ИЗВЕСТИЯ СОИГСИ

Readers are invited to the reediting of the article of academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences I.A. Guldenstadt (1745—1781) “Geographical and Historical News about the New Borderline of the Russian Empire, Carried out between the River Terek and the Sea of Azov”, first published in 1779 in low-circulation scientific journal of the Academy of Sciences “A Historical and Geographical Menology” and republished in 1790, in the same edition of the Academy of Sciences a Collection of essays selected from “Menologies” (“Mesyatseslov”) for different years, is now practically inaccessible to the researchers. Academician I.A. Guldenstadt in 1770—1773. examined the North Caucasus and Georgia with the expedition of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, during this expedition he was keeping diary, travel notes, but did not publish the results of his research of the Caucasus – they were prepared for publication and published by some of his fellow academicians P.S. Pallas and H.-J. Klaproth. During the scientist’s lifetime only one article came to light to the attention of the readers. It is of particular interest because, as was rightly pointed out by such an authoritative researcher of the history of Russian academic of Caucasian studies as M.A. Polievktov, Guldenstedt “...opens a new division in the history of the Russian science of the Caucasian studies of the eighteenth century, the object of which is the entire Caucasus from the Black sea to the Caspian” (3, 123). To the modern reader in the article by I.A. Guldenstadt, of course, of prior interest is not the story of the construction of the “New frontier line of the Russian Empire, carried out between the river Terek and the sea of Azov”, nor the characteristics of “Novoselitsy border areas”, fortress of Catherine, Pavlovsk, Mar, George, Alexander and Stavropol, but rather information gathered by Guldenstadt “on the border nations between” – about Adygs, Abkhaz, Karachay and the Balkars, Nogais. This information – with all their features, inaccuracies and even some fabulousness today are of undoubted interest as one of the earliest evidence of a European being in the Russian service, and first-time visitor to the unknown region of the Caucasus.

Keywords: academician I.A. Guldenstadt, first expedition of the Imperial Academy of Sciences to the Caucasus, Circassians, Balkars, Karachai, Nogai.

References:

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2. Polijevktov M.A. Evropeiskije puteshestvenniki XIII—XVIII vv. po Kavkazu [European travelers of XIII—XVIII centuries to the Caucasus (Digest)]. Tiflis, Research Institute of Caucasology Publ., 1935. 221 p.

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7. [Ozeretskovskij N.Ja.] Predislovie [Preface] Sobranie sochinenij, vybrannyh iz «Mesjaceslovov» na raznye gody [Collected works selected from the “Menologies” for the different years]. St. Petersburg, Imperial Academy of sciences Publ, 1785, part I.