ABSTRACT
Soviet Union inherited the imperial territorial ambitions, and Alexey Yermolov, by virtue of having conquered the Caucasus, became something of a national hero who had to be considered a liberal, even a proto-revolutionary. Yermolov’s tour in the Caucasus lasted for ten years. General Nikolay Muravyev, governor-general of the Caucasus, later recalled an order Yermolov once issued in Tiflis: to hang a captured mullah by the feet in plain view of the whole city.” Pushkin v vospominaniyakh had often expressed his admiration for Yermolov who was, an extremely cunning courtier, a man of many faces, and something of an Inquisitor by nature. As Yermolov wrote in his Notes:” The rebellious villages were looted and burned, orchards and vineyards cut down, and it will take years before the traitors return to their original state. Pyotr Vyazemsky wrote of Yermolov to Alexander Turgenev: “Like a black plague, he destroyed, exterminated, the tribes.
