Twenty-First-Century Prisoners of the Caucasus: Scapegoats and Sacrificial Lambs in Aleksei Uchitel's Captive

This article examines the "Prisoner of the Caucasus" story as it has evolved over the past two centuries, culminating in a discussion of Aleksei Uchitel's 2008 film Captive (Plennyi). As part of its analysis it will use the concept of "scapegoating" in modern war literature as described by David A. Buchanan in Going Scapegoat: Post-9/11 War Literature, Language and Culture. According to Buchanan, scapegoating characters in war narratives is a way for people to simultaneously create a shared identity through the language of colonial conquest while shedding themselves of their shared guilt for wars of questionable moral purpose. This article argues that in this long-running "Prisoner of the Caucasus" narrative, both the Circassian/Chechen character who dies, and the Russian haunted by that death, serve as scapegoats for the guilt of a Russian public anxious to disavow itself of culpability in Russia's wars of colonial expansion.