2019. 02. 007. Svetlana Apazheva, Alim Mamsirov, Tamerlan Tsoloev. North Caucasus: modern ethnopolitical situation and prospects of its stabilization // “istoriya: fakty i simvoly,” 2017, № 4 (13), p. 101-111.

2019.02.007. SVETLANA APAZHEVA, ALIM MAMSIROV, TAMERLAN TSOLOEV. NORTH CAUCASUS: MODERN ETHNOPOLITICAL SITUATION AND PROSPECTS OF ITS STABILIZATION // "Istoriya: fakty i simvoly," 2017, № 4 (13), P. 101-111.

Svetlana Apazheva,

PhD(Philological), Associate Professor, Alim Mamsirov,

PhD(Economics), Associate Professor, Tamerlan Tsoloev, DSc(History), Professor, The Kabardino-Balkarian State University named after H.M. Berbekov

Currently, Russia faces the need to rethink its own historical and international experience in building national policies and interethnic relations in order to develop a "soft" pragmatic regulation of interethnic relations. Domestic inter-ethnic relations of multinational and multi-confessional Russia are becoming a key issue of national security in the context of geopolitical confrontation with the Western world, information and hybrid wars, the intensification of radical Islam and international terrorism, the increase in uncontrolled population migration, and diverse economic and financial pressure from outside.

According to the studies of national politics and inter-ethnic relations carried out by the authors, ethno-territorial contradictions in the North Caucasus are the most complex, most dangerous and potential sources of inter-ethnic, ethno-political conflicts.

Interethnic relations have always been not only one of the key factors in the social history of Russia, but also acquired critical

importance at the turning points of history, as happened in 1917 and in the 1990s.

The North Caucasus has always been and remains a region of confrontations of the strategic interests of world powers. At the turn of the new Millennium, the region remains a zone of acute economic and political rivalry, where geopolitical and geostrategic lines aimed at weakening Russia and strengthening the influence of the West are clearly visible.

More than 30 states, many transnational organizations and companies have declared the Caucasus to be a zone of their strategic interests. There was a direct threat of the transformation of the North Caucasus into one of the centers of international terrorism. The active penetration of religious extremism (Wahhabism), attempts to politicize Islam, manifested in Chechnya and Dagestan in recent years, increasingly affect the ethno-political situation in the region.

One of the reasons for the rapid growth of ethnic conflicts in the North Caucasus is the forms and pace of globalization, which maximize economic, cultural, inter-religious and inter-civilizational contacts. The form of complete westernization that this process has acquired in recent decades leads to the emergence of new and expanding old inter-civilizational faults. The most tangible of them pass through Russia, separating the western civilization from the Islamic world.

A peculiar local form of the existence of Islam (known as "everyday" and "popular" Islam in religious studies) took shape during the natural historical process of adapting Islam to the national moral and legal codes of the peoples of the North Caucasus. Nevertheless, there are different views and approaches to this issue in modern North Caucasian society, including, in some cases, unreasonably distorting historical realities and overly politicizing problems of the correlation of religious and national traditions of the North Caucasian culture.

Such phenomena as the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional composition of the population of the region, the presence of

national-state entities in it and the complex history of relations between local peoples , both among themselves and with the Russian state, should be removed from the framework of political analysis. All this is subject to careful study. It is impossible to carry out a substantive policy, it is impossible to exclude these phenomena as factors of interethnic tension without competence in the relevant issues.

In the context of the growth of ethno-nationalism, spiritual leaders of mass movements in the North Caucasus tried to rely on historical or pseudo-historical precedent, which was intended to legitimize statements of self-determination or independent statehood and mobilize the masses to achieve the goal. In order to substantiate some ethnic and national claims, a myth was often invented. Most disturbing in this activity is that such myths penetrate the mass media, creating the danger of the formation of aggressive ethno-nationalism and xenophobia among the younger generation and condemning the country to inter-ethnic conflicts and the growth of extremism.

Author of the abstract - Elena Dmitrieva

"Islam v sovremennom mire," Moscow, 2018, № 14 (3), P. 167-178.

Yusup Djabrailov,

PhD(Politics), Senior Research Associate, Regional Center of Ethnopolitical Studies, Daghestan Scientific Center, RAS

Yusup Djabrailov examines specific features of connections between ethnic and religious identity in Daghestan during the