Other

Circassian exile and end of the Russo-Circassian War, 1864

The Russian Empire's conquest of the Western Caucasus culminated in the mass expulsion of the Circassian population, an event later characterized by many scholars and some governments as genocide, a term Russia's government rejects.

What happened

The Russian Empire's decades-long conquest of the Western Caucasus, escalating from 1763, culminated in the mass expulsion of the Circassian population and the Russian proclamation of victory on 21 May 1864; estimates vary widely, but Ottoman archives recorded the intake of over 1 million Caucasian migrants by 1879, and Russian records from 1900 documented only around 106,798 Circassians remaining in the Caucasus.[1]

Many scholars and some governments and regional legislatures have characterized these events as genocide; the Russian federal government's official position rejects the term, describing the events instead as a mass migration.[2]

Sources for this page

Each number marks a specific claim. Notes give the source, its locator and how it relates to the claim.

  1. 1.

    Claim: The Russian Empire's decades-long conquest of the Western Caucasus, escalating from 1763, culminated in the mass expulsion of the Circassian population and the Russian proclamation of victory on 21 May 1864 at Kbaada (now Krasnaya Polyana); estimates vary widely, but Ottoman archives recorded the intake of over 1 million Caucasian migrants by 1879, with a substantial additional number reported to have died during the exodus, and Russian records from 1900 documented only around 106,798 Circassians (with other estimates as low as 40,400-65,900) remaining in the Caucasus, against a pre-conflict population reported by some sources at over 4 million.

    • Circassian genocide (Wikipedia) link, Population and displacement figures section. Source record
  2. 2.

    Claim: Many scholars and some governments and regional legislatures have characterized the 1860s events as genocide, including Georgia's parliament (2011) and Ukraine's parliament (2025), and, at a regional level within Russia, the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR (1992) and the republics of Kabardino-Balkaria (1994) and Adygea (1996); the Russian federal government's official position rejects the term "genocide," describing the events instead as a mass migration ("muhajirism"). This bundle presents both positions without adjudicating which characterization is correct.

Source note

Show in the notes list