44'l

COMPOSED FOLK
"FOLK' BEHAVING BADLY: NEWLY
440 IVA NENIC MUSIC AS POPULAR CULTURE

(literally "old city.song"'

I

Therisinggenreofnovokomponovanaechoedandpartlyinheritedpreviouslocal
styles,'such as starogradska pesma
and regional musicaljoik (Bosnian urban
,ong, anO urUan cilansonsl, sevdalinka
a genre consisting "ir;;, muzika (the various musi-
"FOLK'' BEHAVING BADLY: with the topics oi tou" rnitnäing), kafanska
songs dealing
local pubs-"t;;J"tä" shops"-ka fana_-of the Balkans)'
NEWLY COMPOSED FOLK MUSIC cal styles associatei'*iar,
,r.l" crucially'
ioiÄ..ie* it alst differed from them
AS POPULAR CULTURE and many ottrer poiui* i"Jr-r"sicat and a sense of
,no to evoke the rural sound
as it combin"o n.'uil'.on.'por"o "ät"J
pastoralsentimentar,,,",*.nthemodalitiesofmodernmedia,andtheradioandTV commodified
of the;tar ring"r. rrri, *u, ,oon followed by more botdly of music',
presentation ,,pop,,sounds
,,folk,, and and 1980s, both in terms
in il1ulgios
fusions of
of modern sound-production^technologies' 1970s were
iconography, and tt'''" u'ä and earlv
;rtor*"r, ot thl genre in the 1960s
Although ah"
female and
";;" (Silvana ArmenuU']l"Ot l"kiö' Saban Sauliö' and Miroslav
male
both
by lva Neniö case 'pur"eir",the female kafana singer' Actually'
lliö,tonameafew),thearchetypalimagethatmoststronglyinfluencedthecreation
Yugoslav nation-states often present a *u, ir.," tiguie of the
The folk and popular cultures of former of the N.FM ,ar, the hit songs were usu-
Whose heritage is
mJaning and belonging: ffi;iil stärted in tnJlarana setting, and
of longue dur1eideological battles over many performers tti"taining the strong link between the
generated th'rs precious (or despicable) cultural ally well received by kafanaaud,ienceLarlr, scene known
this? what community exclusively one. The popular music
back to the furthest point in time? and the
phenomenon? whose national history stretches common cultural t,äuitus
"r"rging development and subsequent
com-
The flip side of ,t'l" *in is the alternate
history of exclusions and forbidden enjoy- as estrada *r, tt," üuin cutturat ,"aaing'toithe Umet-
UdruZenje Radnika Estradne
of culture that, despite the harsh critique The establisrrmänt of the
ments, the detested and yet adored forms modification of r.rcirvr.
an attempt to organize
this
discourses, still served as strong and mo- Art wort eiri in the 1960s,
they encountered in official and normative nosti [Asso"i.tio,.l-otlrtrada estrada's move away from
its origins as a
sometimes transcending national borders' new and budding n.l*i"
rrrret, followed
bilizing mechanisms for the collectivities, and dance into the pub-
historical legacies' of popular music, c91nedv,
g"n"rätional barriers, and the burden of shared loosely.onn"","i "ä"gr"r""rate Nrcrvihao a strong, if not central' position'3
composed folk music: NCFM],1the
lic space of p"rtorÄ;;;",
where
Novokompo norrÄ" narodna muzika [Newly compoied in such a way as
to resemble
poprtutity exploded in the 1960s in the Social- \ The tunes of were in
musical genre and subculture whose NCFM
',ny'.,,", rno tr,e iyrics initially had a
strong rustic
(SFRYi-and which has continued to live on by \ *h".o,.,.'rnon arooälr'ltoit
..nrri" rtvril while
ist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia an idyllic rural setting'a
equally controversial' musical' media'
and
around the topic"ät n'iu" r*L in
actively engendering different, sometimes \ sentiment, revolving after the models emergrng
be.seen as a prime example t',rno,trJionuJar"'"tselves
cultural offshoots in the post-Yugoslav space-might the perform"rr, onirr" oit'r", in the 1970s and the 1980s'
Yet
of this. officially and somewhat derogatärily
labeled as "newly composed" in the
from modern western popular ö"irrrv musical culture
"urtrr", f'aO ia*en aim at this
criti;;;il
und ,ft",*ard sometimes called simply equally troubling for the
cultural interval of an
cultural politics of Yugoslav communism, slylistic marks such as the
musicl in Serbia' NCFM relied on were mur,"uiunJ
narodna muzikaffolk musicl or narodniacilpeople's important from its very beginning
in,f." construction of the tune'
melisma and
anO it did so by questioning several augmented ,""Jnä trJquently found
a specific mixture of "old" and "new," popurar imagi-
discourses and in the
dichotomies that were embedded in the officiar popularity
vs. elite, rural vs' urban' lts.wide
nation of the time: East vs. west, popular style' visual h:;',;IlTiii,U:iftF",1'.""ä:iä"iäleTl$.f''t1:itrÜ:fl}!ilt?J#5u11ii;,ültf*$,.';,*i,*$*}1t"*:*"*
meros,5umadl:il';;;ä;;ilä|. g"n'"., led manv. äuthors^:?,:tl:::::l:1.'Iä|.äj". r"irr"
arose from the specific convergence of
old and new in terms of musical ät"ji-liä"ä;;;,;-uznjaelitsouttrernl
turning the immediacy of the everyday

äryti;e"t$$:ffffiilt;ffiagill ffi:ffi;;
representation, and the contenl of the lyrics, ru-
discourse that blended together soft
life of the socialist worker into an ,pp"uting
ral nostalgia with the novelty and glitter
of modern urban life' the Cultural SPace ot st Ethno-Linsuistic
Literature: rhe studv of
ökoprouöavanje paratiteraturelwild
lt$;1Jjlt""i,t; 2','3,lrii'^o^!r9i;rrost: Etnolinsvisti
of
and v. n"tÄtssen' wewtv composed Folk Music
l.lopttousetheNcFMacronymfurtheroninthetext,.asthisproposalbyL'ierkaVidiöRasmussenistodaywidelyaccepted iäiJri,ä'ä."i"r ieelsrad-e' zoool'
amono the schotars who appräach this musicat ""r.,1*i'i["i5äääÄ.ii"i'1"
Yugosiavia (New York, 2002), p' xviii'
 IVA NENIO 'FOLK" BEHAVING BADLY: NEWLY COMPOSED FOLK 442
MUSIC AS POPULAR CULTURE
vibrato occurring as stylistic features in the singing, improvisation at certain points
in the song, and the traces of Eastern musical structures (maqam).These musical
elements were widely perceived as being of Oriental origin, ugly and unworthy,
mainly because of the historical associations with the period of Ottoman rule in
Serbia and the Balkans. The progressiveness of the "Yugoslav West," modeled on
pop and popular ölager, thus had its counterpoint in an allegedly remote internal
"other" stemming from the East and embodied in NCFM. This opposition was con-
structed and supported by the dominant discourses of music scholarship, and the
popular press and media at the time.s Novokomponovana soon joined the general
terms that populated media and everyday discourses on music, like zabavna (light
pop music) , narodna (mediatized music in the folk tradition), izvorna (authentic folk
music), and ozbiljna (literally "serious," meaning Western and localclassical music).
However, all these labels and the corresponding sets of sounds and meanings func-
tioned as umbrella terms for a variety of more or less closely related genres, and
sometimes the demarcations were not altogether clear, as these musics together
flowed into the Yugoslav popular cultural sphere and were performed in the same
sociocultural space of estrada.
Another important dichotomy that the off icial cultural apparatuses employed
while trying to tame the new and potentially harmful phenomenon of NCFM (harm-
ful in that it seemingly promoted lowbrow culture, a strange and twisted union of
folk-like sound and modern features)was a disturbing blend of rural and urban cul-
ltural "models" or ways of life. NCFM was a problem precisely because its perform-
and public discourses, presentations, and actions disturbed the reif ied pairing
lers
liof "highbrow" and "lowbrow" culture, as well as the elite vs. folk dichotomy already
"Bstablished in the official representational politics of socialist media apparatuses.
Cvetiöanin and Popescu argue that the societies whose elite mirror Western models,
as in present-day Serbia, display a "constant tension and struggle between global
and local culture for the status of legitimate culture," and that this tension is regard-
ed as more important than the opposition of low and high culture.6 One could say
that in Yugoslav communism both pairs of distinctions orbited together and actually
collapsed around the gap between the official "dry" bureaucratic cultural models and
the everyday "rich" and vibrant cultural practice that contested them by shedding a
different light on class and national identities and on the subversive potentials of a
supposedly benevolent popular culture. Thus the tension between the disciplining
discourses (both institutionalized and popular) and the lived reality of NCFM's mate-
rial symbolic practices might be seen as a case of a battle between "thin" or norma-
tive cultural identification and its "thick" or actual counterpart.
5. Rasmussen, Newly Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia, p. 138 (see note 1).
6. Predrag Cvetiöanin and Mihaela Popescu, "The Art of Making Classes in Serbia: Another Particular Case of the Possible," in
Poetics 39, no. 6 (December2011), pp. 444-68,here: p. 445.
IVA NENIC "FOLK" BEHAVING BADLY: NE\ rLY COMPOSED FOLK 443
MUSIC AS POPULAR CULTURE
The Modernity of the "People"
ln Yugoslav self-managing socialism, the project of modernization displayed a
constant-and, observed from a historical distance, productive-tension between
the political and bureaucratic control of cultural apparatuses, and the more sponta-
neous, ongoing developmental processes of "mass culture" that partially mimicked
the transnational currents and trends of popular culture. As a cultural and political
model, workers'self-management was "designed as a form of direct democracy,
although it was never conducted in a radical manner."7 Hence, the growing new
material-symbolic forms of cultural expression,like novokomponovana muzika,had
the status of semiautonomous social practices, partially relying on a common cul-
tural past (by evoking the tropes of the intimate sociocultural space of kafana in new,
mediatized contexts), while at the same time reaching toward the ideas of modernity,
progress, and westernization at large. The diverse actors taking part in the social
performance of NCFM challenged the instituted models of "people's culture" on at
least two levels: firstly, by ascribing an altered meaning to the notion of "folk" (not
"authentic" folklore, but folklorized tunes and texts that, although not "authentic"
enough, still proved to be more appealing to the "folk"), and then by openly display-
ing the triumph of spontaneous mass culture over the more desirable "highbrow"
cultural forms of socialist moderate modernism.
This was not quite like the "€j.rblime-gacialisfmodernism'8 in the high art prac-
tices of Yugoslavia, where the revolutionary and national myths were reworked, with
the help of modernist art procedures and techniques, into a dignified and solemn
product. Rather, the meanings of both "national past" and "modern progress" col-
lapsed into an unexpected and growing habitus that came as a result of the cultural
engagement of various social actors-singers, band musicians, songwriters, manag-
ers, fans, and audience members. The official and popular discourses rarely inter-
sected, but they actually evolved around the same axis: What sort of cultural expres-
sion and entertainment is best for the "folk"? Let us briefly take a paragraph f rom a
discussion on cultural politics published by the magazine Kultura in 1981 as an ex-
ample of being at pains to ensure the desirable development of the people's culture
in the direction of aesthetically pleasing and socially engaged art forms in the "new
society"-rather than a wild outgrowth of popular subculture into the mainstream:
Certain phenomena that are of great importance for the essence
of our culture are still shrouded in a fog, through which they impose
themselves byvirtue of theirtwistedness and misshapenness. lf the
past wants to serve its creative function, it should not persist too
7.Miöko Suvakovie, Pojmovnik teorie umetnosti [Glossary of Art Theory] (Belgrade, 2O11]l, p.632 [translated].
8. lbid., pp.664-65.
IVA NENIÖ 'FOLK" BEHAVING BADLY: NEWLY COMPOSED FOLK
MUSIC AS POPULAR CULTURE
long or too intensively, nor expire too quickly. ln the first case, the
past, as Marx said, may act like a nightmare putting pressure on the
minds of the living, while, in the second, it may generate the feeling
of something unfinished, incomplete, and unlived, sothat realand
fullcontactwith the cultural past proves etusive.e
What is overlooked in the bitter tones of this highly foimalized paragraph is the
fact that the past did serve its creative function by reaching toward modernity, but
not in the mode envisioned as an ideal peak of communist progress.
Toma Zdravkoviö, one of the biggest and mbst influential stars of NCFM, de-
scribed the gap between the different "realities" existing in the same socialist society
as follows:
It always seemed to me that the politicians lack an understand-
ing of the simple voice of the people, because I sense that they are
always in situations that they feel are too serious. t. . .1 | don't think
thatthe politicianswould be appalled to attend a Lepa Luki6 con-
cert in the Trade union Hall. lf I were in their place, lwould force my-
self to go, to mingle with the people, or at least just get myself out
on the street!1o
This gap was actually a growing fissure between the state apparatus that pro-
duced Yugoslav collective subjectivity by relying on such rhetoric as "socialist de-
mocracy," "self-management," and "ideological struggle," and popular culture, which
was a relatively independent set of signifying practices that allowed for more "free-
dom"l1 and, instead of the dry and alienated repetition of bureaucratic discourse,
produced true affects and a sense of proximity between the past and the present.
NCFM established a place in the ideological discourse that people could easily iden-
tify with, by transforming the common cultural legacy into an emerging domain
where the recent past was reactivated within the popular culture's noncanonical em-
brace of modernity.
9'Radoslav.Dokidetal.,"Razgovorokulturnojpolitici"[DiscussionofCulturalPolicy],in
p.96 [translated].
1O' Petar Lukoviö,Bolf proSlost; P rizori iz muziökog Zivota Jugoslavije 1940-1989
[A Better past: Scenes from the Musical Life of
Yug.oslavial940-19891 (Belgrade, 1989), p. ZZZ [tianstated].-
11' Andrija Filipoviö, 'Afektivna upotreba m-uzike-u proizvodnji jugoslovenskog
subjekta" [The Affective use of Music in the
Production of Yugoslav ldentityl, in Miöko Suvakovic, ed., lstärryJumet nosti u'srbijiXX vek
Century serbial, vol.2, Realizmi i modernizmi oko hladnog rata
iRealisms and Modernisms äround the'cold Warl (Belgrade,
2012), pp. 7 87 -92, her e: p. 7 92.
444 445
IVA NENIC "FOLK" BEHAVING BADLY: NEWLY COMPOSED FOLK
MUSIC AS POPULAR CULTURE
The lnterplay of "Old" and "New"
The intertwining-or the clash-between the imaginative view of the "good
old days" and emerging social structures can be observed in terms of the power
struggles taking place within society: each time the hegemony is disturbed, either
by the "novelty" and possible ideological charge of some cultural phenomenon, or
by a different reenactment of some "tradition," the dominant order seeks to reintro-
duce the equilibrium and to gain an upper hand over the newly staged alternative
spaces where potentially dangerous behaviors lurk. I will try to brief ly outline this sort
of interplay between the dominant cultural paradigms and ideas of the global, local
(national), and micro-local in the case of NCFM.12 From the 1960s on, what constantly
comes up in discussions about NCFM is the concept of "folk": either as in the habitus
of the people who listen to it and share certain cultural dispositions and similarities in
taste, or in the criticism of inauthenticity, which, in various ways, tries to expose the
false pretensions this music has to the status of "folk culture." ln the case of NCFM,
the cultural, ideological, and political shift in the concept of "folk" can be evinced
by applying Raymond Williams's cultural dialectical schema, the triad formed by the
residual (inherited, but still actual), the dominant (the officially instituted culture), and
the emergent (what is perceived as radically new).13 ln fact, each new phase of NCFM,
built upon various mixtures of local and global musical idioms and discourses, ex-
emplifies a cultural redrafting of a complex set of dichotomies-local vs. global,
Eastern vs. Western, foreign vs. native, old vs. modern. At the same time, it evokes
both residual elements and the energy of emergent or alternative cultural modes
of expression, which in the end successfully thrust themselves into the prevailing
cultural framework and actively reshape it. The massive popularity of NCFM wasn't
revolutionary, but it differed enough from the proclaimed cultural models of Yugoslav
socialism to perform a certain subversive function.
The development of novokomponovana muzika took place in the early 1960s
within the context of the state radio and television network,r4 the powerful state ideo-
logical apparatus of the Yugoslav communist regime, where the "proper" and lightly
controlled forms of popular culture were designed and disseminated. The 1960s
were the time when the Yugoslav cultural and political climate started to slowly
Kultura53(19g1),pp.91-132,here:
change due to the official program of political liberalization and increasing economic
growth, the upgrading of social standards, fast urban development, and the opening
of the country's borders, especially after the Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement
lthe History of Art in Twentieth- held in Belgrade in 1961. This was a period of transition from "rigid communism" to
transformations
12. For the purposes of this essay, I will focus on the early development of NCFM. The subsequent, profound
that gave birth to today's hybrid postmodern polygenre of pop-folk, which currently dominates the local music industries in Ser-
bia and, to some extent, the Balkans, are beyond the scope of a single paper.
13. Raymond Williams, "Dominant, Residual, and Emergent," part ll, chap. 8in Marxism and Literature (Oxford,1977\,pp 121-27.
14. The broadcasting network of Jugoslovenska radio-televizija [Yugoslav Radio Television] consisted of eight independent
broadcasting radio änd television centers, each of which belonged to one of the six republics and two autonomous provinces of
the SFRY.
IVA NENIO "FOLK" BEHAVING BADLY: NEWLY COMPOSED FOLK 446
MUSIC AS POPULAR CULTURE
"emancipated communism," which was relatively liberal, with the urban centers em-
phasized as the main spaces where the various local and global cultural frameworks
met and collided.l5 Rigid cultural models of real socialism had been losing ground
since the 1950s, with the cultural industries and new forms of popular culture be-
coming the spheres of "relative autonomy." Many "foreign" culturalforms and trends
stemming from popular culture flooded the Yugoslav cultural industry and its growing
market. Anglo-American and Western European popular music increasingly began
to gain visibility in Yugoslavia, soon becoming the main source of foreign music for
national radio and TV broadcasts.l6 As the official communist attitude toward popular
culture was generally benevolent at the time, the initial reluctance to accept cultural
forms and trends that were perceived as Westein subsided. "The estrada [. . .] became
a testing ground for the culturally-agreed limits of Yugoslavia's openness toward the
world of foreign music."17 NCFM mediated between the sets of cultural imagery of
different "inner selves," and also between local (supranational, national, and Yugoslav)
and Western musics as material symbolic practices that supposedly represented dis-
parate aesthetics and different ideological contents. Folk music ("folk" being used in
some vague sense), which was adapted to appealing pop music sounds, as was the
case with NCFM, was a way of letting people "act out" their everyday troubles and
even perform their national or local identities in an unproblematic and apolitical way,
as a part of "new" Yugoslav popular culture.
On the one hand, the local popular forms of kafanska muzika and the so-called
"radio song" occupied a residual domain for the NCFM, while, on the other, this new
and highly popular musical style soon reached out toward the obviously Western ele-
ments of pop culture, both in terms of the sound (harmonic arrangements, the use of
electrif ied ensembles) and the Western-like modes of visual and discursive represen-
tation. This wasn't conceived of as a resurgence: in fact, the act of ideological "capi-
tonnage" created a new space within the old niche of popular culture, a form of "mod-
erate" folk modernity where localand Western discourses-qua Yugoslav "synthesis"
of East and West-actually clicked together very well. There was also a particular
class moment adherent to the rise of NCFM: it drew on the appeal of folk (peasant-
style and, later, working-class) culture, but, in its modernized form, also catered to the
tastes of the urban intelligentsia (although this fact wasn't always f reely admitted).
NCFM could play with the images that would otherwise be treated as ideologically
problematic, by enveloping them in the jolly and seemingly benevolent popular form:
for example, singer Lepa Lukii was photographed in 1970 wearing opanci(traditional
Serbian footwear), and with a crown on her head, for the front page of the magazine
TV Revija [TV Showsl, and was pronounced "the queen of the folk song."18
15. Miroslava Lukiö-Krstanovi ö, Spektakli XX veka: Muzika i moi lspectacles of the Twentieth Century: l\4usic and Power] (Bel-
grade, 2010), pp. 140-41.
16. Rasmussen, Newly Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia, p. 148 (see note 1).
17. lbid., p. 135.
18. Lukovii, Bota pro5/ost, p.208 (see note 10).
IVA NENIC "FOLK" BEHAVING BADLY: NEWLY COMPOSED FOLK 447
MUSIC AS POPULAR CULTURE
There are many examples that document the early phase of NCFM's transition
from the modesty of folk-styled music genres to the exuberant modernity of emerg-
ing pop-folk, and of the simultaneous coexistence of both the-older and modern-
historical and cultural strata of NCFM. Silvana Armenuliö was a Bosnian singer who
went through the kafana rite of passage in her early teens, and soon developed a
highly successf ul singing career in Belgrade, becoming massively popular through-
out the former Yugoslavia. Her song "Sta öe mi Zivot, bez tebe dragi" [Life's No Good
Without You, Dearl (1969)ts evokes the kafana atmosphere while at the same time
paving the road for the emerging sociocul,tural formation of NCFM. The song was
included in one episode of the popular TV series Ljubav na seoski naöin [Love, the
RuralWayl (1970), where Silvana actually appeared in the role of kafana singer Rada,
and sang "Sta öe mi Zivot." lt has become a legendary scene, in which the actor
Miodrag Petroviö Ökalja, in the role of a drunken guest, becomes emotionally
aroused during Rada's performance. This is indicated in his performance by exagger-
ated facial expressions, gesturing as if to touch the singer's body, and repeated yell-
ing of her name. The melodic structure of the opening phrase "Life's no good without
you, dear" is actually based on a scale pattern of Oriental origin, maqam hijaz, andlhe
style of vocal performance very much resembles the "cultivated" radio song that was
part of the off icial cultural politics of the socialist mass media. Therefore NCFM
clearly preserves several layers of older cultural elements and meanings (a//a turca,
the shared urban musical legacy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries),
and uses them as material for evoking a certain sentimentalism in the interplay of
proximity and distance, causing "the cultural intimacy [. . .l to erupt into public life."20
The dissolving of the boundaries between the cluster of cultural associations and
tropes imagined as "folk," and the staged "imported" modernity of popular culture
is visible in one of the most famous examples of early NCFM, the song "Od izvora
dva putiia" [Two Paths Lead from the Spring] (1964) by Lepa Lukiö. The song's lyr-
ics are about the heartache of a young peasant girl whose boyfriend has forgotten
about her,21 and the sense of rural nostalgia is additionally highlighted by the use of
colloquialisms such as jaran (a euphemism for a male f riend) and the cadence on the
second step of the major scale at the end of the strophe, typical of the rural two-part
homophonic singing performed a cappella and known as pevanje na bas [singing
the bassl. This song is widely regarded as the epitome of newly composed folk mu-
sic; it opened the gates for the similar musical pieces that soon f looded the Yugoslav
music market and the media.22 The song's video is focused on the singer herself,
19. This song is also known as "Noias mi srce pati" [My Heart Suffers Tonight], after the first verse of the chorus.
20. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Socia/ Poetics in the Nation-State (New York, 2005), p. 3.
21. Although not clearly indicated in the lyrics, the probable reason for this is that he has migrated to the city-massive migra-
tion to the large urban centers was an ongoing phenomenon at the time.
22. Ljerka Vidiö Rasmussen, "From Sou rce to Com mod ity: Newly-Com posed Folk M usic of Yugoslavia," in Popular Music 14, no.2
(May 1995), pp.241-56, here: p. 241.
IVA NENIO "FOLK" BEHAVING BADLY: NEWLY COMPOSED FOLK 448 449
MUSIC AS POPULAR CULTURE

filmed against the background of changing urban landscapes. There is an obvious

contrast between the song's theme of longing for the lover, the simple rural idyll, and
the melody with a strong folk resemblance delivered in a soft and relaxed manner
characteristic of the singer, and the visual narration where Lepa Lukiö, clad in a series
of elegant modern outfits, stands, for no obvious reason, in front of the Eiffel Tower
and other famous Parisian landmarks. Thus, the piece that inaugurated NCFM is a
THE SOVIET SIXTIES:
case of "locality gone global," where the embrace of modernity opened up an end-
less cycle of forbidden jouissance at the very heart of Yugoslav socialism. That enjoy-
ment proved to be strong and lasting as, despite the violent breakup of the state and
the bloody dissolution of the "Yugoslav people," pop-folk and its ancestor, NCFM,
FORMS OF CULTURAL
have continued to flourish as a living and animated specter of an identity long gone.
RESISTANCE

by Hrach Bayadyan
The South Caucasus, formerly Transcaucasia, is a Russian-Soviet legacy in the sense
that the region began to take shape as a geographical unit simultaneously with the
Russian empire's expansionist drive to the southJhis took place in the context of
complex, ongoing relations with lran and especially Turkey, as well as with the West,
albeit sometimes indirectly. During the entire nineteenth century, Russia's relations
with Turkey, often on the battlefield, were vital for the former. This was a time when
Russia was seeking to redef ine its identity using Western concepts in order to present
itself as a modernizing nation in the Western sense, and as a country that was a part
of Europe. ln this case, a westernizing Russia saw in Turkey that "Orient" from which
it wanted to distance itself. Thus, within Russia's self-definition, Turkey was presented
as Russia's and, in general, the civilized world's Oriental "Other."1 Russia looked at
the Empire's eastern and southern peoples with a Western perspective. Here, the
Caucasus was viewed as an intermediate zone, a passageway between West and
East, and a region via which Russia might have a civilizing effect on the East.
l.SeelverB.Neumann,Usesof the Other:"TheEast"inEuropeanldentityFormation(lvlinneapolis,MN,1998),pp.39-64'