A major theme that emerges from the readings this week is the idea of the Russian peripheries as distant lands filled with misunderstood and unappreciated natural purity. Tolstoy’s The Cossacks most strikingly reveals this through Olenin’s journey to the Caucasus mountains and his gradual attitude shift towards life in the empire’s periphery. Olenin’s friends initially question his decision to go to the Caucasus, saying that they themselves “wouldn’t do it for anything,” which reveals the important perspective the city dwellers have on these distant lands (7). While Moscow society is preoccupied with establishing one’s social status and speaking French, the periphery is viewed as undesirable (8). Olenin to some extent still embodies these characteristics at the start of his journey, as upon viewing the mountains for the first time he comments that “he could not find anything attractive in the spectacle of the mountains of which he had read and heard so much” (15). This is in line with Moscow society’s blasé attitude towards the periphery; however, Olenin’s attitude quickly changes the next day when he clearly sees the “enormous, pure white masses with their delicate contours, [as if it were an] apparition” (15-16). This marks a turning point for Olenin, where he starts to reject his city ways and embrace what the periphery has to offer.

Olenin’s embrace of natural purity makes him “quite a different man,” as he turns over a new leaf and adopts the Circassian way of life (48). Through his immersion in the majestic nature of the Caucasus mountains, he is reborn with more vigor than he ever had while living in Moscow (52). Olenin’s transformation critiques Moscow society while at the same time extols the splendor of the empire’s periphery that goes unappreciated by many. The Caucasus mountains serve as a physical, cultural, and societal escape from the Russian interior that Tolstoy brings to light through Olenin’s embrace of the land and its people.

Pushkin’s poem, Farewell to Russia, also touches on the interior peoples’ perspectives of distant Russian lands. What is most surprising by this poem is narrator’s mention of his “exile… beneath the Caucasian skies,” as it highlights how the Russian authority punishing him obviously viewed the Caucasus region as a vile punishment (5-6). The narrator, on the other hand, is greatly pleased to escape the undesirable conditions of the interior, which further emphasizes the varying interior perspectives of the periphery. To conclude, one question I have is whether those in the interior considered the empire’s periphery part of Russia, or more as foreign non-Russian regions?