2008/03/20 by Charles King · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Soviet and Russian History
paper · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177756.003.0004
openalex publication_date 2008/03/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract As the Caucasus was being conquered by the Russian empire, images of the Caucasus as a place were being consolidated in the imagination of both Russians and westerners. The poetry and prose of Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, and Leo Tolstoy painted vivid portraits of Russia's southern borderland. Travel and tourism brought new visitors, including European mountaineering enthusiasts such as Douglas Freshfield, who made the first recorded ascents of many of the region's peaks. Even in European erotica, the Caucasus and its peoples were portrayed as intriguingly vestigial versions of humanity, as wild and untamed as the landscape the inhabited.