On October 16, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) opened an international conference dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the end of the Caucasian War. More than 40 scientists from Northern Caucasus and Moscow take part in the conference. The special feature of the conference is a focus on specific problems related to the study of the history of the Caucasian War.
The International Scientific Conference "Caucasian war: events, facts and lessons" is hosted by the Kabardino-Balkarian Institute of Humanitarian Studies (known as KBIGI). The conference has been organized under a grant from the Russian Foundation for Humanities (RFH), and it gathered Caucasus scientists, historians, ethnographers, and linguists from the regions of Northern Caucasus and from Moscow, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports.
The Caucasian War, which lasted from 1763 to 1864, put Circassians on the brink of extinction. After the War and the mass deportation of Circassians to the Ottoman Empire, the number of those who stayed in the homeland was a little more than 50,000 people. The Russian authorities still have made no decision to recognize the genocide of Circassians during the Caucasian War.
In 2011, participants of the expanded meeting of the Executive Committee of the "Adyge Khase" of Adygea supported the proposal to declare 2014 the year of mourning and memory throughout the Circassian world.