All events · Empire, Clearance and Removal

The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus and the Circassian Expulsion

1817–1867 · Balkans, Anatolia & the Caucasus

Displacement Territory Seized Mass Killing

Displaced

700,000

Estimates vary by a factor of three and the difference is politically live. Britannica records that resettlement pressure began in 1860, that the expulsion was largely accomplished by 1864, and puts about 400,000 Circassians displaced, nearly all of whom chose the Ottoman Empire over relocation within Russia. Ottoman reception records and later reconstructions give higher totals, and Walter Richmond's study for Rutgers University Press argues that hundreds of thousands were deported on top of very heavy mortality, with about 200,000 Circassians remaining when the final Russian assault began in November 1861 and roughly three quarters of the population destroyed by 1864. The figures rest on Russian military correspondence, Ottoman provincial settlement registers and demographic back-projection, not on a census of the deported.

Share of the population affected

47%

of the Circassian, Ubykh and Abaza population of the north-western Caucasus before the expulsion, 1860

Killed

150,000–600,000

excess mortality incl. disease and starvation

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What happened

The Russian campaign to subdue the North Caucasus ran from the early nineteenth century to the surrender of Imam Shamil in 1859 in the east and the defeat of the western Circassians in 1864. In the north-west, where resistance had been sustained by a mountain population Russia could not garrison, the army adopted a policy of clearance: villages and crops were destroyed and the inhabitants offered relocation to the plains under Russian administration or emigration to the Ottoman Empire. Britannica records that from 1860 the population was pressed eastward toward the Kuban and that nearly all chose emigration instead, about 400,000 people, with many thousands dying of starvation and disease on the way. Embarkation on the Black Sea coast in overcrowded vessels, and reception in Ottoman ports without adequate provision, produced very high mortality. Circassians today form large diasporas in Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Israel. On 20 May 2011 the Parliament of Georgia became the first legislature to recognise the events as genocide; the Russian Federation rejects that characterisation, treating the emigration as a wartime consequence rather than a policy of destruction.

Parties

The Russian Empire conquered the North Caucasus and expelled the Circassian (Adyghe), Ubykh and Abaza populations of the north-western Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire

Disputed

Whether the expulsion constitutes genocide is disputed between Circassian organisations and the Georgian parliament, which recognised it in 2011, and the Russian government, which rejects the term; the number expelled and the number who died are also disputed, with Britannica's 400,000 displaced at the low end and Richmond's figures at the high end.

The denominator

The baseline is contested and politically charged. Russian imperial administrative estimates of the 1860s imply somewhat under a million; Western scholarship, including Richmond and Shenfield, works with a pre-war population of roughly 1-2 million; Circassian national historiography, citing an 1830 figure, claims more than 4 million. The 1897 Russian census found only about 150,000 Circassians remaining in the Caucasus. Estimates of those expelled run from 500,000 to 1.5 million and of the dead from 400,000 (McCarthy) to over a million (Shenfield).

Both numerator and denominator are disputed by a factor of three or more, and Russian, Turkish and Circassian sources differ systematically; the resulting percentage should be treated as an order of magnitude rather than a measurement.

Where the baseline comes from

Circassian genocide — Wikipediaopen-edited
Circassians — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

The high end is Walter Richmond's figure of at least 600,000 Circassians dead from massacre, starvation and exposure, derived from Russian archival material and demographic reconstruction and used by Circassian organisations seeking recognition of a genocide. The low end reflects more conservative readings that treat the mortality as concentrated in the embarkation camps, the sea crossing and the first Ottoman winter, and that regard the pre-war population estimates on which the higher figures rest as too high. Britannica states only that many thousands died of starvation and disease en route. Russian official historiography disputes the higher figures and the intent they are used to establish.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingDestruction of PropertyStarvation and Siege

Richmond's archival study documents the burning of villages, the destruction of crops and stores to compel departure, and killings during the final campaign; Britannica records the deaths from starvation and disease during the deportation itself.

Formal findings

Parliament of Georgia (2011) — Resolution recognising the nineteenth-century expulsion of the Circassians by the Russian Empire as genocide and ethnic cleansing - the first such recognition by a national legislature — source