Kasbolat Dzamikhov, head of the subdepartment for history at the Kabardino-Balkarian University, emphasized that any attempts to make modern approaches to the Caucasian War ignoring historiographical traditions were pointless. He said that depiction of the war had ideological traits of the Russian Empire, described as a justified mission to free Christians from the Muslim pressure.
Dzamikhov said that one of the traits of such approach were rejection of the mountain culture as such., depiction of local tribes as barbarians, evasion of the civilization factor of the conflict. Russia’s victory in the war is presented as a positive event.
The scientist noted that the ideological aspect of the conflict strengthened during the revolutionary years and the war was depicted as a liberation effort. He added that the success of the war was often evaluated according to progress in shattering the Tsar’s power, in terms of Karl Marks and Friedrich Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
Dzamikhov believes that studies of the Caucasian War were in deep crisis until the 1980s. The myth about Imam Shamil being the only leader and the Eastern Caucasus being the only front existed for 50 years. The expert pointed out two tendencies in the 1980-1990s: a switch of the initiative in determining the public and scientific topicality to local intellectuals for restoration of historic recalls and a switch of the idea of voluntary mergence of the North Caucasus with Russia with the idea of colonial conquering.
