Circassian Genocide
1860s Russian clearance of the Northwest Caucasus
Imperial Russia ended the Caucasian War by expelling and starving Circassian peoples from the Black Sea coast. Villages burned, ports overloaded with refugees, and demographic erasure followed as settlement policy.
Damage
Russian conquest expelled and killed Circassian populations from the northwest Caucasus.
Lives lost
Hundreds of thousands dead or expelled (majority of the nation)
Record Points
- After 1864, Russian forces emptied Circassian lands through massacre, forced march, and deportation by sea.
- Hundreds of thousands died of disease, exposure, and drowning during expulsion toward the Ottoman Empire.
- Vacated lands were resettled by Cossacks and other imperial colonists as a permanent demographic lock.
- Russian official language long framed the campaign as pacification of "mountaineers," not demographic war.
- Circassian diaspora memory keeps the genocide claim alive where Moscow still prefers silence.
Perpetrator(s)
Victims
Circassians