The Russian-Ukrainian crisis brings to mind the first "modern" genocide: the Circassians

(To David Rossi)
04/02/22

Yesterday the news came that Turkey, despite Erdogan's excellent personal relations with Russian leader Putin, the purchase of the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system, the frequent tensions between Ankara and Washington and the annual trade in excess of 30 billion dollars. with Russia (five-sixths in favor of Moscow), it openly sided in favor of the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine, stressing that it legitimately considers Crimea to be the territory of Kiev.

That relations between Russia and Turkey are not really all roses, as well as the news of these days and two and a half centuries of conflicts, we are told by a curious episode that we are going to tell you about, and then we will briefly describe what 'and behind.

The date of mourning

Demonstrations for the Circassian Day of Mourning. These are truly singular events, for those who attend them, when thousands of people of fair complexion and Caucasian appearance, with undoubtedly Russian names and surnames, with passports from Middle Eastern countries and Turkey, parade through the streets often wearing turbans and traditional Ottoman clothing, displaying signs with a number written on them: 1864. That number is a date and hides a horrible story, which we are going to tell you in a nutshell.

The first "modern" horror

Have you heard of the great genocides of the contemporary era: against the Jews in the territories controlled by Nazi Germany (over six million deaths between 1941 and 1945), the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (up to one and a half million deaths between 1915 and 1917), the Ukrainians and Kazakhs in the Soviet Union (up to three and a half million deaths between 1932 and 1933), not to mention those against the Native Americans in California, the Herero in the German colonies, the Assyrians and the Greeks always in the 'Ottoman Empire (and then also at the beginning of Kemalist Turkey), the Nomads by the Nazis themselves etc. Well, before all these there was what, for many historians, is the first modern "scientific" genocide. In short, not a huge and indiscriminate massacre, like those made by Genghis Khan or Julius Caesar, but a meticulous, organized extermination, determined down to the smallest detail and with an ideological foundation ... It involved the Circassians (and other small peoples) who inhabited the region between the Sea of ​​Azov and the northern part of the Caucasus, the area today behind the renowned Russian tourist resort of Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

One hundred years of wars

It did not come, of course, like a bolt from the blue: between 1763 and 1864 the Circassians fought an endless series of wars against the Russia of the Romanovs, the occupying power of their native land, sometimes relying on the Ottoman Empire and other times fighting simultaneously Moscow and Istanbul. At the beginning of 1864 one and a half million Circassians, mostly Muslims but also Christians and pagans, still lived in the region.

The "final solution" of the Circassians

It is at this point that the Russian government took the most radical decision: it decreed the expulsion from those lands of all non-Russified populations and of all residents who had not been baptized Orthodox Christians in obedience to the Moscow Patriarchate. Thus began a work of annihilation of the presence of an ethnic group, a phenomenon so sadly re-proposed in the twentieth century by the Ottomans against the Armenians, by the Nazi-Fascists against the Jews, etc. The means adopted by the Tsarist armed forces were the "modern" ones: ethnic cleansing, which included burning entire Circassian villages, deliberately contagious epidemics, treacherously entering villages and cities under a white flag and then killing. It is estimated that 70% of the eastern Circassian population died between May 1864 and 1867. Certainly, only one twentieth of the Circassians remained in their lands, agreeing to be Russified and baptized.

The macabre story of an officer

Sadly famous became the figure of Colonel Grigory Zass, who went so far as to dismember the corpses of Circassian males and send their organs abroad for scientific experiments on "sub-human" subjects. German universities soon began to use Circassian skulls to study anatomy. In this, he was very meticulous: he washed and boiled the heads and then collected the skulls in his tent. Witnesses say that his soldiers had been trained to behead the corpses and send them to Zass and were not surprised to see heads stuck in pikes outside his tent, waiting to be "worked". Many years later Zass entered into correspondence with another German officer in the Tsarist army, Georg Andreas von Rosen, making him a point of honor for having exterminated the Circassians. The documents of the Ottoman public administration speak of about one million human beings expelled from Russia and entered the territory of Sublime door, most of whom died within weeks of exhaustion and disease.

It was a genocide, the first ...

In the words of Professor Alexander Ohtov, published in the most famous Russian financial newspaper Kommersant, the word "genocide", in the case of the extermination and expulsion of the peoples of Circassia, is justified. “To understand why we talk about genocide, we need to look at history. During the Russo-Caucasian War, Russian generals not only expelled the Circassians, but also physically destroyed them. Not only did they kill them in combat, but they burned hundreds of villages with civilians. They took no pity on either the children or the women or the elderly. They killed and tortured them without distinction. Whole fields of ripe crops were burned, orchards felled, animals burned, so that the Circassians could not return to their homes. Massive destruction of the civilian population ... isn't that genocide? "1

Without peace ...

Last but not least is the fact that the Olympic Village of Sochi, according to the Circassians their ancient capital, was built according to the descendants of the exiles in the same place of the last battle, on May 21, 1864, after which the Russian victors were able begin the liquidation of the Circassian people.

In short, there is no doubt that, given the opportunity, Erdogan, self-proclaimed defender of the Tatars and other Muslim peoples of the former USSR and the former Tsarist Empire, will take the liberty of challenging Moscow also in Ukraine, after Libya, Syria. and the Caucasus.