Conformity and Consensus in Southwestern Georgia after the Establishment of Russian Imperial Authority: the Role of the Russian Empire in the Resettlement of the Local Population (Muhajirism)

Абстракт

The political history of the Caucasus is marked by enduring complexity and multi-faceted contestation, driven by the region’s pivotal position at the crossroads of empires. Over centuries, control oscillated between indigenous polities and succes-sive imperial powers, engendering shifting allegiances and recurrent conflict. During the Russian Empire’s 19th‑century expansion into southwestern Georgia, these dynamics intensified, compelling local communities to choose between ac-quiescence to imperial rule or the precarious maintenance of autonomy. This arti-cle offers a comprehensive analysis of Muhajirism ‒ the mass displacement and migration of predominantly Muslim communities from the Akhaltsikhe region ‒ situating this phenomenon within broader imperial strategies. Employing a rich body of archival documents, including official correspondence, census records, land surveys, and contemporaneous local reports, the study reconstructs the admin-istrative and military mechanisms by which the Russian authorities orchestrated population transfers and repopulated vacated territories with ethnically reliable settlers. The findings reveal a stark disjunction between the empire’s official rhetoric of civilizing missions and its underlying objectives of demographic engineering, social control, and resource consolidation. Internal divisions among Georgian notables and local elites further facilitated imperial designs, while displaced com-munities experienced profound loss of property, identity disintegration, and cultural transformation. By critically reassessing the legacy of Tsarist colonial governance, this research illuminates how Muhajirism functioned as both a tool of power redistribution and a catalyst for long‑term demographic and cultural change. The article contributes to scholarship on South Caucasian regional histo-ry, migration studies, and imperial policy, offering new insights into the processes by which empires sought to produce conformity and secure consensus among sub-jugated populations.