Le Guide Impossibili
5558 Circassia
Ossezia, Cecenia, Due Cabarde e altre contrade caucasiche circostanti la Strada Militare di Georgia
Edited by Gianni Guadalupi. Texts by J.A. Longworth, Vasilij Vereščagin, Essad Bey
1988 / 242 PAGES.
Language: Italian
The Caucasus in the 19th century: a medley of wild yet gallant tribes engaged in a centuries-long war against the Russian Bear.
With the dauntless scorn for reality that inspired Gogol’s most fascinating pages, early-1800s Russian bureaucracy used the expression “conquered territories” to refer to a vast expanse of mountains, forests and pastures that made up the western half of the Caucasus and belonged to a myriad of small tribes. Ignoring the fact that they had been conquered by a decree issued in far-away Saint Petersburg, these tribes forced the czar to keep an army numbering one hundred and fifty thousand men on the warpath on either side of the Caucasian massif, where the tribes often descended to plunder their conquerors. In this volume, three characters describe their adventures in the lost lands of the Caucasus, often coming across the curious knowledge of the Circassians, an ethnic group from the north-western Caucasus.