Containing the Nation, Building the State:

Coping with Nationalism,

Minorities and Conflict in Post-Soviet Georgia

A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. to the University of London in the
School of Oriental and African Studies

2004

Laurence Broers

Political Science

1
 ABSTRACT

This thesis analyses ethnic conflict in the context of post-Soviet state building in the South
Caucasian republic of Georgia. It aims to provide an explanation as to why Georgia proved
more susceptible to ethnic conflict than other post-Soviet republics and why this took violent
form. Drawing upon various theories of ethnicity and conflict to challenge ethnocentric
interpretations, the study identifies multiple causal explanations including processes of state
formation under Soviet rule, the impact of nationalism and the role of events taking place
within the mobilization process of the terminal Soviet period.

The main argument pursued in this dissertation is that the nation penetrated modern Georgian
society primarily as a cultural form, without a concomitant identification with an over-
arching frame of statehood. This is linked to the South Caucasus’s specific historical legacy
as a region penetrated by mass nationalism but lacking an indigenous institutional history of
state building. Soviet state-building strategies reinforced this historical disjunction by
articulating the institutional pathways of the state with ethnic affiliations, and reinforcing
ethnicity with a number of other social and economic cleavages. This made nationalism a
viable and resonant ideology of resistance to Soviet rule in the late 1980s, in a context where
numerous constraints to ethnic nationalism present in other post-Soviet republics were
absent. While the importance of structural and cultural factors in the genesis of conflict is
acknowledged, the dissertation posits a causal disjunction between conflict and ethnic
violence. This is explained here as a separable, contingent outcome of developments taking
place within the context of nationalist mobilization. It is thus argued that the sources of
violence are extrinsic to the politics of group relations and need to be given separate
analytical treatment in considerations of ethnic violence.

The text is arranged over seven chapters. The first deals with theoretical considerations. The
second provides a historical backdrop by examining the emergence of ethnic politics under
Russian colonial rule in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The third chapter
focuses on political incorporation of different groups under Soviet rule to chart the
institutional origins of contemporary conflicts. This analysis is complemented by a more
culturally oriented analysis of the impact of Soviet rule in Chapter four. Chapter five
examines the nationalist mobilization process of the terminal Soviet period and identifies the
factors behind the transformation of conflict into violence. Chapter six focuses on the state
building efforts of the post-conflict period, while chapter seven draws attention to emergent
shifts in self-understandings of Georgianness that point to a fragmentation of singular
concepts of nationhood.

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 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 5
Introduction 8

Chapter 1 20
Nation, State and Conflict: Theoretical Perspectives
Core concepts 21
Peripheral Incorporation and Interethnic Dynamics 27
Constructivist perspectives 30
Social psychological perspectives 35
The security dilemma 38
Democratisation and ‘weak states’ 40
The ‘tidal’ perspective and social movements theory 44
Beyond the national/colonial divide: hidden transcripts of 48
ethnic identity
Chapter Plan 50

Chapter 2 53
Culture and Polity in Georgian History; A Roadmap
Introduction 53
Geography 54
Linguistic and religious composition 55
Early political formations and their contemporary interpretation 59
Ethnic policies in Georgia under Russian rule: ethnography, colonial 62
stereotypes and cultural interventions
Cultural revival in nineteenth century Georgia 70
Georgian independence 1918-21 75
Conclusion 78

Chapter 3 80
The Institutional Origins of Ethnic Conflict in Soviet Georgia
Introduction 80
The incorporation of elites 82
Elite recruitment patterns and mobility in Soviet Georgia 84
Composite incorporation and cultural dynamics 100
National differences compared 106
Conclusions 108

Chapter 4 112
Cultural Hierarchies and the Dialectic of Majority-Minority
Relations in Soviet Georgia
Introduction 112
Soviet ideologies of difference 113
Policy implications of cultural hierarchies 120
Conflicting discourses: internationalism and the ‘core nation’ 122
The view from below 127
The dialectic of majority-minority relations in Soviet Georgia 136
Conclusions 140

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Chapter 5 142
The Georgian National Revival 1987-1992: From Conflict to
Violence
Introduction 142
The Georgian revival 1987-1992: structural facilitation, institutional 144
constraints and event-generated influences
The triumph of radicalism 149
Framing strategies and ethnic policies 153
From conflict to violence 161
Conclusions 176

Chapter 6 178
Post-Conflict Georgia: Neo-Internationalism and the
‘Reassembling State’ 1995-2000
Introduction 178
Post-conflict Georgia: changed contexts 179
Neo-internationalism in post-conflict Georgia 182
Projecting integrative statehood 188
Electoral politics 190
Language policy 194
Autonomy: federal bargaining and strategies of state building 198
Primordial tolerance: a post-Soviet discursive fusion 203
Conclusions 209

Chapter 7 212
‘Two Sons of One Mother’: Georgian, Mingrelian and the
Challenge of Nested Primordialisms
Introduction 212
Background data 214
Post-Soviet contexts of change in intra-titular identity 215
The state perspective 218
A new interpretation of Mingrelian identity? 223
The political incorporation variable and prospects for a 227
Mingrelian revival
The view from below 230
Conclusions 242

Chapter 8 246
Conclusions

Appendix A Population and Nationality in Soviet and 255

Post-Soviet Georgia: Statistical Data

Appendix B Language Repertoires by Nationality in Georgia, 258

Abkhazia and South Ossetia, 1989

Appendix C Communist Party Composition by Nationality in Soviet 260

Georgia, selected years 1926-1989

Bibliography 262

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 Acknowledgments

In the course of any long-term project one incurs innumerable debts, and this thesis has been
no exception. I would like to thank first my supervisor Dr Bhavna Dave for her support in
difficult times, her searching questions and patient encouragement to look at the broader
picture. I am greatly indebted to Professor George Hewitt for guiding me through the
intricacies of the Georgian language. I owe a special debt to Professor Donald Rayfield, for
the original suggestion to take up Georgian studies, and together with Anna Pilkington, for
inspiration, support and friendship. My thanks also to Dr Charles Tripp for his engaging
teaching of methodology.

I would like to thank the Marjorie Wardrop Fund for granting me a scholarship that allowed
me to undertake this work.

In Georgia I would like to warmly thank Shukia Apridonidze, whose friendship and inspired
teaching of Georgian in afternoons at her apartment in Bagebi I will never forget. I owe a
particular debt to the families that opened their homes to me during fieldtrips to Georgia: the
families Rudchik, Badridze, Idoidze, Nanava and Khubulava. The fieldwork for Chapter 7
would never have been possible without the remarkable tutelage of Abesalom Tughushi. I
also owe special thanks to Dennis Sammut, Goga Simonishvili and all at LINKS for the
many opportunities to play a more practical role in civil society work. Other individuals to
whom I owe any insight I have gained into life in Georgia are Anzor Sichinava, Giorgi
Kiziria, Zviad Mukbaniani, Kate Whyte, Nugzar Idoidze, Zaal Kikodze, Maia Machabeli,
and Kevin Tuite. Special thanks to the staff of Tbilisi National Library, particularly to the
photo-copying department, for their patient searching out and copying of documents. And
particular thanks to Giorgi Idoidze, who helped me with my work in the Tbilisi Library. Of
course, I remain responsible for any errors herein.

Thanks to Andrea Lesić-Thomas, Chris Freitag, Razmik Panossian and Leigh Oakes, who
read chapters of the thesis and provided useful criticisms. I would like to extend warm
gratitude to the following individuals, who in different ways contributed to the completion
and enjoyment of this thesis: Sossie Kasbarian, Levan Murtazashvili, Jennie Hogan, Nick
Awde, Leonora Lowe, Jan-Willem van den Bosch, Professor W. Emster, Karin Junker,
Daniel Cousens, Jeremy Hicks, Gillian McCormack, Mathijs Pelkmans, Nino Nanava,
Rachel Clogg and Jonathan Cohen. Special thanks to Dennis Gray for listening. My
profound thanks and love to my aunt Daphne, and my cousin Kathryn and her husband
Frank, for their support over the last year. Deep gratitude also to Bettina Weichert and Alex
Batterbee for keeping the home fires burning and for living to tell the tale in Peronne.

It was my parents’ xenophilia that first set me on the road to this dissertation. In different
ways my parents also provided me with examples of resolve and determination that have
sustained me through this project. My thanks go to my father Robert, and to my stepmother
Pat, for their love and support, and for teaching me to hold an argument. This work is
dedicated to my first and best teacher, my mother Diana, who lived to see the beginning of
this project but not its end. From an early age my mother taught me the value of curiosity
and, especially in the latter stages of her life, the power of magnanimity. Nos actes
s’attachent à nous comme lueur au phosphore, ils nous consument, il est vrai, mais ils font
notre splendeur.

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6
Note on transliteration and terms
This study is based on sources in two languages, Georgian and Russian. Since this is not a
linguistic work, I have opted for a simplified transliteration system for Georgian with
minimal intrusion from diachritic marks. The single exception is where a source features a
surname beginning with a glottalised consonant (k’, p’, t’). In these cases for ease of
reference the diachritic mark is included. The system used is set out below. For Russian I
have used the U.S. Board on Geographic Names System.

Any writing on contemporary Georgia faces the political minefield of choosing between rival
toponyms in disputed territories. In negotiating this choice I have opted to prioritise ease of
reading, and have used the ‘standard’ variants of key place names, i.e. Sukhumi rather than
Sukhum (or the politically neutral but fiddly Sukhum(i) or Sukhum/i). I emphasise here that
this does not reflect any political preference. I also prefer the term South Caucasus to
Transcaucasia (Zakavkaz’e), a term deriving from a specifically Russian perspective. Since
we commonly refer to the North Caucasus and only rarely to Ciscaucasia, this choice also
appears to be the more consistent.

Throughout the study I refer to the eponymous nationality of a given territorial unit as the
‘titular group’ and its representatives ‘titulars’. Thus Georgians are the titulars in the
Georgian republic, Abkhazians in Abkhazia. When I am referring to the smaller titular
groups (Abkhazians, Ossetians and to a lesser extent Acharians) in the broader context of the
Georgian republic, however, I refer to them as ‘second-order titulars’.

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 Introduction
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, virtually all of the post-Soviet successor states
embraced the designation ‘nation-state’ in their construction of new state-political identities.
For the so-called ‘titular’ nationalities – those after whom the national republics of the Soviet
Union were named – de-Sovietization was largely equated with the promotion of the titular
nation’s rights and culture. For the vast majority of the newly independent states (NIS),
independence was indeed legitimated in terms of the right of nations to self-determination,
casting the Soviet state in the role of a repressive empire rather than a multinational state. In
contrast to an earlier generation of newly independent states in post-colonial Asia and Africa,
however, this embrace of nationalism was overwhelmingly characterised by an
understanding of the nation as coextensive with the titular ethnic community, rather than the
entire population of the state. Although post-Soviet states do not display the same
bewildering degree of ethnic diversity as many African and Asian states, with the exception
of Armenia all of the NIS are to varying extents multiethnic, containing often substantial
ethnic minorities. Moreover, the NIS inherited the legacies of institutionalised ethnic
hierarchies, ethno-territorial federalism and fixed understandings of nationhood from Soviet
rule. In many cases this led to unitary nation building projects, in which the rights and status
of non-titulars were left at best ambiguous, at worst sharply curtailed. Coping with the
conflicting imperatives of titular nationalism and the accommodation of de facto ethnic
diversity has proved – and will continue to be – one of the most important challenges facing
the Soviet successor states. Whereas the transformation of conflict generated by these twin
concerns into violence was averted in some post-Soviet states, for others it proved to be the
key obstacle to the consolidation of independent statehood.

Nowhere was the conflict between unitary nationalist ambitions and the fact of ethnic
diversity more starkly drawn than in the republic of Georgia in the South Caucasus. Of the
post-Soviet states Georgia underwent one of the most tortuous and conflict-ridden paths to
independent statehood, second only to Tajikistan in terms of the salience and degree of
violence. With non-Georgians comprising some 30% of the total population in 1989,
Georgia was not unusually multiethnic by Soviet standards, yet ethnic conflict and its
transformation into violence was the defining experience of Georgia’s early independence.
Among the political outcomes accompanying Georgian independence were two violent
conflicts in 1990-93 in the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, resulting in the territorial
fragmentation of the state along ostensibly ethnic lines; some 17, 500 deaths and the

8
displacement of more than 200,000 internal refugees; the violent removal from power of
Georgia’s first legally elected president; the complete collapse of state institutions and social
control between 1992 and 1995; the partial reconsolidation after that time of a state
displaying some of the formal attributes of a liberal democracy; and, finally, Georgia’s
integration into the international system as a rump state dependent on international donors.
The new Georgian state was thus formed in the context of ‘national struggles’, which for the
Georgian majority ended in military defeat at the hands of ‘ethnic others’. This has left a
deep imprint on the attitudes of contemporary Georgians and the efforts to build a viable
independent Georgian state.

Conflict framed in terms of ethnicity is of course by no means unique to Georgia, but

characteristic of a global trend that has seen stable liberal democracies also facing
secessionist bids in Canada, Spain and elsewhere. Within the context of intra-state conflicts,
ethnic and sectarian violence rose sharply in the closing decades of the twentieth century,
particularly following the end of the Cold War (Gurr and Harff, 1994). The challenge of
ethnicity to unitary models of nation-statehood, moreover, shows no signs of abating; on the
contrary, it has increasingly garnered political legitimacy in recent years. Western liberal
theory, traditionally unsympathetic to ethnic particularism, has increasingly accepted cultural
pluralism as ethically and politically legitimate, while Western institutions increasingly
demand the accommodation of ethnic diversity as a precondition of membership (Kymlicka,
1995a, 1995b; Taylor, 1994). Accounting for variable outcomes of ethnic violence and
accommodation, and their importance for the construction of new states, is both topical and
imperative. Applied to the post-Soviet space, we are confronted with the task of explaining
why it is that although post-Soviet states share comparable structural features and common
institutional legacies, some have proved more susceptible to violent ethnic conflict than
others.

Two popular notions have obscured understanding of this question. The first is the ubiquity
in popular and media discourse of the ‘ancient hatreds’ explanation of violent conflict, often
referred to in nationalism studies as the ‘primordialist’ explanation. Developed in the works
of Robert Kaplan and Samuel Huntington, this view holds that different cultures, identities or
‘civilizations’ interpreted broadly along religious lines, will inevitably come into conflict
(Kaplan, 1993; Huntington, 1998). The varying outcomes of conflict and accommodation
across the NIS suggest the limitations of this approach: historical grievances and/or

9
significant cultural differences can be cited for virtually all cases, yet violent conflict has
been the exception rather than the rule. Although the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis is indeed
endorsed in the views of many indigenous parties to conflict, it gives little purchase on the
question of why violent conflict ensues in one context and not another.

The second notion – in a sense a ‘partner in crime’ to the first – is that of ‘transition’. The
transition paradigm has been widely applied to post-socialist Eastern Europe to analyse the
presumed progression of its societies towards political and economic liberalisation. The
concept assumes the convergence of post-socialist societies with a Western template,
symbolising the triumph of liberal democracy and, in Francis Fukuyama’s popular phrase,
“the end of history” (Fukuyama, 1992). By definition this implies movement through the
aftermath of communist rule, rather than its continued influence. Transition theory was
originally conceived with reference to regions of the world where multiethnicity was not a
salient feature of the political landscape (e.g. Latin America, Southern Europe). Moreover,
by emphasising ill-defined notions of ‘national unity’ key theorists of transition incorporated
the absence of ethnic divisions as a ‘pre-condition’ of successful transition (Rustow 1999
[1969]). The foundations of the transition paradigm in classical liberal theory further
embedded within it a programmatic anticipation of the ‘privatization of ethnicity’, and
cultivated expectations of the construction of inclusive, civic nations and the attenuation of
ethnic divisions.1 In the post-Soviet context, where ethnicity had been a core institutional
building block of the preceding regime and in some cases independence was achieved on the
basis of national uprisings, these expectations were unrealistic. As Will Kymlicka observes,
the continued political salience of ethnicity in some post-communist societies has resulted in
Western condemnations of these societies for sustaining ‘ancient hatreds’ (Kymlicka 2001a,
xiv).2 This circular argument is suggestive of a need for closer engagement with the legacies
of communist rule, and how they have structured both the institutional and informal contexts
framing the transition process.

1
Linz and Stepan (1996) address this lacuna in transition theory in their elaboration of the concept of the
‘stateness problem’, where disputes obtain over the territorial boundaries of the state and membership
boundaries of the political community that constitutes it.
2
Consider, for instance, this recent commentary from The Economist: “For the western institutions that have
spent billions of dollars trying to exorcise the demon of chauvinism from the Balkans and the Caucasus – and to
promote the idea that nations and ethnic groups must co-operate to solve their post-communist problems – the
persistence of nationalism is a puzzle and a disappointment” (July 24-30, 2004, p.13).

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Why focus on Georgia? Despite the saliency of conflict accompanying Georgian
independence, Georgia has remained a marginal region even within the post-Soviet research
field. This is in large part because Georgia does not fall within popular schemas of
comparative post-Soviet studies. Among the first generation of studies dedicated to
interethnic relations in the Soviet successor states, the leading assumption was that the newly
created Russian diaspora was the key issue, a comparative axis more inclined to include
states with large Russian populations (Laitin, 1998; Kolstø, 1995, 1999; Melvin, 1995). A
second important comparative frame in post-Soviet studies is the regional one. Compared to
the Baltic, Slavic or Central Asian regions the South Caucasus has emerged much less
distinctively as a coherent unit of regional analysis. This reflects first the region’s genuinely
heterogeneous cultural make-up (demanding knowledge of indigenous languages as well as
Russian) and a related ambiguity as to where it ‘belongs’ in area studies terms. While
Azerbaijan is frequently incorporated in cultural and geopolitical terms within a Central
Asian rubric, Georgia and Armenia fall between the chairs of Eastern Europe and Central
Asia. Significant differences between the national contexts of Georgia and Armenia, inviting
different research interests, compound this ambiguity.3 Perhaps as a result, scholarship in the
Soviet era paid even less attention to the Caucasus than to Central Asia.4 The pool of
scholarship and experience of the Caucasus on which post-Soviet enquiry could draw was
correspondingly small. There is a consequent lack of detailed studies of nationality politics
in the South Caucasus, and much of the empirical literature on the region is not informed by
theoretical insights being generated elsewhere in post-Soviet studies. This dissertation
contributes to the closing of this gap, by expanding our empirical base of knowledge about
one of the least-studied post-Soviet states, informing this knowledge with theoretical insights
from the wider field, and seeing how the Georgian case confirms or moderates those insights.

3
The politics of cultural pluralism that is central in Georgia has little relevance to largely mono-ethnic
Armenia; conversely the theme of diaspora that is central to Armenian studies has little resonance in the
Georgian case. The large-scale emigration of Georgians from Georgia over the past decade has, however,
changed this situation, opening up the possibility for the formation of a significant Georgian diaspora. For more
on this theme see the publication tanamemamule [‘Compatriot’], published since 2003 for Georgian
communities in Western Europe by the Georgian Community Association in Germany.
4
The Caucasus is essentially represented in Soviet-era scholarship by a very small number of specialised works,
most of which are concerned with specific national histories. See the collection of articles in Suny, 1996a (a
revised edition of a volume published originally in 1983); otherwise on Georgia see Suny, 1994; Jones, 1988;
Mars and Altman, 1983; Parsons, 1982; Dobson, 1975. For recent pioneering works see Goldenberg, 1994,
Hunter, 1994, Gachechiladze, 1995; Herzig, 1999. Much material is available in edited volumes of articles on
the South Caucasus, for example Schwartz and Panossian, 1994; Coppieters, 1996; Goldenberg, Wright and
Schofield, 1996; Coppieters, Nodia and Anchabadze, 1998; Suny, 1996b.

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Furthermore, many portrayals of South Caucasian politics have been influenced by a view of
the region as a sort of ‘Soviet Balkans’. In the course of the violence of the early 1990s,
references to the ‘Balkanization’ or the ‘Lebanonization’ of the Caucasus were common (e.g.
Carrère d’Encausse, 1990, 63). Some rather simplistic assumptions ensue from this analogy.
It is, for instance, widely assumed that the Soviet ‘past’ of the region has been exchanged for
a national ‘present’, and that contemporary assertions of national identity testify to the
inability of the Soviet state to transform the region. It is also often assumed that ethnic
violence was foreordained by the ‘intensity’ of these passions, and by the high number of
nationalities in the region. Finally, it is also frequently assumed that South Caucasian
nationalisms are intrinsically ‘nasty’ nationalisms, and that, ultimately, the South Caucasus is
capable only of disintegration. Underlying these assumptions is a fundamental dichotomy in
Soviet-era scholarship between ‘state’ and ‘nation’ in the South Caucasus. In ways
analogous to analyses of ‘society’ as an autonomous realm impervious to Soviet rule in
Central Asia, so the cohesiveness of national communities in the South Caucasus was also
commonly held to have provided a buttress of resistance to the Soviet state.5 Following the
Soviet collapse, this dichotomy has evolved in both nationalist discourse emanating from the
region and Western analyses as one obtaining between a ‘metropole’ and its ‘colonies’. An
extension of this view, that the former ‘metropole’, motivated by neo-imperial ambitions, is
the source of the region’s conflicts is a widely held belief in the region itself.6

The dichotomy between the state and ‘society’ or ‘nation’ (such as that suggested by
phrasing such as ‘the triumph of the nations’) has increasingly been questioned in post-Soviet
scholarship as obscuring the dynamics of mutual transformation between the Soviet state and
the social and political realms it contained (see, e.g., Jones Luong, 2004, 11-24). Rather than
distinct boundaries between the state and society or between the ‘colonizer’ and the

5
For a discussion of this point in the Central Asian context see Jones Luong, 2004, 8-10.
6
This is the ‘divide and rule’ thesis, for examples of which see Gachechiladze, 1995, 33-38, Ch. 9;
Chervonnaya, 1994. This approach attributes conflict to sponsorship of minority separatisms under Soviet rule
and post-Soviet Russia’s practical support of minority secessionist bids in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This
explanation is thus based in a ‘divide and rule’ thesis of colonial rule, re-configured as the interpretation of
Georgia’s multiple autonomies as ‘time-bombs’ deployed by Russia against Georgian independence. I am
sceptical of this approach. Firstly, the circumstances that led minority groups to see separatism as an attractive
alternative to existence in an independent Georgian state need to be elucidated if they are not be seen as
‘passive stooges’ of colonial rule. Secondly, contradictory ontologies of ethnicity, permanent and unchanging
for the in-group, malleable and manipulated for minority out-groups, are assumed in this view. Thirdly,
Russian neo-imperialism again does not explain variance between the Georgian and other cases. If Russia did
not sponsor separatism for co-ethnic Russian diapora communities, why should it have done so for Abkhazians
and Ossetians in Georgia? Rather, I see the divide and rule thesis as an ex post rationalisation of Georgia’s
conflicts and therefore one to be treated with suspicion.

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‘colonized’ there is increasing evidence of mutual influence and exchange between state and
society, allowing new insights into the scale of the transformation of indigenous societies by
Soviet rule. These insights seriously question the dichotomy between ‘state’ and ‘nation’ and
between a Soviet ‘past’ and a national ‘present’. What they suggest is a line of enquiry that
investigates the more complex nature of the strategic borrowings, deletions and
reinstatements that characterise the approach of post-Soviet states to their Soviet pasts.
Proceeding from this insight, this dissertation interrogates notions of separate ‘Soviet’ and
‘national’ realms in Georgia to suggest that the interactions between these realms were far
more intense than we have previously thought. The Georgian example is an ideal case for
the investigation of these themes precisely because Georgian identity is so often thought of as
being ‘ancient’ (see below).

Furthermore, from a broader post-Soviet perspective the outcome of violent conflict in

Georgia is anomalous. Despite pessimistic predictions of pan-regional ethnic conflagration
across the former Soviet space, violent conflict has been exceptional rather than ‘normal’.
Against the predictions of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, several NIS thought to be ‘likely’
cases of ethnic conflict (Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia) have emerged as the subject
of studies examining why violent conflict did not happen (Laitin, 1998; Schatz, 2000a;
Ginkel, 2002; Sasse, 2002). These studies have challenged the early consensus on the
determinative role of ethnic and national affiliations in post-Soviet politics, and from diverse
angles suggest caution in unambiguously attributing conflict to ‘identity’. A paradox
emerges from the above discussion, namely that the South Caucasus, the least studied region
of the former Soviet Union, is the case most frequently cited to justify claims of the ubiquity
of post-Soviet nationalist conflict, claims shown by the experience of other regions to be
exaggerated. This suggests the investigation of the Georgian case (and the South Caucasus at
large) as a counterfactual, a case where violent conflict did occur. Such an approach would
naturally lead us to reconsider what specific features characterise the region and account for
this outcome. The research questions addressed in this study, then, are: why did Georgia
prove susceptible to ethnic conflict – more so than other equally multiethnic post-Soviet
republics? What role did local variations in the broad institutional and cultural legacies of
Soviet rule play in this outcome? Why, and how, did ethnic conflict in Georgia take violent
form? How did the material legacies of violence and fragmentation mediate subsequent
attempts to construct an independent Georgian state? And in the discursive realm, in what
ways has the ‘Soviet’ past informed, or indeed structured, the ‘national’ present?

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The current literature on Georgia is rather scattered and diverse in its approaches. It may be
seen as offering three principal explanations for violent ethnic conflict in Georgia. The first
is that ethnic difference is itself the cause of conflict. A number of works have provided
historical narratives charting the history of interethnic relations in Georgia, attributing
conflict to historical grievances and conflicting identity claims, exacerbated by the
emergence of nationalism following political liberalisation and accompanying socio-
economic tensions (Hewitt, 1993; Lakoba, 1990; Birch, 1996; Colarusso, 1995; Nodia,
1996a).7 A second explanation attributes primary importance to the institutional legacy of
Soviet ethno-federalism as a source of conflict. In this view autonomous institutions reified
ethnic identities over the Soviet period and later provided political resources for secessionist
movements, legitimated by claims to national self-determination (Cornell, 2002; Duffy Toft,
2001). A third line of explanation has emphasised the weakness of Georgian statehood and
the multiple political crises broadly gathered under the transition label. Different analysts in
this vein have stressed the low level of political culture, the weakness of democratic
institutions, and the importance of struggles between patronage networks outside of
institutionalised channels of conflict resolution (Jones, 1994; Nodia, 1996b, 2002; Snyder,
2000, 232-234; MacFarlane, 1997).

Each of these lines of inquiry has contributed to understanding Georgia’s fragmentation.

Treated in isolation from one another, however, they do not explain the variance between the
outcome of conflict in Georgia and its containment in other post-Soviet republics. As noted
above Georgia was not, among the Soviet national republics, by any means unique in being
ethnically heterogeneous. Ethnic conflict, in the form of competing claims over identity,
resource distribution and policies, characterised all of the post-Soviet republics to varying
extents, yet in most cases this was contained within institutionalised channels. Moreover, in
privileging ethnicity per se, we risk a form of teleological explanation that mistakes effect for
cause. Did Georgia fragment because of ethnic differences, or do we ex post ascribe primary
significance to ethnicity because the lines of Georgia’s fragmentation are ostensibly ethnic?
Such an approach conflates two separate questions: how the state broke up – along what lines
of cleavage – and why the state broke up.8 Similarly the focus on institutions of ethno-

7
See also the articles in Hewitt, 1999.
8
I borrow this formulation from Rubin, 1998a, 131. The insertion of empire imagery into discussions of ethnic
relations in Soviet Georgia by Russian dissident Andrey Sakharov’s oft-cited reference to Georgia as a ‘little

14
federalism is certainly warranted, yet the identification of a sine qua non of conflict is not the
same as an explanation. The ethno-federal composition of the Russian Federation has not,
with the important exception of Chechnya, resulted in fragmentation. This suggests that the
nature of the interaction between ethnicity, institutions and conflict is better approached as a
variable and needs to be elucidated for each individual case. Finally institutional weakness
and the problems associated with post-Soviet transition were not features unique to Georgia.
All of the post-Soviet successor states are to varying extents ‘weak’ states, relative to their
individual historical legacies, geopolitical locations and internal specificities.

This study is animated by a renewed focus on the legacies of Soviet rule and their interaction
with the ‘transition’ context of devolved political authority. Of course legacies only become
apparent as such within the context of transition, yet the exploration of legacies is useful for
at least three reasons. First, as Millar and Wolchik argue, legacies are enduring social
relationships that structure forms of collective action and perceptions within the context of
transition (Millar and Wolchik, 1994). Understanding legacies can therefore situate factors
emergent within the transitional context in a broader historical and institutional framework.
This is particularly pertinent for the consideration of ethnicity, a long-term social identity that
is slow to change. Second, as Beissinger and Crawford note, whereas transitional factors
have loomed larger in the literature on post-socialism, in the literature on the post-colonial
state in Africa it is the legacies of colonial rule that have attracted greater attention
(Beissinger and Crawford, 2002, 21).9 The investigation of legacies allows us to situate the
exercise of Soviet rule and its consequences within a broader comparative framework of
colonialism and post-colonialism.10 Third, the investigation of legacies allows us a more
nuanced picture of crucial differences within the exercise of Soviet power at different levels
of the state and in different regions. Although the impact of Soviet ethno-federalism has
been a central theme in the broader literature, it has often been treated in a rather general way
(Kaiser, 1994; Brubaker, 1994; Zaslavsky, 1993; Suny, 1993, Ch.3). The case study
literature by contrast points to important differences in the nature of Soviet legacies in

empire’ in an interview with the Russian magazine Ogonek in July 1989 has further confused matters. Such a
view would ascribe Georgia’s collapse ex post to its ‘imperial’ nature.
9
This is of course in part due to the greater elapse of time since African independence and ‘lower’ Western
expectations attaching to it. The questionable utility of the transition paradigm in post-colonial contexts
suggests caution in its application to post-communist contexts.
10
The utility of bridges between post-socialist and post-colonialist research themes is being affirmed by an
increasing number of scholars of post-socialism. See, for example, Beissinger and Crawford, 2002; Verdery,
2002; G. Smith, 1998a.

15
different regions of the post-Soviet space (e.g., Laitin, 1998; Kolstø, 1999, 2002). A
regionally sensitive account of the impact of Soviet nationalities policies allows for a more
nuanced understanding of its influence in post-Soviet state building, patterns of political
authority and outcomes of conflict and accommodation in different regions.

The main argument pursued in this dissertation is that the nation penetrated modern Georgian
society primarily as a cultural form, without a concomitant identification with an over-
arching frame of statehood. This is linked to the South Caucasus’s specific historical legacy
as a region penetrated by mass nationalism but lacking an indigenous institutional history of
state building. Soviet state-building strategies reinforced this historical disjunction by
articulating the institutional pathways of the state with ethnic affiliations, and over-laying
ethnicity with a number of other social and economic cleavages. This made nationalism a
viable and resonant ideology of resistance to Soviet rule in the late 1980s, in a context where
numerous constraints to ethnic nationalism present in other post-Soviet republics were
absent. Popular identification with ethnic nationality and the legitimacy of nationalism as a
form of political authority far outstripped identification with the state as an integrating
vehicle, or indeed the capacity of state institutions to fulfil such a role. This contrasts with
the Baltic context, where ethnic nationalism was moderated by an institutional history of
statehood and constraints imposed by proximity to Europe, and the Central Asian context,
where weak identification with the nation severely compromised the appeal of nationalism.
While acknowledging the importance of structural and cultural factors in the genesis of
conflict, however, I posit a causal disjunction between conflict and ethnic violence. This is
explained here as a separable, contingent outcome of developments taking place within the
context of nationalist mobilization. This allows the explanation of how the interaction
between structural and cultural legacies and the context of transition contributed to violence
in Georgia but not other post-Soviet scenarios.

This thesis further presents an interrogation of the dominant linear view of the ‘strength’ of
Georgian national identity and the exclusionary nature of Georgian nationalism as sources of
conflict. The prevailing view of Georgian nationalism, and in turn the cohesiveness of
Georgian national identity, has been skewed by an overriding focus on its manifestation in a
particular period, the Georgian national revival between 1987 and 1991. The ubiquitous
assumption in Western scholarship that nationalism and violence are, as Stephen Jones puts
it, “partners in crime” in Georgia (and the South Caucasus at large) has precluded a more

16
nuanced view of the shifting contexts and imperatives confronting expressions of nationalism
(Jones, 2000).11 This has resulted in a number of elisions obscuring explanation. First of all,
we miss the role of contingency in explaining the ascendance of a particular strand of
nationalism over its alternatives. The primacy of an exclusive Georgian nationalism in the
early 1990s needs to be seen as a path-dependent process situated within a particular political
and institutional context, rather than pre-determined. By failing to incorporate contingency
into explanation we further risk fixing the values associated with expressions of nationalism
in a particular context as defining the character of a given nationalism as a whole. In doing
so, explanation inevitably resorts to reified and questionable dichotomies between non-
violent ‘Western’ nationalisms and violent ‘Eastern’ nationalisms. I argue for the
discontinuous study of nationalism, emphasising nationalist strategies in a particular setting
and thereby the timebound nature of particular expressions of nationalism in a shifting
political environment.

Second, by accepting the cohesiveness of Georgian national identity without explaining or

questioning it, we risk integrating ideology into analysis. There has been a tendency to
incorporate nationalist narratives of longevity and cohesiveness into scholarly literature on
Georgia. Particularly by comparison to the more ‘recent’ nations of Central Asia, there is a
common acceptance of the ancientness of Georgian identity. The resulting linear view of
Georgian identity, while accommodating the self-perception of many Georgians, is
nevertheless misleading. The vast majority of recent theoretical works on nationalism have
emphasised the constructed, discursive nature of national identity, produced by intellectuals
and state ideologies according to specific opportunities and political imperatives (see the
discussion in Chapter 1 below). In this study I pay particular attention to countervailing
regional, structural and political factors that have influenced Georgian identity construction
in the post-Soviet period. Investigation of these contexts reveals a far more fragmented and
contextually determined history than assumptions of the strength of Georgian national
identity allow for.

Thirdly, we have on the whole seen nationalism in the post-Soviet space, and the Caucasus in
particular, as a force for destruction rather than construction. Such a view elides

11
As Jones rightly observes, “Western classifications of Georgian nationalism invariably place it in the more
extreme, ethnic, and insoluble category. Georgian nationalism is frequently lumped together with the Serbian
and Croatian examples as a movement rooted in conflict and historical animosities” (p.1).

17
transformations in the elaboration of post-Soviet nationalisms towards a more
accommodating, inclusive stance. To be sure, the Soviet intellectual legacy has made post-
Soviet nationalisms unwieldy vehicles for integrating ideologies. Yet whether as a result of
internal and/or external constraints, or experience born of war and fragmentation, post-Soviet
nationalisms a decade on present a different picture to that of the early 1990s. Here I seek to
look beyond the characterisation of Georgian nationalism as a force for fragmentation by
investigating novel ideological improvisations in the post-conflict context, the imperatives of
state building motivating them, and ways in which inclusive and exclusive idioms of
nationhood interact with one another in a post-conflict society.

It is important to stress the still unresolved nature of the nationality question in contemporary
Georgia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain outside of central government control, a
situation that does not look likely to change in the near future, and their particular dynamics
as two of a number of unrecognised territories in the post-Soviet space forms a separate
research theme in its own right (see, e.g., Lynch 2002). Without their re-integration the more
wide-ranging question of the form a re-constituted Georgian-Abkhazian-Ossetian state might
take remains hypothetical, and, needless to say, highly contested. In order to prevent this
dissertation becoming a running commentary on unstable current events, it covers the period
up to the year 2000.

This dissertation is based on a wide range of primary Georgian and Russian-language

sources, including archival material, Soviet census data, official publications of the Russian
imperial, Soviet and independent Georgian states, newspapers and journals, in addition to
secondary sources in Western and Georgian scholarship. I have also relied on internet
resources, participant observation and a wide range of interviews with official figures and
ethnographic interviews with informants. I spent a total of nine months in Georgia over the
course of the study, the first three of which (in addition to a prior year of tuition in London)
were dedicated to mastering the Georgian language. During the course of my fieldwork I
visited virtually every region of Georgia, including a number of visits to Abkhazia and South
Ossetia while involved in conflict resolution projects. Fifty-three ethnographic interviews,
using the format of open-ended interviews recorded with a dictaphone, were conducted in
Tbilisi and the province of Mingrelia. Interviews conducted during the 1999 parliamentary
elections and the 2000 presidential contest, during which I worked as an election observer for
the non-governmental organisations The London Information Network on Conflicts and

18
State-building (LINKS) and the European Institute of the Media respectively, have also been
drawn upon in the study; all of the presidential candidates in 2000 were interviewed (or, in
two cases where this proved impossible, their plenipotentiaries). Interviews were conducted
in Georgian, or, where appropriate, Russian. Archival material was gathered during an
admittedly incomplete survey of archives dating from Russian colonial rule held at the
Central State Historical Archive in Tbilisi, and archives held in the Zugdidi Historical
Museum in Mingrelia. My usage of disparate source materials has been necessarily eclectic,
drawing upon those sources most relevant to the central themes of the study. The
development of Georgian nationalism remains under-researched and this does not claim to be
an exhaustive study. I hope nevertheless to expand upon our current view and most of all to
bring the ‘view from below’ into clearer focus through ethnographic investigation, hitherto
almost completely absent from accounts of national identity in post-Soviet Georgia.

19
Chapter 1. Nationalism, the State and Conflict: Theoretical Perspectives

In contrast to an earlier generation of post-colonial scholarship on Africa, ethnicity has been

central to scholarship on post-Soviet Eurasia, assimilating the many developments in the
field of nationalism studies of the past two decades.12 In recent years this field has
diversified beyond the traditional debate between ‘constructivists’ and ‘primordialists’.
While they disagree over the timing and agents of construction, all scholars of nationalism
now recognise the constructed, unstable and contextually determined nature of cultural
identities, rather than viewing culture as a ‘given’ of social existence. Other approaches have
sought to take the study of ethnicity and nationalism in new directions in which ethnicity is
seen as a variable in a larger causal matrix of events. However, most scholars today concur
that the ‘ethnic’ nature of a conflict cannot be taken for granted, and at the same time –
although from diverse and sometimes contradictory directions – they concur that ethnicity
can and does play a central role as an organising principle of collective action.

In this chapter I lay out the definitions and methodological frameworks that inform this
study. The diversification of theoretical approaches to ethnic conflict alluded to above has
lead to a useful tension between a wide range of theories in a crowded field. In the following
review of the field and the concepts used in this study, I do not seek to dismiss any single
theory; rather I proceed from the observation made above that no single paradigm has
universal explanatory power when used in isolation. The optimum strategy for the case
analyst is to draw selectively upon those theoretical approaches that most convincingly
address the questions posed by a given case; to the extent that the case substantiates the
predictions of a given theory, it may be seen as having been confirmed. The chapter
proceeds dialectically, considering different methodologies and incorporating them into a
broad integrating framework. While noting the broader theoretical approaches from which
they draw, I pay primary attention to those interpretations based on Soviet and post-Soviet
politics since these already incorporate the specific features of ethnic politics in this regional
arena. I do not give an exhaustive review of the literature on nations and nationalism, which
is vast, and would be superfluous given the increasing number of theoretical reviews now

12
For a discussion of approaches to ethnicity in scholarship on post-colonial Africa see Jacquin, 1999, Ch. 3.

20
available.13 Furthermore for the sake of parsimony I concentrate on those scholars that
present clearly contrastable interpretations.

1.1 Core concepts: nations and nationalism, state-building, ethnic conflict and ethnic
violence, and post-colonialism
I begin by setting out the definitions of the key concepts of nation, nationalism, ethnicity,
ethnic conflict and ethnic violence used in this study. ‘Nation’ is understood here as a
modern category denoting first and foremost a political community, consisting of a
territorialized unit making claims to political self-determination on the basis of a legitimating
ideology of popular sovereignty. ‘Nationality’ is understood as a primarily political category
of membership, denoting the relationship between the individual and the political community
of the nation. To the extent that the nation is defined as a cultural unit, the political
community is co-extensive with a cultural community; here, nationality denotes both
membership in a cultural and political community (see the discussion on ethnic and civic
paradigms of nationalism below). Emergent in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the concept of the nation as the political expression of the will of the ‘people’ had assumed
normative status by the early twentieth century. It displaced prior, more hierarchical dynastic
and religious bases for political legitimacy, and later spread across the post-colonial world.
Whereas the cultural differentiation of dynastic and imperial elites from the strata below
them had formed an integral part of pre-modern states, the modern state required a normative
mobilization of its population that demanded that the polity be ideally homogeneous and
unitary. The normative fusion of state and nation through the discourse of nationalism
demanded that ‘like rule over like’. It is therefore within the political frame of the modern
discourse of the nation and the formation of nation-states that a politics of cultural pluralism,
as opposed to cultural heterogeneity, is articulated.

The main debates in the field of nationalism studies concern the historiography, specifically
the dating, of the nation. While modernists emphasise changes in productive bases,
communications technology, patterns of exchange and the rise of the modern territorial state
in creating nations and a national subjectivity, their opponents (referred to variously as
‘primordialists’, ‘perennialists’ or ‘ethno-symbolists’) emphasise in different ways the
perpetuation (albeit by different actors in successive historical periods) of collective symbols

13
Two useful recent reviews of the literature on nations and nationalism are Ozkirimli, 2000; Spencer and
Wollman, 2002.

21
and myths of identity through history.14 In their less radical forms these are not necessarily
incompatible positions, since most modernists concede that prior cultural materials and
processes were significant in the ideological elaboration of nations, and most non-modernists
concede that cultural antecedents do not wholly explain the routes of modern nation
formation. Between modernist and non-modernist schools there is thus a common ground,
highlighting the intellectual work of elites in constructing nations, popular responses to these
constructions within evolving social and economic contexts, and the normative force of the
ideology of nationalism in the modern world.

Proceeding from the definition of the nation as a primarily political community, nationalism
is understood here as the ideological elaboration of the nation with reference to the state, and
nationalist mobilization as collective action aiming to establish a nation as a sovereign
political community. Nationalism may thus less ambiguously be defined as a strictly modern
phenomenon, since the modern state provides the political frame within which claims to
political autonomy and self-governance are generated. The ideology of nationalism
presupposes not only the existence of discrete nations as the essential vehicles of historical
development, but also what Lisa Malkki calls ‘a national order of things’: “a powerful regime
of classification, an apparently commonsensical system of ordering and sorting people into
national types and kinds” (Malkki, 1995, 6). From here proceeds the unitarian ambition of
nationalism; as Anthony D. Smith observes, nationalism demands that for humans to be free,
they must identify with a nation (A. Smith, 2000, 72). Nationalism thus concedes the
heterogeneity of the world in terms of different nations but is, on the whole, opposed to
heterogeneity within individual nations. At the level of the discrete national unit, nationalism
demands homogeneity and imposes penalties on those who are ‘out of category’.

Closely related to nationalism, but more ambiguous, is the term ‘nation building’. This
concept is understood here to subsume both the ideological elaboration of a nation and the
promotion of its language, culture and symbols by the state across a range of institutional and
functional domains. This understanding of nation building is thus more specifically cultural
than either earlier interpretations of the term as the construction of a civic, ethnically neutral
collective identity or contemporary usages of the term synonymous with state building (see

14
For the leading modernist accounts see Gellner, 1983; Anderson, 1991; Hobsbawm, 1990. For the principal
‘non-modernist’ accounts see Armstrong, 1982; A. Smith, 1986; Connor, 1994. For a useful review of the main
debates between these approaches, see A. Smith, 2000.

22
below).15 As Will Kymlicka has argued, although within a single state more than one
national culture may be recognized, almost all Westerrn liberal democracies have attempted
the diffusion of a single national culture throughout the territory under their control
(Kymlicka, 2001b, 19-21). Thus, as Kymlicka rightly observes, nation building is
intrinsically linked to the choice and elevation of a single culture over others within a defined
territory (p.19). In the post-Soviet context there is no shortage of evidence supporting a
cultural understanding of nation building, which has almost everywhere been coloured by a
strong bias towards titular nations. This cultural bias has important repercussions for the
ability of cultures not promoted by the state to survive as meaningful vehicles of culture
across a full range of human activities (‘societal cultures’ in Kymlicka’s formulation).
Nation building thus in and of itself elicits a response from minority populations, who must
decide whether to integrate, emigrate, mobilize or accept marginalisation.

This understanding of nation building becomes clearer by reference to state building, which
is understood here as primarily a process of establishing an institutional basis for the exercise
of efficient governance according to normative and predictable rules. Most obviously this
process is directed at the imperatives of securing a coercive monopoly, the extraction of
resources and the creation of legitimacy. Of course state building in the modern era
necessarily entails a strong cultural component, particularly where the linguistic
rationalization of the polity is concerned. Here is an important source of conflict between the
imperatives of nation building and state building – the cultural forms demanded by nation
builders as constituting the ‘authentic’ base of the political community in whose name the
state is founded may fall short of efficiency and rationality criteria that motivate state
builders (Laitin, 1992). The discourse of nationalism and the world nation-state system
assumes the convergence of nation and state building. In many post-colonial contexts,
however, the cultural aspects of state building, namely elevating a single culture for the
purposes of efficient governance, has often challenged ethnically neutral conceptualisations
of new nations. In the post-Soviet context, where new or restored multiethnic states have
been (re-)founded in the name of titular nations only, the two processes have more often been
contradictory than complementary.

15
For a prescient critique of the use of the term nation building written in 1972 see Walker Connor’s article
“Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?”, reprinted in Connor, 1994, 29-66.

23
Ethnicity is a more diffuse term than nationality, although it is intimately tied to the concept
of the nation. It is understood here as a primarily cultural category of membership at lower
levels of social aggregation than the state, generally lacking the ideological elaboration and
aspiration to total autonomy of the nation (hence the much more limited application of the
cognate ‘ethnicism’ compared to nationalism). Ethnic groups do not generally define
themselves in terms of territorialized political communities, and do not make claims for self-
government. Compared to nationality, ethnicity is fundamentally ascriptive and
correspondingly less voluntary in nature; although the basis of ethnic membership may be
placed along a continuum from birth to choice, the principal criteria of ethnicity – race,
language, religion, caste, homeland and shared beliefs of origin – are usually conceived of as
given rather than chosen.16 This is central to the underlying assumption of continuity as
central to ethnicity: the ethnic group is conceived of as “intergenerational, ongoing, and
independent of its present members” (Horowitz, 1985, 52). Hence the predominance of
metaphors of blood, birth and kinship in the expression of ethnicity: as Donald Horowitz
observes, “the language of ethnicity is the language of kinship” (p.57). As a category of
belonging ethnicity possesses a strong phenomenological element, intertwining its fictive
family tie with notions of loyalty, morality and sanctity. This attaches particular force to the
emotive appeal of ethnicity, through which ethnic attributes are transformed from the
unconscious realm to the conscious realm of mobilized ethnicity. To distinguish ethnic
mobilization from nationalist mobilization, I define it as the reification of a boundary vis-à-
vis a significant other in more localised contexts than the state (although where the state is
perceived as representing a specific ethnic community, it may also be the significant other),
rather than mobilization aimed directly at political autonomy as the term ‘subnationalism’
might imply.

What makes conflict ‘ethnic’, and what makes ethnic conflict violent? In our everyday
descriptive language we rarely distinguish between ethnic conflict broadly understood, and
violent ethnic conflict; in other words, we typically conflate ethnic conflict and ethnic
violence. This renders the term ethnic conflict ambiguous, since as Ashutosh Varshney
observes, any multiethnic society that allows a degree of political expression will be

16
For detailed discussions of ethnicity see Horowitz, 1985, 55-92; Fishman, 1989, 5-47; for Anthony Smith’s
elaboration of his concept of ethnie (ethnic group) and his vast contribution to the historical sociology of
ethnicity, see A. Smith, 1986; for a discussion of the terminological chaos surrounding the concepts of ethnicity,
ethnic group and nation see Walker Connor’s 1978 article, “A Nation Is a Nation, Is a State, Is an Ethnic Group,
Is a…”, reprinted in Connor, 1994, 90-117.

24
characterised by conflicting claims over identity, the distribution of resources and the group
parameters of state policy (Varshney, 2001). From this perspective, these forms of ethnic
conflict are endemic to any multiethnic context, and are implicit even in the term ethnic
cooperation. However, this is too broad a conceptualisation to be useful. Varshney usefully
distinguishes between violent and non-violent ethnic conflict through the concept of ‘ethnic
peace’, a situation where ethnic conflict is contained and resolved within institutionalised
channels, to be conceptualised as “an absence of violence, not as an absence of conflict”
(p.366, emphasis in original). Ethnic peace may thus accommodate conflict for as long as
institutionalised or non-violent means are used to pursue conflicting claims; we might
therefore see post-Soviet Estonian-Russian or Kazakh-Russian relations as cases of ethnic
peace, rather than ‘non-conflict’. Contrasted with ethnic peace in this sense ethnic conflict is
understood here as a situation where ethnic peace has broken down, that is, where
institutional channels have failed to contain conflict, creating opportunities for extra-
institutional forms of pursuing conflict including political violence.

This formulation is intended to circumvent a further conceptual problem arising from the
conflation of ethnic conflict and ethnic violence, namely the assumption that ethnic conflict
and ethnic violence are parts or stages of the same process. As Rogers Brubaker and David
Laitin argue, ethnic violence has often erroneously been seen as a progression from ethnic
conflict, an escalation in its intensity. They argue that ethnic violence “is not a quantitative
degree of conflict but a qualitative form of conflict, with its own dynamics”(Brubaker and
Laitin, 1998, 426). They define it as

‘violence perpetrated across ethnic lines, in which at least one party is not a state
(or a representative of a state), and in which the putative ethnic difference is
coded – by perpetrators, targets, influential third parties, or analysts – as having
been integral rather than incidental to the violence, that is, in which the violence is
coded as having been meaningfully oriented in some way to the different ethnicity
of the target’ (p.428).

Analyses of ethnic conflict therefore need to explain both the breakdown of the institutional
mechanisms supporting ethnic peace, and the process whereby ethnically directed violence
becomes possible. Recent approaches to ethnic violence have furthermore understood
violence as a broad repertoire of acts including not only the actual exertion of physical force,

25
but also a wide range of discursive practices that interpret and construct acts of violence as
‘ethnic’ in nature.17 As Paul Brass has shown, ethnic violence may be ‘produced’ through ex
post interpretations and representations of perpetrators, victims, witnesses and analysts once
conflict has become a political fact and antagonists attempt to mobilize broader support bases
(Brass, 1997). The coding of violence as ethnic is in turn influenced by the prevailing frames
of interpretation obtaining both in the context in which violence has been perpetrated, and in
the context under which analysis is carried out. Both conflict and violence in the South
Caucasus have been ubiquitously coded as ethnic, often without a distinction between them.
Historical narratives centred on particular ethnic groups facilitate this conflation of disparate
phenomena within the catch-all interpretive frame of ethnicity. I do not agree with the
opposed position, however, that ethnic conflict is a ‘myth’ (Crawford and Lipschutz, 1998).
While such a position is clearly intended to counter ethnic-reductionist forms of explanation
it can lead to a reductionism of its own, reducing conflict to socio-economic factors and a
purely instrumentalist view of the role of ethnicity. This view ignores the extent to which
ethnic frames of interpretation have been – and continue to be – compelling for significant
portions of populations in the South Caucasus, and cannot explain why this should be the
case. In this sense I agree with Pål Kolstø that the touchstone should not be the inherent
quality of events but how actors perceive them, and the historical, cultural and institutional
contexts through which they make sense of them (Kolstø, 2002a, 7).

Finally a note on ‘post-colonialism’ is called for. Although some scholars have cautioned
against ex post redefinitions of the Soviet Union as an empire as explanations of its collapse
(Beissinger, 2002, 5-6), post-colonialism is increasingly serving as an organizing metaphor
of post-Soviet studies. I will not engage at length with the debate over whether the Soviet
Union can or should be seen as an empire (see, e.g., Suny, 2001). Most scholars do concede
that aspects of Soviet rule may usefully be seen as colonial, even if its indigenisation policies
diverged from traditional understandings of empire, leading Graham Smith, for example, to
offer the term ‘federal colonialism’ to describe the unique relationship between Soviet core
and periphery (G. Smith, 1998a, 4). However, as Mark Beissinger has argued, a focus on
degrees of structural disparity or political violence obscures what he calls “empire-
consciousness”, or the perception of being exploited: “whether politics and policies are
accepted as “ours” or rejected as “theirs” (Beissinger, 1995, 155). In this sense the Soviet

17
For a survey of thirteen different approaches that have been used to analyse violence, see Beissinger, 2001.

26
Union may be considered as an empire, and the post-Soviet states as ‘post-colonial’, because
they are constructed as such in the representations of nation-builders and ordinary citizens
(G. Smith, 1998a, 8). Post-colonialism, as a set of attitudes, discourses and understandings
about the nature of the Soviet past and its relationship to the present, has indisputably played
a significant role in the nation building practices of post-Soviet national elites; to this extent,
the categories ‘post-Soviet’ and ‘post-colonial’ describe comparable syndromes. The
perception of prior injustices under Soviet rule has been a key factor in policies of ethnic
redress in all of the NIS, policies seeking to ‘re-instate’ titular nations to what is seen as their
‘rightful’ place at the centre of politics. However, the legacy of titular nationalities equipped
with cultural institutions and ancient histories formulated in the late Soviet period clearly
differentiates post-Soviet ethnic politics from those of African and Asian post-colonial states,
allowing Soviet/Russian rule to be seen as an aberration, and the linking of the ‘pre-colonial’
to the ‘post-colonial’.

The notion of post-coloniality, however, implicitly carries within it certain misleading

assumptions of discontinuity between the ‘colonial’ past and the ‘post-colonial’ present, and
between the Soviet metropole and the colonized societies ‘beneath’ it. I alluded in the
introduction to what might be called the ‘resistance’ paradigm for understanding the Soviet
South Caucasus, in which cohesive national communities were seen as providing social
buttresses against the intrusions of the Soviet state. At one level, this view captures a certain
reality about Soviet rule in the region, but it also suggests an insulation of state from society
that does not capture important mutually transformative processes. I therefore use the term
post-colonial with caution, to describe a widespread subjective perception of politics, and a
legitimatory frame particularly of certain kinds of nationalist politics. As we shall see,
however, actual policies diverge widely from ‘post-colonial’ expectations, and reflect the
thorough suffusing of ‘post-colonial’ expectations, categories and normative codes with
‘colonial’ templates.

1.2 Peripheral Incorporation and Interethnic Dynamics

Many accounts of ethnic conflict have centred on structural explanations emphasising the
dynamics of centre-periphery relations and peripheral incorporation as sources of nationalist
mobilization and conflict. This approach was originally pioneered by Michael Hechter’s
account of “internal colonialism” (Hechter, 1975). Hechter’s account was derived from a
critique of the ‘diffusion model of development’, which he saw as underlying the dominant

27
‘assimilationist’ view of cultural difference in the United States. He suggested that the
increased interaction between an industrialising core and peripheries would not result, as
predicted, in assimilation but in the ‘internal colonisation’ of the periphery by the core. The
result was a ‘cultural division of labour’ in which members of peripheral ethno-regions are
disadvantaged compared to those representing the core. Where ethnic differences correlated,
and began to symbolise, economic inequality, and a sufficient degree of social
communication among exploited groups exists, ethnic mobilization and conflict could ensue.
Hechter later revised the original theory by distinguishing between ‘hierarchical’ and
‘segmental’ patterns of the cultural division of labour:

“Hierarchy refers to the variance in average occupational prestige of the culturally

distinct groups. It is associated with systematic patterns of cultural disadvantage
in various measures of welfare, including income, schooling, and even health
outcomes. Hierarchies tend to persist because groups at the apex of a hierarchy
profit from the labour of those beneath them. Segmentation refers to the variance
in these groups’ corresponding occupational specialization. It fosters – and, in
turn, is fostered by – the establishment of culturally distinct social networks”
(Hechter, 2000, 100).

While the hierarchical pattern led to ‘reactive’ group formation, the segmental pattern could
led to ‘interactive’ group formation, a distinction designed to accommodate cases of
mobilization such as the Scots and Catalans otherwise inexplicable in Hechter’s original
theory (Hechter and Levi, 1979). In this revised account Hechter and Levi identified
institutional autonomy, creating the basis for the interaction of members wholly within the
boundaries of their own group, as an important factor in ethnic group consolidation.
Hechter’s account has been criticised for its overly functionalist analysis, yet this
consideration notwithstanding he identified an important variable for the study of ethnic
conflict in the pattern of peripheral incorporation.18

A focus on mobility patterns was also central to Gellner’s theory of nationalism. Gellner
attributed the germination of nationalist movements to what he calls “entropy-resistant”
classifications, attributes characterised by a “marked tendency not to become, even with the

18
For a synopsis of critiques of Hechter’s theory see Ozkırımlı, 2000, 102-104.

28
passage of time since the initial establishment of an industrial society, evenly distributed
throughout the entire society” (Gellner, 1983, 64). In his fictive example of Ruritanians
barred from mobility through the wider Megalomanian state, Gellner suggests that
“Ruritanians had two ways out: assimilation into Megalomanian language or culture, or the
establishment of a glorious independent Ruritania, where their patois would be turned into an
official and literary language” (p.69). Gellner’s theory, though seminal, has also been
criticised for its functionalism and almost wilful ignoring of cultural factors and micro-
dynamics of mobilization.19

In post-Soviet scholarship, a structural line of analysis has been most fully explored by David
Laitin’s peripheral incorporation model (Laitin, 1991, 1998). Laitin’s model effectively
takes Gellner’s theory of nationalism and turns it on its head by asking not how ‘Ruritanians’
assimilate into ‘Megalomanians’, but how Megalomanians (the Russian diaspora) might
assimilate into Ruritanians (the titular nationalities of the successor states). For Laitin the
key variable is the pattern of elite incorporation governing the insertion of titular nationalities
into the Soviet (and tsarist) state, and its implications for post-Soviet dynamics of linguistic
assimilation (and, by proxy, cultural assimilation). He theorises three patterns of Soviet
peripheral incorporation: ‘most-favoured-lord’, ‘colonial’ and ‘integralist’ (Laitin, 1998, 59-
82). In the ‘most-favoured-lord’ model titular elites are accepted on an equal standing to
those of the imperial core and are able to pursue mobility through to influential positions at
the political centre, creating powerful incentives for cultural assimilation. Ukrainians are the
exemplar of this pattern. In a second, ‘colonial’ pattern, titular elites are not accepted as
equals at the political centre; these elites may pursue careers only as the co-opted mediators
of central rule in the periphery. Cultural assimilation here is here purely instrumental, a
passport to social and political status within the periphery. Kazakhstan is the exemplar of
this pattern. In a third, ‘integralist’ pattern, exemplified by the Baltic republics, the
expanding state is unable to undermine of the cultural integrity of the peripheral elites in its
periphery. The Baltic pattern thus corresponds closely to Hechter’s suggestion of
institutional autonomy.

These models of incorporation, Laitin argues, have important implications for patterns of
post-Soviet interethnic relations between titular and Russian-speaking populations. The

19
For a summary of critiques of Gellner see Ozkırımlı, 2000, 137-143; see also the various contributions to
Hall, 1998.

29
presence of significant numbers of russified titulars presents an important internal constraint
to ethnic nationalism in the most-favoured-lord and colonial models; in the integralist model
this constraint is absent, and incentives for Russians to accommodate the titular nationality
stronger. Although Laitin’s model is directed mainly towards relations between titulars and
Russian-speaking populations, the model has a broader application in the delineation of the
structural relationships of all titular groups to the Soviet state, and the elucidation of patterns
of interethnic conflict potentially arising from these relationships.

Laitin’s approach has many merits, not least the informing of the theoretical model outlined
above by ethnographic fieldwork. Careful to avoid the functionalism of Gellner’s account on
which it is built, Laitin’s approach attempts to bridge the divide between structure and
agency through microanalysis of individual choices within a larger historical framework. For
Laitin, the “macro forces of history delimit individual choice, but they do not determine it.
Both the identity choices of an age and the relative costs of those choices must be analysed in
a coherent fashion” (Laitin, 1998, 367). Laitin also claims to transcend the divide between
rationality and culture, claiming that individuals do calculate ‘returns’ rationally when it
comes to identity choices. He emphasises, however, that ‘rational’ is not synonymous with
‘material’: the returns he analyses are those of status and honour rather than simply the
individual maximisation of wealth (p.366). As Laitin concedes, only a profound
understanding of the cultural system within which cultural preferences derive meaning can
allow the analyst to determine where behaviour is in fact instrumental.

The implication of Laitin’s argument is thus that the role of Soviet nationalities policy needs
to be elucidated in any given case. Rather than accepting the role of Soviet national
institutions as having simply reified and reinforced ethnic identities, the dynamic role of
those institutions in the degree and type of political incorporation for specific groups needs to
be identified. The categories of Laitin’s model have not been extended to Georgia. Posed
for the Georgian case, his approach invites the questions: how were the different titular
groups in Georgia incorporated into the Soviet state? What implications did patterns of
incorporation have for the structural relationships of different groups to the Soviet state, and
for the dynamics of cultural assimilation and differentiation between them?

30
1.3 Constructivist Perspectives: Instrumentalist and Institutionalist Accounts
Constructivism, and its post-modern variant deconstructivism, describes a diffuse range of
approaches that have increasingly dominated the study of ethnicity and nationalism in recent
years.20 Originally aimed against the ‘primordialist’ analysis of ethnicity as a pre-determined
and socially unmediated given of existence, constructivism has – from diverse angles –
sought to show how ethnicity is a constructed and contingent category of identity, subject to
constant redefinition relative to surrounding socio-economic, institutional and cultural
contexts. In political science constructivism has informed instrumentalist approaches to
ethnicity and ethnic conflict. This approach emphasises the role of different political actors,
particularly elites, in bringing consolidated ethnic groups into being by the reification of
certain boundaries over others for purposes of political gain. This position has been most
consistently pursued by Paul Brass, for whom,

“ethnicity and nationalism are not ‘givens’ but are social and political
constructions. They are the creations of elites, who draw upon, distort, and
sometimes fabricate materials from the cultures of groups they wish to represent
in order to protect their well being or existence or to gain political and economic
advantage for their groups as well as themselves” (Brass, 1991, 8).

This approach leads Brass to identify three different sets of struggles that define ethnic
identity formation and mobilization: (1) the struggle within the ethnic group itself for the
control of material and symbolic resources; (2) the competition between ethnic groups for
rights, privileges and resources and (3) the struggle between the state and the groups that

20
The application of post-modernist approaches to the concept of the nation has produced a vast literature of
second-generation scholarship on nationalism. Collectively, post-modernists suggest that “the modern system
of nation-states requires study, not just as a political system narrowly understood, but as a powerful regime of
order and knowledge that is at once politico-economic, historical, cultural, aesthetic, and cosmological”
(Malkki, 1995, 5). With a debt to Anderson’s original theorising of the nation as something ‘imagined’, post-
modernists from diverse angles have drawn attention to the discursive construction of the nation, and the
narrative strategies, sites and institutions through which the nation is ‘told’ and naturalised. Homi Bhabha, for
example, suggests that we approach the nation as “a system of cultural signification” (Bhabha, 1990, 1). In this
vein, post-modernists have brought an anthropologically informed focus on the symbols, metaphors and tropes
which nationalist discourse appropriates, often from the world of nature, to achieve “the fusion of the
ideological and the sensory, the bodily and the normative, the emotional and the instrumental, the organic and
the social” that is central to its claims (Alonso, 1994, 386). Others have focussed on the daily reproduction and
‘flagging’ of the nation in everyday life as a source of its internalisation (Billig, 1995; Borneman, 1992;
Verdery, 1996). These perspectives have led some scholars such as Valery Tishkov to suggest a ‘post-
nationalist’ approach to the study of nationalism as “a series of postulates and actions formulated and initiated
by activists within a particular social space. Nationalism is a set of simplistic but powerful myths arising from
and reaching to political practices” (Tishkov, 2000, 640). For another post-nationalist approach to nationalism
in the former Soviet Union see also Brubaker, 1996, Ch.1.

31
dominate it on the hand, and other populations that inhabit its territory on the other (Brass,
1985, 1). This approach brings a multiple focus to the struggle to define an ethnic group, the
social, economic and institutional incentives spurring this process, the dynamics of
competition and accommodation between ethnic group elites, and finally the alliance
strategies of the state. Brass’s emphasis on the manipulation of ethnicity is tempered,
however, by the recognition that it is those elites most skilled in appealing to the primordially
experienced attachments of their audiences that are most successful. His approach therefore
avoids a purely materialist interpretation of ethnic mobilization by recognising cultural
factors.

The instrumentalist approach in the analysis of post-Soviet conflict has been most explicitly
expressed in the work of Valery Tishkov, to some extent a reflection of the fact that he is a
very rare exception among indigenous scholars in following the constructivist tradition. In
Tishkov’s view, “[a] complex dialogue takes place between the cultural mosaic and power
structures, ‘producing’ ethnic groups by defining their boundaries” (Tishkov, 1997, 12).
While acknowledging the importance of subjectively experienced discrimination and
subordination at the level of the individual, he identifies elite activities as a critical element:

“a crucial factor in this process has not been the existence of a shared name held
in common by a group of people and thereby signifying the primordial existence
of a collective entity – an ‘ethnos’ which should now be properly rediscovered
through ‘correct’ census procedure and scholarly investigation. No, the crucial
factor has always been the political will of ‘outsiders’ or group elites, and
intellectual/academic exercises” (p.20).

For Tishkov the links allowing elite constructions to resonate with wider audiences were the
rapid pace of political change as the Soviet Union collapsed, creating the basis for non-
negotiated solutions to cultural and political issues, and the ‘corporate-centred’ indoctrination
of its totalitarian society (pp.274-5). The instrumental reification of ethnic boundaries thus
needs to be seen within the particular context of the opportunities presented by the
disintegration of the central state authority, and the resulting generalised insecurity.

Another influential account in the constructivist tradition is the ‘institutionalist’ account of

Rogers Brubaker. Informed by post-modernist perspectives that stress the constitutive effects

32
of the codification and institutionalisation of identities, he argues that “Soviet and post-
Soviet “national struggles” were and are not the struggles of nations, but the struggles of
institutionally constituted national elites – that is elites institutionally defined as national –
and aspiring counter-elites” (Brubaker, 1994, 48). The focus of his account is the
institutionalisation of ethnicity in the ethno-federal territorial arrangement of the Soviet state
and in the pervasive use of ethnicity as a component of personal identity (in identity
documents and other spheres). Countering the view that the Soviet Union suppressed
nationality, Brubaker argues that the Soviet state went further than any other state in
institutionalising territorial nationhood and ethnic nationality as fundamental social
categories. In doing so, he suggests, “it inadvertently created a political field supremely
conducive to nationalism” (Brubaker, 1996, 17). Brubaker thus draws attention to the
pervasiveness of ethnic categorisations in Soviet society that allowed for post-Soviet elite
appeals to ethnic identities to be intelligible and resonant to wide social constituencies.

These contributions have done much to dispel assumptions of discontinuity between Soviet
and post-Soviet identities and to draw attention to the role of institutions in both transforming
and politicising ethnic identifications. However, Brubaker’s account is overly general. It
implies that Soviet institutions had an equal effect everywhere, and leads to mistaken
predictions that nationality would be the salient political identity in all post-Soviet regions.
Scholars of Central Asia, for example, have refuted Brubaker’s thesis to argue that Soviet
institutions rendered regional, rather than national, identities salient in post-Soviet Central
Asia (Jones Luong, 2002, Ch. 3; Melvin, 2001). This suggests that Soviet ethno-federal
institutions cannot be assumed to have uniformly ‘incubated’ national identities, and
institutions alone cannot explain the salience of national identities. A more regionally
sensitive approach is needed if identities are not to be seen as epiphenomena of Soviet
structures.

A more dynamic link between constructivism and variable outcomes of conflict and
accommodation has been made through the investigation of the framing strategies adopted by
ethnic elites. It has been argued that the choices made by elites in the cultural symbols,
tropes and frames used to delimit the parameters of public debate have been critical to
outcomes of non-conflict in Kazakhstan and Latvia (Ginkel 2002; Schatz, 2000). In
ethnically divided societies such discursive frames provide important cues to ordinary
citizens as to the direction of ethnic politics and the sanctioning of one interpretation of

33
ethnic relations over another. The focus on elite framing strategies offers an important
insight allocating a more active and dynamic role to constructivism than is often allowed for,
and one that allows for variation within broadly similar structural contexts. This invites the
question of whether and how the identity construction strategies of elites in Georgia differed
from other cases where conflict was contained.

1.3.1 Ideological Factors: Ethnic and Civic Nationalism

Post-Soviet scholarship has also drawn upon the classic distinction between civic and ethnic
ideologies of nationalism to explain conflict. The study of nationalism has traditionally
distinguished civic and ethnic (also referred to voluntary and organicist) varieties of
nationhood as describing contrasting criteria of membership in the political community of the
nation.21 In the civic tradition the institutional and territorial frame of the state determines
membership: political unity constitutes the nation, which nevertheless also strives for cultural
unity (Brubaker, 1992, 1). The ideal-type civic nation is state-centred, secular and
integrationist with regard to its population. In the ethnic tradition culture determines
membership: national consciousness is here said to have preceded the establishment of a
political unit and the nation is therefore defined by cultural rather than political boundaries.
The ideal-type ethnic nation is consequently ethnocentric and exclusivist with regard to non-
members sharing the same state. It is important to emphasise the ideal-typical nature of
‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ categories, and that both discourses of membership usually co-exist in
tension with one another in any given case.22

In the post-Soviet arena a link has often been made between ethnic nationalism, in the form
of exclusive ethnic ideologies of membership favoured by nationalist elites, and conflict.23
In this context the first post-Soviet Georgian regime’s aggressive ethnic nationalism has been

21
Different categories have been used to theorise the civic/ethnic distinction. Hans Kohn distinguished between
‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ nationalisms, rooted in alternative rationalist and culturally based understandings of the
nation derived from the French Revolution and the philosophies of thinkers such as Gottfried Herder and Fichte
respectively (Kohn, 1967, 329-331). Gellner distinguished between ‘will’ and ‘culture’ as bases for the
formation of nations (Gellner, 1983, 53-58), expanded upon in Ralph Grillo’s discussion of “nation as
association” (Gesellschaft) and “nation as community” (Gemeinschaft) (Grillo, 1989, 22-26).
22
The dichotomy between civic and ethnic forms of nationalism has often been starkly drawn. Michael
Ignatieff, for example, argues that civic nationalism is necessarily democratic while ethnic nationalism is more
likely to be authoritarian in its preference for democracy in the interests of ethnic majorities (Ignatieff, 1993, 3-
6). Bernard Yack challenges this view, arguing that the idea of a culturally neutral civic nation is a myth.
Rather than the conferring of membership to individuals consenting to ‘rational’ political principles, Yack
suggests that civic nationalisms also draw extensively upon cultural materials that circumscribe the boundaries
of membership (Yack, 1999).
23
See for example the various contributions in G. Smith et al, 1998; Tishkov, 1997, 1-12.

34
cited as an important source of conflict in Georgia. I do not seek to overturn this argument,
but I do question the assumption that Georgian and other post-Soviet nationalisms are
‘intrinsically’ ethnic. Exclusive strands of nationalist ideology have been present in virtually
all of the NIS, yet in Slavic and Central Asian arenas ethnic nationalism faced important
internal constraints in the form of substantial russified titular populations. A fuller
understanding is required of firstly why an exclusive ethnic nationalism was both possible
and plausible in the Georgian case, and secondly why this strand of nationalism achieved
dominance over other possible orientations. This underlines the need to examine elite
strategies of identity construction as a contingent factor in ethnic conflict, rather than reading
ethnic preferences directly from identity categories per se.

Related to this point, the current literature is on the whole pre-disposed towards the analysis
of elite constructions of ethnic identity as a mechanism for division and fragmentation. If it
is accepted that ethnic identity is subject to construction, then it follows that it may be
constructed along more or less exclusive lines. This is particularly relevant if we are to
understand the changing role of identity construction in different political contexts. The
reification and sharpening of boundaries makes sense in the context of elites seeking to gain
legitimacy in terms of claims to national self-determination. In a context where
independence has been achieved, however, especially if this has been at the cost of ethnic
violence, then alternative strategies to identity construction are likely to be adopted. We
therefore need to be alert to firstly the timebound nature of specific strategies of identity
construction, and secondly tensions between efforts to construct ethnicity among different
political and cultural elites. In the context of this study, this invites the question of how have
the objectives of successive Georgian elites, relative to shifting political circumstances, been
reflected in different strategies of identity construction? And to what extent have such
constructions been seen as plausible or resonant with their intended audiences?

1.4 Social Psychological Perspectives

Constructivism has traditionally been contrasted with the ‘primordialist’ approach, which in
its hardest variants sees ethnic difference as a core motor of ethnic conflict. In recent years
the label ‘primordialism’ has rightly shifted from being used to describe an approach to the
analysis of nationalism to being seen as a strategy of nationalist practice. This shift in
meaning has been accompanied by a fragmentation of positions that diverge from the
modernist view of constructivism into ‘perennialist’, ‘ethnonationalist’ and ‘ethno-symbolist’

35
approaches.24 These approaches do not, at bottom, question that ethnicity is constructed
rather than inherent, but point to the importance of pre-modern cultural materials in the
modern construction of nations. As such they are best suited to elaborating a historical
sociology of ethnicity rather than identifying the role of ethnicity in specific political
outcomes.25 Nevertheless, although few scholars today seriously accept primordialism in its
own terms, as Brubaker observes, ‘realist’ or ‘substantialist’ thinking about nations continues
to suffuse scholarship (Brubaker, 1996, Ch.1). The assumption of a linear relationship
between multiethnicity and ethnic conflict in particular is still not uncommon and can lead to
rather generalised and undifferentiated understandings of conflict as the result of ‘pent-up
enmities’.26 This in turn can lead to pessimistic predictions that cultural pluralism leads
inevitably to conflict.27

The rejection of primordialist analysis does not, however, imply that social psychological
approaches to ethnicity cannot be incorporated into analyses of specific outcomes of conflict
and violence. As proponents of the instrumentalist approach recognise, elite appeals must
resonate with popular perceptions if they are to succeed. ‘Primordialism’ is a misnomer for
the rich socio-psychological perspective on ethnic conflict offered, for example, by
Horowitz’s monumental study. Horowitz proceeds from the observation that ethnic identities
are largely ascriptive and therefore difficult to change; evaluations of group worth, calculated
on the basis of what Horowitz terms a “positional group psychology”, consequently form a
24
These labels describe what is fundamentally a unified approach emphasising the historical persistence of
myths, symbols, memories and value systems as the constituent elements of ethnic groups. Its main exponents
are John Armstrong, Walker Connor and Anthony Smith. For a critical discussion of their approach see
Ozkırımlı, 2000, 167-189.
25
In the Georgian case the historical investigation of myth-symbol complexes over the longue durée suggests a
rich research agenda, albeit one easily suffused with the harder forms of primordialism characteristic of
nationalist discourse. Georgian scholar Rizmag Gordeziani has applied what is in essence an ethno-symbolic
approach to the origins of Georgian ethnic consciousness (Gordeziani, 1993). Through an examination of the
medieval Georgian chronicles of Leonti Mroveli and Armenian sources, Gordeziani argues that a myth of
common genetic relatedness to Targamos, the great-grandson of Noah, provided the basis for the political
unification in antiquity of the classical kingdoms of Iberia and Colchis. More questionable is Gordeziani’s
related claim that this unification created a “Georgian national state”, the restoration of which motivated
regional dynasts in subsequent periods.
26
Connor, for example, suggests that the “fault lines that separate nations are deeper and broader than those
separating nonkindred groups, and the tremors that follow those fault lines more potentially cataclysmic”, with
little elaboration of what factors render such fault-lines politically salient. Connor, 1994, 207. This view has
been recently resuscitated by Samuel Huntington’s above-mentioned thesis of the ‘clash of civilizations’. For
an empirical testing of Huntington’s thesis, which does not support his key claims and points to the limitations
of a ‘civilizational’ view of ethnic conflict, see Fox, 2002.
27
For instance Van Evera has suggested: “the first measure of the risks to the peace of a region posed by
nationalism is found in the proportion of its nationalisms that remain unfulfilled in statehood, a factor expressed
in the nation-to-state ratio” (Van Evera, 1995, 138-9). His analysis assumes that many of the world’s
linguistic groups have “dormant or manifest aspirations for statehood”, thereby reifying language as the
‘source’ of nationalist mobilization.

36
significant element of an individual’s sense of dignity and value. In the modern state, the
“spread of norms of equality has made ethnic subordination illegitimate and spurred ethnic
groups everywhere to compare their standing in society against that of groups in close
proximity” (Horowitz, 1985, 5). An important insight in Horowitz’s study, focussed
exclusively on post-colonial states, is that it is not actual disparities between groups along
socio-economic indicators that matter in the politicisation of ethnicity, but the perception of
disparity along axes of comparison that are inextricably linked to colonial schemata.

Horowitz identifies numerous dimensions through which a positional group psychology may
be articulated: the apportionment of merit between in-groups and key reference groups, the
colonial origins of group juxtapositions, colonial evaluations of group character, the ethnic
distribution of colonial opportunity and the attachment of labels of ‘backwardness’ and
‘advance’. Horowitz thus specifies the need for engagement with colonial ideologies and
practices for the study of ethnic conflict in post-colonial contexts. Horowitz eschews a
simplistic view of colonial policies as ‘divide and rule’, arguing that it is the responses of
groups themselves to opportunity structures that has been more important in creating
disparities than colonial policies per se (Horowitz, 1985, 160). Horowitz’s emphasis on the
ascriptive nature of ethnic identity suggests limits to a purely instrumentalist interpretation of
ethnic mobilization. Rather, he emphasises the basis of symbolic claims in psychological
aspirations to public validation: “Since social recognition affects self-esteem, much political
behavior aims at bringing objective (or official) recognition into harmony with subjective or
aspirational recognition” (p.218). He therefore makes explicit the linkages that must exist
between elite material interests and mass concerns if symbolic claims are to be effective.

Critics of socio-psychological perspectives observe that the solidification of ethnic categories

is not a precondition of their politicisation but a result of it. According to this view we run
the risk of mistaking effect for cause (Wimmer, 1997, 641). There is certainly validity in this
critique. In the Soviet context, however, the a priori solidification of ethnic categories by the
state, and the proscription of movement between them by assimilation, needs to be
acknowledged. Soviet citizens were required to choose the ethnic nationality of one of their
parents, a choice made at the age of eighteen and irreversible thereafter. In a very real sense,
Soviet citizens were ‘stuck’ with their given nationality, limiting their options for favourable
esteem evaluation vis-à-vis other groups. A social psychological perspective thus invites the
fleshing out of structural and instrumental explanations with more cultural analysis of how

37
group dynamics and their representations by elites resonate with ‘ethnic’ constituencies.
How did Soviet classificatory schemas mediate inter-group comparisons? Which groups in
Georgia benefited and which lost out in the ‘colonial apportionment of merit’, and what
practical implications did this have for representatives of different groups?

1.5 The Security Dilemma

Barry Posen’s concept of the security dilemma situates structural and constructivist
arguments in the specific context of threat perception in conditions of state collapse (Posen,
1993). The concept applies insights from the realist school of international relations theory
to inter-group relations to explain interethnic conflict. Realism holds that states in the
international system operate under conditions of anarchy; the primary concern of individual
actors in this context is security, leading them to take action to strengthen their position. This
in turn may be seen by other actors as an increase in their offence capability, leading to the
‘security dilemma’: “what one does to enhance one’s own security causes reactions that, in
the end, can make one less secure” (p.28). In the absence of an overall ‘sovereign’ with the
resources and mandate to deter aggression, action taken to enhance security may equally be
seen by other actors as enhancement of offensive capability. Under ‘normal’ conditions of
state governance, realists argue, this situation does not arise within states. The state itself
acts as a sovereign enforcer of peace and deterrent to acts of violence by internal actors such
as ethnic groups. This situation changes in conditions of state collapse, where the deterrent
to violence presented by the central state authority disappears. Internal groups must now
take responsibility for their own security, leading to an analogous situation to that of
sovereign states in the anarchical international system.

Posen applies this concept to outcomes of post-socialist ethnic violence and accommodation
by arguing that newly independent groups similarly assess their neighbours’ offensive
capabilities and propensity to aggression. They do this by reference to the ethnic
cohesiveness, military potential and external sources of support of out-groups, which delimits
their organizational capacity for offensive actions, demographic patterns of settlement of
their own and other ethnic communities, and to the history of relations with a given group.
Where history can be interpreted in terms of violent relations, in-group entrepreneurs will
maximise this portrayal of reality to secure the cohesion of their own group. Narratives of
atrocities visited upon the in-group by other groups in previous historical periods of state
collapse are a vital component in legitimating violence, and as we have seen, its

38
representation as ‘ethnic’. Posen thereby also recognizes framing strategies as an important –
and contingent – factor in generating ethnic conflict.

Posen also emphasises timing and ‘windows of opportunity’: “if one side has an advantage
that will not be present later and if security can be achieved by offensive military action in
any case, then leaders will be inclined to attack during this ‘window of opportunity’ (Posen,
1993, 32-33). Thus if groups perceive that the balance of power is changing to their
detriment, they may be inclined to mount offensive action while their advantage still holds.
Posen uses this framework to explain the outcome of violence in Serb-Croat relations and the
outcome of non-violence in Russian-Ukrainian relations. In the former case histories of
mutual violence, combined with intermingled demographic settlement of vulnerable Serb
communities surrounded by Croats and a shifting balance of power, led to war between
Serbia and Croatia. In the latter case relatively benign perceptions of the ethnic identity of
the out-group, in conjunction with the deterrent presented by the possession by both parties
of nuclear arsenals, account for the outcome of accommodation rather than violence.

Posen usefully identifies factors considered by leaders in situations of ethnic confrontation

under conditions of generalised insecurity. In the Georgian case, this requires us to identify
whether narratives of violence were available to ethnic groups, and how they may have been
used to frame the position of the group as insecure. Secondly, what role did windows of
opportunity play in the perpetration of violence – were actors compelled to perpetrate pre-
emptive violence because their competitive advantage was perceived as temporary? There
are some problems, however, with the functional equivalence assumed between states in the
international system and ethnic groups in Posen’s framework. Regarding states as unitary
actors runs the risk of anthropomorphising them, as if they were motivated by the will of a
sole leader. This is even more ambiguous in the context of ethnic groups, where perceptions
of interests and representations of reality are even more subjective and open to contestation.
It might be countered that even if states are not unitary actors, internal processes of
negotiation may be seen as having a ‘unitary’ result in the form of policy. This again is more
ambiguous in the context of ethnic groups, where the analogue of ‘policy’ outcomes is made
up of widely disparate ideological interpretations, representations and actions that have
neither singular nor normative character. The ‘foreign policy’ of an ethnic group cannot be
deduced from assumed preferences, nor isolated from either the particularised interests of

39
spokesmen claiming to speak for it or internal struggles over the nature of the ethnic group
itself.

Posen’s theory is also perhaps too ready to assume the neutrality of the state as a deterrent to
violence. Post-socialist ethnic violence has been inextricably connected to the endorsement
and reliance of the state on violence perpetrated by (especially co-ethnic) internal actors.
Moreover, these actors have not necessarily pursued interests derived from the security
concerns of ‘their’ ethnic groups, but personalised, profit-driven interests of their own.
Furthermore, many of the sources of violence in post-Soviet Eurasia have not come from
within the boundaries of the ethnic group but from external actors such as Russian military
units and international formations of mercenaries. These considerations invite a different
question: were the motives of perpetrators of violence necessarily ethnic, and what was the
relationship between political violence more generally and the interpretive frame of
ethnicity?

1.6 Democratisation and ‘weak’ states

A fourth broad orientation looks at ethnic conflict within an international context of forces of
economic globalisation and democratisation. Beverly Crawford, for example, suggests that
change in the global economy forces governments to engage in rapid political and economic
reform (Crawford, 1998). Amid economic decline, reform and institutional transformation
prior ‘social contracts’ are broken, giving rise to instrumental appeals to ethnic and sectarian
identities by weakened states and their challengers in struggles over the reordering of power
and wealth. Globalisation and liberalisation are thus seen here as the triggers for ethnic
conflict. That there is a strong correlation between state-building and ethnic conflict has
been shown by proof of the temporal concentration of ethnic conflicts around periods of
upheaval in the state system, and above all the creation of new states. Peaks in violent ethnic
conflict worldwide in the twentieth century correlate strongly with the creation en masse of
new states in post-colonial Asia and Africa, and the post-Communist world (Rubin, 1998b;
Wimmer, 1997, 633-35).

This argument is rather too general to be useful in the context of an individual case, however,
since the pressures of globalisation and liberalisation will be different according to the
internal characteristics of any given state. This argument also runs the risk of tautology, in
that it can be unclear whether state weakness leads to ethnic conflict or whether ethnic

40
conflicts lead to weak states. The post-Soviet Georgian state, for example, is most often
deemed to be weak because of its ethnic conflicts. The relationship between state weakness
and conflict is thus extremely difficult to unravel: one is left with a ‘chicken and egg’
situation in which both factors seem to be a function of the other. Nevertheless, some of the
syndromes associated with the ‘weak state’ can be identified as interacting with
democratisation processes to produce ethnic conflict in many post-Soviet states, above all
those of the South Caucasus.

Broad commonalities among a significant number of post-colonial states have been theorised
under the heading of ‘weak’ or ‘quasi’ states (Jackson, 1990; Migdal, 1988). On the one
hand the principle of boundary stability enshrined in the international state system has
resulted in a remarkable tendency for borders to remain unchanged; new states have been
entrenched by this system endowing them with external sovereignty. At the same time many
historically recent states have faced crises of capacity to enact and enforce rules, generate
legitimacy and extract resources from societies (Migdal, 1988, 4). The result, in Jackson’s
formulation, is the ‘quasi-state’, a state characterised by external sovereignty as a juridical
entity in the international state system, but lacking internal sovereignty.

Colonial rule established the basis for the weak post-colonial state in a number of ways.
Firstly, as Wimmer notes, the Third World state was most often heir to a colonial
bureaucracy that developed prior to democratic institutions and civil society (Wimmer, 1997,
643). This contributed to the ethnicisation of state bureaucracies as new elites relied heavily
on ethnic ties in their state-building efforts. The public goods represented by the state were
thereby transformed into the collective goods of specific ethnic groups, making ethnicity a
central parameter of access and source of conflict (p.643). Secondly as Migdal argues,
colonial policies had a critical effect in mediating the organisation and scope of social control
(Migdal, 1988, 105). Colonial states could confer preferential access to a range of local
indigenous leaders, able to establish social control over limited segments of society, or they
could support those in a position to create central, countrywide institutions forming the basis
for an eventual centralised state. These different strategies have important implications in
laying the basis for weak, fragmented states or viable states.

While post-Soviet state capacities may compare favourably with many African states, the
legacy of Soviet rule in several ways served to make them particularly vulnerable to ethnic

41
challenges. Soviet ethno-federalism was actively built on the principle of the ethnicisation of
state bureaucracies. The perception that the public goods disbursed by state bureaucracies in
the national republics constituted first and foremost collective goods for titular groups was
well entrenched under Soviet rule. Thus while Soviet policies allowed and encouraged the
creation of titular majorities and centralised institutions that could form the basis for future
states, they also actively sanctioned the ethnic colouring of state institutions. Post-Soviet
state bureaucracies have continued to be seen as affirmative action vehicles for titular groups,
allocating collective goods for ethnic constituencies rather than public goods for whole
citizenries. At the same time in terms of capacity the early post-Soviet state was,
emphatically, a weak state. Post-Soviet states enjoyed the external sovereignty conferred by
the juridical and highly stable recognition of their boundaries by the international state
system. By contrast many lacked a basic empirical statehood in terms of their capacities to
penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources or generate legitimacy. As
Beissinger and Young argue, post-Soviet states may have existed in a Westphalian sense of
juridical entities with stable borders, but they did not exist in a Weberian sense of exercising
control over their societies (Beissinger and Young, 2002, 31). In republics where Soviet rule
had conferred preferential treatment on a hierarchy of ethnically-defined leaderships, the
post-Soviet combination of an ethnically marked state and extremely low capacity to either
offset or enforce titular nation building made ethnic divisions an especially salient form of
state weakness. Forced by the stability of de jure boundaries to live with one another, the
question of who owns the state was especially marked.

The interface between weak statehood, democratisation and conflict has been strongly
differentiated among the different regions of the former Soviet Union. In addition to the
ethno-federal legacy, Jack Snyder identifies two further variables mediating outcomes of
conflict in the post-Soviet space: the historical timing of the development of literacy and
professionalised middle classes and familiarity with legal-bureaucratic relationships rather
than patronage-based favouritism (Snyder, 2000). The timing of economic development,
Snyder argues, affected the emergence of literate, urbanised populations supporting a civic
politics of democratic participation in the post-Soviet period. Thus relatively early economic
development contributed to moderate post-Soviet nationalisms in the Baltic republics, while
late development in Central Asia produced limited nationalism and little nationalist conflict.
He argues that timing of industrialisation in the Caucasus between these extremes
(antecedent to but mainly consolidated during Soviet rule) allowed for the continued

42
entrenchment of clannish patronage networks, thus making the rapid consolidation of civic
politics in the post-Soviet arena impossible. Thus Snyder suggests that post-Soviet
governments in the Caucasian republics

“lacked the organizational resources of the Balts for democratic forms of

collective action. Governments of the Caucasus, no matter how free and fair the
elections that chose them, operated not on the basis of the rule of law but through
corrupt, personalized patron-client ties. Thus, the Caucasian states had reached
that nationalism-prone stage where a high demand for mass political participation
overwhelms inadequate institutional channels. In this setting, nationalism was
harnessed to the parochial concerns of patronage-hungry clans, mass groups
demanding access to power, and state elites justifying the repression of
opponents. Compared to other post-Soviet states, the three Caucasian states were
especially primed to undergo the traumas of incomplete democratisation and
nationalism” (pp.234-35).

These factors had important outcomes for social control – where nationalists captured the
state, the interface between the syndromes of state weakness and societal divisions, among
them ethnic divisions, was far more salient. In Georgia and Azerbaijan new nationalist
governments had further to contend with rival state fragments in the form of minority
autonomous institutions. Having captured the state on the basis of nationalist movements,
these elites were required to fight struggles for sovereignty without the moderating impact of
prior traditions of civic politics and with meagre resources. This created an opening for
collusion between elites engaged in struggles for “public goods” (national sovereignty) and
“privatised” sources of violence. One of the salient features of conflict in weak states is the
reliance of governments engaged in political struggles over sovereignty on privatised sources
of violence: “militiamen, Condottieri and brigands” in Charles Fairbanks’ formulation
(Fairbanks, 1995).28 South Caucasian struggles for sovereignty consequently assumed some
of the qualities of ‘warlord politics’, a concept applied by William Reno to the African
context. Reno defines warlord politics as a situation where “the triumph of informal (shadow
state) networks to the near exclusion of state bureaucracies…could leave rulers in a condition

28
Fairbanks observes that “[T]he nebulous, ill-disciplined character of these forces can embroil the nations that
they supposedly serve in conflicts with groups of their own people, thereby exacerbating disloyalty and
secessionism. In conflicts with other peoples, their plundering, vandalism, sexual predation, ethnic cleansing,
and general disregard for human rights can turn low-level conflicts into bitter wars of survival” (p.22).

43
in which they pursue power through purely personal means and that pursuit becomes
synonymous with and indistinguishable from their private interests” (Reno, 1998, 2-3).

The interaction of the collective struggles of ethnic groups with the private interests of
warlord armies is complex and to date insufficiently explored. A critical issue is that as a
source of ethnic violence, the role of intermediary actors between state and ethnic group,
such as warlord armies, is not anticipated in theories of ethnic conflict. The ‘weak state’
perspective thus invites a number of questions pertinent to the Georgian case. How did
Soviet rule establish a basis for weak post-Soviet statehood in Georgia? How did Georgia’s
vulnerabilities differ from those of other post-Soviet republics in ways that contributed to
conflict? What conditions allowed for the linking of public struggles for national sovereignty
to private sources of violence?

1.7 The ‘Tidal’ perspective and social movements theory

The theoretical approaches outlined above usefully elucidate a range of causal factors in
ethnic conflict. Yet they have relatively little to say about its transformation into violence.
What factors allow for the transformation of a situation in which ethnic conflict is salient into
one of ethnically targeted violence? Some scholars have explained violence in terms of
‘cultures of violence’, giving certain societies a greater propensity to the violent resolution of
conflict. Branimir Anzulovic suggests, for example, that an endemic culture of violence is
critical to understanding violence in the post-Communist Balkans (Anzulovic, 1999, Ch.3).
Acknowledging its glorification by nationalist ideologues, Anzulovic suggests that a violent
“patriarchal-heroic culture’ in the Dinaric mountains of the former Yugoslavia was an
important source of violence in the wars of Yugoslav succession. With reference to Georgia,
David Laitin has theorised that the prevalence of social codes of honour and shame were an
important factor in providing a social constituency for violence in Georgia compared to other
post-Soviet republics (in his study, Ukraine) (Laitin, 1995).

The mountainous regions of Georgia, and indeed the Caucasus as a whole, does share with
the Balkans a historic highland culture in which violence, above all in the form of the blood
feud, was a venerated social institution. I find this a limited explanation of post-Soviet
violence, however. It is too ready to indiscriminately identify the preferences and choices of
individuals with a set of cultural values, one that is any case open to interpretation. In the
Georgian case one can just as easily point to a cultural narrative of interethnic tolerance as

44
one of violence. As Anzulovic himself acknowledges, what is perhaps more important is the
selectivity demonstrated by nationalist elites in privileging one tradition over another in
specific contexts of ethnic conflict. Furthermore underlying this approach is the assumption
that violence is necessarily tied to ‘national’ struggles. As the discussion of warlords above
suggests, practitioners of violence are not necessarily motivated by ‘ethnic’ issues but less
ideological concerns of plunder and self-enrichment. To be sure, their victims are selected
on the basis of ethnicity, but this is more easily explained in terms of the more immediate
conflict setting than long-standing social ‘codes of violence’.

Rather than ‘cultures of violence’ the exceptionality of ethnic violence in the former Soviet
space speaks strongly of the role of contingency in mediating outcomes of violence. Mark
Beissinger has explored this approach in a recent volume, applying theoretical perspectives
drawn from social movements theory to nationalist mobilization and violence in the post-
Soviet arena (Beissinger, 2002). Viewing mobilization as a phased process, social
movements theory has observed the disproportionate concentration of violence towards the
end of broader ‘mobilization cycles’. This is explained in terms of the growth of competition
and fragmentation between elements engaged in mobilization over time. Donatella de le
Porta and Sidney Tarrow have argued that as mobilization winds down, political violence
becomes an attractive option for competing splinter groups increasingly unable to mobilise
mass followings (de la Porta and Tarrow, 1986). Contingency and path-dependency are thus
central to this account of ethnic violence.

The focus of Beissinger’s study is contentious events, which he defines in a broad sense as
“contentious and potentially subversive acts that challenge normalized practices, modes of
causation, or systems of authority” (Beissinger, 2002, 14). Events are not randomly
distributed in time, but take place in clusters or waves that can transcend their localities to
become part of the causal structure of further events in other localities. In the context of
mutually referencing mobilizations of nationalist sentiment, Beissinger calls such waves a
‘tide of nationalism’: “multiple waves of nationalist mobilization whose content and outcome
influence one another” (p.27). Applying this framework to the nationalist uprisings in the
Soviet Union, Beissinger emphasises the interconnectedness of challenges to Soviet
authority:

45
 “Nationalism assumed concrete tidal form in the ways in which nationalist
paradigms were consciously exported and borrowed transnationally,
organisational resources were shared, and challenging groups sought inspiration
from the actions of one another. The nationalist revolutions of the USSR were
not isolated occurrences, but rather transnational phenomena, gaining force and
sustenance from one another’s activities” (p.85).

What takes place in the form of collective action during ‘noisy’ periods of mobilization,
Beissinger argues, is to a considerable extent determined by what happens during the
preceding ‘quiet’ periods of nationalist politics when the state-institutionalised order is in
force. He identifies three factors as important in the uneven process of identity mobilization.
The first is prior structural facilitation, in which factors such as demography, size and the
possession of national institutions, affect the ability of entrepreneurs within the group to take
advantage of event-generated influences. The second is the emboldening of entrepreneurs
and supporters in the face of institutional constraints, in which the resource factor is
paramount. Challenging an institutionalised order demands resources, which are often
lacking. Resources are understood here in broad terms to include various kinds of symbolic
and organizational as well as material assets, where the former can play an important role in
the absence of the latter. The third factor is the recruitment of the less committed for the
nationalist cause; here the role of event-generated influences is paramount in producing
tipping points, where events may have such a radical impact on perceptions of a situation that
mobilization ‘cascades’ may result. Beissinger thus builds on structural explanations by
arguing, “structural conditions become causal forces because they are actively used by states
or movements in the production or prevention of mobilization and that action mediates
between pre-existing structural conditions and outcomes” (p.156).

The timing of nationalist movements affects the interaction between the three principal
causal elements, structural facilitation, institutional constraints and event-generated
influences, in each movement. For the first movements, which Beissinger following Tarrow
calls ‘early risers’, structural facilitation and emboldening are paramount in order to
overcome still strong institutional constraints. For late risers, much of the work in
overcoming institutional constraints has been done, so that the event-generated influence of
prior challenges may compensate for weaker structural bases. Through the analysis of trade-
offs between structural attributes such as size, urbanisation, rates of linguistic assimilation

46
and ethnofederal status, and the timing of mobilization, Beissinger analyses the relative
advantages and disadvantages of nationalist elites across the Soviet Union to utilise the tidal
effect of nationalism.

Beissinger applies a similar approach to outcomes of ethnic violence, showing that in

accordance with Tarrow’s and de la Porta’s findings, violence in the post-Soviet case was
‘rear-packed’, that is, it was concentrated towards the end of the mobilization cycle. But
rather than marginalized political actors within the mobilization cycle, he attributes violence
to the institutionalisation of earlier waves of mobilization, which changed the dynamics of
interaction between violent and non-violent contenders in struggles over the changing nature
of the state in the post-Soviet devolution process. Thus he argues that nationalist violence in
the post-Soviet arena is best seen as a phase within the broader mobilization cycle, “in which
mobilization turns increasingly violent due to the political implications of the
institutionalisation of prior waves of mobilization” (Beissinger, 2002, 285).

Two particular factors are identified by Beissinger as important: the efficacy and appeal of
violent versus non-violent forms of mobilization against the shifting vulnerabilities and
strengths of mobilization targets, and the role of the state in triggering and sustaining
violence. He draws attention to significant shifts in political authority, particularly those
associated with the August coup in 1991 and the definitive demise of the Soviet Union in
December of that year, as pivotal turning points where the targets of mobilization shifted,
from Moscow to the new republican authorities. The different strengths and vulnerabilities
of the new republican authorities compared to Moscow had an important effect in enabling
those political actors willing to use violence over those who were not. The enabling of
entrepreneurs of violence over non-violent actors was thus a key element: violence was
overwhelmingly associated with the consolidation of the militarily weak successor states than
the latter’s secession from the Soviet state. This brought the second factor into play, as
ethnically structured fragments of the state engaged in political struggles for sovereignty
encouraged violence perpetrated by ‘co-ethnic’ actors: “ethnofederalism helped to foster
violence by creating conditions in which state officials, in the chaotic and impassioned
context of heightened contention, often sympathized with the aims of violent entrepreneurs
within their populations or found it difficult to take a public stand against them” (Beissinger,
2002, 304).

47
Within a broad explanatory framework that focuses on structural preconditions and the
temporal sequencing of events, Beissinger’s account stresses the triggering of violence by the
opportunities presented by earlier shifts in political authority within the mobilization cycle,
and its transformation into sustained violent conflict by the political resources of emergent
state actors. Beissinger’s analysis is based largely on quantitative analysis, which as he
concedes can ‘mispredict’ some outcomes of mobilization such as the cases of the
Abkhazians and Chechens. This does not invalidate his overall hypotheses, but may be
critical within the context of a specific case study. Beissinger’s own recourse to historical
and cultural analysis in order to explain these cases points to the need for a sustained
engagement with historical and cultural factors, in order to account for cases that from a
statistical point of view are ‘anomalous’. As he observes, “the structural advantages and
disadvantages which accrue to particular movements are rooted ultimately in historical
counterfactuals” (Beissinger, 2002, 251). This is an instance of the creative tension between
large-n statistical surveys and in-depth case studies.

1.8 Beyond the national/colonial divide: hidden transcripts of ethnic identity

Finally I draw attention to a theme insufficiently explored and to some extent obscured in
prevailing approaches to post-Soviet identity politics, which is pertinent to the investigation
of new forms of ethnic politics emergent in post-independence contexts. Most post-Soviet
scholarship has been focussed on inter-group conflict based on institutionalised
understandings of nationhood inherited by post-Soviet states. This has been challenged by
analyses such as Laitin’s, which draw attention to intra-group dynamics between ‘native’ and
‘cosmopolitan’, i.e. russified, elements. Beyond the native/cosmopolitan divide, however,
there is a further field of intra-group dynamics in the relationship between singular
conceptualisations of titular national identity reified in Soviet nationalities policy and the
disparate attachments and affiliations of which they are composed. Although claims to
singularity by post-Soviet nation builders are often noted, the process upon which these
claims draw – and the reverse process of the unravelling of the singularity inscribed in
institutionalised national identities – are rarely illuminated.

In the 1930s most of the larger Soviet nationalities underwent what Tishkov calls
‘ethnographic processing’, the creation of unified memberships within codified ‘passport’
definitions of ethnic nationality for a wide number of lower level affiliations relating to
disparate identity frames of lineage, region, religious and linguistic difference (depending on

48
regional context) (Tishkov, 1997, 15-21). Edward Schatz has referred to such affiliations as
‘meso-level’ attachments, defining identifications manifested at a level between that of the
individual and the broader institutionalised community of the nation (Schatz, 2001). In
Kazakhstan, Schatz argues, lineage identities constitute an intermediary classificatory
schema of genealogical kinship mediating between the individual and the nation (Schatz,
2000). The post-independence quest for markers of Kazakhness, he suggests, re-invigorated
lineage identities, interposing a novel post-Soviet form of intra-group identity politics.

This perspective suggests the pertinence of re-visiting practices of Soviet ethnographic

processing, in terms of their potential for the further level of unravelling of titular identities
in the Soviet successor states and engendering new forms of ethnic politics. It is suggested
here that this may usefully be approached in terms of James Scott’s concept of the ‘hidden
transcript’ (Scott, 1990). Scott proceeds from the assumption that public and private
performances differ, and that this difference has a strategic dimension. He differentiates
between what he calls the public transcript as “the public performance required of those
subject to elaborate and systematic forms of social subordination…the open interaction
between subordinates and those who dominate”, and the hidden transcript, “discourse that
takes place “offstage”, beyond direct observation by powerholders” (pp.2, 4). Scott argues
that in ideological terms the public transcript will provide evidence for the hegemony of
dominant values, and analysis based on the public transcript is likely to conclude that
subordinate groups are willing partners in their subordination. The hidden transcript does not
present a realm of expressive freedom as such, since it is made up of a variety of acts that
confirm, contradict or inflect what is produced in the public transcript. Nevertheless, the
hidden transcript is produced for a different audience and under different constraints of
power compared to the public transcript.

The Soviet consolidation of nationalities in the 1930s, contemporaneous with the

introduction of natsional’nost’ as a pervasive and materially important component of
personal identity, may be seen as the consolidation of a ‘public transcript’ of nationality,
imbued with normative force. The Georgian ‘passport’ nationality was no exception in
consolidating a number of lower level affiliations associated with regional vernacular
languages and religious minorities. Streamlined into a singular and profoundly cultural
definition of Georgianness, these more liminal identities were banished from the public
sphere to the fringes of Soviet Georgian ethnography and linguistic research. Officially

49
‘deleted’ from the public transcript, they were suffused with values of backwardness and
unorthodoxy signalling their removal from ‘legitimate’ discourse. Such attachments did not
simply disappear, however; yet until the end of Soviet rule, there was little available evidence
either way whether the meso-level attachments assimilated into official nationality categories
had in fact disappeared or not. Post-Soviet ethnographic research in Georgia indicates that
meso-level attachments did not disappear and could be reconfigured as ‘hidden transcripts’ of
‘authentic’ identity, contrasted in dichotomous terms with affirmations of official nationality
designations in responses to censuses and other official elicitations of identity.29

In the post-independence context the relationship between meso-level and official

identifications is ambiguous, raising unsettling questions of the relationship between official
designations of nationality enforced by Soviet-era practices and informally experienced
‘authentic’ identity markers. The re-invigoration of meso-level attachments through a
combination of the nation building practices of post-Soviet elites, the licence to openly
review the past and the incentives to explore these ‘residual’ identities related to socio-
economic change present a new field of post-Soviet identity politics. Revived meso-level
attachments re-instate contingency in the formation of national identities, hitherto obliterated
by the dominant discourse of primordial nationality. New expressions of meso-level identity
posit a new frame for the construction of identities that challenge the hitherto unquestioned
dichotomy between the national ‘self’ and the colonial ‘other’. This has been largely missed
in the focus on the singular institutionalised understandings of nationality inherited from
Soviet nationalities policy, and raises a number of questions. How are official
understandings of national identity related to lower levels of affiliation? What factors may
have encouraged the exploration of these affiliations in the post-independence context, and
does this exploration represent resurgence or re-invention? What are the implications of such
identity exploration for singular, ethnic understandings of nationhood?

Chapter Plan of the Study

This chapter has laid out the different methodological approaches used in this study. They
may be broadly integrated into what might be called a ‘state centred’ approach that sees
dynamics of post-Soviet conflict as best explained in terms of the different relationships of
key groups to the institutions and resources of the state. This approach therefore emphasises

29
On the maintenance of Islamic identity among the Georgian population in the autonomous republic of Achara
see Pelkmans, 2001.

50
processes of state formation, state ideologies and their interaction with nationalist ideologies
of resistance, the political incorporation of different groups and the role of institutions in
shaping cultural affiliations, incentive structures and forms of collective action. It is against
this backdrop that the more contingent factors of elite strategies of identity construction and
the outbreak of violence are analysed.

The chapters of the dissertation are broadly thematic in nature, reflecting the framework laid
out here, although they follow a loosely chronological order. In Chapter 2 basic data about
Georgia’s ethnic composition is presented before a necessarily concise ‘roadmap’ charting
the historical relationship between culture and polity in Georgia is offered. This explores the
legacies of colonial rule, cultural resistance and the brief experience of independence
between 1918 and 1921 in terms of the transformation of patterns of cultural hierarchy prior
to Soviet rule. The political incorporation of different groups into the Soviet state is the
subject of Chapter 3. It is argued that the titular groups at different levels of the ethnofederal
hierarchy in Georgia were incorporated vis-à-vis their immediately superordinate political
centres in contrasting ways. These contrasting patterns produced a fundamental bifurcation
between titular groups along axes of cultural integrity and linguistic assimilation. In Chapter
4 the impact of Soviet ideologies of cultural difference in Georgia is assessed. Ethnographic
data is used to explore how the structural and cultural context of ethnic relations is reflected
in the choices and attitudes of representatives of different groups. The chapter also charts
ethnic conflict in the Soviet era and presents a model of majority-minority relations in Soviet
Georgia. This and the previous chapter argue that structural and cultural contexts conspired
to make Georgia among the Soviet republics especially vulnerable to ethnic conflict through
the profound articulation of ethnicity with state institutions and the institutionalisation of
cultural hierarchies.

Chapter 5 examines the Georgian national revival between 1987 and 1992 and the reasons
behind the transformation of conflict into violence. The chapter examines this
transformation as a contingent and path-dependent outcome, emergent from a combination of
the structural factors previously described, specific institutional constraints to a moderate
politics of nationalism, and the influence of key events. It is argued here that although
structural and cultural contexts may explain Georgia’s vulnerability to ethnic conflict,
violence is better seen as an outcome emergent from developments within the process of
nationalist mobilization. Violence did not grow out of prior ethnic conflict, but emerged

51
from the reliance of the weak Georgian state on privatised sources of violence in its struggles
over national sovereignty.

Chapter 6 examines the attempt of the first post-conflict administration in Georgia to advance
a state building agenda between 1995 and 2000. This chapter argues that the weak Georgian
state turned to an improvised reconfiguration of Soviet internationalism as an integrative
ideology of nationalism to contain new and severe external and internal pressures for state
building. The result, Georgian neo-internationalism, provided an ideology of integration
while simultaneously obscuring the state’s weak capacity to implement policy. An
examination of policy in three areas, electoral politics, language and autonomy, shows that
while progress was made in the construction of a viable state, national integration processes
were nevertheless very limited. Furthermore, the investigation of constructions of national
identity in collective memory shows fundamentally different conceptualisations of cultural
pluralism obtaining at official and informal levels in post-conflict Georgia.

Chapter 7 draws attention to a new form of ethnic politics in independent Georgia, the
politics of vernacular empowerment within the Georgian titular population. It draws
attention to internal diversity within the Georgian population as a source of ‘meso-level’
attachments and presents a case study of the politics of language relating to Georgia’s most
widely spoken but unrecognised vernacular, Mingrelian. The focus of this chapter is thus
intra-titular conflict over the cultural parameters of membership in the Georgian nation, a
dimension of identity construction that was obscured under Soviet rule through the presence
of the Russian ‘other’. The sources of change leading to new explorations of intra-titular
linguistic diversity in the post-independence context are identified, before contrasting
attempts to construct this diversity emanating from centre and periphery are explored. The
second part of the chapter relies on ethnographic data to determine the dynamics of
vernacular revival in the Mingrelian case.

52
Chapter 2: Culture and Polity in Georgian History: A Roadmap

2.1 Introduction
The politicisation of cultural boundaries is a relatively recent phenomenon in the Caucasus,
which does not span more than the last 150 years. The Caucasian experience thus differs
from that of several Western European states, where the historical consolidation of
centralised states has been inextricably linked to the standardisation and homogenisation of
cultural boundaries. In the South Caucasus a modern ethnic politics emerged through the
prism of Russian colonial rule. Imperial categories, value judgements and practical policies
thus played a crucial role in the emergence of modern national identities in Georgia. Rather
than the standardisation or homogenisation of cultural boundaries, colonial rule for different
reasons maintained and in many cases actively promoted ethnic diversity. In doing so ethnic
relations were overlaid with ethnic hierarchies, which continue to inform conflict in post-
Soviet Georgia. This chapter examines the origins of different national identities in Georgia,
and of the discourses and policies through which hierarchies were constructed to order them.
Exploration of these themes provides a historical backdrop to contemporary conflicts, and
also draws attention to the different symbolic resources to which post-Soviet nation builders
can turn.

The chapter begins by presenting basic data about Georgia’s ethnic composition, before
offering a necessarily concise roadmap charting the origins and transformations of cultural
hierarchy in tsarist Georgia and the relatively recent entry of nationalism into the region.
This is not offered as an original contribution to the region’s history, but as a necessary
overview of the shifting political and ideological contexts mediating the emergence and
imaginings of nationhood. It needs to be emphasised that historical debates over the
longevity of culture, population movements and the role of external powers are indivisible
from the political conflicts shaping the current context of South Caucasian and Georgian
state politics. These are not simply exercises in historiography, but impassioned debates in
which the political stakes for the viability, legitimacy and future of the Georgian state are
extremely high. Moreover, the intertwining of the academe and ‘official’ versions of history
also needs to be borne in mind. Rather than a critical historiography standing above or
outside of nationalist constructions, historiography in the South Caucasus is a major social
force for nationalist construction. Popular accounts of national identity attest to the

53
internalisation of key historical ‘facts’, which are ‘supported’ by a plethora of quasi-
academic publications but do not stand up to critical inquiry.

Rather than motifs of cultural longevity or integrity, the survey presented here views the
longue durée of Georgian nationhood in terms of a fundamental and enduring rupture
between culture and polity. While elements of Georgian culture are indeed ancient, their
coupling with the political realm of the state has been minimal in Georgian history. In the
post-Soviet arena this rupture has been an important background factor compromising the
attempts to construct the post-Soviet Georgian state. The promotion of ‘pluralist’ ethnic
policies by the Russian colonial state in particular feeds the widespread perception among
Georgians that the region’s ethnic diversity is a colonial construction not of Georgia’s ‘own
making’.

2.2 Geography
The region occupying the Caucasian isthmus, bounded to the north by the main chain of the
Caucasus mountain range (5,600 m.), to the west and east by the Black and Caspian Seas and
to the south by the River Araxes, has traditionally been referred to as Transcaucasia, a
translation of the Russian term Zakavkaz’e meaning ‘the land beyond the Caucasus
mountains’. Reflecting a Russian viewpoint, this term is avoided in this study in favour of
the less politically nuanced term South Caucasus. Georgia comprises the northwest segment
of the South Caucasus, covering 69,700 square kilometres, making it approximately the same
size as Ireland. Land below 600 metres comprises only 31% of Georgia’s total surface area,
making it a highly mountainous country.30 To the north, Georgia borders the North
Caucasian national republics of the Russian Federation; to the southwest, it is bordered by
the Turkish Republic; directly to the south, the Republic of Armenia; and to the southeast,
the Republic of Azerbaijan. In Georgian the name for Georgia is sakartvelo and the official
ethnonym for the Georgian nationality is kartveli. The capital Tbilisi (population in 1989:
1,243,150) is located in the central region of Kartli.

In 1989 the population of Georgia was 5,400,841, with Georgians accounting for 70% of the
republic’s population. As yet only preliminary data for the 2002 census is available,
according to which Georgia’s total population had fallen to 4, 371,500, a drop of nearly 20%.

30
For a more detailed discussion of the geography of Georgia, from which this figure is taken, see
Gachechiladze, 1995, 8-14.

54
The 2002 data also shows that a significant rationalisation of the republic’s ethnic
composition in favour of the Georgian nationality has occurred over the post-Soviet period
(see Appendix A-1).

In geographic terms Georgia presents a rich diversity of terrains and climates. The
mountains of the Caucasus range provide a formidable natural border to the north, and in the
form of the Likhi or Surami range running north-south roughly through the middle of the
country, also bisect Georgia. To the south, Georgia is bordered by arid high plateaux
reaching an altitude of 3000 metres. The overwhelming majority of the population has been
settled, historically and today, in the intermontane lowland, which although comprising 40%
of the country’s territory is home to some 88% of the population (Gachechiladze, 1995, 10).

2.3 Linguistic and Religious Composition

The taxonomies of classification used by the state to define the population of Georgia have
changed over time, and inconsistencies between different periods are common. The Russian
Empire favoured religion, but towards the end of the nineteenth century increasingly
introduced language as a surrogate for nationality. Soviet schemas likewise privileged
language, which is reflected in the prominence of linguistic affiliation in self-understandings
in the region today. However, particularly among smaller groups formal ethnic identification
and language often do not coincide. The following summary reflects ‘official’ schemas that
reify identities and represent attempts by the state to impose classificatory coherence.
National identities often interact in unpredictable ways with resilient regional identities, a
theme explored further in Chapter 7.

Reflecting a Soviet bias, speakers of languages belonging to the Caucasian group are
conventionally regarded today as the indigenous population of Georgia, while speakers of
Indo-European, Turkic and other language families are regarded as historically immigrant.
Two branches of the Caucasian language family are indigenous to Georgia. The southern, or
Kartvelian, language family consists of the Georgian, Mingrelian, Svan and Laz languages,
of which only Georgian has literary status, and all of which are thought to derive from a
common proto-Kartvelian language.31 Mingrelian is spoken in the littoral province of

31
Although theories differ as to how and when this linguistic differentiation took place, the standard view is
that Svan was the first to break off in about the eighteenth century B.C., followed by Zan (later differentiated
into Mingrelian and Laz) in about the eighth century B.C. For a discussion of this question and review of

55
Mingrelia in the west and Svan in the mountainous region of Svaneti; negligible numbers of
Laz-speakers inhabit Georgia today, mainly in the town of Sarpi situated on the south-west
border with Turkey. Laz is spoken by a substantial population in a number of regional
dialects along the Turkish Black Sea coast, where again it is not a literary or recognised
language. The number of Laz-speakers is thought to be in the range of 250,000 (Bellér-
Hann, 1995, 488). The Georgian language is itself divided into 14 dialects within Georgia,
with the central Kartlian dialect providing the basis for the literary language.

The majority of Georgians adhere, at least nominally, to the Georgian Orthodox faith,
represented by an autocephalous church following the Chalcedonian variant of Eastern
Orthodoxy. The conversion of Georgia is traditionally dated to about 334 AD, although
Christian missionary activity along the eastern Black Sea littoral is attested before this date.32
In the region of Achara, contiguous with the Turkish border, there is a Muslim Georgian
minority, although contemporary adherence to Islam is largely limited to highland regions
(Pelkmans, 2001).

Controversy between non-Georgian and Georgian historians surrounds the dating of the
invention of the unique Georgian script (Suny, 1994, 22-23). One tradition, conventional in
Western scholarship, attributes its invention to churchman Mesrop Mashtots, creator of the
Armenian alphabet, in the early fifth century. An alternative tradition, first articulated in the
eighth century by Georgian chronicler Leonti Mroveli and popular with both Soviet and post-
Soviet Georgian historians, moves the date back to c.284 BC (Gordeziani, 1993, 18-19;
T’opchishvili, 1998). Noting both traditions, however, Rayfield concludes that the
archaeological evidence does not support a pre-Christian origin for the Georgian alphabet
(Rayfield, 1994, 2).

Less controversial is the continuity of a literary tradition in Georgian dating from the fifth
century. Historically, three scripts have been used to write Georgian: the mrg(v)lovani
(‘rounded’) or asomtavruli (‘majuscule’) script from the fifth to the ninth centuries; the
kutkhovani (‘angular’) or nuskhuri (‘minuscule’) script from the ninth to eleventh centuries;
and the mkhedruli (‘military, secular’) script used from the eleventh century to this day.

alternative theories of the diachronic relationship between the Kartvelian languages see Tskhadaia, 1999;
Kurdiani, 1996.
32
For a discussion of early Christian influence in the Black Sea region see Braund, 1994, 264ff.

56
After this time the Georgian Orthodox Church continued to use the older scripts for
ecclesiastical purposes, which became collectively known as khutsuri (‘ecclesiastical’) to
distinguish them from their common modern descendant. Khutsuri was retained as the basis
for the liturgical use of Georgian over a much wider area than that covered by the vernacular
use of Georgian; by the Middle Ages Georgian had superseded Greek as the primary
ecclesiastical language for the practice of Christianity across the whole of Georgia.33 This
variety and usage of Georgian will be referred to as ‘church-Georgian’ in this study, in order
to distinguish it from the vernacular use of Georgian. Church-Georgian may be seen as
standing in the same broad relation to regional vernaculars as Latin to the regional
vernaculars of Western Europe in the Middle Ages.

The other Caucasian language group considered autochthonous in official classifications is

the North-Western group, represented by Abkhaz, spoken to the north-west of the River
Enguri (known as the Ingur to the Abkhazians). The Abkhaz language is related to the
Circassian and (now extinct) Ubykh languages spoken to the north of the Caucasus range,
and has had a literary tradition, based on successive Latin, Georgian and Cyrillic-based
scripts, since the late nineteenth century. In the Abkhaz language, Abkhazia is referred to as
Apsny and the official ethnonym is Apswa. The religious orientation of the Abkhazians is
ambiguous and highly syncretistic. Christian and Muslim traditions have been salient in
different periods, an inconsistency Rachel Clogg has described as “more a case of
expediency than of ‘conversion’, an acceptance of religion as part of the politics of imperial
power” (Clogg, 1999, 206).

Territorially, Abkhazians are now mostly confined to the former Abkhazian Autonomous
Republic, now outside of Georgian government control but unrecognised in international law
at the time of writing. Descendents of the Muslim population who left Abkhazia in response
to the Russian take-over in the nineteenth century (a population movement known as the
Makhajirstvo) now live in Turkey. The extent to which this population retain a Caucasian
identity is much speculated on in Abkhazia today, but awaits empirical elucidation. It seems
likely that population movements augmented the North-Western Caucasian ethnographic
component in Abkhazia in early modern times. However, linguistic evidence of close
contact between Abkhazian and Kartvelian languages suggests that these language groups

33
The supplanting of Greek by Georgian took place later in Abkhazia, in the eleventh century (Clogg, 1999,
207).

57
have been in close contact for at least two millennia, and thus that a North-West Caucasian
element has existed in western Georgia since the earliest times (Hewitt, 1992).

Numerous other groups have long histories of settlement in Georgia, dating back to the
Middle Ages. By the late Soviet period Armenians comprised the most significant minority
numerically, residing in the capital and in compactly settled populations in Abkhazia and the
southern region of Javakheti, bordering on the Armenian Republic. Armenians have
populated Georgia since at least medieval times, and are noted as historically playing the
economic role of a bourgeoisie, enjoying economic and political dominance in the urban
economy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see below).

Ossetians belong linguistically to the Iranian rather than Caucasian language family, and are
thought to have originated in the fusion of nomadic, Sarmatian and indigenous populations of
the North Caucasus in antiquity, with the Sarmatian (later called Alan) element dominant.
Ossetian settlement in Georgia, composed of the Tualläg subgroup, has been a gradual
process beginning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Ossetians are primarily
Orthodox Christian with a small Muslim element. Mirroring attitudes towards the
Abkhazians, the recent arrival of Ossetians in Georgia is a key claim in Georgian nationalist
discourse; a common view is that large-scale Ossetian settlement can be dated only to the last
two hundred years or less. Ossetians were widely dispersed across Georgia until the
outbreak of Georgian-Ossetian violence in 1990, and are today largely concentrated within
the former South Ossetian Autonomous Region, now a self-declared republic outside of
Georgian government control, and the North Ossetian Republic of the Russian Federation.

Turkic groups are represented in the form of an Azerbaijani minority compactly settled in the
south-east Kvemo Kartli region, contiguous with the Republic of Azerbaijan. Other
historically settled minorities include Greeks and two small North-Central Caucasian
(Vainakh) groups, the Kists and Bats. More recent immigrant groups include speakers of
Slavonic languages (Russian, Ukrainian). Georgia has also been a destination for Yezidi
Kurds displaced from their homelands. In total, over 80 different linguistic groups were
recorded in Georgia in 1989, although this gives an exaggerated impression of Georgia’s
diversity. In terms of numbers the vast majority of these groups are marginal.

58
2.4 Pre-Modern Configurations of Culture and Polity and their Contemporary
Interpretation.
As noted above, ethnocentric historiography has provided a major legitimating discourse to
the nationalist ideologies salient in post-Soviet Georgia (and elsewhere in the former Soviet
Union) (Shnirelman, 1998; Suny, 2001b; Tishkov, 1997, 1-12). The constructions of the past
by intellectuals have played a critical role in legitimating the claims of majorities and
minorities alike. Replicating Soviet thought, copious nationalist literatures produced by rival
groups in the Caucasus share a common predilection for the distant past, rooting
contemporary realities in ‘primordial’ origins. I will not attempt to provide a historical
account of pre-modern cultural relations, a vast subject in itself, which is of dubious
relevance to contemporary conflicts other than as a source of historicized claims. Rather –
and admittedly at the risk of simplification – I briefly summarize the history of political
formations prior to Georgia’s incorporation into the Russian Empire, before briefly
discussing rival nationalist constructions of this history.

The earliest political formations on the territory of modern-day Georgia are dated to
antiquity. In the third century B.C. the Black Sea littoral kingdom of Colchis-Egrisi was
united with the kingdom of Iberia, situated to the east of the Likhi range, a unity seen as the
emergence of ‘national Georgian statehood’ in Georgian historiography. A short-lived
unified system of government, patterned on the Iranian model, was established in Iberia, in
which regional governors (eristavni) were installed at the head of each of the major seven
provinces, while Colchis was ruled as a vassal state (Toumanoff, 1963, 96). Within a century
this unity waned, however, and by 100 B.C. Colchis had been incorporated into the Pontic
Empire of Mithridates Eupator (111-63 B.C.). Both Colchis and Iberia were subsequently
subsumed within the Roman sphere of influence (Suny, 1994, 13-14). The rise of Parthia to
the east as a powerful rival to Rome for regional hegemony resulted in consistent warfare
throughout the first three centuries AD (p.15). Political unity re-emerged in the 780s in the
form of a new unification of western Georgia into the Kingdom of Abkhazia (sometimes also
referred to as Apkhazeti or Abasgia), with its capital eventually located in Kutaisi. This
relatively powerful kingdom survived until 1008, when Abkhazia’s King Bagrat III became
the first king of a united Georgia (1008-1014) by dynastic inheritance. Described by
historian Ronald Suny as “a decidedly decentralized state, in which the great dynasts could
successfully challenge the Bagratid king for local power”, the Bagratid kingdom at its apogee
became the dominant regional power, forming a state stretching from Muslim Shirvan on the

59
Caspian to Christian Trebizond on the Black Sea, far in excess of Georgia’s borders today
(p.33).

The tenuous stability achieved by the Bagratid monarchy created the conditions for an
extraordinary flowering of Georgian culture, an efflorescence celebrated in Shota Rustaveli’s
epic poem vepkhistqaosani (‘The Man in the Panther’s Skin’), and regarded as a Golden Age
in Georgia today. It is from this time that the term sakartvelo (literally, ‘place designated for
Georgians’) came into common usage. In the tenth century the Georgian hagiographer
Giorgi Merchule defined ‘Georgia’ as “those spacious lands in which church services are
celebrated and all prayers said in the Georgian [kartuli] tongue” (Gachechiladze, 1995, 20).
The territory included in this definition was much wider that that territory where the
Georgian vernacular itself was spoken. Moreover, the accommodation and even
encouragement of religious pluralism was a pragmatic strategy pursued by Bagratid
monarchs. David the Builder (r.1089-1125), for example, invited Armenians and Qipchak
Turks to populate regions of the kingdom, while the existence of Armenian and Muslim
ecclesiastical authorities within the kingdom was tolerated (Suny, 1994, 35).

The Bagratid kingdom, enduring successive waves of Mongol incursions from the east,
eventually fragmented in 1442. Until incorporation into the Russian state in the nineteenth
century, the various kingdoms and principalities formerly constituting the Bagratid state
would pursue their own separate political trajectories under loose Ottoman suzerainty.
Political loyalties were largely local and dynastic, juxtaposed with a more global cultural
orientation based on the autocephalous Georgian Orthodox faith and its close link to
Georgian as a lingua sacra. Political units remained consistently smaller than the common
cultural system they shared.

Beginning in the late eighteenth century the Russian empire incorporated the various
kingdoms and principalities formerly making up the heartland of the Bagratid kingdom.
Incorporation took the form of integration into the Russian administration after a phase of
autonomy that in some cases lasted only a few years, in others upwards of six decades. By
the late eighteenth century the threat posed by growing Persian and Ottoman expansionism
led King Erekle II of the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti to seek protection from
co-religionist Russia. In 1783 the Treaty of Georgievsk, establishing Kartli-Kakheti as a
Russian protectorate, was concluded. In 1801 Russia abrogated its obligations by the treaty

60
and annexed Kartli-Kakheti directly as an integral part of the Russian Empire. The kingdom
and the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church were abolished in 1801 and 1811
respectively. Following Kartli-Kakheti, the kingdom of Imereti was incorporated in 1810,
and the principalities of Guria, Mingrelia, Svanetia and Abkhazia in 1829, 1857, 1858 and
1864 respectively, while the regions of Batumi and Artvin, corresponding broadly to the
territory of contemporary Achara, were incorporated following the Russo-Ottoman war of
1877-78.34

Rival nationalist narratives offer radically opposed visions of the historical facts, imposing a
modern understanding of nationality on a feudal and dynastic past. A Georgian nationalist
narrative insists on a prior claim to autochthony for the Georgian nation, dating back to the
establishment of a Georgian ‘national state’ in the 3rd century BC. Minorities, especially the
Abkhazians and Ossetians, are portayed as ‘newcomers’; it is widely claimed that the
former’s settlement of ‘Georgian’ territory dates only to the seventeenth century and the
latter’s to the Soviet period. Minorities have countered these constructions with an
interpretive historiography of their own. Their claims, on the whole, centre on notions of
political independence from Georgian polities and the limited use of Georgian cultural traits
(above all language) among elite and ecclesiastical strata, while ‘ethnic masses’ conversed in
the languages identified today as Abkhaz and Ossetic. These constructions are significant in
that they provide a basic political and symbolic lexicon through which contemporary
conflicts are portrayed. Their wide acceptance throughout Caucasian societies, supported by
their institutionalisation in academic circles since the late Soviet period, also render them
powerfully resonant frames upon which politicians have consistently drawn.35 However, it
needs to be constantly remembered that these constructions are precisely that: while
purporting to describe the origins of conflicts in terms of “objective” historical facts, these
narratives also serve to construct them as dyadic oppositions between ethnic units conceived
in absolute and trans-historical terms. Indeed conflict narratives have provided a wide-
ranging rhetorical space for the (re-)construction of ethnic identities, as nationalist
scholarship has re-examined (and enlisted) distant historical periods for justifications of
contemporary claims. The imposition of an ethnic template on the region’s historical past of
course results in innumerable elisions. Perhaps the most significant of these are the

34
For a detailed historical treatment of the incorporation of Imereti, see Armani, 1970; for a discussion of the
incorporation of Abkhazia, see Lakoba, 1999.
35
This point is explored further in Chapter 4.

61
prominent lack of congruence between polity and culture alluded to above, and the
historically recent interaction between alien rule and indigenous societies in making ethnicity
politically salient, to which I now turn.

2.5 Ethnic policies in Georgia under Russian rule: Ethnography, Colonial Stereotypes
and Cultural Interventions
Like European colonialism in Africa, Russian rule in the Caucasus entailed a fundamental
transformation in the conceptualisation of ethnic space. As anthropologist Ralph Grillo
observes, colonial states in many ways presaged the modern state in their interventions into
the indigenous societies they ruled (Grillo, 1998, 98). Through administrative, educational
and missionary activities, the colonial state anticipated the intrusions of the modern state in
lending direction to ethnic processes. Colonial interventions into indigenous societies were,
however, frequently haphazard and implemented by a wide range of agents. This is in turn a
reflection of the different, and sometimes contradictory, motives for colonial intervention.
Some agents of colonial rule, such as administrators, pursued state building objectives of
rationalisation in the metropolitan culture. Others, such as missionaries and teachers, sought
to incorporate indigenes into the metropole’s civilising mission by meeting them on their
own terms culturally. In either case colonial policy rarely ‘created’ ethnic identities. Rather,
as Grillo suggests, the interaction between the colonial state and indigenous society is best
conceived in terms of an ‘ethnic dialectic’, in which colonial and indigenous categories were
not isolated from one another but interacted in complex and often unpredictable ways (pp.
99-100).

The comparatively late onset of state-building and language rationalisation in the Russian
empire conflicted with other emergent state interests, such as mass literacy, economic
development and ideological incorporation. Russian ethnic policies were loosely motivated
by objectives of state rationalisation and securing loyalty to Orthodox values amongst its
subjects. Thus while local administrators were at times under pressure to promote a Russian-
speaking official nationality, counter-pressures, including techniques of Orthodox
proselytising, the need to secure mass literacy and the pre-empting of nationalist movements,
favoured the development of local languages. The state building imperative of
rationalisation was stalled in favour of a strategy of indigenisation, even if this was envisaged
as only a temporary measure. In the South Caucasus, meeting local populations on their own
terms culturally, as a means both to effect their acculturation to Orthodox Russian mores and

62
to promote mass literacy, was an important element of tsarist nationalities policy. To some
extent these were contradictory aims: the political desideratum of the religious incorporation
of local subjects, effected through an instrumental promotion of local vernaculars, was
clearly at odds with the practical objective of linguistic rationalisation in Russian.

The Russian empire was not conceived as a national Russian state. Even during the belated
drive towards russification in the last decades of the nineteenth century, historian Geoffrey
Hosking observes that “[m]ost practitioners of Russification saw Russian identity as over-
arching, not destroying other ethnic (or ‘tribal’, as they called them) loyalties” (Hosking,
1997, 367).36 Yet within the framework of an intermittent regime of russification that was on
the whole tolerant of difference, Russian rule inscribed new meanings onto previously
contextually determined categories of the Georgian cultural mosaic. Through a variety of
interventions, the Russian colonial state interacted with indigenous cultural elements to
produce a novel order of bounded ethnic groups, associated with particular languages and
territories. Furthermore this order was overlaid by a ‘hierarchification’ of groups, a
hierarchical order derived from the categories, suppositions and prejudices of Russian
observers. These prejudices sometimes incorporated and extended indigenous ideologies, in
other cases challenged and reversed them.

Ethnography and the classification of groups

From the latter half of the nineteenth century, Russian ethnographers, geographers and
missionaries produced a voluminous literature dedicated to the classification of the peoples
and languages of the Caucasus.37 There was considerable debate between different scholars
as to what the criterion for classification of Caucasian narody (‘peoples’) should be.38
Against the competing criteria of religion, tribe, highland/lowland, race and custom, it was
language that prevailed in the cataloguing of the population by officials. Russian linguists
and ethnographers engaged in the mapping, differentiation and classification of Caucasian

36
Russian texts referred to the peoples of the Caucasus using the terms narodnost’, an ambiguous term meaning
nationality but with a more local or ethnographic connotation than natsional’nost’, plemya (‘tribe’) and gorets
(‘highlander’).
37
The annually produced volumes of the series Sbornik Materialov dlya Opisaniya Mestnostey i Plemen
Kavkaza and Sbornik Svedeniy o Kavkazkikh Gortsakh, along with the numerous geographical and ethnographic
descriptions of the region and the memoirs of administrators and other observers provide rich sources of both
descriptive material on the South Caucasus under Russian rule and indications of the attitudes of Russians in the
region towards indigenous populations. It is impossible to do full justice to this literature here; rather, I have
drawn selectively on those works most pertinent to the themes explored in this chapter.
38
See, for example, the discussion in Shukhardo, 1899, 50-51.

63
languages and in so doing constructed a new order of equivalent ethnic groups, treated as
topographically isolatable wholes indicated by contrasting coloured zones on a map. Thus
Georgians, Armenians and Muslims were deemed to be different not only on the basis of
their separate religious identities, but principally because they spoke separate languages. The
privileging of language as the principal determinant of difference was especially significant
in the context of the number of vernacular speech communities with minimal or only
ritualistic knowledge of Georgian. Populations speaking Svan, Mingrelian, Ossetic and
Abkhazian vernaculars were now deemed to be separate ethno-linguistic entities rather than
estates marked by ‘low’ cultures. This transformed the earlier view of these vernaculars as
peasant argots expressed in Georgian works of descriptive geography.39 Furthermore, by
associating the category ‘tribe’ with language, Russian observers introduced the category of
aboriginality to the Georgian cultural mosaic. Cultural stratifications that overlaid estate
hierarchies were thereby re-configured as the ‘tribal’ domination of one group over another.40

The new categorical order of ethno-linguistic groups formed the basis for the increasingly
sophisticated enumeration of the region’s ethnic groups in the form of the census, ranging
from single-day censuses of important urban centres to region-wide censuses including even
the smallest units of settlement. For the first time percentages of ‘nationalities’ in delimited
territories were compiled, the homogeneity or heterogeneity of different administrative units
discussed and the new meanings of ethnographic categories introduced into the lives of those
whom they ostensibly described. However, Russian census practice never developed a
consistent concept of nationality. In both the Family Lists compiled in 1886 and the first All-
Russian Census of 1897, which were comprehensive in scope, language was used as a
surrogate for nationality alongside the category of religion. In the Caucasian context
linguistic diversity far outstripped religious diversity; in Kutaisi province, for example, eight
major categories of religious identification were recorded in 1897, while the number of major
categories of linguistic identification was twenty-two. The Russian state’s preference for
language as a surrogate for nationality was thus critical in constructing the South Caucasus as

39
In the early eighteenth century Georgian geographer Prince Vakhushti, for instance, had described Mingrelian
as a “corrupted Georgian” (Wakhoucht, 1842, 404).
40
For example historian K. Borozdin interpreted the relationship between elite usage of Georgian and the serf
population’s use of the Mingrelian vernacular in Mingrelia as the result of ‘tribal conquest’: “Having
subjugated the region and made it his own, the prince distributed to his supporters feudal rights to land
inhabited by low people belonging to a completely different tribe, hence two classes were formed, upper and
lower, the different tribal origins of which are shown by the difference between the Georgian and Mingrelian
dialects…it is in the peasant that one must find the true aboriginal, subjugated by the newcomer Georgian tribe”
(Borozdin, 1885, 317-8).

64
a polyethnic region; other criteria would have rendered the region less bewilderingly
heterogeneous.

Colonial evaluations of group character

As well as serving to classify different populations, the new ethnic taxonomies also served to
construct them through evaluations of group character reflecting the interests and prejudices
of the Russian state. Religion and race were the primary frames through which these
evaluations were made. The category of inovertsy (‘non-believers’) had begun to be used to
describe the non-Christian subjects of the empire already in the early eighteenth century. By
the late eighteenth century this term had been replaced by that of inorodtsy (‘foreign-born’)
used for the first time in 1798 to distinguish nomadic peoples of the Russian steppe from
sedentary populations (Kappeler, 2001, 168-9). This term was originally used to denote the
nomads as a separate estate, but over time its usage expanded to distinguish between
Russians as the state people and all non-Russians. In this usage it came to imply a pejorative,
civilizational hierarchy between Orthodox and Muslim denizens of the empire. In the
context of Georgia this distinction was important in demarcating Georgians as a bridgehead
of Orthodoxy vis-à-vis smaller, ‘backward’ groups.

The Christian orientation of the Georgians, as well as the fact that they were among the first
groups in the region to come into contact with the Russian state, led to the reproduction of
certain key narratives of Georgian identity in colonial discourse. Some insights into colonial
evaluations of local groups may be gleaned from a report on the fifty years of missionary
activity carried out by the Society for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the
Caucasus (Obshchestvo dlya Vosstanovleniya Pravoslavnago Khristianstvo na Kavkaze,
hereafter OVPKhK) (Platonov, 1910). Reflecting the basic dividing line between Orthodox
and non-Orthodox peoples, the Society’s activities were directed towards non-Orthodox
groups, and to those groups considered ‘fallen’ in their religious orientation, consisting
largely of mountaineers (gortsy).41 Race also figured in the evaluation of a group’s potential
for civilization. The Ossetians, for example, are noted as belonging “to that great family of
peoples known as the Indo-Europeans”, and also benefiting from the Christianising influence

41
The populations falling with the Society’s remit were: north and south Ossetians, Ingiloans, Udi, Kist,
Tushetians, Khevsuretians, Pshavians, Meskhians, Khevtsians, Mtiuletians, Acharians, Svans, Abkhazians,
Samurzaqanoans, Aysor, Armenians and sectarian Russians.

65
of their Georgian overlords (Platonov, 1910, 6). Describing the settlement of the Ossetians
in the southern slopes of the Caucasus range, the report observes:

“This circumstance evidently had a beneficial, positive effect on the Ossetians,

since it put them face to face with Christians and must have contributed to the
progress of Christianity amongst them…Georgia on more than one occasion was
subject to the deep trauma of attack by Muslim enemies and could not therefore
devote attention to the support of Orthodoxy amongst the newly converted”
(pp.10-11).

The minimal achievements of Russian missionaries amongst Ossetians in Georgia, however,

led the report to conclude: “the Ossetians are a people of ‘fallen morals’, a people more
heathen than Christian” (p.14). A similar fate had befallen the Abkhazians according to the
report. Once a Christian land, the report attributes the decline of Christianity to Ottoman
‘barbarism’ during the Russo-Ottoman war of 1878-9 and the Ottoman sympathies of the
Abkhazian princes. The report noted Russian missionary activity in the region since 1831
had achieved little, concluding:

“despite these ecclesiastical efforts by Russia for the Abkhazians, the religious
state of the latter presented and presents ‘complete chaos’… The people
possessed no clear understanding about any single religion and appropriated
willy-nilly whatever most strongly acted upon their effectively infantile
imagination” (pp.62-63).

Beyond paganism and superstition, the Abkhazians were also portrayed as gifted in the arts
of horse thieving (“the Abkhazian is above all, a ‘daredevil thief’ [bedovoy vor]”) and the
poisoning of the elderly and infirm (p.68). A similar image of a fallen Christian people
applied to the Acharians, among whom memories of their Christian past were deemed to be
strong; the negative effects of Muslim ‘fanaticism’ were attributed to influence of local
mullahs (pp.37-42).

Christian Kartvelian groups fared considerably better. The OVPKhK portrayed the
Mingrelians, for example, as a bridgehead of Christianity and positive influence in the return
of the Abkhazians to the Orthodox flock (p.65). Christianity in Abkhazia, and by proxy

66
civilization, was thereby perceived in terms of a continuum from the more Christian east to
the Muslim heartland in the northwest district of Gudauta, essentially a continuum of
proximity to the beneficial influence of the Georgian population. Although Svans were
regarded as a ‘semi-wild’ people, progress in the promotion of active adherence to
Orthodoxy was noted. Underlying the report, and Russian portrayals of cultural relations in
the Caucasus as a whole, was the reproduction of indigenous narratives of Georgia as a
Christian outpost, beleaguered by Muslim empires but a civilising influence among smaller
groups within the Caucasus. Russian rule thereby absorbed indigenous self-understandings
at the Georgian cultural core and in so doing, extended them as ideological interpretations of
inter-group relations in the periphery.

Colonial cultural interventions

The breaking down of larger groups into dialectal and even regional identities may surely be
attributed in part to political considerations of ‘divide and rule’.42 However, this is too
simple an explanation of the motives for intervention: group differentiation was also a central
strategy in the political incorporation of ‘backward’ groups. Backwardness, as we have seen,
was associated above all with Islam and religious syncretism, and was seen as closely
interrelated with political loyalty to the state. In the South Caucasus the Russian state
engaged in the political incorporation of backward groups through Orthodox proselytising.
This led the Russian administration to the peripheries, both geographic and cultural, of
Georgian society, where the penetration of Georgian Orthodoxy had historically been
shallowest, and provided the context for the state’s most concentrated efforts at cultural
intervention. While not particularly successful in their own terms, these measures were
critical in providing the raw materials for new ethnic identifications, and in the longer term,
ethnic pluralism.

It was conceded by the OVPKhK that proselytising was likely to be the most successful
among ‘fallen’ peoples where there were historical precedents of Christian practice, rather
than those groups where no such precedent existed. In terms of the means through which
proselytising was to be achieved, the OVPKhK conceived its mission in terms of creating
written languages for the translation of religious texts and the creation of local clergies to
disseminate them (Platonov, 1910, 154). This was pursued firstly through the promotion of

42
This is most obviously the case in the use of regional classifications of Georgians, for example the
delimitation of Gurians and Imeretians as separate groups, in demographic documents.

67
Georgian; under the auspices of the OVPKhK Georgian Psalters and service-books were
printed and distributed to Georgian churches and schools in editions running to several
thousand over the later decades of the nineteenth century (p.156). In regions where Georgian
was not widely known, however, the instrumentalisation of local vernaculars was a major
aspect of this exercise. In 1862-3 a commission was established by the OVPKhK to devise
written standards for the hitherto unwritten Abkhaz, Mingrelian, Svan and Ossetic
vernaculars, associated with regional peasant strata, which were then used to translate
religious texts. Although efforts to implement this strategy were certainly sporadic and
inconsistent (and in the case of the Kartvelian vernaculars strongly resisted by both local and
national elites), by the early twentieth century a basis for ‘high’ Abkhazian and Ossetian
national cultures, rooted in newly devised literary standards, had been created.43

The new alphabets were not designed only to serve not only the religious objective of
Orthodox adherence, however, but also the more politically motivated objective of literacy in
Russian. The following comments, addressed to the administrator responsible for education
in Transcaucasia, Yanovskiy, from a Russian bishop in the diocese of Vladikavkaz in 1888,
illustrate well the thinking behind the new alphabets:

“I suggest that the Caucasian mountaineers, as Russian subjects, should study

Russian grammar, and when reading anything even in their own language, they
should not encounter letters or different ornamental forms which they have not
seen in Russian grammar, and would therefore not understand how to pronounce.
For this reason I suggest that the alphabet for the Caucasian mountaineers should
as far as possible approximate the Russian alphabet, without a proliferation of
letters or diacritical marks above and below letters, which do not clarify matters
but make printing more difficult and complicate reading. Together with educated

43
The earliest translations of Christian religious texts into Ossetic in the nineteenth century used a Georgian
script, though these were not widely disseminated among the vernacular speakers of the time. The first Ossetic
grammar, using a Cyrillic script, was written by Andrey Shøgren, published in 1844. Vsevolod Miller’s
Osetinskie Etyudy was published in 1881, again using an adapted Cyrillic script, followed by his Yazyk Osetin
in 1903. The first Abkhaz alphabet was devised by Baron Uslar in 1863 based on Cyrillic; Abkhaz primers
were distributed in Abkhaz-speaking regions by the OVPKhK in 1866. The Abkhaz alphabet was later
modified by A. Chochua in 1909; Chochua made a complete translation of the Gospels into Abkhaz in 1912.
The Cyrillic-based Svan Lushnu Anban (‘Svan alphabet’), believed to have been authored by Baron Uslar, was
produced in 1864. Both the Lushnu Anban and Aleksandre Tsagareli’s study of the Mingrelian language
Mingrel’skie Etyudy, published in 1880, contained translated selections from the Gospels. In 1899 a Mingrelian
language primer, the Cyrillic-based Mingrel’skaya Azbuka was published, edited by Zavadskiy, and in 1914
Ioseb Qipshidze published his Grammatika Mingrel’skago (Iverskago) Yazyka based on the Georgian script,
providing the best linguistic description of any Kartvelian language at that time.

68
 Ossetians, I excluded 11 letters with marks above them from Shøgren’s alphabet,
as a result of which neither the Ossetian language nor its grammar has lost
anything” (TsSIA, pondi 422, aghtsera 1, sakme 2891, purtseli 120).

The new written standards were thus specifically devised within the linguistic parameters of
the Russian language, so as to facilitate the passage from a temporary indigenisation to a
broader identification with Russian. The case of Mingrelian, where the religious motive was
lacking, indicates a similar strategy. This was made clear in the introduction to the
Mingrel’skaya Azbuka, in which the editor, Zavadskiy, remarked: ‘The Mingrelian alphabet
is being printed only with the intention of assisting Mingrelian children with the acquisition
of literacy in Russian”.44

These efforts were more consistently pursued in the case of Abkhaz, where the Orthodox
proselytising motive was strongest. Following the creation of an Abkhaz alphabet in the
1860s a separate Sukhum eparchate was established in 1885, which assumed authority over
the region’s schools in 1890. In 1892 a Commission for the Translation of Religious Books
into Abkhaz was founded; its work culminated in a complete translation of the Gospels into
Abkhaz in 1912. In 1907 Christian worship in the Abkhaz language took place for the first
time in the villages of Lykhny and Mykw (Chachkhalia, 1997, 35). Precedents for a separate
Abkhazian culture were thus established in language, Orthodox worship in the Abkhaz
language and a separate territorial and institutional demarcation. These efforts were
combined in the late 1890s with the banning of the use of ecclesiastical Georgian in Sukhum
district in favour of Church Slavonic (Amvrosiy, 1906). These moves were resisted by the
Georgian Orthodox Church leadership, who insisted upon the retention of Georgian in
Mingrelian-populated areas of the district. Nevertheless, the actual penetration of Abkhaz
appears to have been marginal, even by the end of Russian rule.45 Significantly, the main
loser in the struggle over language in proselytising, however, was Georgian, which
effectively lost its status as Abkhazia’s primary ecclesiastical language over the course of

44
In the event, the Azbuka was not ready until 1899, so that ‘native language tuition’ in Mingrelia until that
time was thus largely symbolic (Khundadze, 1940, 97).
45
As late as 1916, some years after the relaxation of russification, the inspector of schools in the Sukhum
Eparchial Schooling Council, Seriy, wrote to his superiors that inspection of the eparchate’s schools revealed
that Abkhaz students were proficient in the Church Slavonic liturgy, but not that of their ‘native’ language.
Seriy requested that henceforth Abkhazian pupils be schooled first in their ‘own’ liturgy, then in Russian.
TsSIA, p. 422, a.1, s.13,834, p.7.

69
latter half of the nineteenth century. It was Church Slavonic, and by implication Russian,
rather than Georgian that was deployed as the main vehicle of proselytising efforts in
Abkhazia.

In sum, Russian colonial rule entailed a pervasive re-ordering of ethnic space in Georgia. A
complex lattice of primarily estate and confessional affiliations, thriving on complementary
social and cultural stratification, was gradually broken up into a hierarchical order of ethnic
groups, conceived as unitary and homogeneous wholes. Due to the haphazard and
inconsistent nature of Russian policies, however, the situation on the ground remained
extremely fluid: inertia favouring continued cultural syncretism is perhaps the dominant
feature of the period. The development of new written standards was sporadic and
constrained by the broader state imperative of russification from the 1880s. Particularly in
the course of the 1890s the direct imposition of the Church Slavonic liturgy in parts of
Georgia and a russifying education policy supplanted the earlier efforts to create new written
standards. Nevertheless, whilst simultaneously ratifying a sense of Georgian superiority vis-
à-vis smaller groups Russian policies both limited the appeal of Georgian as a language of
mobility, and through its cultural interventions offered local vernacular-speaking populations
the basis for sui generis orientations. In doing so the Russian policy of strategic
indigenisation presaged the later policies of the Soviet state, particularly in the cultural
sponsorship of small groups. In effect, the rationale behind Russian efforts to develop local
cultures was ‘national in form, Orthodox in content’.

2.6 Cultural Revival in Nineteenth Century Georgia

The Russian administration made effective use of prior political hierarchies in consolidating
its control over indigenous society in Georgia. Russian policy towards the Georgian noble
elite trod a middle path between co-optation through the awarding of rights to the point of
ennoblement that characterised its approach to local elites in Ukraine, and its imposition of
barriers to securing noble status for Muslim groups such as the Volga Tatars (Laitin, 1991,
153-55). In 1827 a Russian ukaz declared all Georgian nobles, regardless of participation in
state service or not, to be equal in privilege and status to Russian nobles. However, as was
the case with the Volga Tatars, the onus of proving noble status was placed on the Georgians,
and an absence of written records necessitated several years of humiliating petitioning and
the falsification of documents for many nobles. The heavy-handedness of the Russian
military administration also alienated parts of the Georgian noble elite, culminating in an ill-

70
fated conspiracy in 1832 to murder leading figures of the Russian administration. By the
mid-nineteenth century, however, conditions of opportunity within the local Russian
administration and generous concessions to the nobility in the serf emancipation process had
secured their loyalty, and a generation of Georgian nobles found employment in the
Caucasus administration.

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, a number of new political currents, populist,
liberal, Marxist and nationalist, were introduced to the societies of the South Caucasus.46
The discourse of nationalism was brought to Georgia by a group of young Georgian
intellectuals, known as the Tergdaleulni (‘those who have drunk of the Terek’, a reference to
the fact that its leading figures had received their education in Russia). This group
assimilated the discourses of both nationalism and social radicalism while receiving their
education in St Petersburg. Returning to Georgia in the 1860s, they embarked on a course of
renewal for Georgian culture, which they saw as elitist, ossified and stifled by Russian rule.
The political impact of the Tergdaleulni was limited by the fact that their predominantly
cultural concerns did not address the major social demands of their intended constituency.
Generous concessions afforded to the Georgian nobility by the Russian feudal reform,
ensuring continued elite privilege and maintained social divides between co-ethnic landlords
and peasants in Georgia, limited the Tergdaleulni’s appeal to cultural unity. As a political
force, nationalism in this period was a marginal, increasingly reactionary force for the
retention of traditional social hierarchies. Rather, it was an ideology of social redistribution,
Social Democracy, which ultimately achieved mass mobilisation. As a force for cultural
modernisation, however, the Tergdaleulni achieved far-reaching change.

This dichotomy may be explained by reference to the model of national revival as theorised
by Miroslav Hroch (Hroch, 1985). Hroch suggests that ‘low’ cultures, popularised by
patriotic intelligentsias, may become the basis for mass revival if the patriots are successful
in articulating salient social demands in national terms. A key assumption, then, is of a
process whereby a low culture within an agro-literate system is transformed into the
universal, high culture of an industrialising, mass society. In contrast to most non-dominant
ethnic groups in Eastern Europe, however, Georgian already was a ‘high’ (but neither secular
nor universal) culture, in the form of both ecclesiastical Georgian and the Georgian literary

46
For an overview of the impact of different social movements in Georgia in this period, see Suny, 1994, 113-
64.

71
tradition. To create a basis for the imagining of nationhood as a community encompassing
all social strata, a desacralization of this high culture was required, entailing a redistribution
of prestige away from the cultural forms and ritualised milieus, which in the centuries of
prolonged fragmentation had substituted for the state and indeed defined Georgianness. A
culture used by an elite to differentiate itself from peasant masses had to be demystified,
socially deepened and divested of contextually derived meanings. In other words, an
ecclesiastical ‘high’ culture restricted in its social distribution had to be transformed into a
vernacular-based secular culture. In this sense, rather than ‘nationalists’ the Tergdaleulni
may be better understood as modernizers in the same tradition as Crimean Tatar Ismail Bey
Gaspirali (1851-1914).47

In contrast to their political marginality, in this project of cultural modernisation the

Tergdaleulni achieved spectacular success. After engaging in an iconoclastic debate with the
‘fathers’ of the older generation, they effected a modernisation of the archaic Georgian
hitherto used in Georgian literary production. Through literature, a national press and their
tireless promotion of a modernised, vernacular-based Georgian through the Society for the
Spread of Literacy Amongst the Georgian Population (established in 1879), the Tergdaleulni
can be credited “with creating not just a language, but the ethics of intellectual debate,
polemic, and reporting, as well as a standard style for narrative prose” (Rayfield, 1994, 179).
Furthermore, key figures within the group, above all Ilia Chavchavadze (1837-1907),
produced an extensive literature historicizing a popular, rather than elite-centred, concept of
Georgian nationhood. Chavchavadze redefined Georgianness in terms of the triptych ena,
mamuli, sartsmunoeba (‘language, land, faith’), thereby emphasising the vernacular language
as the touchstone of a modern, secularised Georgian national consciousness. Georgian
nationhood in this period was thus conceived of in primarily cultural terms rather than a
national-liberationist movement seeking political sovereignty. No social movement prior to
1917 advocated Georgian independence as part of its platform.

The articulation of the ‘national question’ varied according to regional context. Confronted
with the Armenian dominance of the urban economy in Tiflis and eastern Georgia, the
Tergdaleulni and other Georgian intellectuals emphasised deep cultural differences between

47
Lazzerini describes Gaspirali as belonging to a “prepolitical generation of cultural nationalists” (Lazzerini,
1997, 183), a description also befitting the Tergdaleulni. Gaspirali’s concerns of language reform, women’s
rights and emancipation and most importantly education, as opposed to overtly political concerns, closely
mirror those of the Tergdaleulni.

72
the Georgian and Armenian communities.48 This strategy was particularly resonant in the
context of Tiflis, where a nascent Georgian working class was largely isolated from political
power.49 Ethnic differentiation was further applied to the politics of representation in the
Tiflis city duma, where demands were made in the 1890s for proportional representation by
ethnicity. These efforts bore fruit in the increasing curtailing of Armenian privileges by the
Russian administration, convinced by portrayals of the Armenians as a threat to Russian
hegemony (Suny, 1994, 141-42).

With regard to Muslim populations different strategies obtained. In contrast to the Armenian
community Muslims were generally distant from positions of economic or political power;
Turkic Muslim populations consequently played little role in Georgian self-definition. In the
province of Achara, where the majority population was Muslim but Georgian-speaking, the
Tergdaleulni adopted an assimilationist stance emphasising the historical membership of the
province in the Bagratid kingdom and campaigning for the retention of Islamic religious
worship.50 The success of this assimilation campaign was however limited, as a Muslim –
rather than Orthodox Georgian – identity retained its local relevance as an ideology of
resistance to Russian rule (Pelkmans, 2001, 9-12).

Finally in the largely rural western periphery of tsarist Georgia, the regions of Abkhazia,
Mingrelia and Svanetia, the interests of the Tergdaleulni in seeking cultural cohesion and the
cultural interventions of the Russian state detailed above were more obviously opposed.
Efforts to resist the supplanting of church-Georgian and the development of local vernaculars
varied in their success. In Abkhazia it was Church Slavonic rather than church-Georgian that
dominated proselytising efforts. In Christian Mingrelia and Svanetia the case for
proselytising was much weaker, and fiercely resisted by the local Georgian clergy. Vigorous
resistance by local ecclesiastical and noble elites, and the population’s own reluctance to
abandon Georgian, led to the abandonment of efforts to institutionalise Mingrelian and Svan

48
See for example Ilia Chavchavadze’s essay, “kvata ghaghadi” [The Clatter of the Stones], in which he
complains of attempts by Russian and Armenian scholars “to make the country believe that in the South
Caucasus there is only one nation – the Armenian nation” (Ch’avchavadze, 1956, 97).
49
For detailed treatments of ethnic politics in the urban economy in this period see Suny, 1986; Parsons, 1987;
Megrian, 1968; Kazemzadeh, 1951.
50
See for example Ilia Chavchavadze’s essay “osmalos sakartvelo” [Ottoman Georgia]. In contrast to his
stance on the Armenians, Chavchavadze here argues that “neither unity of language, nor unity of faith and tribal
affiliation links human beings together as much as unity of history” (Ch’avchavadze, 1956, 9).

73
vernaculars.51 In the absence of clear ethno-political stimulants and the rival national
projects of the colonial administration, the case for the identification of local populations as
Georgian nevertheless had to be more actively made in the western periphery compared to
eastern Georgia. Up to the end of Russian rule the hegemony of Georgian in these regions
remained limited vis-à-vis Russian and alternative sui generis orientations towards local
vernaculars.52

Political nationalism remained very much a marginal force in tsarist Georgia. Rather, the
Georgian revival in this period is best seen as a revolution of cultural modernisation, whose
inherent social conservatism precluded its spread into a mass movement.53 On the other
hand, the Tergdaleulni distilled and popularised the idea of Georgian nationhood, providing
an ideological canon of national myths and values preceding the Soviet ‘creation of nations’.
Comparison with Central Asia is instructive. In the Central Asian case, the collapsing of the
former high cultures, Persian, Arabic and Chagatay, took place later, largely as a result of
Soviet interventions in the name of new national groups that (with the partial exception of the
Kazakhs) had experienced no prior nation-building (Roy, 2000, 3-11). Unlike Georgian
these ecclesiastical or court cultures did not undergo modernisation in the name of a modern
nation and none of them is exclusively associated with a particular modern Central Asian
nation today.54 In contrast to the Central Asian nations the Tergdaleulni created a modern,
secular Georgian culture potentially inclusive of all social strata. This pre-empted work that
would for other nations be undertaken by the Soviet state and thereby limited the impact of
subsequent russification.

51
For views of the national intelligentsia on this issue see Gogebashvili, 1990; ra enaze adidebdnen da
adideben svanebi ghmerts? 1904; Megreli, 1887. For the views of the local ecclesiastical and noble elites see
Zhurnal [1985?].
52
For commentary on the emergence of a Mingrelian folkloric group in 1919, mapalu, which met with fierce
resistance from the national intelligentsia, see Beridze, 1920, 7-9. The most lucid statement on the predicament
of Kartvelian vernacular groups in this period is that of local Mingrelian teacher Ioseb Kobalia, in his
unpublished memoir of his seminary days in Zugdidi in the 1890s: “[j]ust as the Russians repressed Georgian,
so the Georgians repressed the Mingrelian language. We Mingrelians find ourselves between two fires: the
Russians repressed us for our Georgianness, the Georgians, however, for our Mingrelianness…both had as their
objective the disappearance of a smaller nation” (Kobalia, n.d., 24).
53
See Parsons, 1987 for the most complete treatment of this question.
54
Persian was defined as the key component of a passport Tajik identity under the Soviets. However, the
geographic dispersal of the Tajik-speaking population and the absence of pre-Soviet intellectual activity in the
name of a Tajik nationalism meant that forms and symbols to legitimate a tradition of ethnic continuity between
a Persian past and a Tajik present were largely absent (Rubin, 1998a, 135-39).

74
2.7 Georgian Independence 1918-21
Rather than the national traditionalism of the Tergdaleulni, it was the internationalist
ideology of Social Democracy that ultimately became the basis for mass mobilisation in
Georgia. Notable for a more inclusive stance on membership of the proletariat, the Georgian
Social Democrats adhered to the more liberal, Menshevik variant of Marxism. Historian
Stephen Jones writes that “[i]t was not an ideology of nationalism, but for many Georgians,
social democracy represented national liberation in the first place and proletarian
internationalism second” (Jones, 1984, 296). As an internationalist party promoting class
revolution, secession from Russia never formed part of the Social Democratic platform.55
Georgian sovereignty was unexpected and accidental, made possible and even imperative as
a result of several factors. It was the emergence of the Bolsheviks at the helm of the Russian
Revolution, civil war in Russia, institutional deadlock between rival nationally oriented mass
parties in the Caucasus, the prospect of German sponsorship and the immediate threat of
Turkish invasion that forced the Mensheviks in Georgia under Noe Zhordania to seek
independence. Georgian independence was declared on 26th May 1918, and would be brief,
lasting only three years until annexation by Soviet Russia in February 1921.

For the first time a ‘genuinely’ nationalist agenda, in the Gellnerian sense of congruence
between political and cultural boundaries as a political desideratum, entered Georgian
politics. After independence was declared the Georgian Social Democrats switched from an
internationalist to an overtly nationalist platform, and actively embraced nation-building
policies (Suny, 1994, 207; Parsons, 1987, 509-10; Jones, 388-89). It needs to be underlined,
however, that this was a contingent response to the accident of sovereignty, rather than an
outgrowth of a mass nationalist movement. Georgian was immediately made the compulsory
language of state business; this was followed up in 1919, when Georgian was made the
official language of litigation and school instruction, even in private schools for members of
other nationalities (Parsons, 1987, 512; Jones, 1984, 443-46). A national university was
established and the Georgian-medium arts establishment flourished. These developments
were crucial in the creation of a pool of literate Georgians prior to Sovietization. The
Georgian government also instituted a number of legal provisions entitling ethnic minorities
to cultural and territorial autonomy. Three autonomies were created in the Georgian

55
In a series of publications prior to independence, Noe Zhordania had promoted cultural rather than territorial
autonomy as the most appropriate means to guarantee cultural development alongside what was for him the
more relevant class struggle. For discussion of debates on cultural versus territorial autonomy in Georgian
Social Democracy prior to independence see Parsons, 1987, 355-393; Jones, 1984, 49-62.

75
Constitution of 1921: Abkhazia, Achara and the Muslim-populated region of Zakatala.
However, autonomy was never implemented due to the brevity of Georgian independence.

The three years of independence were marked by a number of violent confrontations

affecting communities now transformed into national minorities in a ‘nationalising’ Georgian
state. While conflict with Armenia and in Achara may be attributed to the contestation of
new international boundaries, in a striking parallel with post-Soviet developments in
Abkhazia and Ossetia conflict ensued from the uncontrolled activities of the newly formed
Georgian People’s Guard.

The advent of Georgian independence transformed cultural Armenophobia into open conflict.
The demise of the post-revolutionary regional government, the Transcaucasian Seim, sparked
a territorial dispute between the emergent Georgian and Armenian states over the regions of
Lori and Akhalkalaki, ethnically Armenian but located within the former Tiflis province. By
December 1918 faltering diplomacy between the two sides had failed and a two-week war
ensued, during which Armenian forces reached within 30 miles of the Georgian capital.
Local Armenian populations in Georgia were transformed from a rooted historical
community into a national minority representing a belligerent and territorially revisionist
neighbouring state. The Armeno-Georgian conflict played into the hands of the nationalist
Georgian opposition, the National Democrats, who demanded support for the establishment
of a Georgian middle class. This could only follow from an indigenisation of the urban
economy. As historian Richard Hovannisian observes: “[t] he brunt of the war fell not upon
the combatants or even the villages of Lori but upon the Armenians of Tiflis and the
surrounding communities” (Hovannisian 1971, 1: 122). Government-enforced indigenisation
took place masquerading as measures enacted as ‘responses’ to the Armeno-Georgian
territorial conflict and social redistribution policies.56 Armenians who had been settled for
generations in Tiflis now looked to the emergent city of Erevan as a new national capital, a
trend powerfully reinforced when Erevan became the capital of Soviet Armenia. In
consequence, the ‘Armenian question’ in Georgia was transformed into the extension of
cultural autonomy to Armenians as a non-titular minority, dealt with according to the specific
framework of Soviet nationalities policy.

56
These included the mass expropriation of property, random arrests, deportations of Tiflis Armenians to
Kutaisi, the closure of the National Council of Armenians and Armenian publications, the removal of
Armenians from state employ and their exclusion from municipal elections (Hovannisian, 1971, 1:123-4).

76
In Achara Georgian independence was greeted with equivocation and resistance. Local
Acharian units carried out sabotage activities and conducted guerrilla warfare in support of
the Turks, and in 1920 a ‘South-West Caucasian Republic’ was proclaimed under the
leadership of a Georgian Muslim, Jihangiradze Ibrahim Bey, with Turkish support. When in
July 1920 Batumi passed back into Georgian control relations with the Acharians further
deteriorated, despite efforts to win the support of the Muslim population through the
establishment of a Georgian Muslim Liberation Committee and the conferring of cultural
autonomy on the region in the 1921 Georgian Constitution (Parsons, 1987, 536; Jones, 1984,
415).

In Abkhazia the emergence of a pro-Circassian orientation within local elites in the early
years of the twentieth century provided the basis for Abkhazia’s membership of the
‘Mountain Republic’ declared after the Russian Revolution in May 1918, joining the peoples
of Dagestan, Chechnya-Ingushetia, Ossetia, Karachay-Balkaria, Kabardia and Adyghea.
Abkhazia was subsequently incorporated into the independent Georgian republic following
the incursion of the Georgian National Guard into Abkhazia in June 1918. Although
Abkhazia was granted autonomy according to the Georgian Constitution of 1921 there was
considerable resistance to Georgian rule in the Abkhazian National Soviet, established in
1917 (Lakoba 1999b, 89-94). In late 1918 the Georgian government disbanded the
Abkhazian National Soviet and arrested its leadership; natives of Abkhazia were barred from
participation in subsequent elections to its successor. These circumstances led to the
welcoming of Soviet power in Abkhazia as a liberating force from Georgian domination.
Finally the suppression of peasant-based and Bolshevik-backed revolts in Ossetian-populated
regions in north-central Georgia in 1919-1920 also took on ethnic undertones as these
regions were subjected to the reprisals of the Georgian People’s Guard (Jones, 1984, 419).

While constituting a milestone in the development of a political, rather than cultural,

Georgian nationalism, the independence period was minimal in terms of ethnic minority
incorporation. The Georgian state’s embrace of nationalism was a contingent response to the
imperative of retaining power, to which all other considerations were subordinated. The
conflicts of the period, generated by this imperative, provided fertile ground for nationalist
readings of both Georgian oppression and the disloyalty of minorities in the post-Soviet
context. Memories of enforced Georgianisation would prove inherently divisive as the

77
prospect of Georgian independence was again raised in the 1990s. Nevertheless, it is often
forgotten on all sides that under difficult circumstances the Georgian government of 1918-21
attempted to accommodate ethnic pluralism through the legal provision of autonomy to some
(if not all) minorities. From the perspective of post-Soviet Georgian state building it is an
unfortunate fact that national autonomy was experienced as a project in Soviet, rather than
Georgian, state construction. This has been a major factor feeding contemporary Georgian
perceptions that institutionalised ethnic pluralism is a Soviet ‘invention’ and thereby to be
associated with ‘colonial’ rule.

2.8 Conclusion
This chapter has highlighted a fundamental disjunction between culture and polity in
Georgian history. Periods of integration into common political institutions in Georgian
history were tenuous, short-lived or historically distant, and precipitated by accidents of
dynastic inheritance or geopolitics rather than a contractual relationship between ruler and
ruled. This has been an important legacy for the post-Soviet construction of an inclusive
Georgian state. The absence of a collective political tradition had a vital impact on
subsequent imaginings of the Georgian nation. History presents serious obstacles to the
imagining of Georgian nationhood in inclusive terms as ‘nation by association’ or
Gesellschaft, a community brought together by commitment to a common set of institutions
or principles into a rational-bureaucratic sense of statehood. Where political continuity is
lacking in Georgian history, however, continuity of language compensates. Georgian
nationhood can more plausibly be imagined in exclusive terms as a ‘nation as community’ or
Gemeinschaft, defined by the common orientation towards Georgian language and culture.

Georgia’s history as a Russian colony further underlines the ambiguous status of minorities.
While I hope to have shown that a ‘divide and rule’ analysis does not capture the more
complex motives behind colonial interventions for smaller groups, the development of
minority cultures historically has been inextricably tied to the policies and programmes of the
colonial power. The integrative institutions emphasised in historical accounts of Western
state development, such as unified schooling systems, conscription and state bureaucracies,
played a tenuous and often highly ambiguous role. While Russian rule endorsed the more
‘advanced’ nature of Georgian culture relative to smaller groups, practical policies in
schooling, administration and language planning curtailed its dissemination across an
ethnically heterogeneous population. This trend was reversed in the Georgian independence

78
period, but the brevity and circumstances of independence forestalled the practical
implementation of the Georgian state’s pluralist policies. On the contrary, the conflicts
associated with Georgian independence provided a rich source of narratives of majority
oppression and minority disloyalty utilised by post-Soviet nationalist elites.

79
Chapter 3 The Institutional Origins of Ethnic Conflict in Soviet Georgia

3.1 Introduction
This chapter deals with the institutional context of ethnic relations in Soviet Georgia. Many
analyses of post-Soviet ethnic politics have drawn attention to the role of the Soviet state’s
ethno-federal structure in entrenching a territorial sense of nationhood among its constituent
titular groups (Brubaker, 1994; Slezkine, 1996; Kaiser, 1994; Suny, 1993; Zaslavsky, 1993).
This approach has usefully suggested why the Soviet Union was particularly vulnerable to
collapse along the ostensibly nationalist lines of its own creation. The role of territorial
ethno-federalism has often been understood in a rather general way, however, with less focus
on its relevance to variable post-Soviet outcomes of conflict and accommodation. In itself
the institutionalist account does not explain the high variation in the degree of nationalist
mobilization and the political salience of identities institutionalised by the Soviet system in
the post-Soviet arena. To understand the links between Soviet ethno-federalism and
variation in post-Soviet conflict a broader picture is needed firstly of the conditions under
which institutionalised ethnic identities were made operational, and given material relevance,
in the everyday lives of Soviet citizens. Secondly, how did Soviet institutions structure post-
Soviet forms of collective action; and thirdly, how did the structural context affect the
internal dynamics of the national revival movements of the late 1980s? In particular, we
need an understanding of how and why linkages between institutionalised identities and
material interests may have contributed to conflict in the Georgian case but not others.

In post-Soviet Georgia, the ethno-federal factor appears to be an accurate, if somewhat crude,

predictor of conflict. For its size and population there were an unusually high number of
ethno-federal units in Soviet Georgia: two autonomous republics in Abkhazia and Achara,
and an autonomous region in South Ossetia.57 These groups are referred to here as ‘second-
order titulars’. Those minorities featuring most prominently in post-Soviet conflict, the
Abkhazians and South Ossetians, were indeed those enjoying Soviet-era territorial autonomy.

57
In the Abkhazian and Ossetian cases autonomy can be seen as having been granted on the basis of ethnicity,
in conformity with the Soviet nationalities policy of the time. The creation of a second Ossetian autonomy was
anomalous, since a North Ossetian autonomy also existed; for one nationality to be granted two autonomies, and
therefore two homelands, was exceptional within the terms of Soviet nationalities policy. In the case of Achara,
the granting of autonomy on the grounds of confessional differences was of course highly anomalous in the
context of an aggressively anti-religious regime. Rather than Leninist nationalities policy, the proper context
for the creation of the Acharian autonomy, rather, is Soviet-Turkish relations of the early 1920s (Pelkmans,
2001, 13).

80
At the same time the Acharian case demonstrates that territorial autonomy is insufficient of
itself to explain conflict. In the case of the Russian Federation ethno-federalism is a poor
indicator of conflict: the vast majority of Russia’s national republics have not seen violent
confrontation. This points to the need to supplement a focus on institutions with exploration
of cultural factors, such as the discourse of nationalism, which is the subject of the next
chapter. What is needed, then, is a fuller picture of how and why ethno-federal structures
may have contributed to the outcome of ethnic conflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

This chapter uses a model of peripheral incorporation to address this question. It focuses on
the means through which different titular elites in Georgia were inserted into the Soviet state,
the cultural consequences of differentiated insertion and its implications for conflict
generated within the context of exit from that state. These relations are explored as providing
the structural underpinnings of conflict, subsequently subsumed into the broader narratives of
ethnic opposition dominating discourse about the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia
today. The main assumption of this chapter is that contrasting patterns of elite incorporation
are critical in structuring patterns of interethnic relations, which became overtly politicised in
the devolution of power from the Soviet centre. The incorporation of peripheral elites
structures two key relationships (Laitin, 1998, 59). Firstly it structures the nature and extent
of integration among peripheral peoples into the culture of the metropolitan core (Russian),
and consequently the degree to which assimilated (here called cosmopolitan) and native
orientations compete amongst indigenous populations. In the more local context of
individual national republics this relationship also describes the extent of integration among
second-order titulars into the titular culture of the union republic, i.e. Georgian. This
relationship is thus critical to elucidating the internal struggle among titular groups to define
the cultural boundaries of the nation. As Taras Kuzio observes, a key struggle in post-Soviet
states is that between ‘nativists’ and ‘assimilados’ for cultural dominance in the nation
building process (Kuzio, 2002, 248). This internal struggle over the degree of cultural
exclusivity in titular nation building is in turn an important factor in majority-minority
relations.

Secondly, incorporation patterns structure the extent to which those representing the
metropole in the periphery have incentives to integrate into peripheral cultures. In the
existing literature this question has been almost entirely understood in terms of cultural
orientations among Russians in the national republics. In the Georgian context, however, this

81
relationship also describes cultural orientations among Georgians, the nationality of the
Georgian ‘centre’, in the Abkhazian and South Ossetian peripheries.

The link between institutions and cultural orientations is made here through the concept of
‘institutional completeness’, a concept devised by Raymond Breton to analyse patterns of
integration among immigrants (Breton, 1964). Breton saw institutional completeness at its
most extreme, i.e. complete, “whenever the ethnic community could perform all the services
required by its members” (p.194). The main argument of this chapter is that different
incorporation patterns resulted in divergent levels of institutional completeness between
Georgia’s titular and second-order titular groups, a pattern I call ‘composite incorporation’. I
demonstrate firstly why Georgian elites had relatively few incentives to acquire Russian, and
retained a cultural integrity largely undiminished by incorporation into the Soviet state. To
illustrate this dynamic, I bring a comparative perspective with five other Soviet republics
(Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). I then show why for Abkhazian
and Ossetian second-order titular elites, there were compelling incentives to acquire and rely
on Russian as mediators and beneficiaries of Soviet rule within their ‘own’ homelands. On
this basis I argue that Georgia may be seen as an example of the composite incorporation of
layered peripheries, in which the incorporation variable, in differentiating occupational
mobility, cultural orientations and consequently institutional completeness, explains a
fundamental bifurcation across a range of parameters between titular groups. This chapter
thus provides the macro context for the examination of nationalist mobilization in the
chapters that follow.

3.2 The Incorporation of Elites

The Soviet incorporation of national elites was predicated on the principle of enhanced
mobility for titular elites at the sub-state level. The unrestricted mobility of local elites
through dedicated titular institutions within designated homelands for the purposes of self-
administration (if not rule) was a key premise of the Soviet policy of korenizatsiya
(indigenisation) and the Soviet social contract as a whole. However, the policy did not offer
any formal prescriptions for the promotion of non-Russian elites into the central institutions
of the state. The early Soviet regime assumed a non-national central state elite, supra-
national rather than multinational (Martin, 2001, 179). In later periods considerable efforts
were expended in securing equality of representation in the governing party structures of the
state for nationalities possessing union republics. As David Laitin has shown, however,

82
regardless of the considerable efforts made to standardise the principle of incorporation
across the Soviet Union titular-to-centre mobility varied between groups, mediated by
cultural proximity to the Russian core, developmental disparity and contrasting historical
experiences (Laitin, 1998).58 To be sure, subjective perceptions of being colonized
characterised all Soviet titular groups to varying extents. Particularly following the shift
towards the promotion of Russian in the 1930s, indigenisation policies stood in an uncertain
and ambiguous relation to an increasing perception of state-led russification. There were
nevertheless important differences between individual patterns of incorporation among the
Soviet nationalities. Laitin has theorised these differences in terms of three ideal-typical
patterns of peripheral incorporation: ‘most-favoured-lord’, ‘colonialist’ and ‘integral’ (see
above, Chapter 1). These three categories describe the extent to which incorporation patterns
created incentives for titular elites to acquire and operate in Russian. Thus while Soviet rule
may have been subjectively perceived as ‘colonial’ by all groups, its varying modes of
expansion into national peripheries had an important differentiating effect in terms of the
nature and extent of russification.

Patterns of incorporation were closely tied to patterns of modernisation. The Soviet state
was, if nothing else, passionately committed to modernising the societies under its rule. Pre-
Soviet rates of literacy, patterns of industrialisation and related trends in Slavic settlement
were closely correlated with russification. Heavily industrialised republics (e.g. Ukraine) or
those industrialising from a near-zero base (e.g. Kazakhstan) typically saw a large influx of
Slavic labour and/or expertise early in the Soviet period. Particularly in Central Asia the
pattern of modernisation, with high representation of European settlers in positions of
authority and monocultural production bases, can be seen as traditionally ‘colonial’. Here
Russian was effectively the cultural medium through which modernisation was implemented,
and modernity experienced. By contrast in the Baltic republics large scale industrialisation
preceded Soviet rule, establishing relatively complete indigenous institutions. Differences in
modernisation thus capture an important difference between ‘integral’ and ‘colonial’ modes:
the extent to which indigenous societies were self-administering, or dependent on an influx
of European settlers to ‘institute’ modernisation.

58
This is not to underestimate the extent to which the expansion of the Soviet into all of its peripheries was in a
fundamental sense ‘colonial’, but to emphasise that the modalities of expansion differed in politically
significant ways according to regional context.

83
The argument pursued here is that Soviet Georgia presents a hybrid of integral and colonial
patterns, where the integral model describes the incorporation of Georgian titulars into the
wider Soviet state, and the colonial model describes the incorporation of Abkhazian and
South Ossetian second-order titulars into the wider Georgian republic. This produced an
outcome in which Georgian elites had relatively few incentives to acquire and rely on
Russian. Second-order titular elites by contrast faced compelling incentives to rely on the
metropolitan (and not Georgian) culture as mediators of Soviet rule within their homelands.
Abkhazians and Ossetians thus share many of the features of instrumental russification
characteristic of Central Asian nationalities, producing a cultural and political orientation
towards the metropolitan culture sharply divergent to that of Georgian titulars. I now
examine the incorporation of Georgian elites into the Soviet state, before moving on to the
incorporation of second-order titulars into the Georgian republic.

3.3 Elite Recruitment Patterns and Mobility in Soviet Georgia

The early Soviet regime was understandably cautious in its treatment of Georgia. The region
had enjoyed a brief period of independence under a nationalist banner, and neither the
working class nor the Bolshevik support base in Georgia was significant in size. Moreover,
since the Bolshevik annexation Georgia had become a rallying cause for Social Democratic
parties across Europe; Lenin himself advocated a wide range of concessions to the various
social constituencies of the Caucasian republics in the establishment of Soviet power (J.
Smith, 1998, 525). These concessions included a prominent role for Georgians in the
Transcaucasian Federative Republic (TFR), of which Tbilisi was made capital until its
dissolution in 1936. Georgians were evidently favoured in recruitment to positions in the
TFR, of which they held a disproportionately high number (Cornell, 2001, 151). In 1936 the
TFR was dissolved and replaced by three union republics, thereby replacing a Caucasus-wide
institutional space for mobility with a more limited, yet for titular nationalities preferential
access to republican positions.

While large-scale industrialisation certainly did take place under Soviet rule in Georgia,
compared to other regions such the Baltics, Ukraine or Kazakhstan, Georgia was not a focus
of labour-intensive industrial development. Soviet Georgia’s economic profile was split
between a high degree of integration into the all-Union economic system in some commodity
fields and local self-sufficiency. The production base remained split between mainly light
industry, agro-industrial and agricultural production, rather than large-scale heavy industry or

84
monocultural agriculture. In some sectors, such as tea and citrus production and Georgia’s
dependence on subsidised energy imports, the Georgian economy did share some of the
features characteristic of a typically ‘colonial’ economy. The unusually high share of
agricultural production, and consequently of employment in agriculture, however,
contributed to the continued prominence of informal market production and therefore private
income.59 By the 1980s, for example, a third of farmers’ income in Georgia came from
private sources (World Bank, 1993, 7).

This context for development may be contrasted with that of the Baltic republics and Central
Asia. In Estonia and Latvia, mass literacy and the onset of industrialisation preceded Soviet
rule, yet a sizeable industrial base continued to attract Russian-speaking migrant labour
throughout the Soviet period, creating bipolar societies. In Central Asia, neither mass
literacy nor industrialisation preceded Soviet rule; both labour and expertise were introduced
to Central Asia through Russian intervention, demographic and technical. The dominant
Central Asian pattern of development took the form of industrial enclaves staffed by
European settlers, creating a Russophone environment in which titulars also operated in
Russian, often as their effective native language (Rubin 1998a, 134). In contrast to these
republics, Georgia did not experience a large-scale influx of Slavic labour or expertise in the
process of industrialisation. The Georgian case combined a middle-range level of pre-Soviet
literacy and cultural development with a relatively limited labour market in production and
technology. There was consequently a sufficient titular labour market to supply the labour
demands of industrialisation and development in Georgia without importing labour or
Russian-speaking know-how.

Relevant comparative data is presented in Table 3.1. Here we see that although Georgia was
more urbanised than Ukraine or Kazakhstan, the Georgians as a national group were about as
urbanised as the Ukrainians by the early Soviet period. Georgians and Ukrainians also
demonstrate a similar level of literacy, at a middle level between Estonian and Kazakh poles.
In 1960 capital investment per capita in Georgia was the lowest of any of the republics
surveyed (the lowest of all was Belorussia at 103 rubles per capita), although nearly half of

59
The extent of private income production is evident in the disparity between savings accumulation and
reported income. In 1991 Georgia ranked 12th poorest of the republics in terms of per capita income, yet
savings deposits per capita were 6th highest amongst the republics. Georgia and Azerbaijan recorded the highest
incidence of absenteeism among the republics in 1990, a further indication of informal economic activity
(World Bank, 1993, 7).

85
all capital investment in the republic was invested in industry. The comparatively high
capacity of titulars to supply the industrial labour market is also evident: in 1977 66% of all
industrial employees were titular, compared with 48% and only 13% in Estonia and
Kazakhstan respectively.

The macro-economic context in Georgia did not therefore favour a substantial Slavic influx.
In effect a ‘colonial phase’ in the republic’s modernisation, administered by Russians, was
largely elided; instead, Georgia moved quickly towards integral incorporation, which indeed
accorded with the formal intentions of Soviet nationalities policy. I now examine
recruitment patterns to enlarge upon this framework for understanding integral incorporation.
Recruitment practices are significant because they mediate the extent to which acculturation
to the metropolitan culture is desirable or expedient to regional elites. Specifically I look at
three key mobility patterns: titular mobility to the Soviet centre, titular mobility within the
‘home’ republic, and non-titular Russian mobility in the national republics.

3.3.1 Titular Mobility to the Soviet Centre

In his study of Soviet recruitment patterns, Hodnett observes that “[i]nter-republic transfer
opportunity is likely to play a key role in influencing the adoption of “local” or “cosmopolitan”
identifications and ambitions” (Hodnett, 1978, 306). External transfer opportunities for titulars at
least equal to their opportunities within their own republic could be assumed to contribute to their
commitment to the Soviet system rather than local identities. Transfer opportunities out of one’s
republic were in fact extremely limited in the Soviet Union, comprising only 9.8% of transfers
researched by Hodnett over the period 1955-1968. The transfers that took place did so almost
exclusively to the RSFSR; this could nevertheless be seen as a promotion. External transfer was
thus a limited factor in career planning, but to the extent that it was a factor, there were significant
differences between republics.

86
Table 3.1 Development Differences across 6 Soviet republics
Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan Ukraine Kazakhstan Estonia
Urban pop.,
1926 (%):
By republic 15.5 12.1 23.1 13.0 5.6 23.2
By titular nation 7.1 23.8 12.0 6.8 1.3 21.1
Literacy of titular
Nationality, 1926
(%) 39.5 34.0 8.1 41.3 7.1 72.4

Capital investment
Per capita of republic
1960, rubles 115 138 146 148 243 195

Proportion of total
Capital investment,
1921-1960, in:
Industry 43.8 46.8 58.6 51.6 38.2 39.0
Agriculture 9.2 9.8 7.6 7.1 21.3 9.9
Scientific, educational
and health sectors 22.1 20.1 16.0 15.7 13.6 24.4

Proportion of 66 92 58 65 13 48
titular employees (68.8) (89.7) (78.1) (73.6) (36.0) (64.7)
in industry, 1977¹

Ethnic Russians 6.3 1.6 5.6 22.1 37.8 30.3

republic, 1989 (%)
Source: Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994),
201-202; Natsional’naya politika v tsifrakh (Moscow, 1930), 271-272; Gosstatizdat, Kapital’noe Stroitel’stvo v SSSR:
Statisticheskiy Sbornik (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Statisticheskoe Izdatel’stvo, 1961), 82-109, 112, 116-117; B. Pockney,
Soviet Statistics since 1950 (Aldershot, Hants: Dartmouth, 1991), 27-28; Neil Melvin, Russians Beyond Russia. The Politics
of National Identity (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995), 134.
¹ The figure given in brackets reflects the titular share of the total population of the relevant republic in 1979.

Hodnett’s data shows that titular opportunities to leave their own republic decreased over
time. The data for Georgia indicates that between 1955 and 1968 only 5.5% of all transfers
from leading positions in Georgia were to the RSFSR; the remainder were confined to within
Georgia. Looking at the data for titulars only, we see from Table 3.2 that external transfers
for Georgian titulars comprised only 3.7% of all transfers, comparing with 9.8% of transfers
originating in Ukraine, 8.1% of those in Kazakhstan and 3.4% of those in Estonia. This
suggests that by the 1950s Soviet, as opposed to republican, careers were an even less likely
prospect for titular cadres in Georgia compared to their counterparts in Ukraine or
Kazakhstan. Data on republican representation in the Politburo also indicates that Georgians
played a relatively minor role at this high level, with nineteen candidate members over the
period 1924-1980 (Table 3.3). This compares favourably with the other South Caucasian
republics, the Baltics and most of the Central Asian republics, but is suggestive of a wide

87
margin of opportunity separating Georgia from the most-favoured-lord status applied to
Slavic nations.60

Table 3.2: Titular and non-titular transfers to positions outside six national republics 1955-1968.

Titulars Non-titulars
% %
Georgia 3.7 100.0
Armenia 5.8 0.0
Azerbaijan 10.3 50.0
Ukraine 9.8 0.0
Kazakhstan 8.1 17.4
Estonia 3.4 0.0
Source: Grey Hodnett, Leadership in the Soviet National Republics (Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1978), 309.

Table 3.3 Republican Representation in the Soviet Politburo, 1924-1980¹

Politburo Membership
Republic Full member Candidate member

RSFSR 27 23
Ukraine 37 47
Kazakhstan 14 6
Georgia - 19
Azerbaijan - 7
Armenia - -
Estonia - -
Source: Donna Bahry, Outside Moscow (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 28.
¹ Indicates Politburo members simultaneously holding positions within their republic of origin.

3.3.2 Titular mobility to Republican Centres

The marginal representation of Georgians at high levels in Soviet structures and the low
degree of external mobility for Georgian titulars stands in sharp contrast to their near-
complete domination of republican structures. In this dimension, all three South Caucasian
republics demonstrate a close affinity to the Baltic republics as self-administering titular
societies, and stand in sharp contrast to the colonial pattern of Soviet rule in Kazakhstan.
The increasing representation of titulars, rather than Russians, was a common trend across
the national republics, a result of the extensive affirmative action policies designed to benefit
native representation within national homelands. Whereas Russians had been central to

60
The significant representation of Kazakhs is an interesting anomaly. Laitin suggests that this was attributable
to the promotion of Kazakhs to largely symbolic, rather than genuinely influential, positions at this level (Laitin,
1998, 73). Martin concurs, suggesting that “easterners who were sent to Moscow were those who had lost out
in factional struggles and were being exiled to a distant and insignificant assignment” (Martin, 2001, 181).

88
implementing Soviet rule in the republics during the earlier years of the Union, in later
decades administrative functions were increasingly ceded to titulars. This process was
especially marked in Georgia, where at each stage of the career process an increasing titular
dominance out of all proportion to the titular share of the population as a whole is notable.

The near-complete degree of titular control over the republic’s leading positions, including
general political leadership, technical and scientific fields and culture is shown in Table 3.4.
What is significant is the degree of titular saturation in Georgia relative to the republic’s
demographic composition. The grand mean of titular occupancy of republican positions in
Georgia between 1955 and 1972 was a remarkable 97.2%. Comparison with Armenia makes
clear the true significance of this figure: while Armenia showed a similar degree of titular
monopoly on leading republican positions at 98.2%, in Armenia the titular share of the total
population was 88.6% in 1970. In Georgia by contrast titulars comprised only 66.8% of the
total population of the republic in that year, indicating a titular saturation of influential
positions to a remarkable degree. Even in the politically sensitive area of personnel
management, Georgians secured a comfortable majority of positions (70%). Georgians also
enjoyed significant over-representation in higher education and following the over-
representation of Russians and Armenians in Georgian Communist Party membership in the
early Soviet years Georgians were consistently over-represented in party membership from
the 1930s to the end of Soviet rule (Appendix C-1).61 These conditions were reflected in the
very high degree of titular concentration within their own republic. In 1979 Georgians were
the most attached of any Soviet nationality to their own republic, with 96.1% resident in their
own republic, to be overtaken only by the Lithuanians in 1989.62

61
The titular share of all students in higher education in 1989-90 in Georgia was 89.4%, compared to 70.1%
share of the republic’s population (Kaiser, 1994, 230-233). Dobson, writing in the 1970s, observed that
university graduates “are mostly assigned to work in the republic to provide national cadres of intelligentsia”.
He also noted the occasional instance of prominent Georgians in all-Union structures (Dobson, 1975, 177).
Titular control over republican structures is confirmed by observations made by visiting Western scholars in the
Soviet period. Robert Parsons, for example, observed in the 1980s that “the higher one goes in the Georgian
party hierarchy the more Georgians one meets” (Parsons, 1982, 553).
62
Kaiser, 1994, 161.

89
 Table 3.4 : Native Occupancy of leading positions across six union republics, 1955-1972

Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan Ukraine Kazakhstan Estonia

Position % % % % % %

CC Secretariat 86.7 100 86.0 100 29.5 79.2

First Secretary 100 100 100 100 33 100
Organisational secr. 40 100 33 100 0 75
Agricultural secr. 67 100 83 67 40 0
Capital gorkom secr. 100 100 100 50 0 100
Trade Union chairman 100 100 100 100 100 100
Komsomol 1st secr. 100 100 100 80 67 100
KGB Chairman 100 50 17 100 25 50
Member of presidium, 100 100 88.9 86.7 48.8 94.4
Council of Ministers
Chairman, Council of 100 100 100 100 100 100
Ministers

Native occupancy,
jobs related to:
Gen. pol. leadership 100 100 100 87.5 58.2 100
Personnel 70.0 100 66.5 83.5 6.7 37.5
Prop./cult./educ./sci. 100 100 100 87.5 88.9 100

Grand Mean¹ 97.2 98.2 91.0 85.3 46.6 83.7

Indigenous Directors, 127 107 113 109 100 134

1989²

Titular share of total

Republic population,
1970 66.8 88..6 73.8 74.9 32.6 68.2
Source: Grey Hodnett, Leadership in the Soviet National Republics (Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1978), 101-103, 108;
Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994,
241.
¹ This is a mean figure for all the categories researched by Hodnett, only a selection of which is given here.
² This figure represents the proportional representation of indigenes among directors of enterprises and organisations.

What explains the extent of titular dominance in Georgia? We have seen that a combination
of a pre-Soviet pool of literate titulars and a pattern of industrial development that did not
require a large influx of labour or expertise favoured the consolidation of titular control. A
further significant factor in explaining the reluctance of Georgians to move beyond their own
republic is the abandonment that migration would mean of the informal resources of
clientelism and patronage networks in procuring basic social goods. Although the available
evidence is sparse, it is clear that patron-client ties and ‘family circles’ were the paramount
resource distribution mechanism in Soviet Georgia.63 In conditions of stiff competition for

63
See Fairbanks, 1996 [1983]. Mars and Altman argue that the salience of Mediterranean values, and the
family as the primary social unit, created the conditions for a robust shadow economy, where in conditions of

90
desirable positions strong networks were a necessary requirement, as this example from Mars
and Altman’s ethnographic research shows: “In Tbilisi University’s medical school, the only
one in Georgia, competition for entrance is so rigorous that we were told that there were
twenty applicants for each place and that a fee of ‘up to 50,000R’ could be charged to ensure
one’s admittance. Here again a strong network is required to raise such sums” (Mars and
Altman, 1983, 556). Within the internal labour market, non-titulars were at a distinct
disadvantage, due to either the absence of such networks or their smaller scale, in offering
effective competition in such a market. Within the political realm promotion was an
essential resource conferred by patrons upon their clients; patrons were consequently less
likely to be interested in clients not eligible for promotion (Fairbanks, 1996 [1983], 366). In
the context of indigenised administrative structures, these included Georgia’s minorities.
Thus non-titulars in Soviet Georgia were not able to compete in the broader informal
economy on account of their size, nor could they penetrate patron-client ties in the
administration on account of their ethnicity.

The pattern of a closed titular circle is common to both the South Caucasian and Central
Asian republics; where they diverge, however, is in the additional control over technical and
cultural fields, in which Russians played a significant role in Central Asia. The segmentation
of the white-collar job market by nationality obtaining in Central Asian contexts did not
apply to the same extent in Georgia: by 1989, enterprise directors were far more likely to be
Georgians than any other nationality. The South Caucasian republics, and especially
Georgia, can thus usefully be seen as a middle point combining the control over intellectual
and political life of the integral model and the internal re-distributive powers of the colonial
model. This made for a potent ‘titular gravy train’, reaching its height during the nineteen-
year administration of First Secretary Mzhavanadze (1953-1972) and was not significantly
diminished even after that time.

informal personalised networks the abstractions of a formal economy have less relevance. They note that the
tolkach, the traditional ‘fixer’ in the Soviet economic system, had no equivalent in the Georgian economy or
language: “This is not because the system does not need this function but because the function has no need to be
formalised and concentrated in a single role. It is a function that is dispersed and is always latently active
within personal networks. Every Georgian is a potential tolkach in his own interest or in the interest of his
network” (Mars and Altman, 1983, 557).

91
3.3.3 Non-titular in-region
Titular dominance across a range of key political and administrative domains is a clear
indication that mobility prospects for non-titulars within the republics were circumscribed.64
I deal with second-order titular mobility in the sections below; here I confine the discussion
to remarks on the mobility prospects of the Russian population in Georgia. Differences in
the respective roles played by Russians as the ‘metropolitan’ nationality in different republics
are a useful gauge for the comparison of the degree and type of titular control. Diaspora
Russians were in a qualitatively different situation from other minorities in the republics.
They were to a significant degree protected from minority status, enjoying Russian medium
schooling and higher education across the Union. Even if by the late Soviet period the clout
of diaspora Russians had considerably receded, their position as minorities was nevertheless
qualitatively different from that of Ossetians, Abkhazians or Armenians in Georgia.65

Although Russians had featured significantly in technical elite positions in earlier periods of
Soviet rule, in Georgia, as in Armenia and the Slavic republics, Russians were never
dominant to same degree as in Central Asia. We have seen the reasons why there was less
demand for Russians to compensate for the absence of titulars in industry, as was the case in
Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Competition from qualified titulars increasingly limited
Russians to lower-qualified labour markets, mainly in the fields of industry and welfare; their
representation in administrative positions was the lowest of any of the republics surveyed
(Table 3.5). By 1989 Russians in Georgia demonstrated the lowest indices of participation in
middle and higher-grade qualified positions.66 Russians in Georgia also demonstrated a
comparatively low rate of inter-generational upward mobility: according to Russian survey
data, only 14% of those questioned in the 1980s whose fathers had worked in low-level and

64
I have omitted non-titular to centre mobility patterns from the main analysis. Examination of Hodnett’s data
reveals an interesting trend with regard to non-titular transfers out of Soviet Georgia. I noted above that
transfers outside of one’s republic were rare in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, non-titulars across the Soviet
Union had a greater chance (16.1%) of being transferred outside of their home republic between 1955 and 1968
than titulars (7.4%) (Hodnett, 1978, 309). This gap widened as time went on, with titulars as a whole
increasingly less likely to procure external transfers. From Table 3.2 above we see that in Georgia after 1959 a
full 100% of non-titular transfers went outside of the republic. This compares with none for either Ukraine or
Estonia, and only 17.4% for Kazakhstan. Only Lithuania (66.7%) and Azerbaijan (50%) approach this level of
externally bound transfers amongst non-titulars. It seems implausible that non-titulars in Georgia enjoyed
special circumstances ensuring a higher degree of external promotions. Rather this provides further evidence of
a closed circle of titular entitlement in Georgia through which non-titulars could not penetrate.
65
See the discussion in Laitin, 1998, 69.
66
The index of representation of Russians in high-grade intellectual labour (calculated by dividing the number
of Russians in a given field by the number of Russians in the total working population) in Georgia in 1989 was
82, compared to 117 in Armenia, 109 in Azerbaijan, 114 in Ukraine, 99 in Kazakhstan and 81 in Estonia
(Arutyunian, 1992, 118).

92
manual labour had managed to move into clerical work (Arutyunian, 1992, 132). This
compared with 20% in Estonia and 31% in Uzbekistan. Moreover, Arutyunian’s data shows
that in Estonia and Georgia Russian promotion into white-collar work was more often
achieved as a result of additional training – by evening or correspondence courses – whereas
in other republics, a higher proportion of Russians began their working lives as white-collar
workers. In Uzbekistan and Moldavia, about half of intelligentsia members began their
careers in positions in qualified clerical work; in Georgia and Estonia there were higher
proportions of those who only acceded to this status in the course of their careers – 89% and
75% respectively (p.132).

Table 3.5: Professional Composition of Russian Intelligentsia in Six Union Republics, 1979: Deviation
from Republican Average (%)

Administrative Production Scientific Arts Misc.

Georgia -57.2 +18.4 -44.9 +4.3 -21.6

Armenia -43.9 +23.8 -19.7 -4.6 -14.7
Azerbaijan -34.4 +48.8 -23.4 0 -39.6
Ukraine -9.3 +5.4 +21.8 +6.7 -11.6
Kazakhstan -11.1 +10.8 -3.6 +8.3 -14.1
Estonia -24.7 +11.0 -55.3 -48.0 -0.5
Source: Yu. V. Arutyunian and L. M. Drobizheva, “Russkie v raspadayushchemsya soyuze”, Otechestvennaya
Istoriya 3 (1992): 5.

Migration patterns are also illuminating. Education levels amongst Russian migrants to
Tbilisi were unusually high: 53.5% of Russian migrants to Tbilisi in the mid-1980s were
high-level specialists and managers, compared to 27% for Tashkent and only 18.2% for
Tallinn (Arutyunian, 1992, 61). Conversely a much lower share of migrants moved to Tbilisi
for blue-collar work. These figures are strongly suggestive that in Georgia titulars were able
to supply the white-collar labour market, obviating the need for a significant importing of
Russian know-how. Compared with Georgia other republics provided less competitive
destinations for Russian migrants in search of white-collar positions. Secondly they indicate
that titulars were also able to supply blue-collar workers without the need for a large-scale
importing of Russian labour, as was the case in Estonia. Georgia did not present a
particularly hospitable environment for short-contract Russian workers either: amongst
residents of 2-3 years in Tbilisi surveyed by Arutyunian in the 1980s, two thirds indicated
their intentions to leave the republic, compared to only 15% of those in Tallinn and Kishinev
(p.83).

93
Viewed comparatively, by the 1980s the Georgian republic presented one of the least
favourable contexts in terms of social mobility for Russian populations of any in the Soviet
Union. Russians were not ‘to the technocracy born’ as to a meaningful extent they were in
Central Asia and even Azerbaijan to some degree. Rather, titulars had saturated most areas
of the white-collar labour market, leaving only limited opportunities in either low-level
positions requiring minimal or no qualifications, or very specialised positions for which a
highly competitive degree of qualification or experience was required. These developments
are reflected in the changing demography of the republican capital, Tbilisi (see Appendix A-
2). Once a city dominated by Armenian merchants and Russian administrators, by 1970
Georgians had become the city’s majority nationality. Over the late Soviet period, Armenian
and Russian shares of the city’s population continued to decline in both relative and absolute
terms, as the Georgian share rose; indeed Russian and Armenian flight from the Georgian
capital in turn contributed to occupational indigenisation at the higher end of the labour
market. By 1989, Tbilisi was more ‘titular’ than any other capital apart from those of the
Slavic republics and Yerevan. The indigenisation of urban space in the capital was also
reflected in changes in the urban demography of the Georgian republic as a whole. Between
1959 and 1989 the titular share of the urban population of the republic rose by 15%, while
the Russian share decreased by 9%. Tbilisi thus acted as a truly national capital, in a way
that Central Asian capitals did not. There the increase of titular populations was offset by an
occupational segmentation that left Russians with considerable representation in prestigious
technical positions.

3.4 Abkhazian and Ossetian Incorporation into the Georgian Republic

For Ossetians, and from 1931 Abkhazians, directly accountable to the Georgian capital, the
centre-periphery dynamic of the national republics vis-à-vis Moscow was replicated at the
more local level vis-à-vis Tbilisi. The expansion of the Soviet state into the national
autonomies in Georgia, and the resulting pattern of second-order titular incorporation,
differed from the pattern described above for the Georgians.

Almost entirely rural societies at the time of Soviet incorporation, both regions saw the large-
scale transformation of their economic, social and demographic structure during the Soviet
period. Patterns of industrial development and demographic change had different outcomes
for the titular nationality of each region, however. South Ossetia remained relatively under-

94
populated despite the establishment of a small but diverse industrial base by the late Soviet
period: covering 5% of the territory of the Georgian republic, in 1989 it accounted for only
1.8% of the total population.67 This is attributable to rural decline and the limited capacity of
the region’s towns to absorb incoming populations.68 Urbanisation resulted, however, in a
significant ‘Ossetification’ of urban space. From 1922 the Ossetian share of the population
of Tskhinvali increased from 13.5% to 74.5%, an increase accounted for by substantial
migration from the surrounding rural areas amid a progressive, region-wide depopulation of
the countryside. Increasing competition for the region’s limited resources is further
suggested by the increasing dispersal of Ossetians across the republic; by 1989 some 60% of
Georgia’s Ossetians were living outside of the autonomy, compared with 47% in 1926. This
contributed to the relatively high level of linguistic assimilation into Georgian amongst the
dispersed Ossetian population.69 By the 1980s Ossetians did not significantly lag behind
Georgians across a range of key social indicators, including urbanisation, class composition
and rates of higher education (see Table 3.6).

Large-scale economic development in Abkhazia also did not precede Soviet rule. In the
early Soviet period a rural economy predominated in Abkhazia, exploiting the region’s
considerable natural resources in the fields of forestry, tobacco production, citrus cultivation
and oil-bearing plants. Tea also became a major commodity in the local economy. To some
extent the production of these commodities lent the rural economy in Abkhazian a typically
colonial profile. By the mid-Soviet period Abkhazia, with only 0.2% of the Soviet
population, accounted for some 20% of the Union’s internal tea production (Bargandzhia,
1999, 161). The scarcity in the Union market of the other rare commodities native to
Abkhazia, such as citrus, figs, olives and other fruits, also meant that they enjoyed high
prices. Ninety-five per cent of this production was for all-Union markets beyond Abkhazia,
while some commodities such as tobacco and nuts were also destined for international
markets. Abkhazia’s rural economy remained significant throughout the Soviet period, and
the Abkhazians remained more rural than either Georgians or Ossetians. This is reflected in
the fact that by 1970 50% of all employed Abkhazians were collective farm workers, a
considerably higher figure than those for either Georgians or Ossetians. Despite substantial
67
This represents a fall from accounting for 3.6% of the republic’s population in 1926.
68
In 1997 I accompanied an employee of the Delegation of the European Commission to Georgia on a routine
visit assessing rehabilitation projects in South Ossetia. He commented that one of the difficulties in this task
was assessing the degree of damage caused by conflict and its consequences, and pre-existing levels of decline
characteristic of the later Soviet years in the region.
69
In 1989, the largest concentration of Ossetians in Georgia was in fact in Tbilisi.

95
growth through the Soviet period, by 1989 Abkhazians accounted for only 12.5% of
Sukhumi’s population. Only 15.9% of the Abkhazian population lived in Sukhumi,
compared with 34.2% of Abkhazia’s Slavic population and 20.6% of its Georgian
population.

Table 3.6 Socio-economic differences in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Georgia Abkhazia South Ossetia
Class Composition of
Titular nationality, 1970 (%)
Manual Labour 40.9 30.1 48.4
Clerical Labour 26.4 19.0 25.2
Kolkhoz workers 32.6 50.7 25.8

Average monthly
Wage by region (R), 1981 201.9 133.8 111.7

No. of students in
Higher education by
Titular nationality,
(per 10,000 national pop.)
1974/5 243 207 253
1984/5 274 327 272

Total population
Composition, 1989 (%)
Urban 55.4 47.1 50.2
Rural 44.6 52.9 49.8

Urbanisation by 53.4 44.5 59.1

titular nationality, all-
Georgia, 1989 (%)

Class composition,
Total population, 1989 (%):
Manual labour 55.5 53.5 59.8
Clerical labour 30.7 27.6 29.3
Collective farm workers 13.2 18.3 10.7
Source: B. Khaberov, “Demograficheskoe razvitie Yuzhnoy Osetii za gody sovetskoy vlasti”, in Yuzhnaya
Osetiya v period stroitel’stva sotsializma, ed. B. Tekhov (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1981), 183, 200; Darrell Slider,
“Crisis and Response in Soviet Nationality Policy: The Case of Abkhazia”, Central Asian Survey 4, no.4
(1985): 58; Central Statistical Directorate of the Georgian Soviet Republic, Narodnoe Khozyaystvo Gruzinskoy
SSR 1922-1982 (Tbilisi: Sabchota Sakartvelo, 1982), 175; Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in
Russia and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 232; SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosakhleobis
erovnuli shemadgenloba. statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi: SRUSASIK, 1991), 4, 68, 92, 98, 128, 132; Gosstatizdat,
Itogi Vsesoyuznaya Perepis’ 1989 goda, Vol.9, Sotsialn’nyi sostav’ Naseleniya SSSR, 17, 26.

Abkhazia is also notable for substantial population movements during the Soviet era.
Population movements formed a staple element of Soviet development strategy; in Abkhazia
these movements had specific social and ethnic consequences. The growth of Georgian
settler communities in Abkhazia took place against the backdrop of the region’s depopulation

96
in the nineteenth century.70 As well as the growth of Sukhumi into a Georgian- and Slavic-
dominated town, all of Abkhazia’s districts (except for Gali, which already possessed an
overwhelming Georgian majority) saw a significant shift in their ethnic composition
reflecting the substantial influx of Georgian settlers (see Appendix A-3). Although
Georgians already formed a plurality in Abkhazia in 1926, the dramatic rise in the scale of
this plurality is closely associated with the early 1940s and 1950s, when the resettlement of
Georgians in Abkhazia and the construction of settler homes and associated infrastructure
formed part of a state policy emanating from Tbilisi (Sagaria, Achuba and Pachulia, 1992, 5-
11).

The scale of population movement is indicated by census data, although exact numbers of
those resettled are difficult to gauge. Between 1939 and 1989 the Abkhazian population of
Abkhazia as a whole decreased by 0.2%, compared to a 16.2% rise in the region’s Georgian
population. The most substantial increases in the Georgian population were in Sukhumi city,
and the districts of Ochamchire, where gains were made at the expense of Slavic and
Abkhazian populations, and Gagra, where gains were made at the expense of Slavic and
Armenian populations. The main effect of these changes was to make the titular nationality a
minority in all regions except Gudauta, and to make the Georgians the majority group in the
eastern districts of Abkhazia as far as and including the capital. The consequences of this
redistribution of ethnic populations were to some extent concealed during the Soviet period
by the region’s relatively high standards of living. I now examine mobility patterns for
second-order titulars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia vis-à-vis the political centre of the
republic and within their own regions.

3.4.1 Abkhazian and South Ossetian mobility to the Georgian Centre

Bearing in mind Hodnett’s observation that inter-region transfer is likely to influence the
adoption of more or less ‘national’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ orientations, what kind of mobility
prospects did Abkhazians and Ossetians have outside of their autonomous regions?
Opportunities for these nationalities to pursue political careers at the Georgian centre would
have provided incentives to acquire Georgian, as well as Russian and their own national

70
Twentieth century demographic change in Abkhazia took place against the backdrop of the large-scale exodus
of the indigenous population in the nineteenth century, a movement known collectively as the Makhajirstvo.
The scale of this movement is impossible to gauge with any precision, but as Müller’s study of Abkhazian
demography concludes, numbers were ‘dramatic’ (Müller, 1999, 220-221).

97
languages. Although the proscription of assimilation would have prevented formal identity
shift, the boundary between Georgian and Abkhazian/Ossetian identities can be conceived in
broadly parallel terms to that between Russian and non-Russian identities in the Union as a
whole. Theoretically at least, Abkhazians and Ossetians could have adopted a Georgianised
cosmopolitanism analogous to that of russified titulars in Central Asia or Ukraine. The
Georgian-Abkhazian/Ossetian relationship can therefore usefully be seen as replicating the
wider Russian/non-Russian relationship, particularly since Georgians did indeed dominate at
the Georgian centre.

As argued above, the incorporation of Georgians into the Soviet Union by the late Soviet
period corresponded to an ‘integral’ model, with a high degree of titular mobility and
indigenisation of high political office within the republic. Combined with the informal
operation of titular networks, this ensured a low degree of non-Georgian penetration of elite
positions. Statistical data on national membership of the Georgian Communist Party at
different all-republic and regional levels provides useful indications that outside of their own
regions, Abkhazians and Ossetians faced distinct constraints to all-republican mobility.
Consider the data on the national composition of the Georgian Communist Party at the levels
of Tbilisi city and regions and towns of all-republic status, i.e. regions and towns outside of
the autonomies, (Appendix C-4). In both cases, the general trend is of consistent and
increasing under-representation of second-order titulars relative to proportional shares of the
population of the republic as a whole. While this is also a reflection of the (intermittent)
existence of preferential mobility exclusive to the autonomies, the consistency of under-
representation indicates that over time, conditions encouraging the dispersal of Abkhazians
and Ossetians through the principal political organisation governing the republic did not
develop. Thus even if ambitious second-order titulars had sought to pursue all-republican
careers they evidently could not do so: Abkhazians and Ossetians did not share political
space at the governing centre of the republic with Georgian titulars. This put Ossetians and
Abkhazians in a situation equivalent to that of Central Asian titulars in the wider Soviet
space: limited to their own regions, Ossetians and especially Abkhazians were essentially
excluded from the corridors of power in Tbilisi.

This trend was also reflected in representation in higher education institutes at the republican
centre. The use of Georgian as the chief language of instruction, and the relatively minor
role of Russian – symptoms in themselves of the integral incorporation of Georgians – at the

98
republic’s leading institutes and universities presented a major obstacle to Abkhazian
representation in higher education. In 1966/67 over one third of Abkhazian university
students were enrolled in institutions outside of Georgia, compared to about 13% of Georgian
students (Slider, 1985, 55). Cost must also have been a major consideration, since as we
have seen above, competition amongst titulars for limited places raised the financial
threshold for matriculation. By the late 1960s, over one-third of all Abkhazian university
students were enrolled at universities and other institutes outside Georgia, compared to one in
eight Georgians (Ibid). Abkhazians and Ossetians thus had limited possibilities to pursue
political and intellectual advancement in the Georgian capital, although this was more
marked for Abkhazians than for Ossetians. With mobility through the wider society of
Soviet Georgia restricted, these elites could operate only within their own regions.

3.4.2 Abkhazian and Ossetian mobility in-region

The theoretical payoff for second-order titular elites in subaltern positions was the right to act
as monopoly mediators within their own territories. In principle at least, Soviet nationalities
policy guaranteed these nationalities the benefit of affirmative action within their ‘own’
designated territories. Here Ossetians and Abkhazians found themselves in different
circumstances due to demographic differences, yet certain key trends are common to both.

In Abkhazia the low demographic share of the titular nationality was a consistent obstacle to
its domination of the autonomous republic’s political structures (Appendix C-2). Although
there were periods when external intervention from Tbilisi imposed severe restrictions to
Abkhazian mobility even within Abkhazia, there were also periods when Abkhazians did
enjoy the benefits of the Soviet social contract through affirmative action within their own
homeland. Demographic marginality made Abkhazian titulars especially dependent on the
enforcement of Soviet-style affirmative action in order to retain political control over their
‘own’ homeland. Thus while affirmative action did benefit Abkhazians during certain
periods, the overall trend was of a struggle to maintain proportional representation of the
titular nationality against a steady increase in Georgian representation. In South Ossetia the
situation differed in that Ossetians formed an overall demographic majority, and were able to
maintain a level of over-representation in party membership in the region throughout the
Soviet period (Appendix C-3). Yet also noticeable in the South Ossetian case is the gradual
increase (though still at a rate of under-representation given the Georgian population of the
autonomy) in Georgian membership, and the steady decrease in Ossetian membership.

99
The pattern of restricted second-order titular mobility is strongly suggestive that with regard
to their immediate political centre, Tbilisi, Abkhazian and Ossetian groups were incorporated
in colonial mode, analogous to that of Central Asian elites within the Soviet Union. Defined
as backward with regard to the political core of the Georgian republic, Abkhazians and
Ossetians did not occupy positions of influence at the centre and were only able to wield
influence within designated territories. Abkhazian and Ossetian elite ambitions could thus
only be realised within the limited field of their native regions. This may only partially be
attributable to Georgian domination at the centre. Like the Central Asian nationalities, a
further factor was undoubtedly one of supply: talented Abkhazians and Ossetians were
directed immediately into local political and administrative cadres. Furthermore, the
operation of the informal economy in Georgia also worked against smaller groups with
smaller network capacities. Abkhazians were not excluded from the universities and
institutes of Georgia only because of language, but also because under conditions of fierce
competition smaller groups did not have the informal resources to generate the necessary
financial goods.

3.5 Composite Incorporation and Cultural Dynamics

I now make the link between the pattern of peripheral incorporation and cultural dynamics by
examining linguistic assimilation patterns amongst titular and Russian populations in Georgia
as a whole, and amongst titular and non-titular populations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
As we have seen by reference to the Ukrainian and Kazakh cases, both most-favoured lord
and colonial patterns of peripheral incorporation present titular elites with significant
incentives to acquire and operate in the metropolitan culture. The pattern, as Laitin shows, is
different in each case: for most-favoured-lords assimilation to Russian is a means to pursue
state-wide careers, while for titulars in colonial contexts it is a passport to the benefits of
acting as mediators of central rule within their own regions (Laitin, 1998, 78-82). In contexts
of integral titular incorporation, however, incentives to acquire Russian are fewer, since high
political office has been indigenised and cultural repertoires based on the local language
suffice.

Although all of the national languages of the Soviet Union were subject to the de facto
dominance of Russian, this was sharply differentiated. For Georgian titulars the Georgian
language derived prestige both from its historical heritage and its political status as the

100
official state language of its ‘own’ republic, a status shared only with Armenian and
Azerbaijani in the Soviet Union. In terms of corpus, Georgian was one of the most
developed of the Soviet national languages. Over the period 1928-1970, Georgian came
third of all the Soviet Union’s published languages in terms of the total number of titles
published (though of course not circulation), second only to Russian and Ukrainian
(Vsesoyuznaya Knizhnaya Palata, 1971, 11).71 This is not to suggest that Georgian offered a
rounded alternative to Russian as a language with a complete technical and scientific lexicon;
indeed Georgian cultural nationalism was able to exploit insecurity about the future of the
language from the 1970s onwards, particularly the dilution of Georgian’s hegemony in the
periphery of the republic (see Chapter 5).

Integral incorporation is reflected in the relatively low rate of fluency in Russian among
titular Georgians between 1970 and 1989 and the relatively low margin of increase over the
same period compared to other republics. In Kazakhstan and Ukraine, the acquisition of
Russian took place at almost double the rate of that in Georgia. Similarity between the
Georgian and Estonian cases is notable, in both relatively low levels of Russian knowledge
and the slow rates of increase in its acquisition. Also significant is the relatively low level of
fluency in Russian claimed by titulars in the capital. Usually the most cosmopolitan
environment within Soviet republics, titulars in the Georgian capital claimed the lowest level
of Russian fluency of any major nationality in the Soviet Union, at only one third of the
titular population. This is striking evidence of the indigenisation of Georgia’s capital.

71
The number of Georgian titles (books and brochures) issued over this period was 50,398, comparing with
1,585,155 Russian titles, 121,177 Ukrainian titles, and 32,789 titles in Lithuanian, the next language after
Georgian. Like all other national languages in the Soviet Union, Georgian literary production was quite
restricted for the duration of the Stalinist period and beyond. Rayfield observes of First Secretary
Mzhavanadze’s period in power (1953-1972) that it was “determinedly anti-intellectual: writers, artists, and
actors were kept out of his circle of influence and ousted from key posts, such as the directorate of theatres or
editorship of journals” (Rayfield, 1994, 320). Following the Thaw, however, and increasingly so after
Mzhavanadze’s replacement by Shevardnadze, the Georgian literary scene became increasingly dynamic. By
the late 1970s periodicals such as literaturuli sakartvelo (‘Literary Georgia’), mnatobi (‘Luminary’), tsiskari
(‘Spark’), kritika (‘Critical Review’), saunje (‘Treasure’) and gantiadi (‘Dawn’) were disseminating a lively
literary culture in the national language to a wide titular audience.

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Table 3.7 Titular knowledge of Russian as a second language inside home republic72
Russian as 2nd language
%
% Change In Capital,
Republic 1970 1979 1989 1970-89 1989
Georgia 20.1 25.5 31.8 11.7 32.7
Armenia 23.3 34.2 44.3 21.0 60.6
Azerbaijan 14.9 27.9 31.7 17.2 62.9
Ukraine 35.8 51.7 59.5 23.7 67.9
Kazakhstan 41.6 50.6 62.8 21.2 86.3
Estonia 27.5 23.1 33.6 6.1 47.6
Source: Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994, table 6.8; Mikhail Guboglo, “Demography and Language in the Capitals of the Union Republics”,
Journal of Soviet Nationalities 1, no.4 (1990-1991): 5.

Table 3.8 Russians Claiming Fluency in Titular Languages, 1989

Titular as 1st language Titular as 2nd language

1970 1989 % Change 1970 1989 % Change

Georgia 0.5 1.2 0.7 10.5 22.5 12.0
Armenia 0.5 1.4 0.9 19.0 32.2 13.2
Azerbaijan 0.1 0.2 0.1 7.6 14.3 6.7
Ukraine 1.5 1.6 0.1 26.0 32.8 6.8
Kazakhstan 0.01 0.01 0.0 1.0 0.9 -0.1
Estonia 1.5 1.3 -0.2 12.6 13.7 1.1
Source: Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994), table 6.9.

The relative incentive of non-titulars to accommodate and even acquire the titular language,
characteristic of integral incorporation, is evident from data on fluency in Georgian claimed
by Russians in Georgia. In comparison with several other republics the asymmetry of
bilingualism was in relative terms more balanced in favour of a titular rather than Russian
cultural ‘pull’. The pattern in Georgia diverged sharply from near-complete Russian
ignorance of titular languages in Central Asia, and exceeded the degree of Russian-titular
bilingualism in Estonia. Significant is the high margin of growth in acquisition of Georgian
as a second language between 1970 and 1989, 12%. Except for the special case of Armenia,
this was the greatest increase in any republic, a further indication that Russians were
increasingly obliged to meet titulars on their own terms culturally. Problems arising from not
knowing the Georgian language appear to have mediated this outcome: a much higher
percentage of short-stay migrants surveyed by Arutyunian in the 1980s, 29%, reported

72
Data on the linguistic assimilation into Russian as a first language are not reliable, given the expectation of
both Soviet citizens and census-takers that mother tongue and nationality should be synonymous. I have relied
on reported knowledge of Russian as a second language, although in some republics, for example, Ukraine, the
degree of first language assimilation into Russian among titulars was significant.

102
serious difficulties as a result of not knowing the titular language in Tbilisi, compared to only
7% of those in Tallinn and 5% of those in Tashkent (Arutyunian, 1992, 78).

In sum, to a considerable and meaningful extent, for Georgian titulars Russian did not present
a language of upward mobility, ‘the city’ or literary and informational access unrivalled by
the titular language in the same way as it did for elites incorporated through most-favoured-
lord or colonial modes. The Georgian language remained central to the everyday
interactions, symbolic literacy and occupational mobility of titulars at all levels of society.
Russians were never accepted as the intelligentsiya in Georgia. Like their counterparts
amongst titulars in the Baltic republics, Georgians did not widely encounter Russians in
higher political or prestigious technical positions within their own republic. It is very
noticeable that Georgians, even at the highest elite levels, speak Russian with a marked
accent absent from the speech of their Central Asian and autonomous republican-level
counterparts, surely an indication of a lower degree of integration with the Russian-speaking
world.

The cultural dynamics in cases of colonial incorporation are quite different. With titular
elites investing in the language of the centre to reap the rewards of mediating central rule in
their regions, incentives for non-titulars to acquire the regional language are correspondingly
few. Given the very limited capacity of second-order titulars to penetrate Georgian-medium
educational and political structures, Russian supplanted Georgian in the role of language of
the centre for Abkhazian and South Ossetian elites.73 Are the patterns characteristic of a
colonial mode of incorporation, namely significant russification among titulars and low
degrees of non-titular competence in regional languages, reflected in the Abkhazian and
Ossetian cases?

Mass literacy was a Soviet-era phenomenon in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In 1926 titular
literacy in Abkhazia stood at 11.3% of the population, while for Ossetians (both in North and
South Ossetia) the figure was 21.2%. Low levels of literacy reflected the low rates of

73
The vast majority of autonomous republics were located in the RSFSR, rendering the issue of competition
between Russian and the union republican language irrelevant. Data on language repertoires in the autonomous
republic of Karakalpakistan in Uzbekistan also indicate that Russian was preferred over Uzbek. Some 20% of
Karakalpaks claimed knowledge of Russian in 1989, compared to 6% claiming knowledge of Uzbek (Tishkov,
1997, 91). An important exception in Georgia is the Ossetian population living outside of the autonomy, which
demonstrated a relatively very high degree of Georgian knowledge (54% in all). In this chapter, I confine the
discussion to dynamics within the autonomy.

103
urbanisation of these groups (2.6% for the Abkhazians, 6% for the Ossetians) (Kaiser, 1994,
201). Although strides were taken in the standardisation, creation of native language tuition
and literary production of the Abkhaz and Ossetic languages, these were heavily
circumscribed. Firstly, for reasons both of inconsistent language planning and political
interests, three different scripts – Latin, Georgian and modified Cyrillic – were used to write
Abkhaz and Ossetic in different periods of Soviet rule, impeding the recognition of these
languages as serious literary vehicles by their speakers.74 In the 1940s the Abkhazian and
Ossetic national schools were closed, creating a generation of second-order titulars who had
never been taught the titular language. Secondly, even in politically more hospitable periods
the use of Abkhaz and Ossetic as languages of instruction was limited to the first four years
of schooling (Hewitt, 1989, 137-38). Within these first four years, however, the number of
hours of tuition of Russian still exceeded that of the national languages. The creation of an
Abkhazian State University (AGU) in 1978 did not significantly change this situation; only
within the Abkhaz Philology and Education faculties was a majority of lectures given in
Abkhaz; the bulk of tuition for Abkhazian students was carried out in Russian (Hewitt, 1989,
140). The establishment of the AGU is a clear example of the paradox of second-order
titular demands: it satisfied Abkhazian national demands by providing an indigenous location
for a more prestigious education in Russian.

The extent of literary production is a third indicator of the limited range of these languages.
Between 1928 and 1970 some 1,235 book and brochure titles were published in the Abkhaz
language, while 3,475 were published in Ossetic (Vsesoyuznaya Knizhnaya Palata, 1971, 11-
13). These figures provide a compelling contrast even to other contexts where russification
was widespread: Kazakh (19,149 titles), Kyrgyz (11,511 titles), Moldavian (12,560 titles).
The reach and prestige of Abkhaz and Ossetic improved to some extent following their
introduction as broadcasting media in the late 1970s, yet the demand for these languages was
not significant. For instance, after peaking in the early to mid-1980s the number of fiction
titles published in both languages actually fell towards the end of the decade; only Ossetic,
supported by a larger market comprising Ossetians in both the Georgian republic and the
North Ossetian autonomous republic, recovered (Goskomstat, 1989, 381).

74
The development of Abkhazian orthography was uncommonly complex. Between 1926 and 1954 it changed
four times. The Latin-based ‘Analytic’ script, devised by Nikolay Marr in 1926, was replaced in 1929 by Prof.
Nikolay Yakovlev’s alphabet, also Latin-based. The introduction of this script was simultaneous to the
introduction of schooling in Abkhaz. The adapted Georgian script was introduced in 1937 and the adapted
Cyrillic script in 1954. See Avidzba, 1999, 177.

104
Language patterns in the national autonomies are illustrated in Appendix B-2. The data
provide clear evidence of the cultural dynamics anticipated by a colonial thesis of
incorporation. First, consider second-order titulars’ knowledge of Russian. The claim of
only 2.1% assimilated bilingualism amongst Abkhazians belies a large-scale societal shift to
Russian as the functional native language, which is better reflected in the 81.5% claim of
knowledge of Russian as a second language. Ossetians, at some 60%, also showed a high
degree of Russian acquisition. With second-order titulars operating in Russian across a range
of public domains, the range and appeal of the Abkhaz and Ossetic languages was
correspondingly low. This is evident in the extremely low degree of acquisition of Abkhaz
by non-titular groups, 0.4%. In South Ossetia, the demographic balance of the region was
more favourable to the titular group, encouraging a higher degree of titular language
acquisition amongst non-titulars, 7.6%. Again, comparison with Central Asian contexts is
instructive. Very low levels of fluency in Abkhaz claimed by Georgians (0.3%) and
Russians (0.6%) in Abkhazia mirror the very low levels of titular language knowledge
claimed by Russians in Kazakhstan (0.9%), Kyrgyzstan (1.2%) and Turkmenistan (2.5%)
(Kaiser, 1994, 294).

Observations in the field confirm the marginal status of Abkhaz and Ossetic amongst
national elites in the autonomies. Abkhazians and Ossetians in elite positions speak flawless
Russian, without the marked accent of their Georgian counterparts, and it is Russian, not
Abkhaz or Ossetic, which is the everyday language of business in the ministries of the de
facto Abkhazian and South Ossetian republics today. An anecdotal example should further
illustrate this point. In 1997 I participated in a seminar in Sukhumi, attended by ministers,
parliamentarians and non-governmental organisation workers, conducted in Russian. One
participant, an Abkhazian parliamentarian, apparently did not speak Russian, necessitating an
impromptu interpreter. Several other Abkhazian delegates attempted to do this in turn but
quickly gave up, one of them complaining in Russian ‘ya ne razbirayus’’ (‘I can’t figure it
out’), as a ripple of embarrassment passed through the room. Echoing the status of English
amongst Indian intellectuals, Russian is more deeply embedded in the national intelligentsia
than Abkhaz, and notions of modern ‘Abkhazian prose’ or ‘Abkhazian literature’ equally

105
denote Russian and Abkhaz-language works. Like his Kyrgyz counterpart Chingiz
Aitmatov, Abkhazia’s best-known novelist, Fazil Iskander, writes in Russian, not Abkhaz.75

3.6 National Differences Compared

The differences in the cultural profiles of the different titular groups of Soviet Georgia may
now be compared. In contrast to the indigenisation of polity and culture characteristic of
titular society in Georgia, the autonomies amply demonstrate the patterns associated with a
colonial mode of incorporation: a heavy reliance on the metropolitan culture, isolation from
positions of political influence outside their homelands and an advanced ‘cultural amnesia’
with regard to local cultures. Through integral incorporation Georgians achieved a high
degree of institutional completeness, insulating them from the need to rely on Russian across
a wide range of social and occupational domains. Colonial incorporation by contrast
rendered Abkhazian and Ossetian titular societies ‘institutionally incomplete’ in relative
terms, demanding a high degree of integration into the norms and culture of the Soviet
centre.

The comparisons presented in Table 3.9 make these differences clear. In the dimension of
russification second-order titulars, themselves differentiated, are clearly distinguished from
Georgians by a much higher degree of bilingualism in Russian. The respective influence of
the titular languages is reflected in the degrees of fluency claimed by non-titulars. Here
again Georgian and Abkhazian are sharply divergent; while Ossetic, for the reasons given
above, enjoyed greater pull than Abkhaz, levels of Ossetic among non-titulars within South
Ossetia were still insignificant, compared with nearly a quarter of all non-titulars in Georgia
as a whole claiming knowledge of Georgian. An index of fictional title publications to titular
shares of homeland populations provides an indicator of the appeal of titular languages.
While creative writing is only aspect of a language’s appeal, it is obviously a very important
one. Here again the differences between Georgian on the one hand and Abkhaz and Ossetic
are clear. Ossetic fares poorly here by comparison with Abkhaz, suggesting that

75
Interestingly I have heard Abkhazians claim that Iskander’s literary Russian is uniquely characteristic of
Russian as it is spoken in Sukhumi, inviting comparisons with Lallans, the distinctive Scottish literary form of
English. Like Gaelic in Scotland, the decline of the ‘authentic’ mother tongue here appears to prompt claims of
local distinctiveness in the language that has ‘replaced’ it. During the Soviet period well-known works of
Abkhazian cinematography were also filmed primarily in Russian. The authors of a Soviet-era history of
culture in Abkhazia note, for example, of Sh. Managadze’s film Who will saddle the horse?, a depiction of life
in Abkhazia based on a script by Abkhazian writer Ivan Tarba, “[the film] was also dubbed into the Abkhaz
language” (Gogokhia and Kuprava, 1982, 81).

106
proportionally speaking the Ossetic readers’ market was supplied with fewer titles than
Abkhaz-readers.

In the dimension of urbanisation Georgians and Ossetians are sharply differentiated from
Abkhazians in showing a significant rise in their share of the respective capital city’s
population. This reflects Abkhazia’s specific history of population movement, a history not
shared by South Ossetia. Finally the data on nationality representation in the Georgian
Supreme Soviet and Communist Party are a strong indication of the high degree of over-
representation of Georgians vis-à-vis second-order titulars in the central organs of state.

Table 3.9: National Differences in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia

%
Georgia Abkhazia South Ossetia
Linguistic russification 32.0 83.5 60.0
of titular nation within
homeland (Russian as 1st
or 2nd language)

Non-titulars who speak 23.9 0.4 7.6

titular language (as 1st or
2nd language), 1989

Creative Literature Index, 24.7 10.9 4.2 b

1988-89 a

Change in titular share of 17.6 6.9 17.1

capital city population
1959-1989

Titular share of urban population, 67.6 16.5 73.3

1989

Representation of titular
nation in:
Georgian Supreme Soviet, 1980 79.7 3.4 2.0
Georgian Communist Party, 1981 78.6 1.6 3.1

Source: SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosakhleobis erovnuli shemadgenloba. statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi:

SRUSASIK, 1991), 4-7, 10-11, 62-63, 68-69, 92-93, 98-99, 128-129, 132-133; Central Statistical Directorate of
the Soviet Georgian Republic, Narodnoe Khozyaystvo Gruzinskoy SSR za 60 let (Tbilisi: Sabchota Sakartvelo,
1980), 31; Goskomstat, Narodnoe Obrazovanie i Kul’tura v SSSR (Moscow: Finansy i Statistika, 1989), 380-
381.
a
This figure represents the number of fictional titles in the titular language published in 1988 as a percentage of
total publications in the republic, indexed to the titular percentage of the relevant territorial unit’s population
(using data from 1989). In the case of Georgia, I have used the titular percentage of the republic’s population
without Abkhazia and South Ossetia (73.7%).
b
This figure is comprises the total number of Ossetic language publications, of which a majority would have
been published in North Ossetia. Nevertheless these would have been readily available to a South Ossetian
readers’ market.

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3.7 Conclusion
This chapter has argued that a key aspect of Soviet rule in Georgia was markedly different
modes of insertion into the Soviet state across different titular groups in Georgia, a pattern I
have called composite incorporation. The incorporation of peripheral Georgian, Abkhazian
and Ossetian elites, relative to their immediately superordinate political centres, followed
contrasting logics. While the incorporation of Georgian titulars into the Soviet state followed
an ‘integral’ model of ‘medium’ incorporation, the incorporation of Abkhazian and Ossetian
titulars into the Georgian republic took the form of a ‘colonial’ pattern of ‘low’
incorporation. This produced an outcome of layered peripheries in Soviet Georgia,
heterogeneous not only in terms of ethnic identification but also in terms of their mode of
incorporation. The effect of the incorporation variable in differentiating first- and second-
order titular mobility, cultural orientations and consequently cultural integrity produced a
fundamental bifurcation in Soviet Georgian society. In contrast to the pattern of
cosmopolitan capital cities and titular rural hinterlands, characteristic especially of Central
Asian republics, the most cosmopolitan regions in Georgia were to be found in the peripheral
autonomies, in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. For the second-order titular elites in these
regions low incorporation into Georgian society resulted in a corresponding isolation from
Georgian culture.76 These findings suggest that composite incorporation may be added as a
fourth category to Laitin’s typology of modes of elite incorporation amongst the Soviet
national republics for the Georgian case.

Composite incorporation has important implications for explaining post-Soviet conflict.

Firstly, it speaks of the different structural relationships of different titular groups to the
Soviet state. Georgian integral incorporation resulted in a low dependence in economic and
institutional terms on the wider Soviet state; indeed, it contributed to the growth of an
indigenous market for informal economic activity signalling a considerable degree of
autonomy from the state. By contrast, Abkhazians, and to a lesser extent Ossetians were
excluded from the Georgian centre and remained dependent on the wider, trans-republican
market for social goods such as higher education. These groups were not able to exert the
same degree of control over the resources and institutions of the Soviet state locally, nor were
76
This highlights the peculiar legacy of second-order titulars in Georgia compared to Central Asian titulars.
For Central Asian titular elites, colonial incorporation did not lead to investment in a separate future but
continued dependence on the culture and networks of the Soviet state. At one layer of remove from the central
Soviet state, for Abkhazians and South Ossetians there were compelling incentives to invest in a ‘pseudo-
separatist’ future: separate from Georgia but integrated into a Soviet or Russian-dominated political and cultural
space.

108
they able to effectively compete in the informal economy. Furthermore, and this is my
principal refinement of Laitin’s model, the differing structural relationships of titular elites to
the Soviet state conditioned different attitudes and strategies of mobilization vis-à-vis the
central state. Elites incorporated in ‘integral’ mode mobilized against what they saw as
intrusions by the central state obstructing the fulfilment of titular indigenisation, and later, as
interfering with the functions of the informal economy. Elites incorporated in ‘colonial’
mode, by contrast, depended on and actively encouraged inputs from the wider state in the
implementation of indigenisation. Combined in a single republic, this was a potent source of
conflict.

Secondly, titular groups clearly stood in different relationships of dependence on the

metropolitan culture. The low reliance of Georgians on the metropolitan culture stands in
sharp contrast to the dependence on Russian demonstrated by Abkhazians and to a lesser
extent Ossetians. In spite of Soviet rule Georgians consequently experienced a primarily
Georgian-speaking modernity. For Abkhazians and Ossetians, modernity was, on the whole,
Russian-speaking, while Abkhaz and Ossetic were largely relegated to the role of symbolic
markers of identity. A biculturalism combining indigenous and Russian elements was
consequently quite natural to these groups as an adaptive response to the circumstances of
incorporation. Composite incorporation points to a Georgian inflection of the characteristic
struggle in post-colonial states between nationalists favouring linguistic indigenisation and
bureaucracies favouring the retention of the colonial language. Rather than being enacted as
an intra-group struggle between ‘nativists and assimilados’ as Kuzio suggests, or between
nationalists and bureaucrats as Laitin has elsewhere explored in the African context, this
division in Georgia intersected with separate ethnic group identifications (Laitin, 1992).77
The nativist/assimilado struggle in post-Soviet Georgia was overlaid, and inseparable from,
interethnic (as opposed to intra-ethnic) politics, lending it particular emotive force. Moves to
remove Russian from Georgian society in the early 1990s did not represent the
disenfranchisement of an assimilated bureaucratic elite, but that of heavily russified minority
groups. The profound articulation of ethnicity with the state thus lent a crucial interethnic
dimension to the ‘decolonising’ removal of Russian from post-Soviet Georgia.

77
Laitin here delineates a salient post-colonial conflict over language enacted between nationalist leaders and
civil servants: “The former have equated a rationalised indigenous language with national independence; the
latter have equated European languages with precision, order and economic advance” (p.105).

109
Thirdly an important corollary of integral incorporation in the Georgian core was the
enabling of exclusivist nationalist claims over civic or multinational discourses of
membership in a future independent state. Key factors constraining exclusivist ethnic nation
building present in other cases, namely a substantial constituency of russified titulars and an
economically significant Russian technical intelligentsia, were absent from the Georgian
context. Furthermore, the very plausibility of an ethnic discourse of nationhood was derived
from the relatively undiluted nature of Georgian ethnic markers (above all language) across
the titular population. Soviet-era integral incorporation thus provided the social foundations
for exclusive post-Soviet ethnic nationalism in Georgia. The corollary of colonial
incorporation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, conversely, was a continued reliance on both
cultural and institutional links to the Soviet core.

In sum, this chapter has argued that it is not so much the institutionalisation of national
identities that laid the basis for post-Soviet ethnic mobilization, so much as the
operationalisation of those identities within Soviet institutions. While Soviet nationalities
policy attempted to impose a uniform conceptual and practical grid of national identities
(which might lead us to expect a uniform post-Soviet response to it), group trajectories
within that grid were far from uniform. Rather, these were variously empowered or
constrained by the impact of pre-Soviet inheritances on Soviet policies and local patterns of
modernization. It is here that the elite incorporation model is useful, since it builds variation
into the institutionalist account to conceptualise institutionalised multinationality as a
variable strategy of alliance making on the part of the state. Rather than by simply
institutionalising them, it was the Soviet state’s imposition of different ‘ceilings’ for different
groups that made ethnic affiliations matter in Soviet Georgia. Either through the
opportunities that these affiliations allowed, or the barriers that they represented, these
affiliations structured the life-chances of the individuals that bore them. This was not
inevitable, as the divergent salience of nationalist identities across the post-Soviet space
attests, but the product of specific incentives for both elites and masses to invest in ethnic
identities. By the late Soviet period for second-order titulars ethnic affiliation proved the
most effective means of securing resources against encroachment from rival elites in Tbilisi
and local Georgian populations. In the early post-Soviet context of national revival the
juxtaposition of contrasting titular cultural profiles had the crucial effect that a countervailing
‘anti-nationalist’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ orientation towards a Russophone/Soviet identity was
overlaid with the ethnic identities of second-order titular groups. Contrasting cultural

110
profiles, the product of differing institutional trajectories, thus reinforced the ethnic
affiliations politicised by Soviet rule, laying a basis for post-Soviet mobilization.

111
Chapter 4 Cultural Hierarchies and the Dialectic of Majority-Minority Relations in
Soviet Georgia

4.1 Introduction
Institutionalised multinationality in the Soviet Union did not represent only an institutional
hierarchy, but also a cultural one that inscribed national identities with specific cultural
meanings and stereotypes. Structural factors such as patterns of modernisation, and the
demographic and linguistic trends that flowed from them, were intimately linked to value
judgements as to the vector (and ‘bearers’) of civilization in the Soviet periphery. Part of the
limitations of the institutionalist analysis is that it tends to be blind to cultural and subjective
aspects to ethnic hierarchies that structured post-Soviet mobilization. These aspects are
critical to understanding why small, heavily russified minorities such as the Abkhazians and
Ossetians mobilized for secession in the early 1990s, an outcome inexplicable by comparison
with groups sharing similar structural features. In this chapter I flesh out the institutionalist
analysis of the previous chapter with a focus on the cultural discourses attaching to the
framework of institutionalised multinationality. I show how the ascriptive categories of
‘Georgian’, ‘Abkhazian’ and ‘Ossetian’ became the vehicles of discursive, civilizational
hierarchies. Exploration of the discursive realm sheds light on the importance of Soviet rule
in fostering mutually exclusive doctrines of political community rooted in ethnicity. These
doctrines, combined with the introduction of a political discourse of nationalism, would be
the major obstacle to a consensual politics of post-Soviet statehood for Georgia’s constituent
groups.

This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part examines Soviet ideologies of
difference and their application to the Georgian ethnic mosaic inherited by Soviet rule in the
region. It is argued that Soviet nationalities discourse led to hierarchification of Georgia’s
ethnic groups, a hierarchification that had practical consequences exceptional in the Soviet
Union. The second part of the chapter presents an ethnographic analysis of how cultural
discourses of national idenity and the pattern of composite incorporation described in the
previous chapter were experienced by representatives of different ethnic groups in Georgia.
This serves to add nuance to the structural analysis in the previous chapter. Finally I
examine the emergent dialectic of majority-minority relations in Soviet Georgia. I
demonstrate how a pattern of ‘adjudication’ by the Soviet centre precluded lateral relations

112
between ethnic elites, and offered incentives to minority mobilization rather than quiescence
with Georgian hegemony.

4.2 Soviet Ideologies of Difference

Soviet rule in the South Caucasus formally institutionalised the embedding of cultural
categories in state structures, and through its extensive policies of indigenisation
(korenizatsiya) overlaid this institutional framework with programmes of benefits to
ethnically defined populations. Indigenisation was a policy enacted across the Soviet Union,
but its implications for cultural pluralism varied according to regional contexts. If in Central
Asia, where relatively little nation-building activity preceded Soviet rule, the
institutionalisation of ethnicity has been characterised as the ‘creation of nations’, then in the
South Caucasus it may more accurately be understood as the ‘hierarchification’ of nations.78
Nowhere was this more so the case than in Georgia, where disparities in the pre-Soviet
experience of nation-building, the Soviet retention of the tsarist dichotomy between advanced
and backward groups and the degree of multiethnicity combined to create a complex,
ethnically defined hierarchy of groups.

‘East’ and ‘West’ in Soviet Georgia and the Creation of Ethnic Hierarchies
The rhetoric of decolonisation underpinning early Soviet nationalities policy stipulated two
criteria for entitlement to indigenisation policies for non-Russian groups (Martin, 2001, 126-
27). The first criterion was indigenousness, according to which what was deemed to be the
indigenous population (korennoe naselenie) of a given territory was given preferential
treatment over what were defined as ‘more recently arrived elements’ (prishlye elementy).79
Indigenous peoples were defined as ‘titular’, and the territories in which they were deemed to
be indigenous were named after them. This instilled and legitimated a prior claim for titular
groups to the institutional resources of ‘their’ eponymous territories. The second criterion
was ‘cultural backwardness’ (kul’turno-otstalost’), a category inherited from the Russian
Empire, which was understood in terms of developmental disparity between ‘Western’ and
‘Eastern’ nations. The vast majority of the Soviet Union’s nationalities were defined as
backward and therefore Eastern. The implication for ethnic entitlement through affirmative

78
Olivier Roy for example argues that nationalism in Central Asia “was created by the administrative, cultural
and political habitus installed by the colonial power, within an entity that had no antecedents of nationhood”
(Roy, 2000, x).
79
The category ‘prishlye’ (in Georgian, mosulebi, literally ‘those who have come here’) is still prominent in
both nationalist discourse and popular identity talk at large in Georgia.

113
action policies was that Western nationalities could claim rights on the basis of
indigenousness only. Eastern nationalities, by contrast, could claim rights on the basis of
both indigenousness and cultural backwardness.

In Georgia the ‘Western/Eastern’ demarcation intersected with the indigenous/non-

indigenous demarcation to produce a configuration of groups unique in the Soviet Union.
The historical pedigree of the Georgian language meant that the Georgian nationality could
hardly be consigned to backwardness beside nationalities that had never possessed written
languages.80 The recent history of independence and political nationalism also dictated
sensitivity. The Georgian nationality was consequently defined as ‘Western’ and therefore
belonging to the ‘advanced’ group of Soviet nationalities (together with Germans, Poles,
Finns, Slavic nationalities, Jews and Armenians). The classification of the Georgian
nationality as both ‘advanced’ and indigenous demarcated it from all other groups in the
Georgian republic, which were classified as either backward or non-indigenous (see Table
4.1). Other groups recognised as indigenous, though ‘backward’, were the Abkhazian,
Ossetian and Acharian minorities; these were granted eponymous autonomous units. These
groups are referred to here as second-order titulars.81 All other groups were classified as
non-indigenous.

The configuration of groups in Georgia, combining a titular and ‘advanced’ group with
‘backward’ second-order titular groups, thus contrasted with that of Azerbaijan, where a
dominant ‘backward’ titular group was combined with a subordinate ‘advanced’ second-tier
titular group, the Armenian minority, or the Central Asian context, where the salient
configuration was ‘backward’ titulars combined with ‘advanced’ non-titulars (Slavic
immigrants).82 The backward-advanced dichotomy in these configurations does not speak

80
Where discussion of feudal relations was concerned, however, Georgians (and Armenians) could also be
classed as Eastern and therefore ‘backward’ (Martin, 2001, 127).
81
Within the Abkhazian and Ossetian autonomies, the hierarchy was ostensibly reversed in the sense that
Georgians living there were defined as non-titulars relative to Abkhazian and Ossetian titulars. However, in
parallel with Russian non-titular communities in the national republics of the Soviet Union, being a Georgian
non-titular within an autonomy contained within the Georgian republic was qualitatively different to being, for
example, an Armenian or Greek non-titular. Georgians migrating to Abkhazia or South Ossetia did not perceive
this as a move across national boundaries; Abkhazia and South Ossetia were considered integral parts of the
Georgian homeland, as Russian diaspora communities considered Estonia or Kazakhstan part of the same
Soviet homeland.
82
The RSFSR constitutes a special case for two reasons. Firstly, in the early Soviet period Russians, as the
putative beneficiaries of the previous tsarist regime, were not recognised as having the same right to entitlement
as non-Russian nationalities. Until the rehabilitation of the Russian nationality in the 1930s, ‘local
nationalisms’ assumed precedence over the Russians as ‘more progressive’ (Martin, 2001, 6-8, 394-401).

114
one-sidedly of relations of domination or subordination, but it did structure the respective
relationships between different titular groups and the Soviet centre in different ways. Firstly,
while second-order titulars claimed rights on the basis of being backward, and looked
favourably upon intervention from the centre (particularly financial support in the creation of
educated cadres), Georgian elites typically framed their relationship with the centre in terms
of the rhetoric of indigenousness and the limits to which the centre had a right to intervene in
the Georgianisation of the republic. This became clear early on during Soviet rule when
Georgian cadres complained of the slow pace of indigenisation and increasing interventions
from Moscow.83 This crystallised into the ‘Georgian Affair’ of 1922-23, a dispute between
the ‘national communists’ of the Georgian Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) in Tbilisi,
favouring federalisation from below with the preservation of Georgian sovereignty, and
centralisers in the Caucasian Bureau (Kavburo) in Baku, who favoured the ‘autonomisation’
of the South Caucasian republics within the Russian Republic, a dispute reflecting respective
‘Leninist’ and ‘Stalinist’ positions over how borderland republics were to be incorporated.84
The Stalinist line prevailed: Georgia was incorporated as a constituent component of the
Transcaucasian Federative Republic (TFR). The Georgian Central Committee resigned en
masse and was tainted with the brush of ‘national deviationism’.

Secondly, indigenisation also took different forms in relation to the prior development of a
given group. For the Georgians, indigenisation consolidated and expanded the established
national cadre, literary production and institutional context of the independence period.
Indigenisation thus took the form of continuing and extending the Georgianisation of the
republic, which is reflected in a number of indicators. By 1927 98% of Georgians in primary
school were being taught in Georgian (Natsional’naya politika VKP(b) v tsifrakh, 1930, 42).
Literary output in Georgian also rapidly increased, to the point where in 1929 71% of all
books published in the republic were in Georgian (Gugushvili, 1984, 690-91). Although
there was an influx of Russian officials from the centre in the early Soviet years, Georgians

Secondly the context for second-tier titulars in the RSFSR differed qualitatively from that of their counterparts
in Georgia, since Russian culture, particularly after the 1930s, was seen as the core culture of the Soviet Union.
Russian was an internationalised culture, and did not bear the same national ‘marking’ as Georgian; it did not,
therefore, carry or imply the same threat of the hegemonic ambitions of a larger neighbouring group as
Georgian did for Abkhazians and Ossetians.
83
These included complaints of the numbers of non-Georgians working in administrative institutions in Tbilisi
who did not know Georgian, the importing of non-Georgian labour and that the work of peoples’ commissariats
was not being carried out in Georgian. Georgian ‘national deviationists’ openly accused the Bolshevik party of
‘hidden colonialism’ in Georgia (Jones, 1988, 628).
84
For detailed accounts of the Georgian Affair see J. Smith, 1998; Ogden, 1977; Suny, 1994, 210-219.

115
were well represented in senior government and party positions. For second-order titulars
indigenisation had a very much smaller or non-existent pre-existing basis. For these groups
indigenisation entailed the creation rather than consolidation of ethnic cadres, literary
cultures and national institutions. The pattern of indigenisation here resembled more that of
Central Asia, establishing new literary standards, new national schools and creating a
national cadre.

Table 4.1 East and West in Soviet Georgia: The Soviet National Hierarchy in Georgia

Western Nationalities (‘advanced’) Eastern Nationalities (‘backward’) Assimilated Groups

Indigenous Non-indigenous Indigenous Non-indigenous

Georgians Armenians Abkhazians Greeks Mingrelians
(Georgian Russians Ossetians Azerbaijanis Svans
Jews) Jews (Acharians)¹ Tatars Laz
Ukrainians Assyrians Bats
Kurds (Acharians)¹
Kists
Turks
Dagestani nationalities
¹ Acharians feature in both indigenous and assimilated categories. This reflects the paradoxical situation in which the
Acharian category – and therefore the right to self-identify as an Acharian – was abolished as a census category after
1926, while the Acharians continued to enjoy official status as a separate autonomous group.

The largest groups in the non-titular (non-indigenous) category were the Armenian and Azeri
populations. Within the framework of Soviet nationalities policy, the national rights of these
populations qua Armenians and Azeris were safeguarded within their ‘own’ national
republics; qua inhabitants or citizens of Georgia, however, they were not granted any specific
rights. Prevented from assimilation, non-titular groups were informally consigned to
secondary status. In practice this was offset by cultural autonomy. In the mid-1930s
Armenians, Turks, Russians, Greeks, Germans, Aysors, Kurds, Lezgians, Kists and
Ingushetians in Georgia were all provided with native language primary education;
secondary education was also available in the republic for the larger non-titular minorities
(Dimoev, 1936, 87).

Beyond the titular/non-titular divide stands the issue of ‘assimilated groups’. The early
emphasis in Soviet policy on the ‘flourishing’ (rastsvet) of the ‘non-essential’ category of
nationality itself resulted in a rapid proliferation of the number of nationalities recognised by
the state. This was reflected in the recognition in the 1926 census of separate Mingrelian,
Svan, Laz and Bats-speaking sub-groups within the Georgian nationality. This can be

116
attributed to three factors. Firstly the early Soviet regime was hostile to assimilation, a
process it saw as naturally favouring the ‘colonial’ Russian nationality (Martin, 2001, 16).
Maximal differentiation of ‘oppressed’ groups was therefore justified as an anti-colonial
measure. Secondly, the definitional content of the category nationality in the 1926 census
was self-consciously ethnographic; local specificity, and the resulting benefit in information
for the mapping the Soviet population, was privileged over other criteria of defining
nationhood, such as size, cultural proximity and so on (Hirsch, 1997). Finally local party
functionaries themselves urged differentiation as a practical tool in the modernisation of
these regions.85 The identification of these groups added a further, internal layer to the
advanced-backward dichotomy within the Georgian nationality category, effectively
suggesting a distinction between ‘advanced’ and ‘backward’ Georgians.

The late 1920s and early 1930s saw a shift away from the ‘Leninist’ support for maximal
ethnographic differentiation to the ‘Stalinist’ line of the consolidation of smaller, ‘backward’
groups into larger units. The proliferation in ethnic categories was reversed as a number of
smaller groups were assimilated into larger related groups, referred to as glavnye
natsional’nosti (‘major nationalities) (Hirsch, 1997, 254).86 Thus while the 1926 census
recorded some 172 groups under the ethnographic term narodnost’, by 1937 the list of
officially recognised nationalities had contracted to 106 (p.269). Following the 1926 census
and the onset of consolidation, the Mingrelian, Svan, Laz, Acharian and Bats categories were
subsumed within the Georgian glavnaya natsional’nost’.

85
In 1930 Ishak Zhvania, local party secretary in Mingrelia, observed “[i]n Mingrelia’s primary schools
teaching is still carried out in Georgian. Children, on beginning their schooling, have absolutely no knowledge
of the Georgian language, and from a pedagogical point of view it would be much better if for the first three to
four years teaching was carried out in their native Mingrelian language” (Zhvania, 1930, 72). The Bibliography
of the Georgian Press records that a total of fourteen newspapers were published between 1930 and 1940 partly
or wholly in Mingrelian. The most important of these was qazaqishi gazeti, published in Mingrelian from 1930
and 1935, then as komunari in Mingrelian with Georgian between 1936 and 1938 and finally as mebrdzoli
entirely in Georgian between 1938 and 1940. The fact that publication in Mingrelian followed the official
consolidation of the nationality suggests that reaching the local population in a language it could understand
was key. No newspapers are recorded as having been published in Svan, Laz or Bats.
86
The logic behind this consolidation is clear from Stalin’s own thoughts on the nationalities question in the
Caucasus: “But in the Caucasus there are a number of peoples each possessing a primitive culture, a specific
language, but without its own literature; peoples, moreover, which are in a state of transition, partly becoming
assimilated and partly continuing to develop. How is national cultural autonomy to be applied to them? What
is to be done with such peoples? How are they to be ‘organised’ into separate national cultural unions, such as
are undoubtedly implied by national cultural autonomy? What is to be done with the Mingrelians, the
Abkhazians, the Adzharians, the Svanetians, the Lesghians and so on, who speak different languages, but do not
possess a literature of their own?…The national problem in the Caucasus can be solved only be drawing the
backward nations and peoples into the common stream of a higher culture” (Stalin, 1913, 48-49; emphasis in
original).

117
Table 4. 2 Kartvelian groups recorded in the 1926 Census

No. by declared No. speaking

Narodnost’ Mother tongue narodnost’ mother tongue
Georgians Georgian 1,568,000 1,475,000
Mingrelians Mingrelian 242,996 284,746
Svans Svan 13,219 13,140
Laz Laz 645 734
Acharian Georgian 71,428 n/a
Source: B. Grande, ‘Spisok narodnostey SSSR’, Revolyutsiya i Natsional’nosti 4, no.74 (1936): 74-85.

Therefore by the late 1930s the various vernacular groups falling within the former church-
Georgian religious system were constituted as ‘national’ by association with either a
secularised Georgian culture (Georgians, Mingrelians, Svans, Laz) or elevated vernacular-
based cultures (Abkhazians, Ossetians). In addition the previously confessional category of
Acharian was now deemed irrelevant and directly incorporated into the Georgian nationality.
This was essentially a bureaucratic consolidation, imposing an apparently commonsensical
national order onto a fluid situation, in which official national categories vied with liminal
religious, parochial and linguistic identities now labelled ‘backward’ and ‘unorthodox’.87
The timing of this consolidation, coinciding with the introduction of natsional’nost’ as a
fundamental marker of personal identity in the form of the internal passport, served to
naturalise the bureaucratic distinction between ‘authentic’ passport nationality and other
identities. Fieldwork among members of these consolidated groups consistently reveals the
internalisation of this distinction, where identities not ‘ratified’ by passport nationality are
felt to be illegitimate.88

The Georgian nationality was thus defined as a sort of staging point in the Soviet teleology of
national development, attracting and assimilating a number of less developed groups. This
need not be seen purely as an exercise in ‘demographic manipulation’ or ‘forced
assimilation’ (Hewitt, 1995a). All major nationality groups underwent what Tishkov calls
‘ethnographic processing’, the establishment of ‘real’ ethnic affiliations and the ‘correction’
of wrong ones (Tishkov, 1997, 15-21). There were clear incentives for individuals to

87
One old woman from Abkhazia related to me the occasion when she went to collect her first passport in the
early 1930s. Looking over the new document she was shocked to read ‘Gruzinka’ under the category
natsional’nost’: ‘They got it wrong!’ [oshiblis’!]; her attempts to have her nationality corrected to ‘Mingrel’ka’
were met with ridicule.
88
When asked how he would define his national identity (erovneba) one elderly informant, a refugee from the
Gali region of Abkhazia, replied “I am a Mingrelian, it’s not written in it [his passport] but I am”. On another
occasion a daughter upbraided her mother for answering that she was a Mingrelian thus: “Show me where
you’ve got ‘Mingrelian’ written down in your passport!”

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identify themselves as belonging to ‘advanced’ and titular rather than backward or non-titular
groups. This process nevertheless lent a layered quality to the passport nationalities thus
consolidated, subsequently obscured by the dominance of the singular, primordialist
paradigm in the later Soviet period.

The national order established by the 1930s was to enjoy considerable stability, remaining
essentially unchanged until the 1990s. Soviet rule transformed understandings of cultural
hierarchy in Georgia, establishing a rigid four-tiered hierarchy of cultural groups entitled to
different regimes of rights. At the top stood the titular Georgians, enjoying the prestige and
preferential entitlement to the mobility opportunities represented by possession of a union
republic. Then came second-tier titulars, entitled to preferential treatment within their own
homelands yet officially defined as ‘backward’ and politically subordinate to both Moscow
and Tbilisi. After them came the non-titulars, entitled to a degree of cultural autonomy.
Finally came the assimilated groups, relegated to the field of ethnographic and linguistic
enquiry after the 1930s.

As Brubaker suggests, Soviet nationalities policy was based on a fundamental dissonance

between ethnicity as a principle of territorial demarcation and as a principle of personal
identity (Brubaker, 1994, 52-54). Beyond ensuring that territorial boundaries incorporated
majorities of the eponymous titular group, there were no opportunities for individuals to
adjust their personal ethnic identities to that of the territorial unit in which they lived. The
individual citizen’s sense of membership in the state was thus directly mediated by their
ethnic membership, and not a universal sense of citizen-membership attaching to the
territorial unit in which they lived. Two aspects of this system need emphasis. Firstly no
conceptual or juridical link existed between non-titulars and their place of residence. Within
the Soviet framework, non-titulars’ ‘national’ rights were provided in their ‘own’ homeland,
be it within Soviet boundaries or without. Secondly, this system not only structured patterns
of access and procurement of resources of titular and minority groups in different ways, but
also lent a hierarchical nature to the legitimacy of claims to ‘belong’. Although the extent of
titular dominance varied greatly across republics, titular groups were formally invested with
a prior right to representation, particularly in the fields of administration and cultural
reproduction.

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4.3 Policy Implications of Cultural Hierarchies
In Soviet Georgia institutional and cultural hierarchies intersected in certain policy fields to
lend practical dimensions to the hierarchy outlined above. The combination of institutional
dominance and putative cultural superiority was a unique feature of titular indigenisation in
Georgia not shared by any other national republic. For elites in the autonomies Tbilisi was
the filter through which Soviet rule was administered, an additional layer of authority
perceived as inserting its own Georgian agenda into otherwise benevolent Soviet policies.
Particularly untrammelled in the period between the late 1930s and early 1950s, this agenda
took the form of the political subordination of Abkhazia to Georgia, a policy of Georgian
settlement in Abkhazia, the closure of minority cultural institutions and the imposition of the
Georgian language and script on Abkhazian and Ossetian populations.

In 1931 Abkhazia’s political status was changed from ‘associate status’ with the Georgian
republic, then still a part of the Transcaucasian Federated Republic (TFR), to that of an
autonomous republic under formal Georgian jurisdiction. When the three constituent
republics of the TFR became separate union republics, Abkhazia’s status became that of an
autonomous republic within Georgia. The legal nuances of this change are complex, and
arguments can be brought to support both Abkhazian and Georgian claims on the legitimacy
or otherwise of this change.89 In Abkhazia there is an unquestioned view of it as an illegal
‘annexation’ of Abkhazia by ‘Georgians in the Kremlin’. This was followed in 1936 by the
renaming of Sukhum as Sukhumi, that is, with the characteristic Georgian noun ending –i. In
1939 a Migration Authority was established in the Georgian Communist Party tasked with
the expansion of the population of Abkhazia (Sagaria, Achuba and Pachulia, 1992, 6). This
was framed in terms of mise en valeur arguments for the exploitation of the region’s
resources, which further entailed the removal of the right of exploitation of the region’s
natural resources from local to republican and Soviet jurisdiction. In ethnic terms

89
Abkhazians claim that the proclamation of a Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia in March 1921 after
Tbilisi’s fall to the Bolsheviks secures their right to separate legal status from Georgia. Georgians point to a
‘treaty relationship’ agreed between Abkhazia and Georgia in December 1921 as evidence to the contrary.
Abkhazia was not mentioned in the Constitution of the Transcaucasian Federative Republic, entering the
Republic as part of Georgia. Article 5 of the Abkhazian Constitution of 1925 defined Abkhazia as “a sovereign
state realising its state-power on its territory independently from any other power”. Article 4, however,
recognised that Abkhazia was “united on the basis of a special union-treaty with the Georgian SSR”. This
Constitution was revised in 1926 to make it compatible with the Georgian Constitution of 1925. In comparative
perspective Abkhazia is far from unique in demotion down the federal hierarchy in the Soviet Union. For an
Abkhaz view, see Lak’oba, 1999a, 94-96; for a Georgian view, see Menteshashvili, 1998, 10-74. For a legal
account of the changes see Hille, 2003, 114-115.

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resettlement resulted in a rapid increase in the region’s Georgian population: between 1939
and 1959 the Georgian population of Abkhazia increased by 66,000 (p.11).

These developments were paralleled in the field of cultural relations. In 1938 script reform
was enacted across the Soviet Union replacing earlier Latin scripts for recently devised
alphabets with Cyrillic. This reform heralded the curtailing of the early Soviet ‘Leninist’ line
of maximal cultural differentiation, and its displacement by the ‘Stalinist’ line of favouring
Russian as the Soviet Union’s dominant nationality.90 In March 1938 Russian was made
compulsory in all non-Russian schools. In conformity with other recently devised alphabets,
Cyrillicisation should have been the fate of the Latin-based Abkhaz and Ossetic scripts
devised in the 1920s. Rather than Cyrillic, however, these scripts were Georgianised. This
was an exceptional instance of the imposition of a ‘national’ – rather than Cyrillic – script on
minority languages in the Soviet Union. The commission responsible for recommending the
curtailing of native language education in Abkhaz justified this decision in practical terms:
“Knowledge of the Georgian language among a significant part of the Abkhazian population,
lexical similarity of the Georgian and Abkhazian languages, and a shared alphabet dictate the
necessity of changing schooling in Abkhazian schools over to the Georgian language”
(Sagaria, Achuba and Pachulia, 1992, 482-83). Nevertheless the shift was also clearly
legitimated by the hierarchical opposition of Georgian as an ‘advanced’ medium, and
Abkhaz and Ossetic as ‘backward’. The shift presaged the further curtailing of minority
cultures in the closure of Abkhaz and Ossetic native language schools and cultural
institutions and the imposition of Georgian as the main language of instruction in these
regions in 1945-6. These moves reflect what was effectively the ‘internationalisation’ of
Georgian, its elevation to parallel status with Russian as a vehicle of both development and
political rationalisation within the local context of the Georgian republic. No other non-
Russian culture played this role in the Soviet Union. While Georgian cultural elites faced
comparable levels of persecution to other republics the internationalisation of Georgian
points to the relatively high degree of autonomy enjoyed by Georgian party elites in the field
of nationalities policy during Stalin and Lavrentii Beria’s period of political ascendance. At
the beginning of the post-Stalinist period in 1953, language planning policy in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia rejoined the broader state orientation and Abkhaz and Ossetic were belatedly
Cyrillicised.

90
For detailed discussions of the motives and practical problems of this reform see Crisp, 1989; Kreindler,
1982.

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These developments point to Georgia’s unusual status as a national republic in which the
dissonance between territorial and personal ethnic identifications was bridged by official
policies. These policies were, however, coercive in nature. From the perspective of
Abkhazian and Ossetian minorities the categorization of Georgian as ‘advanced’ was
inseparable from its perception as ‘colonial’. Abkhazian and Ossetian minorities were
consequently exceptional in the Soviet Union as groups confronting culturally hegemonic
policies supporting a local majority other than Russian. In effect, Georgians played an
analogous role to Russians in the Soviet Union at large, that of ‘elder brothers’ to smaller and
‘undeveloped’ nationalities.

4.4 Conflicting Discourses: Internationalism and the ‘Core Nation’

The principle of indigenisation that formed the basis of Soviet nationalities policy was
moderated by the countervailing principle of internationalism. Internationalism was a broad
discourse conceiving the Soviet Union’s ethnic heterogeneity as a ‘brotherhood of peoples’.
Its conceptualisation as a dialectic, in which ethnic entitlement or ‘flourishing’ (rastsvet)
formed a necessary stage prior to the rapprochement (sblizhenie) and finally merger
(sliyanie) of nations, nevertheless suggested the temporary nature of indigenisation pending
the formation of a trans-ethnic, universal proletariat. The dynamic of interaction between the
twin principles of indigenisation and internationalism differed across national republics in
accordance with the extent of prior nationalist mobilization and state building experiences.
In the Baltic republics both the promotion of state-nations and pluralist policies had been
developed as a function of state building in the interwar period. These policies provided
prior precedents informing post-Soviet policies towards minorities. In Central Asia no prior
experience of territorial delimitation or state building preceded Soviet rule; Soviet
internationalism did not therefore compete with prior state-nation building traditions.
Between these poles, in the South Caucasus nascent state-nation building and policy
responses to the accommodation of ethnic diversity in the independence period were cut
short by Soviet incorporation. Expressions of nationhood in the Soviet South Caucasus thus
combined prior cultural traditions with the Soviet principle of indigenisation to produce what
is called here the ‘core nation’ discourse. Increasingly challenging the postulates of
internationalism over time, this discourse asserted the prior claims of the titular nation over
‘non-indigenous’ groups. Overwhelmingly cultural in content, it was this ideology that
subsequently informed the Georgian national revival.

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As noted in Chapter 2, the Georgian revival of the nineteenth century was overwhelmingly a
cultural phenomenon focussed above all on language. This was balanced in the pre-Soviet
tradition of Georgian historiography with a broad conceptualisation of Georgianness as an
identity rooted in historical statehood and religion, as well as language. This is evident in the
writings of Ivane Javakhishvili, the leading figure in this tradition. In his kartveli eris istoria,
first published in 1913, Javakhishvili evoked the multiethnic nature of the medieval Georgian
state. Although influenced by the contemporary Romantic view of nationality, Javaxishvili
wrote of the kingdom: “it is precisely in this period that the Georgians demonstrated an
undeniable gift for conceptualising the idea of statehood and its realisation” (Javakhishvili,
1965, 307). He postulated that the coexistence of Georgian, Armenian and Islamic faiths was
“confirmatory proof of the highest level of civilisation attained by Georgia, an astonishing
and enchanting example for the time of international cooperation”. Echoing this narrative,
the leaders of the Georgian cultural revival also adopted strategic responses to Georgia’s
ethnic and confessional diversity (see Chapter 2). In the following independence period the
responses of the Georgian state to ethnic minorities were heavily contingent and directed in
the main at securing the republic’s borders. Unlike the Baltic republics, Soviet incorporation
forestalled the implementation of minority rights granted in the Georgian Constitution of
1921.

The early Soviet period, dominated by maximum ethnic differentiation according to Leninist
principles, saw the pre-Soviet tradition under attack. Stalin’s well-known definition of the
nation, with its stipulation of a ‘common economic life’, and the Marxist concept of a
socialist nation relocated nation formation to the nineteenth century and formation of a
national working class.91 This effectively removed medieval statehood and religion as
historical narratives of Georgian identity. As early as the 1940s, however, Georgian
historians questioned the Stalinist orthodoxy. For example historian Simon Janashia’s
speech ‘On the formation of the Georgian nation’, presented to the Georgian Academy of
Sciences in 1944, drew upon the frames of religion and statehood of the earlier tradition to
challenge the contemporary orthodoxy that nations could only be dated to the nineteenth
century (Janashia 1988). On the basis of the Georgian Orthodox faith and the creation of

91
Stalin, in his Marxism and the National Question, famously defined the nation as “a historically constituted,
stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and
psychological make-up manifested in a common culture” (Stalin, 1973, 60).

123
state-political formations, he argued that Georgian nation formation could be dated to the
medieval period. Moreover, he defined Georgia in pluralistic terms, bringing evidence to
support his view that Georgians, Abkhazians and Ossetians formed a single entity, united by
a common lingua sacra and a territorial state. He concluded:

“the Georgian nation is of complex composition, by its tribal formation it includes

the members of not only one tribe, but members of related tribes, and furthermore,
also members of other tribes altogether. We can convincingly state directly that
every important unit in the Caucasus contributes to the Georgian nationality”
(p.187).

Janashia’s view thus combined the earlier tradition of Georgian identity as religion and state-
based with a strongly internationalist interpretation of diversity. Clearly such a view was
compatible with the Georgianisation policies ongoing in parts of the republic, yet what is
significant to note in comparison with subsequent portrayals is the centrality of pluralism to
Janashia’s interpretation.

Following the renewed promotion of Russian in the 1940s-50s at the all-Union level, the
1960s augured a new phase of permissible cultural nationalism under Brezhnev. Provided
that they remained rooted in the cultural, rather than political, sphere considerable leeway
was granted to the exploration and expression of national identity. This was reflected in an
increasing subversion of internationalism by national historiographies elaborating a
discursive ‘titular proprietorship’ over the ‘nationally relevant’ fields of history, archaeology,
ethnography and linguistics. Academic production in these fields in a given republic was
restricted to representatives of the titular nation, resulting in the ‘indigenisation of
historiography’ itself.92 Intimately linked to these developments was the ascendance over the
following decades of the ‘primordialist’ tradition of understanding ethnicity. Elaborated by
influential figures such as Yu. Bromley, Director of the Institute of Ethnography, this
tradition posited the etnos (‘ethnie’, ‘ethnic group’) as an objective, permanent and
teleological ‘organism’ and the main vehicle of historical development (Tishkov, 1997, 1-
12). The ‘ethno-social organism’ (ESO), defined as that part of an ethnic group living on its

92
One informant, a Georgian archaeologist, recalled that in the Soviet period it was impossible to have an
independent research interest in a neighbouring republic. If he wanted to work in Armenia or Azerbaijan this
could only be done through collaboration with that republic’s Academy of Sciences.

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own territory, became a primary unit of historical analysis. As many observers have noted,
this view continues to inform the vast majority of post-Soviet indigenous discourse on
nationality. In Georgia the absorption of this discourse took the form of the displacement of
earlier pre-Soviet and pluralistic portrayals of Georgia’s ethnic diversity by an exclusive,
singular and heavily culturalist historiography of the Georgian nation. This provided the
basis of the core nation discourse.

The late Khrushchev period saw something of a revolution in Georgian historiography

rehabilitating the study of the Georgian national past, albeit through the prism of Marxism.
In 1962 prominent Georgian historian Niko Berdzenishvili set the tone by arguing that the
study of the national past was not ‘nationalist’, but to bring a more ‘correct’ interpretation of
Georgian medieval history as a progressive class struggle (Berdzenishvili, 1966).
Berdzenishvili, responding to more orthodox criticisms of nationalist undertones in Georgian
historiography, described history as a ‘patriotic science’, writing: “Is this really groundless
pride? Why should we hide our achievements in the struggle for progress in the Middle
Ages? Why should we not inform the patriotic builders of communism of their ancestors’
participation and contribution to the cultural edifice of mankind?” (p.317).93 This theme was
reprised in a wave of articles echoing Janashia’s earlier critique of Marxist orthodoxy by
rehabilitating the writings of pre- and early Soviet Georgian medievalists, which traced
Georgian ‘ethnogenesis’ to the medieval period (Apakidze, 1966; Bregadze, 1967;
K’acharava, 1966, 1977).94 Where the new national historiography differed, however, was in
its absorption of Soviet primordialism, so that the main frame for interpreting a Georgian
national past was not statehood or an inclusive religious identity, but the cultural form of the
ethnos. Working within the primordialist paradigm, ever more ancient origins of Georgian
nation formation were formulated. By the 1970s the indigenisation of historiography had
reached the point where a planned composite history of the South Caucasus had to be
abandoned due to the rival and incompatible claims of historians from the region’s three
Academies of Science (Voronov, 1992, 259). Expressions of internationalism increasingly

93
This was originally delivered as a lecture four years earlier to the historical department of the Georgian
Academic Society for History, Archaeology, Ethnography and Folklore.
94
Simultaneously couched in Marxist terms yet drawing a ‘national’ legitimacy from reference to the great
Georgian medievalists, these articles all challenged the Stalinist orthodoxy that Georgian nation formation could
be dated only to industrialisation and therefore the nineteenth century (at the earliest). Through often abstruse
argumentation, these historians argued collectively for the greater historical antiquity of the Georgian nation, at
least to the medieval period. This was not a unique innovation among Soviet national historiographies, nor did
it go unchallenged: for a Marxist critique of their argument, see Surguladze, 1967.

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stood side by side with expressions of the core nation discourse, effectively suggesting a
status of primus inter pares for the Georgian nationality.95

Within Georgia a significant development was the extension of the category of prishlye
(‘newcomers’) to second-order titular groups officially considered to be korennye
(‘autochthons’). This was an idea first suggested in the nineteenth century by Georgian
historian Davit Bakradze, who suggested that a north-west Caucasian ethnic element in
Abkhazia could only be dated to the seventeenth century. This theme was reprised in Pavle
Ingoroqva’s 1954 work, giorgi merchule. The prevalence of the ‘newcomer’ narrative in
discussions of Abkhazian and Ossetian ethnic origins among Georgian informants in the late
1990s attests to the influence of this narrative originating in the academe. Among the
popular beliefs commonly brought by informants is the absence of a maritime vocabulary in
the Abkhaz language, taken as evidence of historically brief habitation in a littoral region.
With regard to South Ossetia, a commonly made claim is that at the time of the creation of
the Ossetian autonomy in Georgia only three Ossetian families were registered in Tskhinvali.
Exclusive nation building was not, however, the prerogative of the Georgian majority. In
1989 Georgian philosopher Shalva Khidasheli, born and raised in the South Ossetian capital
Tskhinvali, complained of the selective readings of the region’s history promoted in its
autonomous institutions. At the autonomy’s research institute no research was carried out
into the region’s feudal history or nineteenth century cultural relations, which, in
Khidasheli’s view, would have situated the region within a broader historical context of
Georgian feudalism and the Georgian-Armenian-Jewish cultural context of the region during
the tsarist period (Khidasheli, 1993, 174-6).

The construction of ethnicity in Soviet Georgia thus reflected and absorbed dominant Soviet
frames of interpretation over time. An outstanding trend was the progressive discursive
narrowing of the meanings associated with the ethnonym kartveli, simultaneous to – and
indirectly legitimating – the progressive consolidation of Georgian dominance in the
republic. It should be emphasised that these developments were not unique to Georgia, and
that their significance can be over-stated in the light of following events. Had the revival
take a different path, these national historiographies might be remembered more as Soviet

95
Thus the author of an account of Georgian-Ossetian relations dating from the 1970s observed: “Georgia
exerted a progressive influence on the development of the neighbouring North Caucasian peoples. This is
natural, since it stood at a higher level of economic, political and cultural development” (Tskhovrebov, 1973,
9).

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oddities than ‘preludes to violence’. Nevertheless it should be noted that by the 1980s the
national pasts produced in titular-controlled institutions, suffused with claims to exclusivity
over eponymous territories, formed important symbolic resources for cultural elites in
Georgia. They also established important narratives of identity that stood uneasily beside the
official prescriptions of internationalism. This tension was more pointed for groups with low
rates of russification, such as the Georgians, than for heavily russified groups, for whom
internationalism could be more easily integrated with a russophone linguistic identity.

4.5 The View from Below

In the previous chapter it was argued that a number of structural and institutional forces
conditioned identity choices in Soviet Georgia. Forces such as the dynamics of
industrialisation, political incorporation strategies and the emergence of unified education
systems have generally loomed large in modernist accounts of nationalism (Gellner, 1983;
Anderson, 1983; Hechter, 1975, 2000; Hroch, 1985; cf. Weber, 1977). Yet these approaches
give us little purchase on the dynamics of identity and cultural choices as individuals
perceive them. Individuals do not respond mechanistically to a given set of conditions, but
invariably develop a range of survival strategies that incorporate factors beyond responses to
structural incentives and constraints.96 How were the cultural discourses described above,
and the structural context to which they were intimately linked, reflected in the choices of
ordinary citizens? To provide a more nuanced view of the structural and cultural contexts of
ethnic identity in Soviet Georgia, I now present ethnographic vignettes describing the
language learning histories of five individual informants. The purpose of these vignettes is to
add greater subtlety and depth to the more schematic view presented thus far and to illustrate
the impact of different social locations on individual cultural choices.

Mimoza
Mimoza, 50, is a Georgian born in the western town of Zugdidi. Her account is suggestive of
the limits of Georgian’s hegemony in the periphery of the republic, yet also of the costs
incurred by assimilation into Russian. Although her older brothers went to Georgian schools

96
Furthermore, Soviet census data, while relatively comprehensive and sophisticated, give a skewed view of
language behaviour and cultural attitudes. Both census-takers and respondents in the Soviet Union assumed
that nationality and language coincided, making claims of ‘native’ language knowledge unreliable. For
example, an uncritical reading of the 1989 census data would suggest that 96.4% of Abkhazians had retained
Abkhaz as their native language, thereby displaying a low rate of linguistic assimilation. However, this figure
belies a widespread societal shift to Russian as the main functional language for most Abkhazians that is
immediately obvious in Abkhazia itself.

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she attended one of the three local Russian schools, which was a popular option among
Georgian parents in the region. She explains:

“It was very much in fashion, to go to Russia…apparently I wanted to go to a

Russian school, my mother says it was you who wanted it so much. Although my
brother went to a Georgian school, for some reason I went two years later to a
Russian school… My mother regretted sending my brother to a Georgian school.
Why did I let him go to a Georgian school, she said, because I want them all to go
to Russia to study.”

Mimoza later fulfilled her mother’s ambition by studying Russian literature for six years in
Rostov. An avid reader, Mimoza nevertheless also read the classics of Georgian literature on
her own initiative while living in Russia. She did not study Georgian seriously, however,
until she had returned to Zugdidi to be near her parents as they grew older, and her sons
began school. It was only through their education in a Georgian school and her own
employment as a teacher that Mimoza became familiar with the Georgian school syllabus
and completely at home in Georgian. Initially, however, she had great difficulties adjusting
to the primarily Georgian-speaking environment. Although Mimoza expresses great
fondness for Russian, she wonders now whether it would not in fact have been better for her
if she had gone to a Georgian school.

Despite her intimacy and ease in Russian as a result of her student years in Russia, her return
to Georgia brought a different appraisal of the Russian-Georgian relationship. She
remembers the attitude of the local Russian population in Zugdidi, employed in large
numbers in the region’s tea factories:

“The Russians here didn’t bother with learning Georgian, no way. They would
only speak in their own language, and at the same time with this very superior
tone. They’d patronise you, that you were a Georgian and didn’t know how to do
things properly, like you don’t know how to stand in a queue. You know it’s in
our nature, we are a bit like that…But I’m speaking with the right of an insider,
you know! You live here, right, you came here and you live here, why shouldn’t
you adapt to the local customs? If I’ve learnt your language, why shouldn’t you
learn mine?”

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Mimoza remembers that local Russians would remark on her flawless Russian as
exceptional, believing that she must be Ukrainian or Belorussian rather than Georgian. She
also remembers that the attitude of ‘why should I study Georgian?’ extended to other
minorities besides Russians, resulting in Russian’s dominance as the lingua franca. Mimoza
expressed annoyance at this encroachment of Russian upon Georgian, particularly among the
Georgian population in Abkhazia, with which she came face to face when she began to teach
displaced Georgian children from Abkhazia after the 1992-93 war. Yet Mimoza is no
partisan of Georgian linguistic nationalism. She organised for a Russian nanny to come in
and look after her grandson with the express purpose of giving him some exposure to
Russian from an early age. She also makes extensive use of her Russian to watch news
programmes on the Russian channels she receives on her television, which she says are more
detailed and professional than their Georgian counterparts.

Mimoza’s account is suggestive of the fierce competition between Georgian and Russian as
the lingua franca of the republic. Georgian hegemony, at least in the periphery, was far from
assured, underlining the fact that Georgia was also subject to the Union-wide domination of
Russian as a sine qua non of educational advancement. Nevertheless, Mimoza experienced
her return to Georgia as a decisive divide between her Russian-oriented childhood and
student years and a Georgian-speaking adulthood, requiring her to adjust her language
repertoire in favour of Georgian. The undiminished prestige of Georgian contrasts sharply
with the relationship between Russian and titular languages in Central Asia (see Laitin, 1998,
121). Regardless of her love of Russian, a continued cosmopolitan orientation after her
return to Georgia was not a possibility for Mimoza. Yet she had also internalised a sense of
cultural proprietorship, exacerbated by the attitude of local Russian populations. Her re-
adjustment to a Georgian-dominated cultural repertoire was thus also demanded by her own
negative assessment of Russian’s encroachment on Georgian’s ‘proper’ function as the
republic’s first language.

Nataliya
My second example, drawn from Abkhazia, reflects a pattern of ‘deracination’ among
second-order titulars and the restricted appeal of Georgian within the national autonomies. It
provides testimony to the internalisation of language as a symbol of national identity, yet also
to the pragmatism of individuals in a changing environment. Nataliya, 27, is an Abkhazian

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born in the town of Ochamchire, Abkhazia. She married a Georgian from Sukhumi towards
the end of the conflict in 1993 and as a result she was displaced with her husband at the end
of the war. She comes from what she calls a very ‘international’ family: on her mother’s side
she is of mixed Svan, Mingrelian and Abkhazian ancestry, while on her father’s side she
traces her Abkhazian ancestry to the village of Jğerda in Ochamchire region (although she
has never been there). Within the family, she grew up in a mixed Russian and Mingrelian-
speaking environment, a reflection of the dominant language balance in Ochamchire. For
Nataliya, Ochamchire and Sukhumi represented a transitional zone between the more
genuinely Abkhazian environment of Gudauta and the purely Mingrelian environment of
Gali. She understands this in terms of the moderation of the more savage (dikii) traditions of
rural Abkhazian society: “the Mingrelian part of our family had an influence, a civilising
influence on us, so we did not uphold Abkhazian traditions in our family”.

Nataliya’s father attended a Georgian school, because during his childhood “it appears that
there simply were no Russian schools at that time”; he could speak Georgian, Russian and
Mingrelian fluently, and “just a little Abkhaz”. Nataliya’s characterisation of her father’s
linguistic repertoire thus refers only obliquely to the Georgianisation drive of the 1940s.
Like her brothers Nataliya attended a Russian kindergarten and a Russian school in
Ochamchire until she was sixteen, when her family moved to Sukhumi. None of her
generation in the family speaks or understands Abkhaz. Her school was located within the
port of Ochamchire, and the teachers were usually Russian officers’ wives and newcomers
(priezzhie) who changed in rapid succession. She remembers: “there used to be this little
barrier between the part that was the port and the town. Beyond the barrier in the port you
could feel that it was a little Russia, and on this side it was Abkhazia”. She studied Abkhaz
and, by her own request, Georgian as subjects in school. She remembers that she was
exceptional as an Abkhazian learning Georgian: in her school the main pattern was that
Abkhazians would take Abkhaz and Georgians would take Georgian, although all of the
teaching was of course carried out in Russian. Circumstances did not change significantly
after her move to Sukhumi. When asked if she used more Georgian after she had moved to
Sukhumi, she answered “[h]eard it more, I’d say…Use it, no. No, because people spoke
Russian. It was enough, the fact that I knew Russian”. Nataliya describes her life in
Sukhumi before the war as a ‘fairy-tale’, offering her a high quality education at the city’s
VUZ and the theatres and cinemas of a regional capital.

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Nataliya considers Russian to be her most native (rodnoy) language. A perceived conflict
between her nationality and language repertoire, however, induces ambivalent feelings of
being deracinée:

“I am an Abkhazian, I’ll never deny that. It’s just that things happened in such a
way that to my great regret I don’t know the language. I studied it, but that was a
drop in the ocean compared with what I wanted to know. Especially being here
[in Georgia] now and not hearing a word of my native language, I went over
completely [to Russian], and my accent too, I don’t have any kind of Abkhaz
accent…”

With a Georgian husband and her previous home in Abkhazia burnt down, Nataliya is now
reconciled to the fact that her future is in Georgia. Thankful of her childhood interest in
Georgian, Nataliya has invested heavily in Georgian and studies part-time at the Tbilisi State
University. Overcoming the problem of learning Georgian, her main problem now in Tbilisi
is one of attitude: “there they differentiate immediately”. She is confident, however, that her
son will not have the same problem. Although she still sometimes uses Russian with her
husband, she is raising her son as a native Georgian-speaker.

Nataliya’s account is suggestive of the cultural impact of composite incorporation and points
to the fluidity of the linguistic environment in Abkhazia, where ‘national’ languages stood as
largely symbolic markers in the context of the de facto hegemony of Russian. It is only
through displacement to Georgia that Nataliya has had to make a firm choice for a national
language over ‘internationalist’ Russian. Her self-perception as deracinée nevertheless also
points to a profound internalisation of the Soviet homology between language and
nationality. Nataliya’s perceptions of her mixed ancestry also point to an internalisation of
the ‘East-West’ divide, through which an Abkhazian identity was cursed with a
backwardness sharply contrasting with the educational and cultural choices open to a
Russian- or Georgian-speaking identity. Discursively constructed as backward, Abkhazians
found themselves in a common colonial bind. ‘Beneficiaries’ of a benevolent paternalism yet
prevented from assimilation, Abkhazians could only access modernity through the mediation
of other ‘advanced’ cultures. Nataliya’s commentary thus is strongly suggestive of how
Soviet ethno-federalism simultaneously created powerful ascriptive bonds to ethnic

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affiliations, and attached to them a sense of inferiority vis-à-vis neighbouring reference
groups.

Merab
Merab, 36, is a Georgian born and raised in Tbilisi. He refers to himself as a naghdi tbiliseli
[‘genuine Tbilisian’], tracing his ancestry back through several generations in the Georgian
capital. As a child he was brought up in an exclusively Georgian-speaking environment, in
which a love of Georgian literature was instilled in him from an early age. Merab attended a
Georgian school and later studied at the Tbilisi State University to become a theatre critic.
With a formidable knowledge of classical Georgian, he is able to recite excerpts of the
Georgian classics, such as vepkhistqaosani (‘The Man in the Panther’s Skin’, Shota
Rustaveli’s medieval epic), at length. Indeed, no table would be complete for Merab without
this celebration of Georgian culture. Merab’s love of the Georgian language is
unconditional. He believes that the Georgian alphabet is itself a metaphor of the human life-
span, its first letter ‘a’ representing the first sound uttered by a newborn infant and its last
letter ‘h’ representing the last gasp uttered at the point of death.

Merab studied Russian as a subject at school, and speaks the language with a thick Georgian
accent of which he is proud. He rarely used his Russian until Georgian independence,
however, when he was forced by unemployment to leave Tbilisi for Moscow to establish a
business with other Georgians producing spare car parts. Merab notes the irony that because
the Georgians were never ‘great industrialists’ Russian terminology predominates even in
Georgian when it comes to car parts and machinery. He ruefully admits that he would never
have needed his Russian if it were not for independence. Merab’s displacement to Moscow
was a deeply unsettling experience, not least because of what he sees as the racism directed
at Caucasians by both the police and ordinary Muscovites. Merab notes that “they [Russians]
call us cherno-zhopye [black arses]” and recounts how police have stopped him in the street
for no apparent reason other than his obviously Caucasian appearance. Merab had few
Russian friends in Moscow; his social circle consisted almost entirely of Georgians, with
whom he would often meet for protracted evenings around a Georgian table (supra)
culminating in Georgian choral singing amongst the men.

Merab’s account points to the cultural dominance of Georgian among the republican
intelligentsia and cultural elite. For him Russian culture could not rival the prestige of his

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own national identity, creating an uncomfortable disjunction between a sense of cultural
superiority and political subordination. Knowledge of Russian was quite irrelevant for
Merab until the humiliating experience of economic exile forced him to resuscitate the
obligatory Russian learnt in school. In exile, Merab’s native language has been transformed
into a citadel of identity, to be zealously guarded by through collective re-enactment at every
opportunity. This in turn points to the role of informal cultural enactments of Georgianness,
particularly those associated with the supra, that form the core of a Georgian cultural
repertoire. These enactments, unimaginable without the Georgian language, survived
undiminished throughout the Soviet era, constituting an informal market of cultural relations
upholding the prestige of Georgian.97

Lara
My fourth example is a Russian in Tbilisi; her story is suggestive of the impact of Georgian
cultural dominance at the republic’s centre from a non-titular point-of-view. Lara, 26, was
born in Tbilisi. Her parents, Tolya and Irina, are both Russian, but born in Lithuania and
Georgia respectively; they met in Moscow as students in the 1970s and decided to settle in
Tbilisi. One of Irina’s grandmothers was Georgian, and though not comfortable in the
language, Irina has a passable knowledge of Georgian. In her daily transactions in the city,
Irina always initiates conversation in Georgian before deferring to Russian. Tolya, a
successful artist, had acquired an excellent knowledge of Georgian and a wide circle of
Georgian friends in Tbilisi. At home, Russian was the dominant language in the family, but
Lara and her brother both attended Georgian-medium schools as the family was happily
settled in Georgia and had no intention of moving. As a result, both Lara and her brother are
completely bilingual; Lara’s Georgian is flawless, and she happily code-switches between the
two languages in mid-sentence. Lara’s circle of friends was composed almost entirely of
Georgians, and both Lara and her brother have thoroughly assimilated Georgian mores such
as toasting at the table and kissing when shaking hands.

In 1996 Lara won a scholarship to the prestigious Tbilisi Academy of Theatrical Arts, and
was looking forward to a career in the lively Tbilisi arts scene. She had designed the sets for
a Shakespeare production at the National Rustaveli Theatre, one of the highest accolades

97
The role of the supra and its mandatory series of toasts (sadghegrdzeloebi) celebrating such vital components
of a national worldview as ancestors, descendents, region and homeland, is an as yet under-explored field of
cultural reproduction in Georgia.

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possible for someone of her age, although she was aware of some rumblings in the
establishment as to why a Russian had earned such plaudits in the Georgian national theatre.
Lara’s career in Tbilisi was cut short, however, by the gradual removal of the family to
Russia for economic reasons. This was hardly a willing exile. When I first met Lara in 1997
her father had already been working as a window-dresser in Moscow for two years, a
humiliating step down compared to his previous life in Tbilisi. Her parents encouraged Lara
to stay in Georgia, Irina staying on with her in Tbilisi to help with the project work that Lara
was undertaking. As it became clear that conditions in Georgia were unlikely to improve, the
rest of the family left to join Tolya in 1999. Although they have no plans at present to return
the family has let rather than sold their two Tbilisi apartments, an indication that they do one
day hope to do so.

Lara’s account in suggestive of the incentives for Russians in Soviet Tbilisi to accommodate
and even acquire Georgian. Her family is characteristic of the dispersed rather than enclave-
like settlement Russians in Tbilisi, encouraging and indeed necessitating accommodation. In
Lara’s case a generational shift had taken place from Russian as the native language to a
Georgian-Russian diglossia, in which Russian was largely relegated to the domestic sphere.
This again stands in sharp contrast to the Russian-titular cultural balance in the capitals of
Central Asia, where the cultural subordination of Russian was unthinkable for many titulars,
let alone Russian-speaking immigrants. The rewards of this cultural assimilation were
significant, however, as both generations were able to pursue careers within the
‘traditionally’ titular – and high-prestige – field of cultural production.

Davit
My last example is Davit, a 21-year old Georgian student at the Zugdidi State University. He
is an example of the relatively rare phenomenon of russification among Georgians, and its
associated costs. Born in Ochamchire, Abkhazia, Davit had completed seven years of study
in a Russian school when war erupted in 1992. His father was very keen for him to have a
good knowledge of Russian, and so Russian and to a lesser extent Mingrelian were the main
languages in the family. Davit expresses regret that he did not learn his ‘native’ language:
“now I realise that not to speak your native language, that is a bad thing. I feel a kind of
shame that I am a Georgian and can’t speak Georgian well”. Davit mentioned the term
gadagvarebuli, literally meaning ‘degenerate’, an epithet applied to those Georgians who

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have assimilated into Russian and ‘lost’ their native language.98 After displacement to
Zugdidi, Davit’s poor Georgian cost him a lot of teasing and even scuffles at school. It also
affected his academic prospects, as he was forced to study in special Russian-language
classes for displaced students rather than the Georgian language mainstream. In response he
insisted on speaking Georgian everywhere, even with his parents, in order to get the
maximum possible practice. His tactics have paid off, and although his Georgian is accented,
he now no longer attends Russian-medium classes. Davit is also an avid student of English
(he originally agreed to be interviewed on the condition that this would be done in English);
when I first met him in class at the university he was urged on by his peers to recite some of
his own English poetry at the front of the class. Davit’s facility in English clearly
compensates for his weakness in Georgian.

Davit’s experience points to the informal sanctions imposed on Georgian nationals who have
‘lost’ facility in Georgian language. His efforts to accommodate these sanctions attests first
to the internalisation of a primordial understanding of the relationship between language and
identity, and second to the weakness of a countervailing ‘Russophile’ orientation among
Georgians. Unlike Central Asian mankurty, gadagvareblebi (‘assimilated Georgians’)
cannot call upon a prestige differential favouring Russian to offset their ‘lost’ native
language. This demonstrates the sharply contrasting values governing the ‘market’ of
cultural relations in Georgia compared to Central Asia. Those Georgians who opted for
russification paid heavily for their choice. It is indeed an irony that it is the community that
was least integrated into Georgian culture that has paid the heaviest price of the ‘national
struggle’ in Abkhazia.

These vignettes point in different ways to the impact of composite incorporation in everyday
life. At the Georgian centre, particularly among cultural elites, Russian did not present a
serious rival to the hegemony of Georgian. Together with the absence of separate Russian-
speaking enclaves, this context presented significant incentives for linguistic accommodation
among Russian-speakers. In the periphery, by contrast, competition between Georgian and
Russian was more intense, with Russian gaining the upper hand as the predominant lingua
franca and language of mobility above all in the national autonomies. Russian non-titulars

98
In the nineteenth century another derogatory term, rusetume, was used by leading figures of the Georgian
cultural revival in this meaning. The term appears to be an adaptation of the phrase rusi, turme, meaning
‘apparently a Russian’.

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consequently faced fewer incentives to acquire Georgian, while among second-order titulars
the penetration of Russian displaced a cultural repertoire based in a ‘native’ identity. These
accounts attest in different ways to the profound internalisation of the institutionalised
concept of nationality and nations as identities rooted in culture. Proficiency in the mother
tongue validates the ‘corresponding’ national identity; where native language and nationality
do not correspond, difficult feelings of dislocation, incompleteness and personal
accountability for this situation arise. Language does not only symbolise or validate a
national identity, but also symbolises relations of power and domination between groups.

4.6 The dialectic of majority-minority relations in Soviet Georgia

The strains implicit in the institutional and cultural context of inter-group relations in
Georgia made themselves felt during Soviet rule, which was punctuated by occasional, but
recurrent, protests by the republic’s constituent titular groups. In 1924 underground
Menshevik resistance organised an armed insurrection against the nascent Bolshevik
authorities in Georgia, which was quickly and ruthlessly suppressed.99 In 1956 silence in the
official media at the anniversary of Stalin’s death in March, together with Khrushchev’s
recent vilification of the ‘cult of personality’, saw mass protest in Tbilisi and other Georgian
cities. The nature of this protest – pro-Stalinist, nationalist or a fusion of the two – was much
debated in Georgia with the onset of glasnost (Fuller, 1988a). The protest was brutally
suppressed by the authorities, resulting in several dozen deaths and hundreds of wounded. In
the 1970s a dissident movement coalesced in Georgia, establishing a watch committee in
1977 recording violations of the 1975 Helsinki accords. Beyond human rights violations
dissidents also inserted a nationalist agenda into their activities, campaigning against
russification, the neglect of Georgian national monuments and enforced atheism. Dissident
nationalism did not, however, extend to a political nationalism questioning the legitimacy of
Soviet rule. This differentiates Georgia from the Baltic context, where secession from the
Soviet Union emerged as a theme of protest before the onset of glasnost.100 In 1978
proposals to divest the national languages of the three Caucasian union republics of their
official status were met by mass protest in Tbilisi for the retention of Georgian, followed by

99
The revolt was largely restricted to rural areas and, with the exception of the traditional Menshevik
stronghold in Guria, failed to elicit the support of the broad mass of the Georgian population (Suny, 1994, 222-
225).
100
Between 1965 and 1986 20 out of 185 demonstrations in the Soviet Union of 100 participants or more raised
the issue of secession, and all of these were located in the Baltic (Beissinger, 2001, 54n8).

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parallel protest in Armenia.101 In response First Secretary Shevardnadze elected for tactical
accommodation, and Georgian’s status was left intact.102 This did not assuage fears of
linguistic assimilation, however, and Georgian’s incomplete hegemony in the republic
continued to form a staple of intellectual discourse throughout the 1980s.103

In Abkhazia the demotion of the republic’s status in 1931 and the effects of composite
incorporation served as grounds for recurrent protests in 1931, 1957, 1965 and 1967. In
December 1977 a petition signed by 130 Abkhazian intellectuals was sent to the Central
Committee of the Soviet Union protesting the failure of Soviet nationalities policy in
Abkhazia and requesting Abkhazia’s secession from the Georgian Republic, alongside direct
action in the form of demonstrations, the effacement of Georgian monuments and signs and,
allegedly, attacks on Georgians living in Abkhazia. Again, the Soviet authorities elected for
appeasement. Abkhazian protest was rewarded with a wide range of conciliatory measures
including the transformation of the Sukhumi Pedagogical Institute into the Abkhazian State
University, quotas for Abkhazians in Georgian universities and a rise in the profile of the
Abkhaz language in broadcast and print media (Gogokhia and Kuprava, 1982; Slider, 1985,
61-64). The policy of appeasement, leading to the disproportionately favourable
representation of Abkhazians in Abkhazia’s party structures by the late 1980s, established
Moscow’s role as Abkhazia’s protector against Georgian encroachment. Challenges to
Moscow’s authority in the wake of perestroika thus followed these substantial Abkhazian
gains earlier in the decade.

The resulting dialectic of majority-minority relations is illustrated in Figure 4.1. Over the
Soviet period a complex three-way relationship evolved between the Soviet centre, titular
majorities and second-order titular minorities. This makes for useful contrast with the
dialectic of nation building suggested for Western states by Will Kymlicka (Kymlicka,
2001b, 47-53). Kymlicka argues that by attempting to diffuse a single hegemonic culture

101
Armenian specialists concur that it was the Georgian protests that led the way in 1978. Razmik Panossian
writes: “Armenian remained the official language of the republic even after the 1978 constitutional changes
largely thanks to Georgian protests in Tbilisi in favour of maintaining the official status of national languages”
(Panossian, 2002)
102
Shevardnadze nevertheless reiterated what the ‘correct’ relationship between Georgian and Russian should
be some three years later: “Special attention is reserved for Russian, the language of international
communication. The question may be put thus: together with their native language, each inhabitant of the
republic must have a perfect knowledge of Russian – the language of the brotherhood of Soviet peoples, of
October, of Lenin” (Shevardnadze, 1981, 59).
103
Fuller, 1988b; author’s discussions with Shukia Apridonidze of the Tbilisi Institute of Linguistics, Tbilisi,
June-July 1998.

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throughout their territories, the nation building policies of states in Western liberal
democracies have elicited mobilization for minority rights among disadvantaged groups. He
suggests that a typical pattern is “a complex package of robust forms of nation-building
combined and constrained by robust forms of minority rights” (p.50). Thus over time,
historically illiberal nation building practices have been increasingly contained and
moderated by demands for minority rights. Nation building in Soviet Georgia differed
through its implicit assumption of what might be called the ‘majority rights’ of titulars – the
rights of the titular nation to dominance in administrative and cultural realms, which was
indeed the core assumption of the Leninist strategy of indigenisation. Majority nation
building – the diffusion of a single hegemonic culture – was thus an essential component of
Soviet state building within national republics, and was not constrained by countervailing
articulations of minority rights.104 Although minorities did, at times, protest for their own
regimes of indigenisation, they did so to the Soviet centre rather than to republican
authorities. The latter in any case lacked the political authority to effect policy changes
demanded by minority protests, such as boundary delimitation, and were consequently
invulnerable to minority mobilization. Thus, rather than a bipolar dialectic of majority nation
building constrained by minority rights, an incomplete tripolar dialectic emerged with
Moscow playing the role of adjudicator between conflicting claims. The missing link in this
dialectic was that between majority and minorities.

Figure 4.1 The Dialectic of Majority-Minority Relations in Soviet Georgia

Tools of minority appeasement

 cultural concessions
 cadre/quota fulfilment

State nation-building policies Majority Rights Claims

 indigenisation policies  centralisation of power
 multinational ethno-federalism  linguistic homogenisation
 cultural nation building  dilution of minorities’ demographic
weight

Centre Majority 2nd Order Titular Minorities

Minority Rights claims:

 separation from republic (not secession from USSR)
 Soviet-style indigenisation
 fulfilment of Soviet social contract

104
This was less apparent where titular majorities were heavily russified and/or economically significant
Russian minorities obtained. In Georgia neither of these attenuating circumstances was present.

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By making Georgian nation building a proxy for Soviet state building (rather than
consistently implementing a state-wide policy of russification) it was Georgia’s minorities,
rather than the Georgian majority, who faced the typical problems posed by state nation
building policies, such as forced linguistic assimilation, disempowerment and demographic
marginalisation. This points to the partial nature of the Soviet model of national statehood
bequeathed to the Union’s constituent republics: while majority nation building was actively
encouraged, it was not tempered by a juridical or contractual doctrine of statehood within the
territory in which it was practiced. In contrast to nation building in Western states Georgian
nation building was not constrained by the need to secure and legitimate a social contract
with the wider, non-Georgian population of the republic. Georgian national elites were only
constrained by the need to preserve the essential feature of their contract with the Soviet
centre – to limit expressions of nationalism to the cultural, rather than political, realm. The
peculiar feature of Soviet ethno-federalism was its simultaneous recognition and tolerance of
both majority and minority rights claims. The centre’s policy of appeasement of both types
of claim in the late 1970s precluded any sense that these distinct regimes of rights could be
related to, or constrained by, one another.

Furthermore, the increasing resort of national elites to expressions of political nationalism

over the Soviet period was not, and could not be, a mutually recognised or accepted
mechanism of distributing resources within the republic. By contrast in Central Asia, a
regional balance of power acted as a consensual means for resolving internal competition for
resources, and later served as a basis for constructing post-Soviet institutions (Jones Luong,
2002, 100). Since the conflicting claims of majority and minorities were ‘resolved’ by
Moscow’s intervention, the Soviet Georgian republic did not act as a self-contained system
for the resolution of these claims. Moscow’s arbitration indeed encouraged both majority
and minority mobilizations, since in 1978 both achieved at least their minimum objectives.
This externally articulated ‘mechanism’ for resolving conflicts could not act as a basis for
forming consensual and self-contained relations between majority and minorities in the post-
Soviet era. On the contrary, secessionist minorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia today
continue to envisage and actively encourage a trilateral framework for their relations with
Tbilisi that includes Russia.

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4.7 Conclusions
This chapter has shown how the articulation of state institutions with ethnicity was
powerfully underscored by the discursive construction of ethnic hierarchy. In the Soviet
Union’s classifications of ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ nationalities we can clearly discern the
colonial apportionment of merit identified by Horowitz as an important element in the social
psychology of ethnic conflict. Soviet ethno-federal institutions in Georgia absorbed ethnic
hierarchies, and through the contrasting incentives and constraints to the consolidation of
titular cultures, reproduced them. Cultural stereotypes of backwardness effectively became a
self-fulfilling prophecy, as heavily russified Abkhazian and Ossetian minorities failed to
comply with the dominant institutionalised definition of nationality. Moreover, individuals
were forced to live with negatively connoted ethnic identifications; for Abkhazians and
Ossetians (unlike Kartvelian linguistic minorities) the alternative path of assimilation was
closed. The ethnographic data presented here points to the contrasting nature of Soviet
modernity as experienced by representatives of different ethnic groups in Georgia. While the
discourse of ethnic nationhood, and its putative link between language and identity,
thoroughly penetrated society, the extent to which this corresponded to the cultural
repertoires of individuals was highly variable.

The early incorporation of Georgia into the Soviet Union relative to Baltic republics resulted
in a much greater intertwining of a Georgian nationalist discourse with Soviet ideology. This
chapter has pointed to the progressive narrowing of earlier, more pluralist understandings of
membership in Georgia. Articulations of Georgian nationhood, both in the academe and in
society at large, assimilated Soviet doctrines of primordialism and autochthony to produce a
discourse that was both deeply cultural and exclusive. This emphasis on primordial
nationhood rather than statehood removed contingency from narratives of Georgian identity.
While all Soviet nationalities assimilated the discourse of primordialism, this omission found
an empirical ‘confirmation’ in the high degree of cultural integrity enjoyed by the Georgian
nationality relative to its immediate reference groups among minorities. A Russophile
orientation among Georgians, in sharp contrast to other Soviet contexts, was marginal and
limited to Georgians in the national autonomies lacking significant social capital. This is a
critical factor forestalling common ground between the Georgian majority and Russophile
minorities in the post-Soviet period.

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Contrasts in the experience of a national modernity led to profound strains expressed in the
recurrent protests of the Soviet period. Such strains are indeed a characteristic feature of the
modernising project of national statehood, not only in the Soviet Union but other contexts
too. Yet unlike Western European state-nation building, tensions arising from ethnic
differentiation were not negotiated within a framework of majority-minority relations.
Rather, the conflict resolution mechanism was dependent on adjudication by the Soviet
centre, in effect shielding both majorities and minorities from direct negotiation with one
another. This points to the partial nature of the paradigm of modern national identity in the
Soviet context. While the Soviet state in Georgia was remarkably successful in inculcating
the discourse of nationhood, this was not matched by commensurate obligations, above all on
the part of the Georgian majority, to negotiate the distributive and discursive functions of
ethnicity. By the 1980s, then, Georgia thus combined structural strains, advanced cultural
segmentation, an increasingly explicit discursive hierarchification of groups and a conflict
resolution mechanism that relied on external intervention. It was into this context that the
wave of nationalist mobilization burst in the late 1980s.

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Chapter 5 The Georgian National Revival 1987-1992: From Conflict to Violence

5.1 Introduction
This chapter examines ethnic conflict in the period associated with the Georgian national
revival and the emergence of an independent Georgian state between 1987 and 1992, and its
transformation into violence. We have seen in previous chapters that incorporation into the
Soviet state created a profound structural and cultural bifurcation between titular and second-
order titular groups. This division was overtly politicised with the onset of the Georgian
national revival in the late 1980s and the prospect of Georgian sovereignty. Rather than
seeing violence as the ‘progression’ of ethnic conflict generated within the context of revival,
however, in this chapter it is argued that violence is best understood as a contingent and path-
dependent outcome of developments within the wider cycle of mobilization beginning in the
late 1980s. This is demonstrated here through the qualitative tracing of the sequencing of
events and processes taking place within this period.

The salience of violent conflict in this period has often been attributed to incompatible
discourses of nationalism among Georgia’s titular groups. First and foremost importance has
been attributed to the intolerant Georgian nationalism and personality of post-Soviet
Georgia’s first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia (Jones, 1994; Suny, 1995). I do not deny the
importance of the ‘Gamsakhurdia factor’ in this period. Behind this factor, however, is a
more fundamental question: why did an extreme, exclusionary form of ethno-nationalism
come to dominate the Georgian national revival? Ethno-nationalism based on the putative
wrongs suffered by the ‘authentic’ cultural community has obvious appeal for secessionist
movements. Yet although ethno-nationalism was an important element in all of the national
revivals in the Soviet Union, in no other republic did the most radical strain of potential
nationalisms dominate to the same extent. This anomaly is suggestive of varying constraints
confronting ethno-nationalists in the national revival movements and in particular of
constraints to radical nationalism present in other cases, but absent in Georgia.

Secondly, why did ethnic conflict take violent form in Georgia? Ethnic conflict, in the form
of competing claims over identity, resources and policies, characterised all of the national
republics in this period. Yet in Georgia ethnic conflict was not contained within
institutionalised channels, variously taking the forms of paramilitary activities, staged
provocations, riots, secessionist war and a wide-ranging discursive ‘ethnicisation’ of violence

142
by perpetrators, observers and third parties. Furthermore violence in post-Soviet Georgia
was not limited to the ethnic dimension. Intra-elite politics in the Georgian case was also
characterised by a high level of political violence, culminating in the ‘civil war’ or ‘Tbilisi
war’ that removed Gamsakhurdia from power. How did political violence interact with
ethnic conflict in Georgia, and what did this interaction mean for the production of ethnic
violence?

This chapter explores these questions through the examination of two distinct but related
dynamics. The first is the salience of internal competition over the cultural definition of the
titular nation. It is argued here that for a variety of structural, cultural and contingent factors,
intra-group competition over the promotion of a unitary ethnic nationalism was
comparatively low in the Georgian case. Constraints to unitary nation building present in
other republics, such as substantial numbers of russified titulars, economically significant
Russian settler populations or weak historical and symbolic resources for the articulation of
nationhood, were absent from the Georgian context. Furthermore the temporal sequencing of
important events had a uniquely radicalising effect on the Georgian revival that was not
replicated in other republics. This explains why the Georgian national revival was the most
radically nationalist of any in the Soviet Union. The second dynamic is the degree of
competition for political power following the demise of central Soviet authority. In this
dimension elite competition in Georgia was outstandingly high. It is argued here that this is
attributable to the fact that the devolution of political authority to republican structures in
1990-91 was not matched by a commensurate devolution of power. Extreme institutional
weakness and its corollary, the rise of militarised informal networks, led to the intertwining
of ‘national’ struggles for sovereignty and ‘personal’ struggles for power. In short, this
chapter argues that while the prominence of ethnic conflict in Georgia may be attributed to
the first dynamic, its transformation into large-scale violence is best understood as a function
of the second: competition for power rather than a ‘progression’ or ‘escalation’ of prior
ethnic conflict.

The chapter is organised in two parts. Part I is dedicated to the first dynamic mentioned
above, exploring the different factors contributing to the dominance of radical ethno-
nationalism at the head of the Georgian revival are considered. The discourse and policies of
the revival leadership are then reviewed. In Part II explores the second dynamic, considering
the different factors in the transformation of ethnic conflict into violence.

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5.2 The Georgian Revival: Structural Facilitation, Institutional Constraints and Event-
generated Influences
In 1985-1986 the reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev under the slogans of glasnost’,
perestroika and uskorenie were followed by a cycle of protest across a wide range of social
groups in the Soviet Union. National issues or demands did not originally form part of
perestroika; in 1987, however, Crimean Tatar, Russian nationalist and Baltic groups began to
take advantage of the new opportunities presented by liberalisation for the articulation of
nationalist protest. By mid-1988 dissidents from different republics had established contact
with one another and popular fronts began to appear. The ability of dissidents and cultural
entrepreneurs in different republics to take advantage of the new opportunities for protest
was far from uniform. Beissinger suggests that three key factors determined outcomes of
successful mobilization (Beissinger, 2001, 147-59). Firstly, structural factors, such as
ethnofederal status, degrees of linguistic assimilation and urbanisation and the symbolic
capital available in a group’s historical background, influenced the ability of nationalist
entrepreneurs to convert opportunities for protest into mass mobilization. Secondly,
institutional constraints structured the strength and type of mobilization. Thirdly, and this is
Beissinger’s principal insight, the influence of events and the power of analogy with other
groups was a key factor. I now examine the influence of these three factors for explaining
the outcome of successful mobilization in Georgia.

Structural facilitation
The significance of the structural context analysed in the previous chapter for the outcome of
successful mobilization in the Georgian case may now be specified. Composite
incorporation facilitated mobilization in three important ways: the low degree of russification
among Georgian titulars, titular domination of the republic’s urban centres and the presence
of second-order titular groups in control of rival fragments of the state. We have seen that
enhanced titular mobility produced an indigenisation of central political structures in the
Georgian republic, and that the Georgian pattern of economic development did not entail a
substantial influx of Russian-speaking expertise or labour. This resulted in one of the lowest
rates of russification for any union republican nationality. It also contributed to the
indigenisation of the republic’s most important urban centres. Thus although at 54.7% the
Georgians were not one of the most urbanised of Soviet nationality groups in 1989,
compared, for instance to Belorussians at 65.1% and Tatars at 69%, this was moderated by

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Georgian majorities in the republic’s main urban centres. Georgians formed outright
majorities in all cities with populations over 100,000, with the exception of Sukhumi, where
they formed a plurality. The Georgian revival did not consequently share the structural
limitations of a diminished linguistic base and weakened urban networks of, for example,
Central Asian or Belorussian contexts.

The presence of second-order titular groups in control of rival fragments of the state was an
important galvanising influence. This rivalry had become well established in public
consciousness by the Abkhazian protests of 1978, the concessions made by Moscow at that
time and subsequent protests by Georgian dissidents in 1981 against the allegedly
discriminatory treatment of Georgians in Abkhazia. Abkhazian and Georgian protest from
1988 had a catalytic influence upon each other. Moreover, in contrast to the role of Nagorno-
Karabakh in Armeno-Azerbaijani relations the role of Moscow as arbiter in Georgian-
Abkhazian relations was less apparent from a Georgian perspective. Nationalist goals in
Georgia and Armenia conditioned opposing stances on each republic’s membership of the
Soviet Union: Armenia could only secure the transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh to its jurisdiction
by remaining part of the Soviet Union; Georgia could only definitively resolve the threat of
Abkhazia’s removal from its jurisdiction by leaving it. This provided an earlier basis for
nationalists to promote secession in Georgia than in Armenia.

Institutional Constraints
The degree of Georgian penetration of republican state structures also produced specific local
institutional constraints. This is most vividly illustrated in the high degree of Communist
Party penetration of Georgian society. Party membership at 8.5% of all Georgians in 1989
was higher than anywhere else in the Union, comparing with 7.9% of Russians in the RSFSR
and 5.4% of Azeris in Azerbaijan (Aves, 1992, 157n1). Party power in Georgia was both
ethnically cohesive and fused with informal client-patron relations to an extent not paralleled
in Baltic or Slavic republics. This produced a cross-cutting pattern of networks and vested
interests which made the Georgian Communist Party (GCP) highly resistant to nationalist
mobilization. From the outset of liberalisation, the GCP under the conservative leadership of
Jumber Patiashvili assumed a stance of uncompromising obstructionism vis-à-vis the national
movement. The most important consequence of this was the marginalisation of the
movement’s more moderate strand. A close observer of this period concluded:

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 “The response of the Georgian leadership in the early months of 1989 to this
emergence of mass political awareness was a combination of rabid hostility and
political impotence. It is symptomatic that, although many of the demands being
expressed were idealistic to the point of being utopian (ranging from immediate
transition to full self-financing to secession from the USSR), the authorities made
virtually no attempt to come up with alternative compromise measures” (Fuller,
1989d, 18).105

This stance can be contrasted with that of the party authorities in the Baltic republics, which
made the mobilizational resources of the party and state available to the popular fronts:
statements of the front leadership were published in the official press, meetings were
televised on state television and their demonstrations received permits (Roeder, 1991, 210-
11).

Event-generated Influences
What role did events play in converting a favourable structural context into mobilization, and
overcoming institutional constraints? This question is best approached through a temporal
perspective. Nationalist mobilization in Georgia may be seen as solidifying over a three-
phase period: a first phase lasting from 1987 to autumn 1988, a second phase lasting from
autumn 1988 to April 1989 and a third phase of mass mobilization after that time.

In the first phase the influence of prior patterns of protest was evident in the predominance of
ecological, cultural and linguistic – rather than openly political or secessionist – concerns.
From October 1987 this was supplemented by the increasing input of dissident-led
groupings, the Helsinki Union and the newly formed Ilia Chavchavadze Society, which
supplemented a human rights agenda with a more overtly nationalist tone. Nevertheless it
was campaigning over cultural-environmental issues, such as the preservation of the
Davitgareja Monastery, which had a wider resonance in Georgian society (Aves, 1992, 158).
The spring and summer of 1988 saw a very rapid escalation in the scale of protest in the
Baltic republics; increasingly, transnational contacts were also established between the
dissident movements in different republics. Mid-1988 saw several mass demonstrations in

105
Nodia reports that some Georgian oppositionists claimed that the GCP deliberately encouraged the radicals
and helped Gamsakhurdia, since the Baltic example demonstrated that moderate groups were more dangerous
than loud but ineffectual radicals (Nodia, 1996c, 76).

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the Baltic republics, coinciding with the 19th All-Union Party Conference. These
developments may plausibly be seen as having an ‘emboldening’ effect on Georgian
mobilisation (Beissinger, 2001, 179). Open parallels were drawn by leading Georgian
nationalists to developments in the Baltic republics: Zviad Gamsakhurdia, head of the more
radical Society of St Ilia the Righteous, envisaged the Georgian Popular Front, first proposed
in November 1988, as a ‘legal organisation’ modelled on the Baltic Popular Fronts (Fuller,
1989a, 24). The autumn of 1988 saw increased street protests against russification, the
destruction of historical monuments and for greater political autonomy, culminating in mass
demonstrations reaching 100,000 participants in November, protesting proposed amendments
to the draft USSR constitution which would have removed the (nominal) republican right to
secession.

By early 1989 mass protest had very rapidly become part of the Georgian political landscape.
Yet the heterogeneity of views amongst the informal and semi-official organisations
operating in this period needs to be emphasised. Secession and independence from the
Soviet Union was not a uniform or even majority view at this point. The Georgian political
scene was highly fragmented between overtly nationalist elements advocating independence
and moderates debating options of reform within the framework of perestroika. At the
radical end of the spectrum, a number of groups including the Society of St Ilia the
Righteous, the National Independence Party and the National Democratic Party advocated
independence as the central component of their platforms, yet they remained minority
groupings with memberships numbering hundreds not thousands, by mid-1989 (Fuller,
1989a, 24). The Shota Rustaveli Society, originally established in March 1988 as a semi-
official counter to the Ilia Chavchavadze Society, represented a more moderate approach. At
this end of the spectrum, and among liberal intellectuals at large, independence was still seen
in spring 1989 as an extreme demand. In March, for example, liberal historian Akaki
Surguladze argued against the futility of ‘extreme’ demands of total Georgian independence
(Fuller and Ouratadze, 1989, 29).

Until April 1989, then, the demands of the radical nationalists were far ahead of the crowds
mobilizing in the streets. Nationalist mobilization in Georgia was radicalised in April 1989
by two related events. Firstly Abkhazian demands for secession from the Georgian republic,
raised in June 1988 by a petition sent to the 19th All-Union Party Conference, were reiterated
by a mass rally in March 1989 in the village of Lykhny, Abkhazia. Abkhazians again

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demanded the upgrading of Abkhazia’s status, and by implication, secession from Georgia.
This protest was reciprocated in Tbilisi by a mass demonstration lasting several days. The
critical tipping point in favour of secessionist protest in Georgia was the violence of 9 April
1989, in which the Soviet Ministries of Defence and Interior used spades and toxic gas to
disperse this demonstration, resulting in sixteen casualties.106 This event, a deus ex machina
not paralleled in any other republic, did more to radicalise perceptions of Georgia’s status
within the Soviet Union than anything else. This event ushered in the third phase of
mobilization, lending an enormous symbolic legitimacy to the cause national independence.
As Jonathan Aves observes, “Although the death-toll in [the subsequent disturbances in July
in Abkhazia] was greater, the tragedy of 9 April had a far greater symbolic effect for
Georgians. Inevitably it strengthened the hands of the radicals who rejected any compromise
with the Soviet authorities and any goal short of total independence” (Aves, 1992, 161).

The key outcome of the April killings in Georgia was the universal appropriation of
secession from the USSR as their principal agenda by all political parties and movements in
Georgia: from that point, the differences between different parties lay in the means to achieve
this end. In late May, Akaki Bakradze, the chairman of the moderate Shota Rustaveli Society
published a new draft programme for the Society in which the restoration of independence
was listed as among its primary aims (Fuller, 1989a, 21-22). The Communist Party, facing
crumbling legitimacy, also appropriated the goal of secession. One year after the killings, the
replacement First Secretary of the GCP, Givi Gumbaridze, averred: “the highest aim of the
Communist Party of Georgia is the restoration of national independence. This policy is
irreversible and there is no alternative to it” (Nelson and Amonashvili, 1992, 687). The
failure of state repression in effect led to a bidding war to harness the enormous symbolic
legitimacy conferred by a programme for Georgian independence.

The tip towards mass mobilization for explicitly secessionist goals is reflected in the
contrasting results to the elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1989,
before the April killings, and the elections in October 1990 to the Georgian Supreme Soviet.
In the elections of March 1989, the Popular Fronts of the Baltic republics succeeded in
electing blocs of deputies to the Congress; in Georgia, by contrast the Communist apparat

106
A further four people died in hospital, while hundreds were hospitalised with injuries and complaints
suggesting the use of CN and CS toxic gases. For a detailed account of these events see Leaning, Barron and
Rumack, 1990.

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was overwhelmingly triumphant: 57% of the seats were uncontested, with the Communist
party candidate receiving at least 50% of the vote in each (Aves, 1992, 164n14). In the
elections to the Supreme Soviet a year and a half later, the nationalist Round Table-Free
Georgia bloc won 54% of the vote and the Communist party 29.4% (Fuller, 1990b). An
opinion poll carried out in November 1990, just after the Supreme Soviet elections, found
that 85% of those surveyed believed that it was ‘very important’ for Georgia to become
independent, and a strong majority believed that this issue should be resolved immediately
(Nelson and Amonashvili, 1992, 696). With the exception of Abkhazia, Georgia did not
participate in the referendum on the preservation of the Soviet Union on 17 March 1991. In
an independent referendum carried out at the end of March 1991, in which 92% of those
eligible voted, 99.6% were in favour of secession and Georgian independence.107 Two
months later, radical nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia won 86% of the vote in the May 1991
elections for an executive president.

The Georgian national revival represents a departure from prior patterns of protest, emerging
as part of the wider cycle of mobilization across the Soviet state beginning in 1987. This
wave of mobilization found favourable structural conditions in Georgia: the Georgians were
a group of sufficient size, urbanisation, cultural integrity and possessing a utilisable store of
symbolic capital to allow nationalists to take advantage of the broader cycle of mobilization.
Yet the ‘strength’ of Georgian national identity or the receptiveness of the social terrain does
not explain the success of mobilization or the rapidity with which a historical pattern of
cultural and linguistic demands changed to openly secessionist demands. Rather, it is the
psychological impact of failed state repression and the wider context of systemic crisis in the
face of multiple secessionist challenges that, in conjunction with structurally facilitating
conditions, explains the success of the Georgian revival.

5.3 The Triumph of Radicalism

How and why did the most radical elements of the Georgian national movement come to
dominate the revival, and why did an exclusionary politics of nationalism come to define the
first post-Soviet Georgian regime? Here I expand on the political leadership variable in an
attempt to explain what broad conditions and political factors specific to the Georgian
context allowed radical ethnonationalism to capture the broader revival movement.

107
The apparent unanimity of this result needs to be seen in the context of the issue of citizenship, discussed
below.

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Consider once again the differences between most-favoured-lord, colonial and integralist
models of incorporation. A key tension and constraint to ethnonationalism in most-favoured-
lord and colonial contexts is the presence of a substantial group of assimilated titulars. This
group stands to be disadvantaged by indigenisation and presents a cosmopolitan foil to
ethnonationalists, advocating instead more inclusive concepts of nationhood. Cosmopolitans
formed significant constituencies in both Ukraine and Kazakhstan advocating multinational
and civic paradigms of statehood. In post-Soviet Ukraine cosmopolitans played a key role in
limiting Ukrainian ethnonationalism, mobilising on some issues on the basis of their ethnic
affiliation, but sharing ground on others with Ukraine’s Russian minority. This has in fact
contributed towards trust between the polarised Ukrainian ethnonationalist and Russian
groups and limited ethnonationalism in Ukraine to what Wilson has called a ‘minority faith’
(Casanova, 1998, 88-89; Wilson, 1997). A significant degree of linguistic russification
among professionally skilled titulars, especially in urban milieus, has likewise tempered an
ethnonationalist agenda in post-Soviet Kazakhstan (Dave, 1996). In Georgia, by contrast, the
low degree of assimilation by titulars removed this constraint to ethnonationalism. There
was no substantial or influential russified component for whom a cultural Georgian
nationalism was unnatural or threatening. Unlike their counterparts in Ukraine or
Kazakhstan, Georgian nationalists did not therefore face the obstacle of an anti-cosmopolitan
revolution. Furthermore, Georgian nationalists did not face the constraint of alienating a
functionally significant Russian intelligentsia. Unlike Russians in Central Asia, perceived as
significant in terms of roles which titulars could not – in the immediate future at least – play,
we have seen that Russians in Georgia were not associated with important technical or
intelligentsia functions that titulars could not fulfil. A ‘drain’ of Russian technical expertise
from Georgia had begun already in the 1960s, leaving Georgia with one of the best pools of
titular human resources of any republic by the end of the Soviet period.

Structural conditions in the Georgian context thus removed certain key internal constraints to
ethnonationalism. Yet these alone are insufficient to explain why the radicals achieved
dominance. A further important aspect to this question is the institutional constraints to the
more moderate strands of the Georgian national movement. Communist Party
obstructionism contributed significantly to the demise of respective platforms for moderates
in the Georgian national movement. Consider the respective fates of the Shota Rustaveli
Society and the Georgian Popular Front. Established in March 1988 as a semi-official

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movement to counter the Ilia Chavchavadze Society, the Rustaveli Society attracted a large
number of moderates under the leadership of respected literary critic Akaki Bakradze.
Although not intended to be a political organisation, during the November demonstrations
against the proposed amendments to the USSR constitution, the Society assumed
responsibility for collecting signatures for a petition against the amendment. In response, the
GCP postponed the Society’s founding congress, scheduled for January 1989, to March,
when Bakradze published a programme for the Society indicating his commitment to
independence and proposing the role of oppositional party for the Rustaveli Society (Fuller,
1989a, 22-23). The GCP response to this move was to postpone indefinitely the Society’s
second congress. Without a firm institutional base and given the pace of events, the
Rustaveli Society was increasingly marginalized; it played no significant role in the elections
to the Supreme Soviet in November 1990, and within days of Gamsakhurdia’s victory in the
elections Bakradze was removed from the leadership of the Society and replaced with a
Gamsakhurdia supporter, Tengiz Sigua (Fuller, 1991a, 11).

What of the Georgian Popular Front (GPF)? The idea for the formation of a popular front
was first proposed in summer 1988, although its founding congress did not take place until
June 1989, after the radicalising impact of Abkhazian protest and the April killings.108 The
GPF was from the outset committed to the restoration of Georgian state independence, but in
contrast to the radicals, its programme emphasised implementation of this goal “within the
framework of existing legislation”.109 In contrast to the Baltic fronts, however, the statutes of
the GPF prohibited party functionaries from holding posts in the front’s executive; moreover,
the party authorities continually signalled their refusal to cooperate with the organisation, for
example by not registering it as a legal organisation (Fuller, 1989b, 22). Months after its
opening congress, the GPF still had no premises of its own, no telephone connection, no
access to state media and publication of its newspaper had ceased after the first issue. These
were problems common to all new political organisations, but the particular weakness of the
GPF meant that it could not play the same role as its counterparts in the Baltic republics.
There, broad fronts constituted umbrella organisations with which different ideological
orientations could affiliate as factions, rather than forming rival parties, and in which

108
The chairman of the GPF board, Nodar Natadze nevertheless specified that the organisation’s objective was
“increasing the republic’s political and economic sovereignty, with due consideration for the interests of all
peoples living in its territory”. Pravda, 29 June 1989, in Current Digest of the Soviet Press (hereafter CDSP)
41, no.26, 23.
109
Programme of the GPF, cited in Fuller, 1989b, 22.

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potential politicians could gain valuable experience (Aves, 1992, 166). The GPF did go on to
participate in the Supreme Soviet elections, winning 12 seats, yet its role in the national
movement remained consistently marginal.

The final critical factor in the institutional marginalisation of moderates in the Georgian
national movement was the capture of the state by radicals. The elections to the Georgian
Supreme Soviet in November 1990 were the first truly multiparty elections to take place in
the USSR, and the willingness of the GCP to allow this test of public opinion was evidently
related to newborn confidence following the divisions of the national movement in the
preceding period (Aves, 1992, 166). Over the course of summer 1990, most political parties
in Georgia decided to participate in the elections to the Supreme Soviet in October rather
than those for the National Congress, a body established by one wing of the radical
nationalist opposition as an alternative to official Soviet structures. The victory of
Gamsakhurdia’s Round Table bloc signalled the marginalisation both of rival radical groups
in the National Congress and of the moderates. In the immediate aftermath of
Gamsakhurdia’s victory, numerous moderate political rivals were removed and the nascent
multiparty system, along with moderate voices of Georgian society, rapidly collapsed under
the weight of Gamsakhurdia’s authoritarianism.

Underlying the marginalisation of moderate positions within the Georgian national

movement is of course the weight of the April killings. This event, as we have seen, lent an
enormous personal legitimacy to the radical leadership imprisoned immediately afterwards,
and preceded the consolidation of a significant moderate rival to the radicals. As Jonathan
Aves observes, “the elements in Georgian society that sought a gradual, constitutional
approach to the question of independence found the ground falling away from under their
feet” (Aves, 1992, 162). This event lent an overwhelmingly moralistic aspect to the national
movement, better suited to a radical worldview and discourse than a gradualist approach.
Beyond Georgia, however, the vector of change also seemed to increasingly support a
maximalist stance on the independence issue. With declarations of independence in the
Baltic in March 1990, arguments in favour of gradualism and working within existing
frameworks lost coherence.

This analysis has pointed to the various factors shaping the internal dynamics of the Georgian
national revival. The structural context in Georgia provided fertile ground for the articulation

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of nationalist protest. Furthermore, unlike other republics such as Ukraine or Kazakhstan,
the legacy of an institutionally complete ethnic community removed key structural
constraints to ethnic nationalism. Beyond structural factors, however, the potential for a
more moderate approach was further reduced by firstly the failure of an institutional base for
the moderate wing of the revival to emerge, and secondly, the critical impact of events.
Rather than any ‘inherent’ radicalism in Georgian nationalism, the extremity of the
nationalism that followed and the marginalisation of a more moderaten position need to be
seen against this backdrop of both structural and contingent factors. Alternative choices were
available at different junctures.

5.4 Framing strategies and Ethnic Policies

Nationalists always have varied materials available for the elaboration of contrasting visions
of the ‘national reality’, and traditions are “themselves invariably complex and multivocal
and can therefore support a wide range of representations” (Laitin, 1998, 320). In addition to
the often vague adoption of formally liberal pluralist notions from the West, post-Soviet
national revivals had widely varying historical narratives and legal precedents available to
them in their articulation of nationhood and its relationship to democracy. This was of
particular significance for the articulation of principles according to which ethnic pluralism
would be managed, and consequently for ethnic conflict. John Ginkel has argued that in the
Latvian case, for example, strategies of identity construction that emphasised the historical
precedent of the democratic interwar Latvian republic played a critical role in moderating
potential conflict between Latvians and Russians (Ginkel, 2002). Leaders of the Latvian
revival emphasised the democratic treatment of the Russian minority in the interwar period:
“Latvian nationalist agitation was couched as a greater political movement, not as a battle
between Latvians and Russians for control of the territory” (p.426).110 Where a democratic
precedent of statehood was unavailable, other post-Soviet revival leaders in potentially
conflictual situations opted for the construction of what Edward Schatz calls “ambiguous
cultural categories” (Schatz, 2000, 78-80). Thus Kazakh leaders promoted the ambiguous
category of “Eurasianism” to defuse the conflict potential of Kazakh-Russian relations. In
both cases the framing strategies deployed by elites played an influential role in sending cues
of political accommodation to non-titular minority groups.

110
Aina Antane and Boris Tsilevich similarly report that electoral support for ethnic Latvians among the
republic’s Russian-speaking population can be explained in terms of the candidates’ advocacy of democratic
rather than purely ethnic ideas (Antane and Tsilevich, 1999, 100).

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In Georgia the framing strategies adopted by Gamsakhurdia and the Round Table took very
different form. This was in a sense a reflection of Georgia’s historical legacy: unlike their
Baltic counterparts the leaders of the Georgian revival could not meaningfully point to an
interwar history of accommodating minority rights. A ‘restorationist’ discourse of Georgian
statehood, though present, was marginal. This was in part due to the greater elapse of time
since Georgian independence and in part to its association with Marxism, which limited its
attractiveness as a Marxist-led phenomenon to ethno-nationalists in the Round Table. In
Georgia it was the nation, rather than prior independence, that was portrayed as providing the
moral precedent for independence. Moreover, the symbolic repertoire and cultural narratives
upon which Georgian ethno-nationalism in this period drew upon was thoroughly suffused
with Soviet tropes of primordial nationality. In the statements and texts of the Round Table
leadership very little attempt was made to accommodate the 30% of the republic’s population
that was not Georgian; on the contrary, Georgia’s multi-ethnic composition was actively
portrayed as a Soviet legacy in spite of which independence was to be realised. The
ethnicisation of the independence issue was consequently a major factor in heightening
ethnic conflict.

Figures from cultural intelligentsias often assume key roles at the outset of national revivals,
drawing legitimacy from their intimate relationship with various fields of the ‘forgotten’
national patrimony: language, literature, religion and so on. As we have seen, Soviet cultural
elites had long been institutionalised as the guardians of an endorsed cultural nationalism;
under perestroika across the Soviet Union these elites assumed a new prominence as cultural
nationalism increasingly dovetailed with more openly political agendas. The Georgian
national revival as a whole was no exception, being outstanding for the high representation of
literary figures, philologists and historians.111 The radical leadership, however, was
dominated by key figures from the Georgian dissident movement. Although also cultural
figures, the leaders who came to head the revival, calling themselves the ‘irreconciliables’,
had extensive experience of underground dissident activism, samizdat publication and

111
In addition to the dissident leadership, other prominent figures included literary critic Akaki Bakradze, leader
of the Rustaveli Society, philologist Nodar Natadze, elected leader of the Popular Front in July 1989, historian
Gia Chanturia, leader of the National Democratic Party, and filmmaker Eldar Shengelaia of the liberal
Democratic Georgia bloc.

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imprisonment at the hands of the authorities.112 Their lack of experience of political office, a
fact indeed central to their authority as ‘authentic’ national leaders, led to a style of politics
aptly described by Gia Nodia as ‘revolutionary aestheticism’:

“Political struggle (for whatever cause) was interpreted as a set of heroic-aesthetic

gestures, and anything like pragmatism or political calculation was considered to
be a disgrace, hence unacceptable. Notional rejection of any compromise with the
projected ‘enemy’ (Russia, or ‘the Kremlin’) practically resulted in failures to
achieve any compromise between different factions of the national-independence
movement...” (Nodia, 1996b, 26).

The radicals were thus men who had dedicated their lives to the study and expression of
Georgian culture, and had no experience of the tactical finesse or strategic accommodation
required of political leadership. This inevitably had an effect on the type of political
discourse they would prefer in office.

In ways characteristic of ethno-nationalism, Georgian nationalist discourse in this period was

constructed around a number of core dichotomies. At the heart of its representation of
interethnic relations was the Soviet distinction between the categories korennye
(‘indigenous’) and prishlye (‘newcomers’). The historicizing of this distinction led to the
construction of a binary narrative of Georgian civilization as a struggle against ethnic
outsiders, as opposed to common Soviet injustices shared by all groups. Consider
Gamsakhurdia’s own texts, The Spiritual Mission of Georgia and his exegesis of the tenth
century verse Praise and Glory of the Georgian Language (Gamsakhurdia, 1991a, 1991b).
The latter text, written in the context of exile following Arab invasions and domination of
Georgia, and preserved in three manuscripts from Mount Sinai, is redolent with the messianic
themes of martyrdom and resurrection:

The Georgian language lies buried until the day of the Second Coming to bear
witness so that God may reveal all languages through this language.

112
The leaders of this group were Merab Kostava (1939-1989) and Zviad Gamsakhurdia (1939-1993). In the
early 1970s they formed the Georgian Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights. Both were arrested in
1977; while Kostava remained intransigent, Gamsakhurdia publicly recanted his views in return for a pardon,
subsequently compromising his authority as a dissident figure.

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 And this language is asleep to the present day, and in the Gospel this language is
called Lazarus…
And he [the Gospeller] spoke of love because every secret lies buried in this
language.
And the prophet David spoke of being dead for four days because ‘A thousand
years are but as a single day.’
And in the Georgian Gospel right at the beginning of Matthew, sits c’ili,
Which is a [Georgian] letter and which signifies exactly four thousand; -and this
is four days and being dead for four days, therefore straightaway being buried
through the death of the Father’s baptism.
And this language, adorned and blessed in the name of the Lord, [now] humble
and afflicted, awaits the day of the Second Coming of the Lord…113

This mystical text had obvious appeal for Gamsakhurdia. In his reading, the references to a
four day burial and the equation of one day to a thousand years reveals the meaning of the
text in the eclipsing of a ‘Japhetic’, or proto-Kartvelian, civilisation, by outsiders:

“the author of Praise tells us in Christian terminology the myth emergent from
ancient mysteries: a once exalted and powerful Georgian tribe and its language
are humbled and afflicted for four thousand years, but this humbling is its own
Christ-like baptism and burial (hence it is “dead for four days”), after which
inevitably follow resurrection and ascension. The Georgian tribe likewise will
rise again after this four-day baptism, while at the Second Coming it will take
back the position of universal spiritual leader and judge of mankind which it
possessed in the past” (Gamsakhurdia, 1991b, 33).

In a rendition of a standard nationalist myth of redemption, the lengthy history of Georgia’s

humiliation at the hands of others is thus read as a prolonged trial, at the end of which the
Georgian nation will find resurrection and re-instatement as God’s proxy on earth. The
messianist undertones in this vision are evident.114 Gamsakhurdia’s specific contribution was

113
A complete translation, on which this is based, can be found in Hewitt, 1994.
114
Messianism, defined by Peter Duncan as ‘the proposition or belief that a given group is in some way chosen
for a purpose’, is an apt description of Gamsakhurdia’s nationalism. Several key tropes of messianist
nationalism, including the close identification of the church with the nation, a fall from grace after a golden age

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to overlay the indigenous/non-indigenous dichotomy with a racial distinction between an
‘Ibero-Caucasian race’ oppressed by ‘Indo-European’ newcomers, an innovation that
effectively turned the racial ideology of the Russian Empire on its head.115

Almost completely absent from Georgian nationalist agitation was imagery relating to the
potentially more inclusive narratives available in Georgian history, those of a ‘pluralist’
mediaeval statehood and Orthodoxy. Orthodox imagery, potentially inclusive of Orthodox
traditions amongst Ossetians, Abkhazians, Slavs and others, did not feature strongly in this
period.116 When it was invoked it was in sharp contrast to earlier representations of Georgian
Christianity as tolerant in nature, reconfigured by Gamsakhurdia in overtly militant terms:
“Christianity [in Georgia] was adopted in its warrior, militant aspect. One could say that
Georgian Christianity in its essence is a militant Christianity” (Gamsakhurdia, 1991a,
206).117 By reifying the categories of language, race, and indigenous pagan rather than
broader Orthodox religious traditions Gamsakhurdia limited the potential constituency
sharing his messianic vision for Georgia. Within the framework of the ‘Ibero-Caucasian’
narrative ‘colonising Indo-Europeans’, i.e. Georgian’s non-Caucasian minorities, by
definition could not participate.

Gamsakhurdia’s ideas admittedly represent the most extreme form of Georgian nationalist
discourse in this period, yet they are by no means isolated examples. Their basic postulates
were reflected in a wave of nationalist literature in the republic’s media ‘proving’ that

and prolonged victimisation at the hands of others, are all central narratives of the discourse of Georgian
ethnonationalism (Duncan, 2000, 1).
115
Gamsakhurdia accepted the theory postulated by maverick Soviet linguist Nikolay Marr of an original
Basque-Caucasian-Dravidian Ursprache as evidence of an ‘Ibero-Caucasian’ or Japhetic civilisation stretching
from the Pyrenees to India, declining in inverse proportion to the rise of an Indo-European civilisation. Within
the logic of Gamsakhurdia’s vision, all relations of power in ancient European history and mythology can be
understood in terms of the Indo-European/Japhetic dyad, be they Indo-European patricians exercising power
over Japhetic plebs in ancient Rome or a Japhetic Prometheus shackled to the Caucasian mountains by Indo-
European Zeus. In Gamsakhurdia’s writings the category ‘Indo-European’ serves as a trope for imperialism.
For example, the eagle, which eats out Prometheus’ heart everyday, is identified as “the symbol of Indo-
European imperial might” (Gamsakhurdia, 1991b, 33).
116
This is confirmed by Western visitors’ accounts of this period. Fairy von Lilienfeld observed. for example:
“the voice of the church had no weight in Georgian society as a whole” (von Lilienfeld, 1993, 226).
117
Gamsakhurdia sought a nativisation of Orthodoxy by identifying Georgian Orthodoxy with the pagan cult of
St. George through which, in his view, Georgia had accepted Christianity. Gamsakhurdia thereby also
subscribed to the myth of the ‘warrior nation’, popular amongst several Caucasian nationalities: “In the
victorious celestial horseman, who executes the divine mission of the salvation of pagan nations and languages,
he [Zosime] foresees the image of Georgia …so that the rider of the white horse and the Georgian nation have
one and the same mission: the redemption of the sins of mankind” (Gamsakhurdia, 1991b, 9).

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Georgia’s ethnic diversity was recent and above all a colonial imposition.118 The near-
complete absence of rival civic or multinational discourses attests to the profound penetration
of Soviet ideological concepts of ethnic nationality, and the correspondingly limited sources
of a countervailing liberal pluralist stance.

The discourse of the revival was closely tied to the policies enacted by Gamsakhurdia’s
regime. These are summarised in Table 5.1. These policies were broadly directed at
entrenching the Georgian hegemony already existing in the republic. The reluctance of the
revival to meet or even address the linguistic, cultural and political demands of non-titulars
assumed the continuation of Georgian dominance and over-representation, and the
considerable benefits deriving from them. The logical conclusion of a more egalitarian or
pluralist discourse would have been the redress of this situation, apportioning the benefits of
representation, office and status differently. Despite its often mystical premises and obscure
content, as a coding of ethnopolitical relations in Georgia Zviadism was not, therefore,
irrational: its claims for the privileged status of a core nation were in keeping with the
expectations and interests of Georgian titulars.

The Georgian State Language Programme, although vague in comparison with the equivalent
programmes of other republics, made it clear that survival without Georgian would be
difficult in an independent Georgian state (Gosudarstvennaya Programma Gruzinskogo
Yazyka, 1995). The status of Russian and minority languages was left unclear; no right to
native-language education was stipulated, although the continued existence of non-Georgian
schools was not questioned. The Georgian citizenship law, adopted in June 1991, took the
zero-option, conferring citizenship to all residents with no language requirements for
residents of ten years or more.119 However, the citizenship issue was politicised in a series of
statements by Gamsakhurdia as an issue first of indigenousness and secondly, loyalty to the
project of Georgian independence. In December 1990 Gamsakhurdia made the
unprecedented suggestion that citizenship might be restricted to those who could prove their
ancestors were resident in Georgia at the time of the annexation by tsarist Russia in 1801
(Fuller, 1991a, 12). Gamsakhurdia later threatened to withhold citizenship – and thereby the

118
For literature in this vein see, for example, Gamqrelidze, 1990; Lomouri, 1989.
119
The law offered citizenship to persons “living permanently in the Republic of Georgia on the day this law is
enacted, who are permanently employed or have a legal source of income on the territory of the Republic of
Georgia, and who declare their desire to take the citizenship of the Republic of Georgia and sign an oath
declaring loyalty to the Republic of Georgia”.

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right to own land in an independent Georgia – from any region not voting in the majority in
favour of Georgian independence in the referendum of 31 March 1991 (Fuller, 1991b). The
99% approval of independence in those regions participating in the referendum needs to be
seen in this light.

The question of territorial autonomy, absent from most other republics, was politicised early
on by the reiteration of Abkhazian demands for secession from Georgia in 1988-89.
Emulation of the Abkhazian example contributed to a consolidation of calls for the upgrading
of South Ossetia’s autonomous status and unification with the North Ossetian autonomous
republic of the RSFSR among more radical elements over the course of 1989 (Fuller, 1989c).
In the third autonomy, Achara, concern over Gamsakhurdia’s intentions vis-à-vis the region’s
status was undoubtedly a factor in the Round Table’s defeat in the Supreme Soviet elections
at the hands of the Communist Party (Fuller, 1990c, 14). Prior to the 1990 elections
Gamsakhurdia guaranteed the continued existence of the autonomies in a sovereign Georgia
(Izvestiya, 10 November 1990, in CDSP 42, n.45, 8). After his victory, however,
Gamsakhurdia backtracked and proposed the abolition of the Acharian autonomy in
November. This was followed in December by the abolishment of the South Ossetian
autonomy by the Georgian Supreme Soviet in response to a South Ossetian declaration of
sovereignty (Fuller, 1990d). This ensured that any commitments made to minorities were not
looked upon as credible. In 1990 Gamsakhurdia reached a power-sharing agreement with the
Abkhazian leadership on the retention of a Soviet-style quota system for Abkhazian
representation in the autonomy’s governing institutions.120 This agreement was, however,
left hanging in the air after Gamsakhurdia’s removal from power in late 1991, and the re-
instatement of the 1921 Constitution.121 This offered territorial autonomy to Abkhazia and
Achara, but offered no practical basis for what this might mean. Minority groups could
almost certainly interpret its provisions as falling short of Soviet autonomy.

120
Different discursive frames within Georgian nationalist discourse contributed to incoherence on the status of
Abkhazians. Gamsakhurdia, following Ivane Javakhishvili’s erroneous theory of the linguistic unity of all
Caucasian languages, included Abkhazians within the fold of his theorised Ibero-Caucasian race
(Gamsakhurdia, 1991a, 220). Simultaneously the theory of Abkhazian ‘non-indigenousness’ first mooted in
1889 by Bakradze and reprised in 1954 by Ingoroqva was popularised in the national media (Chkheidze, 1989).
121
This agreement was implemented for the parliamentary elections in Abkhazia of autumn 1991. It allocated
28 seats for Abkhaz deputies, 26 for Georgian deputies and 11 to deputies of other nationalities, but did so by
allocating electoral districts to particular nationalities rather than proportional representation. Thus electorates
in each district had to vote for competing candidates from one ethnic group. After the election, the Abkhaz
fraction within the parliament was able to secure a narrow majority of 33 through the support of 5 of the 11
deputies representing other nationalities. It then began to introduce extensive constitutional changes that
violated the requirement of a two-thirds majority for constitutional amendments, leading to a Georgian boycott.
For a detailed discussion of this power-sharing agreement and its demise, see Coppieters, 2001, 21-28.

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The weak presence of non-Georgians in the revival movement was formally institutionalised
in the election law adopted by the Georgian Supreme Soviet in August 1990. According to
Article 8 of the law only parties whose activities covered the whole of the republic were
allowed to nominate candidates (Fuller, 1990a, 20).122 This effectively banned the
participation of regional political organisations run by and representing national minority
groups; regionally based groups were thus sidelined and could only make a political impact
by boycotting the elections. The demise of the alternative National Congress, at the founding
conferences of which representatives from Abkhazian and Ossetian organisations had been
present, cut off a further institutional forum for minority voices.

The polarisation of the independence issue in Georgia was reflected in the results of the
March 1991 referendums on the preservation of the Union and Georgian independence
respectively. The Abkhazian authorities defied the Georgian parliament’s boycott of the
former; 52.4% of those eligible to vote in Abkhazia did so, of which 98.4% voted for the
preservation of the Union (Fuller, 1991b, 20). This is strongly suggestive that the entire non-
Georgian population of Abkhazia voted in favour of continued membership of the Soviet
Union. In the referendum on Georgian independence, 90.5% of those eligible voted, of
which 98.9% voted in favour of independence. These results need to be seen in the context
of Gamsakhurdia’s threat mentioned above to withdraw citizenship from entire regions in the
case of a ‘no’ vote. The referendum was also boycotted in Abkhazia.

This discussion has shown how nationalist agitation under the Round Table leadership served
to construct a post-Soviet Georgian identity in an exclusive and threatening manner.
Furthermore, the myths and tropes deployed to construct Georgian identity are an indication
of the thorough penetration of Soviet attitudes even among the dissident leadership dedicated
to anti-Soviet resistance. From the outset, the radicals portrayed Georgia’s predicament in
ethnic terms, rather than by reference to historical or democratic frames. Moreover, this was
overlaid by a moralising rhetoric deeply hostile to either ambiguity or compromise.

122
Gamsakhurdia had originally demanded that this law also include the requirement that voters pass a test of
knowledge of the Georgian language in order to be eligible. This was included in the final version (Aves, 1992,
169).

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Table 5.1: Summary of Language, Citizenship and Autonomy Policies enacted 1989-1991

Georgian State Language Programme, published August 1989

Official Role of Russian

Not specified. (Mention of Russian dropped from 1991 Georgian Constitution).

Official Role of Minority Languages

Not specified. Preparation of new Georgian-Russian, Georgian-Abkhaz, Georgian-Ossetian, Georgian-
Armenian and Georgian-Azerbaijani dictionaries stipulated (Art.17)

Language of republican laws and acts

Not specified

Language requirements for jobs

Not specified

Language on public signs

Not specified, but administrative documents, tickets, signs, advertisements, labels, notices, public information
and instructions in different contexts to be produced in Georgian ‘for general [vseobshchego] usage’ (Art. X.2,
3)

Language of instruction
Obligatory tuition of Georgian as a subject in non-Georgian schools (Art.14). Obligatory written and oral
exams for entry into higher education in humanities; also for entrance into technical, theatrical and artistic
institutes (Art.9); obligatory ‘conversation’ about Georgian language and literature for entrance into non-
Georgian higher education institutes (Art.14)

Georgian Citizenship Law, June 1991

Universal for all resident of Georgia as of June 1991, with no language requirements for residents of 10 years or
more (threatened to be withdrawn from any region in which a majority voted against Georgian independence in
referendum of 31 March 1991).

Autonomy
South Ossetia: autonomy abolished December 1990.

Abkhazia: autonomy agreement made 1991. Autonomy to be retained in the form of a regional parliament, with
28 seats reserved for Abkhazian nationals, 26 for Georgian nationals, 11 for others.

Achara: abolition of autonomy proposed by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, November 1990; autonomy left intact.

Source: Gosudarstvennaya Programma Gruzinskogo Yazyka, published in Nationalities Papers, Vol.23, No.3,
1995, 625-630; Report on the USSR, various issues.

5.5 From Conflict to Violence

The triumph of the radical wing of the Georgian national revival precipitated a rapid rise in
the degree of ethnic conflict in virtually every important policy domain. This situation was
not unique to Georgia: the attainment of sovereignty in all of the national republics was
characterised to varying degrees by conflict over the boundaries of emergent national
citizenries, the status of national languages and the status and rights to be afforded to non-
titular minorities. What distinguishes the Georgian case is the rapidity with which political
violence emerged as a corollary of new configurations of power, and extended to ethnic

161
conflicts. What were the sources of political violence in Georgia, and how did they interact
with ethnic conflicts to produce ethnic violence? I now examine these questions in terms of
four variables: the interpenetration of the emergent Georgian state with militarised informal
networks, shifts in political authority arising from devolution to republican institutions, the
sanctioning of violence by the state and the focussing of ethnic fear by elites.

5.5.1. Competition for Power and the Rise of Warlord Armies

The success of the Georgian national revival resulted in what was effectively the capture of
the state, in the form of emergent executive and representative bodies. The new ruling elite
suddenly found itself attempting to discharge the same state functions which it had dedicated
the previous year to subverting. This context differed from that of the Baltic states, where
the Communist party elite had been instrumental in granting an institutional basis for the
revival movement. It also differed from that of Central Asia, where party elites retained
power and adopted a mild nationalism after independence. Moreover, the devolution of
political authority to the Georgian republic was not matched by a commensurate devolution
of power. The ‘state-ness’ of the embryonic republic in the critical period 1990-93 was
consequently extremely compromised. Possessing a nationalist ideology of statehood and
endowed, from December 1991, with a formal external sovereignty by recognition in the
international state system, the emergent Georgian state lacked almost entirely the capacity for
internal sovereignty. Functions integral to stability and state coherence, especially
mechanisms of social control and institutionalised channels of elite negotiation, were absent.
The absence of a central authority with even minimum capacity led to an intense factional
politics of competition for power and a resulting reliance of official state structures on
informal networks, the militarisation of which is a critical factor in explaining the outcome of
violence.

One of the consequences of the hostility of the Georgian Communist Party to the informal
movements of the late 1980s was their very weak institutional base. As we have seen, this
was a major factor obstructing the consolidation of a moderate alternative to radical
nationalism. Shunned by the Communist Party and lacking resources of their own, the
leaderships of emergent movements turned to informal networks for resources. Informal
networks, originating in extended family, regional and patronage links, had been a consistent
feature of Soviet Georgian society. These networks, in Georgia and elsewhere, were closely

162
intertwined with the criminal world, comprising a ‘shadow’ network of resource allocation
that nevertheless operated through official state structures.

Informal networks were brought into the centre of politics by the intensity of competition
between different radical elements in the Georgian revival. In the form of paramilitary units
different networks were affiliated to competing organisations. The largest paramilitary
group, sakartvelos mkhedrioni (‘Knights of Georgia’) was led by Jaba Ioseliani and affiliated
to the National Congress; a rival formation, the White George Society, was led by Tengiz
Kitovani and affiliated to the Roundtable bloc.123 Paramilitary groups first made their
presence felt politically in the period leading up to the elections to the National Congress in
September 1990 and those to the Supreme Soviet in November, during which the offices and
personnel of the three leading radical groups, the Round-Table bloc, the National
Independence Party and the National Democratic Party, were subjected to arson attacks and
assassinations (Izvestiya, 10 November 1990, in CDSP 42, no.45, 8; Fuller, 1990a, 20). The
isolation of nationalist movements from the state in the early phase of the revival was thus a
key precipitant in the entry of paramilitary organisations and a rapid rise in political violence
preceding the sustained ethnic violence of 1991-1992.

The emergence of paramilitary organisations aligned with political factions was a symptom
of a wider crisis in the institutions of social control. The Soviet state was generally effective
in providing incentives for the quiescent participation of its citizenry in its political
structures, and imposing sanctions against transgressions of social order. The fragmentation
of security agencies against a backdrop of declining social guarantees over the perestroika
period resulted in a rapid increase in levels of crime across the Soviet Union. In Georgia,
recorded crime increased by 46% between 1988 and 1992; the year 1989 inaugurated a
period of rapid increase in the proportion of crimes against private property, theft of public
property and violence against the person (Gachechiladze, 1995, 138-140).124 Significantly
the highest indices of serious crime for the period 1988-1989 (the last years before the
collapse of 1992-1994 for which reliable data exists) were recorded in the city of Sukhumi
(71.3 criminal offences per 10,000 of the population, compared with a republican average of

123
Other Georgian paramilitary organisations included the White Eagles, the White Falcons, the Black Panthers,
the Kutaisi National Guard and the Merab Kostava Society.
124
In November 1990 the Georgian Prosecutor’s Office reported that the number of pre-meditated murders and
attempted murders in Georgia had increased by 67.6% over the previous six months. It also noted the rapid rise
of politically motivated killings (Izvestiya, 10 November 1990, in CDSP 42, no.45, 8).

163
23.9), rural Abkhazia (45.7) and the city of Tskhinvali (43.8) (p.144). In the republic at large
highways were increasingly terrorised by armed gangs. While not symptomatic of ‘ethnic
tensions’ per se, these developments are suggestive of an ongoing crisis of social control
preceding the devolution of political authority to republican governments.

An important consequence of the weakening of the security regime was the dispersal of
weaponry, of which personalised paramilitary formations were the major beneficiary. The
raiding of Soviet Interior Ministry arms depots, police stations, the discovery of arms caches,
and the sales of arms by individuals within Soviet military structures are a consistent feature
of news reports in this period, pointing to the existence of a large and easily available
weapons market.125 Several reports attest to the fact that police personnel were often
complicit in handing over weapons; in the aftermath of riots in Sukhumi in July 1989, for
example, Colonel Shatalin of the Soviet Interior ministry observed that the weapons used
“were seized as a result of carelessness or outright betrayal on the part of police personnel”
(Izvestiya, 22 July 1989, in CDSP 41, no.29, 15). By 1989 an open weapons market existed
in Georgia, which grew in terms of technological sophistication over time. In 1991, as a
result of bilateral accords pursuant to the dismantling of Soviet power, the Georgian republic
further inherited a substantial quantity of formerly Soviet military equipment, which was to
provide the basis for Georgian military capability in the war in Abkhazia.

In conditions of extreme institutional weakness, Gamsakhurdia incorporated his paramilitary

allies under Kitovani’s command into the state in the form of the ‘Georgian National Guard’.
At the same time he moved quickly to neutralise the mkhedrioni group affiliated to his
opponents with a wave of arrests and the imprisonment of Ioseliani. The degree of control
exercised over Kitovani was minimal, however, and he was permitted to continue pursuing
his own personal financial interests. As a result of increasing internal factionalism over the
period of Gamsakhurdia’s presidency, however, Kitovani and Ioseliani emerged at the head
of the opposition, and through their control over their organisations effected Gamsakhurdia’s
removal from power at the end of 1991. This began a two-year period in which there was no
effective state in Georgia; it was the personalised armies of Ioseliani and Kitovani that were
the immediate successors to the Soviet state in independent Georgia.

125
See for example Izvestiya, 1 July 1989, in CDSP 41, no.26, 24; Izvestiya, 1 September 1989, in CDSP 41,
no.35, 21; Megapolis-Express, 19 December 1991, in CDSP 43, no.51, 20. For a discussion of the spread and
impact of weaponry on conflict in the Soviet Union as a whole, see Beissinger, 2002, 313-317.

164
As a result, the Georgian state assumed some of the qualities of ‘warlord politics’ (Reno,
1998). The undisciplined activities of warlord armies acting without and often in direct
conflict with formal negotiation processes were the most important source of violence in
Georgia in 1991-2. These armies have been usefully characterised by Human Rights Watch:

“These fighters are not real soldiers in the professional sense. Typically, they
serve in loose units out of personal loyalty, or for booty, or revenge on specific
individuals, or a desperate hope of protecting or regaining their territory. These
are, significantly, armed formations without non-commissioned officers, the
disciplinary backbone of professional armies. There are no sergeants in these
ranks, no one to insist on discipline among the ordinary soldiers even of a strictly
military, prudential nature – to sandbag positions, dig trenches, safeguard
bivouacs…where there is a predisposition to particular brutality, as in the highly
charged context of ethnic-driven warfare, military or paramilitary leaders can be
expected to build on this prior motivation. There is a real incentive to free their
forces from restraint for tactical reasons, so long as the intent to terrorize and
drive away civilians is there” (Human Rights Watch Arms Project, 1995, 11).

Paramilitary units were also bolstered by the release of prisoners on condition that they fight
in ‘national struggles’ in Abkhazia and South Ossetia (p.22). Warlords themselves also often
carried extensive criminal records. Worthy of emphasis is the particular logic of warlord
operations: rather than strategic or tactical considerations characteristic of more organised
military action, warlord armies are driven by the maximisation of personal gain prior to the
political outlawing and settlement of violence. Armed bands in pursuit of personal gain face
powerful incentives to ‘smash and grab’ as quickly as possible before the conclusion of
ceasefires and legal requirements for withdrawal. This pattern is clearly visible in the
Georgian assault on Sukhumi in the opening weeks of the war in Abkhazia. On the basis of
interviews with refugees from Sukhumi, Human Rights Watch observes:

“While the Georgian forces appeared to be operating under no particular

command, they did seem to have a clear agenda. They roamed through the city at
will, especially at night, looting and pillaging. While political negotiations took
place in Moscow, armed Georgian men poured daily into Sukhumi, intoxicated by

165
 a heady mixture of nationalism and privateering. The first of many cease-fire
agreements, signed August 16, called for Georgian troops to withdraw from the
conflict zone; fighters in Sukhumi therefore had plenty of incentive to take
whatever loot they could with them at every opportunity” (p.20).

While being an immediate source of violence, warlord armies were also indispensable to the
organisation of sustained violence for political elites with severely compromised institutional
bases engaged in struggles over sovereignty (Beissinger, 2002, 311). This situation created
the opportunity for a meeting of the ‘private’ interests represented by warlord armies and the
‘collective’ interests of political elites. Without sufficient capacity to fight its political
struggles, the state and its fragments turned increasingly to private actors; hence
Gamsakhurdia’s institutionalisation of Kitovani’s White George Society as the Georgian
National Guard. The superseding of political leaders drawn from intelligentsia strata by
increasingly fragmented militias under the nominal control of murky entrepreneurial figures
is also reflected in the South Ossetian case. Here the political leadership of Torez
Kulumbegov, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, a long-standing figure in South Ossetian
politics and an advocate of a negotiated separation from Georgia, was undermined by the
emergence of a number of personalised militias favouring the ‘military option’. In June 1992
senior Ossetian officials recognised the possibility of Ossetian militias engaged in military
action in the autonomy outside of their control. This was also suggested by Russian military
personnel in the region:

“According to servicemen in units of the former Soviet Army that are stationed in
Tskhinvali, several political factions that have armed detachments of their own
are operating among the Ossetians, and their interests do not always coincide.
The largest and most influential of them are Chochiyev’s and Teziyev’s
groupings…Torez Kulumbegov is largely a figurehead. He has no real armed
support and is always forced to operate with an eye to what his more powerful
partners are doing. Also operating in the city are small but well-armed bandit
groups that are simply trying to profit from this war” (Izvestiya, 12 June 1992, in
CDSP 44, no.24, 15).126

126
Oleg Teziev, Chairman of the South Ossetian Council of Ministers, was a successful entrepreneur possessing
business ties in Russia that enabled him both to supply South Ossetian militias with salaries and weaponry and
pay for wages and pensions in Tskhinvali as a whole. Teziev’s resulting authority in South Ossetia is suggested

166
This suggests that any unitary concept of ‘the Georgian side’ or ‘the Ossetian side’ misses
both the nature of the perpetrators of violence, their motivations and the dynamics of
competition between them and political elites. The perpetrators of ethnic violence in this
context were paramilitary groupings, or private armies (Fairbanks 2002), acting
autonomously of ethnic leaderships in state structures. As both the Georgian and the
Ossetian contexts demonstrate, moreover, warlords were rapidly able to displace political
leaders’ agendas of negotiated solutions to sovereignty struggles in favour of continued
violence. The interpenetration of the state and militarised informal networks was thus a key
outcome of the devolution of political authority in Georgia under conditions of extremely
low state capacity. It should be emphasised that this interpenetration preceded and was
indeed a critical causal factor in the large-scale ethnic violence of 1992-93.

5.5.2 Shifts in Political Authority and Targets of Protest

Studies of the incidence of violence within a larger mobilization cycle have shown that
violence tends to be ‘rear-packed’, that is, it tends to occur later in the mobilisation cycle
(Beissinger, 2002, 284-89). This suggests that rather than the structural properties or
‘cultures of violence’ of groups engaging in violent mobilisation, it is shifts in power in the
earlier stages of mobilisation that are important in explaining the shift from non-violent to
violent patterns of mobilisation. A key element in these shifts of authority is the
enhancement of opportunities for actors engaging in violent forms of mobilisation, and the
undermining of those engaging in non-violent forms. Thus, Beissinger argues of the post-
Soviet case: ‘[v]iolence emerged as a phase within a larger cycle of mobilisation and was
shaped in part by the specific opportunities and vulnerabilities presented by targets of
contention to those seeking to challenge them” (p.317).

Moscow was the traditional target of minority mobilization in the late Soviet period, in the
non-violent forms of the sending of letters and petitions to Moscow, the passing of quasi-
legal acts and declarations within regional institutions of government, the publication of
letters and articles in the regional press, meetings, demonstrations and strikes. While these
forms of mobilisation had not been successful in bringing about the maximum demands of

by the fact that when he was arrested in Vladikavkaz in June 1992 for the organisation of attacks on military
depots, militia leaders in Tskhinvali threatened to come to Vladikavkaz to free him. He was subsequently
released at the request of Akhsarbek Galazov, Chairman of the North Ossetian Supreme Soviet ( Moskovskie
Novosti, 21 June 1992, in CDSP 44, No.25, 5).

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protesting groups – authorised secession from a union republic – they had (for example in
Abkhazia in 1978) been successful in securing other concessions. Protest directed at
Moscow continued to characterise minority mobilization in the earlier phase of the revival
period between 1989 and the elections to the Georgian Supreme Soviet in November 1990.
In 1990-1991, the shift in political authority from Moscow to new republican state
institutions controlled by titular elites confronted minority groups with a quite different
context. In contrast to the former Soviet centre the new republican elites were not vulnerable
to petitions, letters, strikes or other forms of non-violent disturbance emanating in their own
peripheries. Crucially, they were also increasingly less vulnerable to sanctions imposed by
the Soviet state, signifying the redundancy of the prior pattern of non-violent Moscow-
oriented protest by minority groups. On the other hand, republican elites did not possess an
overwhelming military advantage vis-à-vis rival fragments of the state. In Georgia the
military capacity of the new state was increasingly limited, as we have seen above, to
fragmented and personalised warlord armies.

The devolution of political authority to new republican state-political institutions, the elected
Georgian Supreme Soviet and the Georgian presidency, was accompanied by the closure of
institutional channels for conflict resolution. Non-Georgians had been notably absent from
the movement from the outset; this was further underlined by the electoral law of August
1990 banning regionally based parties. The Abkhazian and South Ossetian popular fronts,
Aidgylara and Adaemon Nykhas, were therefore excluded from the electoral process, and the
Abkhazian and Ossetian populations forced to register their political will by boycotting rather
than participating in the incipient electoral process. As noted above, institutional exclusion
was under-scored by the failure of the Georgian revival leadership to appeal to supra-
national, democratic values rather than ethnonationalism appealing only to the Georgian
majority. In large part due to the collapse of the Communist opposition over the period
1989-90, Gamsakhurdia was relieved of pressure to actively embrace democratic, ‘Western’
values as a foil to ‘Soviet’ values. Gamsakhurdia’s Round-Table faction faced no opposition
from the Communist party with the result that its legislation was passed unanimously.

The closure of political avenues of negotiation and the dispersal of weaponry enhanced the
attractiveness of violent forms of protest directed at the vulnerable underside of the new
republican authority: local co-ethnic communities and representatives of republican law-
enforcement agencies. Although incidents of violence did place earlier, sustained violence

168
began in South Ossetia in the first months of 1991, continuing until July 1992; in Abkhazia,
sustained violence ensued in August 1992. In both cases the onset of sustained violence
followed shifts in political authority either from Moscow to the Georgian republic or within
the Georgian centre itself. I now examine each case in turn.

Prior to the devolution of political authority to the Georgian republic, protest took non-
violent form in South Ossetia. Mobilization took the form of strikes, demands for the raising
of the autonomous region’s status to that of autonomous republic and the declaration of
sovereignty to this effect (Izvestiya, 28 October 1989, in CDSP 41, no.43, 37). A crisis in
November 1989 followed an attempt by Gamsakhurdia to stage a rally of his supporters in
the region’s capital Tskhinvali (see below); this was defused through three-way “dialogues
between the republic’s party and Soviet leaders…and representatives of the population of the
province and nearby districts of eastern Georgia” (Tass 12 January 1990, in CDSP 42, no.2,
32). At this juncture, then, the Soviet centre was still able to play its traditional role of
adjudicator in channelling conflict. The key precipitant of violence in South Ossetia was the
abolishment of the autonomy by the newly elected and Georgian-dominated Supreme Soviet
in December 1990. This signalled the increasing impunity of the Georgian centre to
determine the issue of border definition and revision without reference to Moscow. Against
an authority facing few sanctions from the Soviet centre non-violent forms of protest were
increasingly redundant. Where the republican authority was vulnerable was in the physical
presence of security personnel and co-ethnic populations in the now-abolished autonomy.
Following the December abolition, in early January 1991 personnel from the Georgian
Interior Ministry were attacked and disarmed in Tskhinvali, resulting in the introduction of a
further 3,000 Georgian police officers into the region (Izvestiya, 8 January 1991, in CDSP 43,
no.1, 10). Four officers were killed in this operation, which presaged the military blockade
of Tskhinvali and first round of sustained violence in South Ossetia.

The onset of the second round of sustained violence in South Ossetia and the war in
Abkhazia followed a second critical shift in political authority, this time within the Georgian
centre. As we have seen, in December 1991 Gamsakhurdia was removed from power by the
paramilitary groups that had previously supported him. He was replaced by a State Council,
consisting of Eduard Shevardnadze, Kitovani and Ioseliani. The second round of sustained
violence is best explained through the power struggle within the State Council.
Shevardnadze sought to neutralise the power of the warlords and legitimate his own position

169
through the holding of elections in September 1992. This created a vital ‘window of
opportunity’ for warlords to delay the re-consolidation of state power in the republic. In mid-
1992 Kitovani embarked on two major new operations that would stall the stabilization of the
republic: a renewed attack on Tskhinvali in May-June which “came as a complete surprise to
the Georgian leadership” and his incursion into Abkhazia in August in disobedience of
Shevardnadze’s orders (Izvestiya, 12 June 1992, in CDSP 44, no.24, 16). Kitovani’s
continued autonomy and ability to secure the loyalty of his irregulars depended on the non-
consolidation of legitimate authority in Georgia, to which end his advance into Abkhazia
served well. As noted above, warlords favoured ‘military options’ over negotiated political
resolutions to outstanding conflicts, which would thereby allow the continuation of their
activities.

The shift of political authority represented by the emergence of nominally sovereign

republican institutions in 1990-91 ruptured the historical pattern of adjudication of ethnic
conflict by the Soviet centre. With this shift the respective strengths and vulnerabilities of
opposed political actors also changed. The imperviousness of republican authorities to non-
violent protest acted both to frustrate those favouring non-violent protest and to enhance
opportunities for those willing to use violence. In this new configuration of power it was
local co-ethnic communities that represented the vulnerable underside of republican
authorities, and an available target for perpetrators of violence.

5.5.3 The Sanctioning of Violence by the State

A further factor empowering those willing to use violence was the sanctioning of ‘co-ethnic
violence’ by the state. In a strong state, spontaneous outbreaks of violence or even large
congregations of people usually attract the overwhelming presence of security forces
dedicated to the preservation or restoration of social order. By contrast, through
prevarication, the failure to punish perpetrators of violence and even the active
encouragement of violence by co-ethnic populations, rival fragments of the state in Georgia
lent a sense of impunity to the practice of violence. As argued above this is attributable to
the reliance of rival state fragments on privatised sources of violence in their struggles over
territoriality and sovereignty.

The collusion of the state in acts of violence began with the April 9th tragedy. In an interview
with the Russian newspaper Izvestiya in 1992, Georgian Prosecutor General Vakhtang

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Razmadze observed the tacit alignment of Georgian police forces with the revival movement
following their defence of the April protesters against attack:

“the police force became all but a component part of the national-liberation
movement. Captive to this attitude towards them, policemen more and more often
closed their eyes to crimes committed behind the screen of the national
movement. All a person who assaulted or robbed someone had to do was say that
he was a member of an opposition political party, and the case was dropped”
(Izvestiya, 17 April 1992, in CDSP 44, no.16, 17).

According to Razmadze this situation intensified over the period of Gamsakhurdia’s

incumbency, during which his supporters “got away with everything. The police almost
never intervened in these skirmishes, and at the same time failed to react to ordinary criminal
acts”. Over the course of 1989 the effect of this suborning of the constraining influence of
security agencies was felt in a number of confrontations between representatives of ethnic
groups in Georgia. Beissinger’s analysis of the fighting in Abkhazia in July 1989 provides
ample evidence that the storming of the Tbilisi State University building by Abkhazian
crowds faced no censure from security agencies, being able to engage in violence in full view
of police officers and in some cases receiving assistance from them (Beissinger, 2002, 300-
302). A similar trend obtained in South Ossetia. In November 1989 an attempt by
Gamsakhurdia to stage a rally in Tskhinvali led to a standoff between his supporters and
Ossetians on the edge of the city. Following the dispersal of the crowds a number of clashes
ensued, resulting in 19 wounded Ossetians; in the two days that followed some six deaths and
a further twenty-seven gunshot wound casualties were reported (Denber, 1992, 7). On the
same day it was reported: “police who had been sent in from other districts in the republic
were withdrawn from the province, because there had been many reports of their
participation in the actions of the armed Georgian “unofficials”” (Moskovskie Novosti, 3
December 1989, in CDSP 41, no.48, 21). No disciplinary action was taken either by
Gamsakhurdia or the South Ossetian authorities against those involved in the scuffles.
Rather than intervening to disperse violent confrontations, security agencies either stood by
or actively participated, lending a sense of approval and impunity to radical elements
perpetrating acts of violence.

171
The imparting of a sense of licence to violence was not restricted to security agencies,
however. Georgian state officials also sent encouraging cues to local ethnic communities
that violence would be tolerated and even assisted. In August 1991 Georgia’s then Minister
of Education, Temur Koridze and the Minister of the Interior, Dilar Khabuliani, told a
meeting of the local Georgian population in Sukhumi that if the Abkhazian authorities signed
the new Union treaty, ‘rivers of blood would flow’, and, crucially, that in the event of local
fighting, the local (Georgian) police would be on ‘their’ side (Hewitt, 2002). This meeting
was secretly filmed and broadcast on Abkhazian television.

Violence in the name of the broader political goals of territorial integrity and sovereignty was
thus sanctioned and even encouraged. Through acquiescence, encouragement and even
participation in acts of violence, state officials posited a link between the collective struggles
for national sovereignty with the justification of violent means to achieve this end. This can
be explained by the fact that devolved political authority was not matched by the acquisition
of the commensurate empirical qualities of statehood, most importantly in the field of a
coercive monopoly. In an institutionally fractured environment, rival parties in conflicts over
power and territoriality were increasingly forced to collude with private suppliers of violence
in the pursuit of their political goals. That they were able to draw upon a social constituency
to do so – co-ethnic communities – is a legacy of the ethnofederal construction of the Soviet
state. Regional fragments of the state passively looked on or actively encouraged violence
perpetrated by their ‘own’ ethnic constituents on the vulnerable underside of their political
opponents – local ‘compatriot’ communities.

5.5.4 Focusing Ethnic Fear

Finally, what Brubaker and Laitin call the “cultural construction of fear” needs to be
considered (Brubaker and Laitin, 1998, 441). Scholars of ethnic conflict point to discursive
struggles following events that attempt to define and specify their meaning in politically
advantageous ways. Events come to be defined as ‘ethnic’ in their underlying structure and
motivation through ex post codification and framing by participants, elites and observers.
Thus, Brubaker and Laitin argue, the “ethnic” quality of ethnic violence is not intrinsic to the
act itself; it emerges through after-the-fact interpretive claims” (p.445). Narratives of
outsider violence that are framed in cultural or historical terms offer political entrepreneurs
opportunities to construct current struggles more plausibly as ‘ethnic’ and, if they are
successful, reap the rewards of sharper boundary definition, greater group cohesion and

172
raised levels of mobilisation. The success of such framing strategies depends on their
resonance with established narratives and beliefs among their target constituencies.

Entrepreneurs seeking to ethnicise political events in the post-Soviet context were

advantaged by the ubiquity of ethnic categorisations in Soviet society and the unquestioned
legitimacy of ethnicity as an inalienable, ascriptive identity. From the outset of the revival
period political elites and the media in Georgia unequivocally portrayed politics through
ethnic categories. Consider the portrayal of Georgia’s demography by Georgian nationalists.
The 1989 census confirmed the demographic expansion of the Georgian nationality to the
point where the Georgian majority, at 70.1%, was greater than it had ever been since the
beginning of Soviet power (Appendix A-1). Nevertheless nationalists interpreted Georgia’s
demography in terms of the life-threatening expansion of the non-Georgian population:

“Georgia stands on the brink of a real catastrophe – of extirpation. What devil

ruled our minds, when we yielded up our land, gained inch by inch over the
centuries, defended and soaked with our blood, to every homeless beggar that has
come down from the fringes of the Caucasus, to tribes that have neither history
nor culture…We must make every effort to raise of the percentage of Georgians
in the population of Georgia (currently 61 per cent [sic]) to 95 per cent”
(Mishveladze, 1989).

Proposals were made to limit the birth rates of non-Georgian (especially Muslim)
nationalities, and active steps were taken in the ‘repopulation’ of border zones with Georgian
inhabitants. In the early phase of the revival nationalist radicals combined slogans evoking a
sense of ethnic threat (‘Put an End to Demographic Expansion!’) with the introduction of
tropes of violence, such as ‘Let the Blood Flow!’ and ‘We’ll answer terror with terror’
(Pravda, 3 January 1989, in CDSP 41, no.1, 17).127 This introduction of violence into the
symbolism of the revival was a symptom of the movement’s weakness, not its strength.
While simultaneously intimidating minorities, its real purpose was to induce a tip in favour
of the radicals’ agenda among the Georgian population, which as we have seen had yet to
respond to the radicals’ agenda prior to April 1989. Leaders of national movements

127
If the testimony of one of Gamsakhurdia’s rivals, Irakli Tsereteli, is to be believed, prior to the 1990
elections Gamsakhurdia was actively exhorting crowds to “chop up” and “burn out” non-Georgians (Izvestiya,
10 November 1990, in CDSP 42, no.45, 9).

173
perceived to be ‘strong’ logically avoid the introduction of violence, which is detrimental to
their goals: under similar conditions of uncertainty, Estonian and Latvian nationalists took
pains to reassure minorities in order to secure their passivity.

The introduction of violent imagery was not exclusive to the Georgian nationalists. Cultural
and political elites in Abkhazia and South Ossetia also actively engaged in the construction
of national pasts as narratives of violent victimisation, at the hands of ethnic Georgians.
Abkhazian historiography in the perestroika period opened up hitherto forbidden themes of
the nature of Georgia’s policies in Abkhazia in the Stalin years, relations between Abkhazian
and Georgian party elites and the demographic marginalisation of the ethnic Abkhazian
population (Lak’oba, 1990). A narrative was constructed in which ‘the Georgians’,
portrayed as a unitary ethnic community, were portrayed as mounting a century-long
colonising campaign in Abkhazia, with the ‘forced assimilation’ of Abkhazians qua
Abkhazians as its ultimate goal. The regional violence associated with the Georgian Social
Democratic Republic of 1918-1921 was a fertile source for ethnicising interpretations. In
June 1989 Vladislav Ardzinba, then a deputy for the Gudauta district of Abkhazia, made this
assessment of the history of the Georgian Social Democratic Republic of 1918-1921 at the
ninth meeting of the Congress of People’s Deputies:

“On May 26, 1988, the restoration of Georgian statehood was marked in the
Abkhaz Autonomous Republic. It is up to historians to assess the significance of
this event in the life of the Georgian people. However, in the history of the
Abkhaz people these events are connected with a state that in 1918 drowned the
Abkhaz Bolshevik Commune in blood, and afterwards terrorised Abkhaz villages.
This celebration brought the Abkhaz and Georgian populations to the brink of a
clash…If urgent measures are not taken, something irreparable may happen”
(Izvestiya, 4 June 1989, CDSP 41, no.28, 15).

South Ossetian intellectuals likewise interpreted the decline of the population of South
Ossetia to Georgian hatred rather than social or economic factors, and portrayed the political
struggle with Gamsakhurdia as “a fight to the finish”.128 In 1997 I listened to Kosta Kochiev
of the de facto South Ossetian Ministry of Foreign Affairs describe the events of 1990-1992

128
Interview with Torez Kulumbegov, Moskovskie Novosti, 28 June 1992, in CDSP 44, no.26, 30; interview
with Znaur Gassiev, Pravda, 6 January 1992, in CDSP 44, no.1, 14.

174
in South Ossetia as the ‘second Georgian genocide of Ossetians in this century’ to a seminar
at Oxford University. For both groups Gamsakhurdia’s own inflammatory construction of a
militant Georgian nationalism was a gift lending immediacy and plausibility to their claims.

These narratives provided an ethnic frame for the codification of acts of violence as
ethnically targeted. All of the events in Abkhazia and South Ossetia were framed by political
elites and the media as ethnic in their causal structure and motivation, a frame also utilised by
figures in Russia to justify Russian interventions against ‘genocide’.129 Conflicting codings
of ‘Russia’ itself was a key component in the rhetorical arsenals of Georgian and minority
groups. For minority groups, ‘Russia’ was coded in terms of Soviet statehood, evoking the
values of internationalism and the support of small peoples, rather than the ethnic homeland
of Russians. Thus, the claim that ‘Abkhazia is Russia’ is an evocation of Russia as the
Soviet Union, compatible within the framework of internationalism with the demand for
Abkhazian self-determination (Achba, 1993).130 Conversely, Georgian interpretations coded
‘Russia’ as Rus’, the ethnic homeland of an imperial nation, associated with cultural
imperialism, russification and Russia’s strategic interests as a great power (derzhava).131
These conflicting interpretations were used – and continue to be used – as interpretative
frames for the political stances and strategies of actors in Russia, codifying them either as the
protective influence of a tolerant multinational state or the divide and rule tactics of an
empire.

The deployment of narratives focussing ethnic fear is not to suggest unequivocally that
violence was then seen as ‘rational’ by its perpetrators and can be therefore explained by
such cultural constructions. We do not have evidence that narratives of ethnic hatred were
believed and reproduced at the level of the individual; we have no way of knowing, for
instance, whether Ossetians really believed en masse that a ‘Georgian genocide’ against them
was imminent. Indeed some post-conflict popular accounting explicitly recognises the role
of elite constructions in its dismissal of the conflicts as perpetrated from above by conniving

129
This was Ruslan Khasbulatov’s assessment of May-June fighting in South Ossetia (Izvestiya, 15 June 1992,
in CDSP 44, no.24, 16).
130
Achba’s article was a plea for Russian settlement of Abkhazia. Framed in quintessentially Soviet terms,
Achba claimed that Abkhazia constituted a ‘truly internationalist and united environment’, and with institutions
looking after the Abkhaz language, culture and education, no number of Russian settlers could present a threat
to the Abkhazian etnos.
131
See the interviews with Zviad Gamsakhurdia in Gamsakhurdia 1995; Komsomol’skaya Pravda, 21 February
1991, in CDSP 43, no.9, 13.

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politicians.132 For elites engaged in struggles for national self-determination, however, the
prior entrenchment of narratives of ethnic extinction, extirpation and annihilation allowed
them to plausibly gloss actual instances of violence as ethnic in character. The actions of
warlords, for example, could be and were glossed as actions in defence of the ethnic group,
or an attack by an opposed ethnic group, a glossing that resonated with the prior intellectual
construction of perceived historical precedents and ethnic injustices. Violence perpetrated in
the pursuit of private interests was thereby reconfigured as violence for the collective good.
The cultural construction of fear thus sanctified violence and lent a further sense of
legitimacy and impunity its perpetrators.

5.6 Conclusion
This account has emphasised a number of factors explaining the salience of ethnic conflict
accompanying the Georgian national revival and its transformation into violence. First, the
structural context explains why a number of constraints to ethnic nationalism present in other
republics were absent from the Georgian case. Ethnic nationalism was neither constrained by
either a significant Slavic population in Georgia nor by a titular constituency of russified
Georgians. This removed an important potential bridge between the Georgian majority and
predominantly Russian-speaking national minorities. Second, the inflexibility of Communist
party elites in Georgia had the important effect of marginalizing the moderate wing of the
revival movement. Third, the role of events, above all the April 1989 tragedy, played a
critical role in the final triumph of the radical nationalist wing. This combination of
institutional constraints to more moderate alternatives and the enormous moral legitimacy
conferred by ‘Black Sunday’ brought previously marginal dissident figures to the centre of
the independence movement.133 It was this legitimacy that allowed the revival movement to
capture the state, though by a very different route to the more gradualist and accommodating
ceding of state authority to independence movements in the Baltic republics. The nation

132
Indeed, anecdotal evidence often points in the other direction. Ossetian women that I spoke to in the main
market in Tskhinvali in 1997 were adamant that no other two nationalities in the Soviet Union were as close as
the Georgians and Ossetians.
133
Gamsakhurdia’s enormous popularity in the period following the April tragedy needs to be seen in contrast
to his earlier pariah status as a dissident who had recanted after his arrest in 1977. Donald Rayfield provides a
vivid picture of Gamsakhurdia’s transformation over the perestroika period: “In 1987…he appeared at literary
jubilees, exchanging nods with poets and officials, but surrounded by a two-metre circle of empty
space…[After the April massacre] Zviad’s apostasies were forgotten. He became the voice of threatened
national identity. His articles ranted, making “demography” the sole political question. Those I knew as
Stalinist Russophiles mutated into theocratic chauvinists; Zviad’s opponents became his disciples” (Rayfield,
1992, 16-17).

176
building programme that followed was unequivocally rooted in an exclusive ethnic
nationalism inhospitable to Georgia’s minorities.

However, the rapid rise of an exclusive ethnic nationalism cannot explain the outcome of
violence. In explaining this outcome I have emphasised a number of other factors: the
penetration of an institutionally weak state by militarised informal networks, the changing
vulnerabilities of targets of minority protest resulting from political devolution, the erosion of
social control as the state increasingly sanctioned ‘co-ethnic violence’, and the active
representation of ethnic relations by elites through symbols and tropes of violence. These
factors point collectively to the role of contingency in the outcome of violence. While
structural factors can take us so far in understanding the roots of conflict, violence is a path-
dependent outcome inseparable from events and processes taking place within the
mobilization process. This is not to say that structure is not important, but that its impact
needs to be assessed against a shifting context of incentives and constraints to different
political actors and idioms of nationalist politics. The structural legacy of composite
incorporation enabled an exclusive, ethnic Georgian nationalism, yet it cannot explain why
this variety of nationalism and its promoters won out over the alternatives. Moreover, this
account shows that violence was not the result of ‘pent-up enmities’ but an outcome of
specific political opportunities privileging certain actors over others.

To sum up, the Georgian case shows that the sources of ethnic violence are not ‘predictable’
from the sources of prior ethnic conflict. Theories of ethnic conflict that make ethnic groups
the central unit of analysis have difficulty in explaining this disjunction, missing parallel
factors that interact with ethnic conflict and can become a major causal factor in the
production of ‘ethnic’ violence. It is here that the social movements theory deployed by
Beissinger and Tarrow is useful, since it views the arc of ethnic conflict and violence as a
phased process in which earlier developments act as causal factors in subsequent outcomes.
The points to the need for a sustained engagement with the temporal sequencing of events
and the respective constraints and incentives to different political actors within this sequence
if outcomes of violence are to be explained.

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Chapter 6 Post-Conflict Georgia: Neo-internationalism and the ‘Reassembling State’
1995-2000

6.1 Introduction
Following the attainment of statehood, the imperatives facing post-Soviet national elites
changed radically. Echoing the shifting priorities of post-colonial states in Asia and Africa,
state – rather than nation – building assumed priority.134 Elites were confronted with the
difficult task of constructing functioning state bureaucracies to lend reality to juridical
sovereignty. All of the Soviet successor states have, at bottom, been engaged in a quest for
coherence. This applies to both the practical level of establishing a new functional
relationship between the state and the disparate ethnic groups under its jurisdiction, and the
ideological level of formulating a workable doctrine of statehood. In contrast to many earlier
post-colonial states, however, for post-Soviet elites this task was complicated by the need to
balance integrative initiatives with the demands of ethnic redress favouring titular groups.
For reasons we have seen above, in many ways the conceptual ‘toolkit’ for regulating
political membership inherited from the Soviet Union favoured differentiation rather than
integration. In some instances, notably the Baltic republics, state building amounted to a
recanting of the earlier privileging of inclusive identity politics. Particularly in Estonia and
Latvia, policies denying political participation in the new polity to significant non-titular
portions of the population were adopted (G. Smith, 1998b). In those republics where violent
conflict had accompanied the national revival period, the construction of sovereign statehood
posed particular problems. Against the broader canvas of economic crisis and social
disunity, these republics faced the additional problems posed by territorial fragmentation,
sharpened ethnic boundaries and for ethnic majorities, a compromised reputation in the
international arena.

This chapter highlights the linkages between the changed political and international contexts
of independence, and the process of state building in Georgia between 1995 and 2000. It
does so at two three levels. Firstly I ask in what ways did the official discourse of Georgian
nationalism respond to the changed context of an independent Georgian state, and what
pressures, internal and external, influenced this response? Secondly, through what
mechanisms did the independent Georgian state seek to integrate its citizens, and to what

134
For an eloquent analysis of the changed context of sovereignty for anti-colonial nationalist movements, see
Geertz, 1993.

178
extent were these successful? This question is addressed in four areas: language policy,
electoral politics, autonomy and the projection of integrative statehood. In the last part of the
chapter the focus shifts to a cultural analysis of the official nationalism in this period, in
order to ask upon what affective symbols did the new state nationalism draw to make its
appeal, and to what extent (if at all) did it resonate with constructions of ethnic violence in
the previous period in collective memory?

The argument pursued here is that post-conflict state building in Georgia demanded a
backtracking re-instatement of discursive forms and structures associated with Soviet
political order. The nation building efforts of the previous administration – the systematic
privileging of the titular nation’s rights and identity over other groups – were discarded in
favour of the state-led legal entrenchment and discursive promotion of cultural diversity,
weighed against a more diffuse promotion of ethnic Georgian interests. Symbolic references
to ethnic imagery now featured against an official discourse dominated by idioms of
citizenship, inclusiveness and over-arching statehood. I suggest that the post-conflict state in
Georgia may be seen as a ‘reassembling state’, drawing upon an adapted frame of Soviet
internationalism to promote images of multiethnic harmony and civic nation building to
different domestic and international audiences. This took the form of emphasis on discursive
frames of statehood and political – rather than ethnic – homeland, expressed through a
Western idiom of civic nationalism and suffused with local, ‘Georgian’ meanings appealing
to the majority titular constituency. The ideological sacrifice of nationalism in favour of
state building coherence further underlines the minimal empirical statehood inherited by
post-Soviet Georgia. Under such conditions considerable ideological ‘fudging’ of the
relationship between majority and minorities emerged as an important tool in securing
coherence.

6.2 Post-Conflict Georgia: Changed Contexts

All of the emergent Soviet successor states faced a combination of international pressures to
construct civic norms of political membership and domestic pressures to implement a de-
colonising politics of ethnonationalism. In Kazakhstan international pressure for civic
nation-building in a region possessing nuclear arsenals led Kazakh elites to elaborate a
politics of ‘ambiguous categories’, framing the republic’s ethnic diversity within a broadly
integrative ‘Eurasianist’ discourse (Schatz, 2000, 78-80). In Estonia and Latvia an exclusive
ethnonationalist approach was applied to the question of citizenship, yet its political impact

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was tempered by the constraining influence of ‘rejoining Europe’, requiring elites to abide by
‘European standards’.135 International pressures thus moderated the impact of domestic
incentives to secure legitimacy through ethnonationalism. Moldova, like Georgia, faced
serious constraints to its nationalist, pan-Romanian orientation posed by Sovietophile
separatism in Transdniestr. In Moldova convergence between these orientations was
prompted by the electoral victory of communist elites in 2001. This was followed by the
rehabilitation of Soviet nationality policies and historiography, an orientation shared by
Belarus (Kuzio, 2002, 254-57).

In post-conflict Georgia international pressures to temper ethnonationalism came from the

republic’s severe economic distress and the internationalisation of its internal conflicts. War
and territorial fragmentation in Georgia exacerbated the broader economic decline
accompanying Soviet collapse (see Table 6.1). Official estimates in 1994 put the contraction
of gross domestic product compared to 1989 at 70%, the most severe of any post-Soviet
republic (Stone and Weeks, 1998, 1). In 1995 macroeconomic stabilization policies, a wide-
ranging programme for privatisation and structural reform and a new currency, the lari, were
introduced, paving the way for an energetic through precarious recovery, with double digit
GDP growth until 1998.136 The stability of the lari nevertheless remained dependent on
foreign investment, credits and donor support of current-account deficits and vulnerable to
crises in the Russian economy such as that of 1998. Between 1995 and 2000 the state’s
capacity to generate domestic revenue was extremely limited; over this period domestic tax
revenue collected consistently amounted to less than 12% of GDP. Georgia’s dependence on
international aid was consequently very high: external debts expanded from $1 billion in
1994 to $1.6 billion in 2000 (International Monetary Fund, 2001, 125).

The Georgian political elite therefore confronted state building with genuinely minimal
resources and dependence on the goodwill of foreign donors. All of the major existing and
planned economic projects of the country’s first years of independence, the construction of
the pipeline and terminal for oil from Azerbaijan, the development of Georgia’s largest
enterprise, Poti port, and the exploitation of Georgia’s offshore oil reserves, were all
contingent on foreign investment. Conformity with Western democratic norms is an

135
On the moderating impact of the discourse of ‘rejoining Europe’ in the Baltic states, see G. Smith, 1998b,
108-9.
136
Russian rubles remain the main or alternative currency in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and parts of Georgia’s
southern periphery.

180
important competitive advantage for states competing for aid, a principle not lost on the
Georgian elite. As Stone and Weeks observed in 1998, “Donors are remarkably tolerant of
Georgia since it is less corrupt and more democratic than most of its neighbours” (Stone and
Weeks, 1998, 5). Integration into the international state system as a dependent state thus
created powerful incentives to display outward signs of civic nation building and compliance
with Western democratic norms.

Following ceasefires in June 1992 and December 1993 respectively, the conflicts in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia were internationalised as negotiation processes held under the
sponsorship of the United Nations (in Abkhazia) and the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (in South Ossetia). The internationalisation of these conflicts forced
the Georgian state to revise its position from an ethnonationalist one to the principle of
territorial integrity balanced by civic nation building and the accommodation of minority
rights. The removal of the seceded territories, and the concomitant unmixing of their
peoples, also removed the principal focus of earlier ethnonationalism from the Georgian
political arena. The displaced population from Abkhazia, although a highly vocal element in
Georgian politics, was politically marginal.137 As a strategy for the restoration of Georgia’s
territorial integrity, ethnonationalism was no longer feasible or coherent. Post-Soviet
Georgia was also characterised by a large-scale population exodus, which saw Georgia’s
population reduced by over one million since 1989 to 4,371,500 (State Department for
Statistics of Georgia, 2002).

137
Displacement transformed this population from a community of ethnic kindred in need of nationalist support
to a community of betrayal and a lever of influence in the peace process. Discussions with displaced
informants reveals a widespread perception of a moral reprimand in wider Georgian society that would, as one
informant expressed it, “accept them as martyrs for Georgian territory but not as survivors”.

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Table 6.1 Basic Economic Indicators for Georgia, 1994-1999

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

GDP per capita ($) 232.0 535.0 838.0 633.0 644.0 517.0 555.0

Real GDP growth -11.4 2.4 10.5 10.8 2.9 3.0 2.0
(% change)

Inflation rate 15,607.0 162.7 39.4 7.1 3.6 19.2 4.1

Foreign Direct Investment 8.0 6.0 54.0 236.0 221.0 60.0 101.0
($ million)

Unemployment rate 3.6 3.1 2.8 7.5 14.7 14.9 15.1

Gross foreign debt - 37 44 42 45 57 51

(as % of GDP)
Source: Ghia Nodia, ‘Georgia’, in Nations in Transit 2001. Civil Society, Democracy and Markets in East
Central Europe and the Newly Independent States, edited by A. Karatnycky, A. Motyl and A. Schnetzer (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001: 184); GEPLAC, Georgian Economic Trends, No.1 (1999); No.2 (2002).
NB: Statistical data for the Georgian economy is incomplete, inconsistent and far from reliable. Different
sources offer different data, and some measures such as unemployment bear little relation to reality. The data
presented here therefore need to be seen as indicative only of broad trends.

The political elite in post-conflict Georgia thus confronted a dual imperative. On the one
hand the creation of an institutional and discursive framework was required that would allow
for the re-incorporation of the lost territories in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, accommodate
external pressures for the implementation of civic rather than ethnic nation building, and
prevent any further radicalisation of interethnic relations in Georgia. On the other hand, a
civic nation building agenda had to be framed in terms consistent and resonant with the
expectations of decolonisation among the Georgian majority. The ideological foundations
for the independent Georgian state therefore had to accommodate multiple audiences: an
international audience keen to see the adoption of democratic, multicultural policies, the
secessionist regimes in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali, the remaining non-Georgian population and
the titular majority.

6.3 Neo-Internationalism in Post-Conflict Georgia

The Georgian elite’s response to this challenge was to selectively draw upon the frame of
Soviet internationalism. Soviet internationalism was always an ambiguous discourse
vacillating between integrationism in the earlier stages of its proposed dialectic (sblizhenie,
rapprochement) and outright assimilationism (sliyanie, merger) in its final stage. As we saw
in Chapter 4 in Soviet Georgia perceptions of internationalism were coloured by the
progressive consolidation of the Georgians’ demographic majority and their definition as an

182
‘advanced’ nationality. The posited role of Russians as the ‘elder brother’ of the non-
Russian peoples conflicted with Georgian dominance of political structures and the
progressive decline of the Russian population. Nevertheless, as the ethnographic data in the
last section of this chapter show, internationalism was internalised by titulars as a key frame
for the understanding of Georgia’s multiethnic composition. For the political elite, the
internationalist frame offered imagery of interethnic relations resonating with three key
audiences. Firstly its emphasis on interethnic harmony accorded with Georgian titulars’
desires for stability after the conflagrations of the preceding years. Secondly it resonated
with non-titulars’ desires for non-discrimination, effectively replicating the Soviet category
of minority ‘cultural development’. Finally it resonated with international norms of minority
rights and civicness, thereby projecting a favourable image of Georgia to the outside world
after the ethnonationalist excesses for which the country had become infamous.

President Shevardnadze elaborated a culturally neutral and notionally stable idea of historical
Georgian statehood as an over-arching frame suffused with Soviet internationalist
constructions of multiethnic harmony. The ethnonationalism of his predecessor was reversed
through a range of compensatory, though ill-defined, rights to non-titulars and a reading of
Georgian history appealing to ‘inveterate’ titular qualities of tolerance and inclusiveness. In
effect titulars were called upon to accept a diminishing emphasis on the genius of Georgian
culture in favour of rewards of political stability and international recognition accruing from
non-titular integration and a de-ethnicised discourse of national identity:

“Georgian statehood has existed for 3,000 years. We celebrate this remarkable
date, but we must always remember it is only in conditions of strong statehood
that each individual inhabitant in Georgia had the opportunity to develop their
own talents and potential to their full extent. It has always been thus: the strength
of the Georgian state determined not only the material well-being of the entire
population of Georgia, or the development of Georgian intellectual thought and
culture, but…was the primary guarantor of every ethnic and religious
community’s free development. This was the situation in the Georgia of David
the Builder, Queen Tamar and Giorgi the Brilliant. I see our free and democratic
homeland of the 21st century as the continuation of this historical tradition”
(Shevardnadze, 2000a, 2; emphasis in original).

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Two aspects of this vision are immediately striking. Firstly the claim of a three thousand
year tradition of Georgian statehood pays scant regard to historical fact. Periods of Georgian
statehood have been the exception rather the rule in Georgian history, and most often brought
about by accidents of dynastic inheritance or the disintegration of larger states. The claim of
‘strong statehood’ demands some major historical ‘forgetting’; it was after all, King Erekle
II’s inability to guarantee the existence of his state, let alone the material well-being of his
people, that forced him to seek Russian patronage in 1783. Rather, it was Soviet statehood
that provided the basis for the ‘development’ of minority cultures in Georgia. Secondly,
Shevardnadze’s claims of a tri-millenial tradition of Georgian statehood echoes the similar
timeframe evoked by ethnonationalist constructions of ethnogenesis in antiquity. Like his
predecessor, Shevardnadze appeals to what may seem to a Western observer as outlandish
historical time-spans to legitimate his claims; the only difference lies in the assumed motor of
Georgian history, the ethnic group or the state.

What is significant in Shevardnadze’s reading is the relocation of Georgia’s ethnic diversity

as a fact of the distant past, rather than as a product of colonial rule. The political relevance
of these readings of Georgian history in the context of independence is clear: Georgia always
was and remains a harmonious, multiethnic entity, and the message is addressed to ‘each
individual inhabitant’ and the ‘entire population’ of Georgia rather than the Georgian nation
per se. A corresponding transformation in the discourse of government reformers saw the
concepts of erovneba (‘nationality as ethnicity’), erovnuli sakhelmtsipo (‘national state’) and
the kartuli penomeni (‘the Georgian phenomenon’) supplanted by self-conscious renderings
of a liberal-democratic discourse: mokalakeoba (‘citizenship’), samokalako sazogadoeba
(‘civil society’), samartlebrivi sakhelmtsipo (‘Rechtstaat’), and sazogadoebrivi konsensusi
(‘societal consensus’).

In policy terms, this shift was reflected in a substantial body of legislative acts offering
institutional guarantees to Georgia’s non-Georgian population. The 1995 Constitution
enshrined the principles of non-discrimination normative in international law.138 It declared,

138
According to the preamble of the Constitution, it is ‘Georgia’s citizens’ by whose will and, inter alia, ‘desire
for peaceful relations with other peoples’, that the Constitution is declared, based on ‘the Georgian nation’s
centuries-long tradition of statehood and the basic principles of the Georgian Constitution of 1921”. Both the
1921 and the 1995 Constitutions accord primacy to Georgian statehood in their opening articles. The Georgian
act of independence of 26th May 1918 makes more explicit reference to the Georgian nation as the bearer of the
new state’s sovereignty. The 1921 and 1995 Constitutions do differentiate, however, the bases on which
Georgian citizenship may be obtained. While the 1921 Constitution stipulates ‘origins [tsarmoshoba], marriage

184
however, the implementation of minority rights must not “conflict with Georgia’s
sovereignty, state structures, territorial integrity and political independence” (II, 38/2). The
Constitution recognised the “special role of Georgian Orthodoxy in Georgia’s history”, but
stipulated freedom of confession, and the separation of church and state (I, 9). Georgian was
declared the state language, but state language status was also given to Abkhaz in Abkhazia
(I, 8). Numerous other legislative acts offered institutional accommodation to non-titular
minorities (Kokoev, Svanidze and Melikishvili, 1999, 10-13).139 The law “On the Public
Unions of Citizens” (1994), subsequently integrated into the Civil Code adopted in 1997,
accorded the status of political organisation to public societies established by national
minorities, which may engage in cultural and educational activities, the protection of human
rights and relations with historical homelands and international organisations. The “Law on
Culture” (1997) guaranteed the right to equal participation in cultural activities of all citizens,
and confers broad powers on local authorities to carry out cultural policy in accordance with
the ethnic composition of their regions (I, 9). The law also stipulated the obligation of the
state to create conditions of equality for the cultural development of all regions (I, 20). The
“Law on Education” (1997) established the obligation of the state, in accordance with the
recommendations of local authorities, to create conditions for native language primary and
secondary education to be provided for non-Georgian speakers. The Code of Criminal
Procedure established the right to an interpreter to members of ethnic minorities if desired
(Article 135). Georgia also became party to the United Nations International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, obliging the state to protect the rights of minorities (Article 27),
and as a member of the Council of Europe since 1999 was also party to Recommendation
1201 (1993) on the rights of national minorities and the European Charter for Regional or
Minority Languages (1992).

Amid considerable domestic opposition, in 1996 presidential decree 802 “Concerning the
State Programme on Solving the Legal and Social Problems Relating to the Repatriation of
the Meskhetians Deported from Georgia” outlined conditions for the repatriation of the
Meskhetians (Meskhetian Turks, Ahiska) deported from Georgia in the 1940s. Although the
implementation of this programme has itself been controversial and limited in scope, a study
conducted by the International Organisation for Migration concluded that with the decree

and naturalisation’ (II, 12), the 1995 Constitution stipulates ‘birth and naturalisation’ as the basis for Georgian
citizenship (II, 12).
139
A specific law on the rights of national minorities exists in draft form only amid prolonged debate over the
necessity and desirability of such a law.

185
“Georgia has gone further than ever before” in creating a framework for the return of this
group (International Organization for Migration, 1998, 22).140 The return of the
Meskhetians, feared by nationalists as a potential source of separatism and dilution of
Georgia’s Christian orientation, has since been extremely limited, but the presidential decree
won plaudits in the international arena. Equally controversial laws adopted in June 1997 and
October 1998 signalled a major break with Soviet practice by abolishing the nationality
category in passports (the infamous pyataya grafiya), personal identity documents and birth
certificates.

Beyond the offering of legal guarantees to minority institutions the new legal framework also
formalised the status of Abkhazia as a separate homeland of the Abkhazian nation. By
recognising Abkhaz as a state language in Abkhazia the 1995 Constitution recognised that
Georgia is not a nation-state in the traditional sense, but a multination state in which the
coexistence of more than one state-bearing nation constitutes one form of cultural pluralism.
To date of course this remains a unilateral – and ill-defined – definition not accepted in
Abkhazia, where it is feared that this status reduces Abkhazian claims of nationhood
compared to independent status (or integration with the Russian Federation).

The official discourse and legal architecture of the post-conflict Georgian state thereby
offered a multi-layered framework appealing to different audiences. On one level it
attempted to placate the Georgian majority through an appeal to a putatively stable historical
tradition of statehood as a precondition for ethnic harmony. At the same time it offered a
non-discriminatory framework to non-Georgian minorities simultaneously complying with
the expectations of the international community. To be sure, the re-instatement of an
internationalist frame trampled roughshod over the deeply felt attachments of Georgians on
the ground. The cultural ambiguity of Shevardnadze’s representation of Georgian statehood
contradicted a deep identification with the state as properly expressing the interests and
culture of the Georgian nation. That Shevardnadze was able to plausibly plunder the frame
of Soviet internationalism as a gloss for contemporary ethnic relations in Georgia was due to
two factors. Firstly, the issue of ethnic redress was not as stark or divisive in post-conflict
Georgia as other republics where non-titulars occupied important political and economic

140
Nevertheless by 1998 only a few hundred Meskhetians had actually managed to return to Georgia, amid
controversy that only those prepared to Georgianise their surnames and learn the Georgian language were
allowed to return.

186
niches. Even in Gamsakhurdia’s period in power ethnic redress had been framed in terms of
‘redressing’ the federal territorial arrangement of the state rather than the indigenisation of its
administration, which as we have seen was already a long-standing fact in Soviet Georgia.
Rather than providing a deliberately ambiguous cover for strategies of ethnic redress, as
Schatz suggests was the case in Kazakhstan, the ideological fudges underpinning Georgian
neo-internationalism provided an ambiguous cover for the retention of the status quo (Schatz,
2000a, 83). Its depiction of inclusiveness obscured the multiple failures – and sheer
incapacity – of the state to challenge titular over-representation, to re-integrate the seceded
territories, and to either implement its legal obligations or provide meaningful integrative
structures for the non-Georgian populace.

Secondly, the neo-internationalist appeal to order and stability through the attenuation of
ethnic divisions was recognised as legitimate in the context of Georgia’s recent history. In
the late 1990s the firebrand politics of Gamsakhurdia were remembered with a mixture of
disdain, embarrassment and rue in Georgia.141 War, economic devastation, displacement,
unemployment and anarchy in the preceding years lent unparalleled legitimacy to politicians
perceived as being able to deliver stability. ‘National’ issues receded in the face of more
immediately pressing material concerns, amid a ubiquitous nostalgia for Georgia’s Soviet-era
prosperity.142 In this political climate Shevardnadze’s neutralisation of paramilitary groups,
his ability to personify stability, and his international stature more than outweighed his
compromised ‘nationalist’ credentials.

141
By the late 1990s for many Georgians Gamsakhurdia had been transformed into a figure of parody. His text
The Spiritual Mission of Georgia was sold as a tourist’s curio in English translation along Tbilisi’s Rustaveli
Avenue. The presidential electoral broadcast recorded by one of the presidential candidates in 2000, Kartlos
Gharibashvili, is another example. Reviewing recent episodes of Georgian history, Gamsakhurdia’s era was
symbolically evoked by a group of banner-wielding, chanting demonstrators with their fists in the air. In
conversations with informants, similar gestures often served as negatively connoted shorthand for the
Gamsakhurdia period. His period and style of politics are also parodied in the slang term mdedrioni, combining
the words mkhedrioni (‘horsemen’), the name of the paramilitary group behind Gamsakhurdia’s removal from
power and synonymous with lawlessness in Georgia in 1992-4, and deda (‘mother’). It refers to a group of
mainly middle-aged women supporters who kept a pitched tent in front of the parliament building and regularly
held demonstrations in Gamsakhurdia’s favour. The term conveys the sense of mindless idolatry attributed by
Gamsakhurdia’s critics to both his populist appeal and his supporters.
142
In 1999 49.5% of Georgian residents were estimated to be earning less than the monthly subsistence wage
(102 lari). The number of families earning less than 300 lari per month, an income level below the poverty line,
constituted 74% of all households in the same year. In terms of regional differentials, the regions in greatest
decline were the mountainous regions, Mingrelia (neighbouring Abkhazia), Guria and Imereti, while Tbilisi
presented both extremes. Achara enjoyed a less severe economic climate, insulated by its control over goods
transit to and from Turkey and its insulation from civil violence earlier in the decade (UNDP, 1999, 16). This
situation was reflected in opinion poll research in 1999 indicated that 66% of those surveyed saw economic
problems as the most serious, whereas only 20% saw the restoration of Georgia’s territorial integrity and the
resolution of the Abkhazian conflict as the most serious problem confronting Georgia (Office of Research,
1999).

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6.4 Projecting Integrative Statehood
A key strategy of the new internationalism was the projection of images of integration, which
made effective use of external resources in the international state system available to weak
but recognised states. The Georgian elite spared no effort to present its policies within the
wider panoply of Georgia’s active participation in integrative processes of international
relations. This stood in marked contrast to Gamsakhurdia’s mystical isolationism. One of
the corollaries of Gamsakhurdia’s theory of Ibero-Caucasian identity was an isolationist view
of international relations, both anti-Soviet and ambivalent toward the West:

“We who have come to power, we were struggling for the revival of national
culture, the unification of the people by national aspirations, in order that they
should become fully aware that they have a considerably older history than many
European peoples…It was precisely the national orientation of our policy which
caused the opposition of the wide European community, because officially the
West…opposes every kind of national movement. Their aim is to destroy the
concept of the nation altogether and to create a unified world conglomeration with
a global government at its head…Only the national consciousness of peoples and
the creation of national states can forestall these efforts, which is the reason why
the West opposes the national movements” (Gamsakhurdia, 1995, 17).

The only integrative function envisaged for Georgia in Gamsakhurdia’s vision was a mystical
one, as a spiritual bridge between east and west but belonging to neither, rather than one
framed in terms of economic or geo-political realities. For the political elite in post-conflict
Georgia attracting international investment and enlisting international support in the
resolution of territorial conflicts were urgent foreign policy imperatives born of the pressing
realities of generating external sources of revenue, as noted above, and of undoing the
damage done to Georgia’s international reputation by the unconstrained ethnonationalism of
the preceding period. In Shevardnadze’s first term, integration into international and regional
structures was enthusiastically pursued. In 1996 a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement
between Georgia and the European Union was reached, finally ratified by all parties in 1999.
In 1999 Georgia’s membership of the Council of Europe was secured, followed by
membership in the World Trade Organisation in 2000. In 1999 Georgia also became an
associate member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In the regional arena,

188
the creation of the GUAM alliance with Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova in 1997, and
closer relations with Turkey also signalled the embrace of international integration. Friendly
relations with the member-nations of the United Nations Security Council were cultivated,
yielding fruit in the creation of the ‘Friends of Georgia’ group (consisting of the United
States, France, Germany, Britain and Russia) lobbying – albeit inconsistently – on Georgia’s
behalf in the resolution of its territorial conflicts. Shevardnadze’s reputation of international
stature was augmented by a number of high-profile visits to western states, consistently
featured as front-page news in the governmental newspapers sakartvelos respublika and
Svodbodnaya Gruziya.

These developments clearly reflected a wide range of foreign policy agendas. In their
portrayal by the Georgian elite to domestic audiences their significance was tied to an overt
commitment to integrative processes. Shevardnadze elaborated a revised vision of Georgia’s
international role as first a ‘lost’ member of a wider European community, thereby according
with Georgians’ strong identification with Europe, and a geo-political – rather than cultural
or ‘spiritual’ – hub between east and west:

“I propose that Georgia enter the new century with its historical orientation –
that orientation which all generations of Georgian patriots have struggled for,
which we have established together over the last few years and the whole world
has recognised – an orientation towards Europe and integration with global
structures. Let us enter the twenty-first century with traditional orientations, but
with new priorities – the resolution of domestic problems and the guaranteeing
of the prosperity of all of Georgia’s citizens on the basis of Georgian statehood.
A strong state means a strong society!” (Shevardnadze, 2000a, 3; emphasis in
original).

Images deployed by both Shevardnadze and the presidential party, the Citizens’ Union of
Georgia, consistently evoked integration. CUG party political broadcasts prior to the 1999
parliamentary contest featured footage of the United Nations interspersed with images of the
destruction in central Tbilisi dating from Gamsakhurdia’s removal from power.
Shevardnadze’s electoral propaganda in 2000, some of it featuring a portrait of President Bill
Clinton, situated Georgia as Eurasia’s integrating link: “We created a Georgian state! In these
five years Georgia found its global-historical function – that it become the connecting link

189
country between Europe and Asia, its outpost” (Shevardnadze, 2000a, 6). This imagery
served both to highlight the policy arena where achievements of the Georgian state could
most clearly be demonstrated, foreign policy, and to reify the strategy of integration, rather
than dire political and economic realities, as the source of these achievements.

6.5 Electoral Politics

As Horowitz argues, electoral institutions can have a critical effect in accentuating or
attenuating ethnic conflict (Horowitz, 1985, 291-332). We saw in the previous chapter that
the exclusionary nature of the Georgian Supreme Soviet and its domination by the nationalist
Round Table was an important contributory factor to conflict. In independent Georgia the
conciliatory accommodation of diversity in official discourse has not translated in practice
into the political incorporation of the republic’s non-Georgian population. Despite the partial
entrenchment of democratic elections, the capacity of the state to extend formal legal
provisions to meaningful citizen-membership was limited by a number of factors. Firstly no
elections have taken place across the entire territory of the former Soviet Georgian republic.
Since secession, regional elites in South Ossetia and Abkhazia have held independent (and
internationally unrecognised) elections within the territory under their control. No single
institutional or political space as yet exists for which post-conflict elections could contribute
to resolving the question of who governs it.

Secondly electoral conduct sharply deteriorated over the period 1995-2000. While the
parliamentary and presidential contests of 1995 were deemed generally free and fair, those of
1999-2000 were marked by widespread fraud, harassment of (domestic) observers and
numerous procedural violations.143 Finally the institutional design of the new Georgian
parliament has reproduced some of the key features of ethnic exclusivity of its Soviet
predecessor.144 Parties formed on the basis of exclusively ethnic criteria are prohibited by
the 1995 Constitution. The electoral law governing the 1995 and 1999 parliamentary
contests also specified that registered parties must be able to secure support in at least fifty

143
Author’s interviews with Nugzar Ivanidze, International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy, 5 and 11
April 2000; Reeve, 2000. The democratic quality of electoral practices was highly variable according to
regional context. As a general trend, the extent of electoral code violations and fraud co-varies with distance
from Tbilisi, reaching particularly egregious proportions in the Autonomous Republic of Achara. Gia Nodia
has referred to this phenomenon as ‘Acharianisation’ (Nodia, 2002, 440-441).
144
The Georgian parliament consists of 235 seats, elected for a four year term; 150 are elected from party lists
proportionally according to those parties that pass the 7% threshold for representation and 85 of which are
elected in constituencies corresponding to Georgia’s districts (raionebi) on a first-past-the-post system.

190
per cent of the republic’s constituencies, effectively continuing the prohibition of regionally
based parties. Representation in the 1999-2003 parliament was also contingent on a raised
threshold of seven per cent of the total vote, requiring smaller parties to enter coalitions with
larger parties. These measures were glossed largely in terms of the putative benefits for the
consolidation of political parties, although both Georgians and non-Georgians were aware of
the fear of separatism underlying them.

The compromised nature of emergent electoral practice in independent Georgia was

alleviated by the dominance of parties promoting internationalist, or at least non-nationalist,
platforms.145 A transformation in the voting attitudes of the Georgian majority over a decade
of electoral politics saw the movement of internationalist values from the political margins,
in the form of support for the Communist party in 1990, to the political centre, in the form of
support for the ruling Citizens’ Union of Georgia (CUG) in 1995-1999. Conversely, parties
espousing nationalist values moved from the political centre, in the form of the victorious
Round Table coalition of 1990, to the political margins, confirmed by the failure of the only
major party espousing a nationalist platform, the National Democratic Party, to achieve
representation in the parliamentary elections of 1999. This change is symptomatic of the
very different appeals recognised as legitimate by the Georgian majority in pre-independence
and post-conflict Georgia. As the presidential and most pro-Western party, the CUG’s
principal appeal lay in its identification with President Shevardnadze. Its consistent
projection of modern statehood and its appeal to stability placated the Georgian majority,
while its internationalism appealed to non-Georgian minorities. The main “opposition” party
emergent between 1995 and 1999 was the Union of Democratic Revival (aghordzineba,
hereafter Revival), a republican-wide extension of the Acharian regional elite, offering a neo-
Soviet appeal of distributional paternalism and populism. Consistently pro-Russian in its
foreign policy orientation, Revival was one of the least ‘nationalist’ parties in Georgian

145
Some of the characteristics of the multi-party system emergent in independent Georgia need to be
emphasised. Rather than a multi-party system where political parties occupy contrasting positions along an
ideological spectrum Georgian party politics, as elsewhere in post-socialist societies, is an inchoate and fluid
admixture of clan, regional and economic interest groups. Processes of party formation and fragmentation
represent manifestations of client-patron ties and not the expression of consolidated political constituencies.
This is a reflection of the continued salience of the networking practices of the Soviet era, a problem much more
deep-rooted than the political immaturity of a nascent democracy. This means that although Georgian party
politics is pluralistic, comparing favourably with some Central Asian states, it is far from being representative
or ideologically coherent. See Kjeldsen, 1999. For a critical appraisal of the main parties on the Georgian
political scene in this period see Khaindrava, 1998.

191
politics.146 In the 1999 contest a new party offering a technocratic appeal was the third to
pass the seven per cent threshold, Industry will save Georgia, squeezing out the National
Democratic Party, the only major party in Georgia claiming continuity with a predecessor in
the independence period of 1918-1921.

Table 6.2 Parties Achieving Representation in Georgian parliamentary elections, 1995 and 1999
% of vote

1995 1999
Citizens’ Union of Georgia 23.7 41.6
Union of Democratic Revival 6.8 25.2
National Democratic Party 7.9 -
Industry Will Save Georgia - 7.1
Source: Richard Reeve, 1999 Parliamentary Elections in Georgia (London: The London Information Network
on Conflicts and State-Building, 2000).

Regional voting patterns in areas of compact minority settlement suggest consistent support
for parties advocating ‘internationalist’ values. Those regions showing a high degree of
support for the Communist party in 1990-1991 became areas of core support for non-
nationalist post-Soviet parties. Patterns of support in the 1990 elections broadly reflected the
structural distinction of a titular core and non-titular periphery in Georgian society. While
the nationalist Round Table party won overwhelming support in Tbilisi, the Communist party
drew greater support in Achara, Armenian-populated Samtskhe-Javakheti and Azeri-
populated Kvemo Kartli (Slider 1997: 176). Communist support was also notably stronger in
more rural areas. In the local elections of 1998 and parliamentary elections of 1999, it was
the CUG that inherited this support for internationalism, enjoyed overwhelming support in
Armenian, Azeri and Greek-populated districts in Georgia’s southern periphery.147 Although
the CUG explicitly framed these victories as the result of its integrative civic nationalist
platform, the actual implementation of accommodating practices at the local level appears to
have been minimal. Campaigning material in minority languages other than Russian and
bilingual ballot papers promised in the lead-up to the 1999 parliamentary contest were not

146
For the 1999 parliamentary contest the party formed a bloc (referred to as the Batumi Alliance) with overtly
nationalist and socialist allies (the Union of Georgian Traditionalists, a party including former supporters of
Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and the Socialist Party). This alliance served both to lend credibility to Revival as a
nationwide force, and to add a little ‘nationalist spice’ to a party otherwise noted for its absence. Author’s
interview with Ivlian Khaindrava, 4 April 2000.
147
In the local elections of 1998, several districts in Kvemo Kartli and Samtskhe-Javakheti returned single-party
CUG councils; in the republic at large areas of compact minority settlement typically returned CUG majorities
in 1998-1999 (Lominadze, 1999; Reeve, 2000)

192
always provided (Reeve, 2000, 29).148 In Achara, former Communist support was easily
converted into uniform electoral ‘validation’ for the regional elite, in conditions where
observers were either barred entry into the region or routinely impeded in their mission:
continuity with Soviet practices was the salient feature of elections in this region.

The marginalisation of nationalism as a political platform was further reflected in the profile
of presidential candidates in 2000. Whereas dissidents dominated the early post-Soviet field
for presidential candidates, former Communist party officials dominated the field in 2000
and candidates associated with former dissident activities and nationalist platforms were not
viewed as serious contenders. Insofar as candidates ran coherent electoral campaigns, only
one ran on a platform that might be viewed as nationalist.149

As the discussion above suggests, formal commitments to internationalism and the

dominance of neo-internationalist parties in parliamentary politics have not translated into a
higher degree of representation for non-Georgians in the Georgian Parliament. In the
parliament of 1995-1999 93% of deputies were Georgian, effectively a continuation of titular
over-representation.150 How, then, may the new internationalism be understood in relation to
electoral politics? Georgian neo-internationalism offered a multivalent appeal. Its projection
of statehood and appeal to stability played well with the Georgian majority, while its
endorsement of diversity and resonance with Soviet categories appealed to the desires for
security among non-titulars. Of course in a sense a sort of integration was achieved, as
Georgians and non-Georgians were, in the main, voting for the same parties. The attenuation
of titular insecurity over stability and non-titular insecurity over discrimination amounted to
an incidental convergence between Georgian and non-Georgian voting patterns. It should be
emphasised that this was, however, integration on the basis of the new internationalism’s
ambiguity rather than a genuine political incorporation of the non-Georgian populace. The

148
The shortfall between CUG projection and practice was revealed in reports that Azeri voters in the Georgian
local elections of June 2002 were looking for Aliev’s name on ballot papers (Baazov, 2002).
149
Author’s interviews with Koba Davitashvili, Jumber Patiashvili, Kartlos Gharibashvili, Avtandil Joglidze,
Jemal Gogitidze and Vazha Zhghenti, 2-6 April 2000. The only ‘nationalist’ candidate was Joglidze,
representing the khma ghvtisa, khma erisa [Voice of God, Voice of the Nation] organisation. Other than
Shevardnadze only Patiashvili ran a visible campaign, vaguely focussed on a platform of anti-corruption and
anti-government sentiment and yearnings for a return to Soviet-era paternalism.
150
Armenians accounted for 1.6%, Azeris and Russians 1.2% each and all other nationalities less than 1%. Of
the 17 non-Georgians, 14 participated within the Citizens’ Union of Georgia faction (11 of these being elected
on the basis of the CUG party list). This data was calculated from the website of the Georgian Parliament,
www.parliament.ge.

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disproportionate Georgian dominance of the republic’s governing institutions remained
essentially unchallenged.

6.6 Language Policy

A salient trend in post-colonial states in Asia and Africa is conflict between assimilated
bureaucrats promoting the former colonial language and nationalists promoting the national
language (Laitin, 1992, 105). In post-Soviet states this conflict was pre-empted by Soviet
indigenisation policies. Elites nevertheless confronted widely differing resources with which
to promote national languages, resulting in such divergent outcomes as Russian’s banishment
from the public sphere in the Baltic republics and its 1996 upgrading from ‘language of inter-
ethnic communication’ to official state language in Kazakhstan. Georgia lies between these
‘extremes’.

Independence transformed the language issue from a highly emotive question in the struggle
for sovereignty to a practical issue of state building through the promotion of Georgian
learning among the non-titular population. The Law on Education as we have seen
guaranteed native language primary and secondary education to minorities. This was not a
significant compromise but a continuation of the rights enjoyed by the larger non-titular
groups under Soviet rule. The more pressing issue was the provision of Georgian language
tuition for non-titulars in accordance with the as yet unimplemented Georgian State
Language Programme. This envisaged the displacement of Russian as the language of
interethnic communication by Georgian as the state language and lingua franca in the
republic; Russian was still the preferred language in the latter function for most non-titular
groups (see Appendix B-1 for language repertoires in Georgia in 1989). The approach of the
Georgian elite was to present language rationalisation as a project hospitable to both
Georgian and minority languages. In September 1997 President Shevardnadze passed a
decree, “On Measures to secure the functions of the State Language in conditions amenable
to the Study of Native Languages among National Minority Populations”. A State Language
Chamber was also created with the aim of popularising and spreading knowledge of the state
language. While the phrasing of the presidential decree is an indication of the sea change in
the representation of the language issue, its implementation attests to the yawning gap
between formal intentions and actual practice.

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The programme envisaged in the decree began in November 1997 in the Armenian-populated
region of Samtskhe-Javakheti, with 80,000 lari ($61,540) being assigned to the regional
administration for its implementation (sakartvelos respublika, 14 April 2000). Teachers
were assigned and contracted at a salary of 250-300 lari per month, not inconsiderable by
Georgian standards, and Georgian language learning groups were set up. However, the sums
promised within the terms of the Programme were not delivered; by April 2000 the local
education authority was owed some 105,000 lari ($53,300 at the then exchange rate) in grants
and 229,000 lari ($116,240) in salaries. In the Azeri-populated region of Kvemo Kartli a
similar picture emerges. The programme began with the establishment of ‘Georgian-
speaking days’ in non-Georgian schools once a week, Georgian reading rooms and other
events; it foundered due to the lack of supply of local teachers with adequate grounding in
Georgian (akhali ganatleba, 2 February 2000). Without adequate state provision of Georgian
language, the cost of acquiring the language was transferred to the individual, in a situation
where bilingual learning materials were still lacking. The absence of up-to-date translation
dictionaries between Georgian and the main minority languages in Georgia was recognised in
the 1989 State Language Programme, which stipulated the production of Georgian-Abkhaz,
Georgian-Ossetic, Georgian-Armenian and Georgian-Azerbaijani dictionaries and teaching
materials. To date it remains the case that dictionaries translating between these languages
and Georgian suitable for modern usage are either non-existent or largely unavailable to
ordinary citizens. Dictionaries of these languages into and out of Russian are much more
readily available, which makes the learning of Georgian a complex and somewhat ironic
process achievable only through Russian. Likewise the Georgian state’s capacity to fulfil its
stated obligations for minority language tuition is minimal; Armenian and Azerbaijani-
medium schools in Georgia receive their teaching materials from Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The compromise solution of affording Russian some form of official status opted for in some
post-Soviet republics was not seriously considered in Georgia; neither was there a systematic
attempt to remove Russian from the republic. Russian has no official status and is taught as a
foreign language option for three hours a week in Georgian schools. According to official
data cited by President Shevardnadze some 71 Russian-medium schools remained in Georgia
as of 2000, and Russian continued to be used as the medium of instruction in certain fields in

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higher education institutes (Eduard Shevardnadze, 2000b, 6).151 There have been no
‘Russian-free zones’ of the sort implemented in Estonia, nor did impoverished local
authorities have the luxury of being able to remove Russian-language materials from public
libraries. No systematic replacement of street-signs has taken place, although new signs
feature only Georgian and English, and Russian-language media, including the governmental
newspaper Svobodnaya Gruziya, continue to be widely available. In the realm of local
administration the continued use of Russian in minority-settled areas was tolerated in the
absence of effective measures to replace it with Georgian.

These circumstances point to continued inertia, favouring native language and Russian
bilingualism among Georgia’s non-Georgian population, rather than linguistic rationalisation
in Georgian. However, it would be erroneous to attribute linguistic inertia solely to the non-
implementation of state language policy. Ethnographic data suggest that the goal of language
rationalisation is also being subverted by linguistic accommodation of Russian among titulars
in their encounters with Russian-speakers. In 2000 I attended a dinner party for a group of
displaced Georgians from Abkhazia, and a group of Georgians from Tbilisi, who did not
know each other. The Georgians from Abkhazia spoke Georgian except for one woman
whose knowledge of Georgian was limited. She nevertheless consistently attempted to
accommodate by responding in Georgian; after one or two phrases she would revert to
Russian. Rather than penalising her by continuing to speak to her in Georgian, however,
within half-an-hour the entire table was speaking to her and each other in Russian. In this
case the presence of a single Russian-speaker was enough for the entire group to tip into
Russian. Another example concerns Misha, a Tbilisi-born Armenian with a good knowledge
of Georgian, who was a participant of a backpacking expedition I took part in with a group of
young Georgians from Tbilisi in 1999. Despite Misha’s accommodating attempts to engage
the others in Georgian, they consistently switched to Russian when talking with him rather
than responding in Georgian. Conversations with Misha were thus conducted in Russian, at
one remove from the wider group’s common discourse in Georgian; Misha eventually gave
up his attempts to linguistically accommodate – and thereby be included in the group – and

151
This compares with 135 Armenian schools and 150 Azerbaijani schools. The Georgian State Agrarian
University, the Georgian Technical University, the Ilia Chavchavadze State University of Languages and
Cultures, Tbilisi State University, the Tbilisi State Medical University and the Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani State
Pedagogical University all report that Russian is used as a secondary language of instruction alongside
Georgian (International Association of Universities, 2001).

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switched to Russian. These are by no means isolated examples of unforced linguistic
accommodation of Russian by titulars in Georgia.152

How can this apparently anomalous pattern be explained? These examples are suggestive of
a relative sense of security among Georgian titulars vis-à-vis Russian compared to their
counterparts in Estonia or Latvia.153 It is the limited nature of Russian’s penetration into
titular society that facilitates the generally quiet and non-politicised nature of its continued
significance for Georgians. For the reasons explained in Chapter 3 the reversal of language
shift into Russian has not been an issue in the mainstream of Georgian society. Thus
Georgians are able to approach Russian from a utility accounting perspective rather than as
an ambiguous symbol raising unsettling questions about their own sense of national identity.
Indeed the symbolic politics of language is increasingly directed by those in the Georgian
academe towards the challenge presented by English, rather than Russian.154 Independence
and the opening of Georgia’s borders has diminished Georgia’s stature as a citadel of identity
and exposed its limitations as a ‘small national language’ compared to languages of wider
communication.155 Across a wide range of domains where a Georgian lexicon has yet to be
created or finalised, such as computer science, internet technology and technical literature
Georgians must rely on English and to a lesser extent Russian. This context goes some way

152
My own experience as a Georgian language learner is instructive, though skewed due to my obvious
appearance as a foreigner. Arriving in Tbilisi with an albeit rudimentary knowledge of Georgian, I found that in
the street, in shops and public spaces my attempts in Georgian were most often automatically answered in
Russian. My resort to the claim that I did not speak Russian was met with scepticism: I was told that foreigners
in Georgia speak Russian, and ‘don’t bother’ with Georgian.
153
Bhavna Dave points to similar group code switching prompted by the presence of a single Russian-speaker
in Kazakhstan. In the Kazakh case, however, this appears to be prompted more by titular discomfort in the
‘native’ language than any sense of security or even belief that Kazakh should enjoy pride of place (Dave, 1996,
69).
154
Author’s conversations with linguists at the Tbilisi Institute of Linguistics, 1999-2000. The differences
between the Georgian, Latin and Cyrillic scripts also makes them an instantly recognisable and powerful
vehicle to convey different meanings. Many firms and enterprises now use Latin-lettered English
transliterations of their names, or transliterations of English words into Georgian script, for their logos, much to
the chagrin of language purists. For example, supermarkets named ‘Big Ben’ and ‘jorjia’, selling a high
proportion of imported Western goods, serve the more chic neighbourhoods of Vake and Saburtalo in Tbilisi.
This symbolic use of English is not limited to commercial enterprises, however. In the autonomous republic of
Achara, state employees wear uniforms bearing the legends Police, Security or Customs in English,
disregarding the fact that this makes them unintelligible to many in the local population. For a sensitive
discussion of the meanings associated with different scripts in Achara see Pelkmans, 2002, 3-4.
155
The dilemma for Georgian as a ‘small’ national language was summed up in an article of the burji
erovnebisa (‘buttress of nationality’, an epithet of the Georgian language), a publication of the Tbilisi
Linguistics Institute: “According to the affirmations of the next generation, the country has only one future: the
path of business and the market economy. Yet it is already clear that the Georgian language is not the language
of Georgian business, and is consequently left behind by the stream of development. Another language has
firmly taken its place. Many foreign firms have established themselves in Georgia. In what language do they
operate? In Georgian? Obviously not” (Ts’ibakhashvili, 1999, 2).

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towards explaining why a cognitive shift to viewing Georgian as the natural lingua franca of
the republic has not taken place among titulars.156 For the younger generation in Georgia it is
the proverb ramdeni enats itsi, imdeni katsi khar (‘you are as many men as the number of
languages that you know’) that rings more true than another oft-quoted proverb ra ena
tsakhdes, eri daetses (‘when the language declines, the nation will fall’).

Language policy is a clear example of the disparity between statute and practice in
independent Georgia. The state has not complied with its stated obligations to either national
minorities or the Georgian majority. Rather, Georgia holds a middle ground between the
decisive and systematic replacement of Russian by titular languages in public domains in the
Baltic states and its backtracking re-instatement in Kazakhstan. The non-resolution of the
issue could, however, be justified from the perspective of the new internationalism in
Georgia, which privileged non-conflict over policy outcomes. The political eclipse of
Russian satisfied Georgian ethnonationalists, while the reiteration of minority language
preservation placated non-titulars. The failure of the bridge between these two constituencies
to materialise, state provision of tuition in Georgian for all citizens, perpetuated the status
quo: the continued de facto exclusion of non-Georgian speakers.

6.7 Autonomy: federal bargaining and strategies of state building

We saw in the previous chapter that the issue of autonomy was one of the most contentious
of the Gamsakhurdia period. After the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the issue
was considered so sensitive that when the Constitution was promulgated in 1995 it was
decided to omit the definition of the territorial structure of the state until sovereignty over
both Abkhazia and South Ossetia was regained. The Constitution thus states that “Georgia’s
territorial state structure will be determined by constitutional law according to the principle
of the division of powers after Georgia’s jurisdiction has been restored across the entire
territory of the country” (I, 2/3). The development of centre-periphery relations between
Tbilisi and Achara, Soviet Georgia’s third autonomy in the independence period outstripped
this provision. Tbilisi’s strategy with regard to Achara is a further area where ethnic
nationalism has been compromised in favour of a state building agenda, and is significant in

156
That this is the case was also suggested when I was presented with great fanfare by a university principal to a
room of Georgian students in Zugdidi not by my name, my nationality or my purpose in being there, but
specifically as a ‘Georgian-speaking non-Georgian’ (kartulad molaparake ara-kartveli). My unusual status as a
foreigner notwithstanding, this phrasing indicates that this was a phenomenon perceived as being very rare.

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the fact that Georgia’s emergence as an asymmetric federation has occurred within the
context of centre-periphery, rather interethnic, relations.

As Solnick observes of the Russian context, a centre facing multiple regional challengers
may opt either for a ‘global’ strategy, establishing uniform, transparent rules and then
punishing transgressions from them, or for a strategy of independent bilateral negotiation
with selected actors in return for their consent to a specific jurisdictional and distributional
arrangement (Solnick, 1998, 60-61). The reassembling state in independent Georgia was,
emphatically, a weak state: it did not have the resources or authority sufficient for the
imposition of universal rules. Where central authorities are weak, Solnick notes, “it may be
better for their weakness to remain partly obscured by a veil of ‘ad hocery’ (p.61). Ad hoc
bilateralism was the strategy adopted by Tbilisi in its relations with Achara. To explore this
outcome, a brief background detour is necessary.

Achara was the second autonomous republic to be created in Soviet Georgia. The ethnic
context, however, was quite different to that of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Acharian
autonomy was unique in the Soviet Union in being created on the basis of confessional rather
than national or linguistic grounds. While the population in Achara was undoubtedly
predominantly Muslim at the time of the establishment of the autonomy, the combined effect
of the deletion of a separate Acharian census category in the late 1920s, the active repression
of Islam, and the emphasis on language as the key component of nationality through the
Soviet period significantly diminished a sense of cultural distinctiveness. Nevertheless the
maintenance of Islamic practices in rural areas of Achara attracted the attention of the
republican press in the late 1980s, accompanied by aggressive pro-Orthodox proselytising
and the questioning of the basis for autonomy in the region (von Lilienfeld, 1993, 227;
Fuller, 1990c, 13). Although post-Soviet research indicates that a limited religious revival is
ongoing in highland areas of the region, leading figures in the local elite deny the importance
or relevance of the ‘ethnic factor’ in Achara.157

157
Author’s interview with Aslan Smyrba, 6 April 2000. Visiting the upland town of Keda in 1997, I was
escorted out of the town by the local police after asking to be taken to the town mosque. After driving from
Keda to a local village, I posed the same question to the local inhabitants. After some prevarication I was taken
to the mosque, which was being used as a storehouse for agricultural equipment. The villagers explained,
somewhat sheepishly, that the principle of ‘demokratiya’ governed adherence to religious practice in their
village. When I visited Achara again in 2000, this time as an election observer for the European Institute of the
Media, it was pointed out to me by representatives of the political establishment in Batumi that ‘religious
tolerance’ is a central plank of Aslan Abashidze’s government. An ambitious church-building and restoration
programme was ongoing at that time, from which Achara’s Islamic history was all but omitted. Aslan Smyrba,

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At the time of the Supreme Soviet elections of 1990, Gamsakhurdia committed himself to
abolishing autonomy in Achara as ‘anomalous’ given the Georgian ethnic identification of
the autonomy’s titular population. In response, his Round Table coalition was soundly
defeated in the elections in Achara by the Communist Party.158 Amid persistently tense
relations between the Gamsakhurdia administration and the local population, a planned
referendum on the retention of autonomy in the region did not take place before
Gamsakhurdia’s removal from power (Fuller, 1991c). After the secession of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, Achara remained the only autonomy still nominally under Tbilisi’s
jurisdiction. Under the increasingly consolidated, autocratic grip of local headman Aslan
Abashidze and his party machine, the Union for the Democratic Revival of Georgia, Achara
has also been unique outside of Tbilisi as a region of marked economic recovery, in large
part due to control over cross-border trade with Turkey and one of Georgia’s main ports,
Batumi. Privatisation further concentrated enormous resources in the hands of the local elite,
which also entertains close relations with patrons in Russia, locally manifested in support for
the continued presence of the Russian military base in Batumi.

During Shevardnadze’s first term, the Acharian leadership negotiated preferential federal tax
and customs revenue concessions from the centre ‘in exchange’ for not instituting an
economic free zone in Achara. Achara’s status as an autonomous republic was not, however,
established in Georgian constitutional law. The ambiguity of ethnic claims to local
distinctiveness and absence of a legal framework forced representatives of the local elite to
justify Achara’s autonomous by other means, for example by historical reference to the 1923
Treaty of Kars.159 This situation remained unresolved until the 2000 presidential election,
during which Abashidze did not run a visible campaign and then withdrew his candidature on
the day preceding the election. This move followed a number of visits to Batumi from high-
level delegations from the ruling CUG party, including Shevardnadze himself and Parliament
Speaker Zurab Zhvania, for talks with Abashidze. Following Abashidze’s withdrawal,

a close associate of Abashidze responsible for the ‘privatisation’ of Georgia’s merchant fleet, did not take
kindly to my questions about Islam. He suggested rather that Tbilisi attempts to tarnish Achara, as the seat of
the opposition, with Islamic fundamentalism. For an account of religious revival in highland Achara in the
post-Soviet period see Pelkmans, 2001.
158
The Communist Party polled 56% of the vote, and the Round Table coalition 24% (Fuller, 1990c, 14).
159
Author’s interview with Jemal Gogitidze, 6 April 2000.

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Shevardnadze polled 70% of the vote.160 After the election, it was announced in Tbilisi that
Achara’s status would now be reviewed and the Constitution amended in order to formally
define the republic’s autonomous status (alia, 20-21 April 2000; Fuller, 2000a). One week
later it was announced in Tbilisi that a free trade zone in Achara would be “economically
expedient” (Fuller, 2000b).

How may this outcome be interpreted from a state building perspective? It suggests first that
the weak Georgian centre has opted for bilateralism as a strategy in its ‘bargaining game’
with regional actors. Rather than being subject to universal, fixed rules, the Batumi-Tbilisi
agreement demonstrates that distributional and jurisdictional issues are open to ad hoc
negotiation between the centre and peripheral elites. The capacity of regionally entrenched
‘strongmen’ to resist attempts at re-centralization of power is a further legacy of Soviet rule.
Unable to dislodge such strongmen weak centres can only attempt to forestall collective
action between them. In a parallel with the power-sharing treaty signed by Moscow and the
republic of Tatarstan, the centre may hope that if Achara’s special status is derived from its
bilateral accord with the Georgian centre and Georgian constitutional law, it will be less
inclined to pursue either a separatist orientation or multilateral cooperation with other
regions.

The contrasting examples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the one hand, de facto
independent but economically ravaged and internationally isolated, and Achara on the other,
prosperous and nominally integrationist, also send important signals to other regional
contenders. As Petrov and Treivish note of the Russian context, regions successfully
extracting concessions from the centre within a framework of nominal integration compare
favourably with those that opted for outright secession ending in violence (Petrov and
Treivish, 1995, 156-57). This also highlights the potential drawbacks to a bilateral strategy
on the part of the centre: there is no doubt that developments in Achara were keenly observed
in other regions. In the immediate aftermath of the presidential election and rapprochement
between Tbilisi and Batumi came demands for autonomy based on the Acharian model in the
regions of Mingrelia and Javakheti (akhali taoba, 11 April 2000; kviris palitra, 17-23 April

160
Shevardnadze’s endorsement in Achara needs to be seen in the context of the equally ‘overwhelming’
support won by the Revival party in the parliamentary elections some six months earlier in 1999. The rezonansi
newspaper reported that prior to withdrawing his candidature Abashidze had speculated that Shevardnadze
would receive the same degree of support in Achara as the CUG in the parliamentary election of 1999, some 2-
3% (rezonansi, 10 April 2000).

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2000). Following counterclaims against the federal budget by the Acharian Supreme Council
in May 2001, two months later a ‘Coordinating Council of Opposition Parties of Mingrelia”
again demanded regional autonomy for Mingrelia in order to develop the region’s stagnant
economy (Fuller, 2001).161 A parade of claims to regional autonomy may lead to an outcome
of peripheralised federation, in which the federal centre will be sharply constrained and
therefore less able to mediate regional disparities through resource distribution.162

What does the emergence of a bilateral outcome in Batumi-Tbilisi relations tell us about the
role of ethnicity in the construction, present and future, of the Georgian state? The accord
paradoxically secured privileged status for one of the least culturally differentiated regions of
Georgia. Claims for Acharian autonomy have not been made in the name of ethnic
particularity but by reference to legal-historical and ‘popular will’ arguments.163 This
differentiates Georgia from the Russian context, where ethnic claims have served to
coordinate collective action across the different national republics. In the Acharian case,
both centre and the peripheral elite have an interest in playing down the role of ethnicity, the
former to forestall further ethnic claims elsewhere in the state, the latter due to the ambiguous
nature of an ethnic justification for Acharian autonomy. Given this context, the legal
entrenchment of autonomy in Achara represents a significant retreat from a nation building
imperative and a volte face vis-à-vis Gamsakhurdia’s earlier policy. In the Acharian case this
has formalised a territorial division of the state meaningless outside of the context of Soviet-
Kemalist relations of the 1920s as a model for centre-periphery relations in the post-Soviet
Georgian state. From a nationalist perspective this outcome is an aberration; from a state
building perspective, however, it represents a strategy of incremental state building that
obscures the weakness of the centre vis-à-vis entrenched regional elites. Beneath the veil of

161
. These claims undoubtedly benefit from their juxtaposition with more extreme demands for Mingrelia’s secession,
such as that threatened by renegade Zviadist Akaki Eliava, threatening the secession of Mingrelia (sakartvelos
respublika, 14 April 1999).
162
The experience of 2000 also suggests that elections provide a key moment of regionalist contention in Georgia. The
ability of regional actors to influence or control polling outcomes, or at least to make plausible claims about the level of
turnout, offers a specific window of opportunity to challenge the prior status quo. In Mingrelia, for example, the
demand for autonomy in the immediate aftermath of the presidential election was made amid local claims of a 10%
turnout in the province and therefore an illegitimate election result (akhali taoba, 11 April 2000). Centre-periphery
conflict thus has a cyclical nature in post-conflict Georgia, closely tied to the electoral cycle.
163
This ambiguity is further reflected in Abashidze’s own efforts to secure a historical legitimacy for his rule
through the use of a lineage myth linking himself to the region’s historical ruling house, the Abashidzes.
Prominent new monuments erected in Batumi celebrate key historical figures in this lineage, while ‘research
institutes’ expressly dedicated to this field have also appeared. Party rule in Achara is thus paradoxically
legitimated in terms of both a primordially coded lineage myth and an official policy of religious tolerance and
diversity.

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the new internationalism, however, it is clear that it is not non-Georgian groups that have
benefited; claims for autonomy in other ‘ethnic’ regions have been consistently rejected.

6.8 Primordial tolerance: a post-Soviet discursive fusion

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz has observed that “[n]ationalist ideologies built out of
symbolic forms drawn from local traditions…tend, like vernaculars, to be psychologically
immediate but socially isolating; built out of forms implicated in the general movement of
contemporary history…they tend, like lingua francas, to be socially deprovincializing but
psychologically forced” (Geertz, 1993, 242-43). The re-instatement of internationalism,
despite its resonance with Soviet categories, confronted the Georgian elite with a genuine
problem of presenting this discourse in recognisable and authentic terms for its principal
domestic audience, the Georgian majority. Its use of an imported Western vocabulary of
citizenship and civic nationalism often produced unnatural-sounding formulae further
accentuating its foreignness. Consider the awkwardness of the following formula, taken
from a discussion of linguistic policy in the government newspaper sakartvelos respublika:
“the establishment of truly liberal and democratic values in the country must be followed by
a georgianisation of the civic consciousness of citizens of non-Georgian provenance, their
transformation into ‘political Georgians’” (sakartvelos respublika, 14 April 2000). Such
statements had to tread a fine line between avoiding intimations of ethnic Georgianisation
and establishing some connective link between the state and its non-titular population.

A second problem was ethnonationalist resistance. Compared to the vivid, unambiguous

imagery of Gamsakhurdia’s ethnic messianism, the new internationalism was not only vague
but also redolent of Soviet language. Its apparent appeal for the attenuation of ethnic
attachments in favour of a more nebulous citizen-membership was seen by ethnonationalists
as a direct threat to the Georgian nation. Two open letters written by Georgian intellectuals,
printed in the official newspaper of the Georgian Writers’ Union literaturuli sakartvelo,
protested what they called the “national nihilism” that had seized the country, and called for
the creation of ‘groups of specialists’ to formulate a ‘national ideology’ (Tsintsadze et al,
1997).164 The leader of the nationalist “Georgia First” movement, Guram Sharadze,
paradoxically lambasted the removal of the nationality category from identity documents as a

164
These letters provide insights into the post-Soviet yearning for the certainties of all-embracing, abolute
ideologies: “One of the main reasons for [the paralysis of the nation] is the absence of any systematic ideology,
which has made us lose any sense of values”.

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return to Soviet mores: “in communist times we were a laboratory for internationalism, now
we’ve become a cosmopolitan barracks” (Sharadze, 1999). At more covert levels
ethnonationalist doctrines of autochthony continued to dominate new scholarship and to form
a staple component of feature journalism. A disjunction between the internationalising
discourse of the political elite and continued adherence to ethnonationalism among cultural
elites was thus a salient feature of the period. However, discussions with a wide range of
informants in 1999-2000 also revealed deep anxieties over the removal of the perceived
certainties of ethnic membership with the less immediate benefits of citizen-membership in a
weak and fragmented state.

These problems raised the issue of how the new internationalism could be framed in terms of
‘national’ values – or to put it another way, what Georgian traditions could be enlisted to
make the new internationalism more psychologically immediate for the Georgian populace?
The discourse did after all seem to require a sacrifice of ‘national’ values even if stability was
the projected payoff. It is argued here that the discourse of Georgian neo-internationalism
represents a new twist in the post-Soviet trajectories of the primordialist and internationalist
paradigms. Scholars of post-Soviet identity politics typically conflate primordialism with
national exclusiveness and slate it for deconstruction as a bête noire threatening interethnic
peace (Suny, 2001; Shnirelman, 1998; Tishkov, 1997, 1-12). This is both apposite and
imperative. Yet this approach perhaps elides the infinitely adaptable appeal of categories
rooted in the “assumed ‘givens’ of social existence” (Geertz, 1993, 259). Here it is suggested
that the categories of Georgian neo-internationalism are also coded in ‘primordial’ terms and
signal a paradoxical reincarnation of the primordialist paradigm in the service of ethnically
inclusive state building.

Above I noted the outlandish timeframe claimed by Shevardnadze in his re-conceptualisation

of Georgian statehood as an over-arching frame of political identity. This is hardly unique to
Georgia: comparable timeframes evoked by nation builders in Ukraine, Armenia and Central
Asia similarly isolate the understanding of statehood from more immediate historical
experience, imbuing it with a sense of permanence and remove from social mediation (Suny,
2001b; Kuzio, 2002; Allworth, 1998). What is significant in the Georgian case is that this
historical narrative is explicitly rooted a ‘multicultural’ interpretation of Georgian statehood.
Rather than a set of political principles or tangible historical experiences, this interpretation
of state formation relies on the attribution of tolerance and inclusiveness to the Georgian

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nation over its tri-millenial history – in other words, character attributes coded as
‘primordially Georgian’. Thus to be Georgian is to be tolerant, where tolerance is coded as
innate, inherited and ‘natural’ (if not biologically ascribed in as straightforward a manner as a
Georgian surname). In the words of another government reformer:

“historically the Georgians were less concerned with a person’s or culture’s ethnic
provenance. Georgians incorporated all ethnic groups, and equated them with a
single entity: Georgian statehood. Whoever and whatever accepted Georgian
statehood became a part of Georgian history and culture…It is well-known that
David the Builder respected in equal measure the shrines of the different peoples
of Georgia, and this was a manifestation of the country’s strength. This concern
to divide up the peoples of Georgia today is probably a result of our
weakness”(Saqvarelidze, 1999).

Georgian statehood is thus seen as a sort of outgrowth of the Georgian tolerance of

difference. Georgian neo-internationalism thus takes the conventional postulates of
primordialism and turns it on its head: the attribution of tolerance to the Georgian nation
requires the presence of ethnic others, a population over whom tolerance may be ‘practiced’.
Within the frame of the neo-internationalist discourse the Georgian state, and therefore
Georgian society, is thus ‘primordially multiethnic’; indeed, the very survival of Georgian
statehood over three millennia is ascribed to its ability to tolerate diversity.

What explains this intertwining of primordialist and internationalist frames? The reification
of statehood over ethnic nationhood as the basis for political community reflects the
imperative of establishing ethnically neutral categories in a post-conflict society. Modern
Georgian history, however, offers few utilisable narratives of independent statehood to
legitimate this reification. Tolerance, by contrast, is a motif highly resonant with the self-
understandings and symbolic literacy of ethnic Georgians. Even cursory acquaintance with
Georgian culture reveals that the qualities of hospitality (stumartmoqvareoba, ‘the love of
guests’), generosity and courtesy are central to Georgian self-perception and self-
representation to outsiders. A proverb ritually quoted to foreigners tells that stumari ghvtisaa
(‘guests are sent from God’), requiring the respectful and lavish treatment of guests as a

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‘national’ duty and innate characteristic of Georgians.165 Hospitality has been a recurrent
theme in Georgian literature, exemplified by Vazha Pshavela’s hallowed poem Host and
Guest (stumar-maspindzeli). Written in 1893, many educated Georgians are able to recite
lengthy sections of this poem by heart. Information brochures produced by tourist firms and
the government abound with statements such as ‘Georgian hospitality is second to none’, and
‘since Georgia is at the junction of Europe and Asia, any tradition here is presented in a
moderate way’.166 The ritualised ceremony of the supra (Georgian table), with its emphasis
on situating those present within a wider cosmological schema, is often portrayed by
participants to outsiders as a sort of ‘folk-democratic’ institution. Presided over by the
tamada (toast-master), every participant has the right to provide their own interpretation and
oral contribution to the toasting process, in which most toasts are concerned with expressions
of respect and deference towards others. A toast to peace has a mandatory presence.

Transposed to the collective level of relations between ethnic groups, these values lay the
basis for the understanding of cultural pluralism in terms of a national myth of tolerance. In
Tbilisi’s Old Town the location within close proximity of a Georgian Orthodox church, an
Armenian Gregorian church, a synagogue and a mosque is often cited as visible proof of
Georgia’s unique capacity to accommodate difference. The Old Town, fetishised in artistic
production as the authentic heart of the Georgian capital, becomes itself a trope for Georgian
tolerance. The absence of anti-Semitism in Georgia is also often ritually adduced as
evidence of the Georgians’ tolerant nature.167 Significant to note is that within this mythic
narrative Georgia’s multiethnic character is understood to flow from the quality of tolerance,
rather than the other way round.

165
Of course the hospitality code fulfils other functions, into which I will not digress here. Nor should the
hospitality code be seen as an exclusively Georgian national institution, characterising as it does a much broader
Caucasian society. I have on one or two occasions been present at tables in Abkhazia where a near-identical
litany of toasts was recited.
166
These quotes were taken from a brochure ‘Georgia’, produced by the Georgian Information Centre in
London.
167
This does need to be seen in context, however. Historically it is Armenians who fulfilled the socio-economic
function associated with Jewish communities in other parts of Eastern Europe, that of a mercantile bourgeoisie,
and to a debatable extent Armenophobia has acted as a similarly motivated surrogate for anti-Semitism in
Georgia (though without the same connotations of extremism). Armenophobia was a significant exception to
Ilia Chavchavadze’s generally liberal nationalism, and in the form of the large-scale expropriation of Armenian-
owned assets, harassment of the Armenian population of Tbilisi and territorial conflict with the newly emergent
Armenian state, an important aspect of interethnic relations in the Social Democratic period. A sense of rivalry,
and suspicion at Armenia’s traditionally cordial relations with Russia, continues to suffuse popular views of
Georgian-Armenian relations.

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The attempt to enlist the motif of tolerance in the service of inclusive state building is an
example of the tactical ‘invention of tradition’ in the service of political goals (Hobsbawm
and Ranger, 1983). To what extent does this innovation accord with the construction of
Georgia’s recent history in collective memory? Discussion with informants in 1999-2000
revealed that the social reproduction of memories of the Soviet period fuses a Georgian self-
ascription of tolerance with Soviet internationalism, leading to the belief that Georgia was the
most tolerant of the Soviet republics. An often-reiterated claim was for the greater
maintenance of the Ossetian language vis-à-vis Georgian in South Ossetia compared to its
maintenance vis-à-vis Russian in North Ossetia.168 In collective memory, despite possessing
a lower level of autonomy, the South Ossetians were ‘protected’ in Georgia from
Sovietisation and culture loss. The fact that the Abkhazian autonomy was unique in the
USSR in possessing its own dedicated university, as well as its own national theatre and
media outlets, was also consistently reiterated as evidence of the special circumstances
enjoyed by minorities in Georgia (‘what other autonomy in the Union had its own dedicated
university?’). Thus in Georgian memories of the Soviet period the preservation of Georgia’s
ethnic diversity, and even the institutional fruits of Soviet nationalities policy, are seen to
flow from the self-attributed quality of tolerance, and understood to be a function of it.

The projection of the myth of tolerance into the recent past points to the functions of this
myth in a post-conflict society. Writing against what he sees as the subversion of religious
tolerance by nationalist projects in Bosnia, Rusmir Mahmutćehajić has written: “Bosnia bears
living testimony to the potential created when several sacred laws and ways are present
together. Each has its own inherent form of defence against the possibility of mutual
violence: denial of one sacred tradition by another means that the first has ceased to be
sacred, has lost its capacity to achieve holiness for humanity” (Mahmutćehajić, 2000, 4).169
In the Bosnian case, motifs of tolerance and co-existence provide a counterpoint to
interrogate nationalist excesses, and for Mahmutćehajić, the key to understanding and
existential healing. In post-Soviet Georgia the self-attribution of tolerance can be seen as
providing coherence in a particularly anarchical period. Adherence to the myth of tolerance
in collective memory performed the vital function of simplifying the bewildering complexity
168
This does have a basis in fact. In 1989 in North Ossetia 89% of Ossetians registered knowledge of Russian
as a first or second language compared to 53.1% of Ossetians in Georgia registering knowledge of Georgian
(Tishkov, 1997, 94).
169
Tolerance is also a quality often implied or assumed in national myths of redemption, suffering and unjust
treatment by others, particularly where Christian imagery is invoked. See the discussion in Schöpflin, 1997, 29-
31.

207
of post-Soviet reality in Georgia. The myth restored coherence by standardising perceptions
of interethnic relations, enabling a cohesive collective response across the distinct scenarios
of ethnic relations. It mitigated both the painful acknowledgement of the national
community’s powerlessness to influence the outcome of events, and the self-attribution of
blame for Georgia’s current predicament. Situating responsibility for recent disasters outside
of the collective self, it posited a more satisfactory self-image, even if this took passive form
– ‘we were just too tolerant for our own good’.

The resulting narrative draws upon a popular Georgian anecdote. When God was
distributing territory to the various nations of the world, the Georgians were too busy feasting
to attend. When the Georgians finally appeared and asked which their allotted land was to
be, God replied that all the land had already been given away. Taking a shining to the
festive, irreverent Georgians, however, God decided to give them a morsel of land he was
reserving for himself – Georgia. In the framework of this anecdote, a colourful predilection
for bonhomie and a somewhat lackadaisical attitude, as well as Georgia’s remarkable natural
beauty, are celebrated in a positive register. In the post-Soviet context, however, these
qualities were reconfigured in collective memory as naivety and generosity-to-a-fault,
making the Georgians vulnerable to predatory outsiders. In these terms, to put it simply,
collective understandings of the tolerance myth retold the anecdote: ‘while we were away
feasting, the [Abkhazians, Ossetians, Russians, etc] sneaked in and stole parts of Georgia’.
Theft – of territory, history and the self – is a recurrent theme in informal representations of
the conflicts.170 Collective memory thus rationalises the outcome of secession as the abuse
by ‘outsiders’ of one of the Georgians’ own key virtues, munificence.

The myth of tolerance is an active social force in Georgia, mediating the selective memories
of the past in such a way as to lend coherence to the harsh reality of the present. Memories,
the ritual enunciations of tolerance to outsiders, the toasts at the Georgian table and the
impassioned discussions of ethnic relations that are so salient a feature of post-Soviet
Georgia, are not innocent celebrations of putative ‘folk’ virtues. To use Raphael Samuel’s
compelling phrase they are ‘theatres of memory’, selectively structuring the national past in
terms of the coherence they lend to the present (Samuel, 1994). The extent to which the

170
In 1999 I attended a conflict resolution seminar in Pitsunda, Abkhazia, at which a number of Georgians were
also present. In the evening we gathered round to listen to one of the Abkhazian participants, a historian,
recounting the history of medieval ‘Abkhazian’ kings. One of the Georgians with whom I was sitting leaned
over and whispered, aghast, “Those are our kings he is talking about. They are stealing our kings.”

208
coherence arrived at in the myth is congruent with reality is of course moot. Levan
Berdzenishvili, Director of the Georgian National Library and founder member of the
Republican Party, takes a critical view of the tolerance myth: “To affirm that Georgia today
is a tolerant society is to close one’s eyes to the way people treat Zviadists, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Methodists, Baptists and unmarried mothers…Georgia is an intolerant society and
it is our so-called intelligentsia, which is a bastion of intolerance, that sets the tone in this
respect” (Fuller, 2000c). In Berdzenishvili’s view, the co-opting of the tolerance myth is
merely a cynical pre-electoral ploy to gain votes amongst non-Georgian communities. But
even if this is the case, one has to weigh up whether even an instrumental appeal to non-
Georgian communities is not better than a sincere exclusion of them.

What is certain, however, is that the fusion of primordialist and internationalist frames in
collective memory means that recognition of the policies and periods in which non-Georgian
communities did face discrimination is extraordinarily difficult. The narrative of primordial
tolerance is diametrically at odds with narratives of colonisation and victimisation at the
hands of Georgians, which fuel collective myths and alternative historiographies amongst
Abkhazians and Ossetians. Recognition of these minority claims would, effectively, require
abandonment of the myth, and result in a concomitant loss of cognitive coherence. In the
post-Soviet context, then, the tolerance myth has formed the basis for a popular collective
response to recent catastrophes that restores coherence and favourably distributes
responsibility. Tolerance in the construction of collective memory becomes a self-attributed
and continually reproduced ‘victim narrative’, and therefore constitutes a discourse at odds
with the official appropriation of tolerance in the service of the inclusive state building.

6.9 Conclusions
This chapter has argued that a more contingent reality of compromise and accommodation
lies behind the broad discourse of decolonisation dominant in the post-Soviet states. While
cultural elites actively engage in the reclaiming of exclusive national histories, the
prerogative of securing coherent statehood has demanded numerous compromises from state
building elites. In Georgia this has been explored here in five fields: the re-instatement of an
internationalist discourse of multiethnicity, the promotion of internationalist values in
electoral politics, the (formal) adoption of multilingual state language planning, the re-
instatement of territorial autonomy and the projection of a pluralist – but integrative – public
doctrine of statehood. This points to a post-Soviet inflection of the nationalist-bureaucrat

209
conflict salient in post-colonial states. Rather than assimilated bureaucratic elites, nationalist
compromises in Georgia have been demanded by the need to respond to territorial
fragmentation and the pressures of integration into the international state system, regionally
entrenched elites and the primacy of non-conflict over decolonisation. The construction of a
multinational narrative of Georgian history at the state level has been a central response to
these challenges. That the authorities in Georgia were able to do so is a reflection not only of
the continued resonance of the internationalist frame but its multivalent appeal to different
audiences: it offered stability through imagery of multiethnic harmony to the Georgian
majority, by reifying national identities it offered security to non-Georgian minorities and
through its compatibility with a multicultural civic discourse of nationalism it demonstrated
outward signs of civic state building to external audiences.

This draws attention to both commonalities and differences between post-Soviet state
building strategies. The re-instatement of aspects of Soviet rule into the architecture of new
states has been a variable phenomenon. In Kazakhstan this has taken the form of the official
re-instatement of Russian and ‘creeping’ indigenisation; in Moldova and Belarus a unique
experiment of ideological re-integration with the former imperial core is ongoing. At the
opposite end of the spectrum Baltic republics have been able to actively dismantle the Soviet
heritage, banishing symbols of the Soviet past in favour of genuine state-nation building
rooted in an indigenous tradition of statehood. Georgia lies between these poles. The
nationalist-bureaucrat struggle characteristic of African and Asian post-colonial states, as we
have seen, was enacted between the Georgian core and peripheral ethnic minority elites. In
the post-conflict state, without a linguistically split bureaucracy or a weak identification with
the nation, the retention of Russian or Communist ideologies was unnecessary and unwanted
in the Georgian core. At the same time both governing elites and the Georgian populace at
large have assimilated the perils of untrammelled nationalism. The problem has been what to
replace it with. Georgia’s institutional history offers little in the way of precedent for the
management of ethnic pluralism, while the length of Soviet rule resulted in the thorough
entrenchment of its cultural categories. Regardless of the fervent identification with Europe,
Western liberal pluralism and the discourse of minority rights have no historical foundation
in Georgia. The innovation of an ‘indigenous’ re-working of Soviet internationalism is a
reflection of these meagre resources for the elaboration of multiethnic statehood. Unlike
Soviet internationalism its post-Soviet variant pointedly has no merger (sliyanie) endgame,
making it broadly compatible with both a primordialist conceptualisation of ethnicity and

210
civic approach to state building; its coupling to the myth of tolerance provided a Georgian
‘feel’ to an otherwise decidedly non-nationalist doctrine.

Georgian neo-internationalism has, however, been an ideological exercise rooted in cultural

categories and not a juridical sense of citizenship or concrete policies. In practical terms
national minority policy under President Shevardnadze has consisted essentially of a politics
of omission – omission of any concerted attempt to implement programmes or policies for
either civic integration or minority rights. The feel-good assertions of diversity as a
collective good, while playing well with Western notions of ‘multiculturalism’ and the
residual Soviet frame of internationalism, mask an unchanged reality of Georgian over-
representation in the republic’s governing institutions, a politique de notables in Samtskhe-
Javakheti and Kvemo Kartli, and failure of the state to provide for the emergence of the
individual citizen-elector as a meaningful actor. In the absence of empirical change, cultural
categories continue to provide the basic social adhesive holding Georgia together.

This account has underlined the higher priority of state building over nation building for
post-independence elites, a shift shared by post-colonial elites in Asia and Africa. The
prospects for integration are, however, more promising in Georgia. Unlike minorities in
states such as Nigeria or India, minority populations in the Georgian core will not be able to
sidestep the national language by recourse to the former metropolitan language in their
dealings with officialdom. A generation of Georgians is now growing up that has elected for
English over Russian as their language of wider communication. Only in re-integrated
Abkhazian and South Ossetian units would the long-standing contest between Russian and
Georgian for lingua franca status continue. If re-integrated into a federal Georgian state
these regions would continue to be significantly more multilingual than mainstream Georgian
society. Integration as a multinational state, rather than rationalisation as an ideal-typical
nation-state, is thus the likely future configuration of multiethnicity in Georgia.

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Chapter 7. ‘Two sons of one mother’: Georgian, Mingrelian and the challenge of nested
primordialisms

7.1 Introduction
One of the paradoxes of post-colonial nation building is that the promotion of a singular,
notionally suppressed national identity may inadvertently reinvigorate sub-ethnic distinctions
that question the very basis for the collective identity being promoted. Case studies drawn
from both post-Soviet and broader post-colonial contexts have shown how the attainment of
independence, amid elite efforts at ethnic nation building presumed both to symbolise and
enact decolonisation, can unexpectedly lead to the fragmentation rather than consolidation of
a post-colonial national identity.171 Georgia’s exit from the Soviet Union, while hardly
removing awareness of the ‘Russian other’ (particularly in terms of insecurities over its neo-
imperialist ambitions), created a new frame for the cultural imagining of Georgianness: an
independent Georgian state, rather than a national borderland of the Soviet Union. How has
the attainment of independence, and the diminished role of the Russian ‘other’ in the
imagining of Georgianness in an independent state, affect cultural understandings of
Georgian nationhood? Has the dominant institutionalised view of Georgian nationhood as a
homogeneous language-based community been uniformly accepted within its ‘own’
constituency?

The argument pursued in this chapter is that elite efforts to promote a singular, language-
based concept of Georgian nationhood, in conjunction with other social and economic
factors, served instead to accentuate subdivisions among ethnic Georgians at the local level.
These subdivisions highlight the tension between the institutionalised understanding of
nationhood as a language-based community and the continued existence of a significant
degree of intra-titular linguistic diversity in Georgia. While the ways in which Soviet
institutions reified nationality have been an important focus of post-Soviet Western

171
In post-Soviet Kazakhstan a state-led strategy of ethnic redress favouring titular Kazakhs ironically
reinvigorated lineage (ru and zhuz) identities subdividing the Kazakh nation (Schatz 2000). These reconstituted
identities moved to the centre of Kazakh politics and their management turned into one of the major challenges
of the independent Kazakh state. In India, the eventual triumph of Hindi over Urdu as the sole official language
of the northern Indian states brought into focus the linguistic differences between Hindi and Rajasthani, ‘Bihari’
and ‘Pahari’ sub-groups (Brass, 1994, 182-88) . While the elites of some of these groups acquiesced in the
definition by nation builders of their vernaculars as dialects of Hindi, others, for example speakers of Maithili,
did not, leading to the recognition of Maithili as an official mother tongue in 1949. In the case of Hindi, the
disparity between elite-led efforts at nation building and actual practices demonstrated the constructed nature of
Hindi hegemony even within its putative heartland.

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scholarship, the further implication of tensions arising from congruence between
homogenised ‘passport’ definitions of nationality developed by the Soviet state and post-
Soviet elite constructions of ethnic homogeneity has received less attention. The argument
here is that in post-Soviet Georgia the accentuation of linguistic subdivisions highlighted this
congruence in ways that blurred the boundary between ostensibly ‘Soviet’ and ‘nationalist’
discourses. Perceived congruence between these two planes opened new rhetorical spaces
for the articulation of counter-narratives of heterogeneity at the local level, positing the
constructed rather than organic nature of Georgian cultural homogeneity and giving rise to a
new politics of vernacular empowerment. In doing so, however, these counter-narratives
drew upon the same primordialist frame, and thereby present a further arena in which
essentialist, cultural categories have been invoked in post-Soviet identity construction. In the
longer term, I argue that the reinvigoration of intra-titular linguistic boundaries may have
profound implications for less singular understandings of Georgian nationhood.

The relatively low degree of russification among titulars in Georgia belies a much more
complex picture of ‘unofficial multilingualism’, routinely overlooked in the study of
Georgian nationalism.172 There are several linguistic minorities which are counted as titulars
in Georgia: most significantly the Mingrelians and Svans in eponymous provinces in western
Georgia, a small number of Laz-speakers in Achara, and a very small number of speakers of
the Vainakh Bats language in Kakheti. Each of these communities presents a different social
and cultural context, and to generalise about them is difficult; what they share, however, is a
first-learnt language that is not Georgian. This chapter focuses on the largest of Georgia’s
titular linguistic minorities to present a study of interactions between Georgian and
Mingrelian identities. The broader dimensions of the Georgian-Mingrelian relationship
beyond sociolinguistic concerns have been little studied (though often speculated on); in the
post-Soviet period Mingrelian identity has become the subject of increased indigenous
debate.

The chapter plan is as follows. First some background data is presented, before changes in
socio-economic and political contexts are examined in section two. This shows that the basis
for the increased salience of identification as Mingrelian in independent Georgia was not pre-
determined. Section three explores constructions of the Mingrelian-Georgian dyad in the

172
The main interest in this aspect of Georgian nation formation has come from linguists, who go too far in
reifying the Kartvelian linguistic subunits as separate nationalities (Feurstein, 1992; Hewitt, 1995b).

213
nation building discourse of the post-Soviet Georgian state and how efforts to promote a
singular understanding of nationality have attempted to relegate Mingrelian to the role of a
dialect. The next section examines how the primordialist premises of the official discourse
have been inverted in the divergent constructions of this dyad emergent in the Mingrelian
periphery, establishing the basis for a counter-narrative of intra-titular diversity. In the final
sections interactions between Georgian and Mingrelian identities and the prospects for a
Mingrelian revival are explored using ethnographic data.

7.2 Background Data

Mingrelian is spoken in the western littoral province of Mingrelia and the southern reaches of
neighbouring Abkhazia. Of the four Kartvelian languages only Mingrelian and Laz , spoken
in north-eastern Turkey, are mutually intelligible.173 No reliable figures for the number of
Mingrelian-speakers exist, but it is thought to be in the region of between 400,000 and
500,000, a not insubstantial number in a total population of between 4-5 million.174 Most
Mingrelians use Georgian as their literary language; among the Mingrelian-speaking
population of Abkhazia, however, russification was more salient, reflected in the 63% of the
Georgian population of Abkhazia indicating knowledge of Russian as a second language in
1989 (see Appendix B-2). Some of these Mingrelians have only a poor or passive knowledge
of Georgian. Significantly, there are virtually no monoglot Mingrelians; following a general
pattern of languages in desuetude, only a very limited number of older monoglot speakers in
rural regions remains. In Mingrelia written Mingrelian, using the Georgian script, is limited
to the very small-scale and sporadic publishing of folkloric and linguistic texts. All
literature, press and educational activities are carried out in Georgian. Observations in the
field reveal, however, that Mingrelian may be spoken in virtually any other social context,
including in many cases the domain of work. Thus although the linguistic situation may
broadly correspond to that described by the term diglossia, the distinction between Georgian
and Mingrelian may be less schematic than a diglossic high/low description implies. Russian
media, both printed and broadcast, are also widely available, and code switching into Russian
is more common than in other parts of Georgia.

173
Some linguists refer to Mingrelian and Laz, which are the only two mutually intelligible Kartvelian
languages, as dialects of a single Zan language. Zan, had already split into Mingrelian and Laz variants by early
modern times, however, and it is not customary to speak of a unified Zan language today.
174
The figure of 400,000 is given in Klimov, 1999.

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As we saw in Chapter 4 subnational identities were briefly incorporated into Soviet
classificatory schemata in the 1920s, before being homogenised into a singular Georgian
nationality. There was a brief episode of newspaper publishing in Mingrelian in the 1930s
designed to facilitate the passage to literacy in Georgian. After the consolidation of a
singular Georgian ‘passport nationality’ subnational identities were deeply stigmatised in the
Soviet discourse of development as vestigial remnants to be consigned to a backward past.
Soviet rule did not, however, completely efface these regional and linguistic identities. They
were configured in Soviet-era works as ethnographic peripheries of the Georgian nation,
displaying local variations in the realms of folklore, cuisine and dialectology. They could
also find legitimate expression in the celebration of regional diversity and character attributes
in popular anecdotes. Compared to Georgia’s other subnational identities, however, the
Mingrelian category remained more closely implicated in questions of politics over the
Soviet period as the putative basis for clientelistic networking practices. In 1951-2, a purge
was carried out against party officials of Mingrelian provenance on the orders of Stalin, in
order to break a putative ‘Mingrelian nationalist ring’ (Patsatsia, 1989). Referred to as the
‘Mingrelian Affair’, this event is still not fully understood, although it seems likely that it
involved an instrumental use of a notional Mingrelian particularism by rival clans in party
politics. Indeed, the ‘Georgian Affair’ of the 1920s and the subsequent tainting of the
Georgians with ‘national deviationism’ find a parallel and echo in the similar accusations
levelled against Mingrelians some 30 years later.

7.3 Post-Soviet Contexts of Change in Intra-titular Identity

In addition to the widely perceived licence to critically review the past, both Soviet and
nationalist, three major developments had a significant impact in raising the profile of
Mingrelian in post-independence Georgia. Firstly, the opening of the Georgian-Turkish
border increased awareness of the Laz-speaking population in northeast Turkey. Since
Mingrelian and Laz are the only mutually intelligible Kartvelian languages, this increased the
self-perception of Mingrelians as forming part of a wider speech community.175 This boosted
the specifically linguistic content in Mingrelian self-identification, since the focus is on
language, which unites the Mingrelians with the Lazi, rather than religion, which
differentiates them. The Lazi are manifestly not seen as Georgians or as forming part of the

175
For investigations of Laz identity in Turkey see Bellér-Hann, 1995; Hann, 1997.

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Georgian nation, which thus calls into question the basis for the Mingrelians’ own
relatedness to both groups.176

Secondly, as a result of the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict a dramatic shift in the linguistic

balance between Georgian and Mingrelian took place in Mingrelia in favour of the latter.
According to official Georgian and international sources between 110,000-120,000 internally
displaced persons (IDPs) were displaced to Mingrelia as a result of the conflict, the vast
majority of whom are Mingrelians.177 Many of these grew up in the Mingrelian and Russian-
speaking milieu of Abkhazia and at the time of displacement tended to have a weaker
knowledge of Georgian. Many informants in Zugdidi in 1999-2000 attested to a post-conflict
Mingrelianisation of the town’s linguistic space as a result of the displaced population’s
arrival, reversing the gradual decline in the use of Mingrelian in the town over the late Soviet
period. A further, local challenge to Mingrelian’s low practical value was the requirement by
one of Zugdidi’s most visible post-conflict employers, the United Nations Observer Mission
in Georgia (UNOMIG), that its local staff speak Mingrelian as well as Georgian.

The displacement of Abkhazia’s Georgian population also resulted in the extension of

Mingrelian beyond its traditional region to the capital, Tbilisi. Mingrelian-speaking IDP
communities are now housed in various ‘temporary’ arrangements in hotels, barracks and
other buildings in the capital as well as settlements surrounding it. The raised profile of
Mingrelian in Tbilisi led one observer to suggest that “if before Russian was the second
language in Tbilisi, now it is Mingrelian”.178 This process possessed its own perceptual
dynamics, in which the linguistic category of Mingrelian became intertwined with the
negative social category of IDP, lending a new socio-economic nuance to the Mingrelian-
Georgian relationship.179 These changes are significant in the context of the Georgia-
Abkhazia conflict, since for Georgian understandings of the conflict, and indeed the

176
It should be underlined, however, that Laz-speakers in Turkey have experienced no corresponding
heightened awareness of their linguistic cousins in Georgia. Hann reports that Lazi in Turkey tend to view all
those from across the border in terms of a conglomerate Rus category, which leads to greater Lazi self-
identification as Turkish (Hann, 1997, 149)
177
The Georgian State Statistical Department put the figure at 119,812 for January 1999 (AARSSD, 1999, 31).
The Samegrelo Department of the Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation put the figure at 115,792 for
August of the same year (Samegrelo Departments of Statistics and Ministry of Refugees, 1999). The United
Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) figure for June 2000 for Mingrelia was 112,208 (UNHCR,
2000).
178
Interview with Davit Berdzenishvili, iveria ekspresi, 18-20 November 1997, 3.
179
This is reflected in a joke that I was told on several occasions during fieldwork in 2000: in the eastern
Georgian province of Kakheti a farmer’s wife is nagging her husband to go to the main market in Tbilisi.
Attempting to put her off, her husband replies “what use will that be, since I don’t speak Mingrelian?”

216
Georgian claim to Abkhazia, any notion of Mingrelian separateness is intolerable. In this
sense the Mingrelians are in a similar situation to the Lazi in Turkey, in that separatist
conflict elsewhere in the state imposes severe constraints on the open expression of any
degree of cultural individuality.

The third important context in which Mingrelian is implicated is that of the removal of Zviad
Gamsakhurdia from power and its aftermath in 1992-93. Figures identifiable as Mingrelian
from their surnames featured prominently in the Georgian national revival, most obviously
Gamsakhurdia himself and Merab Kostava. As a fierce advocate of ethnic Georgian
nationalism Gamsakhurdia, as will be argued below, was categorically opposed to any
subdivision of the Georgian nation. Nevertheless, support for Gamsakhurdia after his
removal from power was concentrated in Mingrelia, where a Zviadist uprising took place in
autumn 1993 coinciding with Shevardnadze’s defeat in Abkhazia. The revolt was brutally
suppressed by mkhedrioni paramilitary bands, one of the forces behind Gamsakhurdia’s
removal from power in Tbilisi the preceding December. Related high profile events in
Mingrelia in the late 1990s further raised the spectre of ‘Mingrelian separatism’. In October
1998 the renegade colonel and former Zviadist Akaki Eliava staged an attempted insurrection
and assault on Georgia’s second city Kutaisi (The Times, 20 October 1998). Although the
rebellion was quickly quelled, Eliava continued to provide highly vocal criticism of the
government that regularly included threats of Mingrelian secession, until his assassination by
Interior Ministry Forces in 2000. In early 1999 an oppositional political movement named
the ‘Union for the Democratic Revival of Mingrelia’ was founded in Mingrelia (rezonansi, 9
March 1999). Despite this movement’s clear links to the Achara-based opposition party
Union for the Democratic Revival of Georgia, claims were made in the national press the
organisation was recruiting its members on the basis of a ‘Mingrelian criterion’ (rezonansi,
10 March 1999).

It is difficult to gauge the extent to which Gamsakhurdia’s connection with Mingrelia was a
phenomenon antecedent to civil war between pro-Gamsakhurdia and pro-Shevardnadze
forces or deriving from it. Conversations with informants in Mingrelia suggested that it is
the reprisals enacted by the mkhedrioni paramilitary group following the revolt of 1993 that
lie behind the claims of an anti-Mingrelian agenda. In this sense Mingrelia may be seen as a

217
sort of Vendée of the Shevardnadze ‘revolution’.180 It is nevertheless indisputable that
Gamsakhurdia enjoyed overwhelming support across the whole of Georgia, not just in
Mingrelia. Claiming an ethnic content to the Georgian civil war is a highly dubious exercise,
since cultural differences were not at issue in the conflict. It is quite wrong and misleading to
refer to the Georgian civil war as a ‘Mingrelian conflict’. It seems more plausible to suggest
that the regional origins of political leaders play an important role in their recognition and
appraisal by supporters, whether these origins are invoked or not.

These developments have both contributed to a renewed vibrancy for Mingrelian and created
new contexts for the construction, as well as deconstruction, of the Georgia-Mingrelian
relationship in post-Soviet Georgia. They provide a dynamic backdrop to the contrasting
constructions of Mingrelian identity, to which I now turn.

7.4 The State Perspective

My enquiries about Mingrelian in Georgian academic circles in 1999-2000 were generally
met with suspicion, discomfort or bemusement. On many occasions I found that the capital I
had been awarded as a Georgian-speaking foreigner was immediately lost when I began to
ask about Mingrelian. When I went to the Georgian State Literary Museum in Tbilisi, after
initial delight at my use of Georgian, my request to view an unpublished manuscript relating
to the historical study of Mingrelian was not well received by the museum director. I was
told that the Mingrelian language (megruli ena) ‘does not exist’, and that the manuscript in
question was part of a ‘closed archive’ which I would not be able to see.181 On another
occasion I was asked by several noted linguists at the Tbilisi Institute of Linguistics how I
would define the difference between a language and a dialect.182 My answer to this question,
that I viewed the difference as lying in the realm of politics rather than linguistics, seemed to
do little to reassure my Georgian colleagues that my intentions were bona fide. The notion
that an objective account of this difference is possible is a reflection of the faith in ‘objective’
laws and positivism characterising intellectual enquiry in Georgia, and in turn of the Soviet
intellectual milieu in which most Georgian academics were trained. On this occasion it was
concluded that the laws governing the difference between languages and dialects had simply

180
I am grateful to Thornike Gordadze for suggesting this comparison to me.
181
Interview with Iza Orjonikidze, Director of the Georgian Literary Museum, 29 April 2000. Interestingly I
was asked if I could not research Svan instead, an indication of the difference in sensitivity towards these two
languages.
182
Interview with Rezo Sherozia and Manana Kobaidze, Tbilisi Linguistics Institute, 14 June 2000.

218
‘not been discovered yet’. The very fact that I myself was not a linguist caused obvious
confusion as to why I might be interested in Mingrelian.

In the context of secessionist conflict it is understandable why there should be reluctance to

concede or encourage the existence of further levels of identity seemingly in conflict with
that of the nation. However, these examples are also illustrative of the dominant discursive
framework used to rationalise intra-titular linguistic diversity in Georgia. As early as the
eighteenth century Georgian lexicographer Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani defined the verb
‘twittering’ as the ‘distorted speech of Mingrelians’ (Orbeliani, 1999, 1: 636). In the
nineteenth century the local elite in Mingrelia marshalled numerous arguments against the
institutionalisation of “the despised discourse of the common people”, not least its inability to
express complex or moral concepts (Zhurnal’, [1895?], 9).183 Following the formal
incorporation of the Mingrelian category into the Georgian nationality for census purposes in
the late 1920s, Mingrelian became something of a taboo. Noted Mingrelian ethnographer
Kalistrate Samushia, for example, has observed that

“In my student days it was forbidden to mention Mingrelian. The reason for this
was [discredited 1930s party secretary in Mingrelia and advocate for the wider
use of Mingrelian] Isaki Zhvania…I showed my work to [linguist] Arnold
Chikobava. ‘Leave this subject alone’, he advised me, ‘or you’ll go the way of
Zhvania’” (Samushia, 1999, 12).

This shift in the 1930s provides the basis for the state perspective on the Kartvelian
vernaculars today. Leading linguists in Georgia take the view that while Mingrelian and
Svan may be separate languages in a linguistic sense, in sociolinguistic terms they are
functional equivalents of Georgian dialects; they should thus be seen as codes rather than
languages.184 As such they merit enquiry only in sociolinguistic or dialectological terms.

183
It is one of history’s ironies that the first printed use of the language came in fact with the serf emancipation
order of 1866, when the official decree in Russian (Dopol’nitel’nie k Polozheniyam 13 oktyabrya 1864 goda
Pravila o Krest’yanakh, vyshedshikh iz krepostnoy zavisimosti v Mingrelii) was translated into Mingrelian,
informing the peasantry of their new rights as free men.
184
Author’s interview with Aleksandre Oniani, 18 November 1999; Jorbenadze, 1991; Oniani, 1998. Accounts
in this vein emphasise that the Mingrelian word margali, ‘Mingrelian’, was originally used to denote ‘peasant’,
being synonymous with the Georgian words glekhi and qazakhi meaning ‘peasant’ or ‘villager’. In the view of
Tariel Putkaradze, director of the Akaki Tsereteli State University Dialectological Research Institute in Kutaisi,
the term margali was linked to and contrasted with the term zhinoskua, meaning ‘high-born’ and equivalent to
the Georgian word aznauri, ‘noble’. For Putkaradze it was the demise of the zhinoskua following the Russian

219
This provides the basis for their only legal recognition in Georgia, in the provisions for
dialectological research in the State Programme for the Georgian Language (II, 6,14; VIII,
7). In non-linguistic public discourse, Mingrelian and Svan are commonly regarded as being
in some sense vestigial and backward: “when Georgians have such a rich and commonly held
literary language, the worries that some of our compatriots have that Mingrelian and Svan
might disappear are needless…and if in the distant future this process nevertheless came to
pass, this will be a natural and regular process…” (Gasviani, 1999, 12). Such positive
metaphors as are associated with Mingrelian and Svan tend to be backward looking: in
Gasviani’s view their only value is as treasure troves for “the research into the past of the
common mother tongue”.

The greater freedom for the assertion of Georgian national values accompanying the national
revival has paved the way for more aggressive articulations of the relationship between
Georgian and Mingrelian. Zviad Gamsakhurdia himself was one of the first to address this
theme in 1989 with an article in the official organ of the Georgian Writers’ Union, Literary
Georgia, condemning what he portrayed as the ‘Mingrelian nationalism’ of the 1920s
(Gamsakhurdia, 1989). Following the 1966 precedent of the translation of Shota Rustaveli’s
mediaeval epic The Man in the Panther’s Skin into Mingrelian, renewed interest in the
translation of Georgian literary works into Mingrelian became the subject of heated polemic
in the national press in the post-independence period. Prominent linguists affiliated to
institutes in Tbilisi warned that the translation of literary works and the Bible into Mingrelian
and Svan is an act of national betrayal that will lead to the collapse of the Georgian state
(Sarjveladze and Oniani, 1997). In 1999 Literary Georgia (literaturuli sakartvelo, 28 May-4
June, 1999) published a poem written by the popular Georgian poet Murman Lebanidze
containing the following lines:

‘Just as next to the mother-Mtkvari, the Chorokhi and Enguri,

The Rioni and Tekhuri, Iori and Aragvi,185
So with language, - next to Georgian, Mingrelian
Does not have the right to make its voice heard…

Revolution that engendered the semantic transformation of the term margali from a social to an ethnic category
and, in his view, the illusion of ethnic distinctiveness. Author’s interview with Tariel Putkaradze, 24 November
1999.
185
The Mtkvari is the river flowing through Tbilisi, while all the other rivers named flow through other parts of
Georgia.

220
 ‘You made the word of the enemy your deed,
You instilled something alien in your simple peasantry.
O, shame, you translated Rustaveli, -
You made doggerel of the Georgian poem!

‘I will say no more about this, -

Are we not two sons of one mother, -
It had to be said once and for all,
Let there never be need again!

The poem provoked extended polemic in the national press and was condemned in the
Georgian parliament, while in Mingrelia itself it caused a furore; Literary Georgia’s editor,
Tamaz Tsivtsivadze offered his apologies the following week, but nevertheless stood firm on
the poem’s message: “Were Mingrelians to translate the Bible, or The Man in the Panther’s
Skin… then it transpires that indeed we are two nations…It is averred by academics that
Mingrelian is a dialect. It may be that 12 languages can exist in a state, but when we are
talking about nations, here there can be only one language” (Ts’ivtsivadze, 1999). The
consensus among cultural elites at the Georgian centre is thus that Mingrelian (and Svan)
must not become the vehicles of language revival and thereby, in their view, new potential
sources of separatism. A recurrent implication is that cultural self-expression as Mingrelian
would mean association with the hated regimes in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. In Tbilisi few
things conjure up fear of further separatism in Georgia than discussion of the ‘Mingrelian
question’: as the State Literary Museum director commented, “we’ve had enough calamities
in this country and we don’t need another”.

These fears are especially marked amongst intelligentsia figures of Mingrelian and Svan
provenance, who have figured amongst the most vociferous critics of advocates of a rise in
the status of Mingrelian and Svan. Two recent publications, of the Samegrelo [Mingrelia]
Regional Scientific Centre of the Georgian Academy Sciences are instructive of the
nervousness with which this subject is approached (Antelava, 1999; Ardia and Janelidze,
1999). One a history of the region, the other a geographical description, both publications
bear the same frontispiece featuring Ilia Chavchavadze’s proclamation beginning with the
words “I came to Mingrelia and I saw Georgia – glorious Georgia!” A chapter on culture in

221
the geographical volume reiterates the standard intelligentsia view: “[in the nineteenth
century] the Russians opposed Georgian as the native literary language in Mingrelia. They
tried to remove it from local schools on the pretext that the Mingrelians supposedly are not
Georgians because they have their own language (?!)”(Neidze, 1999, 284).

In sum, manifestations of interest in Mingrelian (and Svan), have instigated a renewed – and
disquieting – awareness of intra-titular linguistic diversity in expressions of ethnic Georgian
nationalism. The 1930s consolidation of the different Kartvelian linguistic groups into a
singular Georgian nationality defined primarily by language, an institutionalised
understanding of nationhood that is not questioned by most Georgian intellectuals, raises
uncomfortable questions of affinity and mutual reinforcement between the Soviet discourse
of cultural engineering and the primordialist discourse of Georgian national identity.
Recognition of either a heterogeneous basis for Georgian nationality or the contribution of
Soviet nationalities policy to the consolidation of a modern Georgian nationality is anathema
to ethnonationalists. This tension is resolved in the views of mainstream intellectuals in two
ways. The first is the claim of popular ignorance of national history. A prominent claim in
Gamsakhurdia’s writings is the historical amnesia of the Georgian people, induced by Soviet
oppression or ignorance: “a majority of Georgia’s population today does not know its own
national identity, its own national past” (Gamsakhurdia, 1989, 7). In his article on Mingrelia
he questioned for example whether Tbilisians knew anything about the role played by the
Mingrelian principality in Georgian history. A recurrent counter-claim by cultural elites to
assertions of linguistic or ethnic difference between Mingrelians and Georgians is that these
emanate from the ‘uneducated’, lower (dabali) strata of rural Mingrelia.

The second resolution of intra-titular linguistic diversity takes the form of the active
‘dialectalisation’ of Mingrelian and Svan alluded to above. Whereas within the larger frame
of the Soviet Union Georgians have generally been happy to portray themselves – and be
perceived by foreigners – as irrational, colourful and romantic figures, within the more local
universe of an independent Georgian state, these values are inverted as Tbilisi arrogates to
itself values befitting a ‘centre’ – rationality, civilisation and progress – vis-à-vis its own
hinterland. In linguistic terms this entails the active policing of the boundary between the
hallowed literary langue and regional vernacular langage, through which Mingrelian and
Svan are invested with the negatively connoted values of patois. This rationalisation of
linguistic diversity can be seen as providing an internal dimension to Georgian self-

222
definition, in a positive register of cultural achievement and advance. For linguistic
nationalists, the denial of separate status as languages to Mingrelian and Svan is a necessary
corollary to the dominant understanding of nation as a community defined by language. In
the linguistic realm, then, expressions of ethnonationalism in the independent Georgian state
assumed some of the characteristics of the “ideology of contempt” for regional vernaculars
that has characterised the ideological elaboration of state-national languages in other
European contexts (Grillo, 1989, 173-74). 186 An ideology of linguistic hierarchification is an
integral aspect of Georgian ethnonationalist discourse vis-à-vis significant segments of its
‘own’ constituency.

7.5 A new interpretation of Mingrelian identity?

Does the hegemony of Georgian posited in ethnonationalist discourse go unquestioned in the
Mingrelian periphery? Responses to my enquiries in Mingrelia itself contrasted sharply with
the discomfort I had encountered in Tbilisi. Although consistently confused by the fact that I
was not a linguist, almost everywhere informants expressed delight that a foreigner was
taking an interest in what was in their view a rich and undervalued language.187 Many
informants were still smarting at the memory of Lebanidze’s poem, bitterly quoting back to
me the most offensive couplet describing Mingrelian as ‘doggerel’. Observations of reading
materials in people’s homes and the Zugdidi bookshop further revealed that literature with a
Mingrelian theme was enjoying something of a renaissance. This included the re-issue of
historical works in Mingrelian linguistics, the publication of poetry and folk-texts in
Mingrelian and historical studies of the Mingrelian region. A further indication of a revival
of a Mingrelian theme, and an interesting example of its printed use, was the new use of
Mingrelian words as company names. An admittedly cursory and rather chaotic examination
of company registration records in the Zugdidi Mayoralty revealed at least 20 companies
registered using Mingrelian words for their names.

186
Consider the following comments, taken from a French newspaper editorial on the issue of raising the status
of regional dialects: “Nobody feels hostile towards Corsican songs, Basque or Kabyle chants and Creole
folksongs. But to accord these dialects exorbitant rights would be to engage in a process which sooner or later
would give rise to demands for identity, violence, and ultimately the dislocation of French identity”. Le Figaro,
reported in The Independent, 30 June 1999, 3.
187
The exception to this warm welcome is highly instructive. Upon learning of my arrival in Zugdidi and my
interest in Mingrelian, the rector of the local branch of Tbilisi State University asked my host, a teacher at the
university, not to bring me to the university for fear of subsequent accusations of ‘separatism’ from his
superiors in Tbilisi.

223
The promotion of Georgian at the state level has led to a parallel process of individual
initiatives in support of local languages, perceived at the local level as part of the ‘lost’
national patrimony.188 One aspect of the renaissance in locally themed literature is the
consolidation of a group of local intellectuals around the publication of a new periodical,
aia.189 Taking its name from one of mythic titles of the ancient eastern Black Sea kingdom
Colchis, the journal is expressly dedicated to recovering the history, language and folklore of
ancient Colchis, and features articles on history, folklore, etymologies, legends associated
with Colchis, poetry and linguistics, as well as polemical articles. The journal is written in
Georgian, although some poetry is also published in Mingrelian using the Georgian script.
The editor of the periodical, Giorgi Sichinava, explains the rationale behind the publication
in its first editorial thus:

“Treasures without an owner…are usually appropriated by others, and all Georgia

already suffers today from the bitter fruit of this process…If we love our
motherland, we should love Colchis and Iberia to the same extent, as children
love their mother and father. Georgia, no more and no less for each, is the
country of Colchidians and Iberians…Georgia’s hospitable and philanthropic
land, its spiritual treasure-house and ancient history have a genuine owner and
that owner is the Georgian people: Colchidians and Iberians arisen from the same
root” (Sichinava, 1996, 1).

While framing inquiry into the Colchidian past as a patriotic endeavour, Sichinava also posits
the duality of the historical Colchidian-Iberian relationship as a reality in contemporary
Georgia. Central to the recovery of the Colchidian past, in his view, is the Mingrelian
language, but this is not to suggest Mingrelian separateness; rather that the original locus of
Georgian genius is to be found in Colchis, and by extension, in Mingrelian. In the pages of
aia, Colchis is variously portrayed as ‘the ancient world’s oldest and strongest coastline

188
During the course of my fieldwork in Mingrelia I was acquainted with several individuals engaged in the
collection of Mingrelian vocabularies, who attributed their activities to the fear that a catastrophic loss of
vocabulary would ensue from the passing of the current older generation of its speakers.
189
aia is actually published in Tbilisi. Issued regularly since 1996, it has expanded from a rather flimsy
pamphlet to a sizeable periodical-type publication. I was informed at the Zugdidi State Library that aia was not
available there; the journal is nevertheless freely available in the bookshop in Zugdidi. Many in Zugdidi had
heard of the journal and had read articles from it; further afield, however, the journal was not well known.
Several Georgian colleagues within the academic establishment were horrified at my interest in aia, regularly
dismissing the views expressed therein as ‘unscientific’. Eulogies to Zviad Gamsakhurdia in aia leave little
doubt as to the political orientation of its founders.

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state’, ‘homeland of the founder of medicine, Medea’, ‘the cradle of human civilization’ and
the ‘source of cartographic map-making and ideogrammic writing’. Contributors to aia
suggest that until now this has been a secret history, deliberately distorted and hidden. The
author of a Mingrelian grammar, Mamanti Dzadzamia, for example, observes in a
contribution to aia that the “history of Colchis and ancient Georgia in general as yet remains
to be convincingly studied and evaluated. Furthermore, it is beyond doubt that in Georgian
historiography the history of Colchis is artificially excluded and what is more falsified, after
the point at which Colchis lost its greatness and the Colchidians’ leading role amongst the
Kartvelian tribes was surrendered to the past” (Dzadzamia, 1997, 51). 190 Elsewhere a
distinctly colonial relationship between ‘Georgian’ and ‘Colchidian’ histories is suggested:
‘Today in broad daylight without any kind of hesitation the Tbilisi intelligentsia plunders the
history of Colchis. It is represented in Georgia’s history in the same way as Georgia was
represented in the history of the Soviet Union” (A. Zhordania, 2000, 34). aia’s contributors
find in their allegations of the claimed neglect and falsification of Colchidian history a
powerful metaphor for the current state of Mingrelian, which they portray as the ‘lost
language’ of Colchis: unrecognised and unstudied, yet representing the authentic depository
of Georgian culture.191

Snubbed by Tbilisi intellectuals as a ‘village intelligentsia’, Sichinava and Dzadzamia decry

what they see as the unjust accusations of Mingrelian nationalism and separatism levelled
against them.192 In private they make no secret of their hopes for a rise in the popularity and
use of Mingrelian and remain quietly confident that their project in cultural revival will one
day bear fruit. When I met Dzadzamia in July 2000 he cited to me reviewers who had
likened his work to that of nineteenth century linguists reviled in their own generation and
vindicated in the next. When I later met Giorgi Sichinava in October 2001 he proudly
190
A former agronomist, Dzadzamia retrained as a linguist later in life and now teaches linguistics at the Zugdidi
State University. He has developed an elaborate theory suggesting links between Mingrelian and the first
language spoken by man, published at his own expense (Dzadzamia and Dzadzamia, 1997).
191
The view that Mingrelian is in fact ‘Old Georgian’, a relationship suggested by nineteenth century Georgian
intellectuals seeking to downplay the difference between Mingrelian and Georgian, was often reiterated by
informants in Mingrelia. In this context it is interesting to note that the link between Colchis and ancient Egypt,
posited by early modern travellers to the region, is a living belief for some. In 1999 an Egyptian soldier serving
with the United Nations Observer Mission in Zugdidi told me that on one occasion he had been embraced and
hailed as ethnic kindred while on patrol.
192
The promoters of Mingrelian are constrained by their potential association with another source of attempts to
popularise Mingrelian, namely the de facto authorities in Abkhazia. In the post-conflict period, the Abkhazians
have sporadically published a Russian-Abkhaz-Mingrelian newspaper, Gal, aimed at the Mingrelian population
of Gali region out of putatively philanthropic motives. The political context of this publication is self-evident
for all, however. In Zugdidi the prevalent feeling is that it is not for the Abkhazians to promote Mingrelian: this
is seen in terms of Abkhazian political desires for a ‘Mingrelian buffer-zone’ between Abkhazia and Georgia.

225
presented to me his latest efforts: a Mingrelian language primer, nanashi nina, and the first
ever journal to be published exclusively in Mingrelian, iriatoni, which features poetry and
short stories written by numerous Mingrelian enthusiasts. Sichinava also informed me that
he was working on a novel in Mingrelian.

Although they too welcome Georgian independence and the lifting of the Soviet veil, these
Mingrelian folklorists see these developments quite differently from the mainstream of the
Georgian intelligentsia. In their view, the sense of titular entitlement seen to flow from
independence has opened a rhetorical space for the recognition of the heterogeneous basis of
Georgian nationhood and the apportionment of cultural (if not, as yet, political) capital along
what they would see as more egalitarian lines between its constituent parts.193 Yet there are
clearly many parallels in the cultural entrepreneurship of the Mingrelian folklorists behind
aia and that of the cultural intelligentsias at the head of the national movements in the Soviet
republics. Theirs is not an autonomous discourse but one reliant on the same primordialist
ontology of the relationship between language and identity as the titular nationalism they
seek to challenge. Anyone familiar with the conflicts over historiography in the Georgian-
Abkhaz, Georgian-Ossetian, Armenian-Azerbaijani and other similar settings will recognize
the highly derivative nature of the claims in aia to history, ancient peoples and territory,
couched in the seemingly limitlessly transferable Soviet idiom of primordial ethnogenesis.
Their challenge in effect replicates the primordialist premises of titular nationalism but turns
it on its head to assert the ontological primacy of Mingrelian over Georgian.

In the conflicting representations of the Mingrelian-Georgian dyad emanating from the centre
and the periphery it is clear that independence has precipitated a new form of language
politics in Georgia, a politics of vernacular empowerment.194 Some of the key aspects of this
development are clearly evident: at the centre, the defence of Georgian as the language of
state and the proper repository of the glories of the Georgian nation and the disparagement of
regional vernaculars as primitive and unfit for cultural production, and in the periphery, the
emergence of a vernacular linguistic narcissism and the identification of Georgian as the
enslaving agent of an overbearing metropole. Particularly striking in this conflict is the
transposition of the narrative of decolonisation, and the evocation of primordial identity

193
The tying of demands for Mingrelian autonomy in 2001 to demands that the Mingrelian language be taught
in schools indicate that the extension of cultural claims for Mingrelian to more explicitly political agendas is
likely to increase (Fuller, 2001).
194
I draw here upon Paul Brass’s discussion of the politics of vernacular empowerment in India (Brass, 2003).

226
underlying it, from its use in the ethnonationalist discourse of the Georgian revival as a
justification for emancipation from Soviet rule, to the post-independence construction of the
centre’s relations with its own cultural hinterlands.195

7.6 The political incorporation variable and prospects for a Mingrelian revival
What are the prospects for a Mingrelian language revival, as the folklorists hope to achieve,
and what are the salient dynamics in the politics of vernacular empowerment in the
Mingrelian case? To answer this question, I turn again to the elite incorporation model in
order to explore the tensions confronting the efforts of the Mingrelian folklorists. As I
argued in Chapter 3 second-order titular elites were incorporated according to a colonial
logic, that is, these elites were unable for various reasons to translate status in the periphery
into status at the centre. Their acquisition of the language of the centre, in this case Russian,
was purely instrumental in order to garner the benefits of co-optation as monopoly mediators
in their own regions. It is argued here that peripheral elites in Mingrelia by contrast did not
face significant constraints to pursuing mobility opportunities at the Georgian centre. As a
result there were strong incentives for successive generations of elite strata in Mingrelia to
identify with the Georgian language and culture, and reap the rewards of co-optation into the
central political and cultural establishment. The incorporation of Mingrelian elites may
therefore be seen as a contrasting case of ‘most-favoured-lord’ incorporation by comparison
with the Abkhazian and Ossetian cases.

Since after 1926 Mingrelians were not differentiated in official data it is impossible to
provide statistical evidence of their distribution through Georgian society. Yet three
significant pointers are strongly suggestive of a high degree of incorporation of elites in
Mingrelia vis-à-vis the Georgian centre. Firstly there is the emergence by the late nineteenth
century of a local elite in Mingrelia accepted as equals by the mainstream Georgian cultural
intelligentsia. The leaders of the Georgian cultural revival in this period took an
assimilationist approach towards cultural diversity in Mingrelia, downplaying the differences
and emphasising the common descent of Mingrelians and (other) Georgians. The local
Mingrelian elite was the most vociferous opponent of Russian attempts to raise Mingrelian’s

195
Conflicting views over the value of language as an authentic component of identity against the advantages of
assimilation into languages of wider communication characterise the ongoing debate over the merits of
programmes for endangered languages. For contrasting approaches on this issue see Fishman, 1991; Dorian,
1998; Ladefoged, 1992.

227
status around the turn of the century.196 For the ambitious members of the lower strata in
Mingrelia there were also significant incentives to identify with Georgian culture in order to
pursue careers in the ecclesiastical, educational and administrative elite in Mingrelia, which,
given appropriate opportunity, could be translated into mobility across wider Georgian
society. Successive generations of the upper strata in Mingrelia thus had significant
incentives to identify with Georgian national culture, not simply in terms of an instrumental
acquisition of Georgian for local rewards but as part of a broader assimilatory framework.

Secondly, a clear signal of fluidity in the Mingrelian/Georgian boundary is the 14.1% of

Mingrelian native-speakers who self-identified with the Georgian rather than Mingrelian
nationality category in the 1926 census (see Table 4.2). This suggests that an assimilation
process into a Georgian national identity was already ongoing amongst Mingrelians by the
time of Soviet incorporation. This process was more advanced in Abkhazia, where 26.2% of
Mingrelian native-speakers identified with the category of Georgian nationality; in contrast
only 0.07% of Abkhaz native-speakers in Abkhazia claimed Georgian nationality in 1926.197

Thirdly Mingrelians have been consistently well represented in titular political and cultural
elites in Georgia throughout Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Among the many Mingrelians
that have played leading roles in their respective fields in the Soviet period and beyond are
Lavrenti Beria, ethnographers Tedo Sakhokia and Sergo Makalatia, novelist Konstantine
Gamsakhurdia, linguists Arnold Chikobava and Korneli Danelia, historian Simon Janashia,
film-maker Eldar Shengelaia, national movement leaders Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Merab
Kostava, and political scientist Gia Nodia. The prominence of key figures of Mingrelian
provenance in modern Georgian history and culture provides compelling evidence of the
fluidity of the Mingrelian/Georgian boundary.198 In popular lore Mingrelians are commonly
portrayed as the most fervently nationalistic of Georgia’s titular subgroups, a point best
illustrated by the humorous and very common self-evaluation amongst Mingrelians, usually

196
For contemporary evidence of this resistance see T. Zhordania, 1913; Zhurnal’ [1985?].
197
Müller attributes the identification with Georgian narodnost’ amongst Mingrelian speakers to a mixture of
inclination towards their own ‘high culture’ and nationalist pressure (Müller, 1999, 233). This view perhaps
does not give sufficient weight to the incentives for Mingrelian-speakers to identify with Georgian nationality
during a period in which titular identities were associated with affirmative action benefits.
198
The ‘Mingrelian Affair’ constitutes an exception to this broader trend of course. Yet it is significant that
Mingrelians were sufficiently well represented in party structures for the existence of a ‘Mingrelian nationalist
ring’ to be seen as plausible. Without diminishing the very real terror experienced by many Mingrelians as a
result of these purges, this interlude does not contradict the overall pattern of a high degree of Mingrelian
incorporation.

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uttered in Russian, mingrelets – vyshchiy sort gruzin [‘A Mingrelian is the best sort of
Georgian’].

Compared with second-order titular elites, Mingrelians thus moved freely through Georgian
society throughout the Soviet period. Combined with cultural proximity, this freedom of
mobility created conditions for the assimilation of Mingrelians, above all elite strata, into a
Georgian national identity. There are strong parallels between the Mingrelian-Georgian
relationship and the Ukrainian-Russian relationship. In both cases the fluidity of group
boundaries encouraged a full cultural assimilation amongst the smaller group’s upper strata
into the larger group’s culture. Over time, the assimilated elites of both groups came to view
the regional culture as variously backward, primitive and distinctly inhibiting of the wider
opportunities available in the ‘high’ culture. In a direct parallel with the insistence of
assimilated Mingrelian elites that Mingrelian is a dialect of Georgian, russified Ukrainians
pejoratively refer to Ukrainian using the term khokhol and regard the language as a ‘dialect’
of Russian (Laitin, 1998, 65). While stereotypes asserting the provincial and backward
qualities of the smaller group amongst representatives of the larger group obtain in both
cases, these have not impeded the progress of Mingrelians and Ukrainians in different
periods to the pinnacles of influence in the political and cultural establishments of their
respective centres.

A most-favoured-lord thesis of Mingrelian incorporation can explain the dynamics and

difficulties confronting the project of a Mingrelian revival. For groups incorporated in this
way, the most significant tensions accompanying revival are the intra-elite tensions between
those elites who have assimilated into the language and culture of the centre, and the cultural
elites now promoting the symbols and vernacular culture of the region. The former view the
latter as the parochial promoters of a culture best left to ethnographic and folkloric margins,
while the regional revivalists deride the betrayal of their ‘authentic’ national identity by what
they see as assimilated ‘co-ethnics’ at the centre. Thus in the Ukrainian case, a Ukrainian
ethnonationalist orientation has always had to compete with Little Russian and Russophile
orientations within in its ‘own’ Ukrainian constituency (Wilson, 1997). The post-Soviet
Ukrainian national revival has consequently been played out in the interactions between three
social clusters, Ukrainophone titulars, Russophone titulars and Russians, in which tensions
between the first two categories have significantly diluted the cultural agenda of the

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Ukrainian nationalists. The impact of these tensions in the Mingrelian case will now be
explored using ethnographic data.

7.7 The View from Below

To what extent do the conflicting constructions of Georgian ethnonationalist discourse and
the Mingrelian folklorists resonate with the wider Mingrelian population? Is a threat to the
future survival of Mingrelian seen as plausible or compelling by the language’s speakers?
How central is language to self-identification as Mingrelian? To explore these questions I
present vignettes from two contrasting milieus, Tbilisi and Zugdidi. Informants from the
displaced population from Abkhazia are included in both contexts, as well as some
informants from rural locations surrounding Zugdidi.

A Note on Method
Exploration of the sensitive and politically loaded theme of intra-titular diversity is to explore
relations of domination, subordination and hegemony, defined as “the ‘spontaneous’ consent
given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by
the dominant fundamental group” (Gramsci, 1971, 12). For the six decades between the
rationalisation of the 1930s and the collapse of the Soviet state intra-titular linguistic
diversity in Georgia was a proscribed subject beyond the contained fields of linguistics and
folklore. In the public domains of Soviet Georgia identification as Mingrelian has, in
particular periods, been invested with meanings of political unorthodoxy and social and
cultural backwardness. In the current context, as suggested above, the ‘Mingrelian theme’ is
not a welcome one in Georgia. Elucidation of the meanings associated with Mingrelian
therefore requires the researcher to enter the unofficial, covert domain of what Scott calls the
‘hidden transcript’, the discourse expressed offstage beyond the direct observation of power-
holders (Scott, 1990). The material offered here consequently relies heavily on ethnographic
data, in the form of both participant observation and open-ended, unstructured interviews
with informants in their homes, gathered over visits to the field in the period 1999-2000.
Surveying techniques, by contrast, may be seen as more useful for the eliciting of the ‘public
transcript’, the public interaction between subordinates and power-holders.199 While my

199
See for example Vamling’s survey, carried out in conjunction with the Chikobava Institute of Linguistics of
the Georgian Academy of Sciences. Oriented more towards sociolinguistic enquiry, Vamling’s study concludes
that “[the fact that] the common literary language was chosen by the respondents to be the most important
component in the perception of their national identity indicates that the respondents consider themselves

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conclusions point broadly towards linkages between public and hidden transcripts, the data
offered here points to the far more contested and differentiated nature of interpretations of the
Mingrelian-Georgian relationship in the hidden vis-à-vis the public transcript. Comparison
of discrepancies between hidden and public transcripts provides an opportunity to assess, in
Scott’s formulation, the impact of domination on public discourse. Of course I encountered
many renditions of the public transcript in the course of interviewing, but one of the strengths
of the ethnographic method is that it allows a more sustained interrogation of overtly
expressed views and the general trends recorded in survey-based research.

7.7.1 Vignettes from Tbilisi

Descended from a noted Mingrelian ethnographer, Maqvala is a leading light in Tbilisi
academic circles. A linguist by training, she has idyllic childhood memories of Mingrelia,
but has lived all her adult life in Tbilisi. Following the conflict in Abkhazia, Maqvala opened
her home to relatives displaced from Sukhumi. Although the occasional joke in Mingrelian
is shared, Georgian dominates in her cramped Tbilisi apartment. For Maqvala, ethnography,
folklore and linguistics are the only appropriate fields for discussion of Mingrelian; indeed
she has difficulties understanding what my interest in Mingrelian is, given my background in
social science. Maqvala has no patience for claims of Mingrelian particularism, which she
sees as a purely Russian-inspired ruse of ‘divide and rule’. If a Georgian/Mingrelian
opposition flourishes, she says, Georgia will perish; indeed she expressed anxiety that I
might be playing into the wrong hands with my questions. To ensure that I was not misled,
she kindly rooted out an old nineteenth century document demonstrating the opposition of
the Mingrelian noble elite to raising Mingrelian’s status. She gave me a copy, expressing
confidence that I would not write anything ‘silly’ about Mingrelian.

Zaal, 30, works in the Tbilisi mayoralty. Born in the Black Sea port of Poti, he has a degree
in Germanic Studies from Tbilisi State University and is fluent in German and Russian as
well as Georgian and Mingrelian. Zaal rarely uses his Mingrelian now, mainly with his
mother and more distant relatives in Poti. Proud of his Mingrelian background, he asserts
that Mingrelia has the richest folklore of any region in Georgia and that Georgian civilisation
indeed originated in ancient Colchis. Zaal concedes that many Tbilisians do not like
Mingrelians, but attributes this to jealousy and resentment of their success: “it is because we

Georgian in a wide sense, closely tied by cultural and historical bonds to the other Kartvelian ethnic groups”
(Vamling, 2000, 11).

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are better than everyone one else, that is why they don’t like us Mingrelians!” he says. He
dismisses claims of discrimination against Mingrelians: if this was the case, he asks, how can
one explain the high number of Mingrelians in official government positions? He points out
that besides him there are many Mingrelians working at the mayoralty, not least the mayor
himself. Zaal is also unimpressed by the claim that Mingrelian is endangered; he believes
that “for as long as the region exists” the language will be spoken. There’s simply no reason
or demand for a rise in Mingrelian’s status, he adds.

Otar, 26, was born and raised in Tbilisi, and works for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Fluent in Russian and English, he is currently posted to a Georgian embassy in the Middle
East and hopes one day to write a doctoral dissertation in international relations. Otar’s
distinctive surname, Orzolia, marks him out as being of Mingrelian provenance. He looks
upon this somewhat ironically, since he has never been to Mingrelia, has no relations there
and has no knowledge of the Mingrelian language. He admits that he has no idea when his
ancestors moved to Tbilisi, and to having little interest in finding out. On learning of my
interest in Mingrelian, Otar took advantage of the opportunity to elicit my views as someone
who had recently been to Mingrelia and might know something about it. He was worried
about what he saw as Russian interference in artificially stirring up a ‘Mingrelian question’.
We discussed this over dinner in one of Tbilisi’s Mingrelian restaurants, which Otar had
chosen specially for the occasion; at the end of the meal, Otar conceded that I knew more
about Mingrelia than he did. For Otar, a Mingrelian identity is quite alien and removed from
his social and cultural experience. As Otar himself admits, he can afford to be ironic about
his Mingrelianness because it has no relevance to his life beyond the occasional enjoyment of
Mingrelian cuisine in the capital.

Nia, a young postgraduate at Tbilisi State University specialising in Modern Greek, proudly
traces her descent from one of the princely houses of feudal Mingrelia. Born and raised in
Tbilisi, she has never been to Mingrelia although she says that she understands some
Mingrelian since it is ‘a dialect of Georgian’. Nia was indignant at my use of the term
‘assimilation’ in the context of Mingrelian-Georgian relations, and asked me heatedly if I
meant to imply that she was an “assimilated Mingrelian”. For Nia there is no such thing for,
as she puts it, there is nothing in megreloba, ‘Mingrelianness’, that is not subsumed within
kartveloba, ‘Georgianness’.

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My next three examples present different perspectives among representatives of the displaced
population from Abkhazia. Elena, 35, teaches German at the formerly Abkhazian section of
Tbilisi State University, now in exile. She was displaced as a result of the war in Abkhazia
and lives in a small rented flat in the capital. Born and raised in Gali, Elena describes herself
as a cosmopolitan, “no one in particular” as she puts it; she completed her education in
Georgian, but is also fluent in Russian and Mingrelian. Although Elena sings the praises of
Mingrelian (she says it is the only language she can think in when she is truly exhausted), she
ascribes its survival to the innate conservatism of Mingrelia, associating it with the specific
traditions of the region: “for as long as these traditions exist – funeral keening [tirili], the
Mingrelian table, and so on – the idea that in these contexts Mingrelian is the appropriate
medium will dominate”, she explains. However, Elena does not see these traditions and the
retention of the language as compatible with life in the capital: in her experience, “unless you
leave your Mingrelianness at the city gates, Tbilisi will not accept you”.

Elena’s sister Leila sees things somewhat differently. Also completing her education at the
Abkhazian State University, rather than remaining in Sukhumi like her sister she returned to
Gali region to teach mathematics in a village school. Since displacement to Tbilisi she has
not been able to find work and looks after her two children. Joking that her mother teases her
as a ‘separatist’, Leila feels much more strongly drawn to Mingrelian, saying that she is ‘first
and foremost a Mingrelian’. Although she has no pretensions that Mingrelian should become
a state language, she has ‘a very great wish’ for Mingrelian to be researched and developed.
Worried about Mingrelian’s underdog status in Tbilisi Leila is consciously raising her
children to speak Mingrelian, insisting that Mingrelian is the only language spoken at home.
She also tries to take the children to relatives in Mingrelia as often as possible, to expose
them to a purely Mingrelian-speaking environment. She affirmed proudly that they are both
growing up bilingual.

Another mother in displacement, Eka, feels torn between Russian and Georgian identities,
but is unapologetic in her preference for Russian. Although she enrolled in the (Georgian
language) Tbilisi State University branch in Sukhumi in 1990, she specifically sought
permission to sit her exams in Russian. Although she reads and understands Georgian, she
has no regrets about her Russian education, which she sees as having given her a ‘wider
view’. In Tbilisi she doesn’t feel at home [ne v svoey tarelke]; “the sense of humour, the
pure Tbilisi humour…I don’t understand it…Russian humour by contrast I adore”. An

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exclusive Georgian identity feels unnatural for Eka. She told me the following story: “one
day my son came home from school saying there are four Mingrelians in our class’, and I
said to him, ‘well who are you then?’ and he replied ‘I’m a Georgian’, and I said ‘no, you’re
also a Mingrelian”. Mingrelian has little relevance for Eka future plans, however. She is
hoping to find some work in Germany but ultimately plans to move to Russia, where she is
sure her son will receive a better education than in Tbilisi.

These vignettes give some useful indications of the two key strata in the contemporary
profile of Mingrelians in the Georgian capital. Firstly there is a substantial stratum of
Mingrelians whose ancestors took advantage of the mobility opportunities available to them
by establishing their families in the capital in generations past. Referred to as ‘pavement
Mingrelians’ in the periphery, these Mingrelians view discussion of Mingrelian identity with
great ambivalence. They see Mingrelianness at best as an atavistic category associated with
folkloric tradition, at worst a sign of provincialism and backwardness. These Mingrelians
emphatically deny the existence of any boundary between Mingrelian and Georgian
identities, and view the extension of what they see as a folk-ethnographic category into the
realm of nationality as distasteful and unpatriotic. Intra-titular diversity can and should be
celebrated but only in terms of variations of common Georgian ethnographic and culinary
traditions, and of course the much-loved anekdotebi (‘jokes’) commemorating regional
character quirks.

While many express feelings of fondness for Mingrelian (and even regret when their families
have not retained it) for these Mingrelians the language is not authentic or psychologically
immediate. They decry reductionist understandings of Mingrelianness as a question of
linguistic competence in Mingrelian, yet the shrillness of some also suggests a real fear of
Mingrelian’s potential to disrupt what they see as the ‘natural order of things’. This group of
Mingrelians presents a key obstacle to the project of the folklorists: nothing brings out the
tension between these two groups more than discussion of Mingrelian’s potential for revival.

The second major social stratum, Mingrelians displaced to Tbilisi from the more Russophone
milieu of Abkhazia, is far more likely to espouse cosmopolitan or ‘internationalist’ views.
For these Mingrelians a Georgian orientation, competing with Russian, Mingrelian and
cosmopolitan orientations, has a limited resonance. Paradoxically, exile has thrust them into
a disquieting confrontation with their ‘own’ national values, in conjunction with the

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humiliation of displacement and nationalist reproach. Yet unlike the mankurty of Central
Asian contexts, these cosmopolitans lack significant social capital to offset the penalties of
cosmopolitanism in Georgian nationalist discourse. Except for the minority that are able to
leave, the majority accept the hegemony of Georgian as a practical and political reality. In
their new circumstances, above all for those from Gali region, Mingrelian particularism takes
the form of nostalgia for a lost époque, rather than a basis for social or political
mobilisation.200

7.7.2 Vignettes from family life in the periphery

Consider once again Mimoza, an informant introduced in Chapter 4. A youthful
grandmother at the age of 50, she teaches English both at the Zugdidi branch of the Tbilisi
State University and privately at home. In addition to Georgian and Russian, Mimoza also
grew up with Mingrelian, which was the principle language of the household. She recalls
that in her childhood “there was not this preference for speaking Georgian to your children
that there is today”. Today Mimoza associates speaking Mingrelian primarily with her visits
to her parents; at home she switches between Mingrelian and Russian with her husband, and
between Georgian and Mingrelian with her year-old grandson. With her son Tamaz and
daughter-in-law Lali, who live at home, however, she only uses Georgian. Mimoza explains
that this is due to the influence of her mother-in-law, a Georgian from Imereti, who also lives
at home and does not speak Mingrelian.

Mimoza observes that there has been a distinct rise in the use of Mingrelian in the post-
independence period compared to the increasing decline of the late Soviet period. In Soviet
times she would never have used Mingrelian with her students in the classroom. Now,
however, she regularly uses direct Mingrelian-English comparisons and translations to teach
her students English. She cites the example of the names of days, which can be translated in
the same way: tutashgha, ‘the moon’s day’ is Monday, bzhashdgha, ‘the sun’s day’ is
Sunday. She says jokingly that her students take pride in these English-Mingrelian
correspondences. Although Mimoza has fond feelings towards the language, and certainly
wants her grandson to know it, she is bemused by the idea of a Mingrelian-language press or
literature. She might enjoy reading Mingrelian poetry for fun, but professes that she has

200
This is clearly expressed in the common humorous parody of Mingrelian as the yazyk mezhnatsional’nykh
otnoshcheniy (‘language of interethnic relations’) in Abkhazia, a category reserved of course for Russian in the
formal discourse of Soviet internationalism.

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never felt inclined to actually read Mingrelian. When I asked Mimoza to help me translate
some photocopies of Mingrelian materials from the 1930s she had difficulties reading the
text, frequently chuckling as she struggled to find the exact Georgian translation.

Mimoza’s parents clearly recall a time before Georgian was widely known in Mingrelia.
Mimoza’s father, Malkhaz, was born in the village of Orule in Zugdidi district in 1914.
Speaking Georgian with a distinctive Mingrelian accent, he recounts that when he was a boy
it was rare for someone in the village to know Georgian. He remembers that his father’s
generation would refer to Georgians from neighbouring regions in Mingrelian as kortuepi
(‘Georgians’), and to the regions beyond Mingrelia as sakortuo (‘Georgia’). Malkhaz learnt
Georgian at school, a three-kilometre walk away when he first began attendance. It was in
fact his father who instigated the opening of a school in the village in 1923, in the family’s
own home until a new building could be constructed. Malkhaz began his working life as a
reading room attendant in Orule, before later switching to forestry and becoming the gamge
[chief administrator] in the village, and later moving to Zugdidi. Malkhaz clearly remembers
the Mingrelian language press of the 1930s. He looked upon this development favourably,
but then: “they said it’s no good, it’s nationalistic, it’s this and that, they said, and then they
imprisoned them, the people who wanted Mingrelia’s division…there was a whole thing
about it”. Malkhaz concedes that he now most often speaks Georgian with his great-
grandchildren. When asked how would define his nationality [erovneba], Malkhaz fell
silent, shifted uncomfortably in his chair and presently answered that he will always see
himself as a Mingrelian first and foremost.

Mimoza’s mother Rusudan, born in 1923, remembers that for one year in around 1930-31
Mingrelian was used as the language of instruction in her school in the village of Darcheli.201
She distinctly remembers being taught different subjects in Mingrelian and can recount her
times tables in Mingrelian. Then, she says, “an order came saying that this wasn’t allowed
[movida prikazi rom ar sheidzlebao], we’re all Georgians and we must know Georgian”. She

201
The question of whether Mingrelian was ever actually used as a language of instruction in Mingrelia remains
tantalisingly unclear. Zviad Gamsakhurdia mentions the existence of Mingrelian-language schools in his 1989
article, but I have not found any official record confirming this. In 2000 I visited the village of Darcheli, where
I did find another elderly Mingrelian who remembers being taught in Mingrelian for two years ‘at some point in
the late 1920s’ by a Ioseb Kobalia. These uncertain dates broadly coincide with the publication of two
Mingrelian language primers, chita chkhoria [‘Red Ray’] and kolektiuri khanda [‘Collective Life’] in 1931-
1932. The coincidence of these memories suggests that a brief and probably very localised use of Mingrelian as
a medium of instruction did indeed occur. This forgotten page in the history of Soviet nationalities policy
would clearly benefit from further oral history research.

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is very disappointed that her grandchildren were not brought up in a Mingrelian-speaking
household. Mimoza remembers that when she would visit with the children, Rusudan would
say “look at them, they are Mingrelians and they do not know Mingrelian!” and would
always speak to them only in Mingrelian.

Mimoza’s son Tamaz, 26, runs a non-governmental organisation in Zugdidi providing free
internet access and computer studies to the local population. Like his mother, he speaks
excellent English as well as Russian. Tamaz admits that due to the influence of his paternal
grandmother, he did not grow up very fluent in Mingrelian; he said that perhaps his family
wasn’t the best example of a ‘typical Mingrelian family’ since Mingrelian is not the
dominant language at home. During a stint of employment with the United Nations mission
in Zugdidi, however, Mingrelian became increasingly important to his work with refugees
from Gali. As he grows older, Tamaz says, his interest in Mingrelian has grown and he has
acquired Mamanti Dzadzamia’s Mingrelian grammar, which he occasionally delves into
when he has time.

Lali, Tamaz’s wife, was born in Senaki into a Mingrelian but primarily Georgian-speaking
family. She specialised in foreign languages at the Zugdidi State University and now works
with her husband in non-governmental organisational work. She has also worked for
extended periods in Tbilisi and is now studying for a master’s degree in central Europe. Lali
is intensely irritated by what she sees as a recent rise in the use of Mingrelian. She says that
“recently there is this tendency for everyone to speak Mingrelian, even in the university, and
I do not like that”. She explains that school, university and work are simply not the place for
Mingrelian, which should only be spoken at home. Yet Lali also recounts her disquiet at her
own mother’s increasing use of Mingrelian as she grows older: “when she turned 40 my
mother started speaking more Mingrelian, and I argued with her all the time. I said why are
you talking Mingrelian all the time, you didn’t do that before so why are you doing it now?”
Lali uses only Georgian at home, with both Tamaz and her young son Tariel. Lali is
indifferent as to whether her year-old son learns Mingrelian or not; she is nevertheless
confident that he will in any case acquire the language from his grandparents and the
surrounding environment.

Tina, 45, was born in the Mingrelian town of Tsalenjikha and works as a doctor at the
Zugdidi polyclinic. She is proud of her upbringing in an intelligentsia family (her parents

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were both teachers), and observes that “despite” her parents’ education, she had a Mingrelian
upbringing. She even remembers sitting at the traditional Mingrelian tabaki (a long table on
which grits used to be made and eaten off) at her grandmother’s house. Tina began to learn
Georgian at the age of six, and later studied medicine in Tbilisi. She explains that as a girl
from a village school in Tsalenjikha, she was very much in awe of her peers at the Institute of
Medicine in Tbilisi. She told me the following story from that time:

“during my student days, between the years 1974 and 1986 when I was in Tbilisi,
I never once spoke Mingrelian to another Mingrelian in the street. You know, if I
met another Mingrelian in the bus, if they had spoken to me or said something to
me in Mingrelian, I would have freaked, you know, I was ashamed…I remember I
met an old friend from school on the bus. I was at the front of the bus and he was
at the back, and from back there he called out to me. Now you know what boys
are like – just to annoy me he called out to me in Mingrelian. I didn’t answer him
until he came to the front of the bus, you see, because he spoke to me in
Mingrelian. I said, what do you want, the whole world to know I am a
Mingrelian? That is how it was. Now it is different…”

Although it gladdens her when the children, aged 5 and 4, understand her when she is talking
to her husband in Mingrelian, Tina has consciously raised her children in Georgian. As she
sees it, “you cannot get anywhere in life just with Mingrelian”, and she is very keen for her
children to learn English. For Tina any talk of division between Mingrelian and Georgian
identities is deeply disturbing. She explains:

“even today I do not speak Mingrelian when I am in public and I do not like to
because I consider myself a Georgian, that’s how it is in my psychology…but I
am not saying that because I do not like or respect Mingrelian, I am a Mingrelian
after all”.

Tina cannot distinguish these identities for herself, and sees any attempt to do so is simply
artificial and anti-Georgian. Tina also finds the idea of reading Mingrelian quite alien and
even vulgar. Indeed she sees Mingrelian’s lack of its own unique script as compromising its
status as an independent language. “Am I supposed to read in Georgian, with Mingrelian
words?” she asked. She was not able to read The Man in the Panther’s Skin in Mingrelian

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translation, and the translation also sounded terrible to her ear. She cannot see the point of
translating Rustaveli or indeed any Georgian literature into Mingrelian since she can read the
original. Yet towards the end of the day that I spent with her, Tina told me that it would be
very sad if Mingrelian did disappear and that my visit had probably ‘returned a fan of the
Mingrelian language’ in her person.202 Tina’s husband Merab does not share his wife’s
views that Mingrelian has receded because of ‘progress’; rather, he says it is because ‘they’
“came down on us so much from above”. Although he concedes that the children must learn
Georgian first, he is says he is delighted by their efforts in Mingrelian. It is in their genes, he
says.

Tina’s niece Ani, 16, attends school in the small town of Tsalenjikha, to the north-east of
Zugdidi. She explains that because her mother comes from Mtianeti in eastern Georgia and
the family spent two years in Tbilisi during the troubles (areuloba), Georgian is the language
used in her family. This causes mixed reactions in Tsalenjikha. When Ani first started
attending her current school, where even during the lessons all the pupils use Mingrelian
amongst themselves, her peers laughed at her: “why is she speaking Georgian”, they asked,
“she is putting on airs, let her speak Mingrelian – we are all Mingrelians here, aren’t we?”
Yet one of her neighbours, from a Mingrelian-speaking family, asked Ani if she wouldn’t
spend some time with her son, “so that he learns a bit of Georgian and will not find it
difficult later on”. Although the lessons in Ani’s school are of course conducted in Georgian,
the teachers sometimes resort to Mingrelian so that it will be easier for the pupils to
understand. After all, for the first-years Georgian is a “foreign language”, Ani says. She also
recounts the story of a lone Tbilisian boy in her class addressed by the other boys not by his
name but only as kortu (‘Georgian’ in Mingrelian), which was in this case clearly used as a
derisory term. Although everyone in Tsalenjikha now knows why Ani is more comfortable

202
Vivien Law’s wonderful study of language myths in Georgia cites the popularity of the myth of foreign
approbation (our language possesses such unique qualities that foreigners come far and wide to study it) in
Georgia (Law, 1998, 186-88). For Tina and other informants, I was only too well aware during my period of
fieldwork that I was the living embodiment of this myth for Mingrelian, reinforced by most informants’
apparent belief that I must be a linguist if I was interested in Mingrelian. This became evident as I was
consistently directed to older family members, those with the ‘purest’ knowledge of Mingrelian typically sought
by linguists. The change in status in the minds of informants resulting from this foreigner’s interest worked
both ways, however. I was also strongly aware of the paradox that as a high-status guest speaking Georgian
(my Mingrelian does not extend beyond courtesies), I was contributing to the view of Mingrelian as
inappropriate for discourse with high-status visitors. One evening I encountered a young boy that I had
previously met in my guise as researcher in his school. Despite the fact that our second encounter took place in
the street, in the evening and in the company of relatives with whom he was freely conversing in Mingrelian,
when I asked him in Mingrelian how he was, he would only answer in Georgian. For this boy, I clearly
embodied the idea that visitors and guests – inherently high-status – should only be spoken to in Georgian.

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in Georgian, she does not like to attract attention to herself by speaking Georgian in the street
now. She would rather be teased for her imperfect Mingrelian. Ani argues with her father
about learning Mingrelian. Especially when he has had a bit to drink, he teases her by asking
why has she not learnt better Mingrelian by now. Ani’s response is strategic: “why should I
speak Mingrelian when I won’t get anything out of it, especially if I intend to get anywhere
or do something with my life?” she reasons. As she grows older, Ani is aware that although
her preference for Georgian affords her some forms of prestige, it may limit other forms of
social capital in Tsalenjikha. Already the womenfolk are saying “she is a beautiful girl, let
her speak Mingrelian”. Ani herself is in no doubt, however, with which language her future
lies.

Manana is 35 years old and sends her two children to Mimoza for private English tuition.
Both she and her husband Jansugh work at the porcelain factory in Zugdidi, where they met.
Her father-in-law Zaur also works there, and all concur that outside of formal meetings,
Mingrelian is the only language spoken in the factory. Manana believes the attitude towards
Mingrelian has shifted significantly since the end of Soviet power. She recalls that in the
Soviet-era, “even a neighbour you met in Tbilisi wouldn’t speak to you in Mingrelian”. She
puts this down to the communist system; now that the people are liberated Mingrelians have
realised what their language is worth and respect it. Now, she adds: “without embarrassment
I can say that I am a Mingrelian and proud of it. Before you could not do that – it would not
be said, that’s all. We weren’t accustomed to it, calling ourselves Mingrelians”.

Manana also attributes great significance to the civil war; she personally feels very aggrieved
by what happened when the mkhedrioni paramilitaries came through Mingrelia. Those
events have transformed her attitude towards Tbilisi: “we are aggrieved with the Georgians,
all the more so because we are Georgians, and Mingrelia is a region of Georgia”. Yet
although Manana emphasises that theirs is a Mingrelian-speaking family, before the children
went to school she only spoke Georgian to them. More than anything else Manana wants her
children to have a good education, and that for her means the State University in Tbilisi. In
her view it is in a completely different league from the local higher education institutes in
Zugdidi. Consequently it was the practice in the family for all the adults to speak to the
children only in Georgian to give them a ‘leg-up’ in their educational careers. It is only now
that the children, aged 9 and 10, are firmly established in their schools that the adults have
relaxed this Georgian regime, and speak Mingrelian with them. Manana’s mother-in-law

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Khatuna is not happy about this situation. She complains that the children will not answer
her in Mingrelian, and to get a squeak out of them she has to talk in Georgian.

Teimuraz, 37, was born in Ochamchire, Abkhazia, and lived there all his life until being
displaced in 1993 to the village of Ingiri outside Zugdidi. Trained as a builder he now works
sporadically as an agricultural labourer. He attended a Russian school and later the Russian
section of the Abkhazian State University in Sukhumi; Russian is the language that feels
most native to him. With his wife, who received her education in Georgian and has
difficulties with Russian, he speaks in Mingrelian. Prior to displacement, he had very little
exposure to Georgian. He explains:

“Why go to a Georgian school, and try to then get into university in Moscow or
Leningrad? You’d have had no chance, so everyone tried to get into Russian
schools. From there you had the chance to go anywhere you wanted in the former
Soviet Union, that’s how it was. So there was absolutely no reason to learn
Georgian, there was no future in it, no future with Georgian. Well alright, you’ve
got Georgia here, but maybe I don’t want Georgia?”

Following displacement Teimuraz has tried to build on his rudimentary Georgian, but with a
strong Russian accent says that it is immediately obvious to anyone where he is from.
Speaking Mingrelian provides some relief from this humiliation. Since the war, Teimuraz
has become a father to two children, who are being raised in Georgian. Indeed he is learning
Georgian with them, which Teimuraz looks upon with some irony. Had he raised them at
home, he says, there is “no way” he would have spoken to them in Georgian.

These vignettes provide indications as to the salient patterns of intergenerational shift

between primarily Mingrelian and Georgian cultural repertoires in Mingrelia. Older speakers
(70+) clearly recall a time prior to the widespread introduction of Georgian, and although
both fluent and literate in Georgian, are more likely to view themselves in terms of a
primarily Mingrelian identity. For many in this generation a Georgian identity represents a
kind of inauthentic overlay that obscures a strong emotional attachment to Mingrelian. The
history of Mingrelian constitutes for this generation a hidden transcript, an alternative history
of the Mingrelians, untainted by Soviet falsification and firmly residing in and ‘belonging’ to

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the people. The survival of the language despite its ‘disappearance’ as a printed medium in
the 1930s provides a resonant and emotive symbol of identity.

For the middle generation the Mingrelian-Georgian dyad is very difficult to unravel, and
many express extreme discomfort when asked to do so. Fond of the language of their
childhood, they were formally socialised to abhor it as a symbol of provincialism and
potentially dangerous unorthodoxy. The events and climate of the post-independence period
have induced a reappraisal of these internalised values, raising uncomfortable ambiguities of
loyalty and allegiance as the Mingrelian quotient has increased. The younger generation,
while far from being encouraged to drop Mingrelian from their repertoires completely, are
under strong pressure from their parents to make pragmatic linguistic choices. This
generation increasingly views Mingrelian as the language of their grandparents’ generation,
of little practical value, and more unambiguously self-identifies as Georgian.

Displaced Russian/Mingrelian bilinguals experience the Georgian-Mingrelian boundary more

keenly; for them Mingrelian has acted as an important signifier of solidarity with the local
population. Yet as the vignettes presented in Chapter 4 attest, neither Mingrelian nor
Russian is seen as a substitute for ‘lost’ mother tongues. However forced it may seem the
displaced population is actively georgianising, a process which for many moves beyond mere
recognition of a new reality and becomes a voluntary act of identity assertion.

7.8 Conclusions
This chapter has drawn attention to an emergent intra-titular politics of vernacular
empowerment in post-Soviet Georgia. It has been argued that the ethnonationalist reification
of language as the determining criterion of ethnic identification had the paradoxical effect of
politicising intra-titular linguistic diversity. Independence and the quest for resonant symbols
of local identity have opened new rhetorical spaces for the questioning of singular
understandings of Georgianness. In particular, the invocation of quasi-biological, ‘natural’
correspondences between language and identity accentuated awareness of regional linguistic
identities, an awareness that found a potent seam of meanings and images in the Mingrelian
language. The very fact of Mingrelian’s survival without any form of institutional support is
seen at the local level as a powerful symbol of resistance to Soviet rule. This demonstrates
the easily transposable nature of primordialism as a discourse that, given suitable ‘natural’
referents, can easily be inverted and turned upon its head. The primordialism of Georgian

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nation builders, itself a derivative discourse, has led to the creation of a new monster in the
Mingrelian periphery. This is a further pointer to the resilience and primacy of cultural
categories in identity construction in post-Soviet Georgia.

Yet this account has also stressed the seamless and osmotic nature of the Georgian-
Mingrelian boundary. The emphasis placed by some authors, especially linguists, on the
bounded nature of Mingrelian and Georgian identities obscures the dynamics of interaction
between these identities. Rather than the rigidity or formalisation of boundaries, more
characteristic of the Georgian-Abkhazian dyad, the evidence presented here points to the
fluidity and internal contradictions between them. Lebanidze’s motif of ‘two sons of one
mother’, paradoxically invoked as an image dispelling a notional Mingrelian separateness,
neatly captures the nested nature of Georgian and Mingrelian identities. In parallel with the
lineage identities of Kazakhstan, “manifestations of the lower affiliation generally imply a
simultaneous enactment of the higher-level one” (Schatz, 2000b, 500). This fluidity has been
explained here in terms of the political incorporation variable. Provided that they accepted
the notion of a singular Georgian-speaking national identity, Mingrelians faced few obstacles
to integration with the urban Georgian intelligentsia, in which they came to play a leading
role. It is their descendants at the centre who are the most implacably opposed to the attempt
of the Mingrelian folklorists to sharpen a Mingrelian/Georgian boundary, which would cast
them in what they would see as the nonsensical role of ‘Georgian cosmopolitans’. Thus in
direct parallel with the Ukrainian case, it is tensions within the proposed constituency for
revival, rather than between ‘Mingrelians’ and ‘Georgians’, that is the key constraint to
revival.

In the periphery assimilation into a Georgian identity was not experienced in the same terms
of a smooth transition, and the regional culture retained considerable symbolic legitimacy.
The changed climate of independence has provided (albeit limited) opportunities for
Mingrelians in the periphery to publicly question the nationality changes of the 1930s, and to
bring into the open what remained over the course of the Soviet period a ‘hidden transcript’
of Mingrelian identity challenging the official discourse of homogeneous Georgian
nationhood. The Mingrelian folklorists’ inference that it was in fact the colonial moment that
was the unifying one for the Georgian nation is extremely unsettling for both urbanised
Mingrelian elites and Georgian ethnonationalists at large. Yet in the wider population too,
beyond a symbolic invigoration of Mingrelian any sharpening of the Mingrelian-Georgian

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boundary feels uncomfortable and unnecessary. Although the views of the Mingrelian
folklorists may have a wide currency in the region, there are few economic motives to unite
them with a wider pro-Mingrelian constituency. This differentiates the Mingrelian context
from the Catalan case, where economic vibrancy associated with a Catalan-speaking
bourgeoisie bolstered its symbolic authority against the forceful introduction of Castilian
under Franco (Woolard, 1989). While some may question Georgian’s political legitimacy,
its utility value is not in doubt: Georgian is seen as a necessary threshold, if not the passport,
to the coveted spheres of English, information technology and the wider world.
Consequently many Mingrelians, above all the crucial stratum of parents of young children,
are taking strategic action to secure the younger generation’s grounding in Georgian.

The material presented in this chapter suggests that an excessive focus on the formal
institutions of Soviet ethno-federalism in explaining post-Soviet identity politics may be
misplaced. By privileging the putative material benefits accruing to identities dominant in
institutional domains, institutionalist analyses can be blind to alternative ‘markets’ in which
other values predominate. Sociolinguists have long pointed to a distinction of status and
solidarity dimensions, suggesting the existence of alternative domains in which the prestige
allocations of the dominant institutional order can be challenged and even reversed (see, e.g.,
Woolard, 1985). From this perspective, “[a]uthority and hegemony cannot be mechanically
read out from institutional dominance” (Ibid, 743). Seventy years of the institutional
dominance of Georgian has not only been insufficient to eradicate Mingrelian, it has also
created the conditions for Mingrelian to accumulate considerable symbolic authority as the
anchor of a specifically local identity against the intrusions of an all-powerful state. The
status/solidarity distinction has generally been located in post-Soviet scholarship at the level
of Russian-titular cultural relations. Yet the distinction can also be applied to ‘internal
markets’ of cultural relations to explore how Soviet-era nation building practices served to
construct local hegemonies and engender local forms of resistance. Soviet-era nation
building needs therefore to be seen also in relation to informal domains and local experience
outside the dominant institutional order. Following independence these provide a basis for
counter-narratives questioning the singularity inscribed in the formal definitions of
nationality inherited by post-Soviet states. The task of analysis is to identify what political,
economic and social factors motivate the production of these counter-narratives and their
resonance with their intended audiences. The post-independence unravelling of national
identities further points to ways in which the predominant narratives structuring perceptions

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of post-Soviet politics, such as those of the demand for freedom in the name of primordial
nationhood and decolonisation, are inherently unstable and may be appropriated by local
actors in unexpected ways.

As David Braund observes, “it is at their peripheries that societies receive their most
unsettling interrogations and most searching tests” (Braund, 1994, 3). Exploration of the
hinterlands of Georgian national identity constitutes precisely such an unsettling
interrogation of the normative distinctions of Georgian ethnonationalism, reconfiguring them
as orthodox rather than self-evident. The attitudes revealed in this study show, however, that
for many informants Georgian and Mingrelian identities are not in fact incompatible or
mutually exclusive, suggestive of an ‘unresolved’ bifurcation in titular nationality. In the
longer term the cultural entrepreneurship behind aia may yet realise its challenge, not as a
separatist movement threatening the Georgian state but as a reconfiguration of titular national
identity along more plural, multinational lines. Any such development, however, would be
contingent on a move away from the currently dominant understanding of nationhood as
linguistically determined. With urban elites rejecting reductionist understandings of
Mingrelianness and Mingrelians in the region extolling the practical virtues of
multilingualism, however, there may yet be sufficient flexibility for the ‘Mingrelian
question’ to exert a pluralizing influence on imaginings of Georgian nationhood.

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Chapter 8 Conclusions

While all of the post-Soviet successor states have had to deal with the material and discursive
legacies of Soviet rule, these legacies in themselves vary widely in regional perspective.
This is evident in the different forms of political authority and the contrasting articulations of
nation and state obtaining across the different macro-regions of the post-Soviet space. It is
the Baltic republics that have most fully realised the promise of ‘transition’. With significant
symbolic resources, and a pre-Soviet institutional history of sovereignty and state building,
the Baltic nationalities paved the way for the national uprisings of late 1980s. During the
critical period of nationalist mobilization titular elites strove to emphasise the inclusive
nature of Baltic nationalisms, so that the goal of independence had already been achieved by
the time more exclusive nation building strategies were adopted in the early 1990s.203 In
sharp contrast to the Baltic experience is that of Central Asia, where nationalism did not
challenge Soviet forms of political authority. Nationalism did not penetrate Central Asia
prior to Soviet rule, and by the early 1990s mass identification with the titular identities
instituted by the Soviet state remained weak. Independence in 1991 was not preceded by
mass mobilization and incumbents did not face serious challenges from nationalist
movements; rather, the violent conflicts that did accompany independence in Central Asia
(i.e. Tajikistan) followed the contours of regional patronage networks central to elite
recruitment practices in the Soviet era.204

Violent ethnic conflict in Georgia (and in the South Caucasus) at large is best understood in
terms of its intermediary position between poles, where the conflict between mass
identification with the nation and the resilience of Soviet modes of political authority was
strongest. Although the artefacts of a secularised (modern) Georgian nationhood predated
Soviet rule, the penetration of a mass-based nationalism was a Soviet-era phenomenon. Prior
to Soviet rule nationalism had been linked to strategies of cultural survival in the Russian
Empire, rather than a territorial unit or an anti-colonial discourse of democracy. This left a
particularly strong cultural imprint on the template of Georgian nationalism. Its
transformation into a doctrine and practice of state building had barely begun when Georgia

203
Despite the outward success of these policies, as David Laitin suggests, Estonia and Latvia may yet face
regional revivals in the form of an emergent Russian-speaking nationality (Laitin, 1998, 353-359).
204
Jones Luong argues that conflict in Tajikistan is in fact attributable to the breakdown of the Soviet pattern of
regionalism in that republic (Jones Luong, 2002, 100).

246
was again absorbed into its northern neighbour. The dissemination of a modern, bureaucratic
sense of national identity at the mass level thus dated to the Soviet period.

A key argument of this study (in Chapter 3) has been that nationalist conflict in the post-
Soviet era was not foreordained by either the pre-existence of ‘identities’ or the mere fact of
their institutionalisation. Rather than institutionalisation I have emphasised
operationalisation: how Soviet strategies of state formation in Georgia – in particular the
Soviet state’s strategies of alliance making and elite recruitment – structured institutional
opportunities in ways offering incentives to elites to invest in ethnic identities. It is the way
in which the formation of the Soviet Georgian republic structured the recruitment of elites
and counter-elites along ethnic lines that is key to understanding the origin and structure of
ethnic conflict in post-Soviet Georgia. The resulting ethnicisation of titular bureaucracies
resulted in the transformation of the public goods offered by the state into ‘collective’ goods
for ethnic groups arranged in a hierarchy of access. The correlation of institutional pathways,
and consequently solidarity, with ethnic affiliation was further reflected in widely divergent
cultural profiles between groups. This both politicised cultural symbols, such as language, as
potent delineators of group allegiance, and through these symbolic links made wide social
constituencies, defined by ethnicity, available to titular elites. In the insecurity
accompanying the devolution of political authority to Georgian-dominated republican
institutions, competitive mobilization led to the escalation of conflict defined by the pattern
of composite incorporation in Soviet Georgia.

Soviet state building in Georgia thus entrenched a profound articulation of ethnicity with the
institutional pathways of the state, and over time with a number of other important cleavages
(linguistic, developmental, and in Abkhazia, demographic). The differentiated cultural
profiles of groups – their ‘institutional completeness’ as ethnic communities – are the product
of these processes. Thus the ‘strength’ or ‘weakness’ of South Caucasian identities as
vehicles of collective action in the post-Soviet arena is more usefully seen in terms of how
they were made operational within the Soviet state. This approach avoids seeing the post-
Soviet salience of ethnic affiliations in Georgia as either pre-determined or as an
epiphenomenon of Soviet structures. It is otherwise difficult to explain why groups with
comparably recent institutional histories and similar structural features, such as Abkhazians
or Ossetians in Georgia and Central Asian titular nationalities, could produce such different
outcomes in terms of post-Soviet mobilization. These findings challenge the current

247
consensus on the constitutive effects of institutionalisation in post-Soviet studies of ethnic
politics. What matters is not institutionalisation per se, but how institutions structured
opportunities and created incentives or disincentives to invest in ethnic affiliations. The
Georgian case thus moderates the postulates of institutionalist analyses of post-Soviet ethnic
politics by suggesting the dynamic, rather than static, nature of institutions as pathways,
whose causal relationship to ethnic mobilization is far from unilinear.

Georgia’s early incorporation into the Soviet state after a brief nationalist dawn further
resulted in a particularly intricate intertwining of the ‘Soviet’ and the ‘national’. It is one of
the distinguishing features of the South Caucasus that ‘Soviet’ and ‘national’ realms are
especially difficult to unravel, and any dichotomisation between them, or between a ‘Soviet
past’ and a ‘national present’, is misleading. Rather than notions of resistance or ‘adaptation’
to Soviet practices, the relationship between national identities in the South Caucasus and the
Soviet state is captured more accurately by a sense of dialectical exchange and strategic
borrowings. These realms, conventionally contrasted with one another, in fact informed and
structured each other’s meanings in subtle ways.

Soviet rule had to accommodate a pre-established, but as yet inchoate Georgian nationalism;
it did this by selectively supplanting indigenous ideologies of the nation with its own
primordialist ideology, resulting in a progressive narrowing of the meanings once associated
with the term kartveli. Earlier idioms of Georgianness focussed on medieval statehood or
religion were marginalized. Moreover, like its tsarist predecessor Soviet rule extended and
lent new political force to certain Georgian self-perceptions throughout the republic by
projecting a powerful sense of Georgian cultural hegemony vis-à-vis minority groups. This
was reflected in a number of concrete policies in cultural, demographic and other areas in the
1930s and 1940s that do not have analogues in any other national republic (bar the
exceptional case of the Russian Republic). While secluded from large-scale linguistic
russification by the cultural work of intellectuals in the nineteenth century and Soviet
Georgia’s particular pattern of modernisation, discourses of Georgian nationhood, dissident
as well as official, nonetheless came in turn to be profoundly structured by Soviet frames and
categories of ethnicity. The only substantive difference between official and dissident
Georgian discourses of the nation was the latter’s (belated) demand for independence. Thus
although late Soviet Georgian society offered a hospitable terrain for nationalism, this was
not moderated by a countervailing discourse of pluralism or an institutional history of

248
accommodating difference. Georgians could conceive of themselves as a nation, but not
through the prism of democracy. For minorities, this meant that loyalty to the Georgian state
was indistinguishable from loyalty to a culturally defined Georgian nation.

This explains the apparently zero sum relationship between nation and state building in
Georgia alluded to in the title of this study. It is a peculiarity of the Georgian example that
the state, as the institutional expression of universal rather than particularist values, has had
to be realised seemingly in spite of the nation. Whereas in post-colonial Africa and Asia
nation building generally followed in the wake of – and indeed sought to rationalise – the
prior establishment of the state, this order was reversed in the Georgian case. Building the
post-Soviet Georgian state has entailed a traumatic challenge to the prior legitimacy of the
nation, what in effect transpires to a desacralization of the cultural form that (but for a
momentary exception in the early 20th century) has deputised for the state throughout modern
Georgian history. It needs to be stressed that this antinomy is of course more apparent than
real, and is rooted in an outdated, fixed understanding of nationality. Nations are subject to
constant reinvention, and the history of the Georgian nation itself provides ample examples
of nationalist re-imaginings allowing the adaptation of the nation form to new socio-political
realities. Rather than a game of zero sum alternatives between nation and state building (as
primordialists in Georgia claim today), the first decade of the post-Soviet era has seen a
significant shift from the creation of a state in the image of the nation, towards the conscious
moulding of the nation within the frame of the state.

The rejection of the established dichotomy between the Soviet past and the national present
invites us to rethink our perceptions of how post-Soviet states are managing ethnic politics.
Rather than a radical break with the Soviet past, a thesis of the strategic selection from Soviet
institutional and discursive legacies by post-Soviet elites is far more convincing. We are not
witnessing a ‘new’ national present, but the resilience and instrumentalization, albeit in
nationalist guise, of Soviet practices, mentalities and techniques of governance. As I have
shown in Chapters 5 and 6, it is the Soviet frames of primordialism and internationalism that
have provided the palette from which contrasting post-Soviet Georgian identity projects – the
desire to entrench particularism in the state, and the countervailing desire to diminish
difference – have been painted. Both projects have plundered Soviet frames and overlaid
them with their own nationalist gloss. Strategic borrowings from the Soviet institutional
toolkit also inform practical policy choices, as we have seen in the accommodation of

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Acharian autonomy. Furthermore, if we accept that the dichotomy between the ‘Soviet’ and
the ‘national’ is too starkly drawn, a similar conclusion must be drawn for the
national/colonial dichotomy. Crawford Young’s intuition that the post-colonial African state
silently incorporated its colonial origins also applies to post-Soviet nationalisms in their
primordialist incarnation (Young, 1994). These have in similarly silent fashion incorporated
the Soviet distinctions, hierarchies and omissions on which they are constructed. The
extension of post-colonial dichotomies of alienness and authenticity to portrayals of the
relationship between Georgian centre and periphery has brought these omissions into new
relief, demonstrating the constructed nature of Georgian hegemony even within its putative
heartland. Paradoxically, then, independence reintroduced contingency into the established
cultural narrative of Georgian nationhood. Yet although this new questioning of the
postulates of Georgian nationalism has assumed a characteristically Soviet idiom, it also
suggests limits to the institutionalised (‘Soviet’? ‘nationalist’?) understanding of the nation as
a linguistic community. The derivative play in the articulations of the Georgian-Mingrelian
dyad analysed in Chapter 7 demonstrates the self-subversive potential of the primordialist
discourse, at the same time as its undiminished currency.

When viewed against a broader post-Soviet canvas, the Georgian case provides evidence that
contrasting outcomes in the articulation of nation to state have much to do with the starting
points of different regions at the time of entry into the Soviet state. Initial conditions, in the
form of institutional histories, levels of penetration by the discourse of nationalism and the
autonomy of indigenous political traditions, established the terrain over which Soviet policies
were subsequently enacted. It is in this sense that the transition concept is misleading, since
it emphasises a common destination rather than different starting points (see King, 2000, for
a discussion of this theme). Essentially a spectrum of potential successors to empire exists,
ranging from consolidating nation-states in the Baltic region to regionally defined patronage
networks inherited from the Soviet period in Central Asia. The position of the South
Caucasus, and Georgia in particular, in this spectrum remains particularly conflicted,
combining elements from both models of nation-statehood and the personalised forms of
Soviet political authority. Throughout Georgia’s post-Soviet history, popular identification
with the nation as a cultural form far outstripped the capacity of the state to organize and
channel the political expression of nationalism in democratic ways. Georgia’s peculiar
dilemma as a post-Soviet and, if you will, post-colonial state has been the struggle on the part

250
of the state to ‘catch up’ with the nation. The continued resilience of cultural understandings
of sovereignty shows that the state still has considerable distance to cover in this race.

One theme I have not been able to address fully here is the context of globalisation in which
the reconstitution of state and national identities in Georgia is taking place. The tensions
identified in this study between rival expectations of the state as first the arbiter of universal
values transcending local particularisms, and second as the guarantor of nationhood, take on
a different hue in the wider context of globalisation. Particularly acute is the tension between
the domestic state building imperative of accommodating diversity, and expectations that the
state will ‘defend’ national identity in the context of integration into transnational structures.
Globalisation and its attendant discourses of minority rights, multiculturalism and
subsidiarity also offer considerable resources to non-state actors to challenge particularisms
embodied in the state.205 It is impossible at present to have a clear view of the forms that
these tensions will assume in the future. However, what is clear is that the effort to
reconfigure political membership in more pluralist terms is as unavoidable as it is essential.
The embrace of cultural pluralism, however faltering, forms an inescapable part of the
broader experiment in democratisation to which Georgia is irrevocably committed. The
demise of Eduard Shevardnadze (concurrent with this time of writing) will not dilute this
imperative. For his successors, the choice between the illiberal ethno-nationalism of the past
and the continued reconfiguration of the culture/polity nexus, misgivings notwithstanding, is
both stark and clear.

The macro-forces of history delineated above are, however, less helpful in explaining
variable outcomes of violence in the post-Soviet arena. The Georgian case effectively
highlights a theoretical disjunction between ethnic conflict and ethnic violence, namely that
the sources of violence cannot be anticipated from analysis of the sources of conflict.
Theories of ethnic violence that rely on inter-group structural variables, historical grievances
or cultures of violence risk losing sight of processes and actors operating at levels other than

205
Achara provides an excellent example of the deployment of the symbolism of globalisation to construct a
local identity. One of the key symbols used by the Revival party in its representation of Achara is that of
Achara’s membership in a “Europe of the Regions”. The lavish campaign material and postcard booklets
produced by the party consistently refer to Achara’s membership of the Assembly of European Regions. The
iconography of the Revival party itself, from flags to lapel pins, is centred around 12 gold stars against a dark
blue background. This further establishes explicit links between ‘Acharian’ and ‘European’ symbolic realms
and and symbolically circumvents Achara’s membership in the Georgian state. Transnational imagery in
Achara, however, cohabits with the deployment of primordialist imagery in the construction of lineage myths
legitimating the region’s particular model of political authority (see Ft.159).

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the state or the ethnic group. This study has provided ample evidence on the role of identity
in the genesis of conflicts in Georgia in both institutional and cultural spheres: there is no
doubt that ethnic hierarchies were both formally and informally institutionalised well before
the end of Soviet rule. But in explaining the transformation of these conflicts into violence, I
have emphasised the nexus of two separate processes, pre-existing ethnic conflict and state
collapse. The processes explaining the outcome of violence – how intra-group struggles
introduced political violence to the centre of politics, how warlords came to be able to suborn
pre-existing ethnic conflicts to their own agendas, and how a weak state came to ‘free-ride’
on the violence they provided – are extraneous to inter-group conflict. These factors derive
from the context of transition: ‘legacy’ and ‘transition’ paradigms therefore need to be
interwoven, rather than dichotomised, if we are to understand their interaction.

The key to understanding ethnic violence in Georgia is the way in which privatised sources
of violence were absorbed by institutionally weak state fragments engaged in struggles for
sovereignty. This process has its origins in the fact that mass identification with and
mobilization for democracy in Georgia was lower than in the Baltic republics, despite the
fact that ample symbolic (‘identity’) resources were available. Official power structures
consequently faced fewer pressures to accommodate, and thereby institutionalise, the
national movement. Two processes followed from this: first was a process of ethnic
outbidding among the rival factions of the national movement attempting to induce a mass tip
in society in favour of independence. The second was that the movement became structured
around a number of informal, patronage-based and increasingly militarised networks. At the
point where one part of the national movement captured the state, these processes combined
to create openings for violence: counter-mobilizations among minorities challenging
Georgian sovereignty provided a context for entrepreneurs of violence to fight the fledgling
state’s battles (the ‘public’ struggle for sovereignty), but for their own personal motives
(plunder and profit). Similar entrepreneurs subsequently came to supply minority
mobilizations with violence, likewise displacing the intellectuals who had initially led
mobilization. Thus the pre-conditions for large-scale violence in Abkhazia and South
Ossetia are to be found in the interplay of political forces at the Georgian centre, and cannot
be interpreted from the analysis of Georgian-Abkhaz or Georgian-Ossetian group relations.
These conditions are extrinsic to the dynamics of inter-group relations, and underline the
need for analysis of ethnic violence to explicitly address mechanisms of social control, state

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capacities to secure a coercive monopoly and the resulting interactions between the state and
informal networks.206

While providing coercive power to the state, informal networks actively strove to preclude
the reconsolidation of state authority, social control and thereby their own obsolescence. The
prolonging of insecurity, rather than the pursuit of ‘ethnic’ agendas in the name of delivering
security, was central to the modus operandi of these groups. For them the security dilemma
in Posen’s terms was immaterial; what mattered was the continued freedom to operate with
impunity. Thus rather than windows of opportunity presented by superior offensive power,
the significant opportunities for these actors were those prior to the imminent reconsolidation
of state power. This explains the timing of the most significant Georgian warlord offensives
in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in May-August 1992. Sustained ethnic violence in the
Georgian case is thus inseparable from the internal struggle for power between rival factions
defined by ties of patronage.

The Georgian case provides support for analyses of violence that shift the emphasis from
identity to resource differentials among mobilization movements in accounting for violence.
This explains the different outcome in Georgia to that of the Estonian and Latvian cases. In
many respects the Georgians demonstrated a comparatively high level of cultural resources,
comparable to Estonians and Latvians, including a low level of assimilation (reflected in the
marginality of mankurtizatsiya in Georgia), resilient cultural production in Georgian and an
established national intelligentsia operating in their ‘own’ language, and a relatively strong
cultural pull exerted by the titular language on non-titulars in the republic. By analogy with
Estonia or Latvia, the relative ‘strength’ of Georgian national identity should have directed
the Georgian revival away from violence, particularly since, as Kolsto observes, violence
does not make sense for the leaders of strong revivals (Kolstø, 2002, 249-250). Rather than
identity cleavages dividing the Georgian constituency (indeed the absence of these cleavages
was crucial to opening the way to radicals), the Georgian movement was split by
organizational cleavages deriving from weak resources. Georgian nationalists had sufficient
symbolic resources to trigger a national revival, but lacked the organizational resources to
institutionalise and broaden the process. They also lacked the external resources offered by

206
I have not attempted a complete analysis of these themes in this study, but only to underscore their relevance
to any discussion of ethnic violence. The interaction between ‘official’ and ‘shadow’ state structures remains
an important and under-explored aspect of Georgian politics, deserving of further research in its own right (see
Fairbanks, 1995, 2002 for broad analyses of the role of ‘private armies’ in post-Soviet violence).

253
Western support, which was almost entirely focussed on the Baltic movements and was
critical to their success (Kolstø, 2002, 266). This explains the coupling of the ethnicisation
of politics with the active corrosion by nationalist elites of ‘normal’ injunctions against the
use of violence. This is again suggestive not of the strength of the Georgian revival
movement, but of its weakness in seeking support from extra-institutional resources. It is
thus the ‘sanctioning strategies’ of ethnic elites in contexts where mobilization has already in
motion that is important. This suggests that although identity and cultural resources may
play a critical coordinating function in achieving mobilization, they are not relevant to
variable outcomes of violence or accommodation. Applied to the broader analysis of the role
of identities in South Caucasian violence, these findings suggest the irrelevance of ‘strong’
identities to violent outcomes and the need for a greater focus on the resources enjoyed by
different mobilization movements.

The Georgian case draws attention to some of the core dichotomies and elisions that obtain in
the analysis of post-Soviet ethnic politics. While on the one hand we have often relied, even
if only implicitly, on dichotomies between the state and the nation, between the colonial and
the national and the past and the present, we have also allowed for mistaken continuities in
our analysis of ethnic conflict and ethnic violence. This study has attempted to show how
assumptions of either radical breaks or linear relationships miss a more complex reality of
strategic choices shaped by structural constraints and contingent factors. It is only through
the consistent affirmation of contingency and responsible agency on the part of political
actors, constrained by structures, that we can demystify ethnicity’s claims to causal
anteriority and, one hopes, contain its destructive potential. All too often, this is forgotten in
contemporary representations of violent conflict in Georgia, many of which continue to
uphold the fiction of the inevitability of violence and explain all prior developments in terms
of this outcome.

254
Appendix A Population and Nationality in Soviet and Post-Soviet Georgia: Statistical
Data

A-1Population by nationality in Georgia 1926-1999

Urban
Nationality 1926¹ 1939¹ 1959 1970 1979 1989 2002² (1989) Location (1989)
Georgian 66.8 61.4 64.3 66.8 68.8 70.1 83.1 53.4 Settled in all
regions, but
concentrated in Tbilisi
and central regions
Abkhaz 2.1 1.6 1.6 1.7 1.7 1.8 0.1 44.5 Northwest
Ossetian 4.2 4.2 3.5 3.2 3.2 3.0 0.8 59.1 Concentrated in
South Ossetia,
but settled in most
regions.
Russian 3.6 8.7 10.1 8.5 7.4 6.3 1.5 86.3 Tbilisi; urban locations
Ukrainian 0.5 1.3 1.3 1.1 0.9 1.0 - 85.3 Tbilisi; urban locations
Belorussian - - 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.2 - 76.4 Tbilisi; urban locations
Azerbaijani 5.4 5.3 3.8 4.6 5.1 5.7 6.5 24.6 Southeast
Armenian 11.5 11.7 11.0 9.7 9.0 8.1 5.7 59.6 Tbilisi; Javakheti;
northwest (Abkhazia)
Tatar - - 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 - 83.6 Urban locations
Jewish 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.2 0.6 0.5 - 98.9 Urban locations
Greek 2.0 2.4 1.8 1.9 1.9 1.9 0.4 59.2 Centre (Tsalka);
Tbilisi
northwest.
Kurd - - 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.6 - 98.5 Tbilisi
Assyrian - - - 0.1 0.1 0.1 - 83.0 Tbilisi
Other 2.8 2.2 - - - - 1.9

Source: SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosakhleobis erovnuli shemadgenloba. statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi: SRUSASIK,
1991); State Department for Statistics of Georgia, 2002 Census Preliminary Data (Tbilisi: State Department for
Statistics of Georgia); Richard Dobson, “Georgia and the Georgians”, in Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities, ed.
Z. Katz, R. Rogers and F. Harned (New York: The Free Press, 1975), 168.
¹ Data for 1926 and 1939 does not distinguish the smaller groups, which are incorporated into the ‘Other’ category.
² This data is drawn from the preliminary results of the 2002 census and will be available in greater detail when the
census is finally published in full. The data does not include the population of either Abkhazia or South
Ossetia/Tskhinvali region.

255
A-2: The Three Largest Nationalities of Tbilisi, 1959-1989

Year Nationality Number Percent

1959 Georgian 336,257 48.4

Armenian 149,258 21.5

Russian 125,674 18.1

1970 Georgian 511,379 57.5

Armenian 150,205 16.9

Russian 124,316 14.0

1979 Georgian 653,242 62.1

Armenian 152,767 14.5

Russian 129,122 12.3

1989 Georgian 820,753 66.0

Armenian 150,127 12.1

Russian 124,825 10.0

Source: SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosakhleobis erovnuli shemadgenloba. statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi:

SRUSASIK, 1991), 4-5.

256
A-3 Ethno-demographic change in Abkhazia 1939-1989

____ 1939 1989

Region Abkhaz Georgian Slavic Armenian Total Urban Abkhaz Georgian Slavic Armenian Total Urban
% % % % % % % % % %
Abkhazian 18.0 29.5 22.3 15.9 311,885 28.3 17.8 45.7 16.9 14.6 525,061 47.1
ASSR

Gagra 4.9 9.3 30.8 40.2 39,501 9.1 28.0 28.7 29.7 77,079
Gudauta 48.6 4.2 19.1 18.3 40,065 53.1 13.4 15.7 15.4 57,534
Ochamchire 47.6 20.9 20.5 7.5 60,209 36.7 46.2 7.3 8.3 75,388
Gali 3.6 89.6 6.2 0.1 49,895 0.8 93.8 4.0 0.7 79,688
Sukhumi 2.5 26.2 16.6 22.6 77,925 5.1 44.4 8.4 29.4 39,516
Gulripsh¹ - - - - - 2.4 52.8 15.9 25.3 54,962

Sukhumi 5.5 19.9 46.5 9.6 44,290 12.5 41.5 25.5 10.3 119,150
(city)
Source: Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1939 goda. Osnovnye Itogi. Abkhazskaya ASSR, fond 1562, opis’ 336, delo 404,
1-46; SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosakhleobis erovnuli shemadgenloba. statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi: SRUSASIK, 1991), 6-7,
22-61, 98-99.

¹ The separate district of Gulripsh, formerly part of Sukhumi region, was created in 1946. This explains the fall in the population of
Sukhumi region.

257
Appendix B: Language Repertoires by Nationality in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia
in 1989

B-1 Language Repertoires by Nationality, Georgia, 1989

Facility in: Native Language as Georgian as 1st Georgian as 2nd Russian as 1st Russian as 2nd
st
1 language (%) Language (%) language (%) language language
Georgians* 99.7 - 0.1 0.2 31.8
Abkhazians 96.4 1.3 2.4 2.3 80.5
Ossetians 77.3 20.5 32.6 2.6 36.6
Azerbaijanis 97.6 0.9 9.3 1.3 34.2
Armenians 85.0 5.7 20.3 9.2 42.9
Russians 98.7 1.2 22.5 - 0.7
Ukrainians 53.4 2.4 14.1 43.9 41.6
Belarussians 54.2 2.0 11.0 43.2 37.4
Tatars 59.3 4.1 14.0 35.7 49.7
Jews 13.4 29.2 27.7 56.5 24.0
Georgian Jews** 95.1 - - 4.6 49.5
Assyrians 53.7 24.5 35.9 20.3 31.2
Greeks 57.1 4.9 15.4 34.9 44.7
Kurds 74.7 11.5 43.8 12.3 26.2
Source: SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosakhleobis erovnuli shemadgenloba. statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi: SRUSASIK,
1991): 62-63.
* The 1989 census did not of course register data on unofficial languages, so that the situation regarding Mingrelian,
Lazuri and Svan is not covered.
** Georgian Jews are distinguished from other Jews by designating Georgian as their mother tongue.

258
B-2 Language Repertoires Among Major Nationalities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, 1989

Abkkhazia
Facility in: Abkhaz as 1st Abkhaz as 2nd Georgian as 1st Georgian as 2nd Russian as 1st Russian as 2nd
language (%) language (%) language (%) language (%) language (%) language (%)
Georgians 0.05 0.3 98.5 0.4 1.4 63.3
Abkhazians 97.2 0.3 0.6 1.6 2.1 81.5
Russians 0.04 0.6 0.1 3.2 99.7 0.2
Armenians 0.03 0.04 0.2 0.9 4.4 79.0
Greeks 0.09 0.2 0.6 1.8 12.1 76.1
Source: SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosaxleobis erovnuli shemadgenloba. statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi: SRUSASIK, 1991), 92-93.

South Ossetia
Facility in: Ossetic as 1st Ossetic as 2nd Georgian as 1st Georgian as 2nd Russian as 1st Russian as 2nd
language (%) language (%) language (%) language (%) language (%) language (%)
Georgians 0.2 6.6 99.7 0.1 0.08 27.5
Ossetians 98.2 0.4 1.4 13.8 0.3 59.7
Russians 0.3 16.5 1.0 9.4 98.4 0.9
Armenians 2.9 9.2 51.9 8.5 9.6 52.4
Source: SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosakhleobis erovnuli shemadgenloba. statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi: SRUSASIK, 1991), 128-
129.

259
Appendix C : Communist Party Composition by Nationality in Soviet Georgia, selected years
1926-1980

C-1 National Composition of the Georgian Communist Party (GCP), relative to national
composition of republican population (pop.), selected years 1926-1979

Georgians Abkhazians Ossetians Russians Armenians

Pop. GCP Pop. GCP Pop. GCP Pop. GCP Pop. GCP
1926¹ 66.8 62.5 2.1 0.8 4.2 4.9 3.6 12.3 11.5 13.1
1939² 61.4 66.6 1.6 0.9 4.2 4.6 8.7 7.0 11.7 14.6
1959 64.3 73.5 1.6 1.3 3.5 3.5 10.1 6.6 11.0 9.7
1970 66.8 76.1 1.7 1.4 3.2 3.3 8.5 5.5 9.7 8.0
1979³ 68.8 78.6 1.7 1.6 3.2 3.1 7.4 5.1 9.0 6.4
Source: L. Toidze, ed., Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Gruzii v Tsifrakh (Tbilisi: Georgian Communist Party
Central Committee Institute for the History of the Party, 1971); Central Statistical Directorate of the Georgian
Soviet Republic, Narodnoe Khozyaystvo Gruzinskoy SSR 1922-1982 (Tbilisi: Sabchota Sakartvelo, 1982), 15.
¹ GCP membership data relates to 1925
² GCP membership data relates to 1938
³ GCP membership data relates to 1981

C-2 National Composition of the Population of Abkhazian Autonomous Republic (AASSR)

1926-1989 and the Abkhazian Communist Party (ACP) 1929-1980

Demographic share Abkhaz Georgian Russian Armenian

1926 27.8 33.6 6.2 12.8
1939 18.0 29.5 19.3 15.9
1959 15.1 39.1 21.4 15.9
1979 17.1 43.9 16.4 15.1
1989 17.8 45.7 14.3 14.6

ACP Membership
1923 10.0 40.4 35.0 4.6
1937 19.7 26.8 26.1 11.4
1940 16.7 42.7 16.7 15.2
1950 13.3 51.0 15.5 14.0
1960 14.4 51.3 15.6 12.4
1970 16.8 50.5 14.4 11.9
1980 18.5 51.2 13.8 10.3
Source: Daniel Müller, “Demography”, in The Abkhazians, edited by George Hewitt (Richmond, London:
Curzon, 1999); L. Toidze, ed., Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Gruzii v Tsifrakh (Tbilisi: Georgian Communist
Party Central Committee Institute for the History of the Party, 1971).

260
C-3 National Composition of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast’, 1939-1989 and South
Ossetian Communist Party Organisation (SO CP) 1923-1970

Demographic Share Ossetian Georgian Russian Armenian

1939 68.1 25.9 2.0 1.5
1959 65.8 27.5 2.5 1.6
1970 66.5 28.3 1.6 1.3
1979 66.4 28.8 2.1 1.0
1989 66.2 29.0 2.2 1.0

SO CP Membership
1923 96.1 3.7 0.2 -
1937 88.1 9.4 0.9 1.2
1940 84.9 12.1 0.8 1.5
1950 73.7 20.3 2.3 2.4
1960 70.2 24.0 1.7 2.8
1970 71.7 23.5 1.5 2.3
Source: Vsesoyuznaya Perepis’ Naseleniya 1939 goda. Osnovnie Itogi. Yugo-Osetinskaya Avtonomnaya
Oblast’: fond 1562, opis’ 336, delo 406, 8; SRUSASIK, sakartvelos mosakhleobis erovnuli shemadgenloba.
statistikuri krebuli (Tbilisi: SRUSASIK, 1991), 10-11; L. Toidze, ed., Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Gruzii v
Tsifrakh (Tbilisi: Georgian Communist Party Central Committee Institute for the History of the Party, 1971).

C-4 National Composition of the Tbilisi City Communist Party Organisation and Regional and
Town Communist Party Organisations of All-Republican Status 1923-1970

National Composition of the Tbilisi City Communist Party Organisation, selected years 1923-
1970
Share of
1923 1929 1940 1950 1960 1970 Population, 1970
Georgians 33.2 45.7 56.4 61.4 63.3 70.6 66.8
Abkhazians 0.3 0.1 0.03 0.2 0.06 0.04 1.7
Ossetians 3.2 4.7 2.7 1.9 2.1 2.1 3.2
Armenians 25.7 26.2 24.9 18.6 16.3 12.6 9.7
Russians 25.0 16.2 10.4 12.3 11.6 9.5 8.5
Source: L. Toidze, ed., Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Gruzii v Tsifrakh (Tbilisi: Georgian Communist Party
Central Committee Institute for the History of the Party, 1971).

National Composition of Regional and Town Communist Party Organisations of all-Republican

status (excluding Tbilisi City), selected years 1923-1970

Share of
1923 1929 1940 1950 1960 1970 Population, 1970
Georgians 87.6 85.3 83.7 83.2 83.4 83.7 66.8
Abkhazians - <0.01 <0.01 0.01 <0.01 <0.01 1.7
Ossetians 5.7 3.3 1.7 1.6 1.6 1.6 3.2
Armenians 2.9 5.4 7.8 7.1 7.1 6.3 9.7
Russians 1.9 2.3 1.5 3.3 2.8 2.5 8.5
Source: L. Toidze, ed., Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Gruzii v Tsifrakh (Tbilisi: Georgian Communist Party
Central Committee Institute for the History of the Party, 1971).

261
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