Circassians honor the victims of the Caucasian War 162 years after its end

Remembrance Day for the Adyghe people who fell victim to the Caucasian War that ended 162 years ago is being celebrated today by residents of southern Russia and the descendants of the Circassians expelled from their historical homeland in various countries around the world.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," residents of Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Adygea annually commemorate the anniversary of the end of the Caucasian War with memorial events. A memorial rally was held in Nalchik on May 20, and in the evening, activists gathered at the "Tree of Life" monument and lit 101 candles.

In Kabardino-Balkaria, the day of remembrance for the victims of the Caucasian War on May 21 has been marked for the past 20 years, beginning in 2006, with a march carrying Circassian flags. Residents of the republic participate in the march in national costumes, and this event is being carried out solely through grassroots initiatives, public figure Azamat Shormanov previously told the "Caucasian Knot."

"This event has been held here since 2006, and the people are the main organizers and initiators. The standard program: a procession in national dress, people bringing symbols of their family trees, and marching with Circassian flags. People come with their families: the older generation, children, and young people. This is how it has evolved since 2006, and now it's a multi-thousand-person event," he said.

This year, a week before the commemorative date, security forces began handing out warnings to residents of Kabardino-Balkaria about the inadmissibility of participating in the May 21st march, prompting human rights activists to call on the republic's head to intervene. Despite warnings that threaten criminal prosecution, activists in Nalchik do not intend to abandon their traditional event.

A year earlier, during a march with Circassian flags dedicated to the 161st anniversary of the end of the Caucasian War, at least eight people were detained in Nalchik. They received sentences ranging from three to ten days of administrative arrest for participating in an unauthorized rally and obstructing traffic. The only woman among the eight detained, Marina Kalmykova, was released after three days of arrest on May 25. Khusein Gugov, Zuber Euaz, Timur Nakhushev, Kazbek Mamikov, and Bashir Yerokov were released on May 27, and Idar Tsipinov and Beslan Gedgafov were released later. Timur Nakhushev and Zuber Euaz appealed the decisions of the Nalchik City Court; Kazbek Mamikov did not file a complaint after his arrest, considering it futile.

The civic position of participants in the commemorative event in Nalchik regarding the anniversary of the end of the Caucasian War is mixed: some activists call for this date to be perceived as a day of remembrance for ancestors, while others insist on a fair assessment of the events and the preservation of knowledge of the historical truth.

The Caucasian War is the longest military conflict involving the Russian Empire, lasting almost 100 years. Attitudes toward its memory remain highly politicized, and authorities are increasingly returning to imperial interpretations of the events, ignoring its main lessons: attempts at forced unification and the destruction of local self-government systems deepen contradictions and conflicts, historians interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" in 2025 noted.

The main consequence of the Caucasian War for the Adyghe was the expulsion of the overwhelming majority of the ethnic group from their native lands, according to historian Zaurbek Kozhev.

"This topic is rarely discussed in the public sphere; it is only mentioned on May 21st. It is hushed up in school education, even at the regional level, not to mention the federal level: the topic of the Caucasian War is relegated to the background, and the formulations recently have become increasingly identical to those used during the Russian Empire – that is, the Caucasus was pacified, the highlanders carried out raids, and imperial and tsarist troops restored order here – this is the main thesis. All topics related to the assessment of the Caucasian War as an anti-colonialist struggle of local peoples have, of course, been gradually removed from official discourse," he stated.

A colleague of Kozhev's, who works at a university in the North Caucasus, assesses the consequences of the Caucasian War for the Adyghe people as catastrophic, stating that they "led to a demographic catastrophe of unprecedented proportions." He considers the main lesson from the history of the Caucasian War to be "the understanding that a military solution to ethnopolitical conflicts is never final."

Materials on the situation of Circassians in Russia and abroad are published by the "Caucasian Knot" on the thematic page "The Circassian Question".