The Study of Abkhazian History in the Twentieth Century, by Oleg Bgazhba
Originally published in: Kavkaz: istoriya, kul’tura, traditsii, yazyki. Sukhum, 2004, pp. 15–20.
Oleg Kh. Bgazhba (1941–2024) was an archaeologist, historian and Caucasian studies scholar. He held a doctorate in historical sciences and was a professor and full member of the Abkhazian Academy of Sciences. Bgazhba conducted extensive archaeological excavations throughout Abkhazia and pioneered research into ancient ironworking in the Western Caucasus. He was the author of more than 150 scholarly works, including 15 monographs, and co-authored the textbook History of Abkhazia (2007). In 2011, he was awarded the honorary title "Honoured Scientist of the Republic of Abkhazia" for his significant contributions to Abkhazian scholarship.
The Study of Abkhazian History in the Twentieth Century
Historians are addressed by three wise precepts of Cicero: the first, to refrain from falsehood; the second, not to conceal the truth; and the third, to give no grounds for suspicion of partiality or biased hostility. They are always relevant and especially so in the present conditions of the dictatorship of “democracy”.
The twentieth century was marked by contradictions in social life. This was reflected in the intellectual sphere as well. The history of Abkhazia was no exception. Over the past century it has travelled a long and complex path of development.
In the study of Abkhazian history in the twentieth century, three periods may be distinguished:
- the pre-Soviet period—from the beginning of the century to 1921;
- the Soviet period—1921–1991;
- the post-Soviet period—from 1991 to the end of the twentieth century.
The Pre-Soviet Period
In the pre-Soviet period, apart from the distinctive generalisation and systematisation of various data on Abkhazian history undertaken by K. Machavariani in his Guide… (1913), only individual historical facts were described.
Already at that time (more precisely, from the second half of the nineteenth century) two opposing approaches to the ancient and medieval history of Abkhazia had emerged. On the one hand, there was a pan-European objective approach (F. Dubois de Montpéreux; Archimandrite Leonid Kavelin, later an elder of Optina Pustyn, amongst others). On the other, there was a narrowly national, tendentious approach (Dmitrii Bakradze and others), which became the precursor of P. Ingorokva’s unscientific migratory “theory”.
The Soviet Period (1921–1991)
The establishment of Soviet power in Abkhazia in 1921 stimulated research in Abkhazian studies. It was perceived locally as liberation from the alien regime of the “democratic” Republic of Georgia (1918–1921). Scholarly work at that time was coordinated by the Abkhazian Scientific Society (AbNO), founded in 1922, and in 1925, on the initiative of N. Marr, a local Academy was established.
The romantics of the 1920s still enjoyed a certain freedom in writing the history of Abkhazia, though this did not eliminate contradictions. On the one hand, there was neglect of local culture and an overestimation of foreign influence (K. Kudryavtsev, 1922); on the other, an exaggeration of couleur locale (S. Basaria, 1923; S. Ashkhatsava, 1925).
A significant contribution to local historiography was D. Gulia’s History of Abkhazia (1925), which, despite its erroneous thesis concerning the African origin of the Abkhazians, remains valuable for the richness of its material.
In 1931, Abkhazia’s status was reduced from that of a Union Republic (Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia) to that of an autonomous republic within the Georgian SSR. Yet whilst Nestor Lakoba enjoyed Stalin’s favour, the tightening of controls proceeded more slowly here than elsewhere in the Union (for example, in the pace of collectivisation). Abkhazian historical scholarship did not immediately experience the full weight of the double pressure of the totalitarian system, deformed locally by Georgian nationalism.
In 1931, on the basis of AbNO and the Academy, the Abkhazian Scientific Research Institute of Regional Studies was created (today the Abkhazian Institute for Humanities of the Abkhazian Academy of Sciences). A Department of History was established, which continues to function. It was headed at different times by A. Fadeev, A. Melikhov, Z. Anchabadze, Sh. Inal-ipa, A. Kuprava, B. Sagaria, S. Lakoba and others.
In the 1930s, A. Fadeev (later head of the Feudalism Sector at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences) for the first time raised and correctly resolved a number of important questions concerning the ancient and medieval history of Abkhazia.
In the 1940s, S. Janashia devoted a number of valuable works to similar problems. He was the founder of the Soviet Georgian historical school, characterised, on the one hand, by excellent knowledge of primary sources and, on the other, at times by less than impartial commentary. During the same period, I. Antelava’s Essays on the History of Abkhazia in the Seventeenth–Eighteenth Centuries (1949) examined the complex relations between Abkhazia and Ottoman Turkey, as well as the specific features of local “mountain” feudalism, which had begun to take shape from the era of the Abkhazian Kingdom.
Historical work was also conducted at the Sukhum State Pedagogical Institute named after Gorky (now Abkhazian State University), at the State Museum, and at the State Archive (naturally, before its destruction). Today the State Archive, under N. Ionidi, is being restored from the ashes. Thanks to A. Taria, the State Museum was preserved during the Abkhaz–Georgian War (1992–1993).
At the beginning of the 1950s, the writer P. Ingorokva published Giorgi Merchule—a Georgian Writer of the Tenth Century, which effectively deprived the Abkhazian people not only of their homeland but of their history. This provoked widespread indignation. Preparations were even made for the deportation of the Abkhazians, as had previously occurred to the Greek and Armenian populations of Abkhazia.
Amongst Abkhazian scholars, the first to refute Ingorokva’s unscientific “theory” were the historian Z. Anchabadze and the philologist O. Bgazhba (1956). They were supported at that time by Georgian researchers K. Lomtatidze, N. Berdzenishvili and G. Soselia.
In subsequent works, Z. Anchabadze addressed one of the key problems of medieval Abkhazia: the time and conditions of the formation of the Abkhazian feudal people, examining the autochthonous theory of the origin of the earliest Abkhazian core.
The culmination of Abkhazian historical scholarship in the early 1960s was the two-volume Essays on the History of the Abkhazian ASSR (1960; 1964). It is indicative that the section on the early medieval period was written not by Z. Anchabadze but by M. Lordkipanidze, a prominent representative of the Georgian national historical school. This school considers the Abkhazian Kingdom to have been a “West Georgian” state, although no such designation exists in the written sources. This is a case where wishful thinking is presented as reality.
The early medieval period in Abkhazia during the 1960s was the subject of works by M. Gunba and G. Amichba. The latter subsequently translated all the material from Georgian written sources concerning Abkhazia and the Abkhazians.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Sh. Inal-ipa’s book Questions of the Ethno-Cultural History of the Abkhazians became, to put it mildly, a “byword”. Under pressure from Tbilisi, it was subjected to undeserved criticism by some Abkhazian scholars, although conceptually it appeared objective, apart from certain elements. The first to support Sh. Inal-ipa were the renowned orientalists V. Ardzinba and E. Grantovsky.
Similar quasi-scientific insinuations occurred with the works of R. Khonelia and Yu. Voronov, and quite recently at the doctoral defence of S. Shamba in Yerevan. One gains the impression that the well-known decree bearing M. Suslov’s signature concerning Abkhazia remains in force today. In any case, Yu. Voronov’s book Colchis at the Threshold of the Middle Ages was published not in Moscow but in Sukhum, a quarter of a century after it had been accepted by the Vostochnaya Literatura publishing house.
In the early 1980s, a collective work appeared: History of the Abkhazian ASSR 1917–1937 (G. Dzidzaria, B. Sagaria, A. Kuprava and others). In the second half of the 1980s, the textbook History of Abkhazia (1986) by Z. Anchabadze, G. Dzidzaria and A. Kuprava became an event. The book was published with difficulty. Some objected to the title alone and to Z. Anchabadze’s text, written at the level of 1964, which testifies to the hardening of Tbilisi’s position towards Abkhazian history.
G. Dzidzaria is widely known for his fundamental studies, which have become classics. These include above all Muhajirism…, The Formation of Pre-Revolutionary Abkhazian Intelligentsia and many others.
A. Kuprava had earlier published a number of synthetic works on the history of Abkhazia in the Soviet period.
From the second half of the 1980s, “Gorbachev’s perestroika” began, which soon turned into armed conflict in Abkhazia. This was preceded by fierce ideological pressure from the Georgian mass media, in which Georgian historians displayed particular activity. Thus, M. Lordkipanidze produced her generalisations about “dual aboriginality” in her work Abkhazia and the Abkhazians, which later received a worthy rebuff in Yu. Voronov’s essay The Abkhazians—Who Are They?
The Soviet period was characterised by a set of priority themes, for example, those connected with the peasant reform, although there was no serfdom in Abkhazia; with the events of the first Russian revolution, although the Abkhazians, as a “guilty” population, could not participate in it, and so forth.
Little is known that the Constitution of the Abkhazian ASSR was adopted later than others, on 6 June 1978, contrary to the will of the Abkhazian people—that is, they did not participate in its adoption.
Towards the end of the Soviet period, a number of candidate dissertations were defended that transcended the framework of the Georgian historical context (I. Agrba, G. Gumba, V. Butba). V. Butba’s candidate dissertation was recently published posthumously.
It is gratifying to note that in the works of our Russian colleagues engaged in Caucasian themes (V. Markovin, V. Kuznetsov, V. Kovalevskaya, E. Alekseeva, A. Krylov and others), the Abkhazian people are worthily represented amongst other related and neighbouring peoples.
V. Pachulia was a well-known populariser of Abkhazian history.
The Post-Soviet Period (1991–2000)
By the end of the Soviet period, an objective necessity had arisen to write and publish a History of Abkhazia. This textbook (1991), edited by S. Lakoba, a historian of the new wave, represented a breakthrough. For the first time, Abkhazia acquired its own history, written in the context of world history. The greater part of its ancient and modern periods was written by Yu. Voronov and S. Lakoba, with individual chapters by V. Ardzinba, V. Chirikba, B. Sagaria, O. Bgazhba, R. Katsia, R. Gozhba, D. Gulia (grandson of D. Gulia), V. Butba and others.
The book contains a number of fundamentally new assessments of our historical past and present, based on documentary materials which had previously been simply ignored owing to prohibition or interpreted one-sidedly and with bias.
S. Lakoba’s works played a role in the objective reorientation of Abkhazian history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, without which it is impossible to comprehend the current political situation. He was the first to provide a scientifically argued monographic response from the Land of the Rising Sun to Tbilisi historians regarding their voluminous Researches on the History of Abkhazia, Georgia (2000), in which the integrity of Georgia is proclaimed virtually from the Stone Age.
Thus, Georgian historians reacted after ten years to the textbook History of Abkhazia, for which a “Key…” has already appeared, aptly selected by M. Kvitsinia.
In their Researches…, our opponents offered nothing new. The assortment is the same: P. Ingorokva’s migratory “theory” (very popular nowadays owing to its simplicity), dual aboriginality in Abkhazia, the absence of Abkhazian statehood despite the existence of the Abkhazian Kingdom, the associated membership of the Abkhazian feudal people in the Georgian nation, and so forth. And the authors are the same, inexhaustible on the Abkhazian question: M. Lordkipanidze, N. Lomouri, E. Khoshtaria-Brosset, M. Inadze, Z. Papaskiri and their ilk. Only one Tbilisi historian, G. Anchabadze, maintains the position of Abkhazian autochthony, continuing his father’s work. Somewhat apart in content, but not in title, stands G. Tsulaya’s book. During the Khrushchev Thaw, there were far more Georgian scholars on the side of the Abkhazians. At that time, A. Khonelia provided invaluable assistance to Abkhazian postgraduate students.
Some Abkhazian historians and political scientists, in the heat of polemic, may unobjectively date Abkhazian statehood back to the second century AD or evaluate the work of individual political figures of Abkhazia and scholars in a one-sidedly negative and, most importantly, undeserved manner.
Recent books by G. Amichba, E. Adjinjal, D. Dbar and D. Chachkhalia, devoted to the history, culture and Christian ideology of early medieval Abkhazia, are impressive.
Invaluable in the present situation is the book Abkhazia—The Documents Testify. 1937–1953 by B. Sagaria, T. Achugba, V. Pachulia and a number of their other publications, as well as those of Yu. Argun.
R. Gozhba has successfully engaged with the Russian periodical press concerning Abkhazia and the Abkhazians at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and with the Caucasian diaspora.
One should note A. Kuprava’s book on the people’s assemblies of Abkhazia as a separate but fateful social institution.
M. Khvartskia’s collection of articles is devoted to falsifications of Abkhazian history.
Several books by Yu. Voronov have appeared: The White Book on the atrocities of the State Council of Georgia’s troops, with a historical essay; the encyclopaedic Ancient Apsilia; and others.
Works on the historiography of Abkhazian history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have also appeared (I. Damenia, M. Kuprava).
A number of publications on the relations of the Abkhazian Kingdom with Alania, the Khazar Khaganate and so forth may also be considered as departures from the Georgian historical context (I. Agrba, O. Bgazhba and others).
A breakthrough onto the international arena was the book The Abkhazians, published in London and New York under the editorship of the British academic George Hewitt. It became the first in a 24-volume series, “The Peoples of the Caucasus”. The historical section was written by G. Shamba, O. Bgazhba, S. Lakoba, Yu. Anchabadze, V. Chirikba and others. It is used by diplomats of many countries.
At Abkhazian State University, there functions a Department of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of Abkhazia (it was headed by Z. Anchabadze, A. Kuprava, G. Amichba, and currently by A. Khashba). A course of lectures on Abkhazian history is taught in all faculties in Russian and Abkhazian. L. Smyr published a book on the activities of the Sukhum Society of Agriculture (1858–1922). V. Biguaa and G. Amichba have works translated from Abkhazian into Turkish in Istanbul.
The scientific and educational activities of the Historical Society named after G. Dzidzaria, led by B. Sagaria and G. Smyr, have also been useful.
+ Abkhazia's Historical Struggles: A Historical Letter by Arkhip Labakhua and Ivan Tarba
+ In Defence of the Homeland: Intellectuals and the Georgian-Abkhazian Conflict, by Bruno Coppieters
+ Rewriting History? A Critique of Modern Georgian Historiography on Abkhazia
+ Once Again on the So-Called "Colchis Kingdom", by Oleg Kh. Bgazhba
+ The value of the past: myths, identity and politics in Transcaucasia, by Victor A. Shnirelman
Conclusion
Abkhazian historical scholarship in the final decade of the twentieth century has been marked by politicisation, which should be understood as a compelled response to polemics emanating from Tbilisi.
The war with its severe consequences had a negative impact on the overall condition of historical science in Abkhazia. Our historians were deprived of their essential sustenance after the pyrotechnic exercises conducted by latter-day Herostratuses in the State Archive of Abkhazia and the Abkhazian Institute. A number of talented historians, for example, V. Butba, V. Antsupov and others, fell on the field of battle. D. Adleyba, who continued his father A. Adleyba’s work, also passed away prematurely. A rupture occurred between the older and younger generations. The middle generation does not shine with health. The generational change is proving long and painful. Although there exists a cohort of historians—E. Chkok, S. Salakaya, A. Lepsaya, R. Agrba, G. Ayba, A. Avidzhba, B. Argun, D. Djonua, D. Kandelaki, A. Studenikin and others—this is far from sufficient to prevent a collapse of the discipline. Specialists are needed not only for all periods of history, but also those capable of working with primary sources and on historical geography.
The leadership of Abkhazia must do everything to ensure that this process proceeds less painfully, for a state that does not develop its scholarship is doomed to become a colony. In short, a state programme for the development of historical science in Abkhazia is needed, the necessity of which was previously written about by A. Papaskiri, who is engaged with the problem of the “obezi” in Russian chronicles.
We also hope for assistance from our colleagues in Russia’s leading institutes in training personnel, but we ourselves must not be remiss.
All this will help to establish intellectual life here. Only under conditions of intellectual freedom will the historical science of Abkhazia flow in its own life-giving channel, and historians be able to devote themselves to pure scholarship.
It is difficult to agree with those political commentators, and there are many nowadays, who maintain that, under present conditions, one should “pay no attention” to what historians write. If historians adhere to Cicero’s three precepts, how can their work be disregarded? It is well known that without the past one cannot comprehend the present nor chart orientations for the future.