Православная церковь в Гражданской войне на Северном Кавказе: взаимоотношения духовенства, населения и политической власти

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The article delves into the religious aspect of the Civil War in the North Caucasus. The authors examine the influence of policy of the central Bolshevik power on the religious sphere of the North Caucasus region and the specifics of the religious issue in this region. They consider this issue in the context of the relationship between the population, the Orthodox clergy and the existing political power. At the same time, the authors in the course of the study were interested primarily in the Orthodox population and clergy by virtue of numerical predominance in the region. The relevance is due to the importance of the spiritual sphere in modern Russian society, in which traditional values and meanings are regaining their significance. In this regard, the study of the history of interaction between the power and the population in the religious sphere at critical moments in history is of undoubted interest. Scientific novelty stems from the fact that the religious aspect of the civil confrontation of 1917–1920 in the North Caucasus as a special area of relations between the population of the region, which adhered to traditional values, and the new state power, which aimed to completely reorganize Russian society and change the worldview of the population of the region. The authors determined that since the beginning of the armed conflict in the country, the spiritual sphere of existence of the North Caucasian society also begins to include crisis confrontational features and becomes a field of ideological confrontation between supporters of the new state power and traditionalists striving to preserve the old religious values. The authors show the full depth of this split and confrontation and reveal various forms of the crisis of religious life in the region in this historical period. Their essential features are outlined, correlated with the general aspects of the Civil War in the South of Russia.