With the USSR collapse, the North Caucasian region became a polygon, where Russian national policy was tested for strength. In the early 1990s, ethno-territorial and ethno-status contradictions, which were defined as a number of "problem issues", escalated in the North Caucasus: the "Shapsut question"; movement for a separate Karachay autonomy; the question of dividing Kabardino-Balkaria by ethnic lines; creation of a separate Ingush autonomy; the question of the Nogai autonomy formation;

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... on of "national-state self-determination of the Kumyk people within their historical territories"; restoration of the Aukhovsky (Chechen) region within the boundaries of 1944; proclamation of the Lezgi national autonomy within Dagestan. The systemic transformation of the Soviet system was especially acute in the Chechen Republic, which in the 1990s turned into a springboard for separatism and international terrorism, becoming a zone of religious and political extremism. The formation of new models of the republican state structure is connected both with the general political situation in the country and with specific regional features. The trend links the origins of inter-ethnic tension in the North Caucasus with the political and legal archaization of the region, with the revival of traditional practices in a deformed form that impede economic modernization and integration of the Caucasian peoples into Russian society. At the beginning of the 21st century, the political and administrative map of the North Caucasus stabilized.