Exactly 112 years ago, a rare natural phenomenon occurred in Abkhazia that became known in the country's history as "As du" or "Big Snow," dividing the country's history into "before" and "after."

ABAZA BİLGİ-BELGE PAYLAŞIM VE APSUARA GRUPLARININ ORTAK BİLDİRİSİDİR

Sakarya Kartvel Gürcü Laz Kültür Derneği’nin 19 Aralık tarihli ‘Abhazya Gürcistan’dır, Gürcistan Hepimizin!’ adlı yazısını okuduğumuzda çoğu zaman yaptığımız gibi ciddiye almayarak geçiştirmiştik. Ne de olsa sadece Gürcü milliyetçileri tarafından tekrarlanan ve hiç bir ciddi akademisyenin, tarihçinin önemsemediği hipotezlerin yeni bir tekrarından başka bir şey değildi. Yazdıkları ikinci yazıyı okuduğumuzda bu sefer en azından düşünmelerini sağlamak için bir cevap yazmanın gerekli olduğunu düşündük.

We are saddened to learn of the passing of Maurizia Jenkins. On behalf of the Abkhazian people, we extend our heartfelt sympathies to her loved ones at this difficult time. May she rest in peace.

She loved Abkhazia like no other foreign activists who, while conscientiously working here for years, nevertheless brought no heartfelt attachment to our tiny country. Her husband Richard Jenkins was the British ambassador to Georgia on the verge of millennium, and they arrived in Sukhum in 1998 - a colourful married couple, the one a two-metre tall, phlegmatic Brit permanently with pipe attached, the other a petite, energetic Italian lady dressed in bright clothes and ever shoulder-to-shoulder with her husband.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
Anya von Bremzen (New York 2013)

That summer John and I went recipe collecting in the romantic, mountainous Caucasus. Reaching Tbilisi, we found the histrionic Georgian capital still reeling in shock. On April 9, Moscow’s troops had killed twenty protesters, mostly young women. Everywhere, amid balconies jutting from teetering houses and restaurants dug into cliffs around the Kura River, Tbilisians seethed with opulent rage, calling down terrible curses on Moscow. The Kremlin, meanwhile, blamed the massacre on local officials.

Ҳаҭыр зкәы сҩызцәа! Мшы бзиақәа!

This is George Hewitt speaking from Yorkshire in the north of England, where I have been Abkhazia’s Honorary Consul since 1993.

I am delighted to have been invited to participate (albeit virtually) in the opening of the Foreign Ministry’s Media Centre because several of us have long felt that such an initiative should have been undertaken many years ago. In the age of 24-hour news-services and instant mass-communication, the importance of disseminating one’s message for a country which suffered years of isolation following a destructive war, which remains poorly known to the outside-world, and which is largely viewed, if viewed at all, through the distorting filter of a foreign power cannot be emphasised too strongly.