Abkhazia and the Abkhazians. A Brief Historical Survey, by Stanislav Lakoba
Lakoba, Stanislav. ‘Abkhazia and the Abkhazians: A Brief Historical Survey.’ In Abkhazia after Two Empires. Nineteenth–Twenty-First Centuries: Essays (Abkhaziia posle dvukh imperii. XIX–XXI vv.), pp. 9–16. Slavic Eurasian Studies, No. 5. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2004.
Translator’s note:
This chapter was co-authored by Stanislav Lakoba (1953-2025) and the distinguished Caucasus archaeologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Oleg Bgazhba (1941-2024).
The Abkhazians are one of the most ancient indigenous ethnoses of the Caucasus. Their language, culture and traditions are closest and most closely related to those of the North Caucasian peoples: the Abazins, Adygheans, Kabardians, Circassians and Ubykhs. In linguistic terms, all of them together constitute the Abkhaz–Adyghe branch of the Northwest Caucasian language family.
The Abkhazians inhabit the territory of the present-day Republic of Abkhazia, situated in the north-western part of Transcaucasia (8,700 square kilometres), on the slopes of the Greater Caucasus and on the Colchian lowland. The country is washed by the Black Sea; the coastline of Abkhazia extends for more than 220 kilometres. Its north-western border with the Russian Federation runs along the Psou River, and its eastern border with Georgia along the Ingur River. Abkhazia is divided into seven administrative districts and has seven towns (including the capital, Sukhum) and four urban-type settlements.
Abkhazia is a small multinational country (approximately 300,000 inhabitants). In addition to the Abkhazians, Armenians, Georgians, Russians, Greeks, Estonians, Turks, Poles, Jews, Germans and representatives of other nationalities reside there. People of different confessions live together peacefully: Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Muslims, Protestants and Jews.
According to the 1989 census, the number of Abkhazians within Abkhazia itself was 93,200, while in the Russian Federation and the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States their total exceeded 150,000. Many Abkhazians also live in Turkey and other countries of the world; in total, they number around 600,000. The Abkhazians profess various faiths: the traditional religion (paganism), Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam.
The earliest references to the Abkhazians are found in a twelfth-century BC Assyrian inscription (that of Tiglath-Pileser I), where they appear under the name ‘abeshla’. In Greco-Roman sources of the first and second centuries AD the ‘Apsils’ and ‘Abasgs’ are recorded. Their genetic connection with the Abkhazian people is indicated by the ethnonyms Apswa (the Abkhazians’ own name for themselves), ‘Abaza’ (the self-designation of the Abazins, closely related to the Abkhazians), the ‘Obezy’ of Russian chronicles, and the ‘Abkhazians’ of Georgian annals.
The Abkhazians call their homeland ‘Apsny’, that is, ‘the Land of the Soul’.
The ancestors of the Abkhazians were among the creators of the megalithic culture (dolmens, cromlechs) of the Western Caucasus in the third millennium BC, and in the early first millennium BC of the Colchian–Koban metallurgical province. In the eighth–seventh centuries BC they mastered the production and working of iron, a skill vividly reflected in the heroic Nart epic of the Abkhazians in the figure of Ainar the smith.
In the seventh–sixth centuries BC the Scythians passed through the territory of Abkhazia along the Maeotian–Colchian road towards Western Asia; some of them settled and intermingled with the local ancient Abkhazian population. Urban life (Dioscurias – modern Sukhum; Gyenos – modern Ochamchira; the Eshera settlement near Sukhum; Pityus – modern Pitsunda), together with the beginnings of statehood, was introduced into the territory of Abkhazia in the first half of the sixth century BC by the ancient Greeks, who subsequently linked the surrounding local communities into a unified system of economic relations.
In the first centuries AD the ancient Abkhazian tribes were united into early class formations (Abasgia, Apsilia, Sanigia), which formed an organic, though peripheral, part of the Romano-Byzantine cultural world. Roman cohorts were stationed in the coastal fortresses of Pityus, Sebastopolis and Ziganis, while in Egypt there was the ‘First Cohort of the Abasgs’. In the sixth–eighth centuries AD three branches of the Great Silk Road passed through Abkhazia towards the North Caucasus – the routes through Abasgia, Apsilia and Misiminia. In the second–seventh centuries AD the ancient Abkhazian tribes created the distinctive Tsebelda culture. In local warrior burials the earliest swords of the third–fourth centuries, made of Damascus steel, discovered on the territory of the former USSR have been found.
Abkhazia in the 7th - 8th centuries A.D.
+ History of Abkhazia: 1st–18th Centuries, by Oleg Bgazhba
+ A Brief History of the Abkhazian Orthodox Church, by Archimandrite Dorotheos (Dbar)
+ From Chiefdom to Kingdom: From the History of Abkhaz Statehood in the First Millennium CE, by Oleg Bgazhba
According to church tradition, the ancestors of the Abkhazians first heard the Christian sermon from the apostles Andrew the First-Called and Simon the Canaanite. At the end of the third–fourth centuries, the first Christian community in the Caucasus was formed at Pityus; its bishop, Stratophilus, represented it at the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325. The local population officially adopted Christianity in the sixth century under Emperor Justinian the Great. The first pastor of the Abasgs was Euphrates; of the Apsils, Constantine. A special school was founded in Constantinople for the children of the Abasgs. The ancient Georgian source ‘The Martyrdom of Abo of Tbilisi’ (eighth century) directly refers to the Christ-loving ‘land of Abkhazia’. It was in this same period that the Abkhaz feudal people began to take shape.
Between the eighth and tenth centuries there existed the Abkhazian Kingdom, whose first king was Leon II, the son of the daughter of a powerful Khazar khagan and a cousin of the Byzantine emperor (both being grandsons of the Khazar khagan, and their mothers sisters). Owing to this fortunate circumstance, the Abkhazian Kingdom then received ‘international recognition’. Acting as a shield against Arab incursions, Abkhazia led the process of unifying the whole of Western Transcaucasia. The kingdom reached its zenith in the tenth century under King George II, who actively promoted the Christianisation of Alania (Ossetia). In this period a distinctive Abkhaz–Alan school of Byzantine architecture emerged in local ecclesiastical building.
The male line of the Abkhazian royal dynasty came to an end with the death of the childless Theodosius the Blind. Power passed to his nephew Bagrat III (978–1014), who was a Kartvelian (Georgian) by his father but inherited the Abkhazian throne through his mother from the Leonid dynasty (his mother Gurandukht was the sister of Theodosius). Bagrat III compiled a genealogical tree of the Abkhazian kings in order to emphasise precisely this dynastic connection. With him began the formation of a new state – the ‘Kingdom of the Abkhazians and the Kartvelians’, which for several more centuries continued to be called ‘Abkhazian’. In the thirteenth century the ‘Kingdom of the Abkhazians and the Kartvelians’ disintegrated.
In the thirteenth–fifteenth centuries Abkhazia fell within the sphere of political and economic influence of Genoa, which established a number of trading factories along the Black Sea coast of Crimea and the Caucasus. San-Sebastian (Sukhum) became an important commercial and economic centre of the region, inhabited by people of various nationalities and confessions. In the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries the Abkhazian Principality was under the protectorate of Ottoman Turkey. During this period Sunni Islam spread in Abkhazia.
From the end of the eighteenth century, under the ruling prince Keleshbey Chachba (Shervashidze), the Abkhazian Principality regained strength and, with the aid of its fleet, controlled the Black Sea coast from Anapa to Batum. In May 1808 Keleshbey was killed. His eldest son Aslanbey became ruler.
In July 1810 a Russian naval landing force stormed Sukhum-Kale. The lawful sovereign prince Aslanbey Chachba was compelled to leave the fortress. The coastal part of Abkhazia, with the exception of significant territories of the free mountain communities, was annexed to Russia. The Tsarist authorities placed their protégé Seferbey Chachba on the Abkhazian throne; he accepted baptism and the new name Georgy. One distinctive feature of the Abkhazian Principality was that, unlike Georgia, upon entering the Russian Empire it did not entirely lose its statehood. From 1810 to 1864, while within Russia, the principality retained autonomous administration, which survived longer than elsewhere in the Caucasus. From 1864 to 1917 Abkhazia (‘the Sukhum Military Department’, and from 1883 ‘the Sukhum District’) was subordinated to the Tsarist administration in the Caucasus.
In the nineteenth century Abkhazia still occupied an intermediate position between the democratic free mountain societies of the North-West Caucasus and the feudal system of Georgia. In spirit, however, its social order was more closely linked to the Circassian–Ubykh world. In Abkhazia there was no feudal ownership of land and no serfdom; all categories of peasants were proprietors of their own land, and free communal members constituted three-quarters of the country’s population. Elements of tribal organisation and pagan beliefs were deeply embedded in the ‘mountain feudalism’ of Abkhazia. The cornerstone of Abkhazia’s social order was the rural community, which united all strata of the population – higher and lower estates alike – and was permeated by milk kinship (atalychestvo – the institution of foster-brotherhood linking feudal lords and peasants). This mitigated certain class contradictions.
Under conditions of dispersed farmstead landholding, arable plots were not the property of the entire community but were held in family or household ownership by Abkhazians. Only pastures and forests were common and open for use. The Abkhaz economy was of a subsistence character. They engaged in animal husbandry, agriculture, viticulture, beekeeping, leatherworking, woodworking, pottery, harness-making, weaving, the preparation of gunpowder and other crafts. Traditionally, the Abkhazians felt aversion towards manifestations of commodity-money relations, considering them shameful and degrading for a warrior people.
As a result of the [Russian -] Caucasian War and the anti-colonial uprisings of 1866 and 1877, the Abkhazians experienced an ethnic catastrophe. More than half of the population was compelled to leave their homeland and become refugees (muhajirs) in Turkey. For thirty years, from 1877 to 1907, owing to repeated disturbances and rebellions, the Abkhazians were designated in Tsarist Russia as a ‘guilty population’. Until 1864 the country had been ethnically homogeneous; in the second half of the nineteenth century it was subjected to colonisation not only by Russians, Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Germans, Estonians and other new settlers, but also, from the 1870s–1880s, by representatives of Kartvelian peoples, chiefly Mingrelians, who poured in from neighbouring districts of Western Georgia.
In 1877 the newspaper Tiflis Vestnik published a programmatic article by the Georgian public figure Iakob Gogebashvili. In it he stated that ‘the Mingrelians must become the first replacements for the Abkhazians who have been displaced’. As a result of these rapid population movements, the ethno-demographic situation in the country changed sharply. Whereas in 1886 Abkhazians constituted 85.7 per cent of the population, by 1897 they accounted for only 55.3 per cent.
+ Demographic change in Abkhazia 1886–1989
+ Georgii Tsereteli (1879): It’s time that we grab new territories in the Caucasus
+ Revelations of forgotten voices (Extracts from the Georgian Newspapers)
Kartvelian colonisation of Abkhazia proved so rapid that it alarmed the Tsarist authorities. Russian interests in Abkhazia came into direct conflict with Georgian ones. Representatives of the Georgian Church, the intelligentsia, and various political parties and currents increasingly asserted their claims to Abkhazia. As a result of the policy of ‘divide and rule’, in 1905, during the revolutionary events in Russia, Georgian–Abkhaz contradictions were exacerbated to the extreme. The Abkhazians perceived everything occurring in their homeland as a ‘Georgian revolution’ and sided with the government against these ‘revolutionaries’. At the initiative of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia, P. A. Stolypin, a special decree of Nicholas II in 1907 removed the ‘guilt’ from the Abkhazians.
After the collapse of the Russian Empire, Abkhazia entered the Union of the United Mountaineers of the Caucasus and the South-Eastern Union. On 8 November 1917, at a congress in Sukhum, a parliament – the Abkhazian People’s Council – was elected, which adopted a Constitution and a Declaration of the Abkhazian people. On 11 May 1918, at the Batumi International Peace Conference, the ‘Mountain Republic’ (the North Caucasian Republic) was proclaimed. Together with Dagestan, Chechnya, Ossetia and Kabarda, Abkhazia joined this federation. Thus Abkhazian statehood, lost in June 1864, was restored.
However, in June 1918, in violation of all agreements, the troops of the newly proclaimed (26 May 1918) Democratic Republic of Georgia, with direct military support from imperial Germany, occupied the territory of Abkhazia. The government of the Mountain Republic lodged a strong protest with the German government and with Georgia, regarding these actions as an act of aggression against Abkhazia and the entire North Caucasian state. The policy of the Menshevik government of Georgia aroused extreme dissatisfaction in multinational Abkhazia, which facilitated the establishment of Soviet power there on 4 March 1921. The new regime was perceived as deliverance from repression and armed intervention by the Georgian republic.
Initially, the Bolsheviks granted Abkhazia freedom of political choice, realised in the proclamation of the independent SSR of Abkhazia (31 March 1921 – 17 February 1922). The uniqueness of this situation lay in the fact that for nearly a year Abkhazia was formally independent of both Soviet Russia and Soviet Georgia. In December 1921, under strong pressure from Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, Abkhaz leaders were compelled to conclude a ‘special union treaty’ with Georgia, ratified in February 1922, which recorded the equality of the two republics. On 30 December 1922 the plenipotentiary representative of the SSR of Abkhazia, N. Akirtava, signed the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR.
Soviet Caucasus, 1920.
From February 1922 until February 1931 the SSR of Abkhazia was termed a ‘treaty republic’. The first Soviet constitution was adopted in Abkhazia in April 1925 by the Third All-Abkhaz Congress of Soviets. In February 1931, under pressure from Stalin, the treaty SSR of Abkhazia was transformed into an autonomous republic (the Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) and incorporated into the Georgian SSR. This question was decided in Tbilisi at the Sixth All-Georgian Congress of Soviets (19 February 1931). The violation of Abkhazia’s sovereign rights and the reduction of its status to that of an autonomy within Georgia led to a many-day nationwide assembly of the Abkhazian people (18–26 February 1931), which expressed no confidence in the government and in Soviet authority.
After the death on 28 December 1936 of the Chairman of the Government of Abkhazia, Nestor Lakoba – who was poisoned in Tbilisi at a dinner in the house of Lavrentiy Beria – the most tragic period in modern Abkhazian history began. Terror descended upon the republic, resulting in the complete destruction of the political and intellectual elite of the Abkhazian people. A policy of Georgianisation was carried out with increased intensity: the Abkhaz script was transferred from a Latin to a Georgian graphical basis; indigenous Abkhaz toponyms were replaced by Georgian ones; instruction in schools was conducted in the Georgian language; and a deliberate assimilationist resettlement policy was implemented, aimed at deforming the ethno-demographic structure of the population. Between 1937 and 1953 tens of thousands of Georgians were resettled from the interior regions of Georgia into Abkhazia, significantly increasing their share of the population. In veiled form, Georgian demographic expansion continued in the post-Stalin period. Thus, whereas in 1886 Georgians constituted only 6 per cent of the population of Abkhazia, by 1989 their share had risen to 45.7 per cent. Mass rallies and demonstrations demanding Abkhazia’s withdrawal from Georgia took place in 1957, 1964, 1967, 1978 and 1989.
In 1989–1990 the Georgian parliament unilaterally adopted decisions that ignored the interstate character of relations between Abkhazia and Georgia and in essence led to the abolition of Abkhazian statehood. Tbilisi declared illegal and invalid all state structures of the Soviet period from February 1921 onwards. In response, on 25 August 1990 the Supreme Soviet of the Abkhazian ASSR adopted the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Abkhazia.
Having come to power as a result of an armed coup in Tbilisi, the Military Council of Georgia in February 1992 decided to abolish the 1978 Constitution of the Georgian SSR and to revert to the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Georgia of 1921, in which the Abkhazian ASSR was not recognised as a subject of state-legal relations. In legal terms the Georgian SSR ceased to exist and a new state was formed, with which the Abkhazian ASSR had no relations.
In order to overcome the legal uncertainty between the republics, on 23 July 1992 the Supreme Soviet of Abkhazia resolved to restore the force of the Constitution of Abkhazia of 1925 and adopted a new Coat of Arms and Flag of the Republic of Abkhazia.
On 14 August 1992 Georgia, which had only just joined the United Nations, unleashed war against Abkhazia. Georgian troops, supported by combat aviation, artillery, more than one hundred tanks and other armoured vehicles, invaded Abkhazia and occupied part of its territory. From the first day of the aggression they shot civilians, subjected them to torture and violence, burned houses and villages, and carried out reprisals not only against the Abkhazian population but also against Armenians, Russians, Greeks and Jews. Ethnic cleansing was conducted in the occupied territories. Alongside physical extermination, a policy of cultural genocide was pursued. Monuments of Abkhazian history and culture, museums and libraries were destroyed; theatres, institutes, schools, archives and universities were ransacked, looted and burned. Priceless folklore recordings, linguistic materials, historical documents, rare books and manuscripts perished. The territory of Abkhazia was liberated only on 30 September 1993, after more than thirteen months of occupation.
Georgian–Abkhaz negotiations have been conducted from November 1993 to the present under the auspices of the United Nations, with Russian mediation and the participation of the OSCE. A number of important documents have been signed, including the ‘Declaration on Measures for Political Settlement’ of 4 April 1994. Since May–June 1994, thanks to the United Nations peacekeeping operation (involving CIS troops, primarily Russian, and UN military observers), a ceasefire has been maintained on the border between Abkhazia and Georgia. The return of refugees to the Gal district of Abkhazia, bordering Georgia, began. To date, virtually the entire pre-war Georgian population of the Gal district has returned.
On 26 November 1994 the parliament of the republic adopted a new Constitution of the sovereign state. The state language of the Republic of Abkhazia was recognised as Abkhaz; Russian, alongside Abkhaz, functions as the language of state and other institutions. State power is exercised on the basis of separation into legislative, executive and judicial branches. Abkhazia is a presidential republic. The parliament elected Vladislav Ardzinba as the first President.
From December 1994 to September 1999 Abkhazia and its people, like no other country in the world, were subjected to an extremely harsh political, economic and informational blockade. After the devastating Georgian–Abkhaz war (14 August 1992 – 30 September 1993), culture, science and education gradually revived in the country. Year by year tea and tobacco production increased; the resorts of Sukhum, Pitsunda and Gagra came back to life; thousands of visitors once again began to visit the New Athos cave and monastery, the ancient capital of Abkhazia on Mount Anakopia, and Lake Ritsa. The Abkhazian State University, the Abkhazian Institute for Humanities Research, and national creative unions of artists, writers, journalists, composers and architects resumed their work. The Academy of Sciences of Abkhazia was founded. Television and radio, the Abkhaz Book Publishing House, journals and newspapers, including independent ones, began to function under new conditions. Folk choreographic ensembles, children’s musical groups, productions of the Abkhaz State Theatre, art exhibitions, youth festivals and competitions enjoy wide popularity.
As a result of a referendum, on 12 October 1999 the Act on the State Independence of Abkhazia was adopted.
From the autumn of 1999 Russia’s policy towards multinational Abkhazia began to change for the better. The Russian government and President Vladimir Putin introduced a visa-free regime for the unrecognised republic and pursued a policy of granting Russian citizenship, among other measures. At the same time, Georgia repeatedly violated ceasefire agreements and in the post-war period twice (in May 1998 and October 2001) entered Abkhazia, seeking revenge for its defeat in 1993, albeit unsuccessfully.
After the overthrow of Eduard Shevardnadze as a result of the ‘Rose Revolution’ on 23 November 2003 and the coming to power of Mikheil Saakashvili on 25 January 2004, Georgian–Abkhaz relations deteriorated markedly and once again became unpredictable.
Further reading
+ Why Can Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili Not Emulate Willi Brandt? by Liz Fuller
+ "The Key to the Future" | Georgian-Abkhazian Conflict
+ US Contractors Training Georgian Military in Acts of Sabotage (Photos)
+ The August 2008 War and the Politics of Disinformation
+ Abkhazia, Georgia, and the Crisis of August 2008: Roots and Lessons, by George Hewitt