The Great Circassian Exile
or
Büyük Sürgün
"The Mountaineers leave the Aul" by Pyotr Nikolayevich Gruzinsky (1837-1892) depicts Circassians leaving their homeland. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Studies on the Circassian Exile
Well-researched scientific studies on the Circassian Exile are difficult to come by. In this section, I am using Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky's amazing doctoral dissertation titled Imperial Refuge: Resettlement of Muslims from Russia in the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1914 to explain the historical backdrop of the Circassian Exile. Dr. Hamed-Troyansky has completed his doctoral dissertation at Stanford University in 2018. His dissertation is the most recent, socio-historically richest, and deepest account of Circassian Exile I have come across in my research. Prof. Hamed-Troyansky is an Assistant Professor of Global Migration and Forced Displacement at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His forthcoming monograph examines the resettlement of North Caucasians in the late Ottoman era.
The Great Circassian Exile refers to the expulsion of the people of Northwestern Caucasia from their homelands by Russian forces. Hamed-Troyansky writes in his doctoral thesis: During the Caucasus War, which consisted of a series of conflicts that lasted 1817-1864, "the Russian military burnt dozens of Circassian villages, killing or expelling their populations, and destroying the crops. Many Circassian communities were evicted from their mountainous villages, and the only alternative offered to them by the Russian military was relocating to new settlements that were either in coastal malarial swamps and flooded lands or in near-coastal plateaus where they would be interspersed among Cossack settlements. The violence, employed by the army, and popular expectations of future atrocities provoked mass flight of Circassians towards the Black Sea coast, where they waited for boats to take them to the Ottoman Empire. Over a half million western Circassians fled to the Ottoman Empire by 1864." (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, pp. 43-44).
Historians are working diligently to pinpoint the exact number but it is estimated approximately 1 million North Caucasians were forcibly displaced from Russia to the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century.
"The 1863-64 Circassian refugee crisis was among the largest humanitarian disasters in the history of both the Russian and the Ottoman empires. The tsarist government, willing to get rid of the population that it considered hostile, contracted and paid private shipping companies to take muhajirs to the Ottoman port cities of Trabzon, Ordu, Samsun, Istanbul, Köstence, and Varna. As hundreds of thousands of Circassians waited on the Circassian coast for the boats to arrive, a harsh winter, famine, and an outbreak of typhus claimed tens of thousands of lives. Many more died onboard the boats and then in the Ottoman port cities, which were unprepared for such a massive refugee influx. In the course of two years, anywhere between 80 and 90 percent of the western Circassian population had left Russia, and up to a quarter of the refugees died before reaching their new homes in the Ottoman Empire" (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, 44-45).
Why don't Circassians eat fish?
Some Circassians still don't eat fish to this day, because the Black Sea became the resting place of so many of their ancestors. To some, eating fish is equated with eating their ancestors' flesh.
The Circassian Genocide?
In "The Circassian Genocide", historian Walter Richmond argues that Russian forces aimed to wipe out the entire Circassian population in the Caucasus, which would categorize what happened to Circassians as "genocide." Genocide is defined, among others, as "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part," according to the United Nations.
Demographic engineering
"Demographic engineering refers to state-directed removal and resettlement of ethno-religious groups in order to consolidate control over territories by homogenizing their populations or altering their demographic ratios. Mass migration from the North Caucasus began during Russia’s war to annex the region and reached its height during the Russian- perpetrated ethnic cleansing of the Circassian coast in 1863-64, followed by the colonization of the fertile Kuban and Terek regions with Christian settlers. The refugee migration was also abetted by Ottoman willingness to accept and resettle a large Muslim population."
Several Circassian tribes, including the Ubykh, my ancestors, as well as the Hatuqwai, and Natukhai – "were expelled from the Caucasus in their entirety" and not allowed to return from the Ottoman Empire. Instead, the Russian Empire settled Russian and Ukrainian peasants in their lands, in an attempt at demographic engineering, that is, turning the population of the Caucasus Christian, docile, and loyal to the Russian Empire.
Today, the remaining Circassians live in "four census-approved 'nationalities' – Adyghe, Kabardin, Cherkess, and Shapsugh – three of which received their autonomous republics: Adygea, with a Russian majority; and Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia, each shared with a Turkic-speaking 'titular nation.' The Soviet government sanctioned the development of two literary languages: Adyghe, or western Circassian, and Kabardino-Cherkess, or eastern Circassian." (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, 42)
"The violent displacement of Circassians in the 1860s remains a highly contentious issue in Russia and in the Circassian diaspora. The government of the Russian Federation adopted a stance similar to those of its Imperial and Soviet predecessors, stressing the voluntary nature of Circassian emigration and refusing to acknowledge its responsibility. Since the 1990s, a growing number of political actors have called for the recognition of the Circassian genocide. The issue generated international news headlines during the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, which coincided with the 150th anniversary of Circassian expulsions from that very region and prompted worldwide North Caucasian diasporic protests." (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, 45-46)
The Historical Context and Causes of Exile
"The defining moment in the history of the region was the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), following the 1768-74 Russo-Ottoman War, a major military and diplomatic defeat for the Ottoman Empire. The treaty affirmed Russia’s sovereignty over Kabarda, in the Northcentral Caucasus, which held a strategic mountain pass into the South Caucasus and had become a platform for Russia’s subsequent conquests in the region. The Ottomans also ended their protectorate over the Crimean Khanate, an influential actor in North Caucasian politics in its own right, leading to Russia’s eventual annexation of Crimea in 1783." (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, 39)
"After having gained the entire South Caucasus by 1828, Russia focused on solidifying its presence in the North Caucasus. Between 1817 and 1864, Russia fought a series of conflicts, collectively known as the Caucasus War. Its primary opponent was the Caucasus Imamate (1828-59), which united territories in northern Daghestan and Chechnya and inspired other groups in the region to fight the Russian state." (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, 39-40)
"For centuries, territories on both sides of the Caucasus Mountains formed khanates, princely states, and tribal confederations, grounding their legitimacy in dynastic genealogy and often seeking patronage of nearby empires. The imamate was a centralized state, which rooted its ideology in anti-colonialism, with Islam as a unifying factor; the notion of jihād [struggle] against Russia and the adoption of shari‘a [Islamic law] were critical in the history of the imamate. In 1859, its third and final imam, Shamil, surrendered to Russia." (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, 40)
The Geopolitical Significance of Coastal Caucasia:
"The Circassian coast was a strategic territory that the Russian military held crucial for its control over the northern part of the Black Sea and over the North and South Caucasus. The fertile Circassian territories also held considerable economic potential. Several tsarist military and civil factions long advocated Slavic colonization of the Circassian coast. By 1864, Russian troops established physical control over the entire Northwest Caucasus, while directing or abetting mass-scale displacement of Muslim populations into the Ottoman Empire." (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, 41)
Russia has been historically interested in accessing the Mediterranean Sea through the conquest of the Caucasus. Its recent annexation of Crimea and presence in Syria are also cited as extensions of Russia's geopolitical interest in accessing the Mediterranean and beyond.
Significance in History: Precedent for Later Forced Displacements
Hamed-Troyansky makes an important argument here: "The exodus of North Caucasian Muslims from the Russian Empire and their resettlement in the Ottoman Empire set a precedent for population transfers and displacements in the Middle East and eastern Europe. The idea that a large population could be moved elsewhere for the benefit of the state fit various ideologies and was subsequently deployed in the 1915 Armenian Genocide, the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange, and Stalin’s deportations in the 1930s and 1940s." (Hamed-Troyansky 2018, 14)