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Tenglik went so as far as to blockade transportation routes until Avars were removed from posts in
the Dagestani leadership and to demand the creation of a separate Kumyk republic which would be
administered entirely by ethnic Kumyks. 18
In the second case, the comparative development of non-Russian urban populations in the
ASSRs and AOs of the North Caucasus after the Second World War demonstrates that the formation
of ministries and a bureaucracy staffed with national cadres was the primary factor in the
urbanization and modernization of the national-territorial units of the USSR. Prior to the 1920s, the
non-Russian populations of the North Caucasian republics were predominantly rural. The major
towns in the region, such as Vladikavkaz, Grozny and Makhachkala, were established as Russian
military and trading outposts in the 19th century, and were thus populated by Russians. Over time,
however, as a result of their state structures, the ASSRs were able to promote education, jobs, and
the provision of housing for the titular nationality. For example, in Nal’chik, the capital of the
Kabardino-Balkaria ASSR, the two titular nationalities accounted for only 15.5% of the total
population in 1959, but represented 41.5% of the total population by 1989. 19 In contrast, in the
Adygei AO, where state structures were shared with Krasnodar Krai, only 15% of the total Adygei
population had become urbanized by 1989. 20
Autonomous oblasts and autonomous okrugs, which had even fewer attributes of
sovereignty, were acutely aware of the greater access to resources and influence accorded to those
higher up the hierarchical ladder. In addition, members of groups without a designated national
territory, or those living outside the borders of their national republic or oblast’ (with the notable
exception of ethnic Russians, the “first among equals” across the whole of the former Soviet Union),
had no guaranteed access whatsoever to education, jobs and housing.
Territorial Readjustment in the Soviet Period:
Despite these limitations, members of all the seemingly disadvantaged groups could hope for
a change in their political fortunes and a readjustment in their favor by the center. From the 1920s to
the 1980s, the federal system of the USSR was repeatedly modified by fiat of the CPSU. These
modifications included:
• border realignments and transfers of territory between union republics, such as the transfer of
Crimea from the Russian Federation to Ukraine in 1954;
• the division of union and autonomous republics into separate units, such as the repeated subdivisions
of the Circassian people of the North Caucasus in the 1920s and 1930s;
18 See Ol’ga Vasil’eva and Timur Muzaev, Severnyi kavkaz v poiskakh regional’noi ideologii, Progress (Moscow,
1994), p.44.
19 See M.N. Guboglo, Razvitie etnodemograficheskoi situatsii v stolitsakh avtonomnykh respublik v 1959-1989 gg,
RAN document No. 33, Series A of Mezhnatsional’nye otnosheniya v sovremennom mire, Institute of
Ethnology and Anthropology (Moscow, 1992).
20 Figures from Kubanskii Kur’er (Krasnodar), December 20, 1991.
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