Ukrainian deputy Aleksey Goncharenko submitted to the Verkhovna Rada a draft resolution on the recognition of the genocide of the church people during the Caucasian War of 1763-1864. If the initiative is approved, Ukraine will become the world’s officially recognized responsibility of the Russian Empire in the event of hundreds of thousands of Circassians. Kavkaz.Realii tells how the issue of the genocide of the Circassians was discussed in the world – and how this issue was ignored in Russia.
Officially, the Caucasian War began in Russia in 1817, when the imperial army began to take active steps against the highlanders according to the plan of General Alexei Yermolov. There is another point of view – the war began in 1763 with the construction of the Russian fortress Mozdok in Malaya Kabarda.
By the senses The Russian historian Adolf Berger, by 1864, as a result of the actions of the Russian army, only about 10% or 80 thousand Circassians managed to remain in their homeland. The remaining 400 thousand people were killed, about half a million more were exiled. According to the Circassian Research Institute in Munich, 260,000 people assessed the resettlement of living people in Turkey – only 180,000 of them survived. The Circassians died not only as a result of battles – the tactics of the Russian troops included, among other things, the waters occupied by the highlanders and the evaluation of their fields.
At the moment, the only country that has recognized the genocide of the Circassians is Georgia. The discussion of this issue began after the war in South Ossetia, in the discussion of the participation of not only foreign, but also foreign experts – for example, the American research organization The Jamestown Foundation. This caused dissatisfaction with the authorities of the republic, which caused a process of response to the explosion of independent independence by Moscow, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In 2020, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation introduced American Foundation in the list of special organizations.
In May 2011, the Georgian Parliament officially recognized the actions of the Russian Empire in the 19th century as an act of genocide against the Circassians. In memory of the tragedy in the Georgian Black Sea resort town of Anaklia in 2012, a monument was erected to the victims of the Circassian genocide. Every year on May 21, he has mourning events for the loss of the church community.
At present, the tragedy of the Circassians is regularly they say and in other countries. For example, in 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan honored the memory deportation phrase: “I share the pain of our church tales and once again wish human mercy to those who died.”
In the same year, the discussion about the genocide of the Circassians reached a new level. speaking at the European Parliament in Brussels on the eve of the Day of the Victims of the Caucasian War, journalist Fatima Tlisova compared the memory of the Circassian genocide in Tsarist Russia in the 19th century, with what Russian troops did in Chechnya, and with what is now happening under the guise of a “special operation” in Ukraine.
By view Professor of Tbilisi State University Meraba Chukhua, Russia had to recognize the recognition of the genocide of the church people. He considers it strange that the emergency situation in Tsarist Russia does not occur at the local authorities.
Attempts to shift responsibility
In the early 1990s, the Circassian genocide was recognized in Kabardino-Balkaria and Adygea. In the next 1992, the Supreme Council of the Kabardino-Balkarian SSR declared about the need for dual citizenship for Circassians abroad, the development of a program for their further and repatriation, the implementation of the status of an exiled people for the Circassians and make May 21 a non-working day.
Then the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, issued a promising statement, which recognized the tragedy of the events of the Caucasian war and the alleged assessment from the end. In the Caucasus on May 18, 1994, he argues shift responsibility for genocide and other states.
“In the struggle for the Caucasus, the interests of the Russian Empire, Great Britain, France, Iran and Turkey clashed.
Mourning events have been banned for three years – the last time officials referred to the war in Ukraine
If then the issue of genocide was discussed at the presidential level, the current authorities prefer not to raise this topic. In 2013 newsreel organizations in Russia applied to the economy, including to President Vladimir Putin, with the recognition of the genocide of the people. On the eve of the Olympic Games in Sochi, such a speech by public figures was perceived by the authorities as a demarche – they did not respond to the request then.
The need to officially identify genocidal activists is annually discussed during actions on the day of memory of the dead Circassians – mourning events in the regions of the Caucasus took place in 2021, 2020, 2019 and subsequent years. However, in Kabardino-Balkaria they have been banned for three years already – if earlier the formal reason for the denial of marches was covid restrictions, now officials have referred to the verdict in Ukraine. They told the activists that “full solidarity” with the action of the files from the country is needed.
Despite the refusal to participate in the republic, it took place – about 500 people took part in it. The police officers who discovered to interfere with the event, according to one of the participants in the protocols of the administrative request for a call for an unsanctioned action. Later, the court returned the case to the police because of the trials.
Receiver Concerns
Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Savva in a conversation with the Caucasus. In 2014, the discussion of this issue by the leader of the “Radical Party” Oleg Lyashko.
According to Savva, Russia resists the recognition of the sick pages of its history because of the imperial ideology, which, the expert, is still alive.
“The main effect of the recognition of the genocide is political and diplomatic. Return events or for material compensation.
For the Circassians, this is the land where a lot of blood was shed, they cannot see “Putin’s palace” here
Researcher at the Georgian “Von Rondadeli” (Tbilisi), historian and political scientist Alexander Kvakhadze believes that the Circassians are the most deadly people of the North Caucasus as a result of the war in the XIX study. According to the modern republic, where the chain of its population lives – Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and Adygea – the “small islands” of the past, and Moscow is worried by the fact that the Circassians in Russia are active in a large, more active Circassian community abroad.
“For Russia, the Black Sea region is of symbolic importance, from where the Circassians were expelled following the war. It is here that the Sochi Olympics are held, the so-called “Putin’s Palace” was built here. [спокойно] see,” Kvakhadze says.
The political scientist, it is obvious that ignoring the Circassian issue and defiant exaltation considers those persons who were involved in the exodus of the Circassians to the Ottoman Empire. This kind of approach, in his opinion, does not bring him closer to the arrival of the genocide of the Circassian people in Russia.
- The Russian government has conducted an investigation into constitutional violations in the proposed amendments to the law “On the state check of the Russian Federation in relation to the attitude of honest people abroad” – activists’ protocols had previously complained about them. If recognition is mandatory, affiliation with the Russian languages is a prerequisite.
- An open appeal to Putin by representatives of representatives of public organizations “Peryt”, “Khabze”, “Adyghe Khase”, the coordinating council of Adyghe public associations, the Kabardino-Balkarian regional human rights center, “Zhegu”, “ZhileBze”, the representative office of the Russian Association of Victims of Repression and the Council of Elders of the Kabardian people. “If the initiative of deputy Zatulin is accepted, the diaspora will actually be cut off from infecting the homeland and its fellow tribesmen. It will be a catastrophe,” said Valery Khatazhukhov, chairman of the Kabardino-Balkarian Center for the Protection of Human Rights.
- Last year, human rights activists presented a report by Russian non-governmental organizations on the armed conflict in the problem, one of the chapters of the reports devoted to Circassian refugees. It tells about the difficulties of their return to their historical homeland in Russia, as well as the problems of adaptation and accommodation.