Ihor Losiv

Caucasus: the boomerang effect [1999]

The Caucasus has always occupied a special place in Russian history. Starting with Ivan the Terrible (Grozny), the Caucasus Mountains, like a magnet, attracted Russian conquistadors, who in the national tradition were affectionately called “land explorers”. The ethnic groups of the North Caucasus were more and more persistently displaced from the fertile lands to the mountainous regions. It was during this long-term military campaign that the Kuban and Teresian Cossack armies were formed.