ABSTRACT
Knowing that Chechnya and the other North Caucasus regions are only a few hours’ drive away, a visitor to Stavropol city, the capital of Stavropol Krai, might be surprised by its apparent calm. Founded in the eighteenth century as a tsarist military outpost and settlement for indigenous Kalmyk converts to Russian Orthodoxy (Khodarkovsky, 2002), Stavropol city now has a population of some 400,000 inhabitants. It is set among wooded hills and has a handsome and well laid-out center. While most residents are ethnic Russians, many belong to various Caucasian ethnic groups, notably Armenians, thus creating a mildly cosmopolitan milieu. As in comparable Russian provincial capitals, prosperity is less widespread than in Moscow. Still, the downtown shops are stocked with a wide range of consumer goods.
