I know this may be a little bit different for you guys, but we got an very interesting e-mail this week of Abkhaz World and we would like to share their opinion with you. But, first, let's clear some things:
1. We provide information of all sides, so there will be pro-Georgian posts in this blog, pro-Russia, pro-Abkhazia and "neutral" analysis. It is an educational event and we want you to have all the information available because we trust in you ability to know right from wrong or left from right in cases where nobody is entirely right.
2. We loved that Abkhaz World took the time to try to elucidate aspects of the post (this one) that they did not agree on which they are entitled. This team really appreciates the debate inherent to these issues, so we just want to make it clear: we are not offended, we were actually thrilled. However, we do not think the original post was inappropriate because it was an existing perspective worth debating.
Here is their e-mail:
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Dear Madam / Sir,
I just read a page about Georgian - Abkhazian War in 1992-93. [http://mirinpucrio.blogspot.
Unfortunately it's including a lot of mistakes.
First of all it was Georgia that STARTED the war. As for the government, it was installed right after the war with Georgia - Putin was not there or even on the political horizon. There was pro-Georgian Yeltsin who together with Georgia put Abkhazia under sanctions and Yeltsin actually gave Shevardnadze the green light to attack Abkhazia on 14th August 1992.
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Quote:
In February 1992, the provisional Georgian Military Council announced Georgia’s return to its 1921 constitution. The Abkhaz Supreme Soviet was concerned that Abkhazia’s status was not adequately taken into consideration and so a draft treaty outlining plans on federal relations was sent to Tbilisi. Tbilisi did not respond and in July 1992 the Abkhaz Parliament reinstated the 1925 Abkhaz Constitution.
On 14 August 1992 Georgian armed forces entered the Gali region of Abkhazia...
...From summer 1992 to summer 1993, Georgian troops controlled much of Abkhazia, including Sukhum(i). [I edited as 'Sukhum(i)'see my explanation and related maps about Sukhum]
Source: http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/
See ''Historical Maps: Abkhazia at various times in history''
http://gallery.abkhazworld.
The maps included here give an idea of the frontiers of Abkhazia at various times in history. The Abkhazians call their capital /Aqw'a/, but it is more usually known in other languages as Sukhum (Sukhum-Kalé or Sukhum-Kaleh in the period of Turkish influence along the Black Sea's eastern coast; /soxumi/ in Georgian). The ending -i in the form /Sukhumi/ represents the Georgian Nominative case-suffix, and it became attached to /Sukhum/ from the late 1930s when (Georgian) Stalin and his Mingrelian lieutenant in Transcaucasia, Lavrent'i Beria, began to implement a series of anti-Abkhazian policies. Abkhazians today, for obvious reasons, resent the attachment of this element from the language of a people they see as oppressors.
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And please see here to read about Abkhazia: http://www.abkhazworld.com/
or
Sitio oficial de la Misión Permanente de la República de Abjasia en Venezuela
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Declaration of the Revolutionary Committee of the SSR of Georgia on Independence of the SSR of Abkhazia - 21 May 1921
In 1921, Abkhazia and Georgia became Sovietized. On 31 March 1921, an independent Soviet Republic of Abkhazia was proclaimed. On 21 May 1921, the Georgian Bolshevik government officially recognized the independence of Abkhazia. But the same year, under pressure from Stalin and other influential Georgian Bolsheviks, Abkhazia was forced to conclude a union (i.e., confederative) treaty with Georgia. Abkhazia still remained a full union republic until 1931, when its status was downgraded, under Stalin's orders, from that of Union Republic to that of an Autonomous Republic within Georgia. This act of incorporation of Abkhazia into Georgia was conducted without the approval and against the will of the Abkhazian people and caused mass protests in Abkhazia. Thus the creation of the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic within Georgia was not the result of the granting by the Bolsheviks of autonomous status to one of the republic's minorities, as it is often alleged, but was rather the forced convergence of two neighbouring states by the incorporation of one of them, Abkhazia, into the other, Georgia.
Vladislav Ardzinba, first president of Abkhazia, stated: “In 1931 Abkhazia was transformed into an autonomous republic within the Georgian SSR. Seemingly it was the only republic whose political status changed under pressure from Stalin not upwards but downwards”. (See Pravda, newspaper, 14 July 1989).
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DECLARATION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF THE SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA on Independence of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia.
21 May 1921
The Menshevik’s power, being bourgeois by its nature, oppressed the revolutionary movement of the national minorities and bred the antagonism between the certain minorities residing in Georgia throughout the centuries.
Soviet power has a different approach to this issue, advancing the principle of fraternal relations and equality between all workers.
The right to self-determination declared by the Great October Revolution is recognized as the best remedy for the eradication of national prejudices and the strengthening of relations between the workers.
On this basis, the Revolutionary Committee of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia recognizes and welcomes the establishment of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia and believes that the relations between the Georgian SSR and the Abkhazian SSR will be decided at the first Congress of the workers and peasants of Abkhazia, as well as of Georgia.
Let the workers of both socialist republics decide the forms of close and fraternal cooperation.
Revcom of the Georgian SSR
http://www.abkhazworld.com/
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When most of Abkhazia was denuded of its native population in the wake of (a) the end of the Great Caucasian War in 1864 and (b) the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the question arose as to who would make the most appropriate substitute-population. One of the leading Georgian intellectuals of the time, the educationalist Iakob Gogebashvili, wrote an interesting article in Tiflisskij Vestnik in 1877 entitled /vin unda iknes dasaxlebuli apxazetshi?/ (Who should be settled in Abkhazia?). In this article he argued that the neighbouring Mingrelians would make the best /kolonizatorebi/ (colonisers)... And this is precisely what they subsequently became.
The mass-immigration of Kartvelians (mostly Mingrelians) goes back to the late 1930s. Abkhaz's script was then altered from a roman to a Georgian base. Abkhaz-language schools were summarily closed in 1945-6, following by a ban on broadcasting and publications. The Abkhazians as a nation were due to face transportation (like the numerous other peoples transported by Stalin from the Koreans in the late 1930s through to Abkhazia's Greeks in the late 1940s), and, as a 'scholarly' justification for that, the literary-historian Pavle Ingoroqva was commissioned to argue in print that the Abkhazians only arrived in Abkhazia in the 17th century, conquering the 'original' Abkhazians of history, who were thus a 'Georgian' tribe. This calumny was revived in the heady days of Georgian nationalism from 1988 AND IS WIDELY BELIEVED BY MANY ORDINARY KARTVELIANS, who for this reason still regard the Abkhazians as unentitled to be living in Abkhazia
See please: Demographic change in Abkhazia 1897–1989
http://www.c-r.org/our-work/
The Georgian general leading the invading forces in the autumn of 1992, Gia Qarqarashvili, stated on TV that he would sacrifice 100,000 Georgians to kill all 97,000 Abkhazians, if that is what it took to keep Georgia's borders inviolate', and a similar threat came from the head of Georgia's wartime administration, Giorgi Khaindrava, on the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique in April 1993. Goga (Giorgi) Khaindrava, told the correspondent from Le Monde Diplomatique that "there are only 80,000 Abkhazians, which means that we can easily and completely destroy the genetic stock of their nation by killing 15,000 of their youth. And we are perfectly capable of doing this."
If you were an Abkhazian, would you welcome back your former Kartvelian neighbours, knowing how many of them think Abkhazians should not be in Abkhazia?
And it was no accident that the Abkhazian research-institute and archives were torched (after cherry-picking) in Nov 1992 -- it was done to try to erase documentary proof of the Abkhazians' presence over the centuries (not to say millennia) on Abkhazian soil. See related article: Abkhazia's archive: fire of war, ashes of history & Related Video (YouTube)
Also, when it comes to the fate of refugees and their right to return home, what is to be said of those Abkhazian descendants (over 300,000) of those more or less forced to leave Abkhazia, when it was populated virtually exclusively by Abkhazians, in 1864?
For some 60 years Abkhazia was forced to accept the unwelcome status of being a mere autonomous republic with Soviet Georgia (thanks to the ruling of the Georgian dictator Stalin – ‘Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili’). For daring to defend our interests in the face of Georgian nationalist aggression, we were subjected to 14 months of savagery. In alliance with our allies from the Abkhazian diaspora or Abkhazians’ cousins in the North Caucasus, we succeeded in ejecting the invader and winning the war. All that Georgia under its various leaders/governments has been willing to offer us by way of a settlement is a return to the ‘status quo ante’— the sudden offer by Misha Saakashvili of asymmetric federation produced on the eve of the recent NATO summit in Bucharest was clearly aimed more at impressing the Western alliance than at appealing to Sukhum.
How many examples are there in history where a people after being invaded, losing 4% of their population, and yet finally winning the war have meekly resigned themselves to accepting the selfsame subordinate status they had before the tragedy of a war inflicted upon them? This is something that the Georgian side and their international backers (who have no interest in the fate of minorities but think solely of the ‘big picture’ of preserving territorial integrity, of finding allies in an unstable part of the world, and of securing the flow of oil) would do well to remember. The Georgians lost Abkhazia in 1993. They should be told by their EU, NATO and US ‘friends’ to accept this fact, find a ‘modus vivendi’ with their neighbours (big and small alike), and then contribute to the creation of stability and prosperity for the Caucasus region as whole. We can all then get on with our lives in the peace that we all deserve.
Best regards,
Administrator of AW"
We thank Abkhaz World for giving the delegates more mechanisms of research on the subject. Moreover, we hope they feel that this time their side of the story was more rightfully told.
Bloggers of MIRIN
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Sem duvida chegou o momento de deixar que Abkhazia seria independente de Georgia.
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