Complete index
Everything on the site, in one place
Eighteen pieces across six sections. Titles link straight through.
Six Seasons
Six seasons, and the one that nearly went somewhere
Open section- A republic side went up and nobody expected them to staySpartak Nalchik reached the Russian Premier League in 2006 from a city with no top-flight history, and stayed six years.
- Sixth place, and what a small budget can buy for one seasonThe 2010 season put Nalchik above clubs spending several times what they did. It was not repeated.
- Going down is a budget event before it is a sporting oneThe 2012 relegation followed the funding rather than the football, which is the ordinary way a club that size leaves the division.
The Ground
The ground, and what a cold republic does to a pitch
Open section- A ground built for a different league, and keptSpartak Stadium in Nalchik held the club's top-flight years with a capacity and a layout inherited from Soviet municipal football.
- Grass does not grow to a fixture listCold-republic clubs argued for artificial surfaces because a natural pitch cannot recover between March fixtures at that altitude.
- The season stops because the ground doesThe Russian calendar carries a long winter break, and where a club sits on the map decides how long its own version of it lasts.
Rivals
The derbies that were never only football
Open section- The neighbours who had already won itAlania Vladikavkaz took the Russian title in 1995, which set the terms for every North Caucasus fixture that followed.
- A club that bought a squad and then stoppedAnzhi Makhachkala's spending years changed what a regional fixture meant, briefly.
- The fixture that carried more than three pointsTerek Grozny played through and after the wars, and the meeting with Nalchik was read regionally rather than as a league game.
The Republic
Kabardino-Balkaria, from the outside in
Open section- The highest mountain in Europe is in this republicElbrus rises to 5,642 metres above Kabardino-Balkaria, and the Baksan valley below it is the route everyone uses.
- One valley carries the road, the river and the peopleThe Baksan runs from the glaciers down past the villages that supply the mountain, and it is the republic's spine.
- A waterfall in a gorge narrow enough to touch both sidesThe Chegem falls drop through a limestone gorge that the road runs directly inside.
Peoples
Who lives here, and what happened to them
Open section- A nation with more people outside the Caucasus than in itThe Circassians were dispersed in the nineteenth century, and the diaspora is larger than the population that remained.
- The Balkars were deported in a single operationIn March 1944 the entire Balkar population was deported to Central Asia. They were permitted to return in 1957.
- The nineteenth century came here to take the watersPyatigorsk and the mineral-water towns drew Russian society, and Lermontov wrote the Caucasus that most readers still carry.
Winter Football
Football played in the wrong weather
Open section- The league everyone here grew up in no longer existsSoviet football's structure ended in 1992, and every club in the region had to be re-placed in a new pyramid.
- The cup is where a smaller club still gets a nightThe Russian Cup remains the route by which a second-tier side meets a first-tier one in front of a full ground.
- Away days measured in time zonesA North Caucasus club's travel is a budget line before it is a fixture, and the distances are continental.