Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 25, 4 (Fall 2024): 783–92. Forum: Research from the Other Shore Tracing Dagestani Deportees from Opochka to Tashkent Notes on Transnational Archival Research and Decolonization VLADIMIR HAMED-TROYANSKY In December 1878, Dagestani prisoners wrote a collective petition while incarcerated in the small town of Opochka, near Pskov, in northwestern Russia. e men, hailing from Gazikumukh (now Kumukh, Dagestan), participated in a failed anticolonial uprising during the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–78, were arrested, and, without any interrogation or court proceedings, were deported to Opochka. ey wrote a petition, in Arabic, to the Caucasus viceroy, reaffirming their loyalty to the Russian emperor and pleading with the viceroy to allow them to return to Dagestan. ey lamented that in Opochka, a “remote and harsh place,” one-third of their people had already perished of a “disease similar to cholera.” 1 Several Dagestani deportees were ‘ulama (Muslim scholars), likely educated in madrasas (schools) in the Caucasus and Crimea and fluent in Arabic and Persian. In an exquisite and heartbreaking petition, they pro- fessed their innocence (see fig. 1). “We are the people obedient to the au- thorities, frail old men,” they pleaded. “We fear for our lives if we have to live here until next year.” 2 Opochka, once frequented by Alexander Pushkin during his own, more comfortable exile in his family estate in nearby Mikhailovskoe, was an obscure destination for the exile of Dagestani insurgents, which was the point. is small town became a prison—site of unfreedom and death—for at least 800 Dagestani deportees and their I thank the Kritika editors, and Anna Whittington and Katherine Zubovich, for their gener- ous feedback. 1 Sakartvelos sakhelmtsipo saistorio arkivi (National Historical Archive of Georgia, SSSA) f. 545, op. 1, d. 1473, l. 414 (in Arabic, 14 December 1878), ll. 415–17 (Russian translation). 2 SSSA f. 545, op. 1, d. 1473, l. 414.