Ethnic Cleansing of Circassians

The ethnic cleansing of Circassians refers to the massive annihilation, displacement, destruction and expulsion of the majority of the indigenous Circassians from historical Circassia, which roughly encompassed the major part of the North Caucasus and the northeast shore of the Black Sea. This occurred in the aftermath of the Caucasian War in the last quarter of the 19th century. The people displaced moved primarily to the Ottoman Empire and to a lesser extent Qajar Persia.

Circassians, the indigenous peoples of this region were ethnically cleansed from their homeland at the end of the Russo-Circassian War by victorious Russia. The expulsion was launched before the end of the war in 1864 and it was mostly completed by 1867. The peoples involved were mainly the Circassians (or Adyghe), Ubykhs, Chechens, Abkhaz, and Abaza.

This expulsion involved an unknown number of people, perhaps numbering hundreds of thousands. In any case, the majority of the people affected were expelled. The Imperial Russian Army rounded up people, driving them from their villages to ports on the Black Sea, where they awaited ships provided by the neighboring Ottoman Empire. The explicit Russian goal was to expel the groups in question from their lands. Only a small percentage (the numbers are unknown) accepted resettlement within the Russian Empire. Circassian populations were thus variously dispersed, resettled, or in some cases killed en masse. An unknown number of deportees perished during the process. Some died from epidemics among crowds of deportees both while awaiting departure and while languishing in their Ottoman Black Sea ports of arrival. Others perished when ships underway sank during storms. According to the Russian government's own figures at the time, about 90 percent of the affected peoples were deported.

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