The article considers the development of the concept of the Caucasian peoples in the works of Leo Tolstoy: from the depiction of the Highlanders as natural, somewhat idealized types ("Cossacks") to the affirmation of their universal human nature ("Caucasian prisoner") and the return to the novel type of a person in whose fate the most important features of Russian life of the late XIX century were reflected. (“Hadji Murad”).