Highlanders through the eyes of Russian classics
Russian literary classics could provide political figures of Russia, the military, journalists and the entire Russian society with invaluable information about the opponent we meet in the Caucasus. Had this attention to literature been shown, we could have tamed Chechnya with less blood.
This is how Pushkin describes the mountain robber and his life values in his romantic “Caucasian Captive”:
Circassian weapons hung;
He is proud of him, comforted by him;
It has armor, food, a quiver,
Kuban bow, dagger, lasso
And checker, eternal friend
His labors, his leisure. (...)
His wealth is a zealous horse,
Pet of the Mountain Herds,
Comrade faithful, patient.
In the cave il in the grass deaf
The treacherous predator lurks with him
And suddenly, with a sudden arrow,
Seeing the traveler, seeks;
In an instant, the right fight
Will decide his mighty blow
And a wanderer in the ravines of the mountains
Already attracts lasso volatile.
The horse strives at full speed
Filled with fiery courage;
All the way to him: swamp, boron,
Bushes, cliffs and ravines;
The blood trail behind him runs,
In the wilderness the tramp is heard;
The gray stream before him makes a noise -
He rushes deep into the boiling;
And the traveler, thrown to the bottom,
Swallows a muddy wave,
Exhausted, death asks
And watch it in front of you ...
But the powerful horse is his arrow
On the beach foamy makes.
Here, in a few lines, the whole psychology of the mountain robber fits: he attacks from an ambush, without engaging in an honest fight. He is torturing a prisoner who is already defenseless. But here is another situation and a different attitude to the random traveler:
When with a peaceful family
Circassian in a father's home
Sits bad weather,
And the coals smolder in the ashes;
And, having stumbled from the faithful horse,
In the desert mountains belated,
A stranger will come to him tired
And shyly sit by the fire, -
Then the master is benevolent
With greetings, gently, gets up
And to the guest in the cup of fragrant
Chikhir gratifying gives.
Under a damp bead, in a smoky saquat,
Traveler tastes a peaceful sleep
And in the morning he leaves
Overnight shelter hospitable.
There is no contradiction between the robbery and family hospitality for the mountaineer. Therefore, it is so difficult for a Russian to distinguish a “peaceful” highlander from a “non-peaceful”. Having been deceived by the friendliness of the family hearth, the Russian begins to judge the mountaineers, as in general a peace-loving and kind people. And it can even be ashamed of its excessive militancy. Until then, until you face a robber on a mountain trail or not serving as a hostage.
Here Pushkin describes how an innocent fun game turns into a bloody massacre of the highlanders:
But the monotonous world is boring
Hearts born for war
And often idle will games
The game is brutal embarrassed.
Often, drafts threateningly shine
In the insane agility of peers,
And heads of slaves fly to dust,
And in joy, babies are splashing.
The last lines speak about the murders of defenseless prisoners in front of the younger generation of future robbers. From the experience of the Chechen war, we know about the participation in the mockery of Russian prisoners who were entrusted to teenagers.
In his “Journey to Arzrum” at a more mature age, Pushkin writes about mountaineers without much romanticism: “The Circassians hate us. We drove them out of free pastures; their villages were ravaged, entire tribes destroyed. Hour from one hour further they go deep into the mountains and from there they direct their raids. Friendship of the peaceful Circassians is unreliable: they are always ready to help their violent fellow tribesmen. The spirit of their wild knighthood visibly dropped. They seldom attack Cossacks in equal numbers, never on infantry and flee, seeing the cannon. But never miss a chance to attack a weak detachment or a defenseless. The local side is full of rumors about their atrocities. There is almost no way to pacify them until they are disarmed, just like they were disarmed by the Crimean Tatars, which is extremely difficult to accomplish, due to the hereditary strife prevailing between them and blood revenge. The dagger and the sword are the members of their body, and the baby begins to possess them before babbling. They have a murder - a simple gesture. They retain the prisoners in the hope of ransom, but they treat them with terrible inhumanity, force them to work superfluously, feed them with raw dough, beat them when they like, and assign their boys to the guardians, who can chop them for their word in one word. Recently caught a peaceful Circassian who shot a soldier. He justified himself by saying that his gun had been loaded for too long. ”
The picture painted by Pushkin corresponds exactly to what the Russian army encountered in Chechnya. Russian residents of Chechnya were also able to convince themselves that the mountaineers, deprived of the bonds of Russian statehood, are turning the murder "into a simple gesture."
Pushkin asks the question “What to do with such a people?” And he sees only two ways: geopolitical - cutting off the Caucasus from Turkey, and cultural - familiarizing with Russian life and preaching Christianity: cutting off Circassians from trade with Turkey, will force them to come closer to us. The influence of luxury can be conducive to taming them: a samovar would be an important innovation. There is a means stronger, more moral, more congruent with the enlightenment of our age: the preaching of the Gospel. The Circassians very recently adopted the Mohammedan faith. They were fascinated by the active fanaticism of the apostles of the Quran, between which Mansur was different, an extraordinary man who had long angered the Caucasus against Russian sovereignty, finally captured by us and died in the Solovki monastery. ”
However, the latter causes skeptical thought in Pushkin: “The Caucasus expects Christian missionaries. But it is easier for our laziness to replace the word of the living by pouring out the dead letters and sending dumb books to people who do not know the letters. ”
Pushkin's ideas about the Highlanders coincide with great precision with the descriptions of Lermontov. In the “Hero of Our Time” in the story “Bela” there are a number of sketches showing Caucasians, their relationship between themselves and the Russians.
One of the first episodes is the Ossetians, pushing the bulls harnessed to a wagon. They do it in such a way that the half-empty cart moves with apparent difficulty. To this, Maxim Maximych says: “These Asians are terrible beasts! Do you think they help that scream? And the devil will make out what they scream? Bulls understand them; harnessed at least twenty, so if they shout in their own way, the bulls are all out of place ... Terrible rogues! And what from them you will take? .. They like to tear up money from passing by ... They spoiled the scammers! You'll see, they will still take on vodka. ”
Two Caucasian features are fixed here: the willingness to profit at the expense of a visitor who does not know the tricks of the local population and prices for certain services, as well as the use of Russian misunderstanding of their language.
Speaking of vodka and wine. Maxim Maksimych says that Tatars do not drink, because they are Muslims. The other mountaineers are not Muslim at all or recent Muslims. That is why not only they drink, but also make their own wine - chikir. The Circassians "will get drunk before the booze at a wedding or a funeral, and the chopping house went down." It is no coincidence that the robber Kazbich, invited to the wedding, wears a thin chainmail under the dress. Guests here can be chopped along with their buddies.
In another place of the story it is said how Azamat (Circassian, "Tatar"?) For the money offered by Pechorin, the next night dragged the best goat from his father's flock. We see the love of money in combination with thieves dashing and recklessness.
It must be said that hospitality and hospitality in the Caucasus are of a completely different nature than in Russia. "Asians, you know, the custom of all the counter and cross to invite to the wedding." This hospitality is not a consequence of special benevolence. It is rather a desire to raise oneself in one's own eyes, as well as boast to relatives and kunaks with the multiplicity of feasts.
The next estimate of Maxim Maksimych, who served in Chechnya for more than ten years, is as follows: “Here, sir, we are fed up with these thugs; now, thank God, more humble; and it happened that you would go a hundred paces beyond the shaft, a shaggy devil was sitting somewhere and watching: a little gape, just look - either a lasso on his neck, or a bullet in the back of his head.
Murder and abduction of people in the Caucasus was, therefore, a manifestation of some sort of remote, a part of the national character, a kind of “sport” like hunting.
Kazbich kills Bela's father and Azamat, slaughtering him like a ram. And did not even think to check his involvement in the abduction of his beloved horse. So revenge "in their language."
In general, people here do not like to sort out offenses and judge who is right and who is wrong. When Azamat rushes into a saklyu and says that Kazbich wanted to kill him, everyone immediately grabs his guns - a scream, shooting begins ... What really happened, nobody cares.
The image of Kazbich says a lot about the psychology of the highlander: “The Beshmet is always torn, in patches, and the weapon in silver. And his horse was famous in whole Kabarda - and for sure, it is impossible to invent anything better than this horse. ”
Was it because in Soviet times the highlander’s pride was an expensive hat and a leather jacket, and now a car? With a monstrous disorder, untidiness in everything else.
In the customs of the mountains, theft and robbery are not considered crimes. On the contrary - part of the dashing robbery of life. Maxim Maksimych says: “These Circassians are famous thieves' people: what is badly lying cannot help but drag off; the other is not needed, but it will steal everything ... ”:
It should be noted that all Highlanders, including Chechens, are called Circassians and "Tatars" here, and Zairechny territories are called "Tatar side".
Actually Chechens Russian times of the Caucasian war are characterized very impartially. So, in the essay "Caucasian" Lermontov, in the words of a Russian veteran officer, says: "Good people, only such Asians! The Chechens, however, are rubbish, but the Kabardians are just great; Well, there are people between Shapsugs that are well-proportioned, only they don’t equal themselves with Kabardians, they won’t be able to dress like that, or ride a horse. ”
In this essay, Lermontov shows how a Russian officer over the years of long and difficult service gradually adopts mountain skills in clothes and manners, begins to love the Caucasus as a field of his field, becoming an expert on mountain customs and psychology (which gives an understanding of the enemy) and even studies the local language.
Lev Tolstoy repeats in part the famous “Caucasian Prisoner” Pushkin story about the love of a Russian captive and a mountain girl (in the Tolstoy story 13-year-old girl helps the Russian officer to escape from captivity), but refrains from direct evaluative characteristics. The main thing that is important for us here is the former attitude of the Highlanders to the prisoners as a source of profit and cruel treatment of them. In this, Pushkin's assessments are repeated completely. (By the way, the film remake of the “Caucasian Captive” that shifted the literary story to the modern war, even with the wonderful acting of the actors, must be recognized as one hundred percent lie.)
In the story “The raid,“ the plot of the Caucasian Captive ”contrasts with the fragment, where a Russian officer, having captured a Chechen in battle, he heals his wounds and, after his recovery, releases him with gifts. In terms of a Russian lieutenant, a Lermontov veteran officer, a “Caucasian”, is easily guessed.
In the story "The felling of the forest" Tolstoy contrasts the calm and showless courage of the Russian soldiers with the courage of the southern peoples, who certainly need something to inflame themselves. The Russian soldier “does not need effects, speeches, belligerent shouts, songs and drums”, he “will never notice boasting, tricks, a desire to think it over, get excited during a danger: on the contrary, modesty, simplicity and the ability to see danger is completely different than the danger ". By the law of contrast, Tolstoy saw opposite features in the highlanders.
The story "Hadji Murad" tells about the highland character recorded by Tolstoy. The well-known “field commander” Imam Shamil goes over to the Russians and is warmly welcomed by former enemies. Hadji Murad is left with weapons, bodyguards, and even the right to ride horses in the neighborhood. In one of these walks, Khadzhi-Murat changes his plans and escapes, killing four Cossacks. And then, together with the bodyguards, she shoots off the pursuers and dies. For Russians, such a change in behavior and such black ingratitude are completely incomprehensible. And Tolstoy is trying to reconstruct the motives of the actions of Hadji Murad. The conclusion that can be drawn from this reconstruction is that the former associate of Shamil is only concerned about the fate of his family left in the mountains and does not intend to take into account any interests of the Russians or somehow take into account the reception given to him.
Probably, it was this peculiarity that prompted the Russians during the Caucasian War to take in fortresses from mountain villages amanats - especially respected old people or children - as guarantors of peaceful behavior of their relatives. Of course, the position of Amanat was much more advantageous than the position of the Russian hostages captured by the mountaineers, which even feed was considered a sin.
Alas, getting rid of the romantic gaze on the highlanders was expensive for the Russians who fought in Chechnya. So to other journalists in 1994-1995. sympathetically writing about the Chechens' national liberation war, it took him to sit in the Chechen zindan to change his point of view.
It would still be easier to read Russian literature.
This is how Pushkin describes the mountain robber and his life values in his romantic “Caucasian Captive”:
Circassian weapons hung;
He is proud of him, comforted by him;
It has armor, food, a quiver,
Kuban bow, dagger, lasso
And checker, eternal friend
His labors, his leisure. (...)
His wealth is a zealous horse,
Pet of the Mountain Herds,
Comrade faithful, patient.
In the cave il in the grass deaf
The treacherous predator lurks with him
And suddenly, with a sudden arrow,
Seeing the traveler, seeks;
In an instant, the right fight
Will decide his mighty blow
And a wanderer in the ravines of the mountains
Already attracts lasso volatile.
The horse strives at full speed
Filled with fiery courage;
All the way to him: swamp, boron,
Bushes, cliffs and ravines;
The blood trail behind him runs,
In the wilderness the tramp is heard;
The gray stream before him makes a noise -
He rushes deep into the boiling;
And the traveler, thrown to the bottom,
Swallows a muddy wave,
Exhausted, death asks
And watch it in front of you ...
But the powerful horse is his arrow
On the beach foamy makes.
Here, in a few lines, the whole psychology of the mountain robber fits: he attacks from an ambush, without engaging in an honest fight. He is torturing a prisoner who is already defenseless. But here is another situation and a different attitude to the random traveler:
When with a peaceful family
Circassian in a father's home
Sits bad weather,
And the coals smolder in the ashes;
And, having stumbled from the faithful horse,
In the desert mountains belated,
A stranger will come to him tired
And shyly sit by the fire, -
Then the master is benevolent
With greetings, gently, gets up
And to the guest in the cup of fragrant
Chikhir gratifying gives.
Under a damp bead, in a smoky saquat,
Traveler tastes a peaceful sleep
And in the morning he leaves
Overnight shelter hospitable.
There is no contradiction between the robbery and family hospitality for the mountaineer. Therefore, it is so difficult for a Russian to distinguish a “peaceful” highlander from a “non-peaceful”. Having been deceived by the friendliness of the family hearth, the Russian begins to judge the mountaineers, as in general a peace-loving and kind people. And it can even be ashamed of its excessive militancy. Until then, until you face a robber on a mountain trail or not serving as a hostage.
Here Pushkin describes how an innocent fun game turns into a bloody massacre of the highlanders:
But the monotonous world is boring
Hearts born for war
And often idle will games
The game is brutal embarrassed.
Often, drafts threateningly shine
In the insane agility of peers,
And heads of slaves fly to dust,
And in joy, babies are splashing.
The last lines speak about the murders of defenseless prisoners in front of the younger generation of future robbers. From the experience of the Chechen war, we know about the participation in the mockery of Russian prisoners who were entrusted to teenagers.
In his “Journey to Arzrum” at a more mature age, Pushkin writes about mountaineers without much romanticism: “The Circassians hate us. We drove them out of free pastures; their villages were ravaged, entire tribes destroyed. Hour from one hour further they go deep into the mountains and from there they direct their raids. Friendship of the peaceful Circassians is unreliable: they are always ready to help their violent fellow tribesmen. The spirit of their wild knighthood visibly dropped. They seldom attack Cossacks in equal numbers, never on infantry and flee, seeing the cannon. But never miss a chance to attack a weak detachment or a defenseless. The local side is full of rumors about their atrocities. There is almost no way to pacify them until they are disarmed, just like they were disarmed by the Crimean Tatars, which is extremely difficult to accomplish, due to the hereditary strife prevailing between them and blood revenge. The dagger and the sword are the members of their body, and the baby begins to possess them before babbling. They have a murder - a simple gesture. They retain the prisoners in the hope of ransom, but they treat them with terrible inhumanity, force them to work superfluously, feed them with raw dough, beat them when they like, and assign their boys to the guardians, who can chop them for their word in one word. Recently caught a peaceful Circassian who shot a soldier. He justified himself by saying that his gun had been loaded for too long. ” The picture painted by Pushkin corresponds exactly to what the Russian army encountered in Chechnya. Russian residents of Chechnya were also able to convince themselves that the mountaineers, deprived of the bonds of Russian statehood, are turning the murder "into a simple gesture."
Pushkin asks the question “What to do with such a people?” And he sees only two ways: geopolitical - cutting off the Caucasus from Turkey, and cultural - familiarizing with Russian life and preaching Christianity: cutting off Circassians from trade with Turkey, will force them to come closer to us. The influence of luxury can be conducive to taming them: a samovar would be an important innovation. There is a means stronger, more moral, more congruent with the enlightenment of our age: the preaching of the Gospel. The Circassians very recently adopted the Mohammedan faith. They were fascinated by the active fanaticism of the apostles of the Quran, between which Mansur was different, an extraordinary man who had long angered the Caucasus against Russian sovereignty, finally captured by us and died in the Solovki monastery. ”
However, the latter causes skeptical thought in Pushkin: “The Caucasus expects Christian missionaries. But it is easier for our laziness to replace the word of the living by pouring out the dead letters and sending dumb books to people who do not know the letters. ”
Pushkin's ideas about the Highlanders coincide with great precision with the descriptions of Lermontov. In the “Hero of Our Time” in the story “Bela” there are a number of sketches showing Caucasians, their relationship between themselves and the Russians.
One of the first episodes is the Ossetians, pushing the bulls harnessed to a wagon. They do it in such a way that the half-empty cart moves with apparent difficulty. To this, Maxim Maximych says: “These Asians are terrible beasts! Do you think they help that scream? And the devil will make out what they scream? Bulls understand them; harnessed at least twenty, so if they shout in their own way, the bulls are all out of place ... Terrible rogues! And what from them you will take? .. They like to tear up money from passing by ... They spoiled the scammers! You'll see, they will still take on vodka. ”
Two Caucasian features are fixed here: the willingness to profit at the expense of a visitor who does not know the tricks of the local population and prices for certain services, as well as the use of Russian misunderstanding of their language.
Speaking of vodka and wine. Maxim Maksimych says that Tatars do not drink, because they are Muslims. The other mountaineers are not Muslim at all or recent Muslims. That is why not only they drink, but also make their own wine - chikir. The Circassians "will get drunk before the booze at a wedding or a funeral, and the chopping house went down." It is no coincidence that the robber Kazbich, invited to the wedding, wears a thin chainmail under the dress. Guests here can be chopped along with their buddies.
In another place of the story it is said how Azamat (Circassian, "Tatar"?) For the money offered by Pechorin, the next night dragged the best goat from his father's flock. We see the love of money in combination with thieves dashing and recklessness.
It must be said that hospitality and hospitality in the Caucasus are of a completely different nature than in Russia. "Asians, you know, the custom of all the counter and cross to invite to the wedding." This hospitality is not a consequence of special benevolence. It is rather a desire to raise oneself in one's own eyes, as well as boast to relatives and kunaks with the multiplicity of feasts.
The next estimate of Maxim Maksimych, who served in Chechnya for more than ten years, is as follows: “Here, sir, we are fed up with these thugs; now, thank God, more humble; and it happened that you would go a hundred paces beyond the shaft, a shaggy devil was sitting somewhere and watching: a little gape, just look - either a lasso on his neck, or a bullet in the back of his head.
Murder and abduction of people in the Caucasus was, therefore, a manifestation of some sort of remote, a part of the national character, a kind of “sport” like hunting.
Kazbich kills Bela's father and Azamat, slaughtering him like a ram. And did not even think to check his involvement in the abduction of his beloved horse. So revenge "in their language."
In general, people here do not like to sort out offenses and judge who is right and who is wrong. When Azamat rushes into a saklyu and says that Kazbich wanted to kill him, everyone immediately grabs his guns - a scream, shooting begins ... What really happened, nobody cares.
The image of Kazbich says a lot about the psychology of the highlander: “The Beshmet is always torn, in patches, and the weapon in silver. And his horse was famous in whole Kabarda - and for sure, it is impossible to invent anything better than this horse. ”
Was it because in Soviet times the highlander’s pride was an expensive hat and a leather jacket, and now a car? With a monstrous disorder, untidiness in everything else.
In the customs of the mountains, theft and robbery are not considered crimes. On the contrary - part of the dashing robbery of life. Maxim Maksimych says: “These Circassians are famous thieves' people: what is badly lying cannot help but drag off; the other is not needed, but it will steal everything ... ”:
It should be noted that all Highlanders, including Chechens, are called Circassians and "Tatars" here, and Zairechny territories are called "Tatar side".
Actually Chechens Russian times of the Caucasian war are characterized very impartially. So, in the essay "Caucasian" Lermontov, in the words of a Russian veteran officer, says: "Good people, only such Asians! The Chechens, however, are rubbish, but the Kabardians are just great; Well, there are people between Shapsugs that are well-proportioned, only they don’t equal themselves with Kabardians, they won’t be able to dress like that, or ride a horse. ”
In this essay, Lermontov shows how a Russian officer over the years of long and difficult service gradually adopts mountain skills in clothes and manners, begins to love the Caucasus as a field of his field, becoming an expert on mountain customs and psychology (which gives an understanding of the enemy) and even studies the local language.
Lev Tolstoy repeats in part the famous “Caucasian Prisoner” Pushkin story about the love of a Russian captive and a mountain girl (in the Tolstoy story 13-year-old girl helps the Russian officer to escape from captivity), but refrains from direct evaluative characteristics. The main thing that is important for us here is the former attitude of the Highlanders to the prisoners as a source of profit and cruel treatment of them. In this, Pushkin's assessments are repeated completely. (By the way, the film remake of the “Caucasian Captive” that shifted the literary story to the modern war, even with the wonderful acting of the actors, must be recognized as one hundred percent lie.)
In the story “The raid,“ the plot of the Caucasian Captive ”contrasts with the fragment, where a Russian officer, having captured a Chechen in battle, he heals his wounds and, after his recovery, releases him with gifts. In terms of a Russian lieutenant, a Lermontov veteran officer, a “Caucasian”, is easily guessed.
In the story "The felling of the forest" Tolstoy contrasts the calm and showless courage of the Russian soldiers with the courage of the southern peoples, who certainly need something to inflame themselves. The Russian soldier “does not need effects, speeches, belligerent shouts, songs and drums”, he “will never notice boasting, tricks, a desire to think it over, get excited during a danger: on the contrary, modesty, simplicity and the ability to see danger is completely different than the danger ". By the law of contrast, Tolstoy saw opposite features in the highlanders.
The story "Hadji Murad" tells about the highland character recorded by Tolstoy. The well-known “field commander” Imam Shamil goes over to the Russians and is warmly welcomed by former enemies. Hadji Murad is left with weapons, bodyguards, and even the right to ride horses in the neighborhood. In one of these walks, Khadzhi-Murat changes his plans and escapes, killing four Cossacks. And then, together with the bodyguards, she shoots off the pursuers and dies. For Russians, such a change in behavior and such black ingratitude are completely incomprehensible. And Tolstoy is trying to reconstruct the motives of the actions of Hadji Murad. The conclusion that can be drawn from this reconstruction is that the former associate of Shamil is only concerned about the fate of his family left in the mountains and does not intend to take into account any interests of the Russians or somehow take into account the reception given to him.
Probably, it was this peculiarity that prompted the Russians during the Caucasian War to take in fortresses from mountain villages amanats - especially respected old people or children - as guarantors of peaceful behavior of their relatives. Of course, the position of Amanat was much more advantageous than the position of the Russian hostages captured by the mountaineers, which even feed was considered a sin.
Alas, getting rid of the romantic gaze on the highlanders was expensive for the Russians who fought in Chechnya. So to other journalists in 1994-1995. sympathetically writing about the Chechens' national liberation war, it took him to sit in the Chechen zindan to change his point of view.
It would still be easier to read Russian literature.
Information