“Everyone began to look at things completely differently”: resistance to the new worldview and world order of part of the mountain population of the North Caucasus in the second half of the 19th century in the context of the “revolution of everyday life”

Introduction. The work analyzes the reaction of the mountain people of the North Caucasus to the ongoing processes of change in their everyday life, which can be considered revolutionary. For part of the population, they were unacceptable and caused various forms of rejection. Various ways of denying the new worldview and world order were chosen – from passive denial to armed resistance.

Materials and methods. The article is based on general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, and the system-structural method, reconstructs a holistic picture of the phenomenon designated as the “revolution of everyday life”. The emphasis is on resistance to this process on the part of part of North Caucasian society.

Analysis. With reference to the methods used to resist the imperial world order, the author identified several conditional social groups that differ from each other in their rejection of the “revolution of everyday life” that followed capitalist modernization. The part of the population least inclined to compromise chose to leave the land of their ancestors. Others preferred to continue their resistance with arms in hand and opposed their Muslim alternative to the “European” way of life. Another group made up of marginalized individuals known as abreks sought to defend their own way of life in the fight against the state. It seems appropriate to add to these protest communities also populist revolutionaries from among the educated mountain youth. They also criticized the changes taking place from the position of supporters of socialist ideals.

Results. The reaction to the ongoing changes led to a split in mountain society. For some, the new era of capitalist modernization has become a chance to improve their property and social status, while others, on the contrary, have lost their former privileges and confidence in the future. The challenges of the “revolution of everyday life” provoked persistent protest sentiments, which were shared by a considerable part of the local residents. Some were unequivocally opposed to the attacks on the “old times”, others were outraged not by the innovations themselves, but by the fact that they could not take advantage of them to the proper extent. There were also those who defended the ideals of social justice, and therefore the capitalist “revolution of everyday life” was interpreted by them in a negative way.

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