Four years after the Decembrist revolt (December 26, 1825), Russia signed the Treaty of Adrianople with the Ottoman Empire, acquiring the northern Black Sea coast and including Sochi, which was then the capital of the autonomous region of Circassia.
Circassians, a Muslim people indigenous to Caucasia, had long been persecuted by the Russian Empire. The Circassians, who had converted to Islam as Ottoman subjects refused to accept the absolute authority of Nicholas I or convert to Russian Orthodox Christianity.
The then Tsarist Russia in 1864 organized a set of attacks to conquer the Caucasus and encountered with a resistance from both Circassians and Chechens.
The Muslim tribes of the Northern Caucasus united under the leadership of Shamil, the Imam of Chechnya and Dagestan. The new political reality created perilous conditions for all Muslims in the region. But the Circassians were the worst affected because they offered the most resistance.
The Circassian Genocide of 1864 is one of the most gruesome genocides of the 19th century. The campaign utilized tactics, such as deportation, resource deprivation and mass murder. At least 600,000 people lost their lives to massacre, starvation, and the elements while hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave their homeland.
By 1864, three-fourths of the population was annihilated, and the Circassians had become one of the first stateless peoples in modern history.
On 21 May 1864; the Russian Tsar Alexander II declared that the war had ended with the occupation of whole Circassia. The Tsar authorized a decision to exile the entire Circassians for their rejection to transform to Christianity from Islam and the constant raids they carried out on Russian villages.
Circassian genocide
