1. Skip to Menu
  2. Skip to Content
  3. Skip to Footer>
Friday Sep 03

recommended

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Nervous about Circassians Identifying Themselves as Circassians in Upcoming Census

August 23 – If Circassians identify themselves as such, as many activists are urging, and not as the separate nationalities the Soviets divided them into, according to Russian experts cited in an article in today’s “Rossiiskaya gazeta,” that action alone could undermine the delicate ethnic...

21st Century is the last opportunity for Circassians, by Yalçın Karadaş

August 18 --Recently, a Circassia is being built on unfounded concepts especially in the virtual environment. The trouble is that, when we ignore the ones whose concern is to mortify everybody and everything, and to produce traitors, the architects of this construction who are able to...

Window on Eurasia: Are Russia’s Non-Russian Republics Now at Risk?

by Paul Goble, August 16 – Even as most of the heads of Russia’s non-Russian republics are declaring that they are prepared to follow Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s lead and no longer call themselves presidents, a few of these leaders appear to be concerned that this is yet...

 

Russia Pays High Price For Winter Olympics - SKY News

by Amanda Walker, Moscow correspondent, SKY News, 11 August 2010 -- The 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia could become the most expensive Games ever - with estimates coming in at a staggering £20bn. With four years still to go, that figure will dwarf overall spend for Canada's Vancouver Olympics of about £3.5bn.

New academy to promote Circassian language, traditions, by Hana Namrouqa - The Jordan Times

by Hana Namrouqa, The Jordan Times, August 8 -- Colourful, thematic performances and music on Friday marked the launch of a new academy designed to preserve and promote Circassian heritage. Performing for a full house at Al Hussein Cultural Centre in Ras Al Ain, the recently...

What has highlighted the explosion at the Baksan hydroelectric?, by Sufian Zhemukhov

Echo Moskvy, July 24 -- Kabardino-Balkaria in recent days has become the focus of attention because of the explosion at the Baksan hydroelectric power plant. It is the oldest electric power plant in Russia, built as part of Lenin’s electrification plan (GOELRO), and was a sort...

Circassians Radicalized by Moscow’s ‘Double Standards’ in Ossetia, Exiled Leader Says, by Paul Goble

Window on Eurasia, July 20 – The “double standards” behind Russia’s nationality policy -- very much on view “when the Kremlin recognizes a small part of the Ossetian people as an independent state while leaving the larger part within Russia and the right to choose its future”...

CW Headlines

  • Previous
  • Next
  • Stop
  • Play

Just like England: On the Liberal Institutions of the Circassians, by Paul Manning

Comparative Studies in Society and History 2009;51(3):590–618. -- With Pushkin’s narrative poem Prisoner of the Caucasus (1822), Circassians entered the Russian imperial imaginary as exemplary personifications of the savagery and freedom of the Caucasus as a whole (Layton 1994; 1997; Grant 2005; 2007). Accordingly, the Russian imagination of Circassian polity, now as egalitarian “free societies,” now as hierarchical aristocracies, now as “noble savages,” now as ignoble brutes, Muslim “fanatics,” or “Asiatic despots,” was a microcosm of the Russian colonial engagement with the Caucasus as a whole, often as not reflecting tensions in the self-perception of imperial autocracy and its elites more than indigenous political organization of Caucasian groups like Circassians in reality (Layton 1997; Jersild 2002; Grant 2005). Inasmuch as such imperial imaginings informed the fantasies of young men, causing them to enlist in search of the poetry of warfare, or informed fantasies of conquest among agents of the Russian state, these imaginings became real in their consequences for various Caucasian groups (Layton 1994; 1997).

Read Article

Abkhazia, Georgia & the Circassians (N. W. Caucasus), by George Hewitt

Central Asian Survey, Volume 18, Issue 4, 1999 - The N.W. Caucasus has been the quietest and thus the least reported of the Caucasian regions since the disintegration of the USSR.

Read Article

Tevfik Esenç - the last person able to speak the Ubykh language

Tevfik Esenç (1904 - October 7, 1992) was a Circassian exile in Turkey and the last known speaker of the Ubykh language. Esenç was raised by his Ubykh-speaking grandparents...

Read Article

Travels in Circassia, Krim Tartary, Etcetera, by Edmund Spencer, Esq

Selections from Travels in Circassia, Krim Tartary, Etcetera by Edmund Spencer, Esq. (originally published in 1837) - Upon Entering Circassian Proper - Circassian...

Read Article

The Circassians: A Forgotten Genocide?, by Stephen D. Shenfield

The massacre of the Circassians, a forgotten people, serves as the subject of Stephen D. Shenfield’s essay. The Circassians were forced to resettle after the tsarist conquest of their territory.

Read Article

Selected Interview: Stephen Shenfield

The Circassian “genocide” is no longer as badly neglected as it was. – An interview with Stephen Shenfield, November 2009

Selected Interview: Paul Goble

Paul Goble, director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy answers CW's questions. 2008

UNPO: Resolution on the Situation of the Circassian People, 1997

Fifth General Assembly - The Circassians have been partly exterminated during the Russian-Caucassian war and 90 percent of those remaining have been forcefully deported abroad to Turkey, Jordan and Syria. Read more...

The Circassian Dimension of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, by Sufian Zhemukhov

PONARS Policy Memo No. 65 - Georgetown University. In 2014, the popular Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi will host the Winter Olympics, signifying Russia’s increasingly high international profile. Read more...

The Circassians in Jordan

The first wave of Circassian immigrants, who were mainly of Shapsugh extraction, arrived in Jordan in 1878 and took refuge in the old ruins of Amman. These were followed by the Kabardians who settled in... Read more...


Circassian World: Responses to the
New Challenges, by Sufian Zhemukho(v)

Small nations do not always have to be the victims
of conflict between larger nations; they can
sometimes solve their problems during hard times
if they are able to clearly understand their own...

» Read more


Yuri Temirkan(ov)
Acclaimed International Conductor

Yuri Temirkanov was born in 1938, near the
capital city of Nalchik, the Kabardino Balkarian
Republic, in the north Caucasus. At the age of
15 years he went to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg)...

» Read more


Prometheus among the Circassians,
by John Colarusso

The most archaic oral tradition seems to be that
of the "Nart Sagas." These are a large corpus of
oral tales involving the Narts, a race of heroes.
While traditonally termed sagas, they are...

» Read more


Circassia and Circassians in the
Historical Books & Magazines

A Year Among the Circassians - Turkey, Russia,
the Black sea, and Circassia - Stories from Russia,
Siberia, Poland, and Circassia - The Dublin Review
Vol. IX - The Circassians...

» Read more

Heku-Zihia Circassian Web PortalPsine MagazineAmjad Jaimoukha's personal web page

Books

CAUCASUS PEOPLE



Nart Sagas

Nart Sagas from the Caucasus: Myths and Legends from the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs, by John Colarusso

The Circassians

The Circassians: A Handbook, by Amjad Jaimoukha 

 

The Abkhazians

The Abkhazians, by George Hewitt

Northwest Caucasus

The Northwest Caucasus: Past, present, future, by Walter Richmond

Caucasus

The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus, by Charles King

Atlas

Atlas of Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus (1774-2004), by Artur Tsutsiev

21 May 1864-2010


Reflections on the Caucasus

In Memoriam

Kardengush Ziramiku (1918-2008)
Къардэнгъущ| Зырамыку