In the fall of 1917, just as the Russian Empire was in the throes of World War I and the Bolsheviks seized power in a coup, American sociologist and criminologist Edward Alsworth Ross (1866 – 1951) decided to visit the realm, travelling across Siberia, Central Asia and Caucasus. By then, he was already a prominent academic, having worked as professor at Indiana University (1891–1892), Cornell University (1892–1893) and Stanford University (1893–1900). He left Stanford amidst a public scandal about his overt racism and support of eugenics but was quickly hired by the University of Nebraska (until 1905) and University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught sociology until 1937. He remained an active proponent of eugenics and immigration restrictions until late 1940s when he gradually moved away from these views. In 1940-1950 he served as a chair of the national committee of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 1917-1918, Ross visited Russia, where he met many prominent public figures and officials (including Leon Trotsky whom he interviewed) and spent several days in Georgia. In 1919, Ross published his impressions in the book "Russia in Upheaval" that contains a chapter on his experiences in Georgia. His high praise of Georgians is noteworthy considering his racial prejudice.
TIFLIS, city of more than a third of a million, where Georgians, Russians, German colonists, Armenians, Persians, and Tatars peacefully commingle, is less hit by the war and shows more vitality and recuperative power than any other city I visited. The presence of sixty thousand Armenians explains, perhaps, why one sees no Jews. Besides Arabs, I came upon a band of Khivans, as wild looking as Touaregs, and one Chinaman. In the streets the eye is gladdened by the sight of long-haired, bearded, Russian priests in dingy, purple cassocks, Tatar mollahs in flowing gowns, wearing a white or green turban, Tatar traders in blue tunics and white skull-caps, mountain shepherds as tall and raw-boned as Scotch Highlanders, high carts (arbas) drawn by Indian buffaloes with massive back-sweeping horns, tethered goats, fat-tailed sheep, leashed goshawks, and Lilliputian donkeys lost under their load. The bazaars, with their color, their stir, their intimacy, and their revelation of the cunning of armorer and silversmith, saddler and furrier, are a perpetual well-spring of delight.
Tiflis is at the cross-roads where meet all the chief peoples and products of the Levant. In the shops the various weaves of carpets from the Caucasus— Kuba, Karabagh, and Daghestan—vie with Pendeh, Beloochi, Tekke, Kermanshah, and Shiraz rugs. When a man has a rug he particularly wants to sell, he throws it over his shoulder and strolls through the bazaar, not crying his ware, but sauntering up to any casual knot of men with a dégagé [unconcerned] air, letting them inspect it if they like after shaking it open on the cobblestones.
The Georgians are the handsomest branch of the white race, and so, from our view point, are the finest-looking people in the world. The nose is thin and straight, with high-cut nostrils, upper lip short, chin well moulded, and head shapely. The mouth, however, does not form a Cupid's bow, and the eyes are set rather too close together to suit the taste of some. In old people the long nose, with much septum showing between the nostrils, suggests the hawk. The hair is fine and often wavy, while the complexion is good. The sight of so many handsome people brightens one's spirits and renews one's faith in the future of humanity.
Nowadays the Georgians rarely wear a full beard, but when they do it is soft and flowing, never bushy as with a race of coarser hair. It was in Tiflis that the whiskers question, which since my arrival in Russia had been gathering insistence in my subconsciousness, came abruptly to a head. Following, perhaps, some traditional clerical prejudice against shaving, the Russians run extravagantly to beard. "Boots-and-whiskers" is the foreigner's nickname for them. "What's the restaurant car giving for breakfast this morning?" I asked an American who occupied a coupe with a Russian officer. "Don't know," he replied. "Wait till my companion gets back. He'll have the menu on his whiskers!"
A flowing beard may be ornamental, but never the "billy-goat beard" that hangs. This is why many of the hirsute appendages one sees in Russia are as depressing as the Spanish moss that dangles from dead branches in dank woods. Were its superfluous whiskers tucked away in half a million hair mattresses, there would be less "unrest" in Russia. The mown chin, to be sure, is artificial, but why should a reasonable being retreat behind a tangle of sorrel undergrowth because half a million years ago nature hit upon facial hair as an advertisement of maleness? When the chin is so expressive of character, why should a man who has nothing to conceal hide himself in a thicket of coarse, tawny hair? So, after having conscientiously suspended judgment for a quarter of a year, in Tiflis my subconsciousness suddenly erupted the sentiment, "Down with whiskers!"
Every Georgian who can afford it wears the tcherkeska, a costume which grew up among the Tcherkesses or Circassians on the other side of the Caucasus, who half a century ago migrated to their fellow-Mohammedans in Turkey rather than endure Christian [Russian] domination. Besides a close fitting coat of snuff- or cream-colored woolen cloth with long very full skirts, decorated across the bosom with rows of cartridge pouches, he wears at his waist a dagger in a damascened silver sheath, and at his side carries a crooked saber. Add soft, yellow boots and a tall cap of lamb's wool, and you have the most gallant and dashing of all male costumes. While gold or silver ornaments have replaced cartridges in the stalls, the edged weapons of the national full-dress are by no means an innocuous survival. They are kept sharp, and rarely does a Georgian avenge a personal injury by a law-suit. Formal duels are not fought, and differences are settled rather casually, but it is the height of bad form to draw a weapon in the presence of women or girls.
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Again and again the famous Georgian military road we travel is blocked for a furlong or more by sheep—as many as three thousand in a single drove—being brought down from the high pastures lest the early snows catch them. The shepherds in their sheepskin coats, feet bound in rags and shod in bast moccasins, head in home-made wool hat, might have stepped from the idylls of Theocritus [the creator of ancient Greek bucolic poetry]. No doubt they would feel quite at home in classical antiquity. Noting the bold eyes, free stride, and proud bearing of these hill-men, I recall a remark by a Russian railway official who had double-tracked the Trans-Siberian through the series of tunnels about the southern end of Lake Baikal and previously, while managing the railways of the Caucasus, had dreamed of tunneling Krestovaya Pass and, with the locomotive whistle, waking the echoes in these wild glens. He described the Caucasian railway laborers as "independent and liberty-loving men who could be handled only by sympathy and tact." After these, he found it child's play to manage Russian laborers.
At every posting-station we get fresh horses and a new yamshchik, or driver. Some of the drivers who whirl us over the ten miles between stations look every inch the stage brigand. Beside these scowling redoubtable fellows the Corsican brigand looks as tame as a ribbon-clerk. During September seven posting-horses have been shot from ambush between Lars and Balta on account of a feud, so our driver on this stage carries gun and revolver, in addition to the dagger and saber that are a part of the regular dress of a man in the Caucasus, as much a matter of course as the revolver in our cow-boy West. These people, moreover, have devised a deadly weapon, peculiarly their own, in the shape of a powerful, savage, and plucky race of dogs. These are white or parti-colored, with short hair and wide heads. They are not the least of the dangers met by the traveler in the Caucasus.
Far up the heights, on slopes as steep as a barn-roof, are great clusters of tiny stacks of grain or hay. Later these will be hauled on sledges down to the farmstead or village. In many yards threshing is going on. The grain is spread on a little hand-beaten threshing-floor, and a woman or girl drives round and round four heifers or colts tethered together, while a man with a fork turns the grain in from the sides and shakes it up. Finally the straw is lifted and thrown aside, the grain and chaff are swept together in a heap, and the light stuff is winnowed out of the mixture by tossing it into the air against the wind.
The houses are of rough stone, flat-topped, and are roofed with flat stones covered with cement. The back of the house is the hill-side. The front is often a kind of porch, with one or two windowless rooms behind. Square, stone towers, to which one might retreat and stand a siege, are a feature of most of the villages. In certain Caucasian valleys where the tradition of law is utterly lost every farm has its tower of refuge, just as in some parts of our West every family has its cyclone-cellar.
No doubt there are more handsome men among these peasants and shepherds than can be found in any other rural population. The bronzed, eagle faced highlander, with a firm chin and a nose like a cathedral buttress, is the normal type. Hair and beard are black or dark-brown, and are very fine. In rich robes the erect, keen-eyed, old men with their silky, grizzling beards would pass for Venetian councilors of state. The women have strong features and fine eyes, but they have poor complexions and fade early. Either their skin is not fine or it coarsens quickly from exposure. Moreover, the strongly moulded features which so befit the men do not suit our ideas of softness and delicacy, so the women excite less admiration than the men.
Since Peter the Great, the tsar has been head of the Russian Orthodox Church, so when by the Treaty of 1783, Georgia relinquished her independence, the tsar would no more tolerate a Katholikos in Georgia than he would tolerate a Patriarch in Russia. Moreover, there has been a consistent policy of favoring the [Russian] Orthodox Church at the expense of the Georgian Church. From the time that Russia gained control very little has been done to keep in repair Georgian churches and cathedrals, and in consequence they have fallen into a bad state. For the restoration of the [Svetitskhoveli] cathedral at Mtzchet [Mtskheta], where lived St. Nina, who in 347 A. D. introduced Christianity to Georgia, only 300 rubles a year have been set aside. A quarter of a century ago the Russian Synod appropriated the income of the monastery of Bodby [the village of Bodbe] - the resting-place of the body of St. Nina - filled the house with nuns of Russian orders, and conducted the religious services only in Russian. For years several million rubles belonging to the Georgian Church have been in the strongbox of the Holy Synod in Moscow. Nevertheless, the Georgian priest has been getting a paltry two or three hundred rubles a year, while from the budget of the Georgian Church the priest of a Russian parish has been paid ten times as much. All this discrimination passed away with the old regime, and the Georgian Church promptly signalized its new freedom by reviving the office of Katholikos. By chance we arrived at Mtzchet on our return journey to Tiflis on the very Sunday [September 30, 1917] set aside for the solemn induction of the new head of the church pCatholicos Patriarch Kyrion II], and there witnessed an outburst of national feeling that will be a landmark in the spiritual history of this people.
While driving down from the highlands on the previous day we had noticed a great drift of people in gala attire journeying in the direction we were going. Our caleche [2-wheeled carriage] overhauled many a crowded wagon and oxcart and passed numerous pedestrian groups and families camping by the highway. The posting-stations were full of people trying to catch a ride, and we had great difficulty in reserving our spare seats for persons we chose to ask to ride with us. On coming out after a change of horses we would find the box loaded down with self-invited guests. The morning trains from Tiflis came in packed, with the roofs loaded with eager sightseers. At the station a procession was formed to escort the Katholikos-elect and the bishops to the church half a mile distant. A circle of girls with joined hands enclosed the automobile of the prelates, who with patriarchal beards and in stately robes looked the dignitaries that they were. They were preceded by a choir of comely young men in red velvet doublets trimmed with gold braid, loose blue trousers, and soft, buff boots. A battalion of Georgians in dress uniform, with rich profusion of gold braid and gold cord, headed the procession. Great numbers of horsemen, wearing the tcherkeska and carrying rifles, followed the prelates' conveyance.
Most picturesque of all in this colorful pageant was a squad of mountain Khevsurs in chain-mail. This little mountain-tribe call themselves "Children of the Cross" and wear the cross embroidered on all their garments. Prince Orbeliani, cousin to the present heir of the Georgian kings, assured me that thirteen crusaders,—eight French, one English, two Italian, and two Spanish, —endeavoring to escape from the Holy Land after the break-up of the Frankish power there, settled in one of the high valleys of the Caucasus, took daughters of the land as mates, and became ancestors of the Khevsurs, some of which perfectly reproduce the Frankish type. Among them are two old French family names that have died out in France. They have kept alive the art of making chain-mail and shields, and cherish as heirlooms certain heavy, two-handed swords that were wielded in Palestine by the forefathers of the tribe. A jewel of a story that! How it fires the imagination! But candor obliges me to record that the scholarly director of the Georgian Museum at Tiflis thinks that the Khevsurs are not descendants of Crusaders, but simply isolated warriors who preserve medieval customs and manners. Their wearing of the cross on their garments gave a French writer the idea of their Crusader origin. Nor was he gentle with the surmise that the Ossets are Ostrogoths in origin, because their language contains various pure Germanic words.
Amid constant cheering from bystanders and much skirling of bagpipes the procession makes its way to the church [Svetitskhoveli Cathedral], now about four centuries old, and proceeds with the ceremonies of installation. Outside is a large space enclosed by a high crenellated wall, really a fortified enclosure. Here are four or five thousand people, unable to crowd into the sacred edifice, who are preparing to feast. Hundreds of bullock-carts have been backed against the wall, and over numerous fires teakettles are singing or soup is bubbling in big copper vessels. Fowls are dressed and spitted. One man cuts the throat of a sheep and dresses it, and soon morsels of it are toasting before his fire. Gay home-made draperies are thrown over a pole, making a canopy under which family parties sit cross-legged on rich, hand-woven rugs. Long tables are spread, laden with brown bread, cheese, caviar, pickles, fish, fowl, and great decanters of the harsh red wine of Kakhetia, besides pears, apples, and grapes. Here are strewn the choir singers in velvet, and amid jests and laughter fair damsels pass youths in crimson doublets portions of cold fowl or lamb on the point of a dagger. Earthenware flagons of wine are handed about. Each group calls to passing friends to come and join them. A party of soldiers invites us to eat with them, and there is much drinking of healths to America and Georgia.
As appetite loses its edge, the festal spirit gains full sway. Here and there they strike up music with fife and hand-drum, or with bagpipes. Khevsurs in helmet and chain-mail engage in fencing bouts with swords and round shields. Whenever dancing begins a crowd gathers, which claps hands in time with the music. After some preliminary pirouetting a handsome, slim-waisted, black-eyed young fellow in a black tcherkeska and white lambskin cap stops and bows to the girl he wishes as his partner. There is no clasping of hands, still less "hugging to music," as the old Empress Dowager of China used to term our round dances. Without touching they dance, facing each other or revolving each about the other. Nothing more modest or graceful can be imagined, and I recall with shame the intimate dances, idiotic or obscene, in which our young people, with the approval of wren-brained parents, have been indulging during recent years.
In this fete the social extremes of the Georgian people meet. Here is a rough, sunburned shepherd in sheepskin coat and goatskin cap, carrying wallet and crook, with the steady, slow-moving eyes of dwellers in wide spaces who have never scanned lines of print. By him stands the head of a clan, a "prince," no doubt, for the tsar has been very free in bestowing that title upon the chiefs and lairds of these people, with blue velvet sleeves emerging from a fancy cape, a full-skirted broadcloth coat, and very full trousers falling over the top of russet-purple boots turned up at the toe. Like that of France, the Georgian nobility has a social rather than a political significance. The people are democratic in spirit; there is not the least chance of a revival of monarchy in Georgia, and the nobles will hardly have more political weight than their individual merit entitles them to.
In face and pose the young [Georgian] men recall the finest American Indian type—the Mohawk warrior. Maidens are there who might assume the title role of Iphigenia at Tauris. The matrons would pass for mothers of heroes. Not one old woman is obese or shapeless. All are straight and slender, with a look of determination on their strongly moulded features as of mothers who would exhort their sons, "Bring back your shields or be brought back on them." With the face framed by a veil tied over the red or purple velvet brim of the little tiara they wear, the women resemble the portraits of early English queens.
A visit to Kakhetia confirms the feeling that the Caucasus harbors the blood-kin of the Greeks of the classic period. Dominated by a snowy chain that thrusts peaks up to 16,000 feet and separates it from
