Le mont Kazbeg culmine à 5033 mètres. Il est l’un des plus imposants sommets du Caucase. Un dieu des Vainakh, un peuple descendant des Kavkaz, à l’origine du nom « Caucase », y serait enchaîné pour avoir donné le feu aux hommes. Il partage sa place avec Amirani, un autre dieu de la mythology Georgian, punished for the same reasons. Their exile is quite similar to that of Prometheus, also condemned by Zeus to torture on a rock in the Caucasus.
This divine cohabitation on summits sharpened like razor blades does not portend anything peaceful. The myth of the creation of the Caucasus mountains, according to the oral tradition of its inhabitants, is grandiose, but is told as a warning. God created a world so flat that people drowned with every tidal wave. He therefore decided to put a little relief there and gathered in a bag some mountains to distribute them on the ground. The devil, knowing that the mountains were too refined a present for men, pierced the creator's bag when he was flying over the Caucasus and the mountains all crashed there. Furious, God forbade the devil to tread the Caucasus forever, because the men of these mountains would have a hard enough life like that. Like Prometheus punished for concern for the human condition, the mountaineers were geographically and socially apart and feared, because they were too close to the divine. The high valleys were reserved for princes, bandits, and nobles.
As if the altitude had given them the right to a fundamental difference in status, the peoples of the Caucasus see themselves first of all as mountain dwellers. Then only as Georgians, Armenians, Azeris or Russians. They clung to their language, like in Xinaliq, a village lost in the Caucasus in Azebaijan, where the current 2000 inhabitants speak a non-Indo-European language that has no connection with Azeri, Georgian orArmenian and remains misunderstood by the neighboring village of 40 kilometers. They clung to their laws, as in Svaneti in Georgia where the vendetta is an institution still in use.
If the geography of the Caucasus, this accordion of mountains folded in on themselves, is favorable to the preservation of local identities, it has also been able to protect them from the empires which tore away this link between East and West. . The Caucasus is Russia's missed Wild West. For more than 200 years, Moscow has been searching for a way to Russify the region, without success. Before the Tsars, the empire Persian and Ottoman also broke their teeth there. The woodpeckers give birth, it is said, to warriors who would rather die free than live with their backs bent. It takes a strong taste for freedom and independence to challenge the Ottomans, the Persians, or the Russians. The manufacturer of Soviet cigarettes "Kazbek" skillfully used the symbol. The package shows a rider riding in front of the mountain. The design is said to have been approved by Stalin himself.
Mount Kazbeg and the village at its foot, Kazbegi (officially “Stepantsminda”) form a mythical place in every sense of the word. Patriarch Iliya II, following an epiphany, said that during the second coming of Christ, the apocalypse, the people of Kazbegi would be saved first. For those whom Bugarach would have disappointed, Kazbegi is therefore a destination of choice. The mountain is home to the monastery of the trinity of Guergetia built in the XIVe century, and which overlooks the historic Georgian military road, known already in antiquity Greek, but whose current layout dates from the annexation of Georgia by Russia under Alexander Ier. An umbilical cord between these two countries, this road played a great importance in the development of the Caucasus, like the Gotthard and Simplon passes in Switzerland. It is today the only exit and supply door in the North for the Armenians, squeezed between Turkey and Azerbaijan. It is therefore important for the Armenians that this road linking two nations in the cold remains open. Kazebgi, 10 minutes from the Russian border, is also used by the Georgian power as a business card. A magnificent five-star hotel, whose construction, opposite the mountain, was suggested, it is said, by President Saakashvili, gives a very good impression of Georgia to the Russians who join Tbilisi. Politics also instrumentalises the landscape.
Thus, Mount Kazbek shelters a part of the history of the Caucasus and gives reason to the legend. A place closer to the gods is not easy, but can make people envious. It is also more expensive. Which is to say that it can be sold. As long as the gods don't have fun tricking Moscow and Tbilisi in turn, these mountaineers may have a chance to see their place rise in value. Economic policy has apparently integrated the importance of tourism and infrastructure development projects are multiplying. As in Gudauri, for example, where a ski resort in the middle of a construction site welcomes extreme ski enthusiasts. Step by step, these mountaineers escape the legendary curse. For three years now, Kazbek has also been welcoming runners in an autumn marathon. To appease the mountain?
