Abstract
The modern approaches to territorial autonomy in the Western constitutional law and political science and in documents of international bodies (especially the Venice Commission) are discussed in the article. The author criticizes the «ethnic» approach to territorial autonomy based on recognition of a national minority group's right to «possess» their «own» territory and argues that such an approach is gradually substituted by the «territorial» approach under which territorial autonomy is thought as a means of peaceful co-existence of different ethnic groups in a common geographical space.