History of Science and Engineering Annotation << Back THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEMS OF NATIONAL SELFDETERMINATION IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS O.A. Zhansitov The article reflects the specifics of the revolutionary period in the mountainous districts of the North Caucasus. The main motives for the involvement of the population of the region into the political struggle, associated primarily with the desire for national-political selfdetermination, as well as the urgent need to resolve the problem of scarcity, are indicated. Attention is given to the analysis of research approaches and attitudes in the domestic historiography of the problem, and, in particular, to the drawing up of an ideologically verified plot of the participation of mountain people in the revolution, presented as a national liberation movement of peoples oppressed by the autocracy, which under the leadership of the Bolsheviks resulted in a struggle for Soviet power that guaranteed the right on national-state construction. The processes of autonomization in the North Caucasus are not exclusively connected with the Bolsheviks. Their beginning was initiated by the national intelligentsia that came to power in the region after the February Revolution, which is striving to turn the North Caucasus into an equal subject of a new democratic Russia. In addition, certain forms of autonomy were provided the Highlanders olso by the command of the White Army, which ruled the region in 1919 and early 1920. The success or failure of the mountaineers’ autonomist aspirations was largely predetermined by the internal ethnopolitical potential, but, eventually, depended on the position of the political force that would be established in power in Russia. Keywords: revolution, Bolsheviks, Northern Caucasus, Highlanders, Soviet power, Cossacks, white army, national autonomy. DOI: 10.25791/intstg.07.2019.777 Contacts: E-mail: osman.zhansitov@yandex.ru Pp. 60-66.