“The god of friendship punish the villain!”: notes on semantic tension (“allegiance” vs. “kheshiagye”) in the space of Russian-Cherkassian political interaction in the 18th century

T.A. Aloev

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Abstract: With each change of adjoining neighbor in the course of expanding its borders throughout the late Middle Ages and Modern times the Russian state entered into certain relationships with new actors. From the beginning of the 18th century it established connections in the southeast with polities significantly inferior to it territorially, economically, demographically and, as a consequence in volume of military potential. Taking into account the ideological component that has not lost its relevance (the demand at the initial stage for the concept of “Moscow is the third Rome” and the subsequent appropriation of the idea of a “civilizing mission” in the Eurasian expanses) in the conduct of Russian promotion, the persistent desire of Moscow/St. Petersburg to interpret these relations as allegiance, i.e. as unconditional inclusion into the state. Modern historiography is quite skeptical about the adequacy of such rhetorical assessments and recognizes the conceptual distortions resulting from relying only on interpretations of imperial structures. In this regard leading experts have been articulating the need to correct research optics for a long time by involving sources of indigenous origin in scientific analysis. This text addresses this problem by studying a specific case of interaction between the Russian Empire and the largest Circassian principality – Great Kabarda in the 18th century. Expanding the range of analyzed sources that reveal the “indigenous” interpretation of the essence of conflicts with the modernizing empire allows us to get closer to a more balanced view on the nature of the relationship between the sides.

Keywords: kunachestvo (consecrated friendship), kheshiagye, allegiance, patronage, hospitality, alliance, Kabarda, Circassians, Russian Empire, borders, politics

For citation. Aloev T.A. “The god of friendship punish the villain!”: notes on semantic tension (“allegiance” vs. “kheshiagye”) in the space of Russian-Cherkassian political interaction in the 18th century. News of the KabardinoBalkarian Scientific Center of RAS. 2023. No. 6(116). Pp. 354–365. DOI: 10.35330/1991-6639-2023-6-116-354-365

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Information about the author

Aloev Timur Khazrailovich, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher of the Sector of Medieval and Modern History of the Institute of Humanitarian Researches – branch of KabardinoBalkarian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences;
360000, Russia, Nalchik, 18 Pushkin street;
aloevtim@yandex.ru, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4853-2589