The Circassians and the other inhabitants of the Caucasus region did not fit into the Czar’s reform program, because he viewed them as an inherent risk to the security of Russia’s southern frontier and the nation is still coming to terms with the consequences of the czar’s expulsion of the Circassian people today. The future Czar Alexander II was born in Moscow’s Kremlin on April 17, 1818, during Easter Week, a good omen to the Russian Orthodox. At the time of Alexander’s birth, Russia was at a crossroads. The reigning Czar, Alexander I, uncle to the infant, had received an Enlightenment education from his grandmother, Catherine the Great.
