RUSSIAN POPULATION OF THE NORTH CAUCASUS AS ETHNOGRAPHIC GROUP: SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-REPRESENTATION FEATURES
The article is devoted to the study of the Russian population of the North Caucasus as a special ethnographic group. In the late 1980s - 1990s part of them due to difficult socio-political and economic situation migrated from the North Caucasus republics to other regions of Russia. However, the move, at first glance, into an environment close to the ethnic, linguistic and cultural environment, was often accompanied by a “cultural shock,” an awareness of its distinctiveness from the local Russian environment. Settlers found themselves in a position of “strangers among their own”, which in turn influenced the processes of social adaptation and the relationship with the host society. The article is based on the authors’ research in 2015-2017 -complex socio-psychological research examines the features of the Russians’ selfawareness in the North Caucasus, its structure and content. The sample population was 25 people with equal distribution by gender. The respondents were selected according to the snowball method. The results of the study allow us to consider the Russian North Caucasus as a special ethnographic group, the formation of ethno-cultural features of which occurred in the course of historical relocation to the North Caucasus and interaction with the local population, gradual adaptation and integration into the system of national cultures of the region. This process was accompanied by the formation of a special ethnocultural type on the basis of the synthesis of Russian and mountain elements, a peculiar culture of the border, the frontier. Representatives of this group tend to have their own self-consciousness and selfpresentation, the basis of which is a number of ethno-differentiating features: origin, value-normative system, language, behavior stereotypes.