July 1989 in Abkhazia: The Clashes That Became a Prelude to War

The violent clashes that erupted in Sukhum on 15–16 July 1989 marked a decisive turning point in modern Abkhaz history. Although the immediate dispute centred on the proposed establishment of a Tbilisi State University branch, the confrontation reflected deeper political, demographic and national tensions that had intensified during the final years of the Soviet Union.

This article traces the developments that preceded the violence, including the rise of competing national movements, the Lykhny Appeal, the crisis surrounding Abkhaz State University and the growing polarisation of Georgian and Abkhaz society. Drawing on eyewitness testimony, published accounts and documentary material, it examines why those July days later came to be remembered as a prelude to the 1992–93 Georgian–Abkhaz war.

This article was first published in Russian by the OKNO Telegram channel and was translated into English by AbkhazWorld.

July 1989 in Abkhazia: The Clashes That Became a Prelude to War

The history of the Georgian–Abkhaz confrontation contains many events that can be seen as having laid the foundations for war. For some, the fuse stretches back to the pre-communist history of Abkhazia and Georgia; for others, it begins with the reduction of Abkhazia’s status from a union republic to an autonomous republic within Georgia in 1931. Still others point to the Stalinist repressions in Abkhazia, the death of Nestor Lakoba, the subsequent Abkhazpereselenstroi resettlement programme, repeated attempts to abolish an Abkhaz autonomy whose rights were already severely restricted, and a succession of other historical upheavals.

Yet among this chain of tragic events for Abkhazia, one became the spark that ignited the fuse. On 15–16 July 1989, armed clashes broke out between Abkhaz and Georgians in Sukhum, leaving 17 people dead, nine of them Abkhaz. Enterprises ceased operating, unrest engulfed the principal streets and squares of Abkhazia’s towns, improvised checkpoints and civil-defence headquarters appeared, and people rapidly found themselves being drawn into the abyss of interethnic conflict.

The immediate catalyst for the unrest was the proposed division of Abkhaz State University. Its deeper causes, however, lay in competing questions of Abkhaz and Georgian self-determination, which had become increasingly acute amid the systemic crisis of the Soviet order. The principal driving force behind the tension was the growing Georgian national movement, remembered by many non-Georgian residents of the Georgian SSR at the time as an explosion of radical nationalism.

From 1988 onwards, as the collapse of the Soviet Union began to appear increasingly likely, active campaigns for withdrawal from the USSR and further democratisation emerged in Georgia and the Baltic republics. While declaring these to be their principal objectives, Georgia’s informal political activists operating outside official Soviet institutions rallied around Zviad Gamsakhurdia and began spreading ultra-right radicalism and ethnonationalism directed against the Abkhaz people and Georgia’s national minorities.

Waves of Georgian nationalist propaganda spread across the republic, reaching and unsettling the Abkhaz autonomy. Anti-Abkhaz appeals provoked its inhabitants, particularly the Abkhaz, which in turn encouraged still greater mobilisation of the Georgian population around Gamsakhurdia.

Banners bearing the words ‘Georgia for the Georgians’, other nationalist slogans, calls for the suppression of national minorities, and reports of gatherings and strikes came to dominate political, public and everyday life within what was still, formally, a shared Abkhaz–Georgian space. Anti-Soviet and anti-Abkhaz rhetoric filled the press and circulated through academic, cultural and political circles, as well as among young people.

Against the background of Georgia’s national ‘awakening’, a process of consolidation naturally began in Abkhazia, both in opposition to Georgian claims and around the Abkhaz people’s long-standing demands for self-determination. Other national minorities, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, Mingrelians and others, aligned themselves politically with the Abkhaz, who constituted 17 per cent of the population and who, according to dismissive remarks by certain Georgian activists, could supposedly be accommodated in two sports stadiums. These minorities were themselves deeply alarmed by the Georgian nationalist agenda.

In his article ‘1989: A Year of Defiance’, Spartak Zhidkov identifies an important feature of these processes: intellectuals and civic organisations stood at the forefront of both the Georgian and Abkhaz struggles for national self-determination. The administrative resources available to the Abkhaz people were, however, more closely allied with the civic movement than those of the Georgian Communist Party, which was losing supporters to Georgia’s informal political activists.

Although the clashes of July 1989 were spontaneous in character, and nationalism in Georgia was rapidly spiralling, they were preceded by a prolonged period during which the conflict quietly matured. One important event in this chronology was the celebrated Letter of the Sixty, sent to Moscow by members of the Abkhaz intelligentsia in 1988 in protest against the policy of Georgianisation in Abkhazia.

The letter warned of a growing threat and set out Abkhaz grievances against the authorities of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. It took the form of a historical account of the developments that had produced the tension, from Abkhazia’s transformation from a union republic into an autonomy to attempts to impose the study of Georgian at every level in Abkhazia. It concluded with a request for the restoration of the Abkhaz Soviet Socialist Republic and a historical justification for that demand.

The letter did not produce the result sought by the Abkhaz. It nevertheless demonstrated to Georgians the protest and mobilisation potential of Abkhaz society and confirmed that self-determination was a central concern of the Abkhaz people.

Young people on both sides, who observed and participated in these processes, were nourished by the corresponding ideas as fire is fed by oxygen. Interest in politics among the young increased rapidly amid the national confrontation. Polarisation grew alongside it and ultimately contributed to the clashes of July 1989.

On the Abkhaz side, the principal ideological centre during this period became the People’s Forum of Abkhazia, Aidgylara (‘Unity’). It emerged through the coming together of two civic forces: the Union of Creative Youth and the People’s Front, which later became the People’s Forum.

The Union of Creative Youth was established in Pitsunda in 1987. It brought together a young generation of patriots born during a period in which Abkhazia’s cultural life had flourished. Its founding figures included Gennady Alamia, Diana Akhba, Alina Achba, Rauf Bartsits, Leonid Enik, Arda Inal-Ipa, Svetlana Korsaya, Daur Mikvabia, Iolanta Otyrba, Suram Sakania, Givi Smyr, Mushni Khvartskia and Nodar Chanba.

The activists first made themselves known through environmental initiatives and by organising the first peaceful march in Abkhazia’s history to commemorate the victims of the Russo-Caucasian War. The march continues to be held annually in Sukhum.

The other wing of the organisation, or, more precisely, its foundation, consisted of members of the Abkhaz Research Institute of History, Language and Literature, representing the older generation of the intelligentsia.

On 21 November 1988, an initiative group met at the premises of the Writers’ Union of Abkhazia. Its members included Dzhuma Akhuba, Bocha Adzhindzhal, Zurab Achba, Oleg Damenia, Nodar Chanba, Roman Chanba, Rauf Ebzhnou, Taras Gitsba, Igor Marykhuba, Valery Kvarchia, Vladimir Zantaria, Valery Gamgia and Roman Gvindzhia.

Those present decided to establish a People’s Forum ‘in support of perestroika and democratisation’. The organisation subsequently became known as Aidgylara.

Three weeks later, on 13 December 1988, its founding congress was held in the State Philharmonic building. The writer Aleksei Gogua was elected to lead the organisation.

The Union of Creative Youth, whose representatives served on Aidgylara’s presidium, gradually merged with the People’s Forum. In this way, the Abkhaz national liberation movement acquired an organised form.

Some Abkhaz activists within the Union called upon the Forum to work more actively towards civic accord within Abkhazia. This meant engaging with both the Abkhaz and Georgian populations. Visiting Georgian informal activists, they argued, were actively promoting the image of the Abkhaz as an enemy among local Georgians in an attempt to mobilise this part of the republic’s population under their own banners.

The Georgian youth organisations that ideologically supported the Tbilisi informal activists were represented by a branch of the All-Georgian Rustaveli Society and the local organisation of the Ilia Chavchavadze Society. Both were established in 1988. Georgian lecturers and students from Abkhaz State University entered their leadership bodies.

These organisations were among the first to stage actions modelled on those taking place in Tbilisi and employing the same anti-Abkhaz slogans. Public platforms increasingly repeated Pavle Ingorokva’s notorious narrative concerning the supposed ‘foreign origin’ of the Abkhaz.

The beginning of 1989 saw a series of strikes and rallies by Georgian activists and students in both Tbilisi and Sukhum. Georgians accused the Abkhaz of ‘oppressing’ the Georgian population.

This prompted a national gathering in the village of Lykhny on 18 March 1989, attended by as many as 30,000 people. In the presence of Communist Party and Soviet officials, another appeal was adopted requesting that the central authorities of the USSR restore the Abkhaz Soviet Socialist Republic.

+ The July 1989 Clashes That Changed Abkhazia

+ Soviet Abkhazia 1989 Facts and Thoughts, by Viktor Popkov

+ Unity in the name of freedom: for the anniversary of the 1989 Lykhny appeal

The appeal was signed by all the republic’s influential ethnic Abkhaz public figures. A signature-gathering campaign was subsequently organised in towns and villages throughout Abkhazia. A total of 35,000 signatures were collected, including 5,000 from non-Abkhaz residents.

The Georgian response to the Lykhny Appeal was not long in coming. Georgian protests intensified in Abkhazia and Georgia, with demonstrators demanding that the signatories of the Appeal be punished and Abkhazia’s leaders removed from office.

On 6 April, at a plenary meeting of the Abkhaz Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, Boris Adleiba, the committee’s first secretary and a signatory to the Appeal, was dismissed from his post.

Several days later, the demands of the anti-Abkhaz demonstrations broadened, as Georgian protesters called for the restoration of Georgia’s independence. Georgia was by then experiencing an internal political struggle between Gamsakhurdia’s ultra-right supporters and the Soviet authorities.

On 9 April 1989, the Georgian Communist Party, with assistance from Moscow, brutally dispersed demonstrators in Tbilisi using clubs and toxic gas. Twenty-one people were killed, more than 140 were injured and more than 3,000 suffered chemical poisoning.

This further radicalised participants in the national movement, precipitating the collapse of the Georgian Communist Party and the victory of Gamsakhurdia’s Round Table–Free Georgia coalition in the first multiparty elections.

The violent suppression of the 9 April demonstration produced a domino effect, triggering a new series of rallies and strikes throughout Georgia.

Parallel unrest began in Sukhum. Georgian students at Abkhaz State University launched a sit-in outside the Georgian Theatre building, now home to the Russian Drama Theatre, demanding that the Georgian section of Abkhaz State University be separated and used as the foundation for a branch of Tbilisi State University.

The protest was supported by Georgian schools, higher-education institutions and enterprises, and eventually by the Georgian Ministry of Education, which decided to establish the branch.

The decision caused outrage among the Abkhaz public. It was seen, among other things, as threatening to deepen the Georgian demographic and personnel predominance within the republic.

In response, the Abkhaz began a protest in Freedom Square, which developed into an open-ended demonstration. The Abkhaz and other residents of the republic who supported the protest demanded the arrival of a commission from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

The commission arrived in early July and concluded that dividing the university along national lines would be inappropriate. The leadership of Tbilisi State University nevertheless declared that the commission’s conclusion had no legal force and that applications to the proposed branch would continue to be accepted.

This produced another escalation in tension, including an attempt by Abkhaz protesters to prevent the publication of the relevant edition of the newspaper Sabchota Abkhazeti (საბჭოთა აფხაზეთი, ‘Soviet Abkhazia’).

Despite the commission’s position, entrance examinations for the Tbilisi State University ‘branch’ were due to begin in a Sukhum school on 16 July. On the previous evening, Abkhaz protesters blockaded the building.

The situation escalated after a spontaneous fight developed into mass clashes. Beatings and pogroms began in the city. Bladed weapons were used, soon followed by firearms. According to official information, 17 people were killed and more than 100 injured during the two days of unrest.

From Spartak Zhidkov’s Seeds of Rebellion: Essays on the History of the National Liberation Struggle in Tkuarchal, 1977–1991:

Vakhtang Pipia, a participant in the events, recalls the gathering in Lenin Square, now Freedom Square:

’When the heavy lorries began moving towards the square on the evening of 15 July, it was a critical moment. The Georgian crowd was moving behind the vehicles, which were intended to act as battering rams. It is terrifying even to imagine what would have happened had they broken through into the square.

’My brother, Tengiz Pipia, blew up the first vehicle – even its cab jumped into the air, and it went no further. Other men handling explosives followed his lead. He ran into the entrance of a building and escaped across the roof, hiding from both the Georgians and the law-enforcement authorities. He did not return home.

‘My brother remained wanted for almost a year. We hid him in Cherkessk with friends of mine. A little later – although we did not yet know it – my uncle, Aleksei Kogonia, the shift supervisor at Sukhum Airport, was killed. He was shot in the back by Georgians who were demanding that he refuse to receive an aircraft carrying Soviet servicemen.’

From an article by Scott Shane in The Baltimore Sun, dated 26 January 1989:

’Aleksei Kogonia was an Abkhaz who was shot by a Georgian during those days in July … According to Abkhaz eyewitnesses, a Georgian crowd dragged Kogonia from his office at Sukhum Airport, declaring that a Georgian should hold the senior position.

’He tried to run towards his car and then back to his office, but the crowd blocked his path and began beating him. A woman then shouted, “Shoot! Shoot!” One of the men grabbed Kogonia and shot him in the back …

’What is surprising is not when or where it happened, but who was involved. Givi Kvaratskhelia, who was accused of the killing, was an airport security officer and had been a close colleague of Kogonia since 1985.

‘“They worked together and ate together. Every 15 November, on Aleksei’s birthday, the airport employees came to our home. Givi was always there. They sat, laughed and enjoyed themselves,” said Venera Kogonia, the victim’s sister. “How could I have known what was in their hearts?”’

The situation became particularly dangerous in Ochamchira and Tkuarchal, towards which thousands of residents of western Georgia were converging, attempting to force their way through with weapons to assist fellow Georgians in Sukhum.

Sergei Bagapsh, secretary of the Ochamchira District Committee, and the prosecutor Valery Gurdzhua played key roles in organising the defence of the bridge across the River Aaldzga.

From Spartak Zhidkov’s Seeds of Rebellion: Essays on the History of the National Liberation Struggle in Tkuarchal, 1977–1991:

Valery Gurdzhua:

’The first confrontation at the Ochamchira bridge took place at one o’clock in the morning on 16 July. The Georgians retreated to Gal and attacked again before dawn.

’Earlier that evening, I had stationed police officers on the bridge, and I stood with them for about an hour. While I was there, a vehicle carrying residents of the village of Kochara in the Ochamchira district was stopped. Military rifles were discovered in its boot, and we detained several people …

’From that moment onwards, the city could be defended only by blocking the bridge over the Aaldzga. Sergei Bagapsh arrived in Ochamchira towards dawn, while Boris Adleiba had been in the city since the evening. He had come from the village of Chlou and remained beside us throughout the night.

‘Although he no longer possessed any official authority, virtually all our actions were coordinated with him … We held the Georgians back in this way for several hours, until the Soviet Interior Ministry troops arrived.’

From 17 July onwards, Soviet troops were finally deployed in Sukhum, preventing a still greater escalation, and a curfew was imposed.

Tensions remained high for a considerable time. Public transport and a section of the Transcaucasian Railway in Sukhum were paralysed for a week. People concealed their ethnic identity as a precaution. Many Abkhaz were dismissed from their jobs on ethnic grounds, while the Georgian leadership resumed the use of repressive methods with renewed force. The prosecutor’s office, acting together with the Georgian security services, fabricated hundreds of criminal cases against Abkhaz people.

People on both sides of the conflict continue to remember those few days in July as a prelude to war. The interethnic accord that had been hanging by its final thread was irretrievably lost.

In director Mamuka Kuparadze’s documentary The Absence of Will: A Journey through Conflict Zones, produced by Studio Re in Tbilisi, university graduates Vakhtang and Teona, who live in Tbilisi, investigate the causes of the Georgian–Abkhaz war.

The film, which includes the well-known interview with Eduard Shevardnadze, challenges the established stigma within Georgian society concerning the supposed ‘guilt’ of the Abkhaz people for the events of 1992–93.

The presenters begin their investigation with the period in which supporters of Zviad Gamsakhurdia radicalised and demoralised the Georgian population, a subject that has received little attention in Georgian public discourse.

The film includes the reflections of Teona’s mother on the events of the late 1980s:

’Looking back now, it seems as though people were behaving aggressively, but at the time it all sounded patriotic. And the majority really did feel that way.

’What was such radicalism intended to achieve? The aim was to make the country united and stronger. That was precisely the reason for the aggression towards our national minorities. We wanted to force them to respect our country.

‘It now seems as though all of this has been reassessed. I think we were wrong at the time.’

The film re-examines the causes of the Georgian–Abkhaz war and encourages reflection on Georgia’s responsibility. Yet 16 years after its release, and 32 years after the end of the war, the Georgian–Abkhaz confrontation continues – this time in the information sphere.