CA&CC Press® AB / Central Asia & Central Caucasus Press

(ИЗ ИСТОРИИ ВОЗНИКНОВЕНИЯ КАВКАЗСКОЙ ДИАСПОРЫ (АБХАЗЫ И АДЫГИ))

Gudisa Vardania, the State University of Abkhazia, 2007

ABSTRACT

The author takes a look into the past in order to shed light on some of the still painful issues relating to the emergence of the Abkhaz-Adighe element of the Caucasian diaspora, the ups and downs of the Caucasian War Russia waged in the Caucasus for many years, the deportation of huge numbers of local people, and their arduous integration into Ottoman Turkey.

Stephen Shenfield | Special to Abkhaz World

Background

In the period 1922—1930 Abkhazia enjoyed the status of a union republic associated with but not subordinate to Georgia. On February 19, 1931 the Sixth All-Georgian Congress of Soviets decided, presumably with Stalin’s consent, to deprive Abkhazia of this status and incorporate it into Georgia as an autonomous republic. In several Abkhaz villages there were mass protests against this change as well as against forced collectivization, then underway across the Soviet Union. Georgian leader Lavrenti Beria mobilized a security police detachment to suppress the protests, but Nestor Lakoba, the first leader of Soviet Abkhazia, managed to defuse the confrontation and avert bloodshed. 

Eurasianet -- You could call it poetic justice. Thrown out of his own boyhood home in Abkhazia on the orders of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Valery Mizadei now is responsible for maintaining all five of the former Soviet dictator’s residences in the sub-tropical Black Sea territory.

Chapter 15. Demography: ''The Abkhazians: A Handbook'' by George Hewitt (Editor) Richmond, Surrey: The Curzon Press 1999 (Caucasus World /Peoples of the Caucasus & The Black Sea), pp. [218]-239.

Demography has many aspects. With regard to the Abkhaz, their famed longevity comes immediately to mind. However, it is difficult to prove just how old one is when, at the supposed time of one s birth, registration was the exception rather than the norm. It has been noted that in the (15 January) 1970 All-Union Census the number of people in some higher age cohorts was actually larger than had been the size of corresponding (eleven year younger) cohorts in the (15 January) 1959 Census. Unless we assume a pensioner-invasion of the USSR in between, this must caution us to realize that some people may have a tendency in old age to advance more rapidly in years than the rest of us!

Georgians and Abkhazians. The Search for a Peace Settlement © August 1998, Vrije University, Brussel - Chapter 7

The post-Soviet period, reminiscent of and in many cases seeming to repeat, the events of 1917-1921 after the break-up of the Russian Empire, has demonstrated quite clearly that the difficulties in Abkhazian-Georgian relations cannot be resolved by those two countries alone, without involving the Caucasus as a whole in this issue.