Circassian genocide

Circassian warrior during the Russo-Circassian War

Circassians, Christianised through Byzantine influence between the 5th and 6th centuries were generally in alliance with Georgians,[30] and both Georgians and Circassians wanted to keep good relations with the Russians.[31] Although there had previously been a small Muslim presence in Circassia, significant conversions came after 1717, when Sultan Murad IV ordered the Crimeans to spread Islam among the Circassians, with the Ottomans and Crimeans seeing success in converting members of the aristocracy who would then ultimately spread the religion to their dependents.[32][33] After the Circassians started accepting Islam, the relations between Circassia and Russia were heavily damaged and Russia began to regard Circassians as enemies.[34][35] Despite this, there were still Pagans and Christians among the Circassian people. The most Muslim region in Circassia was the Abdzakh district, which was ruled by Muhammad Amin and adopted sharia.[36]

In Circassia, the Russians faced disorganized but continuous resistance. While Russia believed it held authority over Circassia based on the Ottomans ceding it in the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople, the Circassians considered this invalid, arguing that because their territory had been independent of the Ottomans, Istanbul had no right to cede it.[37] Relations before the 19th century between the Circassians and the Cossacks had often been cordial with extensive trade, and mutual raids against the Turks and Crimeans. However, after a large influx of Cossack settlers and the construction of a long line of pickets in 1792 which cut the Circassians off from their traditional pastures around the Kuban river[38][39] the Circassians and other Caucasian peoples began systematically raiding Russian encampments and then disappearing. At the same time, as more Russian troops came to be stationed in the region, their own perceived needs (owing to the difficulty of shipping materials back from Russia proper) tempted them in turn to raid native villages, further enraging the natives and producing cycles of retaliation.[40] The Circassians fought the Russians longer than all the other peoples of the Caucasus from 1763–1864.[31]

Russian military outpost on the Circassian frontier, 1845

The Russian military tried to impose authority by building a series of forts, but these forts in turn became the new targets of raids and indeed sometimes the highlanders actually captured and held the forts.[41] By 1816, Russian engagement with the Circassians made military commanders like General Aleksey Yermolov conclude that "terror" would be effective toward frontier protection instead of fortress construction as "moderation in the eyes of the Asiatics is a sign of weakness".[2] Under Yermolov, the Russian military began using a strategy of disproportionate retribution for raids. With the goal of imposing stability and authority over the whole Caucasus, Russian troops retaliated by destroying villages where resistance fighters were thought to hide, as well as employing assassinations, kidnappings and the execution of whole families.[42] Because the resistance was relying on sympathetic villages for food, the Russian military also systematically destroyed crops and livestock and killed Circassian civilians.[43][2] Circassians responded by creating a tribal federation encompassing all tribes of the area.[2]

These tactics further enraged natives and intensified resistance to Russian rule. The Russian army was thus frustrated by a combination of highly mobile (often mounted) raiders and evasive guerrillas with superior terrain knowledge. The Circassian resistance continued, with villages that had previously accepted Russian rule often found resisting again. Furthermore, the Circassian cause began to arouse sympathies in the West, especially Britain of whom assistance was sought that came in the form of intermediaries and spies from the 1830s and during the Crimean War.[44] More substantive British assistance never arrived as support for the Circassian cause subsided after the Crimean War as the region was considered far away from British concerns.[44][2] Imam Shamil in the Northeast Caucasus, meanwhile, had tried to win over their support for his own struggle against Russia on numerous occasions, but the Circassians were largely cold toward his overtures.[45] After he surrendered to Russia, their resistance continued unabated.

The Russians countered the heavy Circassian resistance by modifying the terrain. They laid down a network of roads and cleared the forests around these roads, destroyed native villages, and often settled new farming communities of Russians or pro-Russian Caucasian peoples. In this increasingly bloody situation, the wholesale destruction of villages became a standard tactic.[46]

Russian military and Circassian representatives meet for discussions, 1855

In 1837, the leaders of the Natukhai, Abzakhs and Shapsugs offered submission and voluntary incorporation into the Russian Empire, if Russian and Cossack forces would be withdrawn to beyond the Kuban river; however, their offer was ignored, and the unilateral seizure of Circassian lands continued, with thirty-six new Cossack stanitsas established by 1840. General Yermolov remarked that "We need the Circassian lands, but we don't have any need of the Circassians themselves".[47] Russian military commanders, such as Yermolov and Bulgakov, acting in their own interests to attain glory on the battlefield and riches through conquest, which would be much more difficult to attain on the Western front than in the Caucasus, often deceived the central administration and obscured the attempts of Circassian groups to establish peace with Russia.[48]

In the negotiations to formulate the 1856 Treaty of Paris and end the Crimean War, the British representative, the Earl of Clarendon, insisted that the Kuban river should be the boundary between Russia and Turkey, which would place Circassia outside of Russian rule, but he was undermined by the French and Turkish representatives which supported Russian ownership of Circassia. When Clarendon then tried to make the treaty state that Russia could not build forts in Circassia, he was again thwarted by the French representative. The final treaty also extended amnesty to nationals that had fought for enemy powers, but since Circassia had never previously been under Russian control, Circassians were exempt, and thus Circassians were now placed under de jure Russian sovereignty by the treaty, with Russia under no compulsion to grant Circassians the same rights as Russian citizens elsewhere.[49][50][51]

Among the main peoples that moved to Turkey were Adyghe, Ubykhs, Muslim Abkhazians – hence the reference in the name to the deportation being of Circassians. The Shapsugh tribe which numbered some 300,000 were reduced to 3,000 people of whom managed to flee into the forests and plains.[2] The 140 Shapsugh that remained were sent to Siberia.[2] Overall, calculations including those taking into account the Russian government's own archival figures as well as Ottoman figures have estimated a loss of 90,[21][22] 94%[20] or 95–97%[19] of the Circassian nation in the process.

The population of some (but not all) of the Ubykhs as well as the various major subdivisions of the Circassian (Adyghe) people, the main targets of the operation, before the war and five years after the operation have been calculated as follows:.[78]

Resettlement of Circassians in the Ottoman Empire

However, although Circassians were the main (and most notorious) victims, the expulsions also gravely affected other peoples in the region. It was estimated that 80% of the Ingush left Ingushetia for the Middle East in 1865.[79][80] Lowland Chechens as well were evicted in large numbers, and while many came back, the former Chechen Lowlands lacked their historical Chechen populations for a long period until Chechens were settled in the region during their return from their 1944–1957 deportation to Siberia. The Arshtins, at that time a (debatably) separate people, were completely wiped out as a distinct group: according to official documents, 1,366 Arshtin families disappeared (i.e. either fled or were killed) and only 75 families remained.[81][82] Additionally, in 1860–1861 the Russian army forced a series of evictions in lands in the Central Caucasus, forcing about 10,000 Kabardins, 22,000 Chechens and additionally a significant number of Muslim Ossetians out and to Turkey.[83] Two other Muslim peoples in the northwest Caucasus, the Karachay and the Balkars, were not deported in large numbers during the process. Abkhazia, meanwhile, lost 60% of its population by the end of the 19th century.[84]

Whether sources treat the evictions of these non-Circassian peoples as a part of the same process varies; most sources include the evictions and massacres of the Ubykh (considered by many to be part of the Circassian ethnos despite having a different language[85]) and Abazin populations as part of the same operation against the neighboring ethnic Circassian populations,[86] and some sources also include the Abkhaz in counts of the evicted[87] while others group the expulsions of Chechens, Ingush, Arshtins[82][81][88] and Ossetians[83] with those of Kabardins, and also some include the earlier and less systematic expulsions of Nogai.[89][90] The 1861 order by Yevdokimov the relocate populations of Circassians (including Ubykhs) to the swamps also included the Nogais and Abazas.[91][92]

Shenfield has argued that those that died in the ensuing catastrophe were probably more than a million, likely approaching 1.5 million.[93]

"In this year of 1864 a deed has been accomplished almost without precedent in history: not one of the mountaineer inhabitants remains on their former places of residence, and measures are being taken to cleanse the region in order to prepare it for the new Russian population."

— Main Staff of the Caucasian Army, Jersild 2002:12

The situation of the Circassian and Abkhaz masses that had been driven into the coastal gorges prior to transport was dire. A Russian historian of the time, Adolph Petrovich Berzhe who witnessed the events regarding the departure of the Circassians described the following:[94]

"I shall never forget the overwhelming impression made on me by the mountaineers in Novorossiisk Bay, where about seventeen thousand of them were gathered on the shore. The late, inclement and cold time of the year, the almost complete absence of means of subsistence and the epidemic of typhus and small pox raging among them made their situation desperate. And indeed, whose heart would be touched on seeing, for example, the already stiff corpse of a young Circassian women lying in rags on the damp ground under the open sky with two infants, one struggling in his death-throes while the other sought to assuage his hunger at his dead mother's breast ? And I saw not a few such scenes."

— Adolph Petrovich Berzhe, Ahmed 2013, pp. 162–163.

Circassian refugees

Walter Richmond describes the situation of Circassian refugees as representing one of the first modern crises of a stateless people.[95]

The situation of the Circassian and Abkhaz masses that had been driven into the coastal gorges prior to transport was dire. A Russian historian of the time, Adolph Petrovich Berzhe who witnessed the events regarding the departure of the Circassians described the following:[94]

I shall never forget the overwhelming impression made on me by the mountaineers in Novorossiisk Bay, where about seventeen thousand of them were gathered on the shore. The late, inclement and cold time of the year, the almost complete absence of means of subsistence and the epidemic of typhus and small pox raging among them made their situation desperate. And indeed, whose heart would be touched on seeing, for example, the already stiff corpse of a young Circassian women lying in rags on the damp ground under the open sky with two infants, one struggling in his death-throes while the other sought to assuage his hunger at his dead mother's breast ? And I saw not a few such scenes.[94]

Ivan Drozdov, a Russian officer who witnessed the scene at Qbaada in May 1864 as the other Russians were celebrating their victory remarked:

On the road our eyes were met with a staggering image: corpses of women, children, elderly persons, torn to pieces and half- eaten by dogs; deportees emaciated by hunger and disease, almost too weak to move their legs, collapsing from exhaustion and becoming prey to dogs while still alive. -- Ivan Drozdov[96]

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[18] or due to cases where profit-minded transporters overloaded their ships to maximize monetary gain.[97] In order to pay for the voyage, Circassians sometimes were forced to sell their cattle, their belongings, or themselves into slavery.[98][99]

The operation was not done with any degree of efficiency by the Russians, forcing the Circassians typically to leave using unchartered vessels, thus opening themselves up to abuses by the captains of such vessels.[100] In some cases as many as 1,800 refugees were packed into one ship, which would also carry livestock and household possessions. When the ships did not sink, such crowded environments proved suitable for spread of diseases and dehydration, and when the ships arrived at their destinations, they contained only remnants of their original human cargo. For this reason, they were referred to by contemporary observers as "floating graveyards"[101] with "decks swarming with the dead and dying".[102] Ivan Drozdov recalled that:

...the Turkish skippers... like cargo threw anyone who showed the slightest sign of illness overboard. The waves threw the corpses of these unfortunate souls onto the shores of Anatolia… Scarcely half of those who set out made it to their goal.[103]

Abuses in the transport of refugees between Turkish cities were also noted, with one particular incident concerning a ship bound for Cyprus in which mutilated and decapitated bodies were found washed ashore, compounded by accounts of refugees being tied up and tossed overboard while still alive. On this particular Cyprus-bound ship, only one third of the refugees who had boarded survived.[104] Another Russian observer, Olshevsky, also noted abuses by Turkish skippers, as well as bribes paid by Circassians to get onto departing ships, but he blamed most of all the Russian command under Yevdokimov for the situation:

Why did it happen that ... the Abzakhs and Shapsugs, who were being driven from their homeland, suffered such horrific sufferings and deaths? It was exclusively because of the hurried and premature movement of our troops to the sea prior to the spring equinox. Had the Dakhovsky Detachment moved a month or two weeks later, this would not have happened.[105]

Despite the conditions, Russian forces under Yevdokimov kept driving Circassians to the coast. In January he annihilated Ubykh auls, leaving the Ubykhs without shelter in the severe winter, and in March, the crowd of refugees at the Circassian port of Tuapse approached twenty thousand.[106]

Of the portion that made it to Ottoman shores, many more would die there soon after while they were quarantined on either beaches, the vessels that had carried them, or in lazarettos, and many more died in makeshift accommodations, and still more died in the process of being transported a second time to their final destinations.[107] One British eyewitness recalled that :

Dense masses of ragged men, women, and children literally covered the sea shore. All looked wan and hungry. Many were all but naked. Several lay dying.[108]

In 1864, the Ottoman Porte repeatedly asked the Russian government to stop the deportations on humanitarian grounds, in light of the human disaster unfolding on their shores, but the Ottoman requests were repeatedly refused as Yevdokimov argued with urgency that the deportations should instead be accelerated. When October 1864 was chosen as a cutoff point for the departures, Yevdokimov successfully got it delayed two weeks, after which he ignored the deadline and deported without stop Circassians even as winter set in again.[109] Later in 1867, Grand Prince Mikhail Nikolaevich stated that the cleansing had had to be accelerated "in light of a possible European coalition".[110]

With regard to Ottoman policy overall, historian Walter Richmond accuses the Ottoman government of "playing a double game", "gross irresponsibility" and being "either unconcerned with or oblivious to the consequences immigration would have for the refugees, by having at various points encouraged Circassian population movement", in its previous statements, having earlier encouraged immigration, urging the Circassians to "stay and fight" in late 1863 and promising the arrival of an international coalition force, and then encouraging another wave of immigration as late as June 1864 when the human costs were beyond clear,[111] while Shenfield also describes the Ottoman response to the crisis as "grossly inadequate"[112] and Marc Pinson accuses the Ottoman government of not trying to formulate a coherent policy toward the refugees.[113] Richmond also argues that the British, despite serious discussion of the possibility of military intervention to alleviate the situation in Circassia, of having ultimately been concerned only with their own geopolitical interests and "deserting" Circassia to its fate.[114] Rosser-Owen, meanwhile, portrays both London and Istanbul as having been constrained by pragmatic concerns, at a loss for what to do about the flood of refugees, and notes the hardships suffered by British consular staff as they tried to help the Circassian refugees as well as the improvement of Ottoman policy toward accommodating the refugees over time so that by 1867 when the final Abkhaz refugees were transported, there were many fewer deaths in the process.[115] Whereas Richmond argues that Western European indignation at the unfolding situation in Circassia arose only after Russia leveraged the Porte to gain special rights in the Dardanelles thus threatening their trade interests,[116] Rosser-Owen emphasizes that the philanthropic efforts of British organizations and that the concern for the well-being of Circassians was most intense in Scotland where Circassian struggles were compared to past traumas in then-recent Scottish history.[117]

Commanders of Russian troops in the Western Caucasus: Infantry General Count Nikolai Yevdokimov (left), Governor of the Caucasus and Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich (centre), and Major General D.I. Svyatopolk-Mirsky (right) at Qbaada, 21 May 1864.

Although the order given by Tsar Alexander II was to deport the Circassians rather than to massacre them, the Russian commanders were open to the idea of massacring large portions of the Circassian population, and General Fadeyev wrote that the Russian command decided "to exterminate half the Circassian people to get the other half to lay down their arms."[118] Richmond has noted that "reports abound" of massacres in the final stages of the Caucasus campaign.[119]

In April 1862, a group of Russian soldiers slaughtered hundreds of Circassians who had run out of ammunition, leaving "the mountain covered with corpses of bayoneted enemies", as reported by Ivan Drozdov.[120]

Often, the Russian military preferred to indiscriminately bombard areas where Circassians were residing. In June 1862, after the Circassian auls of a part of the Kuban region were burned down and the Circassians fled into the forest, General Tikhotsky's men proceeded to bombard the forest. In September 1862, after bombarding a Circassian aul and seeing its inhabitants flee into the forest, General Yevdokimov bombarded that forest for six hours straight.[120] Ivan Drozdov claimed to have overheard Circassian men were taking vows to sacrifice themselves to the cannons to allow the rest of their auls to escape, and later reports groups of Circassians doing so.[121]

By the fall of 1863, Richmond argues that Russian operations had become "methodical and thorough", following a formula by which, after the Circassians fled into the woods, their aul, the livestock rounded up and any food that could be found would be burned, then after a week or two they would search for and destroy any huts the Circassians might have made for shelter, and then this process would be repeated until General Yevdokimov was satisfied that all the natives in the area had either died or fled.[122][123]

In May 1864, the coastal tribes of Pskhu, Akhtsipsou, Aibgo and Jigit were defeated in battle and then killed en masse to the last man, woman and child, after which, on 21 May, Prince Mikhail Nikolayevich gathered the troops in a clearing in the area for a thanksgiving service.[124]

As the deportations increased, there were not enough Ottoman and Russian vessels to carry all the deportees, even when Ottoman and Russian warships were recruited for the job, and the situation began taking a heavy toll on Ottoman treasuries, as the Ottomans bore the brunt of the task.[125]

Initially, on 17 May 1863, Tsar Alexander II ruled that "those who chose to emigrate" should pay their own way.[126] Later, the Russians offered financial incentives for vessels to take the Circassians to Ottoman ports, but forced the Circassians themselves to pay part. In some cases, Circassians were forced to sell their cattle or their belongings to pay, in others, one of every thirty Circassians was sold into slavery to pay.[98][99] These funds ultimately ended up in the hands of the transporters, including Russian military officers[126] Many vessels refused to carry Circassians because of the disease that was present among them as many of the ships that had been carrying Circassians had had their crews fall ill, while others that did agree tried to make as much profit out of it as possible by overloading their vessels with refugees, ultimately causing many transport boats to sink, killing their human cargo.[127] In April 1864, after one Russian crew was entirely wiped out by disease, Russian vessels stopped offering themselves for transport, dumping the entire process onto the burden of the Ottomans; although Yevdokimov investigated the possibility of hiring more ships, he made no effort to make provisions for food, water or medical help.[128]

At least one Russian source from 1908 said that special commissions were set up by the Russian imperial authorities to reduce mortality rates and "survey needs of the migrants", that is, to prevents ships from being overloaded, to profitably auction bulky movables, and to prepare clothes and victuals for the poorest families, which would be transported "without fee or charge of any kind".[129] The Russian consul based in the Ottoman Black Sea port of Trabzon reported the arrival of 240,000 Circassians with 19,000 dying shortly thereafter with the death rate being around 200 people per day.[130]

On 25 May 1864, Henry Bulwer, the British ambassador in Istanbul, argued that the British government charter some of its own vessels for the purpose because the Ottomans simply did not have enough on their own; the vessels were not forthcoming but British government ships provided assistance at various points and British steam ships also helped.[131] On 29 May, eight Greek vessels were reported to be helping with the transportation of Circassians, as were one Moldavian, one German, and one British vessel.[132][133]

In 1862, the Circassians sent a delegation of leaders to major cities in Britain, which had been covertly helping the Circassians with tactics and with organizing their resistance, visiting major English and Scottish cities including London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dundee to advocate for their cause.[134] The visits caused a swelling of public support for the Circassians and outrage directed at Russia, with sympathies particularly intense in Scotland perhaps owing to the recent Highland Clearances,[135] and sparked lobbying for intervention by the Dundee Foreign Affairs Committee, calls to arms for the defense of Circassia, the founding of the Circassian Aid Committee in London, and constant reporting on the issue by various newspapers such as The Scotsman.[136] Politicians and newspapers began taking up the "Circassian cause", and calling for intervention to save Circassia from decimation, and at one point Parliament came close to going to war with Russia and attempting to establish a protectorate over struggling Circassia.[137] Although such initiatives failed to change British government policy, the Circassian Aid Committee, organized by many individuals who were angry at inaction by London, managed to gather 2,067 pounds for the provision of mattresses, blankets, pillows, woolens and clothings especially for Circassian orphans in Istanbul, while Russophobic commentary by some of its members has been attributed for its closing in March 1865.[138] British consuls became involved with relief patterns and the organization of resettlement for Circassians, with various British consuls and consular staff catching illnesses from plague-ridden Circassian refugees, and a few died from such illnesses.[139]

In the initial stages of the process, relief efforts were also made by the Ottoman population, both by Muslims and Christians. In Vidin, in Bulgaria, the Muslim and Christian inhabitants volunteered to increase their grain production and send it to the local Circassian refugees, while in Cyprus, the Muslim population sheltered Circassian orphans. The Ottoman government built mosques for them and provided them with hocas, while the Sultan donated 50,000 pounds from his Privy Purse, although there were some reports in the British press that most of this money did not actually end up helping Circassian refugees, having been embezzled by Ottoman officials at various steps along the way.[140] As the burden of the refugees increased however, sentiments against the refugees, particularly among the Bulgarian and Turkish populations, grew and tensions began to develop between the Bulgarian and Turkish natives and the Circassian refugees.[141]

On 25 June 1861, Tsar Alexander II signed an imperial rescript titled "Settlement of the North Caucasus", reading as follows :

Now with God's help, the matter of complete conquest of the Caucasus is near to conclusion. A few years of persistent efforts are remaining to utterly force out the hostile mountaineers from the fertile countries they occupy and settle on the latter a Russian Christian population forever. The honor of accomplishing this deed belongs mainly to the Cossacks of the Kubanski armed forces.[142]

To speed up the process, Alexander offered monetary compensation and various privileges. From the spring of 1861 to 1862, 35 Cossack stanitsas were established, with 5,480 families newly settling the land.

In 1864, seventeen new Cossack stanitsas were established in the Transkuban region.[143]

In 1861–1862 alone, in the Danube Vilayet, there were 41,000 Circassian refugee families.[149] By the end of the process, there were around 250,000 Circassians in the Balkans, accounting for 5 to 7 percent of the total Balkan population, on top of the earlier arrival of 100,000 Crimean Tatars that Balkan populations had just recently had to absorb.[150][151]

Kadir Natho notes that "a net of Circassian settlements enveloped practically all the European part of the Ottoman Empire". Very large numbers of Circassians were settled in Bulgaria. Istoria Bulgarii reports that "about 6,000 families were transferred through Burgas and settled in Thrace; 13,000 families-- through Varna and Shumen -- to Silistra and Vidin; 12,000 families to Sofia and Nish. The remainder 10,000 families were distributed in Svishtovsk, Nikipolsk, Oriskhovsk, and other outskirts." There was a chain of Circassian settlements stretching from Dobrudja to the Serbian border, with an additional cluster of 23 settlements in the Kosovo field. Circassians also settled in a few mostly Greek areas, particularly in the southern part of Epirus, Cyprus and one colony at Panderma in the Sea of Marmara.[149]

Kadir Natho lists the following areas as having notable concentrations of Circassian refugee settlements: "in spacious Anatolia... near Amasya, Samsun, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, on the Charshamba peninsula, along the Aegean Sea, in Turkish Armenia, Adapazar, Duzge, Eskisehir, and Balikesir. From Trebizond the mountaineers were directly sent to Kars and Erzincan... many exiles were distributed in... the vilayet of Sivas, on the extensive desert between Tokat and Sivas".[149]

Circassians are settled in the house of an evicted Bulgarian family, painting in the 1870s

Misha Glenny notes that the settlement of the Circassian deportees played a major role in destabilizing the Ottoman Balkans, especially Bulgaria. Their arrival helped spread starvation and epidemics (including smallpox) in the Balkan territories, and worse, the Porte ordered that Christians be evicted en masse from their homes in certain areas in order to accommodate the need to house the deportees. This, and the outbreak of armed conflict between the Circassians and the Christian and Muslim natives, accelerated the growth of nationalist sentiments in the Balkans.[154] Kadir Natho argues that the Ottomans coopted the Circassians into a "police force" in the Balkans as well as settling them to increase the local Muslim population, with Circassians being made to take arms against rebellions, even those Circassians that had not settled in affected regions.[149] The local Balkan peoples, having just taken on large numbers of Crimean Tatar refugees, an operation which had caused the deaths of thousands of refugees and natives alike due to disease and starvation, were loathe to take in more Muslim refugees expelled by the Russians,[147] and some Bulgarians in particular were convinced that Circassians had been placed into scattered Bulgarian villages "in order to paralyze any kind of liberation and independence Slavic movement".[149] While in many areas, Bulgarian Christians had initially been very hospitable to the Circassian refugees, including by producing extra resources to support them, the collapsing humanitarian situation combined with the political instability caused relations between the two groups to spiral downward.

In many cases, lands were assigned to North Caucasian refugees by the Ottoman government, but the locals refused to give up their homes, causing outbreaks of conflict between Circassians and Chechens on one side, and the Bulgarian, Serbian, Arab, Bedouin, Druze, Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish natives on the other, causing the outbreak of armed conflict. In Uzun Aile, between Kayseri and Sivas, Circassians ultimately pushed the local Kurdish population out, and to this day the Kurds with roots in that region recall in a folk song how a "cruel fair-haired and blue-eyed people with sheep-skin hats" drove them from their homes.[155]

Traumatized, desperate, and having lived for many decades previously in a situation where Circassians and Russians would regularly raid each other, Circassians sometimes resorted to raiding the native populations, ultimately causing a reputation for the Circassians as being particularly barbaric to spread throughout the Empire.[156]

Eventually, fear of the Circassians, due to the diseases they spread and the stereotype of them as either beggars or bandits, became so great that Christian and Muslim communities alike would protest upon hearing that Circassians were to be settled near them.[157]

Later, in the 1870s, war again struck in the Balkans where most Circassians had made their homes, and they were deported by Russian and Russian-allied forces a second time.[158]

Monument dedicated to the Circassian genocide, Republic of Adygea

Scholar Anssi Kullberg states that the "Russian suppression of the Caucasus" directed at the Crimean Tatars and Circassians, resulted in the Russian state "inventing the strategy of modern ethnic cleansing and genocide".[178] Paul Henze, meanwhile, credits the events of the 1860s in Circassia with inspiring the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, to whose lands the Circassians had been deported.[179] Ellman, meanwhile, in a book review of Richmond's Circassian Genocide, agrees that the term's use is justified under the UN definition as referring to actions intending to destroy "in whole or in part an ethnic group", with the part referring to those Circassians whom St Petersberg thought could not accept its rule.[180]

Walter Richmond also argues the term "genocide" is appropriate, considering the events of 1864 to have been "one of the first examples of modern social engineering". Citing international law which holds that "genocidal intent applies to acts of destruction that are not the specific goal but are predictable outcomes or by- products of a policy, which could have been avoided by a change in that policy", he considers the events to have been genocide on the grounds that the ensuing demographic transformation of Circassia to a predominantly ethnically Russian region was viewed as desirable by the Russian authorities,[181] and that the Russian commanders were fully aware of the huge number of deaths by starvation that their methods in the war and the expulsion would bring, as they viewed them as necessary for their supreme goal that Circassia be firmly and permanently Russian territory, all the while viewing Circassia's native inhabitants as "little more than a pestilence to be removed".[182]