3 September 2008, PARC Brownbag talk

"Abkhazian, Ossetian, Ajarian, Mingrelian, and, oh yes, Armenian, Greek, Russian.  Where's Georgian?"


Jim Bennett (with Brian Taylor and Sibel Oktay and others, he hopes)

Status quo (this week, anyway) in the South  Caucasus map  See satellite maps of ports and harbors: Poti, Sukhumi, etc.  Sea access is crucial to the region's future.

Here Nation = language

Masud, an Arab traveler of the 9th century, wrote: “ Only Allah will be able to count the different nations living in the mountains of Caucasia. The mountains of Caucasia are mountains of languages.”  map

In this region, the basis of ethnicity is  language.  By and large, other typical indicators are absent, except the peoples' economic/cultural adaptations to altitude and isolation.  E.g., many Abkhaz in the north are nominally Moslem; the majority is Orthodox.  Religious practices are not prominent, at least in the public sphere.  Most people along the coast and in the mountainous north boast ancestors of many ethnicities.  The violence of 1992-3, when Georgia unsuccessfully sought to govern all the former Georgian SSR map, heightened ethnic sensibilities, but 15 years on the animosities were eroding.  Until August 8. (It would be more accurate to see the posturing and war preparations among both Ossetians and Georgians as beginning well  before that date; but after the 8th, many changes became irreversible.  Compare the onset of the 1962 war between India and China.)

Clans are basis of social organization.  You place yourself by your lineage.  So names are important, but most people have Russified as well as Abkhaz names, and patronymics and nicknames often taken from daring deeds of their youth.  And no business cards ;)  Most people in all walks of life feel that using state  resources to assist members of one's clan is not corruption.

Language dialects are quite localized.  More or less mutually intelligible: Georgia, Mingrelian, Laz.  Svan is more distantly related.  These four languages bear some grammatical affinities with Basque, but it is unlikely that Basque and Georgian share common historical origins.  

The Ossets were the only people of the Caucasus (of which I am aware) to  accept peacefully Russian expansion south.  Ossetian is spoken by no more than 500,000 people, almost all living in N. Ossetia.  It belongs to the Northeastern Iranian branch of Indo-European.   By any measure,  as a people Ossetians  are isolated.

Abkhaz has two spoken dialects, Bzâp in the north and Abz'âwa in the south.  Abkhaz is an Indo-European language, but its precise relations are debated.  The northern dialect is close to some other languages of the North Caucasus, such as Abaza and Kabardian.  The language of high culture (and television) is Abz'âwa, though it is said to be rapidly supplanted by Russian along the coast.  I have not met an Abkhaz adult male who did not speak either  Georgian (Mingrelian) or Russian or both.  Abkhaz rue their isolation from Mediterranean intellectual and economic life from the Soviet period onward.  They object strenuously to becoming a quaint touristic appendage to the Olympic agglomeration to be centered on Sochi.  On the other hand, the economy depends upon tourism, which today is Russian junket tourism.

Turkey's cities and Black Sea coast contain self-reproducing communities of speakers of all of these languages (including almost all of the surviving speakers of Ubykh).

Georgia formed and reformed under prolonged duress at the intersection of Persian, Ottoman and Russian worlds.  

The early 13th century is Georgia's most recent glorious age.     map

Its importance an as energy conduit depends upon (1) Russian good will, (2) continued isolation of Iran, and (3) absence of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia.  The recent war casts doubt upon many initiatives to import energy to Europe without touching Russia: White Stream, Nabucco, etc.

Abkhazia is a region without optimism, without youth, without much visible investment.  Most of its residents possess Russian passports or a sort.   The Abkhaz say openly that they turned to Russian help only because they were embargoed on all other land and sea borders by Georgia.  

Abkhazia would flourish with governmental autonomy and free maritime access to the Mediterranean.  Emigres would return; youth would stay; people would smile; tourism would take off (but at the expense of the "Russian Riviera."

Today's Abkhazia formed an integral part of Pontic (Black Sea) Greek world, then of the Ottoman world.  As the Ottoman frontiers contracted, its culture (and population genetics) were strongly influenced by the mountain peoples.  In the early 19th century its ruler Keleşbey (an ethnic Çerkez) extracted a promise from the Czar's general to facilitate Russian military passage in return for local autonomy.  The deal lasted until 1864.  Abkhaz are notably xenophobic; they have good historical reason to be so.

The Abkhaz draw support from their "kin" in the North Caucasus.  For instance, in the 1992-3 vicious fighting to drive out the Georgians from Abkhazia, Shamil Basayev (later, "the butcher of Beslan"), was 3rd in command of a force of 900 volunteers from the north.  They fought (ineffectually) on the same side as Russian military units!  The bulk of the Abkhaz population is not likely to accept integration into Russia; they may over time emigrate.

Ethnicity here, as elsewhere, is perpetuated via formal and informal schooling, which teach localized histories.  Soviet history was overlaid upon the local history, but it has eroded except  with the well-to-do.  The last standing statue of Stalin is found in the center of Gori, his town of birth.  Supposedly, the Russian soldiers were told to protect the statue from harm.

Prior to the recent war, ethnic divisions, which had been inflamed by the fighting of 2002-3, were slowly healing.  Long-distance trade (read: smuggling) requires cooperation among many diverse groups.  

Russia won the war but is rapidly losing the peace.  It's not a good idea to make so many Europeans feel vulnerable and resentful at the same time.  In its foreign relations,  the EU bears more than a little resemblance to the hodgepodge of statelets before the North German Confederation.   But Putin's initiatives -- however understandable given the diminution of traditional Russian junior partner Serbia and the evident effort to Europeans to cut out Russia from energy transit -- are creating the sort of broad anti-Russian grouping which he apparently seeks to avert.  

In many respects, events of the past few months continue the history of the Soviet Union. Historical maps

In the early Bolshevik era,

    The leadership of the Soviet Union originated disproprotionately from the South Caucasus.
    Contests for leadership often employed policy disputes over South Causasian issues (such as national autonomy vs centralization) as their vehicle in power struggles.
    Georgians were not united, but struggled with each other in Moscow.  
    The career of Lavrenti Beria (Mingrelian born in Abkhazia) exemplifies this phenomenon.

Putin may be adventitiously using "the Georgian question" to cement his hold on power. If so, he seems not to appreciate the breadth and depth of resentment against Russian domination throughout North and South Caucasus?  Don't forget Dagestan, Chechniya, Ingushetia.  Does Putin think that he can extirpate the Georgian democrats just as the Bolsheviks extirpated the Georgian Mensheviks (1920-24)?  Of so, the post-Soviet empire is likely to be more ephemeral than the Soviet empire.

What likely arose as an opportunity for the Russian leadership threatens to become a fixed policy.

Georgian leaders appear to be just as shortsighted as is Putin.  The career of Eduard Shevardnadze reveals many of the contradictions.  Mikheil Saakashvili is John McCain of the Caucasus (says an influential blog on the region).

After independence, most segments of the Georgian elite found it natural and just to reintegrate all parts of the Georgian SSR under their centralized governance.  So far as I can tell, the subjective lexicons of educated members of all these peoples do not really differentiate between "autonomy" and "independence."

Bringing prosperity to S. Ossetia will be very difficult, regardless of political directions. Humanitarian assistance

Prior to the war, S. Ossetia was hemorraghing people.  In the late Soviet people, Tskinvali's population was ~40,000.  Before the recent fighting most estimates give 10-20,000.  Almost all of its residents had been issued Russian passports identical to those issued to N. Ossetians.  The commander of the Ossetian "peacekeepers" was, prior to the war, a native of  N. Ossetia, former (?) Russian army officer.  

At best, the Bush Administration was asleep at the wheel.  Why didn't the USG send Stephen Hadley to Moscow on August 9 or -- better -- directly to the theater of conflict in harms way to demand a cease fire in place?

A  better title today would be, "What's Georgia".  The situation is the South Caucasus is a mess, unlikely to benefit anyone very much and very likely to continue to hard tens of thousands.  It is a "mess" and not a "problem."  For it to become a "problem" we shall, with some confidence, have to answer the question, "Of what is this an instance?"  

At the least, the conflict makes many other 'sleeping disputes' highly salient -- homeporting of the Russian Black Sea fleet; Turkey's balancing act between Moscow[on the one hand] and (a) NATO and (b) French militancy against Russia coupled with French obstruction of EU accession; enhanced attraction to the states of the region of Iran as a source of energy imports;  passage of warships through the Bosphorus; future access and status of OSCE [and other organizations'] observers.