In the early 1920s, after coming to power, the Bolsheviks tried to completely change the organization of governance in the North Caucasus. When organizing the judicial sphere, instead of subjecting the indigenous Muslim population to the Soviet legal system, they established a number of independent judicial forums that relied on the local legal tradition. A rather broad judicial-administrative autonomy was allowed for the Muslim subjects of Soviet Russia. While the Soviet government was still weak, the Bolsheviks tried to win over the local Muslim people, supporting the Sharia over the Adat, the local customary law, which they termed a “subjugating colonial law”. Therefore, they announced the replacement of Adat courts, which had operated under the regulations of the Tsarist rule, with Sharia courts in the North Caucasus. This measure, however, did not signify the disappearance of Adat. In Dagestan, there was no clear distinction between the Sharia and Adat. The Sharia courts continued to implement fiqh and Adat in their proceedings. At the same time, the Bolsheviks established secular courts, whose activities were based on the legal framework of the Soviet state. The Bolsheviks initiated judicial reforms in the North Caucasus with the objective of destroying the local legal structure of the Tsarist government. However, this paper argues, in so doing they unintentionally preserved and reproduced the most significant legal characteristic of the Tsar's rule, namely Legal diversity. This diversity privileged the native Highlanders as it enabled them to choose among legal institutions operating under different legal systems, as they saw fit. In other words, the Soviet judicial reform maintained a situation of legal pluralism in which each Muslim could pick the venue most suitable to his interests. Using unexplored archival materials from the Central State archive of the Republic of Dagestan, together with protocols originating from Sharia courts throughout the Soviet Republic of Dagestan, I will argue that while the Dagestani highlanders remained (colonial) subjects of one rule after another, they maintained their legal-cultural traditions. Furthermore, I will demonstrate the various ways and means by which the Muslim highlanders maneuvered between different bodies of law and took advantage of official and unofficial channels during the first decade of the Soviet Revolution.