What is the North Caucasus primarily associated with? Unfortunately, not with beautiful nature, delicious food, hospitable residents, but with conflicts, radicalism, terrorism. What is not declared as the reasons for such a situation! And the backwardness of the peoples living there, and the special character of the highlanders, and the aggressiveness of Islamic civilization. The authors of this monograph strive to show that the point is not the uniqueness of Caucasian societies, but especially the historical stage they are experiencing. The stage of the breakdown of traditional society, active urbanization, demographic transition. And ethnic and religious conflicts are the forms in which the contradictions characteristic of this stage appear.