THE SURVEY OF THE CASPIAN SEA CAUCASUS LITTORAL THE FIRST HALF OF XIX CENTURY IN RUSSIAN NAVAL OFFICERS' NARRATION

The article concerns the phenomena of the military Caucasus studies in the Russian empire foundation. The author shows the role of the Military Ministry initiated the commencement of military statistical descriptions of the Caspian littoral together with the correlation of this activity with performing of such military-statistical descriptions of other sea possessions of Russia. All conclusions are based on two resulting documents that came into life as the result of the military-statistic activity: the description of the Caspian Sea of the captains Rydalev and Bazanovsky. They have never been used as a primary source. The article headlines the idea that the core of the data the military Stuff was interested in collecting shows us the issues Russian Empire was interested to gain. The Notes of Russian captains either show how the interests were shifted according to the extension of Russian control on the Caspian Sea. The article focuses on the idea that being interested in making the safe navigation by the extending Russian sector of the sea and gathering technical information on its coastal line, the naval officers inevitably turned to the idea of having a stance on people who lived on the shores - on their cultural, ethnical and sometimes political features. Finally, the author concludes that gathering military statistic data was very special in the Russian Empire. All the descriptions were not intended on the knowledge of the remote Imperial regions popularisation among Russian laymen but were written by the militaries concerned on supporting other militaries with the strategical information. That is why all the notes kept in military vaults were utter unknown to the Russian publics.

Caucasus studies, military statistic descriptions, the investigation of the Caspian Sea, Sea Ministry of Russia, the hydrography General, Rydalev, Bazanovsky, Sarychev

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