Throughout history, violence has been an indispensable part of the Russian state tradition. Not only non-Russian subjects but also ethnic Russians have experienced their share of this tradition. In many cases, this tradition has turned into genocidal practices against non-Russian subjects. Due to the current political bottlenecks of the international community, this article focuses on the difficulties experienced in the recognition of these crimes against humanity and examines the genocidal practices of the Russian state in the North Caucasus, especially the Circassian Genocide in the 19th century. For more than two centuries, Russian state politics has been trying to erase the term “the Caucasus” as a geographical term in international public opinion and to make this region part of Southern Russia by cleansing or assimilating the indigenous North Caucasian nations. While the article focuses on the ‘velikorus’ (Great Russian) practices in the Tsarist and Soviet periods, it draws attention to the fact that there have been similar examples in the first thirty years of the so-called Russian federal state.