Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Paul Goble
Staunton, June 26 – Despite its role in the Syrian conflict, Moscow has granted refugee status to only two Circassians from Syria of the roughly 3,000 who’ve applied for that status, Alisa Shishkina says, the result of Russian fears that such people are or will become Islamist radicals or that they will disturb the shaky ethnic balance in the North Caucasus. Read more
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Besides the Russian Victory: Five Other Stories from the World Cup
Paul Goble
Staunton, June 20 – As a result of its second victory, the Russian team has advanced to the second round of the World Cup, the first time it has done so since 1986, an occasion for congratulations and massive celebration by Russians across the country, developments that are eclipsing almost everything else. Read more
May 21 memorial ceremony, Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria (Source: circassianworld.com)
This year as every year for more than a century, the nearly 500,000 Circassians in their North Caucasus homeland and the more than five million Circassians in the diaspora paused, on May 21, to remember the losses they suffered during their 101-year-long resistance to Russian imperial expansion and their forcible expulsion from their homeland in 1864. Indeed, according to Zaurbek Kozhev of the Kabardino-Balkar Institute of Humanitarian Research, this memorial day is “an inalienable part of contemporary Circassian identity” and thus the basis for the mobilization of the community to pursue its collective goals, a point other speakers at memorial meetings made as well (Kavkazsky Uzel, May 23). Read more
Monday, May 21, 2018
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 21 – History, it is often observed, is written by the victors; but those who look like victors at one point may turn out to be the defeated at another and those who appeared to be the vanquished may come back Phoenix-like and win a larger and longer victory than anyone – including themselves – could ever imagine.
Today, Circassians around the world mark what they call tlapqghakakwad – the Circassian word for “death of the nation” – the anniversary of Russia’s expulsion and killing of their ancestors in 1864 after more than a century of resistance to Russian imperial advance into the Caucasus. Read more