George Anchabadze (Achba)
Professor of history at the Ilia State University, Georgia.
The Caucasian War is the longest-running military conflict in Russian history. One of its features is the absence of generally accepted chronological boundaries. Moreover, if almost all historians recognize 1864 as the final date of this conflict, then there is a wide range of opinions regarding the initial date - 1722, 1763, 1785, 1801, 1817, 1830 and other years. Each of these dates has its own more or less justifiable motives, but the most reasonable is the opinion of historians who attribute the beginning of the great confrontation in the North Caucasus to the era of the Russian Empress Catherine II (1762-1796), when the active advance of the Russian troops and administration began here.
Read more …Abkhazia and The Caucasian War: 1810-1864, by George Anchabadze