Mongols
The Mongols are an East-Central Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia and to China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They live as minorities in other regions of China, as well as in Russia. Mongolian people belonging to the Buryat and Kalmyk subgroups live predominantly in the Russian federal subjects of Buryatia and Kalmykia; the Mongols are bound together by ethnic identity. Their indigenous dialects are collectively known as the Mongolian language; the ancestors of the modern-day Mongols are referred to as Proto-Mongols. Broadly defined, the term includes the Mongols proper, Oirats, the Kalmyk people and the Southern Mongols; the latter comprises the Abaga Mongols, Aohans, Gorlos Mongols, Jaruud, Khuuchid and Onnigud. The designation "Mongol" appeared in 8th century records of Tang China to describe a tribe of Shiwei, it resurfaced in the late 11th century during the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty. After the fall of the Liao in 1125, the Khamag Mongols became a leading tribe on the Mongolian Plateau.
However, their wars with the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Tatar confederation had weakened them. In the thirteenth century, the word Mongol grew into an umbrella term for a large group of Mongolic-speaking tribes united under the rule of Genghis Khan. In various times Mongolic peoples have been equated with the Scythians, the Magog, the Tungusic peoples. Based on Chinese historical texts the ancestry of the Mongolic peoples can be traced back to the Donghu, a nomadic confederation occupying eastern Mongolia and Manchuria; the identity of the Xiongnu is still debated today. Although some scholars maintain that they were proto-Mongols, they were more a multi-ethnic group of Mongolic and Turkic tribes, it has been suggested that the language of the Huns was related to the Hünnü. The Donghu, can be much more labeled proto-Mongol since the Chinese histories trace only Mongolic tribes and kingdoms from them, although some historical texts claim a mixed Xiongnu-Donghu ancestry for some tribes. See Genetic history of East Asians The Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as existing in Inner Mongolia north of Yan in 699–632 BCE along with the Shanrong.
Mentions in the Yi Zhou Shu and the Classic of Mountains and Seas indicate the Donghu were active during the Shang dynasty. The Xianbei formed part of the Donghu confederation, but had earlier times of independence, as evidenced by a mention in the Guoyu, which states that during the reign of King Cheng of Zhou they came to participate at a meeting of Zhou subject-lords at Qiyang but were only allowed to perform the fire ceremony under the supervision of Chu since they were not vassals by covenant; the Xianbei chieftain was appointed joint guardian of the ritual torch along with Xiong Yi. These early Xianbei came from the nearby Zhukaigou culture in the Ordos Desert, where maternal DNA corresponds to the Mongol Daur people and the Tungusic Evenks; the Zhukaigou Xianbei had trade relations with the Shang. In the late 2nd century, the Han dynasty scholar Fu Qian wrote in his commentary "Jixie" that "Shanrong and Beidi are ancestors of the present-day Xianbei". Again in Inner Mongolia another connected core Mongolic Xianbei region was the Upper Xiajiadian culture where the Donghu confederation was centered.
After the Donghu were defeated by Xiongnu king Modu Chanyu, the Xianbei and Wuhuan survived as the main remnants of the confederation. Tadun Khan of the Wuhuan was the ancestor of the proto-Mongolic Kumo Xi; the Wuhuan are of the direct Donghu royal line and the New Book of Tang says that in 209 BCE, Modu Chanyu defeated the Wuhuan instead of using the word Donghu. The Xianbei, were of the lateral Donghu line and had a somewhat separate identity, although they shared the same language with the Wuhuan. In 49 CE the Xianbei ruler Bianhe raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2000, after having received generous gifts from Emperor Guangwu of Han; the Xianbei reached their peak under Tanshihuai Khan who expanded the vast, but short lived, Xianbei state. Three prominent groups split from the Xianbei state as recorded by the Chinese histories: the Rouran, the Khitan people and the Shiwei. Besides these three Xianbei groups, there were others such as the Murong and Tuoba, their culture was nomadic, their religion shamanism or Buddhism and their military strength formidable.
There is still no direct evidence that the Rouran spoke Mongolic languages, although most scholars agree that they were Proto-Mongolic. The Khitan, had two scripts of their own and many Mongolic words are found in their half-deciphered writings. Geographically, the Tuoba Xianbei ruled the southern part of Inner Mongolia and northern China, the Rouran ruled eastern Mongolia, western Mongolia, the northern part of Inner Mongolia and northern Mongolia, the Khitan were concentrated in eastern part of Inner Mongolia north of Korea and the Shiwei were located to the north of the Khitan; these tribes and kingdoms were soon overshadowed by the rise of the Turkic Khaganate in 555, the Uyghur Khaganate in 745 and the Yenisei Kirghiz states in 840. The Tuoba were absorbed into China; the Rouran
Soviet Central Asia
Soviet Central Asia refers to the section of Central Asia controlled by the Soviet Union, as well as the time period of Soviet administration. Central Asian SSRs declared independence in 1991. In terms of area, it is nearly synonymous with Russian Turkestan, the name for the region during the Russian Empire. Soviet Central Asia went through many territorial divisions before the current borders were created in the 1920s and 1930s; the beginning of the 18th century marked the zenith of the Kazakh Khanate. During this period the Little jüz participated in the 1723–1730 war against the Dzungars, following their "Great Disaster" invasion of Kazakh territories. Under the leadership of Abul Khair Khan the Kazakhs won major victories over the Dzungar at the Bulanty River and at the Battle of Anrakay in 1729. In the 19th century, the Russian Empire began to expand, spread into Central Asia. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the tsars ruled over most of the territory belonging to what is now the Republic of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Russia annexed Lake Issyk Kul in north east Kyrgyzstan of off China in the early 1860s. Emerging from the Russian Empire following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War of 1918–1921, the USSR was a union of several Soviet republics, but the synecdoche Russia — after its largest and dominant constituent state — continued to be used throughout the state's existence. Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created from the Turkestan Krai of Imperial Russia, its capital was Tashkent, population about 5,000,000. British and Persian forces tried to reach Baku in Azerbaijan and the Turkmen port of Krasnovodsk. Bukhara, Samarkand, Kokand and the former Trans-Caspian province would see various anti-Bolshevik risings over the next few years. In 1924, it was split into Tajik ASSR, Turkmen SSR, Uzbek SSR, Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast, Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast. In March 1918, activists of the Young Bukharian Movement informed the Bolsheviks that the Bukharans were ready for the revolution and that the people were awaiting liberation.
The Red Army marched to the gates of Bukhara and demanded that the emir surrender the city to the Young Bukharans. As Russian sources report, the emir responded by murdering the Bolshevik delegation, along with several hundred Russian inhabitants of Bukhara and the surrounding territories; the majority of Bukharans did not support an invasion and the ill-equipped and ill-disciplined Bolshevik army fled back to the Soviet stronghold at Tashkent. However, the emir had won only a temporary respite; as the civil war in Russia wound down, Moscow sent reinforcements to Central Asia. On 2 September 1920, an army of well-disciplined and well equipped Red Army troops under the command of Bolshevik general Mikhail Frunze attacked the city. After four days of fighting, the emir's citadel was destroyed, the Red flag was raised from the top of Kalyan Minaret, the Emir Alim Khan was forced to flee to his base at Dushanbe in Eastern Bukharan, to Kabul, Afghanistan. A nearby anti-Bolshevik stronghold in the Tadjik/Moslem village of Khangir declared its independence shortly afterwards, but soon surrendered after a 14-day siege by Russian and Bokhkori Bolsheviks.
It was quickly re-integrated back into Communist Bokhorah. The Bukharan People's Republic was proclaimed on 8 October 1920 under Faizullah Khojaev; the overthrow of the Emir was the impetus for an anti-Russian rebellion. In 1922, most of the territory of the republic was controlled by Basmachi, surrounding the city of Bukhara. Joseph Stalin would purge and exile many of the local Bukhori people as well as most of the local Jewish community from the former Bukharan People's Soviet Republic. Prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, the Bukharian Jews were one of the most isolated Jewish communities in the world; the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic was created as the successor to the Khanate of Khiva in February 1920 and declared on 26 April 1920. On 20 October 1923, it was transformed into the Khorezm Socialist Soviet Republic; the Khorezm SSR only survived until 17 February 1925, when it was divided between the Uzbek SSR, Turkmen SSR, Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast as part of the reorganization of Central Asia by Moscow according to nationalities.
The Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created on 14 October 1924 within the Russian SFSR from the predominantly Kazakh and Kyrgyz parts of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On 15 May 1925 it was renamed into the Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast. On 11 February 1926 it was reorganized into the Kyrgyz ASSR. On 5 December 1936 it became one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union; the Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast was created on February 19, 1925 by separating lands of the ethnic Karakalpaks from the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Khoresm People's Soviet Republic. Located within the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Karakalpak A. O. was transferred to the RSFSR from July 20, 1930 to March 20, 1932, at which time it was elevated to the Karakalpak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The Karakalpak ASSR was joined to the Uzbek SSR on December 5, 1936; the Kazakh ASSR was an autonomous republic of the Soviet Union. It became the Kazakh SSR on December 5, 1936.
Its original name was the Kirgiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. This ASSR was established on 26 August 1920, was a part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic In 1925 it was renamed the Kazakh Autonomou
Alania
Alania was a medieval kingdom of the Iranian Alans that flourished in the Northern Caucasus in the location of latter-day Circassia and modern North Ossetia–Alania, from its independence from the Khazars in the late 9th century until its destruction by the Mongol invasion in 1238-39. Its capital was Maghas, it controlled a vital trade route through the Darial Pass; the kingdom reached its peak under the rule of king Dorgolel. The Alans originated as an Iranian-speaking subdivision of the Sarmatians, they were split by the invasion of the Huns into the European and the Caucasian. The Caucasian Alans occupied part of the North Caucasian plain and the foothills of the main mountain chain from the headwaters of the Kuban River in the west to the Darial Gorge in the east. Alania was an important buffer state during the Byzantine-Arab Wars and Khazar-Arab Wars of the 8th century. Theophanes the Confessor left a detailed account of Leo the Isaurian's mission to Alania in the early 8th century. Leo was instructed by Emperor Justinian II to bribe the Alan leader Itaxes into severing his "ancient friendship" with the Kingdom of Abkhazia which had allied itself with Caliph Al-Walid I He crossed the mountain passes and concluded an alliance with the Alans, but was prevented from returning to Byzantium through Abasgia.
Although the Abkhazians spared no expense to have him imprisoned, the Alans refused to convey the Byzantine envoy to his enemies. After several months of adventures in the Northern Caucasus, Leo extricated himself from the precarious situation and returned to Constantinople. After Leo assumed the imperial title, the land of his mountaineer allies was invaded by Umar II's forces. A Khazar chieftain, hastened to their succor and, in 722, the joint Alan-Khazar army inflicted a defeat on the Arab general Tabit al-Nahrani; the Khazars erected several other strongholds in Alania at this period. In 728 Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik, having penetrated the Gate of the Alans, devastated the country of the Alans. Eight years Marwan ibn Muhammad passed by the Gate in order to ravage the forts in Alania. In 758, as Ibn al-Faqih reports, the Gate was held by Yazid ibn Usayd; as a result of their united stand against the successive waves of invaders from the south, the Alans of the Caucasus fell under the overlordship of the Khazar Khaganate.
They remained staunch allies of the Khazars in the 9th century, supporting them against a Byzantine-led coalition during the reign of the Khazar king Benjamin. According to the anonymous author of the Schechter Letter, many Alans were during this period adherents of Judaism. In the late 9th century, Alania became independent from the Khazars. In the early 10th century, the Alans fell under the influence of the Byzantine Empire due to the conversion of their ruler to Christianity; the conversion is documented in the letters of Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus to the local archbishop, whose name was Peter. When Ibn Rustah visited Alania at some point between 903 and 913, its king was by Christian; the Persian traveller came to Alania from Sarir, a Christian kingdom to the east: You go to the left from the kingdom of Sarir and, after three days of journey through mountains and meadows, arrive in the kingdom of Al-Lan. Their king is Christian at heart. You travel for ten days among rivers and woods before arriving at a fortress called the "Gate of the Alans".
It stands on the top of a mountain at the foot. The Byzantines, who had adopted an anti-Khazar foreign policy, involved the Alans in a war against the Khaganate during the reign of the Khazar ruler Aaron II the early 920s. In this war the Alans were defeated and their king captured. According to Muslim sources such as al-Mas'udi, the Alans abandoned Christianity and expelled the Byzantine missionaries and clergy contemporaneously with these events. Aaron's son married the daughter of the Alan king and Alania was re-aligned with the Khazars, remaining so until the collapse of the Khaganate in the 960s. After the downfall of Khazaria, the Alan kings allied with the Byzantines and various Georgian rulers for protection against encroachments by northern steppe peoples such as the Pechenegs and Kipchaks. John Skylitzes reports that Alda of Alania, after the death of her husband, "George of Abasgia", received Anakopia as a maritime fief from Emperor Romanus III; this happened in 1033, the year when the Alans and the Rus sacked the coast of Shirvan in modern-day Azerbaijan.
Alania is not mentioned in East Slavic chronicles, but archaeology indicates that the Alans maintained trade contacts with the Rus' principality of Tmutarakan. There is a stone grave cross, with a Cyrillic inscription from 1041, standing on the bank of the Bolshoi Yegorlyk River in present-day Stavropol Krai north of Alania. Two Russian crosses, datable to ca. 1200, were discovered by archaeologists in the heartland of medieval Alania. The Alans and Georgians collaborated in the Christianization of the Vainakhs and Dvals in the 12th and 13th centuries, Georgian missionaries were active in Alania and the Alan contingents were employed by the Georgian monarchs against their Muslim neighbors; the Alanian-Georgian alliance was cemented in the 1060s, when the Alans struck across Muslim Arran and sacked Ganja. In the 1120s King David the Builder of Georgia visited the Darial to reconcile the Alans with the Kipchaks, who thereupon were allowed to pass through Alania to the Georgian soil. David's son, Demetre I journeyed, c.
1153, to Alania acco
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest denomination of Islam, followed by nearly 90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word sunnah; the differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagreement over the succession to Muhammad and subsequently acquired broader political significance, as well as theological and juridical dimensions. According to Sunni traditions, Muhammad did not designate a successor and the Muslim community acted according to his sunnah in electing his father-in-law Abu Bakr as the first caliph; this contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad announced at the event of Ghadir Khumm his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor. Political tensions between Sunnis and Shias continued with varying intensity throughout Islamic history and they have been exacerbated in recent times by ethnic conflicts and the rise of Wahhabism; as of 2009, Sunni Muslims constituted 87–90% of the world's Muslim population. Sunni Islam is the world's largest religious denomination, followed by Catholicism.
Its adherents are referred to in Arabic as ahl as-sunnah wa ahl as-sunnah for short. In English, its doctrines and practices are sometimes called Sunnism, while adherents are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis and Ahlus Sunnah. Sunni Islam is sometimes referred to as "orthodox Islam". However, other scholars of Islam, such as John Burton believe that there is no such thing as "orthodox Islam"; the Quran, together with hadith and binding juristic consensus form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. Sharia rulings are derived from these basic sources, in conjunction with analogical reasoning, consideration of public welfare and juristic discretion, using the principles of jurisprudence developed by the traditional legal schools. In matters of creed, the Sunni tradition upholds the six pillars of iman and comprises the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools of rationalistic theology as well as the textualist school known as traditionalist theology. Sunnī commonly referred to as Sunnīism, is a term derived from sunnah meaning "habit", "usual practice", "custom", "tradition".
The Muslim use of this term refers to living habits of the prophet Muhammad. In Arabic, this branch of Islam is referred to as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah, "the people of the sunnah and the community", shortened to ahl as-sunnah. One common mistake is to assume that Sunni Islam represents a normative Islam that emerged during the period after Muhammad's death, that Sufism and Shi'ism developed out of Sunni Islam; this perception is due to the reliance on ideological sources that have been accepted as reliable historical works, because the vast majority of the population is Sunni. Both Sunnism and Shiaism are the end products of several centuries of competition between ideologies. Both sects used each other to further cement their own doctrines; the first four caliphs are known among Sunnis as the Rashidun or "Rightly-Guided Ones". Sunni recognition includes the aforementioned Abu Bakr as the first, Umar as the second, Uthman as the third, Ali as the fourth. Sunnis recognised different rulers as the caliph, though they did not include anyone in the list of the rightly guided ones or Rashidun after the murder of Ali, until the caliphate was constitutionally abolished in Turkey on 3 March 1924.
The seeds of metamorphosis of caliphate into kingship were sown, as the second caliph Umar had feared, as early as the regime of the third caliph Uthman, who appointed many of his kinsmen from his clan Banu Umayya, including Marwan and Walid bin Uqba on important government positions, becoming the main cause of turmoil resulting in his murder and the ensuing infighting during Ali's time and rebellion by Muawiya, another of Uthman's kinsman. This resulted in the establishment of firm dynastic rule of Banu Umayya after Husain, the younger son of Ali from Fatima, was killed at the Battle of Karbala; the rise to power of Banu Umayya, the Meccan tribe of elites who had vehemently opposed Muhammad under the leadership of Abu Sufyan, Muawiya's father, right up to the conquest of Mecca by Muhammad, as his successors with the accession of Uthman to caliphate, replaced the egalitarian society formed as a result of Muhammad's revolution to a society stratified between haves and have-nots as a result of nepotism, in the words of El-Hibri through "the use of religious charity revenues to subsidise family interests, which Uthman justified as "al-sila"."
Ali, during his rather brief regime after Uthman maintained austere life style and tried hard to bring back the egalitarian system and supremacy of law over the ruler idealised in Muhammad's message, but faced continued opposition, wars one after another by Aisha-Talhah-Zubair, by Muawiya and by the Kharjites. After he was murdered his followers elected Hasan ibn Ali his elder son from Fatima to succeed him. Hasan, shortly afterwards signed a treaty with Muawiaya relinquishing power in favour of the latter, with a condition inter alia, that one of the two who will outlive the other will be the caliph, that this caliph will not appoint a successor but will leave the matter of selection of the caliph to the public. Subsequently, Hasan was poisoned to death and Muawiya enjoyed unchallenged power. Not honouring his treaty with Hasan he however nominated his son Yazid to succeed him. Upon Muawiya's death, Yazid asked Husain the younger brother of Hasan, Ali's son and Muh
Central Asia
Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. The region consists of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, it is colloquially referred to as "the stans" as the countries considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix "-stan", meaning "land of". Central Asia has a population of about 72 million, consisting of five republics: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, a part of South Asia, is sometimes included in Central Asia. Central Asia has been tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people and ideas between Europe, Western Asia, South Asia, East Asia. The Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe and China; this crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization. In pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, populated by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Dahae.
After expansion by Turkic peoples, Central Asia became the homeland for the Kazakhs, Tatars, Turkmen and Uyghurs. From the mid-19th century until the end of the 20th century, most of Central Asia was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, both Slavic-majority countries, the five former Soviet "-stans" are still home to about 7 million ethnic Russians and 500,000 Ukrainians; the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions. Built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia; the most limited definition was the official one of the Soviet Union, which defined Middle Asia as consisting of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, hence omitting Kazakhstan. This definition was often used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two distinct terms: Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия.
Soon after independence, the leaders of the four former Soviet Central Asian Republics met in Tashkent and declared that the definition of Central Asia should include Kazakhstan as well as the original four included by the Soviets. Since this has become the most common definition of Central Asia; the UNESCO History of the Civilizations of Central Asia, published in 1992, defines the region as "Afghanistan, northeastern Iran and central Pakistan, northern India, western China and the former Soviet Central Asian republics."An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity, in particular, areas populated by Eastern Turkic, Eastern Iranian, or Mongolian peoples. These areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan and the Kashmir Valley of India may be included; the Tibetans and Ladakhi are included. Insofar, most of the mentioned peoples are considered the "indigenous" peoples of the vast region.
Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan. There are several places that claim to be the geographic center of Asia, for example Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva in the Russian Federation, a village 200 miles north of Ürümqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region of China. Central Asia is an large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts, treeless, grassy steppes; the vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a homogeneous geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too rugged for farming; the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes: The world's northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, 50°18' N; the Northern Hemisphere's southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17' N. The world's shortest distance between non-frozen desert and permafrost: 770 km.
The Eurasian pole of inaccessibility. A majority of the people earn a living by herding livestock. Industrial activity centers in the region's cities. Major rivers of the region include the Amu Darya, the Syr Darya, the Hari River and the Murghab River. Major bodies of water include the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash, both of which are part of the huge west-central Asian endorheic basin that includes the Caspian Sea. Both of these bodies of water have shrunk in recent decades due to diversion of water from rivers that feed them for irrigation and industrial purposes. Water is an valuable resource in arid Central Asia and can lead to rather significant international disputes. Central Asia is bounded on the north by the forests of Siberia; the northern half of Cent
Peoples of the Caucasus
For caucasian in the racial sense, see Caucasian race. The peoples of the Caucasus are diverse comprising more than 50 ethnic groups throughout the Caucasus region. Caucasians who speak languages which have long been indigenous to the region are classified into three groups: Kartvelian peoples, Northeast Caucasian peoples and Northwest Caucasian peoples. Georgians Zans Mingrelians Lazs Svans Avar–Andic peoples: Avars Andic peoples: Andis Akhvakh Karata Botlikhs Godoberi Chamalals Bagvalals Tindis Tsezic peoples: Tsez Hinukh Bezhta Hunzibs Khwarshi Lezgic peoples: Aguls Lezgians Rutuls Tabasarans Tsakhurs Kryts Buduck Udins Archins Dargins Khinalug Laks Nakh peoples: Bats Chechens Kists Ingush Northwest Caucasian languages Abkhaz Abaza Circassians: Adyghe Kabarday Cherkess UbykhThe largest peoples speaking languages which belong to the Caucasian language families and who are resident in the Caucasus are the Georgians, the Chechens, the Lezgins, the Kabardins and the Avars, while outside the Caucasus, the largest people of Caucasian origin, in diaspora in more than 40 countries are the Circassians with about 3,000,000-4,000,000 speakers.
Georgians are the only Caucasian people -- Georgia. Abkhazia's status is disputed. Other Caucasian peoples have republics within the Russian Federation: Adyghe, Kabardins, Chechens, while other Northeast Caucasian peoples live in Dagestan. Caucasians that speak languages that belong to the Indo-European language family: Armenians Hellenic group: Caucasus Greeks, including Turkish-speaking Christian Greeks of Georgia or Urums Pontic Greeks Iranian group: Gilaks Mazanderanis Ossetians Talysh Kurds Tats Mountain Jews Yazidis Slavic group: Russians Kuban Cossacks Terek Cossacks UkrainiansArmenians number 3,215,800 in their native Armenia, though 8 million live outside the republic, forming the Armenian diaspora. Elsewhere in the region, they reside in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Russian North Caucasus; the Ossetians live in North Ossetia–Alania and in South Ossetia, de facto independent, but de jure is part of Georgia. The Yazidis reside in the western areas of Armenia in the Aragatsotn marz, in the eastern areas of Georgia.
An autonomous Kurdish region was created in 1923 in Soviet Azerbaijan but was abolished in 1929. Pontic Greeks reside in Georgia. Pontic Greeks had made up a significant component of the southern Caucasus region acquired from the Ottoman Turkish Empire that centred on the town of Kars. Russians live in the Russian North Caucasus and their largest concentration is in Stavropol Krai, Krasnodar Krai, in Adygea. Georgia and the former south Russian Caucasus province of Kars Oblast was home to a significant minority of ethnic Germans, although their numbers have become depleted as a result of deportations, immigration to Germany, assimilation into indigenous Christian Orthodox communities. Caucasians that speak languages that belong to the Semitic language family Assyrians in the Caucasus number 35,000 people, live in Armenia, Georgia and Southern Russia. There are up to 15,000 in Georgia, 3500 in Armenia, up to 15,000 in southern Russia and 1400 in Azerbaijan, they descend from the ancient Mesopotamians.
They are Eastern Rite Christians followers of the Assyrian Church of the East, speak and write Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic dialects. Caucasus Jews of two sub-ethnic groups Mountain Jews and Georgian Jews. There are about 15,000–30,000 Caucasus Jews. Arabs in the Caucasus: a population of nomadic Arabs was reported in 1728 as having rented winter pastures near the Caspian shores of Mughan. In 1888, an unknown number of Arabs still lived in the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire; as well as descendants of Sayyid and Siddiqui – the people with Arabian origin, but assimilated by other Caucasian peoples. However, some people identify not just as Sayyid or Siddiqui with non-Arabian ethnicity, but as Arabs. Caucasians that speak languages that belong to the Turkic language family: Kipchaks: Kumyks Balkars Karachays Nogais Oghuz: Azerbaijanis Meskhetian Turks TurkmensThe largest of the Turkic-speaking peoples in the Caucasus are Azerbaijanis who number 8,700,000 in the Republic of Azerbaijan. In the Caucasus region, they live in Georgia, Turkey and in Armenia.
The total number of Azerbaijanis is around 35 million. Other Turkic speakers live in their autonomous republics within Russian Federation: Karachays, while Kumyks and Nogais live in Dagestan; this gives ethnic locations about 1775 before the Russians came. All of these peoples were Sunni Muslims. In the mountains there were some pre-Islamic customs. NWCLS means Northwest Caucasian Language speakers and NECLS means Northeast Caucasian Language speakers; the linguistic nationalities that we now recognize are somewhat artificial. Two hundred years ago a man’s loyalty was to his friends, kin and chief and not pr
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a Soviet statesman who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, for several liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in 1894 in the village of Kalinovka, close to the present-day border between Russia and Ukraine, he was employed as a metal worker during his youth, he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. With the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy, he supported Joseph Stalin's purges, approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern Ukraine, he continued the purges there.
During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. On 5 March 1953, the death of Stalin triggered a power struggle in which Khrushchev emerged victorious after consolidating his leadership of the party with that of the Council of Ministers. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, he delivered the "Secret Speech", which denounced Stalin's purges and ushered in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union, his domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were ineffective in agriculture. Hoping to rely on missiles for national defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, Khrushchev's rule saw the most tense years of the Cold War, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies. This emboldened his potential opponents, who rose in strength and deposed the Premier in October 1964. However, he did not suffer the deadly fate of previous Soviet power struggles, was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the countryside, his lengthy memoirs were smuggled to the West and published in part in 1970. Khrushchev died in 1971 of a heart attack. Khrushchev was born on 15 April 1894, in Kalinovka, a village in what is now Russia's Kursk Oblast, near the present Ukrainian border, his parents, Sergei Khrushchev and Xeniya Khrushcheva, were poor peasants of Russian origin, had a daughter two years Nikita's junior, Irina. Sergei Khrushchev was employed in a number of positions in the Donbas area of far eastern Ukraine, working as a railwayman, as a miner, labouring in a brick factory. Wages were much higher in the Donbas than in the Kursk region, Sergei Khrushchev left his family in Kalinovka, returning there when he had enough money.
Kalinovka was a peasant village. Nikita worked as a herdsboy from an early age, he was schooled for a total of four years, part in the village parochial school and part under Shevchenko's tutelage in Kalinovka's state school. According to Khrushchev in his memoirs, Shevchenko was a freethinker who upset the villagers by not attending church, when her brother visited, he gave the boy books, banned by the Imperial Government, she urged Nikita to seek further education. In 1908, Sergei Khrushchev moved to the Donbas city of Yuzovka. Yuzovka, renamed Stalino in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961, was at the heart of one of the most industrialized areas of the Russian Empire. After the boy worked in other fields, Khrushchev's parents found him a place as a metal fitter's apprentice. Upon completing that apprenticeship, the teenage Khrushchev was hired by a factory, he lost that job when he collected money for the families of the victims of the Lena Goldfields Massacre, was hired to mend underground equipment by a mine in nearby Rutchenkovo, where his father was the union organiser, he helped distribute copies and organise public readings of Pravda.
He stated that he considered emigrating to the United States for better wages, but did not do so. When World War I broke out in 1914, Khrushchev was exempt from conscription because he was a skilled metal worker, he was employed by a workshop that serviced ten mines, he was involved in several strikes that demanded higher pay, better working conditions, an end to the war. In 1914, he married daughter of the lift operator at the Rutchenkovo mine. In 1915, they had a daughter, in 1917, a son, Leonid. After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, the new Russian Provisional Government in Petrograd had little influence over Ukraine. Khrushchev was elected to the worker's council in Rutchenkovo, in May he became its chairman, he did not join the Bolsheviks until 1918, a year in which the Russian Civil War, between the Bolsheviks and a coalition of opponents known as the White Army, began in earnest. His biographer, William Taubman, suggests that Khrushchev's delay in affiliating himself with the Bolsheviks was because he felt closer to the Mensheviks who prioritised economic progress, whereas the Bolsheviks so
Russia
Turkey
Kazakhstan