The Ethnographic Museum

The Ethnographic Museum was created by Vladimir Gennadievich Melikov three years ago with the help of local residents. Many of them brought household items that had long been used in Circassian hachesh houses. A hachesh is a separate accommodation for guests. It should have the best utensils, the best dishes, and the best bed. The owner may deny himself but to refuse something to a guest is shame. Many items came to the museum from Cossack kurens (dwellings).

Bronze camping folding icons were in God’s corner. Orthodoxy took root in the Caucasus earlier than in Kievan Rus. These were the lands of the Sugdean diocese.

Islam was brought here by the Turks after the conquest of Constantinople and the defeat of Byzantium. Sometimes you can wonder at how intricately intertwined the life, culture, and customs of the first settlers were – the Slavs and Caucasian highlanders!

The Great Patriotic War is the theme of a separate museum exposition. The settlements of Kamennomostsky, Guzeripl, and the village of Dakhovskaya were the sites of fierce fighting of the Maykop-Tuapse operation. Everybody knows that the rangers of the Edelweiss division went to the Azish Pass along the road that goes near the walls of the Belovodye tourist complex. But not everyone knows that secret searches were carried out by special forces from the Hitler occult organization, Anenerbe, on the approaches to the pass.

The museum stores unique artifacts of this unknown page of history and the history of the Soviet mountain rifle battalions’ feat that defended our mountains in the harsh year of the battle for the Caucasus.

The museum is a member of the UNESCO Association.