ABSTRACT
If the effect of Tsarist occupation of the North Caucasus was limited (if still significant) in terms of its cultural impact on the ground, sociological changes within the Transcaucasus were far more dramatic and profound, as the revolution of 1905 underlined. Though the discovery of oil had transformed Groznyi by the turn of the century from a military outpost into a boom town, the Russian authorities, with the exception of the small-scale secular educational initiatives in areas such as Stavropol outlined in the last chapter, had in many ways already turned their back on the North Caucasus mountaineers, embittered perhaps by over forty years of near continuous conflict there. However, hopes regarding the economic and cultural development of the Armenian, Georgian, Kurdish and Azeri peoples south of the main Caucasus mountain range burnt far brighter.
