Beginning Friday night, hundreds of millions of people will tune in to the Winter Olympics, which Russia hopes will prove to the world that the country has re-emerged as a world power after its long, post-Soviet funk—and that Sochi itself deserves “international resort” status. Elided from this narrative, though, is what took place in exactly the same spot 150 years ago, when Sochi's indigenous residents were routed by the Imperial Russian Army, the survivors herded onto ships and exiled, never to return.
Unacknowledged by Vladimir Putin’s government, the ethnic cleansing of the mostly-Muslim Circassians is considered Europe’s first modern genocide by many historians, and provides a gloomy backdrop to the Olympic glamour in this subtropical city—not least for surviving Circassians who are furious over being excluded from the celebration in Sochi.