Office Practice of the Kabardian Provisional Court: Documentary Measurement of the Regional Integration of the Peoples of the Central Caucasus in 1822–1858

Abstract. The article gives an assessment of the regional integration of the peoples of the Central Caucasus on the basis of an analysis of the office practice of the Kabardian Provisional Court in 1822–1858. In the course of the study, the documents of the Court were differentiated into 3 groups depending on the nature of its external communication and the needs of internal management: 1) documents that ensured interaction with higher authorities (instructions, reviews, orders, reports); 2) documents ensuring interaction with other institutions within the framework of their jurisdiction (relationship); 3) documents on the management of their own activities (books and journals, journal records, journal regulations, registers of verbal complaints, petitions and complaints from the population, subscriptions, receipts, certificates, acts of medical examinations, explanations, statements, etc.). An analysis of the informative return of each of the listed groups of documents for the study of the sociopolitical and economic history of Kabardians, Balkars and their neighboring peoples in the second quarter of the 19th century is given. It is concluded that the Court’s paperwork has significant heuristic potential for studying the features of the incorporation of Kabardians and Balkars into the political and legal space of the Russian Empire and the nature of the transformation of their internal integration relations in 1822–1858.

Keywords: Russian Empire, Caucasus, Center of the Caucasian Line, Kabardian Line of Military Fortifications, Kabardian Provisional Court, Kabardians, Balkarians, Historical Source, Records.