Centenary of the Patriotic War of 1812 in the North Caucasus: Memory and Politics

The article is devoted to the problems of commemorating the events of the Patriotic War of 1812 in the Northern Caucasus in the year of the centenary. A wide range of archival and published sources is used to analyse the ways in which the image of victory in the war with Napoleon is formed in the region, and to trace the specifics of the imperial authorities' construction of the memory of the war and the involvement of all the peoples of the Russian Empire in this event. The specific nature of regional commemorative practices is revealed through a comparative analysis of the various political orientations of the central and regional press. Periodicals were the most responsive and reflected on their pages all actions of the authorities to implement the jubilee celebrations, the key objective of which was seen as the unification of the country's multi-ethnic and multi-confessional population. In the conditions of increasing social and inter-ethnic contradictions in the North Caucasus, as well as the significant militarisation of Russian celebrations in the early 20th century, the memory of the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812 was to become a certain assemblage point for the imperial state under the conditions of instability. An analysis of the reporting documents on the celebrations in the North Caucasus in comparison with the materials of the periodical press made it possible to identify the possibilities and limits of the use of the jubilee date in this process.