Country: Russia

Group: Adyghe

Date Finalized: 2/16/22

Team: Anthony Un (Lead), Hannah Goldman, Isabella Boker

Content Warning: Genocide, violence

Approximate Time Period: 1817-1864

            The Adyghe are also known as West Circassian. The Russian empire conquered the nation of Circassia in the Russian-Circassian war between 1763 and 1864. Tsar Alexander the II proclaimed in June of 1861 that Russia had almost succeeded in its goal “to utterly force out the hostile mountaineers from the fertile countries they occupy and settle on the latter a Russian Christian population forever” (Natho 2009). The subsequent genocide and mass deportation of Circassians left between 3-20% of the original population in the Russian Federation (Catic 2015). The remaining Circassian population largely converted to Orthodox Christianity, likely in fear of displacement and dispossession (Hamed-Troyansky 2021). At the time in Imperial Russia, one’s religious affiliations were often seen as representative of one’s loyalty to the empire (Hamed-Troyansky 2021). In 1938, cyrillic replaced the Arabic script for the Adyghe language, under the influence of the Russian government.

            The Russian government counts 718,000 Circassians today, including 124,835 recognized Adyghe. While most Circassians live in exile, modern Adyghe people that remain in Russia have the status of autonomous republic, enclosed within the Krasnodar region (Minority Rights Group 2020). The Adyghe people remain a minority even in the Adyghe Republic. Adyghe is still spoken as an official language of the republic of Adygea. In 1926, Adyghe represented 44.8% of the population, a number which has dropped to 25.8% today.

Data Quality: The data quality is rated a 2/3 for significant but not exhaustive evidence in books and written articles.

Sources

  1. Catic, M. (2015). Circassians and the Politics of Genocide Recognition. Europe-Asia Studies, 67(10), 1685–1708. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2015.1102202
  2. Hamed-Troyansky, Vladimir. (2021). Becoming Armenian: Religious Conversions in the Late Imperial South Caucasus. Cambridge University Press.
  3. Minority Rights Group. (2020, December 14). Adyghe – Russia. World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/adyghe/
  4. Natho, Kadir. (2009). Circassian History. Xlibris Publishing.