Ancient cultures of the Northern Caucasus are known as
Klin-Yar community, with one of the most notable cultures being the ancient
Koban culture. Ciscaucasus was historically covered by the
Pontic–Caspian steppe, mostly on fertile calcareous
chernozyom soils, which has been almost completely tilled and grazed. It is bounded by the
Sea of Azov on the west, and the Caspian Sea on the east. According to the
Concise Atlas of the World, Second Edition (2008), the Ciscaucasus region lies on the European side of the "commonly-accepted division" that separates Europe from Asia. The
Russian Empire completed the conquest of the North Caucasus by 1864. Between the 1850s and World War I, about a million North Caucasian Muslims, including
Circassians,
Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians, and others, became refugees in the
Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government settled North Caucasian refugees in territories of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Kosovo, Greece, Cyprus, and North Macedonia, creating a large North Caucasian diaspora. Much of the Northern Caucasus seceded from Russia in March 1917 as the
Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, taking advantage of the instability caused by the
February Revolution and becoming a minor participant in the
Russian Civil War. Mountainous Republic troops engaged in fierce clashes against the invading
White General
Anton Denikin's
Volunteer Army, before the latter's defeat at the hands of the
Red Army. The region was informally occupied by the
Soviet Union shortly afterwards, and the republic was forced into accepting a nonviolent annexation in January 1921. It was reformed into the
Mountainous ASSR, which was later dissolved in October 1924, replaced by a series of autonomous Okrugs and Oblasts. The outer border of the Soviet Union's North Caucasus Krai was the same as that of present-day North Caucasus Economic Region (Raion) which includes an oblast (
Rostov Oblast), two krais (
Krasnodar Krai and
Stavropol Krai), and seven republics. The former North Caucasus Military District (Okrug) also included
Astrakhan Oblast,
Volgograd Oblast, and the
Republic of Kalmykia. Its administrative center was Rostov-on-Don until 10 January 1934, Pyatigorsk until January 1936, then Ordzhonikidze (today Vladikavkaz) and, from 15 December 1936, Voroshilovsk (today Stavropol).
Unrest The North Caucasus region experienced widespread unrest and insurgency after the fall of the Soviet Union, including a low-level armed conflict between
Russia and militants associated with the
Caucasus Emirate and, from June 2015, the
Islamic State. The insurgency became relatively dormant in its later years. counter-terrorism operations in the North Caucasus have not ended. In June 2022, the
US State Department advised citizens not to travel to the North Caucasus, including
Chechnya and
Mount Elbrus, due to terrorism, kidnapping and risk of civil unrest. Other paramilitaries active in the region have included the
Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, a
pan-Caucasian organization that based its flag and political agenda directly on those of the Mountainous Republic. ==Economy==