Conclusion of Russian Academy of Science about “Circassian” and “Circassia”

The International Circassian Association received the reply from the Establishment of the Russian Academies of Sciences (RAS) “Ethnology and anthropology Institute of M.N.Miklukho-Maklay”. NatPress offers the text of the letter:

“The ethnonym ‘Circassian’ and toponym ‘Circassia’ as designations of the people and its country in North-Caucasus appear in the Armenian, Georgian, Arabian, Persian, Turkic, an some other historical sources since the XIII century AD, having superseded the previous ethnonymic nomenclature – Kerkets, Zihs, Djihs, Kashags, Kases, Kasogs, Djarkases and so on. The ethnonym ‘Circassian’ became common in the European and the Russian sources since ХV-ХIХ centuries.

At the same time the local population invariable named itself ‘Adyghe” though probably the local names with which separate ethnopolitical formations identified themselves - Natuhai, Abadzeh, Jane, Kabardei, and so on - still had value. Nevertheless, despite of certain distinctions of social, cultural, language character, from the historical-ethnographic point of view, that is the one Circassian (Adygeyan) people.

Historical collisions of the XIX-XX centuries connected with catastrophes of the Caucasian war, violent eviction of significant part of Circassians into the Ottoman empire, administrative transformations carried out by the Russian imperial government, and then – by the bodies of the Soviet authority of the RSFSR and the USSR - have led to formation in Russian Federation of the four territorially divided parts of Circassian people with various ethnographic designations – Shapsugs, Adygs, Circassians, Kabardians.

Such rather recent (from the historical point of view) territorial dissociation has not caused loss by the people its memory of the genetic and cultural generality among those groups. Modern researches prove that the ethnic identity and the basic layer of the traditional culture of Shapsugs, Adygs, Circassians and Kabardians are common. It testifies to that it is possible to consider the named groups as subethnoses of one nation - Circassian (Adygeyan) people.

As to Ubyhs, that people had lived up to the middle of the XIX century AD in the upper rivers of Sochi and Shahe, almost completely emigrated to the Ottoman empire. Under the kept written historical sources Ubyhs named themselves ‘b’aekh”, though and in that case sources fix only the local name of that ethnic group.

The present not numerous descendants of Ubyhs, or those who consider themselves as those (they were registered during the All-Russia census of 2002), have the All-Circassian identity, share the Circassian (Adygeyan) cultural traditions, identify themselves with the basic part of modern Circassian (Adygeyan) people”.