Certain Problems of Researches of Slavery in the Caucasus as Holistic Phenomenon in Modern Russian-Speaking Historiography. Part I

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of modern Russian historiography of slavery in the Caucasus. The author comes to the conclusion that despite a heightened attention to local and individual cases, the works describing Caucasian slavery in general are rather few, and they have appeared relatively. Therefore, there is no unified comprehensive picture of slavery in the Caucasus, and even evaluation of its cruelty can differ dramatically. The first part of the article introduces terminological definition of Caucasian slavery and clarifies the context in which it should be studied. It shows that researchers usually don’t define the very concept of “slavery”, which leads to serious distortions: sometimes only one of the types of Caucasian slavery is termed “slavery”, whereas others are ignored; sometimes various forms of dependence are blended under one definition of “slavery”, etc. The author suggests that the term should be defined in the researches to avoid serious distortions of terminological and conceptual nature. As a context for the study of slavery, the author proposes using the history of the Black Sea slave trade locus. Russian influence in the region became predominant in the 19th century, and the main forms of Caucasian slavery were shaped under social conditions completely atypical of Russia. The very approach to slavery characteristic of the Caucasus was based on Mediterranean Islamic practices and cannot be properly understood outside of them. Finally, only in consideration of the relative mildness of certain forms of Mediterranean slavery can some Caucasian customs, such as selling one’s children into slavery, be understood.