"Adyge Khase-Circassian Council" from Maikop announces 2014 to be Year of Sorrow

The organization "Adyge Khase-Circassian Council" from the city of Maikop, the capital of Adygea, has decided to declare 2014 the Year of Sorrow in connection with the 150th anniversary of the end of the Caucasian War. In the near future, an action plan, dated to the event, will be approved.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by Zaurbiy Chundyshko, the chairman of the executive committee of the above organization, one of the proposals is to return ancient names to rural settlements of the Maikop District. According to his story, the remains of the ancestors who lived during the Caucasian War need re-burying.

Besides, the members of the board of the "Adyge Khase-Circassian Council" offer to hold in 2014 an international conference dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the end of the Caucasian War.

Sergey Koblev, a member of the above executive committee and also a member of the movement "Adyge Khase-Circassian Parliament", has noted that the proposal to declare 2014 the Year of Sorrow was made without any direct connection with the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

Earlier, Naima Neflyasheva, a senior scientific collaborator at the Centre for Civilization and Regional Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted that most of the Circassian organizations in Russia had supported the Olympic Games in Sochi; and only three of them – the "Circassian Congresses" of Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia – were against, arguing that the Olympics could not be held in an area where, in their opinion, there were cases of genocide of Adygs (Circassians) during the Caucasus War.