The North-Western Caucasus in the 30-50s of the XIX century as a means of fighting against Russia in the plans of its geopolitical opponents

The main geopolitical opponents of the Russian Empire in the first half of the 19th century - England, France and the Ottoman Port - sought to complicate the situation in the North Caucasus by setting the local mountain population against the Russians. They not only sent their agents and emissaries to the eastern coast of the Black Sea, who collected intelligence information there, and distributed anti-Russian appeals, but by sea on commercial ships they delivered various goods, weapons and gunpowder to the mountaineers, irreconcilably disposed towards the Russians.

European and Turkish agents urged the Circassians to fight against the Russians and promised them military support from the European monarchs, who did not recognize Russia’s right to own the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. Poles-emigrants, also hostile to the Russians, together with European agents, penetrated into the Caucasus from Constantinople, where their recruiting centers were located and tried to unite the Circassians with the Polish deserters who had fled from the Russian army, urging them to fight together with a common enemy.

All efforts to use the North-western Caucasus as a weapon aimed at containing Russia and even destroying its statehood have failed. The Circassians did not wait for effective help from the Europeans, who sought to use them for their political purposes, and the Poles, concentrated in their hatred of Russia, failed to involve and send neither the Circassians nor the Cossacks, whom they saw as their potential allies, into the struggle for the liberation of Poland. The chimerical plans of the leaders of the Polish emigration went beyond reasonable reality, and therefore were more of a fantasy that had no real basis for implementation.

The Russian authorities actively countered the intrigues of their European, Turkish and Polish enemies, and they began to approach the confrontation with the mountaineers of the North Caucasus more variably, using not only force of arms, but also measures that strengthened confidence and the possibility of peaceful coexistence.

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