Abkhazia marks Day of Remembrance for victims of the Russo-Caucasian War

SUKHUM / AQW'A — Abkhazia has marked the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Russo-Caucasian War, 162 years after the war ended and set in motion the mass exile that scattered much of the Abkhazian people across the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.

The date is observed each year on 21 May, the day in 1864 on which the war was formally declared over at the mountain meadow of Kbaada — later renamed Krasnaya Polyana — near the ancient Ubykh settlement of Shacha, on the site of present-day Sochi. The same day is commemorated across the republics of the North Caucasus and by the Abkhaz–Adyghe diaspora in Turkey.

In Sukhum, mourners laid flowers at the Monument to the Makhajirs on the city's seafront, which bears their name. Young people carried historic Abkhazian flags and the crests of Abkhazian families through the streets, while a ritual "Nart fire" was lit on the embankment alongside the ashchamaka, the memorial candle. Wreaths were lowered into the sea in memory of those who never returned.

The seafront monument has become the focal point of the commemoration. A memorial stone was first laid there on 31 May 1990, and in September 2010 it was replaced by a bronze sculpture of a horseman and his mount, the rider's raised and clenched fist intended to symbolise the will to return and revive. The work is by the Abkhazian artist and sculptor Gennady Lakoba. Abkhazia observed the day on 31 May until 2011, when the date was moved to 21 May to align with the wider Caucasian commemoration.

A presidential address

In an address to compatriots at home and abroad, President Badra Gunba described the exile, known as the makhajirstvo, as one of the most sorrowful chapters in the history of the Abkhazian people. "However many years pass, the pain of loss does not subside," he said, urging Abkhazians to honour the memory of those who died far from their homeland.

The President said it was the love of the ancestral land, passed down through generations, that had allowed the descendants of the exiled to preserve their language and culture despite living far from Abkhazia. Those descendants, he noted, are today dispersed across the world, yet "wherever they live, their native Abkhazia is always in their thoughts and in their hearts." He called on Abkhazians everywhere to safeguard and strengthen what he termed their common homeland, describing the independent Abkhazian state as the house in which the nation's ethnic identity, language and culture are preserved.

An exhibition of remembrance

Mr Gunba and Vice-President Beslan Bigvava also visited the National Picture Gallery for the opening of an exhibition marking the day, titled "He Who Loses His Homeland Loses Everything." The display features works by Batal Djapua, People's Artist of Abkhazia, inspired by Bagrat Shinkuba's novel The Last of the Departed — a literary account of the disappearance of the Ubykh people, whose fate has become emblematic of the wider tragedy of the Caucasus. Also shown are the artist's "Aublaa" series, portraits of village elders, and other paintings.

The roots of the exile

The reasons for the mass departure of Abkhazians from their homeland were examined in detail by the Abkhazian historian Georgy Dzidzaria in his study Makhajirstvo and Problems of the History of Abkhazia in the Nineteenth Century. Among the principal causes he identified were the colonial policy of tsarist Russia in the Caucasus; the territorial ambitions of Ottoman Turkey; the role of Western, and especially British, interests seeking to weaken Russia's position in the region; and the conduct of a section of the local feudal nobility. Religion also weighed heavily, with the Muslim faith professed by part of the population fostering ties to the Ottoman Sultan, while the persistence of forcible "pacification" by tsarist generals deepened the unrest that drove people from their land.

Although emigration from the Caucasus to Turkey had occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century, the first mass departure of highlanders took place between 1859 and 1865. A further wave followed in 1867, after the uprising in the village of Lykhny on 26 July 1866, when more than 20,000 people left Abkhazia. The largest exodus of the century came in 1877, during the Russo-Turkish War, when as many as 50,000 are estimated to have departed. By the close of the century, the majority of the Abkhazian people lived outside Abkhazia, a demographic rupture whose consequences continue to shape the country today.

See also:

+ 21 May 1864: Abkhazia and the End of the Russo-Caucasian War

+ 21 May 1864: From Dmitri Kipiani to Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich Romanov

+ Abkhazia and The Caucasian War: 1810-1864, by George Anchabadze

+ 160th Anniversary of the End of the Russo-Caucasian War