ЦЕНТРАЛЬНЫЙ КАВКАЗ КАК ПРОСТРАНСТВО СОЦИАЛЬНО-ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИХ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЙ: ИСТОРИОГРАФИЧЕСКИЕ ИТОГИ И ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ ИЗУЧЕНИЯ

Abstract

Part of the preparatory work for writing a generalizing history of the Kabardin-Balkaria is summing up the results of a scientific study of its key problems, which include the interpretation of the traditional system of socio-political or inter-social interactions in the Central Caucasus. In the previous publication, the formation of the historiographical tradition in the 18th – early 20th centuries was considered. The proposed article aims to continue the study of this topic using the material of Soviet and post-Soviet historiography. The material considered in the article shows that the construction of a generalized concept of the traditional system of inter-social interactions in the Central Caucasus is a complex problem that touches upon the fundamental issues of the study of regional history. The first of them is the question of the applicability of categories developed in other social sciences or on historical material from other eras and regions to the North Caucasian reality of the 16th – 18th centuries. In this case, individual elements and relationships are identified with the structure of the system as a whole. Inter-social interactions that unfold both in space and in time receive a static, exclusively spatial representation. The second question is related to the need to differentiate ethnic and socio-political nomenclature in the representation of the Central Caucasus as a space of inter-social interactions. Contemporary historiography explicitly or implicitly places the social interactions of the owners and societies of the region in an “interethnic” and / or “ethnopolitical” context. Historical concepts to a certain extent are divorced from the sources of data of the 16th – 18th centuries, in which ethnic communities – "peoples" are never the subjects of inter-social interactions. A generalized interpretation of the historical experience of inter-social interactions in the Central Caucasus is possible on the basis of combining a “narrative”, descriptive approach with a “supra-ethnic” representation of the region as a space with a complex natural and social landscape. The most stable general function of the traditional system of inter-social interactions is the maintenance of order that is understandable to all their participants and ensured the reproduction of each ethno-social unit that occupies its own natural-ecological niche.