Nukhrikyan E.S. Regulatory Basis of the Public Assets of Karachay and Balkaria in the Post-Reform Period (1860-s - the beginning of the XX century)

Abstract: The topic of the study are regulatory legal acts of the Russian Empire and the norms of common law in Karachay and Balkaria that comprised the basis that regulated property relations connected with the public assets, including those all-national and rural (aul), in mountain societies of Karachay and Balkaria in the post-reform period. The article investigates the relations in the field of land commerce and changes in its regulation that happened in the course of reforms in 1860-70s in mountain regions of the Northern Caucasus. Attention is paid to the issue of land ownership by village communities that first were granted the right to be the subject of property relations in the end of XIX century. It was the period of time when the traditions of common law (adat) were substituted by the legal tools of regulations in the form of regulatory documents. Methodologically the research is based on dialectic materialistic analysis of historical events and facts that allowed to examine the process of institutionalisation of village communities in Northern Caucasian mountain societies during the liberal reforms of 1860-1870s. The author notices that a certain part of the adat norms was included in the national legal framework, and the introduced regulatory innovations had positive results. Demesnial legal reforms conducted by the government in the Northern Caucasus were of evolutionary nature, which allowed to avoid social upheaval and provided the stability of the "Muslim outskirts" of the empire.

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