CAUCASIAN AREA, NORTH. A province in the Rus sian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic. The boundaries are : West, the Ukraine, the Sea of Azov and the Black sea ; south, Abkhazia and Georgia ; east, Daghestan and the Kalmuck area ; north-east, Stalingrad ; north-west, Voronezh. Area 28 7,41 osq.km. Pop. (1926) 8,324,788; urban 1,408,085, rural 6,916,703. The following autonomous areas (q.v.) are linked to it administratively: The Adigei-Cherkess, Karachaev, Kabardino-Balkarsk, North Ossetia, Ingush, Chechen.
The southern part of the area consists of the foothills and northern slopes of the Caucasus mountains, but most of the area is a fertile plain, which has always been a zone of movement of peoples, owing to its situation between the Black sea and the Caspian, with the Caucasus on its southern flank. It formed a link between the Mediterranean civilizations which established trading colonies here, the Persian and Turkish empires of Asia Minor, the Tatar and Mongol steppe peoples, and the Russians from the north-west, all attracted by its fertility and its trading possibilities. In 1926 the varying elements in the population cluded Russians (Great Russians, Ukrainians and White sians) 83.38%, Chechens 2.72%, Ossetians 2.03%, Armenians Kabardians 1.85%, Greeks 1.14%, Germans 1•o6%, Cherkess 1.03%, with Ingushetes, Karachaevs, Jews, Poles, mucks, Georgians, Tatars, Turks, Persians, Moldavians, tonians, Czechs and Lesgians. In spite of these varied elements, the province has a certain economic unity : it is essentially an agricultural area undergoing a process of industrialization, and has an important export trade. In varying forms this export trade dates from a great antiquity. The west and south-west, with rich black earth soils, have intensive agriculture, market gardening and dairying, and a good net of communications ; proximity of the Black sea and the Caucasus, leads to increased rainfall and modification of summer heat and winter cold, abundance of streams and a longer vegetative period (i.e., number of days with a temperature above 4° C) ; in the Black sea area there are days, and in Krasnodar, Maikop and Armavir 250, as against 210 days in the Donetz and Shakhtinsk areas. Towards the north and in the east the climatic influences are Continental, with drought conditions, and in the east the soils are chestnut-coloured (favourable to the growth of summer wheat in wet years), with about I o% saline and arid sands unfit for agriculture. The chief crops are summer wheat in the northern provinces, a hard variety in demand on the world market for flour and macaroni, etc., win ter wheat in the wetter south-west districts, barley, maize, rye, millet and oats. Sunflower seed, providing food, oil, fuel and potash is increasingly cultivated in the Kuban area, as is sugar beet. There are vineyards in the Don, Black sea, Kuban and Tersk (western Tersk T.) areas : the Don wines are good, but the Kuban and Tersk wine is sharp. Tobacco is cultivated in the Kuban and Black sea provinces. In the south-west Kuban and near the great cities and health resorts market gardening (especially of melons, pumpkins and potatoes) is prosperous. Agriculture suf fered severely in the World War period and is only slowly re covering, the wine produced being only 44% of the 1913 total. In 1927 the sown area was 88.9% of the 1913 area, but the har vest was only 65.2%.
Cattle rearing is decreasing, and is mainly limited to the dry steppe and the hill pasture meadows. The stock of horses greatly diminished between 1914 and 1921. Horses are bred in Kuban and Kabardia and by the steppe nomads. In Kuban they are used as working animals. The grey Black sea cattle, related to the Ukrainian cattle, are the best working oxen, and are bred and used in the north and near Maikop. Dairy cattle (German) are in demand near the cities, while the Kalmucks breed the best cattle for meat. Formerly in the Stavropol steppe and the Salsk area there were 4,000,000 head of merino sheep, but they were catastrophically destroyed between 1914-21 and there are now only 300,000 or 400,000. Goats are kept for milking, especially in the hill areas. Pig breeding has recovered its pre-war level, especially in the Kuban and the maize zone of the foothills. Hens, geese, ducks and turkeys numbered II million in 1925, and eggs, feathers, down and live and dead birds are exported (mainly to the home Russian markets) . In Kuban, Tersk and the foothills the long, warm summer and the flora favour beekeeping, and much wax of good quality is exported.
The steppe and much of the plain is treeless, except near the streams and along the Don valley (oak and elm). On the foot hills patches of mixed steppe and forest lead to the continuous beech, oak, hornbeam, ash, maple, lime and elm forest, above which are pines, birches and silver firs, with Alpine meadows higher still. The Black sea slopes yield yew and chestnut. The Government is controlling timber felling on the foothills in view of the importance of tree growth in regulating the streams and in fixing the soil. In the higher regions much timber is neglected because of lack of labour and lack of transport. Of the timber most goes to the treeless steppe, the markets of the Near East and the Mediterranean. The silver fir is used in the home region for cellulose manufacture.
Fishing for bream, carp, herring, mackerel, sturgeon and an chovy is carried on in a primitive way, but suffers from . lack of refrigerators and of quick transport. The mineral wealth consists of the Grozny and Maikop-Taman naphtha beds, the silver, lead and zinc ores of Alagir, south of Vladikavkaz, lead ore on the Upper Kuban, anthracite in the Shakhtinsk area and south of Batalpashinsk, and coal and iron ore on the north shore of Azov. Some of the mines are worked by peasant artels. The chief man ufactures are foodstuffs (flour and fish, fruit and vegetable pre serves) especially in the Kuban, naphtha refining at Grozny, Tuapse, Maikop (aviation benzine), cement at Novorossiisk, to bacco at Rostov, Krasnodar, Armavir and Vladikavkaz, agricul tural machinery at Rostov, Taganrog and Sylin, leather at Tagan rog and Maikop, sugar near Armavir and in the Kuban. Maize products (brandy, starch and flour), textiles (wool, cotton, stock ings, ropes), soap, potash, bricks, glass, tiles and paper are also manufactured and there are printing works at Rostov and other towns. Side by side with the factory industries go the koustar (peasant) industries and in the flour milling and oil pressing they produce 45% of the total. The chief towns (q.v.) in order of size of population in 1926 are : Rostov-on-Don 233,491; Krasno dar 154,201; Taganrog, Armavir, Vladikavkaz, Groznyi, Novoros siisk, Stavropol, Pyatigorsk, all over 50,00o; and Shakhti, Batal pashinsk, Millerop, Salsk and Maikop.
These towns and their population are an indication of the marked industrial development of the area, as 'is the fact that naphtha and not wheat is now the chief export. But agriculture is still, as in the past, the chief occupation of the area. In the internal life of the province it affects directly the welfare of four fifths of the population and indirectly its development affects the remaining one-fifth, regulating markets, causing seasonal over freightage of the transport-network (railways, ports, elevators and refrigerators) and supplying the raw material for the fac tories and the food for the workers. The importance of the North Caucasian area in the economy of the U.S.S.R. as a source of sup ply of wheat and raw material is recognized by the Government. The electrification of six areas in the district and the develop ment of canals, both for irrigation and for transport, are planned for completion in 193o and 1931, and a certain proportion is already completed (1928).