Circassian Identity and a Historic Document Presented to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919

Independent researcher and author Cem Kumuk shares a pivotal historical document from the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, presenting it as evidence of long-standing Caucasian solidarity. In his introduction, Kumuk challenges current perspectives on Adyghe (Circassian) identity, arguing for a unified Caucasian approach. The document, a memorandum from the Union of Circassian Peoples and Daghestan Delegation, offers insight into early 20th-century efforts to represent Caucasian interests on the world stage. 

Kumuk's commentary and the subsequent historical document offer valuable insights into the complex dynamics of Caucasian identity, both in the past and present. Readers are encouraged to examine the full text of the memorandum to gain a deeper understanding of this crucial period in Caucasian history.

First published on the Historical Memory of the North Caucasus website:

"Some people who give a glance at the existence struggle of the Adyghe nation through blinders do not understand that Oshkhamafe cannot stand alone without the peaks, Kazbeg, Dombay, Oshten, Fisht, Cheget, Kogutai, Ushba, Bezengi and Donguz Orun. Instead of recognizing their ignorance and inexperience underlying their failures, these people, who have not been able to make any progress in the struggle they claim to be waging on behalf of the Adygean nation, find the solution in picking on their brotherly Caucasian peoples. Instead of understanding the strength of the Caucasian identity and solidarity in the emigration life, they question why the Abkhaz, Chechen, and Ossetian flags are waved next to the Adygean flag during national events.  They express their discomfort with the emphasis on Caucasian identity in the institutional titles of NGOs in immigration. "Has there been ever such a union in the Caucasus?" they ask, as if this phenomenon is a fiction that has no historical roots and was invented in the life of immigration, and instead of holding Hafitse Muhammed, Hauti Sohrokov and similar people, who were the subcontractors of the Soviet regime in the Caucasus for 80 years, responsible, they attack the emigrant organizations that they think they can get their teeth into. Unfortunately, they are succeeding to some extent by playing on the national sentiments of some uneducated and unconscious groups. This tactic, which the Moscovites have used for the last 25 years to weaken immigrant organizations, is being revived by some groups and individuals among the Adygean political groups in recent days."

"For those who ask if anyone in the Caucasus has ever mentioned such a bilateral organization, I would like to show the declaration presented by the representatives of the North Caucasian Republic at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.  This declaration presented to the members of the League of Nations by the delegation of the Republic of the North Caucasus, consisting of Abaza Aziz Meker, Ossetian Hassan Hadzarague, Chechen Abdulmedjid Chermoy, Kumuk Haydar Bammat and Lezgi Ibrahim Haydar, read carefully the way they emphasize the Circassian identity and their statements to the representatives of the nations of the world about the future of the North Caucasus. In addition to the English translation of this document, which was originally prepared in French and Russian, our friends who wish to read the Turkish translation can download it as a PDF file from the link on our page."

Cem Kumuk
Historical Memory of the North Caucasus

Memorandum Presented To The General Peace Conference By The Union Of Circassian Peoples And Daghestan Delegation

Paris, May 9, 1919

HISTORICAL SUMMARY

Among the peoples who appear today before this Supreme Court, which has taken upon itself the noble task of reorganizing international relations based on law and justice, and which gives justice to all justified national claims, regardless of the period from which they date or the countries from which they come, there are the peoples of Circassia and Dagestan, who have been able to constitute the oldest democracies between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, and who have shed the most blood for the preservation of their freedom and independence through all the ages of history, and who have suffered the most for this ideal for which democratic Western Europe and America have fought relentlessly for four years.

The Circassian and Dagestani peoples, having occupied in antiquity and the Middle Ages the entire territory between the Boire and Azow Seas on the one hand, and the Caspian Sea on the other, as far as the mouths of the Don and Volga rivers, and thus placed themselves in the immediate path of the great invasions from Asia, have been obliged to sustain age-old struggles against all these invasions. These struggles are without example in the history of peoples, for their length, their bitterness, and the disproportion between the opposing forces.

The struggle of the Circassian peoples continued mercilessly throughout the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries against the Mongols of Djenghis, the Tartars of Tamerlane and their descendants, until the emergence of the Muscovite power, and later, during the 18th and 19th centuries, against the Russians who had succeeded the Tartars and Mongols in the vast plains of Eastern Europe, and who more methodically and systematically attacked their independence. These uninterrupted struggles over so many centuries against the world's greatest empires had considerably weakened the national organism of the Circassian peoples and forced them to retreat southwards. In 1783, when the Russians had been called to Georgia by King Heraclius II, the Kuban River formed the border between Circassia and the new Russian possessions north of the Caucasus.

The struggle that had long since begun became a duel to the death behind closed doors between the small, freedom-loving democracies of Circassia and Dagestan, who had fought throughout the ages for this ideal, and the largest and most powerful empire that despotism had been able to forge at the expense of Europe and Asia. Cut off from all communication with the rest of the world, and left to their own resources, the Circassians and Dagestanians endured a century-long siege against the countless armies of the czars, constantly renewed and equipped with every destructive device that Western science had to offer.

When the Circassians in the western part of Circassia were completely defeated, in 1864, Russia committed an act without precedent in the history of peoples; Having conquered the hitherto independent country of Circassia, Russia brutally expelled 750.000 Circassians from their thousand-year-old homeland in the unfortunate year of 1864, by official decree of Grand Duke Michel, brother of Tsar Alexander II and his Lieutenant in the Caucasus, ruthlessly enforced by the bayonets of a 300.000 strong regular army.

Stripped of all their possessions, furniture, and real estate, they were left in complete destitution, piled haphazardly into frail boats, entrusted to the fury of the Black Sea waves, that our unfortunate compatriots were expelled from their homes and washed up on the shores of Turkey, dying of hunger and thirst, prey to all the miseries of prolonged deprivation, overcrowding and immeasurable grief caused by the loss of their beloved homeland.

In place of these noble and unfortunate outcasts, whom she thus disinherited and threw on foreign soil, for the simple reason that they wanted to live free of their democratic life, Russia tried to immediately install her servants, the Cossacks and Russian peasants it was uprooted & from their homes, from the interior of the Russian plains, into the houses, gardens, vineyards and fields that a long and patient labor of the Circassians had created, maintained and embellished in this laughing and grandiose setting of nature.

Russia subsequently continued in this conquered country the terrorism it had made a rule of governmental conduct, and violent expropriation was the only method employed vis-à-vis the Circassian peoples, forcing many of our unfortunate compatriots to follow those of 1864 and go and suffer on foreign soil.
The laws in the Russian Empire were not characterized by marked liberalism; until the revolution of 1917, Circassia and Dagestan did not even know these retro-grade laws.

From 1864 to 1917, for 53 years, these two countries were constantly under a state of siege that stopped all intellectual life, and cultural and economic development.

After the revolution in March 1917, the peoples of Circassia and Dagestan, who had lost their independence half a century earlier, set to work rebuilding their national life. The two national assemblies in Wladicaucase in May and September 1917, in which delegates from all Circassian peoples, from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Caspian Sea, took part by free pronouncement, gave rise to a government which rules the North Caucasus and which, since the Bolshevist revolution in November 1917, has broken off all relations with the Soviet Government, against which it is in struggle, causing bloody losses to the Circassian and Dagestani peoples.

Towards the end of January 1919, the armies of our Republic had recaptured the cities of Wladicaucasus and Grozny, which had fallen into the hands of the Bolshevists.  In the meantime, General Denikin, whose army had been organized by the Allies and associates for the common struggle against Bolshevism, began unspeakable and inexplicable military operations against our Republic, which had been fighting the Soviets for a year and a half, causing bloodshed which was dangerous for the peace of the entire Caucasus, and which was a clear attack on our freedom and the principles of freedom of disposition, We hope that the Peace Conference will call General Denikin back to his true duty, which is the fight against Bolshevism.

On May 11, 1918, the Union Government notified all powers of the independence of the Republic of the Union of Circassian Peoples and Dagestan.
The present Government of the Republic of the Union of Circassian Peoples and Dagestan, which has reorganized the national forces, is a government of concentration, in which all parties are represented and in which the Cossack minorities have three seats; it has a political program whose main objective is the realization of the national aspirations of the Circassian peoples and Dagestan, and it is strongly supported by all the organized political parties and the opinion of broad sections of the entire population.

TERRITORIAL CLAIMS

In antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Circassian peoples occupied a vast territory stretching from the coast to the mouths of the Don and Volga rivers, as well as the Crimean Peninsula and as far south as İmereti, whose capital, the city of Kutaisi, was founded by Leo I, King of Abkhazia, in the second half of the 7th century AD. But as the Circassian peoples were forced to retreat southwards, in the face of Mongol, Tartar, and later Russian invasions in the 18th and 19th centuries, many of the territories that were the undisputed heritages of our ancestors have been denationalized over the centuries.

The northern boundary of Circassia was formed by the Kuban River in 1783, when Georgia called the Russians to the Caucasus, while the Ingur River separated Abkhazia, i.e. the south-western part of Circassia, from Georgia. In our current claims, we don't want to invoke historical reasons from antiquity or the Middle Ages, as so many other peoples do; we don't want for ourselves the mouths of the Don and Volga rivers, and the provinces of Georgia, such as Mingrelia and Imereti.

Based on the torrents of blood they have shed in the service of freedom and humanity by fighting for dozens of centuries against Asian invasions and all the imperialisms of Eastern Europe and Asia, based on ethnographic and economic reason the unexampled injustices and violence they suffered at the hands of the Russians during the 18th and 19th centuries, the peoples of Circassia and Dagestan, who in the past were able to constitute the only democracies of Eastern Europe and the Near East, today claim as the territory of their Union all the provinces and districts bounded on the west by the Black Sea, from the Kuban river to that of the Ingur river, and on the east by the Caspian Sea, from the mouth of the Kouma river to the Kiliazi station, on the Baku-Petrovsk railroad line, to the north, the lower courses of the Kuban and Kouma rivers, to the south the entire course of the Ingur river from its mouth, then the crest of the Caucasus chain as far as the Kiliazi station, except for the two districts of South Ossetia and Zakatala which, although situated on the southern slope of the chain, must for ethnographic reasons be part of our Union.

POPULATIONS

In the territory of the Union of Circassian and Dagestan Peoples, on January 1, 1918, there were 4,221,860 inhabitants, of whom 3.228.529 were Circassians and Dagestanis, 892.362 were Great Russians, Ukrainians, and Cossacks, 100.969 were Armenians, Greeks, Germans, Israelites, Estonians, etc., making the territory of the Union of Circassian and Dagestan Peoples one of the largest in Europe. As a result, on the territory of the Union, there are 76.47% Circassians and Dagestanis, 21.14% Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks, and 2.39% other peoples. Among the Russians, there are many civil servants, officials, and people attracted by the climatic resorts of the Circassian Coast and the Septentrional plateau of Pyatigorsk (Beshtau) and Kislovodsk (Narzan) immediately adjoining the middle of the northern slope of the great Caucasus chain.

According to the above statistics in the Union of Circassian Peoples, there remain 892.362 Russian inhabitants made up of Great Russians, Ukrainians, and Cossacks, descendants of the first military settlers the Russian government installed immediately after the expulsion of the 750.000 unfortunates at gunpoint whom imperialism and the premeditated denationalization of Russia brutally removed from their homes.

These Russians are bound to remain in our Union. This is the direct result of Muscovite imperialism, which emptied the interior of Russia and Ukraine, transferring the population to the newly conquered regions, whose inhabitants were to disappear in the face of this artificial colonization, forced from the Russian point of view and inhumane towards the denationalized countries. As a result of the same irrational and unfounded Russian imperialism, large numbers of Russians will inevitably remain in Poland, Lithuania, Bessarabia, Crimea, and other non-Russian areas of the former Russian Empire.

It's because of similar mistakes that 3 million Germans will be forced to live in a Czech-Slovak majority, despite being on the outskirts of Bohemia; millions of Hungarians and Germans will remain among the Romanian populations of Transylvania; and millions of Tures have been living in Bulgaria, Romania and other Balkan countries for 40 years.

It is impossible to deny us the southern part of the Kuban Oblast, to which Russian colonization mainly spread after the brutal expulsion of Circassians in 1884. This unprecedented, in the history of nations, forcible expulsion of Circassians, because they were independent people of independent Circassia and were not at all a rebellious region gives them more moral right to return this part of their homeland to them. Otherwise, it would appear that the strong nations encourage violence against the weak and besiege us irrevocably and inhumanely, regardless of our struggle against the horrors of the Asian hordes and aspirations for European civilization, to deprive the fertile parts of our country by taking away our access to the Black Sea.

That would condemn us to live with Asia without communication with the West and the light serving as a guide for all mankind. This is death for us economically and culturally. As for the two regions of the Black Sea and Sukhum, these are countries belonging to Circassian tribes by language and race from ancient times. Even though these areas were the object of desire of Russians for their forced resettlement, as well as in other areas, the climate, topography, and special culture such as forestry, winemaking, and cattle breeding, which Russian settlers were incapable of, stopped Russian colonization and instead of 400.000 Circassians evicted from this area Russian government invited Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians Estonians and Germans. At present in total in these two districts, there are 56.03% Circassians, 28.48% Russians, and 15.4% exchange nationalities. Thus, despite the brutal eviction, the region has retained its Circassian character.

THE OSSETIA MERIDIONAL AND ZAKATALA DISTRICTS

The Ossetia Meridional district, populated by Ossetians, although situated on the southern slope, must be part of the Union of the Peoples of the North Caucasus, because of the will of its inhabitants, whose compatriots are mainly on the northern slope and who have ties with us.

The Ossetians as a whole do not accept that they should be divided in two and are categorically in favor of our Republic.

As for the Zakatala district, which has only 5.000 Armenians and 5.000 Georgians for 120.000 inhabitants mostly of Dagestani origin we do not doubt that its inhabitants wish to stay in our union.

We can't refuse the collaboration of our compatriots who want to reconstitute our national life with us and who come to us spontaneously, especially as the reunion of these two districts with our Republic in no way affects the economic life of the Georgian Republic, our neighbor to the south, which also wants to return to independent and national life in the same way as we do.

CIRCASSIANS EXPELLED FROM THEIR COUNTRY

The 750000 Circassians who were deprived of all their property, movable and immovable, and who were expelled from their thousand-year-old homeland in 1864 by official decree of the Russian Government, and those who were driven from their country by systematic and brutal denationalization, have never ceased to protest against this unspeakable act of Russia, and have always demanded the national rights of which they were so violently deprived. At this solemn turning point in the history of peoples, our unfortunate compatriots, numbering 1.5 million, who live in foreign lands, declare loudly before the Peace Conference and before conscious humanity that they have never abdicated their national rights, and that they beg the Peace Conference to take into consideration their most natural and obvious rights, trampled underfoot by Russian despotism, and to assure them by an international act the return to their homeland and their homes.
The Conference will have redressed the greatest injustice to any people in all the ages of history, and will thus have earned the gratitude and unanimous approval of conscious humanity.

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE MOST SUITED TO THE ENTIRE CAUCASUS

The Caucasus, which forms a geographical unit between two seas and two continents, is also an economic unit. The agricultural products of the North Caucasus find an outlet in the Transcaucasus, which does not produce enough cereals and livestock, while the wines, silks, cotton, and carpets of the Transcaucasus are sold in the North so these two parts of the Caucasus complement each other and form an economic whole. The general situation in the world, and the existence of large political accumulations in the North and South, demand that this geographical and economic whole be completed by political unity. It was in obedience to these very important considerations, and to facilitate the settlement of the borders of the different states constituted throughout the Caucasus, that on April 1, 1918, the North Caucasian Government proposed to all the governments constituted in the Caucasus the formation of a Caucasian confederation which would safeguard the particular interests of each of the peoples as well as the general interests of the whole Caucasus, while leaving each of the confederated states complete autonomy within its borders.

This political concept, which meets all the real needs of all the peoples of the Caucasus, has been put to all interested parties on several occasions since April 1, 1918.

In principle, no Caucasian government has rejected the idea of Confederation. Talks on this question are continuing in the Caucasus between the various Caucasian governments and the Caucasian delegations in Paris. The government of the Republic of Azerbaijan, our neighbor to the southeast, has already accepted the principle of Caucasian confederation, making the question of our common borders with this republic less acute. The idea of confederation is gaining ground not only in government circles but above all among all the peoples of the Caucasus. We hope that the Georgians and Armenians, whose fate is linked to ours, will soon adhere to this political concept of the Caucasian Confederation, of which we remain the most fervent supporters.

CONCLUSION

Convinced that the disappearance of certain nationalities due to the violence of numerically stronger nations with little concern for the general fate of humanity is a calamity for humanity as a whole; given that the attack on the national life of a people, regardless of its numerical weakness and the smallness of its territory, is a crime against humanity; convinced that all the imperialisms of Eastern Europe and Asia, against which the Circassian peoples have had to struggle over the centuries to preserve their freedom, have halted their progress and consequently prevented them from contributing to the best of their ability to the upward and majestic march of humanity towards the best and a sublime goal; Given that their return to the bosom of greater Russia is impossible according to ethnographic principles, and that such a return would bring back to the Caucasus the age-old bloody struggles between our small democracies and the central Russian power; In view of the fact that, despite the most violent and brutal denationalization ever recorded, in certain districts of Circassia there are only 21% Russians on the territory of the Union, made up of Ukrainians, Cossacks and Great Russians; In view of the fact that the geographical situation of our country between two seas, together with its immense agricultural, forestry and mining wealth, has led to great economic development, viability and, consequently, state stability;

Given that the Caucasus and the Transcaucasus, landlocked between two seas, complement each other through the diversity of their raw materials; given that there is a moral unity of all Caucasian peoples resulting from the community of origin as regards the peoples of the North Caucasus and the Georgians, and the communities of religious beliefs as regards the Circassians and the Southern Tartars; given that the Caucasus as a whole, from a geographical point of view, constitutes a natural boulevard between the reservoirs of mankind that are the plains of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, which is in the process of transformation and needs absolute and prolonged calm for its rebirth to life;

In view of all these considerations, some more important than others, the Circassian and Dagestani peoples, in the name of the higher interests of mankind, of the just and elevated principles, drawn by the eminent President Wilson and accepted by all, of the careful and conscientious examination of the causes of the last general conflagration which plunged the world into mourning and desolation, and of the universal malaise which oppressed all mankind, in the name of the blood which they have shed from time immemorial until the second half of the 19th century for the preservation of their independence, their freedom, and as the vanguard of the white races of Europe and Mediterranean civilization, against all incursions and invasions of the devastating hordes from the depths of Central Asia, the Circassian and Dagestani peoples, who wish to form a Caucasian confederation with their southern neighbor, to live their own lives, to develop within their natural framework, in freedom and order, and to contribute the fruits of their labor to the common work of all peoples, urge the Peace Conference to re-acknowledge their complete independence within the limits indicated, to admit the Delegation to the Conference, to accept the admission of the Republic of the Union of Circassian Peoples and Dagestan among the States of the League of Nations, to guarantee its perpetual neutrality, and finally to spare it any hindrance or servitude which might be prejudicial to its peaceful development, so that Circassia and Dagestan, together with their southern neighbors, may give in this part of the world, the best possible protection to the peoples of the world, can set an example in this part of the world of the democratic life of the League of Nations, based on law, justice and mutual respect for the feelings of peoples, and thus, straddling the two main parts of the old world like an intercontinental Switzerland, they can save humanity in this part of the world from countless calamities, or at least, like their European sister, the Helvetic Republic, alleviate the miseries inherent in human nature.

We are sure that by agreeing to the just and equitable demands of the peoples of Circassia and Dagestan, the Peace Conference recognizes and rectifies the immense wrongs they have suffered through the ages at the hands of Asian and European imperialism, and renders an immense service to future humanity by permitting and assisting the state organization of the peoples of the Caucasus, which is the boulevard and material obstacle that must prevent conflagrations between Europe and Asia.

Signed.

Abdulmedjid Tchermoeff
President of the Delegation

Haidar Bammate
Minister of Foreign Affairs

Ibrahim Haidar
Delegate

Hassan Khadzaraque
Delegate