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History

The concept of Caucasian orientalism and the Asian "other" were largely the result of scholarship during this period, with many literary works inspired by the conflict. For example, the writers Mikhail Lermontov and Leo Tolstoy, who gained much of his knowledge and experience of war for his book War and Peace from these encounters, took part in the hostilities. The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin referred to the war in his Byronic poem "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" (Russian: Кавказский пленник; Kavkazskij plennik), written in 1821. In general, the Russian armies that served in the Caucasian wars were very eclectic; as well as ethnic Russians from various parts of the Russian empire they included Cossacks, Armenians, Georgians, Caucasus Greeks, Ossetians, and even soldiers of Muslim background like Tatars and Turkmen.

One of the precipitating events for the Caucasian war has been attributed to the failed attempt by al-Imam al-Mansur to use Islam as a means of rallying Caucasian resistance against Russian forces. According to Moshe Gammer, as a result of al-Imam al-Mansur's symbolic actions, Alexander I sent Aleksey Yermolov to conquer the Caucasus in 1816. Yermolov was known for his ruthless military tactics in the Caucasus, most notably brutally ousting Chechens from their territory; this event triggered a revolt in Chechnya and Dagestan, which Yermolov also violently subdued. Bruce King succinctly describes Ermolov's actions in the Caucasus, stating that after a successful military career during the Napoleonic Wars he "routed a significant number of raiding parties, completely razing entire villages he judged to be complicit and cementing his reputation for merciless determination through series of public executions." The Russian invasion, however, encountered fierce resistance. The first period of the invasion ended coincidentally with the death of Alexander I and the Decembrist Revolt in 1825. It achieved surprisingly little success, especially compared with the then recent Russian victory over the "Great Army" of Napoleon in 1812. Indeed, Yermolov's invasion of the Caucasus did little more than enhance the Caucasians' already mounting hostility toward Russia and solidify Islam's role in Caucasian resistance to Russian rule.