By Vestnik Kavkaza
Yesterday in Rostov-on-Don an international conference "Metamorphosis vs transformation: a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the history of Circassians in the XIX-XXI centuries" was held.
The North Caucasus Research Center of the Graduate School of the Southern Federal University invited scientists and researchers from Russia, Georgia, Abkhazia and Turkey to participate in the conference. They discussed new approaches to the study of the macro-historical region, issues of historiography and sources of Adyghe history, the issue of historical mythology in theoretical and practical dimensions, as well as the following subject: "The Circassians in the international context: Past and Present ."
At the conference it was suggested that the history of the Adyghe people has become a breeding ground for myth-making. Today in Russia there is an acute shortage of our own "great theories". These voids are occupied by borrowed Western concepts claiming universality. However, they do not consider any scientific tradition or local conditions, directly dependent on the prevailing historiographical schools abroad.
Until the early 1980s, the study of the Caucasian War was in a state of profound crisis. A prominent feature of the historiographical process at the turn of the 1990s was the sharp mainstreaming of ways and forms of occurrence of the North Caucasus in the Russian state. The general shift in the historiographical situation was defined by the connection between the two tendencies. First, there was the transition of the initiative in determining the social and scientific relevance of certain topics to local intellectual circles and closely linking scientific problems with the ethnic question, recovery of historical memory, the revival of ethnic and cultural traditions. Secondly, there was the installation on the ideological replacement of "voluntary entry" of the North Caucasus into the Russian Empire by the concept of colonial enslavement.
However, an objective perception of the current situation in the Caucasus is impossible without a major systemic analysis of the stereotypes of historical memory, providing a comprehensive impact on the successive formation of values in modern society. The corresponding representations are formed not only in the research practice of professional scientists, but also in the interpersonal dialogue of various generations, literature and fine arts. The most important task of public structures and public institutions is not an artificial reconstruction of historical memory breaking the traditional value system, but the gradual adaptation of existing concepts to new conditions.
For scientists, the need for cooperation and coordination of efforts of scientists in Abkhazia, the Caucasus, and Russia as a whole in finding, organizing, classifying and publishing sources on the history of the region is obvious. The experts also talked about the need to recognize the formation of a new concept of the North Caucasian history in XVIII - XX centuries, based on a strictly scientific approach and rejecting the politicization and artificial actualization of the events. Indeed, during the Caucasian war there were not only the valor and glory of the Russian army, but also a great tragedy of the Caucasian peoples caught up in exile . But we should not forget the immense contribution of Russia in the subsequent socio-economic improvement of the Caucasus, taking into account the different positions of mountain communities in relation to incorporation processes and seeing real alternatives in the historical development of the region .
Significant impact on regional developments was made by a long and bitter struggle of powerful empires - the Russian Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, which sought to establish their own control over the strategically-important territories. Historical responsibility, therefore, should be divided among all the participants in this process, but instead radical historians prefer to consider exclusively Russia to be the main culprit of the Caucasian disasters.
