The peoples of the North Caucasus

The Caucasus is the southern border dividing Europe and Asia. About thirty different nationalities live here.

Its part, the North Caucasus, is almost all part of Russia, and the southern part is divided among such republics as Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

The peoples of the North Caucasus live in the most complexin many respects the region of our country, which includes many territorial entities, formed according to the national type. This densely populated and multinational region with its various traditions, languages, and beliefs is considered to be Russia in miniature.

Thanks to its unique geopolitical andgeocultural position, a relatively small North Caucasus has long been considered a contact zone and at the same time a barrier separating the civilizations of the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and the Near East. This is what determines the many processes taking place in this region.

Most of the peoples of the North Caucasusare the same outwardly: the indigenous people are usually dark-eyed, fair-skinned and dark-haired, they have sharp features, a nose with a hump and narrow lips. Usually the mountaineers are compared to the flat inhabitants of higher growth.

They are distinguished by polyethnicity, religioussyncretism, peculiar ethnic codes, in which certain features predominate due to their ancient occupation, such as terraced farming, alpine cattle breeding, horsemanship.

By their language classification, the peoples of the NorthThe Caucasus belong to three groups: Adygea-Abkhazia (in this language the Adygs, Abkhazians, Circassians and Kabardians speak), to Vainakhskaya - Chechens, Ingushs, and to the Kartvelian group, native to the Svan, Ajar and Megrelian.

The history of the North Caucasus is in many respects intertwined withRussia, which always connected with this region big plans. From the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries the Moscow state began to establish intensive contacts with local peoples, especially with Circassians and Kabardians, helping them in the struggle against the Crimean Khanate.

The peoples of the North Caucasus suffering from aggressionTurkey and Shah Iran, have always seen in Russian real allies, which will help them remain independent. The eighteenth century was a new stage in these relations. After a successfully completed Persian campaign, Peter I took under his sovereignty many areas, as a result of which his relations with Turkey sharply deteriorated.

The problems of the North Caucasus have always been on theplan of foreign policy tasks of Russia. This was due to the importance of this region in the struggle for access to the strategically important for the Russian Black Sea. That is why, in order to consolidate their positions, the tsarist government generously endowed the mountain princes, who passed to its side, with fertile lands.

Dissatisfaction with the Ottoman Turkey led to a Russian-Turkish war, in which Russia managed to recapture large areas.

However, the final factor for the final entry of the entire region into the composition of Russia was the Caucasian War.

And today in the North Caucasus region, the borderswhich was defined in the nineteenth century, seven autonomous republics of the Russian Federation are located: Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Alania, Ingushetia, Dagestan and the Chechen Republic.

The area on which they are located is less than one percent of the entire territory of our country.

In Russia there are about one hundred nationalities andnationalities, and almost half of them are the peoples of the North Caucasus. And according to the estimates of demographic statistics, it is their number that is constantly increasing, and today this figure exceeds sixteen million people.