Conflict in the Caucasus

EVERY SATURDAY MORNING at the Dry Bridge Market by the Mtkvari River in Tbilisi, people gather to buy and sell goods at a long-established open air market. The nearby park is devoted to work by local artists, with garishly colored paintings that depict typically Georgian scenes, like skyrocket church domes and bacchanalian wine gatherings, but it is the flea market at the roadside that is the greatest draw for locals.

The goods on sale are painstakingly spread out on tablecloths in the shade of trees, and the combined effect seems more like an outdoor museum of the Georgian twentieth century than a commercial enterprise. There are all manner of Soviet-era cameras, magazines, medals and lapel badges. There are stamp collections, coins and records, and statuettes of Marx, Lenin and other members of the Soviet elite who failed to become household names. This being Georgia, it is inevitable to see likenesses of the most famous Georgian of all time: Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, better known to the rest of the world as Joseph Stalin.

Strolling the market, one notices that, rather than guttural Georgian, the lingua franca here is Russian. This may be Tbilisi, but many of those gathered here do not speak Georgian — they are members of the capital’s Russian minority and their life is difficult enough without having to cope with the tongue-twisting consonants and mind-bending grammar that fluency in Georgian requires.

Cross the river and head west to the Marjanishvili quarter of the city. Here, among street markets, Turkish restaurants and backpacker hostels, stands the blue-domed Russian Orthodox Church of Alexander Nevsky, built in 1863-4 and one of the earliest Russian churches in the city. It is still busy on Sunday mornings, when Russian voices ring out to compete with the roar of passing marshrutki. In fact, on any day of the week there are usually a few worshippers inside and a beggar or two at the gate.

Russians have been present in Georgia for the best part of two centuries and remain a sizeable minority, although their numbers have dwindled in recent years. According to the 1959 census, there were 408,000 Russians in Georgia, or just over ten percent of the total population. By 1989 these numbers had fallen to 341,000 and 6.3 percent; by 2002 there was further shrinkage, to 68,000 and just 1.5 percent. Today, nearly a decade on, the numbers are unknown but certainly considerably lower. Based on Tbilisi’s Dry Bridge Market, it would seem that those Russians who have remained get along well enough with their Georgian neighbors. Nevertheless, the last few years have been very trying times.

AUGUST 2011 MARKS the third anniversary of the bloody Russian-Georgian conflict over South Ossetia — a painful memory for all involved. It was a “conflict” that lasted just over a week, but which had serious consequences for both countries; to this day the precise sovereignty of South Ossetia is undetermined. While at the time it seemed to many inevitable that Russia and Georgia would clash over South Ossetia, even the most cursory examination suggests that the two nations have long had a very complex relationship.

Although Georgia’s history has long been linked with that of Russia, in many ways the two nations could not be more different. Georgia’s unique position at the edge of both Europe and the Middle East has had considerable impact on its culture, which, although very distinctive, is hard to define. Compared to its vast, northern neighbor, Georgia is tiny, self-contained, and almost Mediterranean in its climate, food and traditions, and, most tellingly, in the outlook of its people. Despite a fully-entrenched Christian Orthodox religion, the second oldest in the world, numerous invasions have given Georgia a culture that shows a refinement that is almost Persian. It abounds in ancient legend, and tends to think of itself as a proud, long-forged nation that is as old as Time. An overstatement perhaps, but there is some truth to this — it was Georgians, after all, who invented wine. And, according to legend, this was also the land of the mythical Golden Fleece (a legend which modern research has shown may be founded on historical truth).

The Russo-Georgian marriage of cultures has its origins in the late eighteenth century. At that time, the Caucasus region was caught between three great empires: the Ottoman Empire to the west, Persia to the east and Russia to the north. Georgia chose (it might be said, in hindsight) to ally with the lesser of three evils, when in 1800 it joined the Russian Empire, supposedly at the request of Georgia’s King George XII, although this was not accepted by many Georgian nobility until two years later, when they were forced to take an oath of allegiance.

Beyond lay the jagged blue wall of mountains, with the white cardinal’s cape of Kazbek peeping out behind. I was sorry to be leaving them and bade a mental farewell.

Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

IN THE FIRST HALF of the nineteenth century, the Russian view of Georgia was that of a distant frontier — a “place beyond the mountains” both geographically and metaphorically. Georgia was the land of adventure, the last frontier: a wild region of misty mountains and exotic color; a living Babel of languages peopled with rebellious natives — the Wild South. For adventurers and romantics, Georgia represented a very different world from the stultified, politically repressed country from which many of them sought deliverance. As a consequence, the newly acquired Caucasian territories became a sort of testing ground for rebellious and bored young men from Tsarist Russia.

Brave young officers made the most of their military service by wrenching poetry from their experience, rather like Rudyard Kipling did as a servant of the British Raj in India. Mikhail Lermontov was one such young officer; he was exiled twice to the Caucasus, first for writing a scurrilous poem about Pushkin’s murder and second for taking part in a duel. Lermontov thrived on the experience and, energized and inspired by it, molded his Georgian exile into rich poetry and one the greatest of Russian romantic novels, A Hero of Our Time, in which the book’s hero dies from duel. Two years after he finished writing the novel, Lermontov himself perished in a duel that was eerily similar, his notebooks still brimming with unpublished poetry. He was just 26.

Lermontov was not, however, the first Russian to be captivated by the Caucasus. Alexander Griboyedov (1795-1829), a composer and playwright who traveled here as a member of the diplomatic service, went so far as to marry the 16-year-old daughter of his friend, Prince Alexander Chavchavadze, the father of Georgian romanticism. Sticky ends were commonplace in those days and, unhappily, Griboyedov died just a few months after his marriage, massacred by an anti-Russian mob in Persia.

And of course there were others. Alexander Pushkin was deeply inspired by this region. His poem, The Prisoner of the Caucasus, had strongly influenced Lermontov. Lev Tolstoy’s writing career had its origins in the Caucasus. His last novel, Hadji Murad, written from 1896-1904 and published posthumously, is based on a rebel Avar commander, an historical figure whom Tolstoy heard about while on military service in the Caucasus half a century before. And the poet of the Revolution, Vladimir Mayakovsky, spent the early part of his life in Georgia and attended school in Kutaisi before moving with his mother to Moscow.

What a glorious valley this is! All around it tower awesome mountains, reddish crags draped with hanging ivy and crowned with clusters of plane trees, yellow cliffs grooved by torrents, with a gilded fringe of snow high above, while down below the Aragvi River embraces a nameless stream that noisily bursts forth from a black gloom-filled gorge and then stretches in a silvery ribbon into the distance, its surface shimmering like a scaly back of a snake.

Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

The 1817 completion of the Georgian Military Highway meant that travel south of the Caucasus become relatively straightforward for Russian adventurers. Beginning in Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, the highway squeezed into Georgia through the Darial Gorge before reaching the small town of Stepantsminda (often referred to as Kazbegi, after the mountain that looms above it) and then continued south over passes to Tbilisi.

Pushkin travelled this way in 1829 and Lermontov used its setting for the background of A Hero of Our Time. Tolstoy and Gorky also featured it in their writings. Even today the road is impressive; while it is in poor condition in places, it is still the only viable route through the central Caucasus. Threading through enormous defiles and deep valleys, it is shadowed throughout by mighty peaks that include Georgia’s most mythical mountain, Mount Kazbek, where legend has it Amirani — the Georgian equivalent of Prometheus — was once chained as punishment for having stolen fire from the gods.

Halfway along the Georgian Military Highway between the Russian border and Tbilisi stands an exquisitely placed viewing platform that dates from 1983 and is dedicated to Russo-Georgian friendship. The mural here, depicting Georgian historical figures in an heroic Soviet context, is a little threadbare, but the views are still breathtaking — exactly the sort of place from where Lermontov might have waxed so lyrically on the beauty of the valley and Georgia’s larger than life topography.

If the mountains and the route of the Georgian Military Highway gave rise to poetry about Georgia’s wild and untrammeled character, then the capital, Tbilisi, was its civilized counterpart — a city that seems very much of the south, even oriental. Its wine, delicious food, hot springs and southern exoticism, charmed and soothed Russians in equal measure, creating a more three-dimensional view of the country. Indeed, Tbilisi became an object of affection for writers like Lermontov, Tolstoy and Gorky, although it was Pushkin who was one of the first to settle in for a longer stay.

Pushkin arrived in Tbilisi in 1829 and a bust and a street named for him still exist in the city center. He was particularly fond of the hot sulfur baths and describes them in detail in his Journey to Arzrum. A plaque on the wall outside the blue-tiled, Persian-style Orbeliani baths still bears witness to this, stating in Russian and Georgian: “Not since my birth have I witnessed such luxuriousness as at the Tbilisi baths.” Pushkin was also keen on Georgian food, as is almost anybody who tastes it, especially Russians raised on blander fare. “Every Georgian dish is a poem,” Pushkin wrote, with only a hint of hyperbole.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, the Russo-Georgian relationship has deteriorated dramatically in the years since Pushkin and Lermontov waxed so lyrically. After a century as a subject of the Tsarist Russian Empire, Georgia became briefly independent in 1917; the short-lived Democratic Republic of Georgia was violently crushed in 1921 by the Bolsheviks, and the country became part of the Soviet Union the following year.

The years of Soviet rule were as dramatic — and traumatic — in Georgia as anywhere else in the Soviet Union, and Stalin’s steel fist hammered no more gently here simply because the General Secretary was a native son. Considerable tracts of Georgian territory were ceded in the early 1920s: to Turkey as part of the Treaty of Kars, to Azerbaijan, Armenia and even to Russia itself. The early years of the Soviet period also saw the closure of hundreds of Georgian churches and monasteries, another factor along with enforced collectivization that led to an August 1924 uprising, which was brutally suppressed. As elsewhere, widespread purges took place in the period immediately before and after World War II yet, ironically perhaps, Nikita’s Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalin in 1956 provoked anti-Russian and pro-Stalin riots in Tbilisi that were crushed by Soviet tanks, killing around 100 students.


Independence arrived again in 1991, and Russo-Georgian tensions have been steadily on the rise ever since. It began with the brutal Kremlin crackdowns in 1989-90 that failed to ward off Georgian independence, and intensified when Russia supported Abkhazia, previously an autonomous Georgian region that borders Russia, in its civil war with Tbilisi in 1992-1993. Russia provided Abkhazia with logistical and military aid, which greatly contributed to Georgia’s military defeat. This was followed by de facto Abkhazian independence and the ethnic cleansing of Georgians from the region.

There was a brief period of relative détente after Eduard Shevardnadze (formerly Soviet foreign minister and first secretary of the Georgian Soviet Republic) came to power, but it ended when Shevardnadze was ousted by the 2003 Rose Revolution and the American-educated Mikheil Saakashvili was elected president, openly espousing a desire for Georgia to enter NATO.

For Russia’s part, there is certainly perceived ingratitude at the root of some of the current tensions. Since tsarist times, Russia has seen itself as the protector of vulnerable Georgians, making Georgia’s demand for independence in 1990 seem disrespectful and ungrateful (and its pursuit of NATO membership downright traitorous). On the flip side, many Georgians see Russia as the overbearing and occasionally brutal stepfather.

Complicating all this is the irony that the most murderous dictator in Russian history, Stalin, was a native Georgian, as was his last Secret Police Chief, Lavrenty Beria. And Georgians were murdered and brutalized as much as other Soviets from 1925-1953. Surprisingly, however, Stalin’s memory is still cherished by some in Georgia, most notably in his hometown of Gori, where even his dreadful record of genocide does not overshadow the fact that he was a “local boy made good.”

The Abkhazian dynamic was repeated in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as Russia began to actively support the break away of another border region, South Ossetia. Tensions finally overflowed into conflict in August 2008, when Russian tanks crossed into South Ossetia through the Roki Tunnel. Russia argued that its military intervention of peacekeepers was necessary in order to protect Ossetians from ethnic cleansing. Georgia called it an unlawful invasion of a sovereign state and launched a counter-offensive that was largely ineffectual, given the relative scale of the adversary. For a brief period, the Georgian cities of Gori, Zugdidi, Poti and Senaki were occupied by Russian forces. A French-brokered ceasefire was signed roughly a week after hostilities broke out, and Russian troops withdrew from Georgian territory, but not before recognizing the independence of South Ossetia (and also Abkhazia) on 26 August.

The European Union’s subsequent inquiry placed most of the blame for starting the war on Georgia. And for his part Georgian President Saakashvili seemed to be deliberately provoking the Kremlin in the half-decade leading up to 2008, with a very public courtship of then U.S. President George W. Bush. Saakashvili had even named the main Tbilisi airport road George W. Bush Boulevard and erected an enormous billboard depicting the beaming Texan, in case anyone was not sure who he was. About the same time, posters started to appear around the capital that stated, in English: “Our foreign policy priority is the integration into NATO.” After August 2008, these were joined by signs that simply said, “Stop Russia,” with swastika symbols replacing the “ss” in Russia.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS can take many forms and political animosity can appear distinctly self-defeating on occasion. In 2006, two years before the South Ossetia conflict, Russia imposed an import ban on Georgian wines. Full-page ads in the communist mouthpiece Pravda shouted “Don’t Drink Georgian Wine.” Meanwhile, the official Russian line was that Georgian (and Moldovan) wines contained heavy metals and pesticides and sometimes falsified their labels. Yet it was no coincidence that the ban coincided with Saakashvili’s increasingly bold embrace of the U.S.

The wine embargo caused considerable economic damage to Georgia — Russia was always by far the country’s largest export market. Yet, given Russia’s love of Georgian food and drink, the initiative was also rather masochistic. Even today, Russian supermarkets contain fine imported wines from Europe, South America and even New Zealand, but not a drop from just across the Caucasus. A ban on Georgian Borjomi mineral water, a highly popular beverage attributed with almost supernatural health-giving properties, followed soon after, on the grounds of water purity standards. And the trade war has gone both ways: Georgians have to make do with domestically-made vodka and inferior Ukrainian chocolate, rather than the better quality Russian brands.

Increasingly, choice and circumstance are redirecting Georgia’s economy toward the West and away from Russia. Georgian railways will soon be managed by a British firm and Turkey is currently Georgia’s chief trading partner. The Russian language is no longer taught in most Georgian schools, and a new generation is emerging with English as their second language. All of these signs might suggest that any residual Russo-Georgian friendship or sense of shared destiny has been consigned to the bonfire of history. Indeed, President Saakashvili continues to describe Russia as “the enemy” while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev asserts that normal relationships are impossible as long as Saakashvili remains in power.

Yet nothing is written in stone. President Saakashvili will not be able to hang on to power forever and his successor may well be more compromising. And, with time, even Russia’s ruling tandem may soften to a pro-American state clutched to its Caucasian underbelly.

And then there are the Olympics. In February 2014, the Olympic Winter Games will take place in Sochi, on the Russian Black Sea coast, an area that borders both Abkhazia and Georgia. Russia is staking a large measure of its international prestige on the successful execution of these games, and it is no small fact that they will be proceeding near the geographical epicenter of Russo-Georgian tensions. Perhaps this fact alone will lead to some form of reconciliation. To quote one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century, Ukrainian pole vaulter and Soviet Olympic Gold medalist (1988) Sergei Bubka, “The Olympics are always a special competition. It is very difficult to predict what will happen.” RL