No 2 (2025)

The article examines some areas of activity of the bailiff of Malaya Kabarda in 1830-1858. In the work, based mainly on the office records of the Office of the Center of the Caucasian Line, the office of Malaya Kabarda and the Kabardinsky District Court and in the context of the system of institutions of local judicial and administrative control that had developed by that time, its administrative, police, judicial and some other powers were considered. It is noted that their tasks included preventing the concealment of persons who had committed crimes (abrek), monitoring the sanitary and epidemiological situation among the population in order to prevent the spread of infections, conducting preliminary investigations in criminal cases, independently making decisions on minor offenses and civil disputes, resolving land issues, collecting information about the social status of local residents, providing management with reports on the movement of funds in the bailiff system, etc. These areas of activity were considered in light of the fact that the bailiff of Malaya Kabarda, within the limits of his authority, interacted with both higher-ranking officials (the head of the Caucasian Line Center) and other officials and institutions (the Kabardian Temporary Court, the head of the Sunzha Line, etc.) to resolve issues that went beyond his direct administrative subordination. It is concluded that in the period from 1830 to 1858, the administration of Malaya Kabarda was an important link in the management system of the Central Caucasus, combining administrative, police, judicial, and other functions.

The article identifies features of the education system management in the Russian Empire’s Caucasian Educational District during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The study examines the creation of educational districts, their structure, and the role of trustees in organizing the educational process in Caucasus. The analysis examines the directions of transformation of the regulatory framework, the directions of reforms in the Russian Empire, and emphasizes the importance of interaction between central authorities and local institutions for the formation of an effective educational system. The novelty of the article is the reconstruction of the relationship between regulatory legal acts and actual practices of managing educational districts, as well as the systematization and generalization of previously disparate information about the trustees of the Caucasian Educational District and their activities. The article is an attempt to trace the evolution of managerial approaches in the educational policy of the Russian Empire using the example of the activities of trustees in the Caucasian Educational District. Despite the limited scope, the analysis makes it possible to identify general trends and features of the functioning of the education system in the region, without pretending to provide exhaustive coverage of the contribution of each trustee. The results of the analysis can become useful material for further research in the field of history of education and management in a historical context. 

In the early 1920 s, the national formations of Soviet Russia underwent a radical transformation of social relations, which acquired a new political meaning in the context of the proclamation of their independence. The national policy of the Bolsheviks provided them with support from national minorities, who, in turn, were given the opportunity to acquire the status of independent subjects – autonomies or republics within the RSFSR. The key importance for the new autonomous entities, including the Adyghe (Circassian) Autonomous Region, was the involvement of representatives of national minorities in the party structures, who were supposed to act as the main agents of the policy of the RCP (b) in the ethnic environment. But there were not enough trained personnel in Adygea, so the dominant positions in the party apparatus were occupied by newcomers sent by the central office of the RCP(b). They had no real understanding of the mountain society, which largely explains the slow party building in the region. The first half of the 1920 s was the initial stage of the formation of the regional party apparatus and the emergence of primary party organizations in the Adyghe villages. During this period, the main directions of internal party work, its organizational design and the social base of the RCP (b) were determined.

The article presents an analysis of some ethnographic information on the Kabardians, recorded in Russian sources of the last third of the 18th – first quarter of the 19th century: office documents, narrative materials, etc. It is shown that they contain contradictory – objective and tendentious assessments of information about the Kabardians. Statements recorded in the sources about the absence of laws and princely property in Kabarda, about the predatory nature of tax collection by princes, etc., as well as the listing of a significant number of negative qualities allegedly inherent in the ethnic character of the Kabardians and other peoples of the North Caucasus, are refuted by information indicating the opposite. In the reviewed sources, demographic and statistical information is considered mainly in the context of describing the political situation in the region. The positions of the tsarist authorities and the Kabardian political elite on the territorial problem are presented. They recorded a significant decrease in the number of Kabardians by 9-10 times and, as a consequence, a decrease in the military potential of Kabarda. Some sources contain recommendations from military officials to eliminate the system of military education of the sons of Circassian feudal lords in order to establish full administrative and legal control over Kabarda.

The article analyzes the depiction of the interactions between the populations of Kabarda and Balkaria in the newspaper “Kavkaz,” within the context of the socio-spatial framework of the Central Caucasus from the 19th to early 20th century. An examination of the authors' and editorial staff's interpretations of the relationship between Kabardians and Balkars, alongside the newspaper's portrayal of the Russian government's initiatives to establish a new administrative-territorial division of the Caucasus within its legal framework, was conducted. The study is based on a “narrative”, descriptive and explanatory approach, which allows avoiding subordination to a strictly defined concept and allows focusing on the analysis of source data and the consistent reconstruction of facts and all possible interactions in the case under study. The materials involved are analyzed based on historical-systemic method. The work shows the fundamental grounds for building Kabardino-Balkarian ties, as well as the nature of coverage of such an issue in the pages of the periodical press. The totality of the materials of the newspaper “Kavkaz” on the Kabardino-Balkarian unity allows us to see that its design corresponded to the internal logic of the relationship between continuity and metamorphosis of a deeply conditioned and historically established socio-territorial structure. Publications in the newspaper "Kavkaz" of government decisions on reforms in the Central Caucasus also show that the imperial authorities took into account the historical and cultural foundations and economic realities of building relationships between Kabardians and Balkars. 

The article examines the editorial policy of the newspaper «Kavkaz» in covering the military and revolutionary events in Russia in 1905. Published in Tiflis, the newspaper informed provincial readers about current socio-political developments in the country. An analysis of its publications addressing the Russo-Japanese War and the First Russian Revolution reveals that the Kavkaz endorsed the domestic and foreign policies of the autocracy and shaped public opinion in the Caucasus region. The need to maintain peace and stability in the Caucasus dictated a cautious approach to reporting these events. The newspaper’s content was marked by ideological conservatism, linking military failures on the warfronts to the revolutionary movement. Society was steered against the revolution, while Russia’s defeat in the war with Japan was attributed to internal unrest. These disturbances later weakened the foundations of the autocratic regime in Russia and set the stage for subsequent revolutionary upheavals.periodicals, newspaper, Caucasus, editorial office, Russo-Japanese War, First Russian Revolution

The article deals with the practice of polygamy among the Ingush people in the historical dynamics from the first evidence in the early XIX to the XXI century. The tasks of the author’s research include finding answers to questions such as: how much more or less common has polygyny become in the Ingush community when comparing the experience of the past (XIX century) to the present? How is the practice of creating polygamous marriages by men and women of Ingush nationality of different ages and varying degrees of education treated by people living in different areas: cities and villages? What are the causal relationships for Ingush newlyweds in polygamous marriages?The author also aimed to include information about the modern practices of forming polygamous families among the Ingush people in the scientific discourse and to explore the perception of the phenomenon of polygamy by representatives of the nation.To comprehensively address the claimed topic, the author employed various scientific research methods: historical and comparative methods, thematic interviews, in-depth interviews, and the method of observation.Based on the analysis of empirical data collected while preparing the material, the author demonstrates that, despite the processes of urbanization, modernization of culture, and recent re-Islamization of society, the culture and traditions of the Ingush people remain strongly influenced. Overall, polygamy has retained its presence in Ingush society. The study shows that the motivations of Ingush newlyweds entering into polygamous marriages have changed over time.The author collected field material from 2022 to 2024 in various settlements of the Republic of Ingushetia, including the cities of Magas, Nazran, Sunzha, and Karabulak, as well as the rural settlements of Dolakovo, Ekazhevo, Plievo, Surkhakhi, Galashki, Sredni Achaluki, and Beini. The respondents were men and women of Ingush nationality aged 25 years and older. All respondents had secondary or higher education and varied social status, including unemployed individuals, entrepreneurs, and specialists in various fields.

The work contains analytical information about the processes of aesthetic unification and national identity of the North Caucasian literatures of the early twentieth century. The focus is on reflections on the nature of the ideological factors that influenced the division of national literatures into "traditional" and "newly written" ones. Based on the poetic works of K. Mechiev and S. Shakhmurzaev, the problem of continuity and isolation of Balkarian literature, the processes of modernization of national author's poetry of the 1920s and 1930s are analyzed. It is shown that in the context of a sharp expansion of the thematic and problematic fields of young Soviet poetry, which was observed even during the tightening of the cultural policy of the state, the Balkan poets consciously and purposefully built in their works a new system of imaginative presentations based not only on traditional sensitive structures, but also – to a greater extent – on reflective schemes of denotative, generalized conceptual character. The author comes to the conclusion that the physical fullness of the images of Balkarian poetry, their materiality, emanating from the perceptual resources of the language itself, in the late 30s of the last century determines the parameters of poetic representations of most authors. It is inherent even to those of them whose individual style, pathos and conceptualism were completely determined by the standards of the ideological order and formed within the boundaries of the socialist abstract emblems. 

The article highlights a number of ideological and artistic aspects embodied in the story "Lost in the City" by the Adyghe writer Z. M. Kankulov. In addition, episodes related to the imprinting of the memory of the writer, the entry of his image into the Adyghe literary context are sketched. The role of N. A. Shogentsukova and Z. S. Kanukova in the publication and popularization of the artistic heritage of Z. Kankulov is noted. A brief overview of the publications of his works in the original language and in literary translation is given. Among the aspects of the story "Lost in the City" actualized in the presented work, a special place is occupied by the character structure, compositional construction, features of the emotional drawing, the role of proper names and appellations, and philosophical subtext. Conclusions are made about the functionality of the effect of deceived expectations and the role of reader's emotion predetermined by this effect, about the connection of the semantics of the names of the heroes with their characters. 

The article presents the first experience of semantic and word-formation analysis of the eye (нэ) lexeme in the Kabardino-Circassian language, which forms a lexical field and is its core. The representations of different peoples about reality recorded in linguistic units give a variety of linguistic pictures of the world. Each language is a coded system reflecting the type of relations of a person, one ethnic community to the world. One of the basic categories of "human" has a wide variety of characteristics, expressed in metaphors. The concept of the "eye" as one of the most important components of man refers to the most important archetypes that regulate human thinking. In the language, the word eye, and its derivatives are the basis of lexical units used to describe the surrounding reality, a person, an assessment of his external and internal world, anatomy and psychological makeup, attitude to the outside world, and his social role. The article is devoted to various issues of the structural composition and semantics of words dating back to the productive basis of eyes in the Adyghe linguoculture. The article discusses issues related to the functioning of ne-eye somatism in the Kabardino-Circassian language, figurative expressions with the ne-eye component, which serve as figurative means to describe various physical and mental states of a person, connected by abstract and concrete concepts. Phraseological units with the ne-eye component of the Kabardino-Circassian language are of particular scientific interest. 

The article focuses on a crucial issue in Adyghe linguistics: defining the functional status and clarifying the origins of Kabardino-Circassian formations ending in -у//-уе//-эу, a topic that has fueled ongoing scholarly discussion. In the Kabardino-Circassian language, because of its polyfunctionality, wordforms involving the affix -у//-уе//-эу can, from a grammatical point of view, belong to different classes of words.Researchers of the Adyghe languages have expressed different opinions regarding the functional weight and genesis of the formant -у//-уе//-эу. This article, based on the analysis of linguistic material, presents the argument that the affix -у//-уе//-эу in Kabardino-Circassian should be classified as a word-forming, form-building, and inflectional element with a broad range of semantic contributions to the sentence. Along with the consideration of its word-formation, form-building and inflectional functions the work presents the history of the study of the issue and genesis of the formant -у//-уе//-эу with outlining various views of Adyghe researchers on this problem.

This article addresses topical issues of the correlation between language and culture, a central problem in modern humanitarian research, due to increased attention to national culture as a means of spiritual development and societal transformation. The features of the modern holiday as a socio-cultural reality of the 21st century are considered; the increased attention to festive culture is emphasized, the activation of the processes of changing its style is noted; the tendencies towards the revival of ethnic traditions and the archaization of modern culture are revealed; the thesis about the multifunctionality of the holiday from the standpoint of historical, representative, moral and value content and personal aspect is substantiated. The research material was based on texts published on the official regional websites of Kabardino-Balkaria, whose festive calendar includes three ethnic holidays: September 1 is the Day of Statehood of the KBR, March 28 is the Day of the Revival of the Balkarian people, September 20 is the Day of the Adygs (Circassians). In the course of the work, the thesis is convincing that an ethnic holiday in the republic is a special modern event, the purpose of which is predetermined by the affirmation of the values and preferences of peoples, the restoration of once–forgotten historical life episodes or traditional meanings, immersion in cultural heritage and understanding its values through the prism of the present, which helps modern people to preserve their ethnic identity. identity. The analysis of congratulatory texts allows us to conclude that official congratulatory texts represent key social and cultural values that are significant for modernity, affirm the dominant conceptual ideas of society, reveal the value of the festive word in consolidating and integrating processes that form an ethnic mentality among people, affirming modern moral guidelines, continuous connection and continuity.

The article explores Mahmud Esambayev’s work as a dramatic actor, which has received little attention. He worked on a variety of film productions, including wuch as musical-choreographic, dramatic, children’s films, and adventure. His dance performances achieved international acclaim. Meanwhile, movie directors willingly invited Mahmud for roles in feature films. But this facet of Esambayev’s work is little known to the general public. Without revealing his contribution to the cinematography, the biography of the great artist will be incomplete. Based on numerous biographical works and journal publications introduced for the first time in the scientific turnover, it is concluded that Esambayev’s entry into cinematography was natural. According to experts, his roles in the movie are played masterfully and brightly. It is also noted that he did not fully realize himself as a dramatic actor. Other aspects of M. Esambayev’s creative work are still awaiting research. He possessed the skill of a storyteller on television and documentary films. He created the genre of variety, which is a concert-lecture, where dance numbers were accompanied by interesting stories of the performer himself.