Vitalii Shtybin The Circassian expulsion of 1864 was one of the most catastrophic outcomes of the Caucasian War. Unlike other Russian imperial military campaigns, this action involved the deliberate, forced deportation of the entire indigenous population of the Northwest Caucasus, driven either into the marshy lowlands on the southern bank of the Kuban River or across the Black Sea into the Ottoman Empire. By various estimates, this second route alone forced well over half a