SOME WORKS OF MEMOIR LITERATURE OF «PRISONER OF THE CAUCASUS» AND THE PROBLEM OF RUSSIAN ORIENTALISM

Abstract

The article is written in the context of research on the Russian orientalism, based on memoirs of Russians, who were held captive by the mountaineers during the war in the first half of the XIX c. The article studies some features of this phenomenon. They consist in the description of mountaineers' characters by the individual authors, characterized by the dominance of negative qualities and their grotesque presentation. On the other hand, the diaries of some «prisoners of the Caucasus» besides the features of Orientalism include dynamics towards objective characteristics of the mountaineers, which testifies to the Russians' efforts of deeper and more objective penetration into the mentality and culture of these people.

Keywords

• russian orientalism
• discourse
• dehumanism
• the concept of the «noble savage»
• slave trading
• hadith
• mountain combatants
• the equivalence of the other one