Arrangement And Government Of Terek Region At The Beginning Of 20Th Century

Abstract

The system of reorganization of administrative and territorial arrangement as well as government system of the North Caucasus, in particular, the Terek Region, was distorted, which forced the population of the Region – the highlanders – to oppose the policies pursued by the throne. It most severely concerned the land issue, which was very topical in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It should be clarified that the reorganization carried out by the throne was one of the Western “modernization” models, the purpose of which was to destroy the traditional system of highlanders. This fact can be found in archival documents that recorded the actions and activities of the reformers who wrote the following: “... with this system we could no longer fear stirring up a murmur in the population to prematurely destroy the government system developed throughout the history”. This is an excerpt from the report of the governor of the Caucasus, Grand Duke M.N. Romanov (1863–1879). The throne did not recognize the rights of the Chechens, arguing that the Chechens historically did not have any farming skills, and they did not have rights and supporting documents to own the land and rejected the transactions of ordinary mountain law. As a result, by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, the state was the main owner of the Chechen territories in the Terek Region. The second large landowner after the state was the Terek Cossacks of the North Caucasus.