Abstract
ARTVIN UNDER RUSSIAN RULE in GUSTAV RADDE'S TRAVEL NOTES: CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC ATTENTIONS
Artvin came under Russian rule at the end of the 1877-78 Ottoman-Russian War. The city remained under Russian rule for about 40 years and was returned to Turkey in 1921. In 1893 German batonicist and naturalist Gustav Radde visited Artvin that was under Russian administation. Radde later published his travel notes in journals, Germany. The visit was his tird visit to the Ottoman geography. Radde's Notes to Artvin, along with two other visit notes, were translated into Georgian under the title On Ottoman Georgia. Radde besides the flora and fauna of the Artvin region in these third travel notes explained the cultural, ethnographic and social features of the city, Artvin as well, and so the aim of this article is to make visible the social, ethnographic and cultural phenomena in his travel notes. These notes were chosen as the sample of the study with the Purposeful Sampling Method. The data were analyzed by the Sociological Method. We determined that besides the administrative structure, social, ethnographic and cultural structures as well were undergone some changes. The findings can be used to compare them with the data on Artvin before (1877) and after the transition period of it (1918).
Keywords
Artvin, Russian administration, social life, ethnography, cultural determinations
