The exchange of prisoners as a new form of the Russian-Circassian dialogue at the beginning of the 19th century: Part i

The article discusses the exchange of prisoners as a form of Russian-circassian dialogue that allowed to return the 160 Russian prisoners to their homeland in 1803-1804. The attention is paid to the social, gender composition of the Russian prisoners, the characteristics of the persons who acted as the exchangers are given. The materials of the prisoner exchange organization are analyzed. As materials there are used the unpublished documents of state archive of the Krasnodar Krai (Krasnodar, Russian Federation). The specialized and memoir literature is also attracted to the study. In the solution of research tasks there were used the traditional scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, concretization, generalization. The statistical method is of great importance, which was calculated for gender, ethnic and social compositions of exchanged prisoners. There were calculated also the duration of stay in captivity. The attention is given to the national and social composition of the publicans. The authors concluded that the exchange of prisoners in 1803-1804 was one of the most effective measures for the return of Russian citizens in Russia. In the course of the exchange, the Russian side often advanced the publicans on the territory of Circassia, which led to the loss of 189 circassians for 160 Russian captives. The issues of the exchange were dealt by the trans-kuban armenians, as well as circassians, who had relatives among the captives. During the exchange of prisoners the gender imbalance was discovered-153 men and 7 women. The reasons for this imbalance was the desire of the owners to keep the Russian women for economic purposes or for further sale them in Turkey. Copyright © 2017 by Academic Publishing House Researcher s.r.o. Copyright © 2017 by Sochi State University.