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In this article, Vladimir Bobrovikov, Russia's leading scholar of the Caucasus, reflects on the contribution of Anatoly Remnev to Russian im­perial history. He notes that Remnev was a student of Boris Anan'ich and began his studies doing research on administrative institutions of the Rus­sian Empire. Bobrovnikov recalls two projects on which he collaborated with Remnev. He was a proponent of the "regional" approach to imperial history as opposed to the nationalizing paradigm of Russian historical writing. Bobrovnikov notes that Remnev was a superb expert on the fabric of imperial society, and that in his works theory never took over the facts, even if he did not shy away from general observations. Especially valuable for Bobrovnikov was a chance to work with Remnev and compare differ­ent regions of the Russian empire. The author sees this work as potentially more productive than comparisons between different imperial formations. Bobrovnikov discusses Remnev's work on the "mental maps" of the Russian empire and what he called the "geography of power." He did not always agree with Remnev, who was critical of the "frontier approach" to Siberian history. Finally, Bobrovnikov writes about Remnev's contributions to the study of orientalist representations of native peoples of the steppe. Remnev succeeded in uncovering the voices of the subjugated peoples in a way no one did before him. Bobrovnikov bemoans the fact that he and Remnev did not succeed in writing a study together on the "inorodtsy" from different regional perspectives. He describes the passing of Anatoly Remnev as an irreparable loss to scholarship on the Russian Empire.

Статья раскрывает деятельность государственного призрения в дореволюционной России в форме комитетов. Основное внимание в работе автор акцентирует на видах, функциональных задачах и методах организации работы в комитетах: выдаче пособий, помощи сиротам и семьям лиц, призванных на войну. ; The article reveals the activity of state charity in pre-revolutionary Russia in the form of Committees. The author pays special attention to the types, functional tasks and work organization methods in the committees: benefit granting, helping orphans and families of persons called up for military service.

SUMMARY:
The review article by Vladimir Bobrovnikov is devoted to the discussion of two books: The Captive and the Gift by Bruce Grant and A Look at the Mountaineers, the View from the Mountains by Yuri Karpov. Bobrovnikov situates these two books in the larger historiographical context of studies of the Caucasus, which is dominated by the reductionist perspective of looking at the Caucasus through the prism of empire and conquest and by narrow-minded ethnographic studies. The two books differ from this context by their attempt to understand the region by looking at the interaction between the local population and empire and by their criticism of simplistic orientalist paradigms. Bobrovnikov praises Grant for the breadth of material covered, innovative interpretation of empire as a sovereignty of gift, and the potential of the latter concept to go beyond the conventional view on the history of the Caucasus from the viewpoint of postcolonial studies. He acknowledges the viability of looking at empire in terms of cultural memory, which lies at the center of Grant's approach. Bobrovnikov criticizes Grant for failure to take into account the historicity of imperial power and local societies associated with the historical dynamics of expansion, conquest, accommodation, and incorporation of the region in the Russian Empire. Karpov's book is devoted to the analysis of micro-history of mountainous societies based on Jamaat/Jamia in the period of the eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Bobrovnikov praises Karpov for "thick description" of social and cultural realities of mountainous societies in Dagestan and for taking into account the factors of social change in the borderland that led to the disintegration of Jamaat/Jamia. Finally, Bobrovnikov contends that historical parallels with present-day realities in Karpov's book appear unconvincing. Bobrovnikov criticizes Karpov for elements of an essentialist approach in his treatment of Jamaat/Jamia and for underestimating the role of Islam in resistance and accommodation in the North Caucasus. Bobrovnikov's conclusion is that the two books may be looked at as complementary to each other, although the authors differ in their approach.

SUMMARY:
The article is based on the author's research in different archival collections containing documents in Russian and various Oriental languages relating to North Caucasian Muslims. The paper presents an attempt to critically rethink the advantages and disadvantages of the so-called Archival Revolution in the post-Communist period. More than fifteen years have passed since the opening of the archives of the post-Soviet space, yet these years did not produce a serious shift in understanding of Islam and Muslim communities under Russian rule. This situation points to a methodological crisis in Russian Islamic Studies. This crisis arises from the continued domination of misleading approaches of the Cold War period. Most scholars still concentrate on official Russian-language sources featuring a hostile attitude toward Islam and viewing Muslims as eternal enemies of the Russian state. The voices of Russia's Muslims are fundamentally neglected or misunderstood by contemporary historians, who rely on sources produced by tsarist and Soviet officials. In order to capture these voices scholars should turn to Arabic sources and evidence emanating from local Muslim communities in imperial and early Soviet Russia. These sources may be found in central state and private archival collections. They comprise a vast body of official documents and narrative materials that shed light on the inner life of Muslim communities and their relationship with the state. In view of these variegated archival collections, it appears that the history of Islam and Muslim communities in Russia should be represented through the model of entangled history. Knowledge of written Islamic sources in the Arabic language or script is essential to this entangled history. Yet, Arabic was just one medium in an intricate and constantly changing hierarchy of oral and written languages used by Muslim subjects in the Caucasian borderland of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Various types of first-hand sources present conflicting stories, yet also complement each other. Their comparative synchronic analysis allows for a more complicated, more credible and more dynamic picture of Muslim life at a local or micro-historical level. Bobrovnikov also points out that the archival sources dealing with nineteenth and twentieth century Russian Muslims of the Caucasus borderland are scattered all over the world. This article presents archival findings from the collections of Dagestan and Bulgaria. In Sofia there is a rich collection of Ottoman legal records and financial documents many of which pertain to the history of the nineteenth century Muslim emigration ( muhajirun ) from the Caucasus and other regions the Russian Empire. Drawing on these sources, Bobrovnikov shows the importance of further studies on a variety of themes: the conceptual languages of state documentation of Islam; the construction and/or perversion of social and political meaning in the process of translating official documents pertaining to Islam in a multilingual milieu; authors and actors of Islamic discourse and activism in the Russian Caucasus; the criteria and underlying ideological messages of statistics; and the role of oral histories in local Muslim discourse concerning Islam and the Empire.

SUMMARY:
This article analyzes the reception by Russian intellectuals of the first Russian translation of Edward Said's "Orientalism" (St. Petersburg, 2006). The author first suggests reasons why "Orientalism" was never particularly popular with Russian scholars and was never discussed within any local academic discourse. He then turns his attention toward the Russian version of "Orientalism" that appeared fifteen years after the original English-language publication. The article deals with many mistakes in the translation which are explained by the absence of scholarly editing, as well as the tendentiousness of the translator and especially of the author of the extensive Postsciptum accompanying the Russian text. This Postcriptum contains some information on Said, yet its main purpose is to explain the meaning of his major book for Russia and Russians. The article offers a critical interpretation of this text by K. A. Krylov, leader of the moderate Russian patriots and editor-in-chief of such media publications as "Russia's Special Force" and "Russian March." Using "Orientalism" as a source of inspiration, Krylov expresses his anti-western views, his irritation with westernized Russian intellectuals and with the post-modernist tradition of thought (without placing Said within this tradition). He recommends reading "Orientalism" as a model of action for "us" who live in the "huge and scary European East." The article also analyzes the ideological presumptions and rhetorical tools of Krylov, who frames "Orientalism" as the manifesto of anti-globalism, anti-Americanism and a declaration of the superiority of non-western civilization. The bulk of Krylov's commentary on "Orientalism" is dedicated to Said's views on Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then the article turns to other reviews of "Orientalism" in the Russian press pointing to the similarity of reactions of local "statist" and nationalists who support Said, and the unanimous rejection of Said by local "westernizers." All parties involved see in "Orientalism" a political manifesto of a Westernized Arab. The article compares this reaction to the reception of the original "Orientalism" in the West and stresses the essentialism of Russian commentators, be they Marxists, western-style liberals or nationalists. The author concludes that the essentialism of the Russian critics is incompatible with Said's relativism. The pathos of "Orientalism," which the author defines as the rejection of essentialism of positivist science of the 19 th and 20 th centuries, remains unnoticed by the majority of Russian commentators of Said.

SUMMARY:
Vladimir Bobrovnikov, an editor of the volume North Caucasus within the Russian Empire , recounts how that volume was written, commenting on its composition and overall historiographic mission as well as responding to criticism by reviewers. Bobrovnikov begins by listing what he would have done differently with respect to the published volume. He laments that the volume does not cover the whole of the Caucasus region, which would have been a more adequate analysis of the region's history. At the same time, Bobrovnikov explains the peculiarity of the region inhabited by mountaineer societies vis-à-vis the whole of the Caucasus, highlighting the fact that historians should be critical toward the regional divisions of the Empire's territory as demarcated by the imperial government, even though this geographic and administrative map might seem to be historic and authentic. Reflecting on both the North Caucasus and other volumes in the series, he suggests how the interwoven fabric of social experience and imperial governance might have been better addressed by linking the regions together (the Caucasus and Central Asia, for instance), rather than separating them as was done in the series. Responding to criticism of the volume by reviewers, Bobrovnikov defends the volume's positing of diverse historical experiences of the Caucasian War (or Caucasian wars). That is to say the history of imperial presence in the region cannot be reduced to military confrontations and subjugation by military means and should encompass the gradient of loyalties of North Caucasian peoples to the Empire, as well as trade and collaboration. Reflecting on the diametrically opposed reviews of the volume by Russian and western specialists, Bobrovnikov contends that this difference is rooted in the divergence of paradigmatic historical narratives through which the history of the region is perceived. He emphasizes that the volume on the North Caucasus was written with the explicit task of introducing new methodological paradigms. These paradigms include both new interpretations of the religious history of the region's Muslim communities and new historical approaches to Orientalism and colonialism in the history of the Russian Empire. In conclusion, Bobrovnikov assesses the series Borderlands of the Russian Empire as a successfully accomplished project because the published volumes thwarted the initial design to write the history of the Empire according to a single analytical framework and thus revealed the manifold phenomenon of imperial diversity.

SUMMARY:
Vladimir Bobrovnikov's article focuses on the reconstruction of Islamic traditions on a collective farm in Dagestan. Based upon fieldwork done in the early 1990s in the Dagestani aul of Khustada, Bobrovnikov's article first explores the concept of tradition in Soviet ethnography and Western social studies.

Khushtada was chosen for research because it is one of the centers of Islamic life in Dagestan. The village houses a seventeenth century mosque, Sufi monuments, and many praying houses. Local memory often refers to the role of the Khustada people in the spread of Islam in Dagestan and links Islam to local events. A popular local narrative refers to volunteers from the village who joined Imam Shamil, while another one describes a Naqshbandi sheikh killed by the Soviet authorities. During Soviet times, Islamic traditions, the Koran, and Sufism were taught illegally in Khushtada. Despite the stress on resistance to the Soviet authorities, the local population remembers nostalgically the Soviet collective farm, which survives today as a form of communal self-organization ( dzhamaat ) centered on the mosque and run by the local Islamic elite, and contributes to the maintenance of the local mosque. The dzhamaat also received the land that belonged to the collective farm.

Islamic authorities not only control the village administration but also implement the shari'a and, although the dzhamaat has no means to enforce its decisions, the force of public opinion secures its authority. However, the judicial authority of the local Islamic administration covers only minor cases, while for serious cases the people of Khushtada address the militia and courts in the district center. However, in mid-1990s the Islamic community of Khushtada has been split between "Sufists" (followers of the local Islam) and "Wahhabists" (followers of the reformer al-Wahhab).

According to the author, despite the revival of Islam based on the legacy of Soviet collective farms, "Islamic traditions" in Dagestan cover a great number of ruptures and discontinuities (such as prolonged periods when mosques were closed or Sufi educational patterns broke down). Russian has replaced Arabic, and few people can read old manuscripts. Today's basis for Islamic revival, the Soviet collective farm, though, appears to have emerged as an heir to the local self-government unit, introduced by the Russian imperial administration in the 1860s. And yet, the collective farm, which replaced the dzhamaat during the Soviet period, itself profoundly changed in the last half century.

Bobrovnikov concludes that his research into the transformations of the community in Khushtada allows arguing that there is no "primordial" Islamic tradition in Dagestan. These traditions emerged in response to colonial and Soviet transformations and modernization. The invented traditions of an Islamic and a Soviet past merged in the collective farm / dzhamaat . Bobrovnikov concurs that it is in local communities that the dynamics of Islamic life and the transmission of Islamic knowledge are defined, yet he does not agree that these local communities are necessarily in opposition to the state. Soviet authorities attempted to use traditionalist discourse and to maintain local communities in a new form. In doing so, they helped the carriers of these "invented traditions" to grab power.

SUMMARY:
In his article, Vladimir Bobrovnikov analyzes the motives of violence and power in the historical memory of Dagestani mountaineers during the transitional period (the 18 th and first half of the 19 th centuries), in which region was incorporated into the Russian empire, but retained its frontier characteristics in the context of Russian-Muslim encounter of the Caucasus. The author bases his analysis on the Tale of Khochbar . Having surveyed the existing translations of this text, Bobrovnikov concludes that they are inadequate for scholarly work and proposes a new own translation based on the earliest version of the historical document. The author then recites the plot of the Tale providing commentary on the mentioned historical figures and socio-cultural and political realities at the time of composition. Noting the palimpsest layers of this historical document, the author sheds light on the period before the Caucasian war and incorporation of the mountainous region into the Russian empire. The Tale reports on the life in the Muslim borderland, which was united at that time in a confederation of mountain tribes. The military units of this confederation carried out assaults on the Georgian Kingdom and defended the confederation in case of attack. In a subsequent period at the end of the 18 th and beginning of the 19 th centuries the unity of the mountainous confederation was undermined by rival powers, the Iranian and the Russian empires. The imperial rivalry brought a tension to the tribal elite and communes. First, Iranian (Shia) expansion triggered the increasing identification with and politicization of Islam by the tribal communes, then was directed against the Russian empire's presence in the region and the empire mountainous elite allied with the empire. Having reconstructed the historical context, Bobrovnikov returns to the motif of Khochbar in which, he asserts, two different figures blurred as a result of textual palimpsest. One figure represents the reality of mountainous confederation and its young armed formations that distinguished themselves in raids on Georgia. The other figure stands for the Muslim movement against the imperial domination, which was behind the Islamic theocratic state that took shape during the war in the Caucasus. The textual coalescence of those two figures in the text of the historical document leaves the question open as to what extent the changing historical reality of Caucasus was underpinned by the continuity of socio-cultural patterns of a frontier society.