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Below I shall try to give a short review of the history of
Abkhazia and Abkhazian-Georgian relations. No claims are made as to an
in-depth study of the remote past nor as to any new discoveries. However, I
feel it necessary to express my own point of view about the cardinal issues
of Abkhazian history over which fierce political controversies have been
raging and, as far as possible, to dispel the mythology that surrounds it. So
much contradictory nonsense has been touted as truth: the twenty five
centuries of Abkhazian statehood; the dual aboriginality of the Abkhazians;
Abkhazia is Russia; Abkhazians are Georgians; Abkhazians came to Western
Georgia in the 19th century; Abkhazians as bearers of Islamic fundamentalism;
the wise Leninist national policy according to which Abkhazia should have
been a union republic, and Stalin's pro-Georgian intrigues which turned the
treaty-related Abkhazian republic into an autonomous one.
Early Times to 1917.
The Abkhazian people (self-designation Apsua) constitute one of the most
ancient autochthonous inhabitants of the eastern Black
Sea littoral. According to the last All-Union census, within the
Abkhazian ASSR, whose total population reached 537,000, the Abkhazians
(93,267 in 1989) numbered just above 17% - an obvious ethnic minority.
With some difference in dialects (Abzhu - which forms the
basis of the literary language, and Bzyb), and also in sub-ethnic groups
(Abzhu; Gudauta, or Bzyb; Samurzaqano), ethnically, in social, cultural and
psychological respects the Abkhazian people represent a historically formed
stable community - a nation. The Abkhazian language belongs to the
Abkhaz-Adyghe, north-western group of the Ibero-Caucasian language family.
This group, along with Abkhazian, includes the Abazin, Adyghe,
Kabardino-Circassian and Ubykh languages spoken by the kindred peoples of the
Northern Caucasus: the Abazins, Adyghe,
Kabardians, Circassians, and Shapsugh -united under the common name of
Adyghe.
The language and ethnocultural closeness with the Adyghe
does not mean any isolation of the Abkhazians from other peoples of the
Northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia. From
ancient times particularly close cultural and genetic ties linked the
Abkhazians with Georgian tribes, their immediate neighbours in the eastern Black Sea littoral. This is confirmed by the
archaeological remains of material culture (in particular, by the diffusion
of the Colchian culture of the Bronze and Early Iron Ages throughout the
territory of Western Georgia, including a large part of the present-day
Abkhazian Autonomy), Georgian-Abkhazian ethnographic parallels, mutual
borrowing of lexical and morphological elements in the languages, numerous coincidences
in place names, etc. Even the earliest mention of the ancestors of the
Abkhazians in Assyrian Sources under the names of the tribe Abeshla (in the
inscription of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser, 11th century B.C.) is found
in immediate proximity with the listing of Georgian tribes Qulha (Colchians),
Zevah (Jovah), Taochoi, etc. forming the mixed population of this region.
References to ancient Abkhazians (under the ethnonyms
Abasgoi and Absili or Apsili) in classical authors, in particular Pliny the
Younger, Arrian and other Roman sources of the first and second centuries,
are also in permanent correlation with the listing of various tribes of
Kartvelian origin (Mingrel-Chan and Svan). So, ancient Georgians lived with
ancient Abkhazians on common land, engaging in complex ethnocultural
interaction. The antiquity of origin and length of residence of the
Abkhazians in this land is acknowledged by historical science: the idea that
they are newcomers is out of the question. In the Abkhazian national
mentality home is rightly felt to be this strip of rich land (8,600 square
kilometers) between the Greater Caucasus Range and the Black
Sea shore. It is bounded by the river Psou in the north-west and
by the Inguri in the south-east, covering the woody slopes of the Caucasus
mountains and the sub-tropical zone of the Kolkheti lowland, which, according
to the administrative division of the USSR, was over the decades officially
designated the Abkhazian ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) within
the Georgian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic).
The right of the Abkhazians to consider this land to be their
historical homeland - the ancient arena of their ethnogenesis - is beyond all
question. However, any ideas that their ancestors were the only inhabitants
of this land, and that there are no ancient roots of Georgian culture here,
are absolutely erroneous and illusory.
The point is not only that the boundaries of the settlement of the Abkhazians
in ancient times and throughout the Middle Ages were vague and transparent,
but that they suffered considerable change and were eventually defined quite
arbitrarily as the borders of the Abkhazian
Soviet Socialist
Republic. This claimed
to be a state created on the basis of the right to national
self-determination of the Abkhazian ethnos, though the Abkhazians constitute
an ethnic minority on this territory.
In the Georgian national mentality this land is also rightly considered as
their own territory, an organic part of the Georgian people who have lived
here from time immemorial, formed their culture, gave their names to the
mountains and rivers, towns and villages, fought side by side with the
Abkhazian people against common enemies and were subject to common kings and
princes. In the dramatic peripeteia of ancient and mediaeval history this, of
course, did not rule out a shifting alignment of forces when related tribes
and close neighbours fought against each other and argued over land, faith,
crown and booty. Be that as it may, in 1917 on the territory of the future
Abkhazian ASSR the Georgians totalled 42.1 % of the local population, and the
Abkhazians 21.4%. So, not only by virtue of historico-cultural association,
but also ethnodemographically this land should be considered part of Georgia.
From the 6th century B.C. the territory
of Abkhazia belonged to the most
ancient Colchian kingdom
of Western Transcaucasia,
the heyday of which was in the 4th century B.C. This was the first attempt to
unite all local tribes into a single ancient Georgian state. After the
disintegration of the Colchian kingdom (2nd century BC), its territory became
dismembered and its western lands of the Black Sea littoral, including
Abkhazia, were captured by Mithradates VI, (The Kingdom of Bosporus also
became part of the Kingdom
of Pontus at the end of
the 2nd century B.C.) Eventually the Greeks were replaced by Roman
legionaries, and already in 64 B.C. the lands of Abkhazia and Colchis
together with the Pontic kingdom found themselves within the Roman Empire.
Click on the map for better resolution
The local tribes waged a persistent struggle against Roman domination. Among
the first to secede from the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire was
Western Georgia where, at the end of the 4th century A.D., the Kingdom of
Lazica (or Egrisi) came into being, comprising the territory of present-day
Abkhazia and Ajaria (Atchara). Ancient Georgian tribes, known under the name
of Laz, were by no means the only inhabitants of this multitribal and
multilingual state. Unfolding in an endless struggle and with frequent wars
both with late Rome and with the new powerful empires of Byzantium and
Sasanid Iran, which sought to extend their domination to the eastern Black
Sea area, the dramatic history of Lazica was a common landmark in the process
of the becoming of both Georgian and Abkhazian statehood and early Christian
culture. However, the processes of the diffusion of Christianity among the
peoples of the Transcaucasus were not absolutely synchronous. Georgia is
considered as having become christianized from 337, and Abkhazia much later -
from 523.6. In the sixth and seventh centuries Western Georgia together with
Abkhazia was within Byzantium and was actually
the arena of incessant wars: between Byzantium
and Iran for dominance on
these lands, between the confederated local tribes and their Constantinople
rulers, and between the warriors of the Caliphate invading the Caucasus and the forces opposing them such as the
Khazars. At times the Arabs concluded temporary alliances but these soon
broke up.
Towards the 730s an early feudal Abkhazian principality was formed as a
stable union of Abkhazian and Georgian tribes. This principality consolidated
its power in the battle of Anakopia (736), which put an end to Arab
aggression. At the end of the eighth century the Abkhazian state freed itself
from Byzantine vassalage, and the Abkhazian prince Leon II received the title
of Abkhazian king (with the active help of the Khazar Khanate (with which
Leon was related through family kinship: his mother was the daughter of the
Khazar Khan). The Abkhazian kingdom comprised the entire territory of Western
Georgia, including Lazica. Its population was
made up of Abkhazian (the minority) and Kartvelian Georgian tribes (the
majority: the Laz, Mingrels and Svans). At this period these tribes
respectively contributed to the formation of the Abkhazian and Georgian
nationalities. The capital of the kingdom was Kutaisi,
and the whole territory extending from Nikopsia in the north to the Tchorokhi
(in modern Ajaria) in the south, and from the Black Sea
in the west to the Likhi (Surami) Range in the east. It was divided into
eight principalities - Saeristavos: Abkhazian, Tskhumi (the old Georgian name
of Sukhumi),
Bedian, Svan, Racha-Takverian, Gurian, Kutaisian and Shorapanian.
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for better resolution
The Abkhazian kingdom reached its acme in the ninth and tenth centuries
(under Giorgi II and Leon III), becoming a powerful united state, polyethnic
in population, with a prevalence of Georgians and Abkhazians - and a
developed feudal society with a high culture. As correctly stressed by
Stanislav Lakoba, referring to the studies of Academician G.A. Melikishvili:
'the kings of Abkhazia carried on active constructional work, erecting
numerous churches, including those in western Georgia (Martvili) and even in
southern Georgia (Kumordo) ... ; the capital of the Abkhazian kingdom,
Kutaisi, became the capital of united Georgia, retaining this status for more
than a century..."
In 978, after the death of the childless Teodosi, the
dynasty of the Abkhazian kings and the kingdom of Abkhazia
came to an end. However, the development of Abkhazian culture and statehood
naturally continued within the broader, united Georgian state. The first to
come to the throne was Bagrat III Bagrationi (978-1014) whose father was
Georgian and mother Abkhazian, sister of Teodosi. Subsequently, throughout
the Middle Ages, the process of the integration of Abkhazia and Georgia
intensified in the political, economic, military and cultural aspects. It
became traditional to conduct joint military campaigns of the Abkhazians and
Georgians against aggressions threatening the Georgian kingdom, coming from
the Seljuk Sultanate (the battle of Basiani 1205), the Abbasid Caliphate, and
- with the expansion westward of the Empire of Genghis Khan and theGenghisids
- from the Tatar-Mongol hordes whose invasion created a threat to the
Christian civilization of Transcaucasia.
In the fifteenth century, Georgia, weakened by cruel
feudal wars, disintegrated into several kingdoms and principalities (Kartli
Kakheti, Imereti, Samtskhe-Saatabago, Mingrelia, Guria and Abkhazia) which
became the object of rivalry and wars between the Shah's Iran and the
Sultan's Turkey (16th-18th centuries). After a short period of prosperity for
the independent principality of Sabediano (1470-1475) uniting Mingrelia
(Odishi principality), Guria and a considerable part of Abkhazia, Abkhazia
came under the dependence of Turkey and for almost 300 years (15th-18th
centuries) was under the Sultan's rule within the Ottoman Empire.
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for better resolution
Three centuries of Turkish rule failed to break the primordial historical ties
of Georgia and Abkhazia. Even the spread of Islam in Abkhazia did not become
a barrier to Georgian-Abkhazian cultural and historical unity. Georgia,
where Islam penetrated, affecting part of the Georgian ethnos proper
(Georgian Ajaria as well as the south of the country: Meskhet-Javakheti), and
some of the peoples and national groups settled there (Azerbaijanis, Turks,
Tatars) did not show religious intolerance towards the heterodox-Muslims or
any other religious minorities. As to the Abkhazians, the new religion did
not have a profound effect on their culture and national self-consciousness.
Characteristically, the article Abkhazians in the encyclopaedia Narody Mira
gives the following note: 'Believers: Muslim-Sunnites and Orthodox
Christians.'
Actually, orthodox Christians are relatively few, and the mass spread of
Islam began as far back as the Tatar-Mongol period with the penetration of
the Golden Horde influence and the Empire of the Timurids (14th-15th
centuries). It gained force in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries when
Abkhazia was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire
and was completed during the Caucasian war and the Mahajir movement (mass
emigration of Muslim Abkhaz during the nineteenth century under Tsarist rule.
This altered considerably the demographic balance in the area.) However,
there has always been an indifference towards religion in general - a rather
rare phenomenon in the East. Characteristically enough, there are actually no
significant monuments of Islamic architecture on Abkhazian territory, though
they abound in the neighbouring Northern Caucasus, the Crimea and even the
Middle Volga Area (Bulgary, Kazan), to say nothing of such regions as Azerbaijan and Central
Asia. The percentage of active believers among the Abkhazian
population ois very low. Suffice it to say, for example, that in Sukhumi, the capital of
Abkhazia, for more than than half a century there has never been a single
functioning mosque, and nobody worried about it. Generally speaking, the
Abkhazians could be considered heathen-pantheists rather than
monotheist-Muslims or Christians.10
It is safe to say that the Abkhazians do not feel any particular
'co-religionist' closeness either to their Christian neighbours (Georgians,
Greeks, Armenians, Russians and particularly Cossacks who appeared in the
Caucasus in the 19th century), nor to their Muslim neighbours Turks, Crimean
Tatars, Azerbaijanis, and peoples of the Northern Caucasus). All
demonstrations of solidarity or division occurred here, at least over recent
centuries, on any other basis save religion. The religious division of most
Abkhazians (Muslims) and most Georgians Christians) did not lead to a rupture
of their long-standing and stable ethnocultural ties or to any other
political complications.
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The fate of Abkhazia and Georgia in face of the spread of the power of the
Russian Empire in the Caucasus proved to be common.
They entered this Empire stage by stage with the conclusion by the Russian
autocracy of separate treaties with local kings and princes. These were often
then broken by the Russians as, for example, the shameless breach of the
terms and principles of the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk. The annexation of Georgia was carried out in parts, these
colonial seizures being screened by a seemingly voluntary incorporation of
separate territories into Russia.
Elements of voluntariness did occur at all levels - from the ruling elite to
the popular masses -for hopes were still alive that it would be easier with
the Russians, and that the white Tsar would liberate them from the Turkish
yoke and the imminent threat of Persian conquests. Nevertheless, this was a
common and equally sad fate for both Abkhazians and Georgians. They could not
withstand the onslaught of the Russian Empire and the conquest of the Caucasus.
The ideologues of anti-Georgian political movements in Abkhazia, and
primarily the leaders of the Slav Home, are particularly fond of stressing
that Abkhazia joined Russia in the nineteenth century independently of
Georgia and voluntarily. In his Essays on the Political History of Abkhazia
Stanislav Lakoba writes in this connection: 'As regards the Abkhazian principality
(excepting the free Abkhazian communities of Aibga, Pskhu, Dal, Tsabal,
etc.), it entered the patronage of the Russian Empire on February 17,1810, as
an independent state political unit. The Emperor Alexander I royally endorsed
on that day "the points of appeal of the Abkhazian sovereign
prince" the first of which reads: "I, the legitimate heir and
sovereign of Abkhazia... am becoming the subject and entering the service as
a hereditary subject of the All-gracious Autocrat of all Russia ..." Thus,
from 1810 to 1864 the Abkhazian principality was part of the Russian Empire
with the status of autonomy."
Voronov builds an entire historico-mythological structure on the theme of a
Russian-Abkhazian idyll. 'Slavic-Russian presence in Abkhazia', he writes,
'is attested from the 6th century A.D. Appropriate contacts developed after
965, with the establishment of the Tmutarakan principality in the
north-western Caucasus. The Abkhazians
supported Yuri Bogolyubski at the end of the 12th century; mediaeval Novgorod women of
fashion combed their hair with combs of Abkhazian boxwood' (some historical
argument!). In the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries the Abkhazians rendered
assistance to the Zaporozhye and Don Cossacks in their inroads into Turkey. The
commencement of the process of talks on Abkhazia's entry under Russian
protection and the participation of the Abkhazians in the actions of Russian
troops date back to the beginning of the 1770s. In 1806 the sovereign prince
of Abkhazia, Keleshbei Shervashidze, resumed talks on Abkhazia's entry under
Russian protection which soon cost him his life. In 1810 the Emperor
Alexander I granted an investiture charter to Keleshbei's son Giorgi,
according to which Abkhazia came under 'the supreme protection, power and defence
of the Russian Empire'. The Abkhazian autonomous principality, transformed
into the Sukhumi department in the 1860s, then into a district, was under
Russian administration till 1917.12 Thus in a nonsense version of history
Abkhazia was under the power and protection (of Russia), and there were no
national tragedies, no Mahajir movement, no national-liberation struggle of
the Abkhazians with Tsarism, only the tenderest Slavic-Russian presence, a
peaceful process of talks, and the unity of the Russians and Abkhazians in
military actions. Zurab Achba borders on political delirium when he declares:
"Abkhazia is Russia.
We can produce documents. Being a free and independent state we entered Russia in
1810. And we have never changed our choice ... I was baptized by an old
Russian woman named Manya... According to the constitution of 1925 the state
language of Abkhazia became Russian..."'
This version of history which presents the incorporation
of Abkhazia into Russia as
an act of historical progress that put an end to the Turkish yoke and
liberated the Abkhazians from a constant fear of invaders is developed by the
authors of Ethnopolis14, published by the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation.
It is necessary to shatter this myth and lay stress on the fact that there
was no voluntary, progressive, independent-from-Georgia joining of Abkhazia
to Russia;
furthermore there was no autonomous Abkhazian principality within the Russian
Empire. The conquest of the Caucasus was
part of the colonial policy of the Russian Empire and various means were used
in this policy, ranging from the exercise of military power to diplomatic
deception and comical acts of bequeathing or presenting lands and bribing
princes and nobles, the vast population having nothing at all to do with any
of this. Dismembering the states to be annexed, playing on the clan,
religious, dynastic and other contradictions, and seeking to set Christian
and Muslim peoples against each other, Russian autocracy advanced in the
Transcaucasus slowly, step by step annexing lands and countries, conquering
its peoples, constantly alternating bloody violence with promises and acts of
royal charity and tenderness to the new loyal subjects. Russia did not manage to annex Georgia straightaway, the same being true of Azerbaijan and the Northern
Caucasus. She had to crack and grab Georgia
in parts: the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti in 1804 - the Kingdom of Imereti
and the Gurian principality in 1810 - the Abkhazian principality, and only in
1878 - Ajaria (Batumi district) was wrested
from Turkey and made part
of Russia.
At the same time expulsion began of Muslims residing on lands from Kars to Batumi.
Georgia did not cease to
be Georgia
because of this, and the tragedies of all the peoples incorporated and subjugated
by the Russian autocracy differed very little from one another. For the
Abkhazian people this incorporation did not mean a mythical liberation from a
constant fear of invaders, for it had not lived in constant fear, and its
history was quite different until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Nor did it bring illusory autonomy (autonomy was out of the question in
autocratic Russia),
but the most brutal economic oppression, and moral and political humiliation.
Not wishing to endure this condition, the Abkhazian people responded to the
attempt at bringing it into the citizenship of the all-gracious autocrat by
taking part in the Caucasian war and, after its defeat, by the mass tragic
exodus of the Mahajir movement when thousands of Abkhazians left for exile in
Turkey.
'This famous Caucasian war', writes A. Avtorkhanov, 'began back in 1817 and
ended ... in the capture of the outstanding commander the Imam Shamil. No
other war of conquest of alien peoples cost Russia so many casualties as the
Caucasian war, and its duration (55 years) is in general unprecedented in the
history of colonial wars. It began under Alexander 1, continued throughout
the reign of Nicholas I, and ended only under Alexander II.'11
In his work Russia as a Multinational Empire, Andreas Kappeler brings to
light the real purposes of Russian autocratic colonial policy in the
Transcaucasus which was considered to be 'a colony inhabited by uncivilized
asiatics' and which, according to the 1873 decision of the Imperial State
Council, was to form a single body with Russia and to bring the local
population to a point at which it spoke Russian, and thought and felt in
Russian. He emphasizes the exceptional importance of the 'protracted war of
the freedom-loving peoples of the Caucasus against the attempt to dominate
them ('the fact that small Muslim peoples waged such a long war with the
mighty Russian giant became a symbol of anti-colonial resistance for many
years - up to the Afghan war of the recent past'). Kappeler notes that
whereas in the war headed by Shamil, Chechnia, Daghestan and Ingushetia were
his main support, the peoples of the Adyghe community (Circassians) did not
share their Islamic fanaticism and were not in a hurry to rally to the banner
of the Hazawat or holy war against the infidels. After the defeat and capture
(1859) of Shamil, when the resistance of the Eastern Caucasus seemed to have
been crushed, the Russian colonisers had to face an enhanced resistance of
the Circassians or, to be more precise, all the peoples of the AdygheKabardino-Abkhazian
community in the Western Caucasus.' Acting
to some degree independently from Shamil and sharing muridism and its
postulates only to a small extent, Circassian tribes nevertheless offered
successful armed resistance to the Russian troops for decades. They relied on
support from Ottoman Turkey with which they had long-standing links. Having
defeated Shamil, Russia
brought her entire brutal power to bear on the Circassians, and from 1864 she
controlled the whole Caucasus, including its
western edge. Populating the Black Sea
Coast and the fertile foothills of
the Caucasus with Christian colonists, Russia destroyed the Circassians
and drove them from their native lands. Some of them were exiled, others fled
from Russian domination and emigrated voluntarily. In the 1860s-1870s, almost
all the surviving Circassians (at least 300,000) emigrated to the Ottoman Empire. In 1897, there were 44,746 Circassians
left in Russia.
(According to other sources, the number of the Circassians that emigrated in
1860 reached two million.) The majority of Abkhazians linguistically related
to the Circassians also emigrated to the Ottoman Empire.
This emigration occurred in several waves during the nineteenth century... It
was a tragedy which in a certain respect anticipated the forced deportation
of peoples in the twentieth century. '16
Both the Georgians and the Abkhazians reacted to this strengthening of
autocratic, social and national oppression with revolts, peasant uprisings,
and political disturbances (the revolt in Abkhazia or Lykhny in 1866, which
was cruelly suppressed by the tsarist troops under the command of the
Governor-General of Kutaisi - Svyatopolk Mirsky). Mass actions of the
Abkhazians in support of Turkey during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878
caused fresh brutal repressions: by Royal Decree of 31 May 1880 the entire
Abkhazian people were officially declared guilty, and thousands of Abkhazians
were exiled to eastern and northern provinces of Russia, the wave of Mahajirs
reaching 50,000. Central Abkhazia from the Kodori river to the Psyrtskha was
almost completely deserted, as well as the lands once populated by Abkhazians
in the Adler, Gagra, Sukhumi,
and Gulripsh districts.
Furthermore, as noted by contemporaries, 'there was an order that Abkhazians
should not settle in places between the rivers Kodori and Psyrtskha'. The
Memorandum on the Colonization in the Sukhumi District, drawn up by its
commander Colonel Brakker in 1895, clearly shows for whom these lands were
intended. The memorandum reads: 'It is desirable to save as much free land as
possible for the settlement of exclusively native Russian people.""
A little earlier Alexander II endorsed the plan drawn up by his Vice Regent
in the Caucasus, Prince Michael Romanov, which envisaged the settling of the
territory from the mouth of the Kuban to the river Inguri by Cossacks.11 So
much for the close historic ties unifying Russia and Abkhazia.
Not a trace was left of the illusory independence of the Abkhazian
principality, the last sovereign of which in 1823-1864 was Prince Mikheil
Sharvashidze (Chachba), a representative of an ancient Abkhazian aristocratic
family. He had been granted the rank of general for his outstanding service
to the Emperor. Georgia
was divided into Tiflis and Kutaisi
gubernias (provinces). In 1864 the Abkhazian principality was renamed as the Sukhumi military
department. Broadened in 1868 through the inclusion of Pitsunda and
Ochamchire districts, it existed till 1893 when it was transformed into the Sukhumi military district and was included in the Kutaisi military
governorship. From 1904 till 1917 Gagra and its environs were excluded from
the Sukhumi military district and subjected to
the Sochi military district of the Black Sea coast province on the initiative of Prince
Oldenburg, a relative of the Emperor. The concept of Abkhazia was restored
only after the overthrow of tsarism and the disintegration of the Russian
Empire.
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map for better resolution
It should be stressed that from ancient times Abkhazia emerged as a
constituent part of Georgia.
The ethnic Abkhazians as well as the Kartvelian tribes proper (the Karts,
Egrians, Svans, and others) made a contribution to the birth of Georgian
culture and statehood - common and unitary for this region. The integration
of Abkhazia with other territories was due to geopolitical conditions and to
the interests of the peoples. Here reference is not to a union of two
different states isolated and opposed to each other. If small Abkhazia,
occupying a narrow strip of the Black Sea littoral, had become a barrier to
the powerful state drive of Georgia
to the Black Sea, she might have been
crushed by that larger and stronger state. However, in union with Georgia,
Abkhazia preserved her ethnohistorical space and identity. Since ancient
times all this land has been the zone of contact of the Georgian and
Abkhazian ethnoses (tribes, nationalities, nations in the making).
Historically the culture of the region was formed as a Georgian national
culture with many common principles and parameters, despite the linguistic
and religious peculiarities of the peoples inhabiting it.19
The Abkhazian Kingdom
of the ninth and tenth centuries and the united Georgian Kingdom,
experiencing its heyday in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were,
irrespective of the change of dynasties, structures of Georgian statehood.
The tragedy of Georgia's
disintegration into separate feudal principalities was a common tragedy of
both the Georgian and Abkhazian peoples, for the disintegration was followed
by attacks of enemies, predatory wars, occupation, break up of the common
cultural zone, gradual annexation and finally colonization with all its
tragic consequences including mass repressions and deportations. Both big and
small nations in the Caucasus, Muslims and
Orthodox believers, mountaineers and plainsmen, became victims of Russian
autocratic colonial policy and Russian imperialism, hypocritically covering
its real aims under its civilising or Christian missionary activities.
In this common calamity neither the Abkhazians nor the Georgians had any
advantage over each other, nor is there any moral foundation to calculations
of who fell victim to deceit or aggression earlier or later, who suffered
more and who less.
1917 to 1931
The fate of the Abkhazians, Georgians and other peoples of
the Caucasus was roughly the same. Even
after the Revolution of 1917 the first sigh of hope, a brief dawn of freedom,
and attempts at self-determination were followed by bloody Bolshevik terror.
The Bolsheviks were particularly merciless to their flesh and blood and their
close neighbours. Lavrenti Beria, who hailed from Mingrelia, Western Georgia, destroyed on his own initiative more
than ten thousand of his fellow-countrymen, Mingrelians, and annihilated the
pick of the Abkhazian nation, including its Bolshevik leadership of the 1920s
and early 1930s, headed by Nestor Lakoba. For several decades the Georgian
and Abkhazian peoples equally came under the grip of the Soviet empire with
its operetta autonomies and Soviet republics deprived of real rights of
self-determination.
Abkhazia had her own hell in this common nightmare -
perhaps not the most terrible if one recalls the harder fate of the deported,
punished peoples. However, this was small consolation for the people whose
bitter resentments and national suffering accumulated over the decades. And
this is the system to which the Abkhazian separatists wish to belong!
The most absurd thing to do
is to represent the Soviet period in the history of Abkhazia in terms of the
vulgar scheme proposed by Voronov: at first 'on the ruins of the Russian
state system and culture (though unbelievable, it reads so!) there arose the
Georgian Democratic Republic. (though unbelievable, it reads so!) there arose
the Georgian Democratic Republic. The latter immediately occupied Abkhazia,
the occupation lasting from 1918 till 1921. Then the Russian Red Army
liberated Abkhazia, and the republic of peasants and workers, liberated in
this way, acquired the status first of an independent, then of a sovereign
Soviet socialist republic linked with treaty-based relations to Georgia. But
Joseph Stalin began to hatch malicious and cunning intrigues against the
Abkhazians from Moscow
and, under his pressure, Abkhazia was included in the Georgian SSR as an
autonomous republic. '20 This kind of history is just incredible.
In reality the overthrow of tsarism and the Russian February Revolution of
1917 gave a powerful impetus to the rise of the national-liberation movements
of all the peoples of the former empire. In the Sukhumi district on 10 March 1917 a
Committee of national security, headed by Prince Shervashidze, was set up.
New bodies of the Provisional Government, soviets of deputies
(representatives) as well as national movements, parties and unions came into
existence everywhere, to be the Union of the United Mountaineers of the Caucasus, founded in May 1917 at the First Congress of
Mountaineers in Vladikavkaz. These bodies were formed by the revolutionary
energy of the masses and their striving to break away from the grip of the
empire and to find new forms of their own statehood. The Sukhumi Committee of
National Security conducted its activities in contact with the democratic
organisations of Georgia
and Russia.
In particular they showed. considerable interest in the Union of the United
Mountaineers of the Caucasus. The Abkhazian
delegation attended the congress at the aul of Khakurinokhabl near Maikop in
August 1917, where 'the question of the attitude of the mountaineers of Kuban
region to the Abkhazian people' was considered; and in October 1917 the
delegation was in Vladikavkaz where the setting up of the South-Eastern Union
of Cossack Troops and the Mountaineers of the Caucasus and Free Peoples of
the Steppes was announced.
On 8 November 1917 the
Abkhazian People's Soviet was formed at a congress of the representatives of
the Abkhazian people in Sukhumi.
In the Declaration adopted at the congress the task was given to this Soviet
'to carry on work towards the self-determination of the Abkhazian people.'
The concrete forms of such self-determination were not yet specified.
Meanwhile the October coup in Petrograd and
the Red Terror launched by the Bolsheviks created a palpable threat to
democratic reforms in all regions of the country.
The Transcaucasian Sejm
(under the chairmanship of N.S. Chkheidze) convened in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) on 10 February 1918 and, expressing the
interests of all the peoples of this region, Abkhazia included,'' adhered to
the policy of establishing the Transcaucasian
Federal Republic,
independent of Russia:
the Republic was proclaimed on 22 April 1918.
However, Abkhazia was one of
the first regions in Transcaucasia to arouse
an insatiable appetite in the Kremlin leaders and strategists of the 'World
Proletarian Revolution', and to come under the attack of the Bolsheviks. She
had to live through her first 'cursed days' as early as 16-21 February 1918,
when the Military Revolutionary Committee headed by Efrem Eshba seized power
in Sukhumi.
The brutality and excesses committed by the Revolutionary Black Sea sailors
(from the battle-cruiser Dakia and the torpedo-boat Derzkii) made the
inhabitants of the sea-shore shudder with horror. The first attempt to
establish Soviet Rule was brought to nought by the Abkhazian People's Council
which demanded the liquidation of the illegitimate Military Revolutionary
Committee.
In the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks made a more
disastrous and protracted experiment in the Sovietization of Abkhazia which
had been turned by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK) into a
shooting-ground of execution and torture. Beginning on 8 April to 17 May, the
Bolsheviks controlled the whole of the former Sukhumi district (with the exception of the
Ochamchire area). At this time, the forces of the Abkhazian People's Council
were not sufficient to liberate Abkhazia. The Georgian National Guard under
the command of V. Jugeli joined the battle against the Bolsheviks. They acted
in accordance with the mandate given by the Transcaucasian Democratic Federal
Republic - the common state - in which the Abkhazian People's Council
legitimately represented the population of the region. By 17 May Abkhazia had
been cleared of the Bolsheviks. How little the operation undertaken by the
Georgian National Guard resembled 'a bloody occupation' about which myths are
being circulated by the present ideologists of Abkhazian separatism, is
testified by members of the Abkhazian People's Council (D. Alania, M.
Tarnava, M. Tsaguria, and others). In their letter of 29 September 1919
addressing the Georgian. Government they wrote the following: 'For the first
time Georgian troops appeared in Abkhazia during the fight against the Bolsheviks.
This was the National Guard under the command of V. Jugeli and A. Dgebuadze.
It gives us pleasure to note the impartiality and correctness with which the
National Guard treated Abkhazia's whole population. It should be borne in
mind that by 1918 the population of Abkhazia included 21.4% Abkhazians, 42.1
% Georgians, 11.7% Russians, 11.7% Greeks, 10.2% Armenians and 2.9% of other
nationalities.
Meanwhile, in the late spring of 1918, the days of the Transcaucasian
Democratic Federal Republic were numbered. Thrown into a state of unrest by
the advancing civil war and international turmoil (the Transcaucasian Sejm
refused to accept the conditions of the Treaty of Brest), it was a very
fragile, insecure political instrument, too feeble to be able to express and
reconcile the various interests and desires of Transcaucasia"
s population.
So on 25 May 1918 the Georgian Democratic Republic was proclaimed (followed
by the formation of the independent republics of Azerbaijan
and Armenia), initiating
the process of the consolidation of Georgia's independence and
restoration of her statehood within her historical borders. The inclusion of
Abkhazia in the political structure of the Georgian Republic was determined
by the long traditions of their common statehood and also by the agreements
reached on the eve of the opening of the Transcaucasian Sejm (on 9 February
1918) which envisaged the autonomy of Abkhazia within the borders of Georgia.
It was also precipitated by the situation that had been created by the end of
May 1918, when Abkhazia, liberated from the Bolsheviks for the second time,
was actually part of the Georgian state and could defend herself only through
the military aid of the Georgian National Guard.
This state of affairs was legally fixed by an agreement signed by the
Government of the Georgian Democratic Republic and the Abkhazian People's
Council on 8 June 1918. The agreement gave Abkhazia internal autonomy
(self-government) and military aid in case of external aggression.
Considering these facts, all
talk about Abkhazia's annexation or occupation by the Georgian Mensheviks is
absurd. However, it would be incorrect to draw too idyllic a picture of the
existing situation. The restoration of the single Georgian-Abkhazian state in
the extreme conditions of nationwide disaster and imminent civil war
progressed with great difficulty. Many mistakes, provocations, delusions, and
crimes committed by political leaders of various orientations hindered this
process, leading it into a deadlock of aggravating contradictions
Bringing army divisions into Abkhazia 17-22 June 1918, and occupying the
whole sea-shore from Tuapse to Sochi,
General Mazniev (Mazniashvili) formed., as one might think, an indispensable
beachhead against the Red Army threat, but unexpectedly this aggravated the
situation in Abkhazia. The military command of Mazniev (he was appointed
governor-general and commander of Sukhumi
garrison) ignored the Abkhazian People's Council, oppressed the local
population and violated the autonomous rights of Abkhazia, guaranteed by the
agreement reached on 8 June 1918.
These Abkhazian-Georgian difficulties were exploited by both the Red
Bolshevik S23 and organisers of the Whites whose ultimate goal was the
restoration of 'one and indivisible Russia'. In Sochi General M.S.
Alexeev, commander of the Voluntary Army (Dobrovoltsy), received and
attentively listened to the Abkhazian delegation whose request was to
liberate Abkhazia from the armed intervention of Georgia. These complaints served
as a good pretext for the general to start a war and bring back the lost
territory under Russian rule. Vorobiev, one of the participants of this
September meeting, a representative of the Kuban Cossacks, was quite
outspoken about it: 'The question arises as to what motives the representatives
of the Georgian Republic had when they seized the purely Russian Gagra area
and Sukhumi district and, despite the demands of the commanders of the
Voluntary Army - the representatives of great, one and indivisible Russia
-and of the Abkhazian people, refused to clear this territory of their
military troops ...It is not without reason that the Black Sea coast is
called the 'Russian Riviera",... 'a Pearl in the Russian crown', how to
resist the temptation not to tear off from sick Russia one of her best
regions, not to take advantage of the fact that there is no power as yet to
defend this "region'...121
This sounds so familiar when compared with the invocations of the present
Russian national-patriots who again are in need of the 'Russian Riviera'. The
tragedy of history is repeating itself.
The independent Georgian Democratic Republic existed for
less than three years (from May 1918 to April 1921). Moreover, it may be
stated that all her short history was full of a dynamic search for optimal
relations with autonomous Abkhazia, based on the people's will and the norms
of a democratic constitution. Force was used only in exceptional cases,
particularly when an attempt was made to engineer a coup d'etat in Abkhazia
during General Denikin"s operation (January 1919). Denikin, responding
to the appeal of the conspirators to liberate Abkhazia from the Georgian
troops, launched an attack on Sukhumi.
He presented his arguments to the Georgian government, claiming that Abkhazia
belonged to Russia.
But in the spring of 1919 the Georgian forces repelled this aggression.
Notwithstanding the wartime tension, immediately after the dissolution of the
old composition of the Abkhazian People's Council (which had been in secret
negotiations with Denikin), in the autumn of 1918, preparation for the
elections to the new Abkhazian People's Council began. And these very
elections, carried out on a democratic basis with the participation of the
whole population of Abkhazia, resulted in the formation of a new Abkhazian
People's Council, a legitimate government body, which at its first sitting on
18-20 March 1919 passed a resolution to the effect that Abkhazia entered into
the Georgian Democratic Republic as its autonomous subject. On 20 March 1919
the government of Georgia
approved the Act on the autonomy of Abkhazia that had been passed by the
People's Council."
It was a bitter irony of fate that the principal proposition on the
autonomous government of Abkhazia was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of
Georgia on one of the last days of her independent existence. The troops of
the 11th Red Army, obeying the orders of Trotsky and Ordjonikidze, invaded Georgia and
pushed towards Tbilisii. However, the Constituent Assembly - elected through
a nationwide ballot - fully performed its civic and historical duty to the
people of the Republic: on 21 February 1921 the principal proposition on
Abkhazia's autonomy and the Constitution of the Georgian Democratic Republic
were adopted. This is the Constitution of 1921 which the Georgian people have
succeeded in restoring only after seven decades. Ideologists of Abkhazian
separatism are fond. of asserting that this Constitution did not specify the
existence of autonomous Abkhazia. This is a downright lie. The proposition on
the autonomy of Abkhazia was adopted by the Constituent Assembly even earlier
than the Constitution as a whole, and article 107 of the Constitution clearly
announced the right of Abkhazia, as an integral part of Georgia, to have
'autonomous government in local affairs'.
At the close of the winter
of 1921, the period of the first democratic revival of Georgian statehood,
involving the Abkhazian autonomy, came to its end.On 25 February the Georgian
SSR was proclaimed, and on 4 March Soviet power, the Bolshevik dictatorship,
was established in Abkhazia. On 6 March notorious Abkhaz revolutionaries -
enjoying the special personal favour and confidence of Stalin - arrived from Turkey. They
were the so- called Exes, experts in plunder and expropriation, terrorist
activity, and in training the Comintern secret service from the foreign
diaspora in the Middle East. They formed a
Revolutionary Committee (a three-member group consisting of Eshba, chairman,
Lakoba and Akirtava). Having established a local Extraordinary Commission
(ChK) and Organisation Bureau of the Russian Communist Party of the
Bolsheviks (RCP/B) in Abkhazia, they started energetic activity to turn
Abkhazia into a Soviet
Socialist Republic.
On 31 March 1921, the Abkhazian SSR was officially proclaimed. From now on
the political history of Abkhazia, as of the whole of Transcaucasia,
was directed from the Kremlin. It is noteworthy that the USSR was not yet in existence, neither the
Union nor Union Republics, but Ordjonikidze ruled the Caucasian
Bureau of the Central Committee of Russia's Communist Party of Bolsheviks
(RCPB), and gave the orders in Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan. Moscow took the line of setting up a federation - a
union of the Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani SSRs in a Transcaucasian Socialist
Federative Soviet
Republic (proclaimed on
12 March 1922). It entered the political structure of the USSR in December 1922, and existed in such
status for fourteen years until the new Stalin Constitution, adopted on 5
December, 1936, determined the fate of Transcaucasia
in a different way. Probably at this new stage it seemed to the leader more
expedient to rule Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan
separately. Thus they were given the status of independent union republics.
Abkhazia had to enter the TSFSR and then together with it, through Georgia, the USSR. Delegating her authorities
to Georgia, Abkhazia in
fact entered the USSR
as an autonomous republic, as part of the Georgian SSR. However, the term
'autonomy' in reference to Abkhazia was not used in official documents in the
first Soviet decade (1921-1931).
On 16
December 1921 Georgia and Abkhazia signed an appropriate agreement and in
February 1922 the first Congress of the Abkhazian Soviets ratified the state union
of the Abkhazian and Georgian SSR. The Abkhazian and Georgian Soviet
Constitutions, adopted in 1925, also registered this political union. 'The
Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia on the basis of a special treaty,
enters the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and through her the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic,'
states the Constitution of the Abkhazian SSR. However, the status of Abkhazia
was often defined in peculiar political jargon: a 'treaty' republic (it is
clear though that the term 'treaty' might have been used in reference to Georgia as
well). Finally things were made clear when. on 11 February 1931 at the 6th
Congress, convened simultaneously by the Georgian and Abkhazian SSR, a
resolution was passed on changing the 'treaty' Abkhazian
Republic into the Abkhazian
autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic
within the Georgian SSR. This proposal was confirmed by the Stalin
Constitution in 1936.
1931 to the Present Day
In reality all of this was
of no consequence. For, irrespective of how often definitions were changed or
what words were used in constitutions and declarations unanimously adopted by
congresses, convened one after another in the country of the Soviets (the
word autonomy is, of course, far more attractive than the obscure treaty),
all these treaties, autonomies, unions and all the widely announced civil
rights they were supposed to enjoy, served merely as a screen concealing an
absolute lack of civil rights, a cruel enslavement of personality, ethnos and
civil community of the population of any republic, be it Union, federal, or
treaty in the general system of the totalitarian regime.
Pilipe Makharadze, Chairman
of the Council of People's Commissars of Georgia, was very accurate and
outspoken in characterizing this state of affairs in his speech delivered at
the 12th Congress of the Party in 1923: 'They talk', he remarked, 'about
independent Soviet republics ... we all understand what kind of independence
is meant. You know, we have a single party, one central organ which makes all
the decisions for every republic, even the smallest ones; it does absolutely
everything, and gives general directives, right up to appointing executives.'
After being changed from a treaty republic into an
autonomy, Abkhazia actually neither gained nor lost anything, not a single
ko- p ' for her budget, not a single inch of her land (enthusiastically being
turned into an All-Union health-resort, mercilessly devastated ecologically,
but no longer hers), nor any bit of freedom, for there was no trace of
freedom in that country.
After receiving within a few years the Order of Lenin and the Sun of the
Stalin Constitution as a gift for the fifteenth anniversary of the Republic,
Abkhazia was plunged into the most atrocious, bloody horror of repression.
There was a rapid succession of events: the secret murder of Nestor Lakoba,
Chairman of the Abkhazian Central Executive Committee, on 16 December 1936;
the posthumous announcement of his being an enemy of the people; the
merciless elimination of his whole family, including his children and
comrades-inarms, their terrible torture in torture-chambers of the People's
Committee of Internal Affairs (NKVD); impetuous countrywide collectivization
within a year, from the horror of which Lakoba tried, more or less
successfully, to protect the agriculture of Abkhazia till 1936; the complete
elimination of the Abkhazian intelligentsia, the most important link ensuring
the mutual understanding and reciprocal influence of Georgian and Abkhazian
cultures, and the fundamentally prepared decision on the mass deportation of
the Abkhazian people from their native country (by sheer luck it was not
fulfilled, though the people of the Northern Caucasus, the Crimea, Meskhetian
Turks, Kurds, Khemshils, and Pontic Greeks had to suffer this misfortune).
Against the background of these huge crimes came the programmes to cripple
the Abkhazian language, to restrict the sphere of its application, bringing
to nought its role in the people's culture and memory. The replacement of
Abkhazian writing first with Georgian and then Cyrillic scripts (1937),27 and
the abolition of the Abkhazian language at secondary schools and in the
system of preliminary education, with a provocative substitution of Abkhazian
lessons by obligatory lessons conducted in Georgian - all this formed part
and parcel of the national policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet
State.
All the peoples of the USSR
found themselves in the orbit of this policy regardless of the status that
was conferred on - or arbitrarily taken away from - a republic, region or any
other territorial unit; regardless of the borders that were drawn and
re-drawn, of the high-flown words about equality, freedom, autonomy, and
friendship between the peoples that were solemnly pronounced on different
occasions and forgotten at once, and of many other fine things that had
nothing to do with reality.
At the same time, the card, deftly played in Abkhazian political history,
aimed at a gradual transformation of a republic formed on a treaty basis into
an autonomous one, was not a futile exercise, and though these words were
devoid of juridical sense, political reality, value and truth, playing with
them proved to be surprisingly easy in order to maintain in the public
consciousness and psychology the sense of wounded dignity, jealous envy of
their neighbours and a host of political myths that, for the communist
dictators, facilitated the task of dividing and ruling in a multi-national
country.
In the Abkhaz social consciousness, a myth was cultivated that Abkhazia -
because of the malicious intent of its neighbours, the Georgians - was
fraudulently deprived of the status of a sovereign republic and artificially
turned into an autonomous republic in 1931.
However, under the totalitarian regime, neither the so-called union republics
nor any other autonomous formations possessed any genuine autonomy and the
human and ethnic rights of the peoples were equally flagrantly violated on
the whole territory of the Soviet Union. Yet
the difference between the two administrative formations was appreciable.In
the union republics far more favourable conditions were created for the
titular nations than in the autonomies which were under double subordination
- first to the republic centre, in the present case in Tbilisi, and second,
to the All-Union authorities in Moscow. The resentment was even more
irritating because of the striking difference between the standard of living
of the Georgians in Georgia
(including the level of their cultural development) and that of the
Abkhazians, who felt oppressed in every respect in their own homeland.
It was not difficult to make the people labouring under a totalitarian
regime, whose best intellectual part was almost completely exterminated, who
had been driven to despair and who were not well-versed in political science
or realpolitik, believe that all their misfortunes resulted from a loss of
sovereignty and its replacement with the humiliating status of autonomy.
It goes without saying that for several decades after such
a replacement many concrete steps were taken that infringed upon the national
rights and offended the national dignity of the Abkhazians, whom Communist
power skilfully set against the neighbouring peoples, first and foremost
against the Georgian people. Further carrying on the tsarist policy of
ousting the Abkhazians from their historical homeland, the Soviet Government
continued this policy by the hands of the Georgians. It gave the Georgian
settlers in the western and eastern regions of the republic the most fertile
lands, allotted to them plots for country-cottages, houses and flats (in
conditions of an overall housing shortage in the resort zone); it opened the
doors of prestigious higher education institutions to Georgians (in
conditions when the demands of the youth of Abkhazia were not satisfied); it
appointed Georgians to lucrative posts and jobs (in conditions of latent
unemployment and overall poverty); finally, it granted to Georgians the
leading posts in the Party and government structures. Having long since
turned into a national minority within the boundaries of Abkhazia, and
despite their natural population growth, every year the Abkhazian people
found themselves increasingly surrounded by other nationals, primarily
Georgians, and the number of Abkhazians began to decrease steadily.'-1 Divide
and rule, the tactics of the Communist leadership, are plain to see.
The leading posts in Sukhumi,
especially from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s were occupied not even by
local Georgians but by people from other regions who were not familiar with
the situation in Abkhazia and indifferent to all the problems of the
Abkhazians.
Both the exploitation of the resort zone and the denigration of Abkhaz
culture naturally stirred up a feeling of bitterness among the Abkhazian
people, summed up recently by Aslanbey Gozhba: 'We live in Abkhazia, but we
do not possess it.' 29
All this happened here in the same way as in the national outlying districts
of the Soviet empire, from Lithuania
to the Far East. At this time causes for
resentment were not all invented by some nationalist-extremists but had. real
substance; they accumulated through several decades, turning into an
explosive mixture of suppressed resentment, popular anger and civil protest.
With the collapse of the totalitarian regime, much depended on how and by
whom that destructive force would be directed.
It should be said that attempts to direct rising popular
resentment and impatience along a safe channel had been made a long time
before. To what extent and by whom these attempts were organised, how much
came from a spontaneous, sincere impulse or naive hope ('We shall leave
Georgia and it will make our life easier'), and how much was based upon a
subtly calculated provocation which gave those concerned a chance to search
for and punish culprits after each political d6marche, are questions that
call for a thorough historical analysis in each case.
Without going too deeply
into the matter, I simply remind the reader that as far back as 1931, a
stormy meeting of many days (18-26 April) - the so-called national rally of
the Abkhazians - in the village of Duripsh voiced the people's protest
against the transformation of the Abkhazian Republic into an autonomous one.
The fate of many orators who had dared to give vent to their sentiments and
emotions at that meeting was really deplorable.
Later, after Stalin's death,
the Abkhazian question cropped up with a surprising regularity every ten
years, and perhaps this helps provoke the teasing thought that advanced planning
and organisation were at work. It may have been thought a good idea to let
off some steam after each decade, allowing the Abkhaz anti-autonomists to
make one more declaration concerning the unjust inclusion of the Abkhazian
SSR within the Georgian SSR. Perhaps from time to time an object lesson and a
pretext were needed for a new campaign against nationalism (both Georgian and
Abkhazian) and to 'strengthen the ideological work towards an international
education of the working masses'. Nationalistic passions were so much aroused
that heartfelt collective letters were written and sent to various official
departments: to the regular Congress of the CPSU, the Supreme Soviet of the
USSR, or personally to Comrade Khruschev, Comrade Brezhnev, and so on. Anyhow
in 1957, 1967, 1978 and finally in 1988 (when the notorious Abkhaz letter
that became the detonator of the first tragic events of 1989 was written) the
Abkhazian question recurred.
Any changes in the highest echelons of power and any change
in the home policy served as a stimulus for raising this question anew. As is
seen in the chronological chain of events, the Abkhazian question was
discussed shortly after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, then after the removal
of Nikita Khruschev, later in connection with the adoption of the new
Constitution of the USSR,
and naturally at the time when perestroika was in full swing. Collective
letters, individual public speeches, small-scale meetings (it had not come to
larger-scale demonstrations yet) were promoted by narrow circles of
functionaries directly interested in raising their republican status, who
managed to inspire not only the youth but the romantically disposed Abkhaz
intelligentsia with this idea. The main body of the population of the republic,
the so-called 'working mass', did not take part in these political games.
These speeches did not produce any radical changes, as the state system of
the USSR
remained indestructible for the time being; but these actions did leave some
traces.30
Permanent tension in Abkhaz-Georgian relations was maintained: and it is not
difficult to understand in whose long-term interests this was done. A not so
subtle blackmail of the Georgian leadership was resorted to at a high level:
'If you don't behave yourself we shall punish you by cutting off Abkhazia
from Georgia'.
This was usually followed by the exposure of some suspicious trouble-making
nationalists among the Abkhazians. (Those who signed petitions in the Soviet
tradition were always among those who suffered.) Then came 'filtration' of
the 'unreliable elements' throughout the whole republic. Every act of
shake-up and reshuffle, every resolution of the regional committee or the
Central Committee of the Georgian CP, following yet another attempt at revising
the status of the autonomy, promised pragmatic advantages to all those who
stood behind the scenes.
Meanwhile the situation in Abkhazia changed and in those changes there were
certain things that inspired hope, and certain other things that caused anxiety.
The Abkhazia of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and especially of the 1980s no longer
looked like the Abkhazia of 1936-1938 or 1944-1949 - the humiliated, mute
country, crushed by terror and deprived of its national intelligentsia and of
its native language. Sukhumi State University became the engine of lively
scientific ideas; the scientific-research institutes of the republic gave
birth to some important schools engaged in technical and humanitarian studies
and in the unions of writers, artists, journalists and. architects, the
Abkhaz creative intelligentsia was worthily represented.
I would not like to lapse into the tone of an official festive report or a
prospectus on Soviet Abkhazia, but the above, after all, did correspond to
reality: the Abkhazian Theatre with a rich repertory in Sukhumi, some
talented amateur art groups, the Days of Abkhazian Culture in Georgia (10-13
April 1980), the national press, independent television and broadcasting not
controlled by Moscow or Tbilisi, four magazines issued in the Autonomous
Republic, the largest number of books per head in their mother tongue. It has
been calculated that in terms of titles (4.3 book editions per 10,000 people)
Abkhazia ranked first in the USSR
(Estonian and Latvian book-publishing offices excelled. this figure by the
circulation index, and not by titles). In the 1980s both the Abkhazian
language and the history of Abkhazia were taught at the schools of Abkhazia.
At the same time the
situation in Abkhazia changed for the worse. If in Stalin's time advantages
and privileges were artificially conferred on the Georgians, after 1956 the
situation went to another extreme and now the ethnic Abkhazians began to
supplant the Georgians, the Russians and representatives of other
nationalities and to form a ruling and representative elite on the basis of
family, clan and blood ties. In search of ways to satisfy the career
ambitions of some Abkhazians, the nationalist argument was very frequently
put forward.
At one of the last plenary
sessions of the CPSU Central Committee (in September 1989), the first
secretary of the CP of Georgia, G. Gumbaridze, emphatically announced: 'The
fact that at present in multi-national Abkhazia, where the Abkhazians
constitute only 17% of her total population, the national Abkhaz cadres hold
40% of places in the local elective bodies and more than half of the leading
political and executive posts, speaks for itsel'.31
At the Abkhazian D. Gulia
Institute of Language, Literature and History, which (especially after Ardzinba's
appointment as its director in 1988) became the hotbed of theories of
'Abkhazia for the Abkhazians', 'Abkhazia is not Georgia', and the ideological
headquarters of Abkhaz separatism, 75% of its scientific personnel are Abkhaz
nationals.
The dismissal of Georgian
specialists from many offices and especially from leading posts had become
almost a norm in the political life of Abkhazia by the end of the 1980s. For
example, the activists of the Abkhaz national movement unleashed a baiting
campaign, demanding the resignation of the secretaries of the regional
Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia in Gagra (including T.
Nadareishvili) only because of their nationality.32
Without closing our eyes to these very real
contradictions, we can draw the following conclusion from the review and
analysis of the ethnopolitical situation in Abkhazia towards the end of the
1980s. There was not a single problem that could not have been solved without
resorting to military force. There were no objective reasons for the
collision of the two peoples in an armed conflict and a civil war. There was
no great warp in the state system of Georgia or in the autonomy of
Abkhazia that must necessarily be corrected by a radical severing of the
historically established geopolitical and ethnopolitical ties in this region.
At the same time the
situation was complex. There was real social tension: links between the Autonomous Republic,
the Union Republic, and the Centre, were far
from ideal. There was no real political culture in the country; the
ethnopolitical factors and the scars which still lived in the people's
memory, all created favourable ground for the seeds of conflict. The only
thing needed was the emergence of forces interested in such a conflict to
turn potential problems into out-and-out war.
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