ABSTRACT
Daghestan is the size of Scodand, where the claws of the Great Caucasian Mountains grab south-eastwards at the Caspian Sea. The two million inhabitants, two thirds of whom live in 700 villages, still speak thirty-two languages, even after over a century of Tsarist control followed by seventy years of repressive Soviet rule. 1 was looking for non-Soviet life in a non-Soviet way. 1 tried to record only what was happening, leaving my opinions on the survival of their culture till later. To some extent that culture was already defined by what the Soviets had tried to suppress. Definition of traditional or present culture is not only a problem in Daghestan.
