An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR

No Love Affair: Ingush and Chechen Imperial Ethnographies

No Love Affair: Ingush and Chechen Imperial Ethnographies Christian Dettmering Introduction The history of the Caucasus and its conquest is also a history of the mutual impact of ethnographic knowledge and politics in the Russian Empire . With the Caucasus an ethnically and linguistically highly complex region became part of the Russian Empire. And because of its ethnic and linguistic diversity, the Russian government felt compelled to analyze the region’s ethnic complexity from the very beginning. So when Russia was on the verge of conquering the region in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg launched a number of expeditions into the Caucasus. These missions had the task of collecting data on topography, geological conditions, flora and fauna, and last but not least, the ethnicities and their cultures. With the escalating conflict and war, the North Caucasus was the most conflict-prone zone in the empire. The Russian leadership ascribed the conflict to religious hatred against Russians. As an obstacle to religious unity, the support of contemporary or presumably older segmented traditional social patterns became popular among the Russian leadership anywhere that Russia’s statehood met Muslim resistance. Once more, ethnography became a tool to foster supposedly pre-Islamic traditions contradicting Islam. Such a strategy was employed throughout the empire until, beginning in the 1880s, national movements posed a new threat.1 The same happened in the northeast Caucasus in the 1840s, after the most prominent resistance leader, Shamil 1 Daniel Brower, “Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy in Turkestan,” in Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917, eds. D.R. Brower and E.J. Lazzerini (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 123. 342 Christian Dettmering (1797–1871),2 recovered from his first major defeat and the Russian army saw an urgent need for a thorough examination of the mountaineers’ legal traditions. Customary law would serve as a barrier against Islamic legal ideas and institutions.3 Moreover, the segmented clan society would prohibit a united front of Muslim mountaineers against Russia. Therefore the mountaineers’ administration (Gorskoe upravlenie) within the army was set up and started collecting data on these peoples. Later on the clans, one of the defining elements of traditional societies in the eyes of Russian observers, were themselves regarded as a danger to Russian statehood and were attacked and in turn ethnographically researched. Thus shari’a (Islamic law) and Muslim leaders, as well as clans and clan leaders, were considered a threat.4 Initial research on the ethnography of the peoples in Dagestan showed the impact of political considerations and ethnographic research topics and results. Thus Michael Kemper points out in his article “‘Adat against Shari’a”5 that the research on ‘adat [local customary law] was driven by the interest in which social groups could be conveniently incorporated into Russian structures6 and which (customary) laws would be helpful to repel shari’a in the local courts7 and thus reduce the influence of Muslim leaders . Using the Dagestan example, Bobrovnikov also showed how clans became viewed as a threat that needed to be fought, and how that was stressed by ethnographic analyses.8 The reverse impact, of how much the ethnographic studies had influenced political decisions, has been analyzed less, since most studies expect and find a self-enforcing system of political expectations. Although the policy makers see a need for ethnographic research, eventually this research rather rationalizes than questions politi2 Imam Shamil was Russia’s best-known enemy in the Northeast Caucasus. He led a war against the Russian advance from 1834 until 1859, and during the conflict he united the peoples who fought with him against Russia in a short-lived state. 3 V.O. Bobrovnikov, Musul’mane Severnogo Kavkaza: Obychai, Pravo, Nasilie. Ocherki po Istorii i Ėtnografii Prava Nagornogo Dagestana [The Muslims of the North Caucasus . Custom, law, violence. Sketches of the history and ethnography of the law of Upper Dagestan] (Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura, 2002), 148. 4 Bobrovnikov (2002), 148; Christian Dettmering, “Reassassing Chechen and Ingush (Vainakh) Clan Structures in the 19th Century,” Central Asian Survey no. 4 (2005): 477– 482. 5 Michael Kemper, “‘Adat against’ Šarī’a: Russian Approaches towards Daghestani ‘Customary Law’ in the 19th Century,” Ab Imperio (2005), 147–174. 6 Ibid., 152. 7 Ibid., 155–156. 8 Bobrovnikov (2002), 284. No Love Affair 343 cal decisions. In cases where researchers’ recommendations deviated from the political direction, it is found...