Abkhazia, Georgia, and the Crisis of August 2008: Roots and Lessons, by George Hewitt

8/14/2019 Abkhazia, Georgia, and the Crisis of August 2008: Roots and Lessons, by George Hewitt

1/12

Abkhazia, Georgia, and the Crisis of August 2008: Roots and Lessons

George Hewitt

GLOBAL DIALOGUE Volume 11 2009After Georgia PREVIEW

George Hewitt is Professor of Caucasian Languages at London University and has been a Fellow of the British

Academy since 1997. Since 1989 he has written widely about the GeorgianAbkhazian conflict.

The events that occurred in or around both South Ossetia and Abkhazia from 7 August 2008 were astonishing in

many ways. What could have possessed the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, to launch a military assault

on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinval,[1] and its environs as that day was drawing to a close and locals were

taking to their beds shortly after he had issued a televised assurance that rising tensions would be peacefully

resolved? Why did the United States and British representatives at the United Nations Security Council block in

the immediately following hours a request from the Russian delegation that the council issue a press statement

demanding a halt to hostilities? Why did much of the Western media allow themselves to be so gullibly beguiled

by Georgias spin-machine that the Georgian-wrought destruction in Tskhinval was occasionally even presented

as the result of Russian bombing of Gori (Stalins birthplace), a town which was never directly targeted by Russian

forces (though a residential block there was hit, with tragic consequences, when a bomb aimed at a local military

installation went astray)?

How did Russias response to the killings in South Ossetia and its pre-emptive action in Abkhazia, intended to

forestall a similar Georgian assault there, come to be so widely described as the pre-planned invasion of a

sovereign neighbour, with the Kremlin consequently being condemned for acting in such a way as to make likely a

possible return to the Cold War (if not actually to pose a threat of World War III)? Why was the conflict lazily

portrayed as a RussianGeorgian affair? And following the fighting, why was Russias recognition of the

independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia basically dismissed as a land-grab, with little, if any, analysis of

what lay behind the decision?

Anyone watching, listening to, or reading the news throughout the month of August 2008 will be familiar with all of

the above. Less well-known are the issues that have plagued Georgias relations with both South Ossetia and

Abkhazia for decades (not to say centuries) and which led to wars in both regions as the Soviet Union collapsed.

This article addresses these issues (especially with regard to Abkhazia).

Tsarist Background


2/12

The first official contacts between Russians and Georgians occurred towards the end of the sixteenth century, as

Russia began its drive south. By this stage, the once-powerful medieval Georgian kingdom, in the creation of

which at the turn of the first millennium a crucial role had been played by the kingdom of Abkhazia,[2] had

fragmented following the Mongol depredations of the thirteenth century. One result was that there was then no

single state-entity bearing the name Georgia. The various minor statelets and principalities in Georgia became

prey to incursions by the (Ottoman) Turks in the west and the (Safavid) Persians in the east. And it was the

Georgian Erekle II, ruler of the central kingdom of Kartli and the eastern kingdom of Kakheti, who gave tsarist

Russia its first foothold in Transcaucasia when, in a move to gain respite from unwelcome Persian attention, he

signed in 1783 the Treaty of Georgievsk with Catherine the Great. Improvements began to be made to the Daryal

Pass, which linked the (North) Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz to the Transcaucasus (via Kartlis capital of Tbilisi,

then known as Tpilisi, which is source for the older English version Tiflis). As the Georgian Encyclopaedia of 1985

notes, the pass acquired a greater strategic significance after the formal annexation of KartliKakheti by Russia in

1801, around which time the route was redesignated the Georgian Military Highway.

It is important to avoid the mistaken belief that these events of 1783 and 1801 represented a contractual

relationship between Russia and (a then non-existent) Georgia; the western province of Mingrelia under the

Dadiani princes, which traditionally had formed a buffer between Abkhazia and Georgian-speaking territories (for

the native language of Mingrelia was Mingrelian, sister to, but not mutually intelligible with, Georgian), came under

Russian protection in 1803, followed in 1804 by the western Georgian kingdom of Imereti. Abkhazia was taken

under Russian protection on 17 February 1810. However, Abkhazia continued to administer its own affairs until

June 1864, one month after the end of the Great Caucasian War, at which point the rule there of the Chachba

princely dynasty was abolished and Abkhazia restyled the Sukhum Military Department; the south-easternmost

province of Samurzaqano, largely but not exactly coterminous with todays Gal(i) District, had come under

Russian control in 1845 as a result of AbkhazMingrelian squabbling over rights to the region, the Mingrelians,

too, being allowed to look after their own affairs until 1857.

With allies in the Orthodox Ossetians, who occupied the central portion of the North Caucasus, and the Orthodox

Kartlians and Kakhetians across the main Caucasian mountain ridge, the tsars sought to win control over the

freedom-loving mountain peoples who lived either side of the (North) Ossetians. Immediately to the east were the

Chechens and Ingush, relatively recent converts to Islam, and further to the east the various tribes of polyglot

Daghestan, where Islam was long established. In the west were the North-West-Caucasian-speaking Circassians,

Ubykhs, and Abkhazians, related peoples whose adherence to Islam was shallower and coexisted (certainly

among the Abkhazians) with Orthodoxy and elements of paganism. The brutality meted out over decades to the

mountaineers by a succession of Russian military commanders, most notoriously by Mikhail Ermolov between

1816 and 1827, has been richly described in several accounts, of which mention may be made of those by John

Baddeley (The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus, 1908, republished by Curzon Press in 1999) and Lesley

Blanch (in the less academically orientated The Sabres of Paradise, 1960). The North-East Caucasus was

notionally pacified with the surrender of the resistance leader Imam Shamil in 1859. Thereafter, the whole of


3/12

Russias military might was concentrated against the North-West Caucasian alliance, which yielded to the

inevitable on 21 May 1864.

Mass migrations were to decimate the North-West Caucasian peoples and leave but rump populations behind on

their native terrain. Reporting from Sukhum on 17 March 1864, British (Vice-) Consul Charles Hamer Dicksonreported to Earl Russell in London: As the Russian troops gain ground on the coast, the natives are not allowed

to remain there on any terms, but are compelled either to transfer themselves to the plains of the Kouban or

emigrate to Turkey.[3] Most of the Circassians and Abkhazians together with the entire Ubykh nation chose to

migrate in what is commonly known in Russian as the maxadzhirstvo(exile). As a result of these population shifts,

the majority Circassian and Abkhazian populations today live not in the Caucasus but in diaspora communities

based in Turkey; the last fully competent speaker of Ubykh died there in 1992.

The specific consequences for Abkhazia of these tumultuous events were abolition of home rule under the

Chachbas, and being placed, as the Sukhum Military Department, under the control of the Russian governor-

general of Kutaisi (capital of western Georgias Imereti province).

In the wake of an 1866 revolt against land reform, twenty thousand Abkhazians underwent their own amhadzhyrra

(as this exile is known in Abkhaz) when forced to vacate the Dal Valley and Tsebelda (in the Kodor Valley).

Following the Russo-Turkish War of 18778 and a further uprising, the entire nation was branded guilty and

forbidden to settle along the coast or live in the towns of Sukhum, Gudauta and Ochamchira. Another reform was

introduced in 1868 when the Sukhum Military Department was divided into the regions of Pitsunda (from the town

of Gagra to the Kodor Valley) in the north and Ochamchira (from the Kodor to the river Ingur) in the south. In

1883, the Military Department was downgraded and renamed a Military District, which from 1903 to 1906 was

made directly subservient to the Russian authorities responsible for the Caucasus (based in Tbilisi). From 1904 to

1917, Gagra and its environs were re-assigned to the Sochi District of the Black Sea Province. Given this history,

one might have predicted that the same kind of virulently anti-Russian sentiment would characterise the

Abkhazians as has remained potent among the Chechens ever since 1859. But attitudes in Abkhazia were to

change.

The Georgian Factor

Abkhazia after the purging of its autochthons was well described by the distinguished English alpinist, Douglas

Freshfield, in his magnificent Exploration of the Caucasus, where he writes on the theme of The Solitude of

Abkhasia thus:

What is to be the future of this Earthly Paradise? Its ancient and primaeval inhabitants are gone. They have been

exiled for a quarter of a century; their dwellings and their tombs are alike lost in the glorious vegetation that feeds

nothing but bears and mosquitoes and fevers. A people that had lived the same life in the same place since the

beginning of history has been dispersed and destroyed. The Abkhasians have vanished, leaving behind them no

records, and hardly sufficient material for the ethnologist who desires to ascertain to what branch of the worlds

families they belonged.[4]


4/12

Georgian educationalist Iakob Gogebashvili had an answer to the question of what should be done with the

depopulated Abkhazia, which he propounded in a series of 1877 newspaper articles entitled vin unda iknes

dasaxlebuli apxazetshi? (Who should be settled in Abkhazia?) that were brought together in volume 1 of his

collected works, published in 1952. The fact that Abkhazia will never again be able to see its own children moved

him to ask which group could serve as colonisers.[5] Gogebashvili argued that, because of the extent of malarial

marshes (since drained) to which the Abkhazians had become acclimatised over many centuries in their own

region, the obvious colonisers were the neighbouring Mingrelians. In addition, they were the most adept of the

Kartvelians (viz., Georgians, Mingrelians, Laz and Svans) at adapting to new conditions; there was a shortage of

land in Mingrelia; and they had already gained control of commerce in Sukhum and Ochamchira (given the

prohibition on living there placed on the Abkhazians).

One could be forgiven for seeing Gogebashvilis proposal as entirely unobjectionable; after all, if attractive land is

vacant, should not someone make use of it? But Gogebashvilis works contain the seeds of what was to develop

into something much more sinister, namely, the questioning of Abkhazian rights to the very territory. Calling the

Mingrelians in every respect the ideal colonisers for Abkhazia, Gogebashvili in his 1877 articles said that from

the viewpoint of historical rights they were also more the legal heirs of the Abkhazians who have emigrated. He

claimed that the Mingrelians, in the not so distant past, had held the eastern part of Abkhazia, but after the

taking of Istanbul by the Turks and the Ottomans strengthening in the Black Sea, the Abkhazians, with the Turks

support, expelled the Mingrelians beyond the [river] Ingur and occupied part of what was then Mingrelias

territory. It would be no more than an act of historical fairness, Gogebashvili argued, to allow the settlement of

Abkhazia by the Mingreliansa restitution of what was snatched away and its handing over to a people who are

the co-religionists of, and faithful towards, Russia.

The early years of the twentieth century were not exactly calm ones for Abkhazia, and in 1907 L. Voronov

published a booklet Abkhazia Is Not Georgia (in Russian) to counter attempts already under way to distort local

history. But it was probably during the turbulent years in the wake of the Russian Revolution that Georgia finally

replaced Russia as the central object of Abkhazians suspicions and fears, a shift in perspective which

subsequent Georgian actions have only strengthened. Abkhazians had no sense of belonging to any Georgian

entity and chose in September 1917 to enter the Union of the United Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus. Shortly

afterwards, in November 1917, they established an Abkhazian Peoples Council as a legitimate organ of power.

Georgia declared independence on 26 May 1918 and on 11 June signed a treaty with Abkhazia, thereby

recognising its non-Georgian status. But thereafter, by a mixture of political intrigue and violence under General

Mazniev (Mazniashvili) and his lieutenant, Tukhareli, Georgia forced Abkhazia into its orbit. In August 1919, Sir

Oliver Wardrop, the British representative to Georgia, then under Menshevik rule, sent to the Foreign Office a

Memorandum on the Abkhazian Question by an Abkhazian officer, one Lieutenant Khasaia, written on 10 June.

In it we read:

The Abkhasian nation threatened by Bolshevism concluded a temporary treaty with Georgia on July 11th 1918.

This treaty was signed without the knowledge of the majority of members of the Abkhasian Peoples Council;


5/12

when the Abkhasian nation heard of that factitious treaty it criticized and rejected it Later, during the

elections [to the Abkhazian Peoples Council], the most open pressure upon the will of the electors was made and

the elections themselves took place under threat of Georgian bayonets [W]e beg the representatives of Great

Britain to inform the British Government that the Abkhasian Nation requests Georgia to lead Georgian troops and

[the] Georgian Administration away from Abkhasian territory.[6]

Georgias Menshevik constitution of 1921 mentioned Abkhazia as an autonomy within Georgia without specifying

the nature of any statelegal relations between the autonomy and the centre, but, before promulgation, the

government collapsed as the Red Army seized control.

Georgian troops applied Georgias policy of fire and sword also in South Ossetia during this period (191821),

which witnessed a number of bloodily suppressed uprisings against Menshevik rule. It is, thus, hardly surprising

that the newly constituted Soviet Union felt compelled to assign special status to both Abkhazia and South Ossetia

in recognition of their respective histories.

The Soviet Years

The Abkhazian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on 31 March 1921 and recognised by Georgias

Revolutionary Committee on 21 May. On 16 December, Abkhazia and Georgia contracted a treaty of alliance. On

13 December 1922, the Abkhazian SSR entered the Transcaucasian Federation (in treaty-alliance with the

Georgian SSR). In February 1931, with the position of Georgias most prominent son, Ioseb Besarionis-dze

Dzhughashvili (aka Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin), finally unchallengeable in the Kremlin, Abkhazia was reduced to

an autonomous republic (ASSR) within Georgia, the status it retained until the Soviet Unions collapse; Stalin, of

course, had been Lenins long-serving appointee for nationalities policy. Even during the 1920s, steps were taken

to play down the importance of Abkhazians within Abkhazia. Daniel Mllers comprehensive analysis of

demographic data shows inter alia how the thirty thousand or so Samurzaqanoans, the inhabitants of south-

eastern Abkhazia, who were designated as Abkhazians in the 1926 Soviet Encyclopaedia, were summarily

reclassified as Kartvelians in the 1926 census.[7] (Note that some time around 1930 all Mingrelians were

officially designated as Georgians.)

Subsequently, as Stalins Terror got under way, it no longer became merely a matter of manipulating the ethnic

categorisation of Abkhazias established population. Stalins Transcaucasian overlord, the Mingrelian Lavrenti

Beria, later notorious as head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, instituted a policy of forced transplantation of

mostly Mingrelians into Abkhazia to swamp the native residents. In fact, as the 1952 Georgian editors of the afore-

mentioned 1877 work of Gogebashvili unashamedly acknowledge, Gogebashvilis ideas on the settlement of

Abkhazias empty territory by Georgians achieved their actual realisation under the conditions of Soviet power!

The anti-Abkhazian measures, following Berias appointment as Stalins NKVD chief in 1938, continued under the

direction of his successor in Tbilisi, Kandid Charkviani (father of Mikheil Saakashvilis first London ambassador).

The Abkhazian script (like that of Ossetic in South Ossetia only) was shifted to a Georgian base in 1938; schools

teaching in the Abkhazian language were closed in 19456 and replaced by schools teaching in Georgian;

publishing and broadcasting in Abkhaz in effect ceased.
http://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.htmlhttp://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.htmlhttp://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.htmlhttp://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.htmlhttp://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.html


6/12

The Abkhazians only narrowly escaped deportation in the late 1940s. Seemingly to provide an academic pretext

for such a measure, Georgian literature expert Pavle Ingoroqva manufactured the fictitious theory, published first

in the journal mnatobiLuminary (194951) and later as part of his book giorgi merchule (1954), that modern-

day Abkhazians migrated to Abkhazia from the north Caucasus only in the seventeenth century, replacing and

taking the name of historys true Abkhazians, who were a Georgian tribeergo, Abkhazia is Georgian territory.

Though lauded by a range of Georgian academics, otherwise distinguished in their various fields, Ingoroqvas

absurd hypothesis was bravely condemned by Georgias Abkhaz expert, Ketevan Lomtatidze, in the debate that

followed the 1954 publication. (The manuscript of giorgi merchulehad been handed to the printers in 1951, well

before Stalins death in 1953.) After Stalins demise, his anti-Abkhazian policies were reversed, with a new Abkhaz

script devised and schooling and publishing in Abkhaz reintroduced. (Interestingly, Gogebashvilis 1877 articles

were omitted from the 1955 edition of his works.)

Nonetheless, Abkhazians periodically (roughly every decade) mounted demonstrations against their homelands

subordination to Tbilisi. The most serious of these (prior to the era of the Soviet collapse) occurred in 1978, when

130 intellectuals wrote to the Kremlin to request Abkhazias removal from Georgia and its inclusion in the Russian

Federation; in one night all Georgian names were painted over on road-signs. Moscow was so alarmed that

Georgian party secretary Eduard Shevardnadze was despatched with instructions to cool tempers. This was

achieved in part by the establishment of the Abkhazian State University, with its three language sectors:

Abkhazian, Russian and Georgian (the largest). However, the 130 intellectuals lost their jobs, and Abkhazias

status remained unaltered. The Kartvelian (mostly Mingrelian) population in Abkhazia continued to grow, so that

by the time of the last Soviet census (1989) Kartvelians outnumbered Abkhazians by 239,872 to 93,267, though

they still fell below an absolute majority at 45.7 per cent (Abkhazias population includes significant numbers of

Armenians and Russians).

Late- and Post-Soviet Conflict

When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power and encouraged public discussion of grievances through his policy of

glasnost, it is hardly surprising that the Abkhazians took the opportunity to reassert their displeasure at their

territorys subordinate status within Georgia. Matters began to turn nasty (and not only for the Abkhazians) when

the anti-communist opposition in Tbilisi started sowing the seeds of nationalism in the all-too-fertile Georgian soil.

The popular rallying cry of Georgia for the Georgians was unhealthy when in 1989 Kartvelians amounted only to

70.1 per cent of Georgias population. But, as Ingoroqvas ideas were resuscitated and Georgians started to refer

to the Abkhazians as apsuebi, not out of respect for the Abkhazians self-designation ( apswa) but as an insulting

suggestion that they were interlopers on the land of the true Abkhazians, self-delusionally argued to be a

historically Kartvelian tribe, the threat was all too obvious. The fatal clashes in Sukhum and Ochamchira on 1516

July 1989 over the opening in Sukhum of a branch of Tbilisi University (to rival and undermine the Abkhazian

State University established there in 1978) were a foretaste of the bloodshed to come. Soviet troops had to restore

order after at least sixteen people were killed and more than one hundred injured in violence between Abkhazians

and Georgians.


7/12

In the 17 March 1991 referendum called by Gorbachev on the renewal of the Soviet Union, which was boycotted in

Georgia proper, Abkhazias citizens voted in favour by an absolute majority, which meant that some Kartvelians

must have supported preserving the Union. It was clear that the majority of voters within Abkhazia rejected the

idea of becoming part of an independent Georgia, and when Georgia gained that independence in the wake of the

Soviet collapse in late 1991, the countdown to war began.

The preceding historical background-information indicates two things: (1) nineteenth-century history hardly makes

the Abkhazians natural candidates to be the pro-Russian puppets they are often portrayed as being (by Georgians

and their Western sympathisers); (2) the Georgians have only themselves to blame for acting over many decades

in ways that have induced distrust and resentment among the Abkhazians (and South Ossetians). Georgian

apologists prefer to blame the Kremlin for Soviet misdeeds, but the inescapable fact remains that the grossest

anti-Abkhazian policies were dictated by a Georgian (Stalin) in what he deemed Georgian interests.

Despite Abkhazian objections to the policies that subordinated them to Tbilisi and that by 1989 had reduced them

to a 17.8 per cent minority in their ancestral homeland, on a personal level relations with the Kartvelians living

alongside them were good, with many Abkhazians being fluent in Mingrelian (less so in Georgian). Had a wiser

course (that of federalisation) been adopted by its anti-communist oppositionists and post-Soviet leadership,

Georgia might have carried all its minorities along with it into a peaceful and prosperous independence. But such

a dream was never realisable, given the majoritys chauvinist orientation and arrogant assumption that Stalins

frontiers for Georgia would outlive the larger state he had crafted. Russia needed to do nothing to frustrate

Georgian aspirations; the Georgians did that themselves.

Georgias first post-Soviet president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a Mingrelian, was deposed in a coup in January 1992,

and Eduard Shevardnadze was invited home from Moscow to lead the ruling junta. The West had wisely refrained

from recognising Georgia under the unstable Gamsakhurdia, who had instigated a war against South Ossetia. But

it unwisely rushed to offer recognition as a favour to the former Soviet foreign minister. Stalins Georgian borders

thus received international approval, although a civil war was raging between Gamsakhurdias foes and his

supporters in Mingrelia and tensions were rising also inside Abkhazia.

After participating in negotiations to end Gamsakhurdias war in South Ossetia via the Dagomys Accords (June

1992), Shevardnadze celebrated Georgias accession to the United Nations by launching war against the

Abkhazians (14 August). Diaspora Abkhazians and volunteers from the north Caucasus (including Cossacks)

rushed to aid the threatened minority, and victory was achieved at the end of September 1993, when most (but not

all) of the Kartvelian population fled before troops of the triumphant alliance reached their settlements. The

Georgian authorities have done little to improve the lot of the resulting refugees, apart from exploiting them for

propaganda purposes (vastly exaggerating their numbers in the process).

Shevardnadzes political neck was saved by subsequent Russian intervention inside western Georgia to prevent

Gamsakhurdias forces from marching on Tbilisi and retaking control; this operation by Russia elicited none of the

Western squeals of horror occasioned by its actions in August 2008. A formal Abkhazian ceasefire was signed in

Moscow in the spring of 1994, when a demilitarised zone along the river Ingur was established and a contingent of


8/12

Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, but essentially Russian) troops assigned to Abkhazia as peace-

keepers. At the time, the West was quite happy with such Russian involvement, just as it had been with the

creation of a tripartite (GeorgianOssetianRussian) force to secure the earlier ceasefire along South Ossetias

borders. The Wests attention was concentrated on the Balkans in an odd reprise of the situation in the mid-

nineteenth century.

The following years (up to, and beyond, Shevardnadzes ousting by Saakashvili in November 2003) were

characterised by:

charges that the war had actually been between Georgians and Russians (not Abkhazians) and that the

Abkhazians were guilty of aggressive separatism, whereas events are seen more accurately as Georgian

aggressive state-integrationism;

Georgias offer to the Abkhazians, by way of a permanent settlement, of nothing more than maximal autonomy(namely, a return to the status quo ante, which had led to war in the first place);

accusations that Russia was frustrating each step towards resolution, whereas the maximum concession the

victorious Abkhazians themselves were prepared to consider was, naturally enough (given that the war imposed

upon them had cost the lives of 4 per cent of their people and ruined so much of the countrys infrastructure, for

which reparations have yet to be paid), a confederal relationship with Georgia, something that Georgian

negotiators rejected;

introduction of a CIS blockade on Abkhazia and closure of its northern border over the river Psou with Russia toall but holders of Abkhazian documents or Russian passports;

repeated acts of sabotage and terrorism inside Abkhazia by groups operating out of Mingrelia such as the

Forest Brethren and the White Legion, culminating in May 1998 in a renewed resort to military force by

Georgia, successfully repulsed. Terrorist acts were still being perpetrated in the spring of 2008.

Exasperated by all of the above, annoyed at the Wests constant refusal to take seriously their demand to exercise

their right to self-determination, and suspecting that they were being punished for having had the effrontery to

defeat one of the Wests (then-)darlings, the Abkhazians finally declared formal independence at the end of 1999,when amendments were introduced to the constitution they had promulgated on 26 November 1994. In practice,

little changed, and life remained difficult in conditions of isolation and economic stringency. Sukhums airport, the

largest in the entire Caucasus, stayed idle, and the single-track railway-line, the only such link to Russia for even

Georgia and Armenia, was inoperative. Georgia itself, however, was attracting more attention once the export of

Caspian oil over its territory came on the agenda.

Prospects for Abkhazia began to brighten when Vladimir Putin during his first term as Russias president enabled

Abkhazian citizens to apply both for Russian pensions and passports. Those able to afford the latter had renewed

possibilities of travel beyond Russias frontiers. Perhaps 80 per cent of Abkhazians currently hold such passports,

now available more cheaply.


9/12

The Saakashvili Era

Saakashvili snatched power in November 2003 in the so-called Rose Revolution; he subsequently won

presidential elections in early 2004, promising to restore Georgias territorial integrity within his first term. The

West, especially the United States, immediately dropped Shevardnadze and blindly switched allegiance to hisusurper. Hopes were high for the new president, whose cabinet was packed with young, Western-orientated,

English-speaking ministers like himself. Predictably, the administration of President George W. Bush (so

susceptible to anti-Russian Cold War thinking) was smitten, and US investment in Georgia increased, together

with military training and the provision of military equipment. It had long been naively assumed that the South

Ossetian problem would be easier for Tbilisi to resolve than that of Abkhazia, the larger and better defended of the

two disputed territories, and it was not long before Saakashvili started agitating in South Ossetia. Then, in spring

2006, he introduced hundreds of troops, mendaciously described to the outside world as a police force, into the

Upper Kodor Valley, the only part of Abkhazian territory not taken back into Abkhazian control in September 1993;

this rightly caused the Abkhazians to break off all negotiations, as it violated the 1994 ceasefire agreement.

Georgia, despite the nature of its earliest ties with Russia, had long become a byword for anti-Russianism, and

Saakashvili seemed to regard it as part of his mandate to voice such sentiments, taking particular relish in baiting

Putin. In these circumstances, it was not surprising that relations between the two states rapidly deteriorated. In

2006, the Russian border with Abkhazia over the river Psou was finally opened to normal traffic.

Meanwhile, another cloud was developing on the horizon. Whether any assurance had been given to Moscow on

the reunification of Germany that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) would not expand eastwards,

membership was eventually granted to a number of former Warsaw Pact states and even to the (former Soviet)

Baltic republics. This cannot have pleased the Kremlin, but it is no secret that it particularly resented the

suggestion of a yet further NATO advance into Georgia (and the Ukraine). Thus, for President Bush to urge at

NATOs Bucharest summit in April 2008 a proposal to admit these two former Soviet republics was both to ignore

a range of persuasive counter-arguments and to provide one more illustration of his administrations dangerously

cavalier approach to international affairs. The proposal should have been summarily rejected, but the insistence of

some of NATOs former eastern bloc members (exercising their own anti-Russian agenda) resulted in a decision to

review Georgia and Ukraines entry bids at the alliances December 2008 summit. The part played in the events of

August 2008 by that foolish promise of ultimate membership will long be debated. Since NATO membership is not

open to countries with territorial disputes, Abkhazia and South Ossetia nervously wondered what the summer

would bring.

Abkhazia announced that evidence of an abandoned Georgian spring offensive had been uncovered, as

unmanned military drones (acquired from Israel) started to fly from the Upper Kodor Valley, a further infringement

of the ceasefire. On 19 May, a Georgian website carried an article by journalists Ian Carver and Joni Simonishvili

entitled, Georgian War Footing Takes Concrete FormLiterally; the accompanying photo showed a concrete

unloading bay for tanks on a refurbished stretch of the railway line near the river Ingur on the Mingrelian side of

the border.


10/12

But on 7 August it was the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval that bore the brunt of the attack by Georgia. As stated

above, the US and British delegations at the United Nations blocked the call for an immediate ceasefire. Did they

do so in the hope that Georgia would achieve a quick victory in South Ossetia, speedily overrun Abkhazia, and

thus finally end the stalemate of fifteen to sixteen years of no peace, no war, allowing for quick Georgian entry to

NATO? Russia eventually reversed Georgian gains in South Ossetia, and decisive Russian and Abkhazian action

in the Upper Kodor Valley ejected (amazingly, but mercifully, without resistance) the Georgian troops lodged

there. Russias destruction of Georgias command centres in Gori and Senaki and its sinking in Poti of the vessels

that threatened Abkhazias exposed coast were perfectly proper in terms of military logic: Georgias capacity to

mount further acts of aggression was removed.

A host of Western politicians, UN representatives and NATO spokesmen angrily condemned Russian

aggression, ignoring the fact that Russia held an international mandate for peace-keeping in Abkhazia and

South Ossetia and that several of its peace-keepers had been killed in the Georgian assault on the latter territory;

it is hard to believe that any Western power would have acted differently from Russia in the same circumstances.

The Gordian Knot of the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was then boldly cut by President Dmitry

Medvedevs recognition of their independence on 26 August, a move that immediately brought universal (and

noisy) rejoicing in both republics, but which occasioned much indignation among Georgias backers, though, as of

the start of 2009, the hysteria seems to have evaporated (along with Georgias chances of NATO membership).

Lessons to Be Drawn

The West made a catastrophic error in deciding in 1991 that no lower entity than a union-republic was worthy of

recognition on the break-up of the Soviet Union. Recognising Georgia the following year within its Stalinist borders

helped to make hostilities inevitable by sacrificing Abkhazia to Georgian territorial integrity. After Abkhazias

military victory in 1993, the West pursued a simplistic (not to say retarded) policy of giving unconditional support to

virtually every demand by Georgia, which has resulted only in Abkhazias being driven ever more firmly into

Russias embracequite the opposite of what was intended. In recent years, the West seems to have believed

that if Georgia, as a beacon of democracy (a description at which Saakashvilis many Georgian opponents would

baulk), could also be helped to become an economic powerhouse, not only would Georgias independence be

strengthened, but the Abkhazians and South Ossetians would be weaned away from their attraction to Russia and

throw in their lot with Tbilisi for financial benefit. Strangely, here again are nineteenth-century echoes.

On 1 February 1855, a British official, one Jas. Brant, sent a confidential Memorandum Respecting Georgia from

the Turkish city of Erzeroum to the Foreign Office in London. In it he suggested expulsion of the Russians from

Georgia and the establishment of a British-mandated Georgian state to embrace the Government of the

Caucasus, as defined by Russia. Brant urged that the first and chief advantage of this step would be a material

guarantee that Russia shall never be allowed to regain her influence in the East . . . Georgia will soon become the

emporium of a vast commerce . . . and the new road thus opened to trade between Europe and Asia would enrich

and civilise all the countries through which it would pass.[8] But Russias consolidation of its position in the

Caucasus over the next 136 years (with an interruption in 191721), for good or ill, turned the whole region very


11/12

much into Russias back yard. And, for all its anti-Russian clamouring, Georgia was to achieve one of Brants

aspirations by becoming perhaps the most prosperous, and certainly most attractive, of the Soviet republics.[9]

Although the Kremlin accepted the loss of the non-Russian Soviet republics with remarkable sang froid, the level

of its attachment to this very special part of Russias near-abroad seems to have been woefully underestimatedby those who, like NATO, thought to encroach. No one would argue that Russias actions in August 2008 were

motivated by pure altruism (what state ever so acts?). A specific set of circumstances existed in South Ossetia

and Abkhazia which licensed Russias action; there is no compelling reason to suppose that other neighbours

need fear similar incursions.

Russias acceptance of the reality that neither the Abkhazians nor the South Ossetians would ever consent to a

return to rule from Tbilisi (based on a deeper knowledge of the area than possessed by Washington or Whitehall)

and its recognition of their independence should be welcomed and emulated so that serious thought can belatedly

be given to how the international community acting together (i.e., along with Russia) might improve the lot of the

whole Caucasus, needlessly blighted now for two decades and deserving of a brighter future. To do otherwise

would amount to continuing the failed policies of the past (including siding with the aggressor).

Is there a lesson in all of the above that the Georgians themselves might profitably learn? We have seen how one

bit of Gogebashvilis 1877 advice was put into practice by Stalin and Beria in the 1930s, when they promoted the

settlement of Abkhazia by Georgians. If another precept offered in Gogebashvilis articles had been followed by

Georgia as it strove for independence during both the Menshevik and post-Soviet periods, its goals might have

been more successfully achieved: A state is the stronger and more steadfast to the extent that the well-being of

the people entering it stands at a high level, and vice versa. South Ossetia, which in the long term is likely to unite

with North Ossetia within the Russian Federation, and Abkhazia are lost to Georgia. Gogebashvilis sage counsel

should serve as Tbilisis future guiding principle regarding the remaining minorities living compactly around

Georgias borders (such as the Armenians of Dzhavakheti, the Azerbaijanis of Dmanisi-Marneuli, and even the

Mingrelians) before the danger arises of those borders shrinking even further.

Endnotes

1. Note that the spelling of the city, and of the Abkhazian capital, Sukhum, is a sensitive issue. The terminal i

often used in the West for both cities is the Georgian nominative case-ending. Therefore, to use it is (for some

unwittingly) to support the Georgian claim to the two territories. Consequently, the South Ossetians and

Abkhazians vehemently object to its use, preferring respectively Tskhinval and Sukhum.

2. For details of early and medieval Abkhazian history, see my Abkhazia: A Problem of Identity and Ownership,

Central Asian Survey 12, no. 3 (1993), pp. 267323. (Also available at

[http://www.apsny.ru/special/special.php?page=content/hewitt.htm].)

3. Dicksons report was one of a number of Papers Respecting the Settlement of Circassian Emigrants to Turkey

presented to the House of Commons on 6 June 1864.
http://www.apsny.ru/special/special.php?page=content/hewitt.htmhttp://www.apsny.ru/special/special.php?page=content/hewitt.htmhttp://www.circassianworld.com/new/war-and-genocide/1140-papers-settlement-of-circassian-emigrants.htmlhttp://www.circassianworld.com/new/war-and-genocide/1140-papers-settlement-of-circassian-emigrants.htmlhttp://www.apsny.ru/special/special.php?page=content/hewitt.htmhttp://www.circassianworld.com/new/war-and-genocide/1140-papers-settlement-of-circassian-emigrants.html


12/12

4. Douglas Freshfield, The Exploration of the Caucasus(London and New York: Arnold, 1896), p. 211.

5. The 1952 editors of the collected edition felt obliged to gloss this term thus: Gogebashvili here and below uses

the word coloniser not in its modern sense but to mean the persons settled there. Obviously, they saw it as

awkward that one of the leading Georgians of the 1870s should describe as colonisers Kartvelian settlers onterritory that by 1952 had long and strenuously been argued to be Georgian soil.

6. See Anita Burdett, ed., Caucasian Boundaries: Documents and Maps 18021946(Cambridge: Archive Editions,

1996), pp. 52837.

7. Daniel Mller, Demography: Ethno-Demographic History, 18861989, in The Abkhazians: A Handbook, ed.

George Hewitt (New York: St Martins Press, 1998), pp. 21839.

8. Burdett, ed., Caucasian Boundaries, pp. 912.

9. A distinguished Georgian intellectual, while making a toast to my native Great Britain back in the 1980s, alluded

to Georgias never having been the subject of a worthy imperial power, by which I assumed he meant that

Georgia would have benefited had it been part of the British (rather than the Russian) Empire.

Source:Center for World Dialogue

http://www.abkhazworld.com/articles/conflict/279
http://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.htmlhttp://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.htmlhttp://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.htmlhttp://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=442http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=442http://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/history/263-muller-demographia.htmlhttp://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=442