Caucasus is the southern boundary that separates Europe and Asia.There are about thirty different nationalities.
his part, the North Caucasus, almost all the part of Russia, and south is divided between those republics like Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
North Caucasian peoples living in the most difficult in many respects, the region of the country, which includes many regional entities that have emerged on the national type.This densely populated and cosmopolitan area with its different traditions, languages and beliefs considered to be Russia in miniature.
With its unique geopolitical and geo-cultural position, the relatively small North Caucasus has long been considered the contact area and at the same time a barrier separating the civilizations of the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and Asia.This accounts for many of the processes occurring in the region.
The majority of the peoples of the North Caucasus are identical in appearance: the indigenous people, as a rule, dark-eyed, dark-haired and fair-skinned, they have sharp features, aquiline nose and thin lips.Mountaineers usually compared to the inhabitants of the plains of higher growth.
They are characterized by multi-ethnicity, religious syncretism, a kind of ethnic codes, which are dominated by certain features due to their ancient birth classes, such as terrace farming, alpine cattle, horsemanship.
By its linguistic classification of the peoples of the North Caucasus are three groups: to the Adyghe-Abkhaz (the language spoken Circassians, Abkhazians, Circassians and Kabardin) to the Vainakh - Chechens, Ingush, and to the Kartvelian group native to the Svan, Adjara andMegrelians.
history of the North Caucasus largely intertwined with Russia, which is always associated with the region has big plans.Ever since the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries Muscovy begins to establish intensive contacts with local people, especially with the Circassians and Kabardin, helping them in their struggle against the Crimean Khanate.
peoples of the North Caucasus, suffering from aggression Turkey and the Shah of Iran, always seen in the Russian real allies to help them remain independent.The eighteenth century became a new stage in the relationship.After successfully completed the Persian campaign, Peter I took under its sovereignty many areas, resulting in dramatically worsened its relations with Turkey.
problems of the North Caucasus have always been at the forefront of foreign policy tasks of Russia.This explains the importance of the region in the struggle for access to the strategically important for the Russian Black Sea.That's why in order to consolidate its position, the tsarist government generously mountain princes, switched to his side, fertile lands.
Dissatisfaction with the Ottoman Empire led to the Russian-Turkish war in which Russia managed to win a large area.
However, the final factor in the final entry of the entire region in the Russian Caucasus war began.
And today in the North Caucasus region, whose boundaries were defined in the nineteenth century, is located seven autonomous republics of the Russian Federation: Karachay-Cherkessia, Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Alania, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya.
area in which they are located - it is less than one percent of the entire territory of our country.
In Russia, home to around a hundred nationalities and ethnic groups, and almost half of them - it is the peoples of the North Caucasus.And an estimated population statistics, their number is constantly growing and today the figure exceeds sixteen million people.
