Territorial structure of the Turkic-Slavic and Turkic-Caucasian contact zones in the south of European Russia

The south of European Russia is a contact zone for peoples of three language families — North Caucasian, Indo-European and Altaic. Within the Indo-European family, Slavic peoples are predominantly represented here, while Turkic peoples are predominantly represented within the Altaic family. The aim of the study is to determine the main features of the territorial structure of the contact zone of Turkic-speaking ethnic groups with Slavic and North Caucasian peoples in the south of European Russia, as well as to identify the features of the spatial dynamics of these contact zones in the period between the 2010 and 2021 censuses. The main feature of the territorial structure of the Turkic-Slavic contact zone within the study region is the presence of two cores — in Karachay-Cherkessia and the Astrakhan region. A connecting belt is forming between these cores; however, it is currently weakly defined in Stavropol Krai and has a noticeable gap in Kalmykia. The territorial structure of the Turkic-Caucasian contact zone also distinguishes two cores: the first, corresponding to the territories of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia, and the second, to the northern and eastern parts of Dagestan. Between these cores, a connecting belt has already been formed, which includes the regions of the southeast of the Stavropol Territory and the north of the Chechen Republic.  In the second decade of the 21st century, this belt of regions acquired the features of a full-fledged contact zone of the meta-ethnic level due to the increase in the share of both Turkic and North Caucasian peoples.