Fedor A. Shcherbina’s History of the Kuban Cossack Host is one of the most important primary sources on the Russian conquest and colonization of Circassia and the North-West Caucasus during the nineteenth century. Written by a prominent historian, statistician, and Corresponding Member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, the work provides a detailed account of the military campaigns, settlement policies, and expansion of the Kuban Cossacks along the Circassian frontier. Of particular significance for researchers of the Circassian Genocide, the book contains extensive information on the final stages of the Caucasian War, the forced displacement of the indigenous Circassian population, the destruction and depopulation of Circassian territories, and the subsequent settlement of Cossack communities in the region. 

Although written from an imperial Russian perspective, Shcherbina’s account preserves valuable documentary evidence regarding the conquest of Circassia and the demographic transformation of the North-West Caucasus following 1864. As a contemporary historical source produced within the Russian imperial scholarly tradition, the work remains indispensable for understanding both the mechanisms of Russian expansion in the Caucasus and the historical events that many scholars today identify as constituting the Circassian Genocide.