Disputes about the ethnic and national and transformation of North Caucasus people's culture

The article is dedicated to the methodological disputes concerning the nature of the ethnic and national which exist since the times of «the ethnic Renaissance» of the second half of the 20th century. Authors demonstrate that criticism of the soviet ethnos theory from the social constructivism point of view and the replacement of the notion of ethnos by the concept of ethnicity took place at the national science on the background of classical and nonclassical (in essence postmodern) methodological paradigms' opposition. While the soviet ethnos theory applies ethnical measures to the national, social constructivism projects modern supranational cultural peculiarities on the ethnos and nation. In authors opinion, methodology studies of transformations of ethnic and national of post-soviet Russian peoples must be based on the concrete cultural historical analysis.