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The paper is a concise version of the research carried out in 2012 in five Republics of the North Caucasus: Dagestan, Ingushetia, KabardinoBalkaria, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, and Chechnya. The authors analyze the respondents' overall evaluation of the situation, beliefs about the main social issues and existing threats, trust to social institutions, perception of economic problems, situation in education and healthcare, the influence and role of Islam, attitudes to civil rights and political preferences. The main reasons for respondents' tensions and anxieties are connected with economic sphere and are common to Russia on the whole: prices growth, increasing unemployment, dramatic social differentiation. The inhabitants of all the five Republics distrust the main institutions of the Russian society (excluding personalized power figures and symbolic significance of power structures), are extremely dissatisfied with the work of absolute majority of governmental social services, with the condition of social environment and social communications in their Republics, including general and higher education, health care system, support of young generation, business favoring climate. Poly-ethnic Republics – Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan, and in some respects Karachayevo-Cherkessia are the pole of the greatest tensions and anxieties. The pole of more positive evaluations is Chechnya where, besides being mono-ethnic, particular relations with the Federal Center and strict order of monopolized inner management have established. Respondents in Ingushetia point to the threatening level of corruption, terrorism and personal unprotectedness, arbitrary rule of the authorities, growing indications of anomy, increasing negative emotional background of existence.