Strokes to the portrait of N.N. Zabudsky, the Caucasus military explorer

The article was prepared with the framework of the contemporary historical studies of the Caucasus at the time of the region annexation and integration into the all-Russia Imperial space. The focus of the paper is on the key milestones of the military career as well as on the investigation initiatives of N.N. Zabudsky, the Major-General, who sets an example of a typical Caucasus military explorer of the 19th century. It reveals his role in the preparation of the military-statistical reviews of different Caucasus regions such as the review of the Stavropol Governorate (Gubernia) with its Caucasus Line Hinterland.

Basing  on  the  documents  kept  in  the  fund  of  the  Military-Research Committee  of  the  Russian  State  Military  Historical  Archives,  the  author investigates one of the first examples of preparing a historical research paper on the final stages of the Caucasus War – the paper to which Zabudsky was to  be  the  author.  She  characterizes  the  researcher  plans,  his  approach  to selecting materials as well as the reaction of the high command to his creative initiative.

The present work comes to the conclusion that such representatives of the Russian officer corps like Zabudskiy became active participants in the complex process of studying the Caucasus. Being under the influence of different circumstances, they shifted the focus of their research from checking up military statistics data to the regional history reconstruction attempts including the analysis of the events which they were participants to. The results of their scientific and practical investigations contributed to the formation of the empirical foundation for writing the official history of the Caucasus War and, in general, for the further development of the historical research on the Caucasus.

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