The article reviews the transformation of national policy in the North Caucasus in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The goal of this research is the historical and political reconstruction of the inclusion of the peoples of the North Caucasus into the united Russian state and socio-cultural space at the end of the imperial and early Soviet periods of Russian history. The methodology is based on a combination of elements of historiographic, historical-comparative and historical-political analysis. The source base was made up of archival materials, as well as sources of legislative, political, historiographic and journalistic nature. The national policy of the Russian Empire, characterized by unitarity and Russification while preserving the culture and traditions of national communities, could not find a balance between the desire for autonomy of the peoples of the North Caucasus and the unification. The establishment of the Soviet regime in the region was characterized by ethnization of politics and formation of ethno-state formations. The national policy of the Soviet state in the North Caucasus in the 20s - 30s assumed flexibility of management approaches and the desire to take into account the national and cultural characteristics of highlanders. It was aimed at eliminating the economic and socio-cultural backwardness of national outskirts by creating preferences that would ensure a faster pace of socio-economic development and modernization of ethnic territories. Korenizatsiya (indigenization) led to the formation of national bureaucracies, development of national cultures and languages. The negative features of the Soviet national policy of this period were the exaltingof the ethnic factor as the basis of the socio-political structure of the territories; frequent changes in the state and administrative structure of the region due to the complexity of determining the boundaries of ethnic territories; formation of ethnic clannishness in government bodies; politicization of ethnicity and the manifestation of separatist tendencies. Formation of the national state structure of the North Caucasus has become the most important condition for the further development of the peoples of the region.
