It’s a common misconception that the Caucasus Region is an innately violent part of the world, with many of its conflicts deeply rooted in the region’s history and exaggerated by its ethnic diversity. History’s version of this region--Georgia’s conflicts included--paints a story where today’s violence and distrust between various ethnic groups can be traced back.  Prior to the late 1800s, the Georgians, along with their Abkhazian and (South) Ossetian neighbors, lived in agrarian societies without the notion of “us” and “them” (i.e. nationalism). In Georgia, the process of introducing nationalism into the Georgian people was done mostly by Georgian author and academician, Ilia Chavchavadze. Through alphabetic reforms, the introduction of a newspaper and periodicals for the citizenry, and the creation of a national museum, Chavchavadze allowed people from all around Georgia to begin developing the notion of “the Georgian people.” This was occuring at the same time as the Russian Empire came to its end.

 

The period between 1918 and 1921 was extremely tumultuous for the Georgians, Abkhazians, and South Ossetians alike. During these four years, these three peoples had to arrange their political relationships with each other for the first time in centuries while simultaneously having to deal with increasing local nationalism and a strengthening Bolshevik party in Russia. The chaos caused by these factors resulted in the governments of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be extremely divided between different interests and aspirations for their respective region.

 

Historically, the Abkhazians have had relatively stable ties with Georgia; however, they are a people who are unrelated to the Georgians in all but Christianity. The Abkhazians have had long historical ties with both sides of the Caucasus, but this became irrelevant to the Abkhazian government, which was becoming increasingly replaced by ideas of Abkhazian self-determination. The majority of infighting occurred between the Abkhazian intellectuals wanting independence and intellectuals wanting integration with Georgia. The North Caucasus has teetered on the edge of conflict, whether it be the uprising with Imam Shamil in the 1840s which resulted in deportations of both Chechens and Circassians, the Rebellion of 1877, or the various ethnic cleansings of the Circassians in the mid to late 1800s. As such, the Abkhazians knew that vying for independence or unification with Russia would create the risk of associating themselves with the abovementioned uprisings and disturbances that had in the past led to a series of deportations within Abkhazia proper in 1866 and in 1877. Therefore, when the national question came up, a large group of Abkhazian leaders lobbied for independence, and by 9 February 1918, the Abkhazian People’s Council told the Georgian National council during a meeting that the Abkhazians would be an independent people from the Georgians.

 

The members of the Georgian National Council refused any Abkhazian claim to full independence that broke Georgian territorial integrity. The Georgian and Abkhazian leaders reached an agreement that the discussion of Abkhazia’s future would wait until after the election of a special assembly in Abkhazia, and, in return, Georgia would recognize full Abkhazian sovereignty within Georgia. The pro-independent group within the Abkhazian government had made claim that Abkhazia was to be an independent country, yet folded and allowed Abkhazia to remain within Georgia as an autonomous region. Such indecisiveness about the status of Abkhazia prevented any further substantial agreements and understandings between the Abkhazian government and the Georgian government. Ultimately, this would allow national tempers to fester, creating an environment ripe for revolution and conflict.

 

The case for South Ossetian independence was a loose one, which, like with Abkhazia, was filled with in-fighting among the local leaders, allowing for the Bolshevik Party to dominate other political ideologies within South Ossetia. Up to this time, South Ossetia was a region that had no official boundaries and was traditionally placed within the Gori district of the Tiflis/Tbilisi Province within Georgia itself. Similar to the Abkhazians, the South Ossetians have their ancestry in the North Caucasus but, unlike the Abkhazians, have their ethnic homeland residing on the direct opposite side of the Caucasus Mountains in a region now called North Ossetia-Alania. The ramifications of this have come to haunt the South Ossetian push for independence throughout recent history. From 1917 through 1918, the South Ossetian People’s Congress conducted two meetings, during which they petitioned to the authorities in Tbilisi for the creation of a unified Ossetian region to be composed of both the regions of North Ossetia and South Ossetia, wherein the capital would be Tskhinvali, located about 100 kilometers north-northwest of Tbilisi.