IntroductionIntroduction. A. A. Pliev’s monograph Some Aspects of the Legal Culture of Chechens and Ingush: 1880–1970 (Moscow: Nauka, 2016) is examined in the article as a fundamental source-study complex for investigating the evolution of adat law of the peoples of the North Caucasus under changing state-legal regimes.The purpose of the study is to identify the methodological and empirical potential of A. A. Pliev’s work and to reassess it from the standpoint of modern legal anthropology and historical-legal scholarship.The methodological framework is based on diachronic, historical-legal, comparative-ethnographic, and statistical-legal methods. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that the author has for the first time carried out a comprehensive quantitative-legal analysis of the statistical block ofAA. A. Pliev’s monograph presented in the following tables: Table 1 – “Number of Cases Initiated in Soviet Courts,” Table 2 – “Number of Crimes in 1958–1965,” Table 3 – “Analysis of Cases of the Supreme Court of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, 1958–1965.” In the present study, they are interpreted as a unified statistical-institutional array reflecting the transformation of legal regulation mechanisms. The author succeeded in: – identifying a latent institutional shift in the structure of initiation of criminal cases in the late 1920s; – quantitatively determining the actual share of blood feud within the system of violent crime of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR; – reconstructing a stable model of criminal-law response to acts of blood feud in the practice of the Supreme Court of the autonomy; – demonstrating the transition from a socially resonant model of law enforcement to a centralized prosecutorial-party system of control.Results and conclusionsResults and conclusions. The monograph demonstrates an in-depth analysis of adat under the influence of Russian imperial (tsarist), post-revolutionary, and Soviet law, while preserving the continuity of the norms of blood feud, reconciliation, and marriage institutions. A valuable synthesis of archival documents and field observations makes it relevant for contemporary legal anthropology of the Caucasus, especially in the post-Soviet context. The work serves as a benchmark for interdisciplinary studies of ethnolegal traditions. It is proved that the statistical material of A. A. Pliev’s monograph has independent heuristic value and records not a linear displacement of adat by state law, but a complex model of normative dualism and managed legal transformation. It is established that by the mid-1960s the institutional consolidation of the state monopoly on sanctions took place while partially preserving the mediatory functions of traditional law. It is concluded that the in-depth analysis of the three key tables carried out by the author of the article significantly expands the interpretative potential of A. A. Pliev’s monograph and makes it possible to consider it not only as an ethnographic study but also as a quantitatively verifiable source on the history of legal modernization of the North Caucasus. This gives the work new methodological significance and strengthens its importance for modern legal anthropology and historical-legal science.
