Moscow: Nauka Publ., 2007, 302 p. The core methodological thesis of K. K. Sultanov is formulated as follows: the more intense the process of self-identification, the more diverse the connections with the expanding cultural context. The author is attracted by the "dynamic aspect of human self-identification, including ethno-cultural" (p. 9), which is opened in the "expanding context" of culture and history. With this approach, the principle of dialogization is perceived as a necessary condition for ethno-cultural self-affirmation, the viability of the national literary tradition in the modern world. page 182 The reader's attention will probably be drawn to the sections of the second chapter "Over the Top" or " Being Heard." The leitmotif of "reducing dissent" in L. Tolstoy's story "Hadji Murad" and " Oncoming Traffic. Caucasian Discourse of Russian Literature: the Historiosophical aspect", in which the cultural and historical dialogue between Russia and the Caucasus is traced in terms of the evolution of the historical, cultural, literary and artistic perception of the Caucasian war of the XIX century. Referring to the experience of Russian literary classics, K. K. Sultanov takes it under the sign of one of the leading ideas of the book: "The best people of Russia and the Caucasus puzzled over the search for a stable language of mutual understanding" (p. 102). He tries to decipher what he calls the "ethical dominant", which "included sympathy and admiration for the freedom-loving mountaineers, but in conjunction with an internal psychological attitude towards their inevitable entry into the Russian civilizational context" (p.152). At the same time, the author argues against two well-known extremes: "nostalgic neoconservatism", which tends to evaluate the history of Russian-North Caucasian relations exclusively in terms of irreconcilable confrontation, and a primitive and unambiguous view from above, "which resolutely denies the national liberation movement any posit ... Read more