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Caucasus War

The Caucasian War
Roubaud. Scene from Caucasian war.jpg
Franz Roubaud's A Scene from the Caucasian War
Date 1817–1864
Location Caucasus
Result Surrender of Imam Shamil
Russian annexation of the Northeast Caucasus
Ethnic cleansing of Circassians
Territorial
changes
Caucasus annexed into Russia.
Belligerents
Russia Russian Empire
Odishi flag.svg Principality of Mingrelia
Banner of Guria.svg Principality of Guria
Thirdimamateflag.svg Caucasian Imamate
Flag of Adygea.svg Circassia
Kabarda3.gif Big Kabarda (to 1825)
Flag of Abazinia.svg Abkhazian insurgents
Flag of the Lak People v2.svg Khanate of Kazi-Kumukh
Dagestan free people
Khunz Wolf 3b.svg Avar Khanate (1829–1859)
Geo svan.JPG Principality of Svaneti
Commanders and leaders
Tsar Nicholas I
Tsar Alexander I
Tsar Alexander II
Aleksey Yermolov
Mikhail Vorontsov
Aleksandr Baryatinskiy
Ivan Paskevich
Nikolai Yevdokimov
Sheikh Mansur
Beibulat Taimiev
Imam Shamil
Gamzat-bek
Ghazi Mullah
Kazbech Tuguzhoko
Akhmat Aublaa
Shabat Marshan
Haji Kerantukh Berzek
Strength
about 250,000 unknown
Casualties and losses
roughly 96,000 unknown

The Caucasian War (Russian: Кавказская война; Kavkazskaya voyna) of 1817–1864 was an invasion of the Caucasus by the Russian Empire which resulted in Russia's annexation of the areas of the North Caucasus, and the Ethnic cleansing of Circassians. It consisted of a series of military actions waged by Russia against territories and tribal groups in Caucasia including: Chechnya, Dagestan, the Circassians (Adyghe, Kabarday), Abkhaz, Abazins, and Ubykh, as Russia sought to expand southward. In Dagestan, resistance to the Russians has been described as jihad.

Russian control of the Georgian Military Highway in the center divided the Caucasian War into the Russo-Circassian War in the west and the Murid War in the east.

Other territories of the Caucasus (comprising contemporary Georgia, southern Dagestan, Armenia and Azerbaijan) were incorporated into the Russian empire at various times in the 19th century as a result of Russian wars with Persia.

The war took place during the administrations of three successive Russian Tsars: Alexander I (reigned 1801–1825), Nicholas I (1825–1855), and Alexander II (1855–1881). The leading Russian commanders included Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov in 1816–1827, Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov in 1844–1853, and Aleksandr Baryatinskiy in 1853–1856. The writers Mikhail Lermontov and Leo Tolstoy, who gained much of his knowledge and experience of war for his book War and Peace from these encounters, took part in the hostilities. The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin referred to the war in his Byronic poem The Prisoner of the Caucasus (Kavkazskiy plennik (Кавказский пленник), 1821). In general, the Russian armies that served in the Caucasian wars were very eclectic; as well as ethnic Russians from various parts of the Russian empire they included Cossacks, Armenians, Georgians, Caucasus Greeks, Ossetians, and even soldiers of Muslim background like Tatars and Turkmen.


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