According to UNESCO, Circassian is on the list of languages at risk of disappearing, especially among the Shapsug subtribe living on the Black Sea coast of the Kuban region. Despite this, recent initiatives by the authorities in the Russian Federation have further marginalized the Circassian language, which, for many centuries, used to be the region’s Indigenous language. Formal and informal conditions for teaching local languages, history, and culture—known in Russia as kraevedenie—have gradually deteriorated. One reason for the marginalization of the Circassian language is the increased demand for the promotion of Russian patriotism, which has increased since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This has taken place despite claims of the opposite by the local and federal authorities. Circassians have undergone a revival of their identity and history since the fall of the Soviet Union, including narratives and documentation on the extreme violence of the Russian army during the armed colonization in the nineteenth century. Today, this renewed Russification threatens to force the Circassian efforts into the private sphere, as during the Soviet period.