Abstract: the purpose of this study is to analyze the specifics of the implementation of the institution of blood feud in the territory of the Republic of Abkhazia. The article analyzes the place of the Blood Vengeance institution in the customary law of the Abkhazians. It studies the causes of the emergence, peculiarities of management and termination (through reconciliation with the injured party and compensation for the harm done, or the expulsion of the guilty party (both voluntary and by decision of the people’s court) Blood vengeance, emphasizing the importance of the institution of blood feud as a human rights and law-recovery extrajudicial mechanism in the period.
In the first place, this institution was called upon to protect the honor of the clan, and second, to cause equal harm to the offender. In this case, the use of blood revenge led to an endless confrontation of the clans – which as a result threatened the extinction of the whole ethnos. In order to avoid self-destruction, the society independently begins to limit the use of the institution of blood feud. In Abkhazia, for these purposes, people’s (conciliation) justice was applied, as well as traditional reconciliation institutions such as atalychestvo (dairy relationship).
Despite the fact that the society itself, through traditional conciliatory justice, and later the norms of the Sharia, Russian (imperial and Soviet) legislation, tried to fight the institution of blood feud – the tradition of the killing lives even nowadays, directly from the Abkhazians and other Caucasian peoples, and in a number of other countries (the Near and Far East, Eastern Europe, etc.).
Keywords: blood vengeance, adat, customary law, retribution, exile, reconciliation, atalychestvo