Ethnogenesis and sociogenesis in the formation of historical Balkaria (some research results)

The article is devoted to the problem of Balkar ethnogenesis, considered in the context of the ethnopolitical situation in the Central Caucasus during the Golden Horde period. A set of sources that shed light on the early ethnic history of the Balkars is analyzed: information from Persian authors of the late 14th-early 15th centuries Sharaf ad-din Yazdi and Nizam ad-din Shami, materials from the academic expedition of G. Yu. Klaproth to the Caucasus in 1807-1808, ethnogenetic and genealogical legends about the origin of various divisions of the Balkar people, materials from archaeological excursions of V. F. Miller and M. M. Kovalevsky to mountain societies in the 1880s, etc. Some results of research into the process of ethnogenesis of the Balkars in modern historiography are summarized. It is emphasized that the process of formation of an ethnic group is accompanied by its socio-potestary self-organization. This aspect of ethnogenesis cannot be ignored in the historical interpretation of the ethnogenesis of the Balkars and the formation of Balkaria as an ethno-socio-territorial entity. Just as in pre-revolutionary and Soviet historiography, the article asserts that the place where the processes of Karachay-Balkar ethnogenesis ended was the highlands of the Central Caucasus, corresponding to the Balkar ethnic area of a later time. In relation to the 15th-16th centuries, we can talk about the stabilization in the highland zone of the Central Caucasus of a special ethno-socio-territorial entity, which later became known to the outside world as Balkaria. Its population acquired a set of characteristics of an ethnic group as a special community of people: territorial integrity, common language and social ties, specific features of traditional material and spiritual culture. The study allowed us to conclude that the main components of the Karachay-Balkar ethnogenesis – the autochthonous Caucasian, Iranian (Sarmatian-Alanian) and Turkic (Bulgar-Kipchak) – interacted over a long historical period. However, the formation of the Balkarian ethnic group itself, localized within the historical Balkaria, occurred only with the end of the Golden Horde era.