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Russian Imperialist Ambition in A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's Allamat-Bek

kimsungil 1

1청주대학교

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ABSTRACT

The theme of Caucasus in Russian literature stemmed from A. Pushkin's The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1820) became expended when it reached to writer Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. The writer's magnum opus, Allamat-Bek (1832), was based on a real historical event. Being proponent to the side of Russian ideology, this work strongly presents that the primary task the Russian Imperialist government paused in this region at the time was civilization of the Caucasus through diplomatic and humanistic ways. There are three main protagonists in this work, but Berkhovsky and Sultan Akhmet-Khan are the characters who stand for the contradictory views toward the "war between Russia- Caucasus." While the former, Berkhovsky, thinks that the conflict between the two parties might be solved by means of communication and cooperation, the latter, on the other hand, is opposed to any of peaceful completion of this war. Allamat-Bek, the main hero of this work, however, passes away, going back and forth between loyalty and renegation. The author goes on to describe that Berkhovsky considers the Caucasus as Eden, the land of fruits, unlike Russia which appears as the land of labor. Yet, for Berkhovsky the Caucasus is presented as the land which needs enlightenment. This is the transformation of the so-called typical Western Orientalism. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky does not take side of either evil or good between the Russian Orthodoxy and the Islam, that is the conflict between the two opponent parties. The writer, instead, argues that this is just difference between the familiar and the strange, that is, the svoi and the chuzhoi. What is the very picture the writer wants to show the reader, then, is that it is petty and sad to see the unavoidable violent progress which happened and experienced by the indigenous people during the civilization of the Caucasus by the Russian Imperialist government.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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