page_title: Circassian genocide
section_title: Intensifying resistance
hierarchical_section_title: Circassian genocide / Background / Intensifying resistance
caption_attribution_description: English: Edmund Spencer, Turkey, Russia, the Black Sea, and Circassia This file was uploaded with Commonist.
context_page_description: The Circassian genocide was the Russian Empire's ethnic cleansing, killing, forced migration, and expulsion of the majority of the Circassians from their historical homeland Circassia, which roughly encompassed the major part of the North Caucasus and the northeast shore of the Black Sea. This occurred in the aftermath of the Caucasian War in the second half of the 19th century. The displaced people moved primarily to the Ottoman Empire.
  Circassians, the indigenous peoples of this region, were ethnically cleansed from their homeland at the end of the Russo-Circassian War by Russia. The expulsion was launched before the end of the war in 1864 and it was mostly completed by 1867. The peoples planned for removal were mainly the Circassians, Ubykhs, and Abaza, but Abkhaz, Arshtins, Chechens and Ossetians and were also heavily affected. Other peoples of the Caucasus, were also affected to a degree such as Avars and Ingush.
  This expulsion involved an unknown number of people, perhaps numbering hundreds of thousands. In any case, the majority of the affected people were expelled.
context_section_description: 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. 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. 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. 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.
  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". 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.
  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.
caption: Russian military and Circassian representatives meet for discussions, 1855
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