Musa Kundukhov and the Tragedy of Mass Emigration

Abstract

This chapter deals with the tragedy of the mass expulsion of the North Caucasian indigenous population in the aftermath of Russian conquest in the mid-1860s. While the causes of the forced emigration of vast numbers of Cherkessians to the Ottoman Empire have been investigated, little research has been conducted regarding the simultaneous emigration of other Muslim communities, including thousands of Chechens. In the migrations of Muslim Ossetians, Karabulaks and Chechens in 1865, it was an ethnic Ossetian Muslim and general of the Russian Imperial Army, Musa Kundukhov, who played a crucial role. When he organized the mass emigration of Chechens and other Muslim peoples to the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1860s, he also departed together with his family, and later became a highly decorated general in the sultan’s forces. By studying the biography of this individual, this chapter sheds light on the situation in the north-eastern part of the Caucasus as well as the features of Russia’s rule in the early 1860s, and thus illuminates a still little-understood aspect of the history of Russia’s conquest of the Caucasus.