“The last phase of the Caucasian war can only be described as genocide. Under the new commander, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, Russian troops systematically combed the mountains, valleys, and forests of Circassia, flushing out Cherkes tribesmen, driving them into the plains and to the seashore, or killing masses of them. Death, emigration to Turkey, or settlement in the plains under the guns of Russian forts in a ring of Cossack villages was the fate of the Mountaineers… In 1864 Circassia almost ceased to exist. Many Cherkes tribes (the Shapsug, the Natukhai, the Ubykh) had been either exterminated or uprooted. Others were overwhelmed by Russian settlers.”

This passage from Kazemzadeh's chapter represents the first known scholarly characterization of the Circassian tragedy as genocide (1974).