Cherkessk

Cherkessk is a city in Russia, the capital of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic.
Population: 123,168 (2020).

National composition (1989): Circassians - 35.0%, Karachais - 20.7%, Abazins - 11.5%, Russians - 33.0%,

The city is located in the Precaucasia, on the right bank of the Kuban River.

It was founded in 1804 by the Cossacks of the 3rd Hoper regiment as a Russian military fortification on the Kuban border line, where in 1790 Russian troops under the command of General I. I. German defeated the 40,000-strong Turkish army of Batal Pasha. In the autumn of 1825, the first settlers from the Stavropol province appeared near the redoubt, so the Cossack village of Batalpashinskaya was formed - the rarest case when the settlement was named in honor of not the winner, but the defeated.
In 1880, the village of Batalpashinskaya became the administrative center of the district (from 1886 - department) of the Kuban region. In Batalpashinskaya, grain and livestock were traded; a sawmill operated.

Since 1922 - the center of the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Region, since 1926 - the center of the Circassian National District, from 1928 to 1943 - the Circassian Autonomous Region.
In 1931, the settlement was given the status of a city and the name Batalpashinsk. In 1934 Batalpashinsk was renamed Sulimov by the name of the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR D. E. Sulimov (1890-1937). In 1937 Sulimov was arrested and shot, after which the city was renamed Yezhov-Cherkessk, in honor of the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs N. I. Yezhov (1895-1940). In 1939, Yezhov was also arrested, after which only the second part of the name Cherkessk remained outside the city.
Since 1957, Cherkessk has been the center of the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Region, since 1991 - the capital of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic.

Architecture, attractions

18 km from Cherkessk - Batalpashy lakes (turned into a reservoir, the so-called Cherkess Sea), which is a reserve of drinking water for the cities of resorts of Caucasian mineral waters, receiving water from the Great Stavropol Canal in the summer during the melting of snow, giving water through a pumping station. To the south of Cherkessk, near the city of Ust-Dzheguta, there are mounds of the Bronze Age (3-2 millennia BC), in which bronze jewelry, ceramics with carved ornament are found.

Near the village of Krasnogorsk there are ruins of Russian fortifications (a round stone tower with slit-shaped loopholes) of the period of the Caucasian War (1832).