Editing Caucasus (section)

===Modern period===
[[File:Pyotr Nikolayevich Gruzinsky - The mountaineers leave the aul.jpg|thumb|right|A scene from the [[Caucasian War]], by [[Pyotr Gruzinsky]]]]
Up to and including the early 19th century, most of the [[Southern Caucasus]] and southern [[Dagestan]] all formed part of the [[Qajar dynasty|Persian Empire]]. In 1813 and 1828 by the [[Treaty of Gulistan]] and the [[Treaty of Turkmenchay]] respectively, the Persians were forced to irrevocably cede the Southern Caucasus and Dagestan to [[Imperial Russia]].<ref>Timothy C. Dowling [https://books.google.com/books?id=KTq2BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA728 ''Russia at War: From the Mongol Conquest to Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Beyond''] pp 728–730 ABC-CLIO, 2 Dec. 2014. {{ISBN|978-1598849486}}</ref> In the ensuing years after these gains, the [[Russian conquest of the Caucasus|Russians took the remaining part of the Southern Caucasus]], comprising western Georgia, through several wars from the [[Ottoman Empire]].<ref>Suny, page 64</ref><ref>Allen F. Chew. "An Atlas of Russian History: Eleven Centuries of Changing Borders", [[Yale University Press]], 1970, p. 74</ref>

In the second half of the 19th century, the Russian Empire also conquered the North Caucasus. In the aftermath of the [[Caucasian Wars]], the Russian military perpetrated an [[ethnic cleansing of Circassians]], expelling this indigenous population from its homeland.<ref>Yemelianova, Galina, Islam nationalism and state in the Muslim Caucasus. Caucasus Survey, April 2014. p. 3</ref><ref>Memoirs of Miliutin, "the plan of action decided upon for 1860 was to cleanse [ochistit'] the mountain zone of its indigenous population", per Richmond, W. <u>The Northwest Caucasus: Past, Present, and Future</u>. Routledge. 2008.</ref> Between the 1850s and World War I, about a million North Caucasian Muslims arrived in the Ottoman Empire as refugees.{{sfn|Hamed-Troyansky|2024|p=49}}

Having killed and deported most of the Armenians of Western Armenia during the [[Armenian genocide]], the Turks intended to eliminate the Armenian population of [[Eastern Armenia]].<ref>Balakian. ''Burning Tigris'', pp. 319-323.</ref> During the 1920 [[Turkish–Armenian War]], 60,000 to 98,000 Armenian civilians were estimated to have been killed by the Turkish army.<ref>[[Vahakn Dadrian]]. (2003). ''The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus''. New York: Berghahn Books, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZCVJMAVoMM0C&pg=PA360 pp. 360–61]. {{ISBN|1-57181-666-6}}.</ref>

In the 1940s, around 480,000 [[Chechens]] and [[Ingush people|Ingush]], 120,000 [[Karachays|Karachay]]–[[Balkars]] and [[Meskhetian Turks]], thousands of [[Kalmyks]], and 200,000 [[Kurds]] in Nakchivan and [[Caucasus Germans]] were [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|deported en masse]] to Central Asia and Siberia by the Soviet security apparatus. About a quarter of them died.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Weitz |first=Eric D. |url=https://archive.org/details/centuryofgenocid0000weit |title=A century of genocide: utopias of race and nation |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2003 |isbn=0-691-00913-9 |page=[https://archive.org/details/centuryofgenocid0000weit/page/82 82] |url-access=registration}}</ref>
[[File:1993 Georgia war1.svg|thumb|upright=1.35|[[Georgian Civil War]] and the [[War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)|War in Abkhazia]] in August–October 1993]]

The Southern Caucasus region was unified as a single political entity twice&nbsp;– during the [[Russian Civil War]] ([[Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic]]) from 9 April 1918 to 26 May 1918, and under the [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] rule ([[Transcaucasian SFSR]]) from 12 March 1922 to 5 December 1936. Following the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] in 1991, [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]], [[Azerbaijan]] and [[Armenia]] became independent nations.
[[File:Pictorial Map of the Caucasus.jpg|thumb|Ethnic-administrative borders on the Soviet and Post-soviet Caucasus on the pictorial map of the Caucasus]]

The region has been subject to various territorial disputes since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the [[First Nagorno-Karabakh War]] (1988–1994), the [[East Prigorodny Conflict]] (1989–1991), the [[War in Abkhazia (1992–93)]], the [[First Chechen War]] (1994–1996), the [[Second Chechen War]] (1999–2009), [[Russo-Georgian War]] (2008), and the [[Second Nagorno-Karabakh War]] (2020).