Note February 2016. Wrote this for a website discussing Circassia and I can’t find the original.

http://historiana.eu/case-study/the-russian-expulsion-circassian-peoples-19th-century/multiple-perspectives-commemorations-tragic-events-such-circassian-exodus

I do not think such commemorations are a good idea because the memory of yesterday’s miseries can lead to tomorrow’s.

Warfare is one of the engines of history – people live in this place and not that, speak this language and not that, have this religion and not that as the consequences of victory or defeat in war. The Circassians lost a long and brutal war and many of them went into exile as miserable refugees. But all peoples have the same past; all have been losers, all have been winners. My own ancestors, Border Reivers, were dispossessed of their lands and driven from Britain 400 years ago. It aids no one to dwell on these past miseries and injustices.

Therefore, commemorations of past tragedies can fuel present disputes that will lead to future tragedies. They should be matters of history to be dispassionately remembered and assessed. These events happened and, in most cases, had the losers been the winners, they would have done the same to their enemies.