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This article focuses on problems of the national movement of the Circassians – a small nation in the Caucasus, most of whose population is dispersed all over the world. The paper researches the development of the Circassian movement from 1989–2000 and its contemporary structure since 2005. The modern Circassian movement as a whole has never been approached from a political science viewpoint. This research aims to answer several core questions: What are the different strands of the movement? What principles are they based on? Who are the participants? What political forces support them? How do these political forces interact with each other? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an exploration into the perceptions of the Caucuses and the Circassian people within the political imagination of Great Britain during the early 19th century. Discussion is given highlighting the opposing idealized views of the Circassians by the Russians and the British, both projecting their political ideals onto the social structures of the region. The diplomatic work and ethnographic observations of the British ambassadors J. A. Longworth and James Stanislaus Bell in the 1830s are particularly discussed relating to their championing of liberalism.

In nineteenth-century Russia, the Caucasus was a large region composed of various territories and ethnic and religious groups. This region included Circassia, Mingrelia, Georgia, a part of Armenia, the ancient Media, Daghestan and the territories of Suanctians, Ossetians, Abkhazians, Karakalpaks and other mountaineer nations. In this study, focusing mainly on the nineteenth century, and how Russians occupied the Caucasus because the way Russians occupied and controlled the Caucasus had great impact on relations between them and the Caucasians. As Edward Allworth writes, Russian conquest, forced migrations and other brutal measures that the Russians used for their conquest of the Caucasus "inflicted scars upon the relationships between the invaders and invaded."