Parallels between the Russian Border with Chechnya and the U.S. Border with Mexico

Mikhail Lermontov is one of my favorite Russian writers.  History of the Russian  border patrol in the Caucasus seems to have many parallels with those of my own experiences in the Border Patrol on the Texas Mexican border.  If fact, my first novel (2004) makes Lermontov a central figure. 

The protagonist, Rodney Capers,  believes that he might be the reincarnation of Lermontov.  He and a group of outcast El Paso patrolmen make their own rules of engagement in the interest of the self-preservation.  While giving a future girlfriend, Sochi, a ride home, he scolds her for trusting him too easily.  She retorts that he is a federal officer and there is no reason she should not trust him.  He is amazed by that statement and said, "Look Sochi, we deal with some of the lowest scum on earth and sometimes we deal with them on their level."  He goes on to say that even thought they are officers, there is no such thing as "noblesse oblige," nor any quarter yielded by either side in the silent war that goes on along the border that most people will never know about.

The Caucasus was a mountainous border with Chechnya, a place of historical violence between Russian and that country.  Some of Russia's best writers of the early 19th Century were exiled to the Caucus to serve in the border patrol,  Czarist Russia seemed to think that, being artists, the Chechens would make short work of them.  When that did not happen, it seemed (to me)  that some professional duelers showed up in the Caucasus and picked duels with the writers.  Pushkin was one victim.  Lermontov was another.

Recently, I noticed some  eerie facts about my first novel, The Border Nightwalkers.  The protagonist's girlfriend was a Mexican American girl named "Sochi."  The correct spelling was Xochitl, an Aztec princess' name (a common name for Mexican girls).  But everyone called the Xochitl in my novel, "Sochi" for short.  The two words are almost the same in pronunciation.

The  protagonist, Rodney Capers, had nightmares about being shot in a gunfight and falling off a cliff, like Lermontov had when killed by a duelist. That story ends with a plan by Capers to do patrolling with a border patrol partner, on Mount Cristo Rey where smugglers and bandits can actually fall off a cliff near the top the mountain and actually fall back to Mexico.  Capers revealed the plan only to a sympathetic El Paso police detective, and friend.  Mount Cristo Rey is where the corners of the Mexican State of Chihuahua touch the corners of Texas and New Mexico.   Before writing the novel, I had recently read the book, "A Hero of Our Time," and the names of many places that are now in the news had long been familiar to me since reading Lermontov. 

This Lermontov story takes place in a small town where smugglers seem to be the only inhabitants.  It is near Kerch in the Crimea where Russia has long had an interest due to its key location between the Sea of Azov and the Mediterranean.  In fact, the Strait of Kerch in the Crimea is prime real estate that makes Russia want to make it a part of their country again. 

 Lermontov's stories in "A Hero of Our Time" are based upon the diary of a fictional border guard named Pechorin that Lermontov came across.  Lermontov narrates the stories from Pechorin's diary.  In reality, all these stories are all related to Lermontov's experiences in the Caucasus and the Crimean region.

To keep from cluttering the blog, I am referring the reader to another site to read the tex of Lermontov's short story, "Taman."

http://www.eldritchpress.org/myl/hero.htm#taman