A tragedy that took place in the vicinity of the 2014 Winter Olympics sites continues to be ignored. It's where hundreds of thousands of Circassians who inhabited the area were were the victims of one of history's most terrible genocides.
Circassia, a fertile plateau in the northeastern region of the Caucasus, was located at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The region extends between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Historically, many Circassians considered Sochi their traditional capital city.
Most of Circassia’s population was brutally expelled from their country by Russia in the 19th century. The Russian-Circassian War began in 1763 and ended in 1864 with the departure of the Circassians from their territory in what many historians consider the ethnic cleansing of the Circassians.