Kobakhidze, Elena I.
Izvestia SOIGSI. 2022. IIS 43 (82).

Abstract:
The formation of the Russian state in its spatial and socio-cultural aspects took place
over several centuries, during which the administrative boundaries of the country gradually
included ethno-social systems differing in socio-political characteristics, including the North
Caucasian ones. For centuries the complicated international context determined the way of
life of local societies and various models of their interaction with the external environment –
the states competing for the region (the Crimean Khanate, the Moscow Kingdom, the Ottoman
Empire, and later with the Russian Empire). The appearance of Slavic settlers in the North
Caucasus, the entry of the region into the Russian Empire, the processes of integration into
the economy, social and cultural spheres led to a significant transformation of the adaptation
strategies of the peoples of the North Caucasus region. The study of regional features of the
military-political, economic, administrative and legal conditions for the entry of the North
Caucasus into the Russian state, in all the variety of traditional forms and practices of self-
government, their interaction with the norms of the political and legal culture of the Russian
Empire, is relevant both in theory and in applied relation, revealing the specifics of integration
processes and their historical role in the formation of the multicultural space of modern Russia.
The monograph under review continues the traditions of Russian Caucasian studies, offering
a methodologically new interpretation of one of the “difficult issues” of regional history related
to the evolution of the forms of socio-political organization of the multi-ethnic space of the
Central Caucasus, to which Kabardino-Balkaria belongs. Using the concept of inter-social
interaction and attracting wide documentary and historiographical material, the authors
conduct a meaningful analysis of the factors that determined the future of the peoples of the
Central Caucasus as part of the Russian state, consistently reveal the mechanisms for creating
a united Soviet autonomy of the Kabardian and Balkar peoples, explore the mechanisms of
transition from Soviet to modern political regime in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic in
terms of the influence of ethno-political factors on the process of democratization.

Keywords: Central Caucasus, Kabardino-Balkaria, inter-social interaction, socio-political organization, historiography

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