№ 2 (2020)

The maze of high mountain ridges blocking the isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas renders the Caucasus a separate historical-geographical region. Since Bronze Age, it harbored endemic human populations with their peculiar languages that resisted assimilation from both the agrarian civilizations of Near East and the waves of nomadic invasions sweeping the Eurasian Steppes. Hence William McNeill’s metaphor of a ‘rock in the grinding wheels of history’. The Caucasus, however, has participated in the succession of ancient and medieval world-systems mostly as semi-periphery sending its inhabitants to the core as mercenaries, traders, or slaves. The modern world-system transformed the Caucasus even before incorporating it. First, new American crops (esp. maize) produced demographic explosion. Next, firearms successfully imitated by local gunsmiths shifted the balance of power from mounted knights to commoners. The spread of militant Islam in its original, pre-imperial forms, paradoxically, was the ideological consequence of early modernization and its social revolution in the North Caucasus. The demise of medieval mounted aristocracy enabled by firearms in the hands of commoners recapitulated in a very different context the armed democratizations of Ancient Greece and Rome. Maize, guns, and mountaineer democracy made the incorporation of the Caucasus by imperial Russia its costliest colonial conquest in material and human terms. The consequences reach into our days through ethno-nationalist conflicts that forcefully homogenized the ethnic map of the region.

In 2019, burial 148 was investigated at the Zayukovo-3 burial ground (Baksan district of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic), was committed in a dirt pit. The skeleton of the buried was almost completely decayed, the bones were preserved fragmentarily. The headdress items were preserved from the funerary inventory: spiral piercings, barrel shaped deads and biconical piercings. A torc and a necklace were found on the neck of the deceased, two pins were pointed under the throat with the points to wards the heard, and a bracelet was found on the left hond. The presence оf a rich necklace in combi nation with a torc embination with a torc embroidered with a pierced headgear, as well as a bracelet, indicates a buried woman. The burial dates back to the 8th – 7th centuries. The burial dress reveals significant similarities with synchronous burials from the burial grounds of Teres and Industry, which indicates cultural and possibly, ethnic kinship between the population of the pre-Scythian time of the Baksan gorge and the Kislovodsk hollow.

Part of the preparatory work for writing a generalizing history of Kabardino-Balkaria is the summing up of the scientific study of its key problems. This article is intended to discuss the experience of conceptualizing the traditional system of inter-social interactions in the Central Caucasus in the social and scientific thought of Russia and the region from the late 18th to the early 20th century. During this time, the contexts and texts in which the corresponding issues were interpreted have substantially changed. In the late 18th - early 19th century, the interpretation of the system of inter-social interactions in the region was included in the general geographical paradigm of cognition of the Caucasus informed by the enlightenment world vision. In the first half of the 19th century, a kind of political-ethnographic paradigm of regional studies emerged represented by extensive literature. In the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, in the context of the integration of local societies into the judicial and administrative system, economic life and the estate structure of the empire, a kind of local discursive space arose in which the discussion of the estate and land issues turned out to be closely connected with the interpretation of the nature of inter-social interactions on Central Caucasus. A direct or indirect exchange of assessments and judgments was between the academic socio-historical approach, government reformism and enlightened representatives of local elites. The material considered in the article recalls the importance of historiographical and methodological reflection for scientific and historical knowledge. The fundamental problem for the historical study of the traditional system of inter-social interactions in the Central Caucasus is the problem of combining the categorical apparatus of socio-historical and ethno-historical approaches to the problem. A significant problem is the generalization of the totality of historical data on the system of inter-social relationships in the region's space, as well as on their reproduction and evolution over time. It seems that any unambiguous formula here will carry elements of simplification and subjectivity. These issues require further careful study at the theoretical and methodological level.

The article was prepared on the basis of archival (public and private archives of France) and field ethnographic materials collected by the author in France. The aim of this article is to study one of the aspects of the domestic sphere of life of the North Caucasian émigrés, who settled in France in the 1920s. The author examined various aspects of the material life of emigrants (job, rent flat etc.), various types of emigrant social assistance and its connection with the political views of North Caucasians. Some of North Caucasian émigrés were the rich. They became owners of oil shares (for example, Nobel), the other – very poor people. Many emigrants acquired financial prosperity during the 1930s and 1940s.

The article presents an analysis of the main problems in the activities of public associations of the Kabardian National Movement in 1992. It is revealed that during 1992, public associations of the Kabardian National Movement, led by the Congress of Kabardian People, carried out active activities to realize their main aim – the restoration of the sovereign Kabardian Republic within the Russian Federation in confrontation with the authorities of Kabardino-Balkaria. The President and the Supreme Council of the KBR, who took a firm position on preservation the unity of the republic, have taken a series of measures to prevent the division of the KBR into Kabarda and Balkaria. The main factors stipulated the failure of the Kabardian National Movement project to restore the Kabardian Republic were: opposition from the authorities; deadlock with the determination of the borders of Kabarda and Balkaria by the expert commissions of the CKP and the NCBP (the commissions could not come to a compromise solution); the use by public associations of the Kabardian National Movement of a significant part of their resources in activities to support the people of Abkhazia in the fight against aggression. Public associations of the Kabardian National Movement have also been active in resolving conflict situations and maintaining interethnic peace in the republic, together with state authorities of the KBR. The leadership of the KBR in cooperation with public associations of the Kabardian and Balkarian national movements managed to prevent the escalation of criminal incidents into conflict between the Kabardian and Balkarian population of the republic.

The article is devoted to ancient and medieval burial mounds preserved in the Prikumye steppes (Eastern regions of Stavropol and Northern regions of Dagestan). The relevance of this research is that the authors consider the mounds not as archaeological monuments, but as part of the history and culture of the Nogai population of the North-Eastern Caucasus. During the study, the authors found that the surviving and lost mounds in the Lower Prikumye are quite numerous, and modern researchers, with rare exceptions, are perceived as objects of cultural heritage that should be studied by purely archaeological methods (exploration (inventory and certification) and excavations leading to  complete demolition of the mound mounds). However, the mounds are an integral part of the historical landscape of the Nogai steppes, and in particular the planar Prikumye.  Unfortunately, data on the mounds as part of the cultural heritage of the Nogai people is very fragmentary. They are preserved in historical documents (for example, on maps), and in descriptions of archaeological surveys and excavations, in toponymic codes, materials of folklore and ethnographic expeditions. The relevance of the research is also due to the fact that there are no generalizing publications on this topic. Steppe mounds continue to be destroyed as a result of construction work, plowing, treasure hunting and other factors. The authors address the issue of preservation of historical-cultural landscape in the steppes of Prikumye.

The article explores the novels of one of the founders of the novel genre in Adyghe (Kabardino-Circassian) literature Z.M. Naloev. For the first time, the author’s individual and authorial skill is examined his contribution to the development of national prose is determined. In general, the content and compositional features of the writer's prose are determined. The main focus is on observing genre preferences and the compliance of architectonics of Z. Naloev’s works with the canons of the novel genre. A comprehensive detailed analysis is made of a number of novels: “The Lone Crane”, “Musa and Musa’s awl”, “Murat and Guaziza”, “Wooden Doll of Khabala”, etc. Genre signs of the novel are revealed: mono-event, anecdotal core, fabulous, mystical, mythological motifs, elements of fiction, the severity of the conflict, sharp and unexpected plot twists, etc. Special attention is paid to individual authoring – the use of a philosophical summary that completes most of Z. Naloev’s novels. The research involved the method of artistic analysis, which allows to identify the features of the structurally-meaningful organization of short stories. The role and significance of individual works in the general process of the formation and evolution of national novel is determined. The results of the study can be a theoretical aid in the study of Adyghe prose, in particular, small forms of the prosaic genre, as well as find practical application in special courses, research works of teachers, graduate students and students.

The article analyzes some aspects of the spiritual development of the Karachay-Balkarian literature of the New Age. A correlation is established between the religious sphere and fiction in the region, the influence of Islamic ideas on the work of the young generation of poets is growing. The evolution of author’s self-awareness in the “new poetry” vividly illustrates the changes in the historical and literary context. This is evidenced by the transformation of the religious genre, the observed intergenre diffusion, which allowed to expand the scope of traditional religious themes. Particular emphasis is placed on identifying key concepts in the work of the young generation, as well as on the study of the poetics of works, images, motifs, reminiscences, intersecting with the Koranic ethics, close to the spiritual value system of the Karachai-Balkar people. As a result of the study, the most important aspects in the development of artistic consciousness of modern Karachai-Balkarian authors were revealed, the main trends were identified, the specificity of the relationship between continuity and innovation was determined.