Kirill Rivkin. Arms and Armor of Caucasus. Edina: Yamna Publishing, 2016. Illustrations. 327 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-692-49481-3.
Reviewed by Mara Kozelsky (University of South Alabama)
Published on H-War (November, 2018)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)
Kirill Rivkin’s Arms and Armor of Caucasus analyzes an array of weaponry produced or found in the Caucasus. The book incorporates hundreds of images, many of which are published for the first time from obscure collections stored in remote museums or private holdings. This alone makes the book valuable. On a larger level, the book offers a rare glimpse into early modern military conflicts between the Russian and Ottoman Empires in an understudied battleground. Russian and Ottoman militaries frequently met in the Caucasus, as did warriors of Persia. All three empires left their stamp on the region and its peoples.
Along with Georgia, modern nation-states of Armenia and Azerbaijan comprise the Caucasus. Autonomous republics and federal regions of Russia—most notably Chechnya—are spread along the north. Although a long history of warfare and imperialism has forced some homogeneity, the Caucasus still remains one of the most diverse small spaces in the world. Hundreds of tribal identities exist, as do a dizzying number of languages and dialects. Today, tribal beliefs defy easy categorization, with some peoples practicing a blend of Christianity and Islam, often inflected with animism. Other tribes adhere to Buddhism or Judaism. Nationalist movements compete with one another, while frozen conflicts exist in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh. The complex nature of the Caucasus, characterized by microscopic communities and shifting political boundaries, makes the area particularly difficult to study.
Rivkin has admirably risen to the challenge by offering a new, transnational approach to weapons classification. Instead of viewing weapons as “Russian” or “Georgian” or “Persian,” for example, he emphasizes “shape, decoration, signatures, manufacturing techniques, and so on” (p. 10). In other words, Rivkin does not restrict his analysis to a single collection or draw conclusions based on political borders. Given that Caucasian tribes were often nomadic or seminomadic, this approach makes sense and facilitates tracing evolution of weapons across multiple empires and tribes. Thus, for example, figure 149 shows a Dagestan blade, with Georgian decoration, mounted in Turkey (p. 246). Figure 206 depicts a Trans-Caucasian saber with a Persian coin (p. 294). Other images depict a Circassian-Tatar saber (figure 86) excavated from a Cossack settlement and a Tatar or Mongol bayonet-tipped saber (figure 87) captured by King Gustavus Adolphus (p. 166). Consistently, Rivkin’s analysis of weapons illustrates the tremendous intermingling and movement among Caucasian peoples. Rivkin’s identification of European influence in Caucasian weapons reveals, moreover, the degree to which mountain tribes found themselves bound up in Great Power politics of the nineteenth century.
Arms and Armor moves beyond a study of military technology to offer a cultural history of war. Rivkin writes: “The connection between weapons and the very soul of a society is of the most intimate nature.” The author points out that weapons, particularly in the Caucasus where tribes sometimes elevated swords on altars, “function as a national symbol, an allegory of justice, power and destruction” (p. 6). For Rivkin, these weapons—the armor, knives, kindjals, and shashkas (he describes the latter as archetypical to the Caucasus)—function as texts that reveal tribal values and lifestyles.
Rivkin acknowledges the problematic nature of primary and secondary sources as a limiting factor of his analysis. Evidence from weaponry aside, many tribes did not leave written records of their activities. Therefore, Rivkin relies on Russian primary accounts to fill in gaps, much of which was created during wars of conquest. Georgia features more prominently than other parts of the Caucasus, as it had one of the more developed weapons industries. Still, he gives attention to Circassian and Tatar, Dagestani, and Cossack materials as sources permit. He clarifies throughout when he is speculating about a weapon’s provenance and consistently points to areas in need of further scholarship.
Through the lens of arms and armor, Rivkin gives us the history of the Caucasus and introduces readers to the various peoples who lived among fragmented nations caught between the Persian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires. Rivkin approaches artifacts with the eye of an artist and sensibility of a cultural historian of war. The book is an interdisciplinary, original, and solid contribution to the literature.
Scholars and enthusiasts interested in military history and weaponry will most value Rivkin’s work. Other readers desiring a general introduction to the history and peoples living in the Caucasus will find much to appreciate in the first two of Rivkin’s three chapters. These provide a balanced survey of Caucasian political alliances and wars with the Ottoman and Persian Empires, as well as wars of resistance against Russian conquest.
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Citation:
Mara Kozelsky. Review of Rivkin, Kirill, Arms and Armor of Caucasus.
H-War, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2018.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=52899
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