Private Life Space among the Adyghe People in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries: Shifting Privacy Boundaries

This article analyzes the fundamental transformations of the Adyghe private sphere that occurred during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Four periods in the organization of Adyghe private life are distinguished. The first corresponds to the time of the independent evolution of the public and private spheres (before 1864) and is characterized by the clear dominance of the public sphere (constructed on fundamentally different foundations among «aristocratic» and «democratic» sub-ethnic groups). The second period begins in 1864 with the almost complete disappearance of the Adyghe public sphere and the accompanying degradation of private life. This state of aff airs lasted until approximately the 1890s and led to a period of qualitative improvement in the content of private life and the expansion of opportunities for the construction of Adyghe public space after 1905. The article outlines, without going into detail, the era of the collapse of all the foundations of public and private life that followed the revolution and the Civil War.