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The threefold task the author had in mind implies the following. First, to assess informative value of the 18th century European sketches on the Caucasus as a source of the appropriate knowledge. Second, to redirect scholarly attention towards searching for distinct lines between murky facts and their interpretation, oftentimes arbitrary, uncritical, and even openly biased. It would help to reveal what might be called a scientific trend in Western “historiography” on the region`s past. Third, to expose the role of the incoming political and ideological factors determined by geostrategic interests of the concerned States on the one hand and by its largely prejudiced, as it were, orientalistic perception of the East on the other. While the author found his general approach promising he hesitates to claim that all of his conclusions are flawless. Some of them need further arguments either pro or contra to deservedly place the subject in question in a wider context of history.
Keywords: scientific Caucasian studies, "image of the other", European writings.
References:
- Adygi, balkartsy, karachaevtsy v izvestiyakh evropeiskikh avtorov XIII-XIX vv. Sostavlenie, redaktsiya perevodov, vvedenie i vstupitel'nye stat'i k tekstam V.K. Gardanova [Adygs, Balkars, Karachais by information of the European authors of the XIII-XIX centuries. Comp., ed., transl., introduction and headnotes to the texts by V.K. Gardanov]. Nalchik, 1974. 635 p.
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- Jan Struys. Tri puteshestviya [Three trips]. Moscow, OGIZ-Sotsekgiz, 1935. 500 p.
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