GEORGIA'S LOCATION AT a major commercial crossroads and among several
powerful neighbors has provided both advantages and disadvantages
through some twenty-five centuries of history. Georgia is comprised of
regions having distinctive traits. The ethnic, religious, and linguistic
characteristics of the country as a unit coalesced to a greater degree
than before under Russian rule in the nineteenth century. Then, beneath
a veneer of centralized economic and political control imposed during
seventy years of Soviet rule, Georgian cultural and social institutions
survived, thanks in part to Georgia's relative distance from Moscow. As
the republic entered the post-Soviet period in the 1990s, however, the
prospects of establishing true national autonomy based on a common
heritage remained unclear.
Although Saint George is the country's patron saint, the name Georgia
derives from the Arabic and Persian words, Kurj and Gurj,
for the country. In 1991 Georgia-- called Sakartvelo in
Georgian and Gruziia in Russian--had been part of a Russian or
Soviet empire almost continuously since the beginning of the nineteenth
century, when most of the regions that constitute modern Georgia
accepted Russian annexation in order to gain protection from Persia.
Prior to that time, some combination of the territories that comprise
modern Georgia had been ruled by the Bagratid Dynasty for about 1,000
years, including periods of foreign domination and fragmentation.
Georgia - Early History
Archeological evidence indicates a neolithic culture in the area of
modern Georgia as early as the fifth millennium B.C. Between that time
and the modern era, a number of ethnic groups invaded or migrated into
the region, merging with numerous indigenous tribes to form the ethnic
base of the modern Georgian people. Throughout history the territory
comprising the Georgian state varied considerably in size as foreign
forces occupied some regions and as centrally ruled federations
controlled others.
Christianity and the Georgian Empire
In the last centuries of the pre-Christian era, Georgia, in the form
of the kingdom of Kartli-Iberia, was strongly influenced by Greece to
the west and Persia to the east. After the Roman Empire completed its
conquest of the Caucasus region in 66 B.C., the kingdom was a Roman
client state and ally for some 400 years. In A.D. 330, King Marian III's
acceptance of Christianity ultimately tied Georgia to the neighboring
Byzantine Empire, which exerted a strong cultural influence for several
centuries. Although Arabs captured the capital city of Tbilisi in A.D.
645, Kartli-Iberia retained considerable independence under local Arab
rulers. In A.D. 813, the Armenian prince Ashot I became the first of the
Bagrationi family to rule Georgia. Ashot's reign began a period of
nearly 1,000 years during which the Bagratids, as the house was known,
ruled at least part of what is now Georgia.
Western and eastern Georgia were united under Bagrat V (r. 1027-72).
In the next century, David IV (called the Builder, r. 1099-1125)
initiated the Georgian golden age by driving the Turks from the country
and expanding Georgian cultural and political influence southward into
Armenia and eastward to the Caspian Sea. That era of unparalleled power
and prestige for the Georgian monarchy concluded with the great literary
flowering of Queen Tamar's reign (1184-1212). At the end of that period,
Georgia was well known in the Christian West (and relied upon as an ally
by the Crusaders). Outside the national boundaries, several provinces
were dependent to some degree on Georgian power: the Trabzon Empire on
the southern shore of the Black Sea, regions in the Caucasus to the
north and east, and southern Azerbaijan.
Georgia - Occupation and Inclusion in the Russian Empire
The Mongol invasion in 1236 marked the beginning of a century of
fragmentation and decline. A brief resurgence of Georgian power in the
fourteenth century ended when the Turkic conquerer Timur (Tamerlane)
destroyed Tbilisi in 1386. The capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman
Turks in 1453 began three centuries of domination by the militant
Ottoman and Persian empires, which divided Georgia into spheres of
influence in 1553 and subsequently redistributed Georgian territory
between them. By the eighteenth century, however, the Bagratid line
again had achieved substantial independence under nominal Persian rule.
In this period, Georgia was threatened more by rebellious Georgian and
Persian nobles within than by the major powers surrounding the country.
In 1762 Herekle II was able to unite the east Georgian regions of Kartli
and Kakhetia under his independent but tenuous rule. In this period of
renewed unity, trade increased and feudal institutions lost influence in
Georgia.
In 1773 Herekle began efforts to gain Russian protection from the
Turks, who were threatening to retake his kingdom. In this period,
Russian troops intermittently occupied parts of Georgia, making the
country a pawn in the explosive Russian-Turkish rivalry of the last
three decades of the eighteenth century. After the Persians sacked
Tbilisi in 1795, Herekle again sought the protection of Orthodox Russia.
Georgia - Within the Russian Empire
Annexation by the Russian Empire began a new stage of Georgian
history, in which security was achieved by linking Georgia more closely
than ever with Russia. This subordinate relationship would last nearly
two centuries.
Russian Influence in the Nineteenth Century
Because of its weak position, Georgia could not name the terms of
protection by the Russian Empire. In 1801 Tsar Alexander I summarily
abolished the kingdom of Kartli-Kakhetia, and the heir to the Bagratid
throne was forced to abdicate. In the next decade, the Russian Empire
gradually annexed Georgia's entire territory. Eastern Georgia (the
regions of Kartli and Kakhetia) became part of the Russian Empire in
1801, and western Georgia (Imeretia) was incorporated in 1804. After
annexation Russian governors tried to rearrange Georgian feudal society
and government according to the Russian model. Russian education and
ranks of nobility were introduced, and the Georgian Orthodox Church lost
its autocephalous status in 1811. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, Russification intensified, as did Georgian rebellions against
the process.
Georgia - Social and Intellectual Developments
By 1850 the social and political position of the Georgian nobility,
for centuries the foundation of Georgian society, had deteriorated. A
new worker class began to exert social pressure in Georgian population
centers. Because the nobility still represented Georgian national
interests, its decline meant that the Armenian merchant class, which had
been a constructive part of urban life since the Middle Ages, gained
greater economic power within Georgia. At the same time, Russian
political hegemony over the Caucasus now went unopposed by Georgians. In
response to these conditions, Georgian intellectuals borrowed the
thinking of Russian and West European political philosophers, forging a
variety of theoretical salvations for Georgian nationalism that had
little relation to the changing economic conditions of the Georgian
people.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Russia, fearing increased
Armenian power in Georgia, asserted direct control over Armenian
religious and political institutions. In the first decade of the
twentieth century, a full-fledged Georgian national liberation movement
was led by Marxist followers of the Russian Social Democrat Party.
Marxist precepts fell on fertile soil in Georgia; by 1900 migration from
rural areas and the growth of manufacturing had generated a fairly
cohesive working class led by a new generation of Georgian intellectuals
who called for elimination of both the Armenian bourgeoisie and the
Russian government bureaucracy. The main foe, however, was tsarist
autocracy.
Georgia - The Spirit of Revolution
Because Turkey was a member of the Central Powers in World War I, the
Caucasus region became a major battleground in that conflict. In 1915
and 1916, Russian forces pushed southwest into eastern Turkey from bases
in the Caucasus, with limited success. As part of the Russian Empire,
Georgia officially backed the Allies, although it stood to gain little
from victory by either side. By 1916 economic conditions and mass
immigration of war refugees had raised social discontent throughout the
Caucasus, and the Russian Empire's decade-old experiment with
constitutional monarchy was judged a failure.
The revolution of 1917 in Russia intensified the struggle between the
Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in Georgia. In May 1918, Georgia declared
its independence under the protection of Germany. Georgia turned toward
Germany to prevent opportunistic invasion by the Turks; the move also
resulted from Georgians' perception of Germany as the center of European
culture. The major European powers recognized Georgia's independence,
and in May 1920, Russian leader Vladimir I. Lenin officially followed
suit.
To gain peasant support, Zhordania's moderate new Menshevikdominated
government redistributed much of Georgia's remaining aristocratic
landholdings to the peasants, eliminating the longtime privileged status
of the nobility. The few years of postwar independence were economically
disastrous, however, because Georgia did not establish commercial
relations with the West, Russia, or its smaller neighbors.
Georgia - Within the Soviet Union
In seven decades as part of the Soviet Union, Georgia maintained some
cultural independence, and Georgian nationalism remained a
significant--though at times muted--issue in relations with the
Russians. In economic and political terms, however, Georgia was
thoroughly integrated into the Soviet system.
The Interwar Years
After independence was declared in 1918, the Georgian Bolsheviks
campaigned to undermine the Menshevik leader Zhordania, and in 1921 the
Red Army invaded Georgia and forced him to flee. From 1922 until 1936,
Georgia was part of a united Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist
Republic (TSFSR) within the Soviet Union. In 1936 the federated republic
was split up as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, which remained
separate Soviet socialist republics of the Soviet Union until the end of
1991.
Although Stalin and Lavrenti Beria, his chief of secret police from
1938 to 1953, were both Georgians, Stalin's regime oppressed Georgians
as severely as it oppressed citizens of other Soviet republics. The most
notable manifestations of this policy were the execution of 5,000 nobles
in 1924 as punishment for a Menshevik revolt and the purge of Georgian
intellectuals and artists in 1936-37. Another Georgian Bolshevik, Sergo
Ordzhonikidze, played an important role in the early 1920s in bringing
Georgia and other Soviet republics into a centralized, Moscow-directed
state. Ordzhonikidze later became Stalin's top economic official.
Georgia - World War II and the Late Stalin Period
Georgia was not invaded in World War II. It contributed more than
500,000 fighters to the Red Army, however, and was a vital source of
textiles and munitions. Stalin's successful appeal for patriotic unity
eclipsed Georgian nationalism during the war and diffused it in the
years following. Restoration of autonomy to the Georgian Orthodox Church
in 1943 facilitated this process.
The last two decades of Stalin's rule saw rapid, forced urbanization
and industrialization, as well as drastic reductions in illiteracy and
the preferential treatment of Georgians at the expense of ethnic
minorities in the republic. The full Soviet centralized economic
planning structure was in place in Georgia by 1934. Between 1940 and
1958, the republic's industrial output grew by 240 percent. In that
time, the influence of traditional village life decreased significantly
for a large part of the Georgian population.
Georgia - Post-Stalin Politics
Upon Stalin's death in 1953, Georgian nationalism revived and resumed
its struggle against dictates from the central government in Moscow. In
the 1950s, reforms under Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev included the
shifting of economic authority from Moscow to republic-level officials,
but the Russian Khrushchev's repudiation of Stalin set off a backlash in
Georgia. In 1956 hundreds of Georgians were killed when they
demonstrated against Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization. Long
afterward many Stalin monuments and place-names--as well as the museum
constructed at Stalin's birthplace in the town of Gori, northwest of
Tbilisi--were maintained. Only with Mikhail S. Gorbachev's policy of glasnost
in the late 1980s did criticism of Stalin become acceptable and a full
account of Stalin's crimes against his fellow Georgians become known in
Georgia.
Between 1955 and 1972, Georgian communists used decentralization to
become entrenched in political posts and to reduce further the influence
of other ethnic groups in Georgia. In addition, enterprising Georgians
created factories whose entire output was "off the books". In
1972 the long-standing corruption and economic inefficiency of Georgia's
leaders led Moscow to sponsor Eduard Shevardnadze as first secretary of
the Georgian Communist Party. Shevardnadze had risen through the ranks
of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) to become a party first
secretary at the district level in 1961. From 1964 until 1972,
Shevardnadze oversaw the Georgian police from the Ministry of Internal
Affairs, where he made a reputation as a competent and incorruptible
official.
Georgia - The First Shevardnadze Period
As party first secretary, Shevardnadze used purges to attack the
corruption and chauvinism for which Georgia's elite had become infamous
even among the corrupt and chauvinistic republics of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, a small group of dissident nationalists coalesced around
academician Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who stressed the threat that
Russification presented to the Georgian national identity. This theme
would remain at the center of Georgian-Russian relations into the new
era of Georgian independence in the 1990s. Soviet power and Georgian
nationalism clashed in 1978 when Moscow ordered revision of the
constitutional status of the Georgian language as Georgia's official
state language. Bowing to pressure from street demonstrations, Moscow
approved Shevardnadze's reinstatement of the constitutional guarantee
the same year.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Shevardnadze successfully walked a
narrow line between the demands of Moscow and the Georgians' growing
desire for national autonomy. He maintained political and economic
control while listening carefully to popular demands and making
strategic concessions. Shevardnadze dealt with nationalism and dissent
by explaining his policies to hostile audiences and seeking compromise
solutions. The most serious ethnic dispute of Shevardnadze's tenure
arose in 1978, when leaders of the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic
threatened to secede from Georgia, alleging unfair cultural, linguistic,
political, and economic restrictions imposed by Tbilisi. Shevardnadze
took a series of steps to diffuse the crisis, including an affirmative
action program that increased the role of Abkhazian elites in running
"their" region, despite the minority status of their group in
Abkhazia.
Shevardnadze initiated experiments that foreshadowed the economic and
political reforms that Gorbachev later introduced into the central
Soviet system. The Abasha economic experiment in agriculture created new
incentives for farmers similar to those used in the Hungarian
agricultural reform of the time. A reorganization in the seaport of Poti
expanded the role of local authorities at the expense of republic and
all-union ministries. By 1980 Shevardnadze had raised Georgia's
industrial and agricultural production significantly and dismissed about
300 members of the party's corrupt hierarchy. When Shevardnadze left
office in 1985, considerable government corruption remained, however,
and Georgia's official economy was still weakened by an extensive
illegal "second economy." But his reputation for honesty and
political courage earned Shevardnadze great popularity among Georgians,
the awarding of the Order of Lenin by the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union in 1978, and appointment as minister of foreign affairs of the
Soviet Union in 1985.
Georgia - Patiashvili
Jumber Patiashvili, a nondescript party loyalist, succeeded
Shevardnadze as head of the Georgian Communist Party. Under Patiashvili,
most of Shevardnadze's initiatives atrophied, and no new policy
innovations were undertaken. Patiashvili removed some of Shevardnadze's
key appointees, although he could not dismiss his predecessor's many
middle-echelon appointees without seriously damaging the party
apparatus.
In dealing with dissent, Patiashvili, who distrusted radical and
unofficial groups, returned to the usual confrontational strategy of
Soviet regional party officials. The party head met major resistance
when he backed a plan for a new Transcaucasian railroad that would cut a
swath parallel to the Georgian Military Highway in a historic, scenic,
and environmentally significant region. In a televised speech,
Patiashvili called opponents of the project "enemies of the
people"--a phrase used in the 1930s to justify liquidation of
Stalin's real and imagined opponents. By isolating opposition groups,
Patiashvili forced reformist leaders into underground organizations and
confrontational behavior.
Georgia - After Communist Rule
In April 1989, Soviet troops broke up a peaceful demonstration at the
government building in Tbilisi. Under unclear circumstances, twenty
Georgians, mostly women and children, were killed. The military
authorities and the official media blamed the demonstrators, and
opposition leaders were arrested. The Georgian public was outraged. What
was afterwards referred to as the April Tragedy fundamentally
radicalized political life in the republic. Shevardnadze was sent to
Georgia to restore calm. He arranged for the replacement of Patiashvili
by Givi Gumbaridze, head of the Georgian branch of the Committee for
State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti--KGB).
In an atmosphere of renewed nationalist fervor, public opinion
surveys indicated that the vast majority of the population was committed
to immediate independence from Moscow. Although the communist party was
discredited, it continued to control the formal instruments of power. In
the months following the April Tragedy, the opposition used strikes and
other forms of pressure to undermine communist power and set the stage
for de facto separation from the Soviet Union.
Georgia - The Rise of Gamsakhurdia
Partly as a result of the conspiratorial nature of antigovernment
activity prior to 1989, opposition groups tended to be small, tightly
knit units organized around prominent individuals. The personal
ambitions of opposition leaders prevented the emergence of a united
front, but Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the most widely honored and recognized of
the nationalist dissidents, moved naturally to a position of leadership.
The son of Georgia's foremost contemporary novelist, Gamsakhurdia had
gained many enemies during the communist years in acrimonious disputes
and irreconcilable factional splits.
Opposition pressure resulted in an open, multiparty election in
October 1990. Despite guarantees written into the new law on elections,
many prominent opposition parties boycotted the vote, arguing that their
groups could not compete fairly and that their participation under
existing conditions would only legitimize continuation of Georgia's
"colonial status" within the Soviet system.
As an alternative, the opposition parties had held their own
election, without government approval, in September 1990. Although the
minimum turnout for a valid election was not achieved, the new
"legislative" body, called the Georgian National Congress, met
and became a center of opposition to the government chosen in the
official October election. In the officially sanctioned voting,
Gamsakhurdia's Round Table/Free Georgia coalition won a solid majority
in the Supreme Soviet, Georgia's official parliamentary body.
Arguably the most virulently anticommunist politician ever elected in
a Soviet republic, Gamsakhurdia was intolerant of all political
opposition. He often accused his opposition of treason or involvement
with the KGB. The quality of political debate in Georgia was lowered by
the exchange of such charges between Gamsakhurdia and opposition leaders
such as Gia Chanturia of the National Democratic Party.
After his election, Gamsakhurdia's greatest concern was the armed
opposition. Both Gamsakhurdia's Round Table/Free Georgia coalition and
some opposition factions in the Georgian National Congress had informal
military units, which the previous, communist Supreme Soviet had
legalized under pressure from informal groups. The most formidable of
these groups were the Mkhedrioni (horsemen), said to number 5,000 men,
and the socalled National Guard. The new parliament, dominated by
Gamsakhurdia, outlawed such groups and ordered them to surrender their
weapons, but the order had no effect. After the elections, independent
military groups raided local police stations and Soviet military
installations, sometimes adding formidable weaponry to their arsenals.
In February 1991, a Soviet army counterattack against Mkhedrioni
headquarters had led to the imprisonment of the Mkhedrioni leader.
Gamsakhurdia moved quickly to assert Georgia's independence from
Moscow. He took steps to bring the Georgian KGB and Ministry of Internal
Affairs (both overseen until then from Moscow) under his control.
Gamsakhurdia refused to attend meetings called by Gorbachev to preserve
a working union among the rapidly separating Soviet republics.
Gamsakhurdia's communications with the Soviet leader usually took the
form of angry telegrams and telephone calls. In May 1991, Gamsakhurdia
ended the collection in Georgia of Gorbachev's national sales tax on the
grounds that it damaged the Georgian economy. Soon Georgia ceased all
payments to Moscow, and the central government took steps to isolate the
republic economically.
Rather than consent to participate in Gorbachev's March 1991
referendum on preserving a federation of Soviet republics, Gamsakhurdia
organized a separate referendum on Georgian independence. The measure
was approved by 98.9 percent of Georgian voters. Shortly thereafter, on
the second anniversary of the April Tragedy (April 9, 1991), the
Georgian parliament passed a declaration of independence from the Soviet
Union. Once the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, Georgia
refused to participate in the formation or subsequent activities of the
Commonwealth of Independent States ( CIS), the loose confederation of
independent republics that succeeded the Soviet Union.
Georgia - The Struggle for Control
In May 1991, Gamsakhurdia was elected president of Georgia (receiving
over 86 percent of the vote) in the first popular presidential election
in a Soviet republic. Apparently perceiving the election as a mandate to
run Georgia personally, Gamsakhurdia made increasingly erratic policy
and personnel decisions in the months that followed, while his attitude
toward the opposition became more strident. After intense conflict with
Gamsakhurdia, Prime Minister Tengiz Sigua resigned in August 1991.
The August 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev in Moscow marked a
turning point in Georgian as well as in Soviet politics. Gamsakhurdia
made it clear that he believed the coup, headed by the Soviet minister
of defense and the head of the KGB, was both inevitable and likely to
succeed. Accordingly, he ordered Russian president Boris N. Yeltsin's
proclamations against the coup removed from the streets of Tbilisi.
Gamsakhurdia also ordered the National Guard to turn in its weapons,
disband, and integrate itself into the forces of the Ministry of
Internal Affairs. Opposition leaders immediately denounced this action
as capitulation to the coup. In defiance of Gamskhurdia, National Guard
commander Tengiz Kitovani led most of his troops out of Tbilisi.
The opposition to Gamsakhurdia, now joined in an uneasy coalition
behind Sigua and Kitovani, demanded that Gamsakhurdia resign and call
new parliamentary elections. Gamsakhurdia refused to compromise, and his
troops forcibly dispersed a large opposition rally in Tbilisi in
September 1991. Chanturia, whose National Democratic Party was one of
the most active opposition groups at that time, was arrested and
imprisoned on charges of seeking help from Moscow to overthrow the
government.
In the ensuing period, both the government and extraparliamentary
opposition intensified the purchase and "liberation" of large
quantities of weapons--mostly from Soviet military units stationed in
Georgia--including heavy artillery, tanks, helicopter gunships, and
armored personnel carriers. On December 22, intense fighting broke out
in central Tbilisi after government troops again used force to disperse
demonstrators. At this point, the National Guard and the Mkhedrioni
besieged Gamsakhurdia and his supporters in the heavily fortified
parliament building. Gunfire and bombs severely damaged central Tbilisi,
and Gamsakhurdia fled the city in early January 1992 to seek refuge
outside Georgia.
Georgia - The Military Council
A Military Council made up of Sigua, Kitovani, and Mkhedrioni leader
Jaba Ioseliani took control after Gamsakhurdia's departure. Shortly
thereafter, a Political Consultative Council and a larger State Council
were formed to provide more decisive leadership. In March 1992, Eduard
Shevardnadze returned to Georgia at the invitation of the Military
Council. Shortly thereafter Shevardnadze joined Ioseliani, Sigua, and
Kitovani to form the State Council Presidium. All four were given the
right of veto over State Council decisions.
Gamsakhurdia, despite his absence, continued to enjoy substantial
support within Georgia, especially in rural areas and in his home region
of Mingrelia in western Georgia. Gamsakhurdia supporters now constituted
another extraparliamentary opposition, viewing themselves as victims of
an illegal and unconstitutional putsch and refusing to participate in
future elections. Based in the neighboring Chechen Autonomous Republic
of Russia, Gamsakhurdia continued to play a direct role in Georgian
politics, characterizing Shevardnadze as an agent of Moscow in a
neocommunist conspiracy against Georgia. In March 1992, Gamsakhurdia
convened a parliament in exile in the Chechen city of Groznyi. In 1992
and 1993, his armed supporters prevented the Georgian government from
gaining control of parts of western Georgia.
Georgia - Threats of Fragmentation - South Ossetia
The autonomous areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia added to the
problems of Georgia's post-Soviet governments. By 1993 separatist
movements in those regions threatened to tear the republic into several
sections. Intimations of Russian interference in the ethnic crises also
complicated Georgia's relations with its giant neighbor.
South Ossetia
The first major crisis faced by the Gamsakhurdia regime was in the
South Ossetian Autonomous Region, which was largely populated by
Ossetians, a separate ethnic group speaking a language based on Persian.
In December 1990, Gamsakhurdia summarily abolished the region's
autonomous status within Georgia in response to its longtime efforts to
gain independence. When the South Ossetian regional legislature took its
first steps toward secession and union with the North Ossetian
Autonomous Republic of Russia, Georgian forces invaded. The resulting
conflict lasted throughout 1991, causing thousands of casualties and
creating tens of thousands of refugees on both sides of the
Georgian-Russian border. Yeltsin mediated a cease-fire in July 1992. A
year later, the cease-fire was still in place, enforced by Ossetian and
Georgian troops together with six Russian battalions. Representatives of
the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe ( CSCE) attempted
mediation, but the two sides remained intractable. In July 1993, the
South Ossetian government declared negotiations over and threatened to
renew large-scale combat, but the cease-fire held through early 1994.
Georgia - Abkhazia
In the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic of Georgia, the Abkhazian
population, like the Ossetians a distinct ethnic group, feared that the
Georgians would eliminate their political autonomy and destroy the
Abkhaz as a cultural entity. On one hand, a long history of ill will
between the Abkhaz and the Georgians was complicated by the minority
status of the Abkhaz within the autonomous republic and by periodic
Georgianization campaigns, first by the Soviet and later by the Georgian
government. On the other hand, the Georgian majority in Abkhazia
resented disproportionate distribution of political and administrative
positions to the Abkhaz. Beginning in 1978, Moscow had sought to head
off Abkhazian demands for independence by allocating as much as 67
percent of party and government positions to the Abkhaz, although,
according to the 1989 census, 2.5 times as many Georgians as Abkhaz
lived in Abkhazia.
Tensions in Abkhazia led to open warfare on a much larger scale than
in South Ossetia. In July 1992, the Abkhazian Supreme Soviet voted to
return to the 1925 constitution under which Abkhazia was separate from
Georgia. In August 1992, a force of the Georgian National Guard was sent
to the Abkhazian capital of Sukhumi with orders to protect Georgian rail
and road supply lines, and to secure the border with Russia. When
Abkhazian authorities reacted to this transgression of their
selfproclaimed sovereignty, hundreds were killed in fighting between
Abkhazian and Georgian forces, and large numbers of refugees fled across
the border into Russia or into other parts of Georgia. The Abkhazian
government was forced to flee Sukhumi.
For two centuries, the Abkhaz had viewed Russia as a protector of
their interests against the Georgians; accordingly, the Georgian
incursion of 1992 brought an Abkhazian plea for Russia to intervene and
settle the issue. An unknown number of Russian military personnel and
volunteers also fought on the side of the Abkhaz, and Shevardnadze
accused Yeltsin of intentionally weakening Georgia's national security
by supporting separatists. After the failure of three cease-fires, in
September 1993 Abkhazian forces besieged and captured Sukhumi and drove
the remaining Georgian forces out of Abkhazia. In the fall of 1993,
mediation efforts by the United Nations (UN) and Russia were slowed by
Georgia's struggle against Gamsakhurdia's forces in Mingrelia, south of
Abkhazia. In early 1994, a de facto ceasefire remained in place, with
the Inguri River in northwest Georgia serving as the dividing line.
Separatist forces made occasional forays into Georgian territory,
however.
In September 1993, Gamsakhurdia took advantage of the struggle in
Abkhazia to return to Georgia and rally enthusiastic but disorganized
Mingrelians against the demoralized Georgian army. Although Gamsakhurdia
initially represented his return as a rescue of Georgian forces, he
actually included Abkhazian troops in his new advance. Gamsakhurdia's
forces took several towns in western Georgia, adding urgency to an
appeal by Shevardnadze for Russian military assistance. In mid-October
the addition of Russian weapons, supply-line security, and technical
assistance turned the tide against Gamsakhurdia and brought a quick end
to hostilities on the Mingrelian front. His cause apparently lost,
Gamsakhurdia committed suicide in January 1994.
