The Caucasus, an Alberta-size area including Southern
districts of Russian Federation
as well as three new nations - Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan - has been to a
great extent isolated from the rest of the world during 70 years of
communist rule and its policy of "the Iron Curtain". Most
archival materials and other sources of historical information about the Caucasus were unavailable during this time, both for
foreign and domestic research. In the USSR
and to a great extent in the Russian empire (before 1917), mostly for
ideological reasons, researchers were unable to study the history of
annexed lands, especially if those lands had a much longer history than Russia
itself. The Caucasus with its history
coming back at least to the 9th century B.C. was not an exception. At the
same time many Western researchers tended to underestimate the area
regarding it as a remote and thus less important Russian province.
Due to the above facts the Caucasus
still remains relatively unknown to the West. Finding reference literature
is still a problem and it is still very hard for western diplomats,
businessmen and ordinary citizens to understand the conflicts and problems
of the area, to help resolve them and to make a more or less reliable
prognosis for future development.
However the Caucasus
seems to be a very interesting area of the world. Being a frontier of West and
East it has a long and dramatic history. Its mountains and valleys gave
birth to many important historical figures, among them philosopher Averroes
and marshal Joachim Murat (hyp.), field-marshal Peter Bagration and
dictator Joseph Stalin, Jurij Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev. Peoples of
the Caucasus made a valuable deposit into
human culture having created numerous masterpieces of art, architecture,
literature and film. Rich mineral and natural resources make the Caucasus a prospective area for international
business.
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