Stalin’s National Question and Ethnocultural Policy in Abkhazia (1930s–1950s), by Nuri Bagapsh

This article examines the ethnocultural policy of the Georgian SSR in Abkhazia during the 1930s–1950s through the prism of Stalin’s early theoretical formulations on the national question. Drawing upon Soviet administrative data, regional parallels, and contemporary scholarship, Nuri V. Bagapsh argues that assimilationist measures in Abkhazia were not episodic or incidental, but formed part of a broader all-Union strategy of ethnocultural homogenisation. Within the Georgian SSR, however, these policies intersected with pre-existing nationalist paradigms, resulting in a distinctive configuration of demographic, linguistic and institutional transformation. By situating Abkhazia within comparative Soviet practice, the study offers a structurally grounded interpretation of assimilation, consolidation and the politics of titular nationhood in the late Stalinist era.

Translated by AbkhazWorld

Aamtaq’a / Vremena: Historical and Cultural Almanac
Research Centre Abkhazian Encyclopaedia; Abkhazian Historical Society
Editor-in-Chief: A. F. Avidzba
No. 3–4 (2024), pp. 135–142
Sukhum: House of Print

Ethnocultural Policy of the Georgian SSR in Abkhazia in the 1930s–1950s as the Practical Implementation of Stalin’s Early Theoretical Constructs on the National Question

The policy pursued by Tbilisi towards the assimilation of the Abkhaz ethnos in the 1930s–1950s, as well as its individual components, has been examined in considerable detail within Abkhaz historiography. Russian, Western, and Georgian scholars have also addressed this subject.

According to G.P. Lezhava, the ethnocultural policy of Georgia in Abkhazia during the 1930s–1950s not only conformed to the general contours of Soviet national policy of that period, but also corresponded to Stalin’s theoretical views on the national question, as articulated in his 1913 work Marxism and the National Question[1]. It should be noted that Lenin paid particular attention to this article. Despite criticising certain provisions, he subsequently regarded Stalin as the principal specialist on the national question within the RSDLP(b). Immediately following the October Revolution, Stalin assumed the post of People’s Commissar for Nationalities of the RSFSR.

We concur with Lezhava on both points. Stalin’s later practical policy in this sphere — particularly from the 1930s onwards, when he was able to act independently — clearly stemmed from his earlier theoretical constructs. As will be demonstrated below, these policies were implemented on an all-Union scale. The phased assimilation of the Abkhaz constituted one link in a broader chain of ethnocultural homogenisation of Union and certain autonomous republics (within the RSFSR). At the same time, within the Georgian SSR, this all-Union policy found fertile ground prepared by Georgian nationalism of the preceding period, and represented an organic continuation of both the pre-revolutionary Georgian national movement and the national policy of the Georgian Democratic Republic (1918–1921).

Let us turn to what Stalin wrote in 1913:

“Cultural-national autonomy presupposes more or less developed nationalities, with developed culture and literature. Without these conditions, such autonomy loses all meaning and becomes absurd. But in the Caucasus there exist a number of peoples with primitive culture, with their own language, but without native literature — peoples, moreover, transitional in character, partly undergoing assimilation, partly developing further. How is cultural-national autonomy to be applied to them? How are such peoples to be dealt with? How are they to be ‘organised’ into separate cultural-national unions, as cultural-national autonomy undoubtedly presupposes? What is to be done with the Mingrelians, Abkhazians, Adjarians, Svans, Lezgins, etc., who speak different languages but have no literature of their own? To which nations are they to be assigned? Is it possible to ‘organise’ them into national unions? Around what ‘cultural affairs’ are they to be organised? What is to be done with the Ossetians, of whom the Transcaucasian Ossetians are being assimilated (though far from fully) by the Georgians, while the Ciscaucasian Ossetians are partly being assimilated by the Russians and partly continuing to develop, creating their own literature? How are they to be ‘organised’ into a single national union?... The national question in the Caucasus can be resolved only in the spirit of drawing the backward nations and nationalities into the general channel of a higher culture.”[2]

How were these early theoretical propositions implemented in practice some twenty-five years later, when Stalin had become leader of the USSR?

From the late 1930s in particular, a line of ethnocultural consolidation of ethnolinguistic and ethnoconfessional minorities with the dominant group — through institutionally entrenched mechanisms of assimilation — began to be pursued virtually throughout the Soviet Union: in Ukraine, Tatarstan, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and many other regions.

Numerous national districts, volosts, and village councils created across the USSR during the 1920s–1930s within the framework of Leninist korenizatsiya (indigenisation) in areas of compact settlement of ethnic groups that were not titular for a given territory[3] were largely liquidated by the end of the 1930s, that is, they lost their national status.

In 1934, there were more than 240 national districts and over 5,300 national village councils in the USSR[4]. By 1937, the number of national village councils exceeded 11,000. According to data for 1934, approximately 10% of all districts and about 12% of all village councils of the Soviet Union were categorised as national[5]. Within Abkhazia, the Gali district held the status of a national district (Georgian, but not Mingrelian)[6].

At the end of 1937, the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) adopted the resolution “On the Liquidation of National Districts and Village Councils”[6]. M. Junge, D. Müller, V. Feuerstein and I. Dzhukha observe:

“Now, in order to substantially accelerate movement toward a ‘post-national Soviet whole,’ powerful administrative support was provided to the process of ethnic homogenisation of already existing large national units — namely, the titular nations of the Soviet state. This policy gathered momentum from the early 1930s…”[7]

In Dagestan during this period, the Ando-Tsez peoples (and by the 1959 census also the Archins[8]) were administratively incorporated into the Avars. However, similar administrative consolidation of the peoples of the Lezgin group was not carried out.

According to V.O. Bobrovnikov, nation-building in Western Dagestan, oriented toward the formation of a unified Avar ethnonation, was complicated not only by linguistic diversity but also by the absence of developed ethnic self-consciousness among the local population[9]. A.A. Tsutsiev likewise emphasises the amorphous nature of the nascent ethnic self-awareness of Dagestani highlanders[10].

In Azerbaijan, consolidation of the Azerbaijani socialist nation was pursued through partial or complete administrative incorporation of local Muslim ethnic groups into the dominant Turkic ethnolinguistic core, followed by ethnolinguistic assimilation of Avars, Akhvakh, Ingiloys, Kurds, Lezgins, Rutuls, Talysh, Tats, Tsakhurs and the Shahdag peoples[11].

Whereas in Lezgin villages of Dagestan there existed Lezgin-language primary schools, in Azerbaijan education throughout almost the entire Soviet period (with the exception of 1935–1938[12]) was conducted in Turkic. Only from 1963 were Lezgin language and literature introduced as subjects in schools in Lezgin villages of the Qusar and Quba districts[13].

In the mid-1930s, three districts in southern Dagestan — Akhty, Kasumkent, and Kurakh — had Lezgin national status[14]. However, the Ghil (Qusar) district of Azerbaijan, predominantly inhabited by ethnic Lezgins[15], had no analogous status. Azerbaijan was the only Union republic with compact minority settlement areas that had no national districts within its structure[16].

As previously noted, ethnocultural policy in Stalinist Georgia fully corresponded with earlier Georgian nationalist programmes. Language policy in Soviet Georgia represented a continuation of policies laid down in the nineteenth century.

Researchers of the Great Terror in the Georgian SSR observe:

“In general, the policy of the republican centre (Tbilisi – N.B.) may be interpreted as a continuation of the old policy of Georgian nationalists and the Georgian Church, who since the 1880s had fiercely opposed Russian attempts to introduce writing systems for the Mingrelian and Abkhaz languages…”[17]

During debates in the Georgian Constituent Assembly on 2 August 1919, L. Shengelaia (Kiacheri) stated:

“…to conduct nationalisation (linguistic Georgianisation of Abkhazia – N.B.) in one stroke would, in our view, cause enormous harm… In our opinion, nationalisation must proceed not from above but from below, and the principal burden must fall upon the zemstvos, which should introduce Georgian schools.”[18]

Components of Assimilation Policy in Abkhazia

In Abkhazia, this policy included:

• Severe repression of Abkhaz during the Great Terror[19]
• Demographic colonisation through planned resettlement of Georgian peasants[20]
• Disproportionate military conscription of Abkhaz during the Great Patriotic War and assignment primarily to infantry units[21]
• Transfer of the Abkhaz alphabet to Georgian script and subsequent transition of Abkhaz schools to Georgian-language instruction (effectively eliminating Abkhaz schools)
• Georgianisation of toponymy
• Ethnically selective кадровая политика (personnel policy)[22]
• Deportation plans[23]
• Administrative gerrymandering, including division of the Gudauta district and creation of the Akhaliafon district[24]

Many of these measures were also applied to South Ossetians. In 1938, the Ossetian Latin alphabet within the Georgian SSR was transferred to Georgian script, while in the RSFSR Ossetian writing was transferred to Cyrillic[25]. The apparent paradox of one small, compactly settled ethnos using two writing systems becomes comprehensible when viewed in light of Stalin’s 1913 statement: Transcaucasian Ossetians, like Abkhaz, were to become Georgians, and this process was institutionally accelerated.

Mingrelians, Svans and Adjarians had earlier been administratively incorporated into the Georgian ethnonation.

Although the Abkhaz were never formally incorporated into the Georgian nation during Stalin’s lifetime, by the early 1950s signals to that effect appear to have been issued from above. Publications of the period contain explicit suggestions that Abkhaz should be regarded as ethnic Georgians, and the Abkhaz language was even declared to be one of the Kartvelian languages[26].

Issues of the newspaper Soviet Abkhazia from 1950 contain no usage of the phrase “Abkhaz people”. Instead, formulations such as “the working people of Abkhazia, like the entire Georgian people…” were employed.

+ Bolshevik order in Georgia: Ethnic Origin in Place of Citizenship 

+ The Stalin-Beria Terror in Abkhazia, 1936-1953, by Stephen D. Shenfield 

+ Bolshevik order in Georgia: Social Status and Repressions: Abkhazians, Adjarians, Ossetians, by Marc Junge & Bernd Bonwetsch

+ What’s Yours Is Mine: Nation-Building and Extraterritorial Nationhood Inside the South Caucasus, by Krista A. Goff 

+ On the Demographic Expansion of Abkhazia (1937 - Mid-1950s), by Adgur E. Agrba

The 1953 Abkhaz Primer

As a final illustration, let us consider what may appear to be a minor episode: the use of children’s names in the Abkhaz primer by Andrei Maksimovich Chochua, published in 1953.

Primers for the first class[27] in the twentieth century reflected shifting ideological orientations. A.M. Chochua authored numerous Abkhaz primers and textbooks between 1909 and 1960.

It is customary that primers include children’s personal names typical of the ethnolinguistic environment of their readership. The primer is the first book encountered by a child in his or her native language.

Remarkably, the 1953 Abkhaz primer for the first time included Georgian and Georgian-derived personal names: Mushni, Otar, Tamaz, Tinati, Shota[28].

Fig. 1. Example of a page from the 1953 Abkhaz primer.

While such names were not uncommon among Abkhaz children of the period — Abkhaz anthroponymy being sensitive to political-cultural shifts — they had not appeared in earlier primers. In the 1957 primer, published in the post-Stalin period, only Mushni and Otar remained[29]. Later editions eliminated them entirely.

The introduction of Georgian (and Georgian-mediated) names into the 1953 Abkhaz primer was therefore unlikely to have been accidental. Rather, it constituted one instrument within a multifaceted assimilation policy pursued by the Georgian republican leadership until the mid-1950s. Following Stalin’s death, this policy slowed. Comparable reversals occurred, to varying degrees, in other regions of the USSR previously subjected to accelerated administrative ethnocultural homogenisation.

References

1. Lezhava, G.P. Abkhaziya: anatomiya mezhnatsional'noi napryazhennosti [Abkhazia: The Anatomy of Interethnic Tension]. Moscow, 1999, p. 147.
   
2. Stalin, I.V. Marksizm i natsional'nyi vopros [Marxism and the National Question]. In: I.V. Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol. 2 (1907–1913). Moscow, 1954, pp. 349–351.
   
3. These ethnic groups were not always minorities. Even within the RSFSR, in autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts and national okrugs, a significant number of Russian national districts and village councils were established.
   
4. Administrativno-territorial'noe delenie Soyuza SSR na 15 iyulya 1934 goda [Administrative-Territorial Division of the USSR as of 15 July 1934]. Moscow, 1934, p. XI.
   
5. Vdovin, A.I. Russkie v XX veke [The Russians in the Twentieth Century]. Moscow, 2004, p. 422.
   
6. Administrativno-territorial'noe delenie Soyuza SSR na 15 iyulya 1934 goda [Administrative-Territorial Division of the USSR as of 15 July 1934]. Moscow, 1934, p. 250.
   
7. Vdovin, A.I., op. cit., p. 130.
   
8. Bolshevistskii poryadok v Gruzii [The Bolshevik Order in Georgia], 2 vols. Vol. 1: Bol'shoi terror v malen'koi kavkazskoi respublike [The Great Terror in a Small Caucasian Republic], ed. Mark Junge and Bernd Bonwetsch. Moscow, 2015, p. 337.
   
9. Ramazanova, D.Sh. “Yazykovaya politika v Dagestane: istoricheskii aspekt” [Language Policy in Dagestan: A Historical Aspect]. Teoriya i praktika obshchestvennogo razvitiya, 2015, no. 9, p. 172.
   
10. Bobrovnikov, V.O. “Sovetskaya natsional'naya politika i izmenenie identichnosti gortsev Zapadnogo Dagestana” [Soviet National Policy and the Transformation of Highlander Identity in Western Dagestan]. In: Faktor etnokonfessional'noi samobytnosti v postsovetskom obshchestve [The Factor of Ethno-Confessional Identity in Post-Soviet Society]. Moscow, 1998, p. 114.
    
11. Tsutsiev, A.A. Atlas etnopoliticheskoi istorii Kavkaza (1774–2004) [Atlas of the Ethnopolitical History of the Caucasus (1774–2004)]. Moscow, 2006, p. 65.
    
12. Ibid., p. 68.
    
13. Magomedkhanov, M.M. Dagestantsy: etnoyazykovye i sotsiokul'turnye aspekty samosoznaniya [The Peoples of Dagestan: Ethnolinguistic and Sociocultural Aspects of Self-Consciousness]. Moscow, 2008, p. 49.
    
14. Ikhilov, M.M. Narodnosti lezginskoi gruppy. Etnograficheskoe issledovanie proshlogo i nastoyashchego lezgin, tabasarantsev, rutulov, tsakhurov, agulov [The Peoples of the Lezgin Group: An Ethnographic Study of the Past and Present of the Lezgins, Tabasarans, Rutuls, Tsakhurs and Aguls]. Makhachkala, 1967, p. 17.
    
15. Administrativno-territorial'noe delenie Soyuza SSR na 15 iyulya 1934 goda [Administrative-Territorial Division of the USSR as of 15 July 1934]. Moscow, 1934, pp. 124–126.
    
16. Russian State Archive of the Economy (RGAE), fond 1562, opis’ 336, delo 999.
    
17. Administrativno-territorial'noe delenie Soyuza SSR na 15 iyulya 1934 goda [Administrative-Territorial Division of the USSR as of 15 July 1934]. Moscow, 1934, pp. 234–240.
    
18. Bolshevistskii poryadok v Gruzii [The Bolshevik Order in Georgia], 2 vols. Vol. 1: Bol'shoi terror v malen'koi kavkazskoi respublike, ed. Mark Junge and Bernd Bonwetsch. Moscow, 2015, pp. 331–332.
    
19. Lezhava, G.P. Mezhdu Gruziei i Rossiei. Istoricheskie korni i sovremennye faktory abkhazo-gruzinskogo konflikta (XIX–XX vv.) [Between Georgia and Russia: Historical Roots and Contemporary Factors of the Abkhaz–Georgian Conflict (19th–20th Centuries)]. Moscow, 1997, p. 75.
    
20. Bolshevistskii poryadok v Gruzii, Vol. 1, pp. 244–267.
    
21. Bagapsh, N.V. “Demograficheskaya kolonizatsiya kak instrument politiki natsional'noi gomogenizatsii v Gruzinskoi SSR (na primere Gudautskogo raiona Abkhazii)” [Demographic Colonisation as an Instrument of National Homogenisation Policy in the Georgian SSR (The Case of the Gudauta District of Abkhazia)]. Vestnik antropologii, 2018, no. 3, pp. 4–23.
    
22. Pachuliya, V.M. Abkhaziya v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine (1941–1945 gg.) [Abkhazia in the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945)]. Sukhum, 2015, pp. 16–18.
    
23. Otyrba, Aslan. Po lezviyu kinzhala [On the Edge of a Dagger], comp. A.F. Avidzba. Sukhum, 2017.
    
24. Geller, M., and A. Nekrich. Utopiya u vlasti. Istoriya Sovetskogo Soyuza s 1917 goda do nashikh dnei, Vol. 2 [Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present Day]. London, 1982, p. 92.
    
25. Bagapsh, N.V. “Administrativno-territorial'nye preobrazovaniya kak instrument natsional'noi politiki Gruzinskoi SSR v Abkhazii (na primere Akhaliafonskogo raiona)” [Administrative-Territorial Transformations as an Instrument of National Policy of the Georgian SSR in Abkhazia (The Case of the Akhaliafon District)]. In: Prostranstvennaya organizatsiya obshchestva: teoriya, metodologiya, praktika. Proceedings of the International Scientific-Practical Conference (7–11 November 2018). Perm, 2018.
    
26. Bgazhba, Kh.S. Iz istorii pis'mennosti v Abkhazii [From the History of Writing in Abkhazia]. Tbilisi, 1967, pp. 59–60.
    
27. Delba, M.K. K voprosu izucheniya yazyka i istorii abkhazov [On the Study of the Language and History of the Abkhaz]. Sukhum, 1951, p. 9; Lezhava, G.P., Mezhdu Gruziei i Rossiei, pp. 123–124; Smirnova, Ya.S. “Etnograficheskie motivy v proizvedeniyakh abkhazskikh pisatelei” [Ethnographic Motifs in the Works of Abkhaz Writers]. Sovetskaya etnografiya, 1951, no. 1, p. 205.
    
28. Chochua, A.M. Anban sheq'u. Akua [Sukhum], 1953.
29. Chochua, A.M. Anban. Akua [Sukhum], 1957.