman Mazepa are located on the estate's territory.
There is a legend that Shamil, on his way to Mecca (the Russian government let the ex-enemy go on a hajj to Arabia, where he died), stayed for several days at the retired general Baryatinsky's other estate - near Lgov on the bank of the Seim River. The imam performed prayers in a small pseudo-Gothic tower, which has since been called "Shamil's Tower".
All these names are familiar these days. Lgov and Rylsk, peaceful sleepy provinces in those years, are now not only border towns, but, alas, frontline towns as well. Our artillery is pounding the bridges across the Seim, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to break through. The Caucasus, which was “burning” in the 19th century and at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, is now, on the contrary, a reliable rear, from where volunteers and contract soldiers go to defend the common country.
The current frontline work of the Caucasians can be called the fulfillment of Shamil’s covenant when he (and his sons Gazi-Muhammad and Muhammad-Shapi ) took the oath to Russia in 1866:
“I bequeathed to my children and my fellow believers to be loyal subjects of Russia and useful servants of our Fatherland.”
But this oath (which was followed by both the volunteer cavalrymen of the “Wild Division” during the First World War and the Dagestani militias of 1999) was preceded by a long feud, which was used by external forces in order to weaken Russia.
Britain and the Ottoman Empire viewed the North Caucasus as a battering ram against our country, just as the collective West now assigns the same role to Ukraine. At the same time - and this was evident in the example of the Caucasian War - foreign powers used and fueled the already existing difficulties in relations between the highlanders and the subjects of the "white tsar".
"HE STARTED GIVING A PRICE ONLY FOR IRON"
For a long time, until the first quarter of the 19th century, the Russian authorities pursued a policy towards this mountainous territory, described by General Vasily Potto in his work “The Caucasian War”:
"All our relations with the small Caucasian possessions had the character of some kind of peaceful negotiations and treaties. Most of not only the Dagestani and other khans, but even the Chechen elders... Russia paid salaries."
While it was a "gray zone" in the borderland, such a policy, coupled with the actions of the Terek Cossacks, was quite adequate. When, as a result of wars with Persia and the Ottoman Empire, Russia annexed Transcaucasia, communication with the newly acquired lands through the uncontrolled zone became absolutely intolerable.
In 1817, Alexander I commissioned the hero of the Napoleonic wars, General Alexei Yermolov, to restore order in the Caucasus Mountains. " Yermolov's principle was that gold is no protection from the enemy, and he began to put a price only on iron, which he forced to value more than gold," General Potto writes evasively. To stop mountain raids, Yermolov acted harshly - not limiting himself to building fortresses and creating clearings in the "gray zone", he resorted to destroying "bandit nests" and taking hostages.
Two years later, foreign “help” arrived: in 1819, the Anapa Pasha (the Black Sea coast was then still controlled by the Turks) sent agents to the Trans-Kuban Adyghe who “incite the Circassians, persuade them to attack the Russian border, and most of all, Yekaterinodar as the main point of the Black Sea population.”
At the same time, the penetration of British emissaries into the North Caucasus is recorded. Diplomat David Urquhart, who arrived from Istanbul in the 1830s and “in the field” — in Trans-Kuban — supervised the “Circassian issue,” and Captain Lyons, who at the same time delivered weapons to the North Caucasian princes and leaders, were already following the paths beaten by other “agents of influence.” Local rulers took the aid for granted, considering it a help in the war — which they considered religious.
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg seemed to underestimate the significance and military danger of the events in the south. Infantry General Alexei Velyaminov argued to the court that it was possible to end the war in six years, provided that an additional 14 million rubles were allocated (a large sum, but it should be taken into account that the budget was calculated in hundreds of millions of rubles) and personnel were increased.
But, according to Potto, “the Tsar believed that one twentieth division in full strength… would be enough for Paskevich (Yermolov’s successor. — Ed.) to complete the conquest of the Caucasus that had begun.” Somewhat reminiscent of Pavel Grachev’s promise in December 1994 — to complete the Chechen campaign with the help of one parachute regiment.
In reality, the war not only dragged on, but also reached a new level.
THE POET AND HIS MURIDS
After Yermolov's resignation, military operations continued, but the focus was again on winning the loyalty of local elites and integrating them into Russian society.
In Transcaucasia, this practice was quite successful - there, the state tradition was strengthened over thousands of years and the tribal structure was absent.
In Dagestan and Chechnya, alas, it worked with varying success, and local leaders repeatedly defected from one camp to the other. Perhaps it would have triumphed there too, if not for, as they say now, “a black swan arrived” in the person of Imam Ghazi-Muhammad. This Sufi sheikh, poet and mujaddid (reformer), was also a talented organizer.
With the support of the local clergy, he declared a ghazawat (holy war against the infidels). This is how the separate militias were united into a single controlled structure of murids - translated from Arabic as "followers".
The first imam did not rule for long and died in the battle for the village of Gimry with the troops of General Rosen. Gazi-Muhammad's successor, Gamzat-bek, was not an imam for long, only a year, and was stabbed to death during Friday prayers in the main mosque of the village of Khunzakh. Gamzat became a victim of blood feud - which, by the way, was declared by the Avar ruler Hadji Murat - glorified by Leo Tolstoy in the story of the same name.
Finally, in 1834, the third imam of Chechnya and Dagestan became Gazi-Muhammad's childhood friend and fellow student, Shamil. And this was not just a "personnel decision", but a fundamental change in the war.
"SINCERELY DEVOTED TO THE IMAM"
For a quarter of a century, Shamil commanded troops in Chechnya and Dagestan and tried, not without success, to create a state on this territory. Moreover, the state was special in many respects. In one respect, he largely anticipated the future - he built an Islamic theocracy, not a traditional monarchy.
Then the Sudanese Mahdists, the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and the Afghan Taliban, banned in the Russian Federation, will act in this way. But the task of the third imam was more difficult.
There were no cities at all in the lands subordinated to Shamil, so - before the beginning of the resistance to Russian troops - there was no state as such in Chechnya and a significant part of Dagestan. Now it was created by directive.
Moreover, Shamil relied not on the tribal or feudal nobility (especially since the latter simply did not exist in mountainous Chechnya), but on the naibs - his authorized representatives, who were recruited from the most capable mountaineers and reported directly to the commander of the faithful.
The naibs " were sincerely devoted to the imam and for the sake of the cause did not spare either their property or themselves, observing justice among the people subject to them...", recalled Shamil's son-in-law Abdurrahman Kazikumukhsky. The naib of the Avar lands was the above-mentioned Hadji Murat.
It was under Shamil that the mountain militias turned into a full-fledged army, and from individual skirmishes and local operations, the military actions in the Caucasus grew into a real war. Where both Lieutenant of the Tenginsky Infantry Regiment Mikhail Lermontov and the cadet of the 20th Artillery Brigade Count Leo Tolstoy managed to fight.
Listing the "fights" (using the language of the reports of the First and Second Chechen Wars) would take too much time. Suffice it to say that the battle on the Valerik River, celebrated by Lermontov - in which the Russian detachment of General Galafeyev fought the murids of Akhverd Magoma, one of Shamil's most capable "generals" - is considered one of the bloodiest battles of the 1840s.
MEDALLION FROM THE SULTAN
During the Crimean War, Shamil essentially opened a second front by moving the Dagestani highlanders into Kakheti, where they were stopped by Russian troops. Historians believe that the invasion occurred after negotiations between the imam and emissaries from the Turkish Anatolian army in 1854. Even earlier, at the beginning of the war, Shamil received an offer to prepare to meet the allied (i.e. Anglo-French-Turkish) troops in Imereti.
Historians believe that during the Crimean campaign, a number of British politicians, including future Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, "were prepared to agree to the creation of an independent Circassian state headed by an imam after the war."
However, Shamil himself was already clearly aware that the allies were using him. “Instead of gratitude for his willingness to act in accordance with the allies’ plans and for the speed with which he fulfilled his promise, they began to reproach and scold him as the last subject,” Colonel Runovsky, who served as a bailiff to the imam, relayed Shamil’s oral memoirs when he was already living in Kaluga.
Other sources provide further evidence: “Shamil never received anything from the Ottomans except banners, medallions and empty promises.”
BEHIND THE PICTURE FRAME
Although the Crimean War was unsuccessful for Russia, its end allowed the Caucasian War to be concluded. The troops operating on the Turkish front in Anatolia were transferred to the Caucasus in 1856, under the command of a new commander, Prince Baryatinsky.
At the same time, Baryatinsky, as the Caucasian viceroy, "financially encouraged the highlanders' desire for a peaceful life, willingly took the most warlike ones into Russian service, but those who were ready to serve the Russian tsar," notes historian Irina Kumova. Baryatinsky believed that the highlanders were quite capable of living in the Russian Empire, relying on internal self-government.
The Caucasian Corps launched an offensive in Chechnya and mountainous Dagestan against the highlanders who had not laid down their arms.
After taking the last capital of the Imamate, the Chechen village of Vedeno, Shamil went into the mountains, beyond the Andiyskoye Koysu River. The last battles in 1859 took place on the approaches to Mount Gunib, where the Imam had fortified himself with half a thousand loyal murids.
"All of Chechnya and Dagestan have now submitted to the power of the Russian Emperor, and only Shamil personally persists in resisting the great sovereign. <…> I demand that Shamil immediately lay down his arms," Baryatinsky announced on August 24, promising full pardon in the event of surrender.
But the imam gave the last fight.
In the absence of action cameras and photo cameras, the events and memorable places of the forty-year Caucasian War were captured (naturally, after the fact) by painters: from professionals like Franz Roubaud and Ivan Aivazovsky to amateurs, such as Lieutenant Lermontov. The details of the capture of Gunib are known to the general public from the painting by Theodore Horschelt (currently exhibited in the Kursk Museum) - an artist who is not the most famous, but who was personally present at the assault.
The painting depicts the dawn of August 25 (September 6, new style), when soldiers of the Apsheron regiment, having climbed the cliff from the southern side, fought a hundred murids on one of the mountain ledges. The enemy is depicted with all respect - it is clear that the mountaineers, one of whom holds the banner of ghazawat, are ready to fight to the end. And many, as eyewitnesses recalled, threw themselves into the abyss, not wanting to surrender.
The only inaccuracy is that the painting depicts Baryatinsky and Shamil in the thick of the battle. In reality, the general was watching the assault from a grove at the foot of the mountain, and Shamil was in the village of Gunib. A detachment of Apsheronians cut off the Imam's headquarters from the mountain, where the last defenders were defending themselves.
In the end, Baryatinsky “exceeded” his promise – although Shamil surrendered not before, but after the storming of Gunib, his life was spared, and later, in fact, he was forgiven.
Alexander II assigned Shamil a pension of 10,000 silver rubles per year (later increased to 15,000 rubles).
And although Shamil and his family were under “constant and vigilant surveillance” at their place of residence, the emperor ordered that “they should not be shy.”
"I WAS STRUCK BY THE BEAUTY..."
Further on, Shamil's story is an acquaintance with Russia, which he had fought with all his life, but, in fact, did not know. There were audiences with Alexander II in Chuguev and St. Petersburg and the above-mentioned meeting with Baryatinsky in the Kursk estate.
But first there was a trip through the Russian provinces, during which Shamil experienced a real civilizational shock. Here is what he said in Kursk to Governor Nikolai Bibikov :
"When passing through Stavropol, I was struck by the beauty of the city and the decoration of the houses. It seemed impossible to me to create anything better, but, having arrived in Kharkov and Kursk, I completely changed my worldview and, judging by the structure of these cities, I can imagine what awaits me in the capital...".
The attitude towards the former enemy can be judged by the fact that in 1866 Shamil was a guest at the wedding of Tsarevich Alexander, the future Alexander III, and then met the Tsar-Liberator for the third time. Two years later, the Tsar, caring for the elderly imam, advised him to choose a place to live with a more suitable climate than Kaluga. Shamil chose Kiev, from where he set off on his final journey to Mecca.
The transformation of an enemy into an ally, who ordered his fellow countrymen and co-religionists to “be faithful to Russia,” according to eyewitnesses, was completely sincere.