PECULIARITIES OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY ADMINISTRATION IN THE CAUCASUS IN THE 1850-60'S
In the middle of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, when the Crimean War's failure highlighted numerous national problems, the Russian government was challenged by the issue of controlling and regulation on the edges of the Empire. Additionally, the Emperor Alexander II of Russia maintained a major reform process aimed to touch upon a variety of social spheres. The Caucasus-oriented set of reforms was attributable to the fact that the region had been undergoing the establishment of mixed military-civil administration designed to follow through the region's conquest and embed local population into the national legal field. The particular attention of the paper is paid to the reform initiatives of the Caucasian Viceroy A.I. Baryatinskiy who significantly contributed to the transformation of the North Caucasus Line and its subsequent abolition, which had resulted in the shift from the military regime to the completely new governance system. Not only were Baryatinskiy's improvements based on the achievements of his predecessors; he had also brought new insights to this endeavour. Accordingly, based on the official document analysis, the article sheds the light on the scope of the Viceroy's steps to lay the foundations of what he had seen as a sought-after model for the newly acquired territories of the Russian Empire that lasted up to the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. This system considered local ethnic specifics and was conducive to the integration of the indigenous population into the Russian society.