The Secessions of Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh

8/14/2019 The Secessions of Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh

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The Secessions of Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh.The Roots and Patterns of Development of post-Soviet Micro-secessions in

Transcaucasia.

Alexander Murinson

Central Asian Survey, 1465-3354, Volume 23, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 5 26

I would like to gratefully acknowledge B. George Hewitts perusal and his thoughtful

comments.

Introduction

The Soviet leadership announced the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics on December 25th, 1991. On that day, the last multiethnic empire ceased to

exist.1 With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western public opinion recognized the

end of the age of Empires. Perhaps this chapter of human history has been closed

prematurely? The human tragedies perpetrated by the extinct empires continue to

haunt humankind as the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and Transcaucasia

have illustrated recently. The ethno-national conflict, secessions and micro-

nationalisms are of vital concern to the intergovernmental and international

organizations which are required by their Charter to secure peace between nations and

to safeguard the rights of ethnic minorities. Some believe it is the responsibility of the

international community to find an equitable solution to these major crises out of purely

humanitarian or communitarian considerations.2

Using Randle's classification, one can identify the end of the age of the Empires as the

primary issue, which has continued to affect the global state system since the end of

World War I.3 However, the secondary issue, but most resistant to social or political

engineering and threatening the concept of state sovereignty itself, is the issue of

micro-secessions. How these issues will be resolved, most likely will determine the

constitution and membership of the state system in the 21st century. The Foreign

Minister of the Republic of Nagorny Karabagh, Arkadi Ghukasian noted in this regard,


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If we watch the ethnic conflicts closely, we can see that the international community protects the

rights of states and not the rights of peoples. We were the first, and I believe that is good,

because the same processes are now happening on a different level. The international

community is quite busy with the conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya and Abkhazia. I think the Serbs

[sic] and Abkhazs are very close to receiving their desired goals. Of course, this will have an

effect on the status of Karabagh.4

The successor states of the former Soviet Union have recently began to face the

problems associated with nation- and state-building.5 These problems often manifest

themselves as traumatic, violent political, territorial and ethnic crises. Secession is just

one of the forms of ethno-national conflict which became prevalent in the territory of the

former Soviet Union. By December 1991, there were 164 secessions, ethno-territorial

conflicts and claims on the territory of the collapsing Soviet Empire.6

The proliferation of micro-secessionist movements in many parts of the world and the

search for self-determination by numerically small ethnic minorities still awaits definitive

theoretical explanation.7 In this paper an alternative model of post-Soviet secession will

be presented. This model is a modification of the Birch and Heraclides models. Using

the structural-normative model, a comparative analysis of post-Soviet secession will be

offered on the examples provided by the secessions of Abkhazia and Nagorny

Karabagh. These two cases deserve study because they share many common

features with the other significant secession in the area - the secession of the

Chechen-Ichkeria, and another post-Communist secession conflict in Bosnia-

Herzegovina.

The dissolution of the Ottoman, Persian and Russian empires, and recently the Soviet

Empire, has left a lasting and profound imprint on the fate of the peoples of


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southeastern Europe and the Caucasus. The numerous acts of genocide and

expulsions, the exchanges of ethnic populations between the Russian, the Ottoman

Empire and the Persian empires in the 18th and19th centuries and the Soviet empire in

the 20th century drastically reshaped the demographic and ethnic compositions of many

micro regions of this predominantly mountainous territory over the last three centuries.

These imperial policies, directed at subjugation and control of ethnic or religious

minorities and later their homogenisation in the colonial administrative units, have sown

the seeds of the intense interethnic animosities. As soon as the Communist totalitarian

control started to erode, they have borne their fruit in Bosnia and the Caucasian region

as well as in Moldova, Kosovo, Macedonia.

This article will focus on the factors which are disregarded in some explanatory models

of secession to account for the peculiarities of post-Soviet secessions. The delimitation

of the volume of the article allows only for a cursory treatment of such substantive

issues, such as patterns of development of secessionist movements and their

consequences. Many serious discrepancies in the historical accounts of the recent and

not-so-recent events relating to the regions under consideration also complicated the

writing of this article, but, hopefully, will not prove insurmountable. The lack of

published economic, socio-demographic data on the non-titular nationalities of the

former Soviet republics limited the possibilities for more exhaustive analysis of the

ethnic mobilization of minorities caused by the modernization of Soviet society.8

SECESSION VERSUS THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION IN

INTERNATIONAL AND SOVIET LAW.

Alex Heraclides defined secession stricto sensu as a special kind of territorial

separatism which results in a formal declaration of independence by the region of a

state.

9

Ralp Premdas called secession:...an ultimate act of alienation...from the existing state, secession may result in the emergence of aninternational unit possessing all attributes of a sovereign state - territory, people, government, autonomy.


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Or it may as a temporary measure settle for internal self- government within an extensively decentralized

system such as a federal or confederal state.10

The same author also expressed another view of secession as "a social process

constituted of steps and stages, cumulative and precipitating causes, displaying

patterns of accommodation and intransigence."11 The last definition seems be the most

satisfying because it reflects the multi-variate nature of secession. The objective of a

secessionist movement is usually territorial autonomy.

Secessions threaten the international system, based on the primacy of state

sovereignty, created as a result of World War I. Although the Peace of Westphalia had

already established the European Christian state system, only at the beginning of the

20th century a truly global constitution of the state system was created.12 The

principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity were adopted in international law

and later stipulated in the UN Charter in 1947. The Helsinki Accords of 1975 reiterated

the principle of the inviolability of state boundaries established after the Second World

War in Europe.13 But the promulgation in international law of the right to self-

determination of peoples came to serve as the main legal principle to the realization of

which all secessionist movements have aspired. Some legal experts believe that this

right was recognized in several documents of international law as legally binding.14

However, the principle of self-determination, stipulated in the UN Charter, proclaims it a

right only with regard to the colonies of the Western powers and the Trust territories

administered by the UN Trusteeship Council. International law interprets this principle

in a strict sense, i.e. only the people living in the entities mentioned in the UN Charter

can exercise the right for self-determination. International law has nothing to say about

the right for self-determination for territories of federated states or metropolitan states in

Europe. The 1970 UN Declaration authoritatively prohibits any right of secession from

an independent state and condemns any action aimed at the partial or total disruption


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of the national unity or territorial integrity of any other states or the country. This leaves

the issue of self-determination for the peoples of the former USSR uncertain.

Both secessionist movements in Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh appealed to the

Leninist principle of self-determination. 15 But these secession movements could not

secede in accordance with Soviet law. The right of secession, albeit symbolically

guaranteed by the Soviet Constitution, was granted only to the Soviet Union republics

such as Georgia and Azerbaijan. 16 So neither the autonomous republic of Abkhazia,

nor the autonomous region of Nagorny Karabagh (NKAO) could appeal to it.

Before the dissolution of the USSR, the Abkhazian secessionist leaders demanded on

several occasions the restoration of the status of Abkhazia as the Soviet Socialist (or a

Union) republic, which it had enjoyed prior to 1931, and secession from Georgia . In

August 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Abkhazia declared the sovereignty of the

republic.17

Whereas the population of the rest of Georgia, including Adzharia, boycotted all-Union

referendum on the preservation of the USSR on March 17, 1991, Abkhazia took part in

the plebiscite.18 Only 52% of the total population of the Abkhazian Autonomous

republic participated in the referendum, and 94.4% voted "Yes". 19 By this vote the

majority of the population affirmed their desire to prevent the secession of Abkhazia as

part of Georgia from the USSR. But Georgia declared its independence on March

31st, 1991.

When the central government of the Georgian Republic reinstated its 1921 constitution,

which effectively put Abkhazia under its direct rule, the Abkhazian parliament defiantly

reinstated its 1925 Constitution on July 7th, 1992. Abkhazian parliamentarians

declared that Abkhazia and its autonomous status were not mentioned in the GeorgianConstitution.20 On the basis of the 1925 Abkhazian Constitution, Abkhazia was united


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with the Georgian Republic by a special Union-treaty. Article 5 of the 1925 Constitution

included a provision for the right of free secession both from Transcaucasian

Federation of which it was a member and the USSR.21

At that stage, the Abkhazian leadership intended to renegotiate Abkhazia's legal

relationship with the Georgian side. Meanwhile, they adopted a national flag, and

national emblem. The Abkhazian ASSR was renamed the Republic of Abkhazia. The

Abkhazian leader Vladislav Ardzinba stressed that this action should not be regarded

as the declaration of secession. But on August 14th Georgian troops invaded Abkhazia,

and the status quo was broken.22

The Karabaghists tried to secede from the Azerbaijani SSR and reunify with the

Republic of Armenia "...in order to correct the error committed during the 1920s in

determining the territorial status of Karabagh."23 On 20th of February 1988, the

regional Soviet of Karabagh adopted a resolution which called for "a positive decision

concerning the transfer of the region from the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR."

24 After the central Soviet authorities failed to give a clear response to their decision, the

Armenians of Karabagh declared unilateral secession. Nagorny Karabagh seceded

from Azerbaijan on the basis of their right to self-determination in July of 1988. This

decision was unprecedented in Soviet history. 25 On December 10th, 1991, Nagorny

Karabagh held an independence referendum in which 82% of all voters participated,

and 99% voted for independence. On January 6th, 1992, the leaders of

Nagorno-Karabagh declared independence as the Republic of Nagorny Karabagh

(RNK). This independence is not widely recognized.

THE ALTERNATIVE THEORIES OF SECESSION.

A group of Russian sociologists concluded that the current conflicts in the Caucasus,including the secessions in Georgia and Azerbaijan, had an exclusively economic


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nature.26 They argued such variables as property rights and natural resources were

important. They claimed that the problems of the preservation of ethnic identity, cultural

heritage and national education "to a large extent lost their urgency." 27 It was

abundantly clear that this conclusion of an economically reductionist nature was to be

expected from ex-Soviet political scientists steeped in Marxist dogma.28 Another

Russian expert came to the conclusion that the secession in Abkhazia was the result of

a collusion of the old Russian and Abkhazian Communist elites.28 Such instrumentalist

views of secession and ethnic mobilization can find their systematic treatment in works

by Paul Brass and John Breuilly, but the secession movements in question may have a

complex aetiology.30

Among a number of competing theories about the genealogy of secession three main

currents of thought have developed. In this article the predictive power of these

theories will be assessed by using a typology of the rational choice explanation versus

the structural-normative explanation on the examples provided by the secessions of

Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh. The Horowitz model belongs to the first category.31

The Heraclides model and the Birch model of secession will belongs to the second

category. After a critical comparison of the major alternative theories of Donald

Horowitz, Alex Heraclides and Anthony Birch, a modified model, which combines some

features of the Birch and Heraclides models, will be proposed.

Donald Horowitz constructed an explanatory matrix for the process and timing of

secession based on the typology of the backwardness or advancement of the

communities and regions concerned.32 Gellnerian thinking served as the theoretical

foundation for his model. Horowitz also used elements of the rational choice theory for

construction of his matrix. The Horowitz model can be valid in some cases ofsecession, but it can be of tenuous relevance in others.


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Among the post-Soviet secessions, the Abkhazian secession fits fairly well into

Horowitz's framework with some qualifications. The Abkhazians, as a minority group in

the Georgian SSR, were economically underdeveloped and culturally underprivileged.

The Abkhazian agricultural sector was larger compared with the national average in the

Georgian republic (33.2% versus 28% of total employment in 1978), whilst employment

in industry lagged behind (13.7% versus 19.5% of total employment in the same

year).33 As a result of the uneven distribution of investment in industry and

infrastructure by the Georgian central authorities, the Abkhazian ASSR suffered

chronically from disinvestment.34 Judging by these socio-economic criteria, the

Abkhazians were a backward group.

In its economic development, the Georgian republic occupied an intermediate position

between Armenia, which was the most advanced, and Azerbaijan, which was the most

backward of the Transcaucasian republics. But, as an economic region, Transcaucasia

was backward compared with other regions of the former USSR.35

In accordance with Horowitz's prediction, the Abkhazians originally expressed a desire

to join the Russian Federation, because Russia symbolized protection against the

imperialist claims of the nationalist leaders of the "Round Table", the first independent

political bloc in Georgia. A would-be president of the Georgian republic, Zviayd

Gamsakhurdia, declared: "The Abkhaz nation historically never existed." At the

nationalist rallies in Tbilisi on April 8 th, 1989, leaflets were distributed which said: "Let

Abkhazians immediately leave the territory of Georgia and let us annul the autonomy of

Abkhazia."36 The Abkhazian leadership had expressed the secessionist aspirations

quite early, even before the official break-up of the Soviet Union. The symbolic issue of

the preservation of Abkhazian language as the official one in the autonomous republic

also figured prominently among the demands of the leaders of the secessionistmovement as the Horowitz matrix predicted.37 The original Abkhazian demand for the


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federal relationship within an independent Georgia also went unheeded by Zviyad

Gamsakhurdia's government as the model predicted.

However, the Abkhazian case also diverged from Horowitz's scenario of secession.

After a major ethnic conflagration in Abkhazia in 1978, when demands for secession

were raised by a group of leading Abkhazian intellectuals, the central Georgian

authorities made significant concessions in cultural, educational and the cadre policy.

As a result, the Abkhazians in the late 80s were overrepresented in the bodies of

authority, administration and the Communist party in relation to their proportion in the

total population. Forty percent of the official positions were filled by the ethnic

Abkhazians, when they constituted only 17% of the total population.38 According to

this indicator, the Abkhazian case deviated from Horowitz's matrix.39

The objection to the Horowitz model is also sustained by the evidence from another

region in Georgia. The autonomous republic of Adzharia (also a less developed region

of the Georgian SSR) suffered not only from the imbalance in the staffing of high civil

service positions by outsiders, but also from significant in-migration of skilled labour

from other parts of the Soviet Union in the same period.40 But no secessionist

movement has developed in Adzharia.

Applying the Horowitz model to the secession in Nagorny Karabagh, one finds a

significant disparity between the model's prediction and the test case. The Armenians

of Karabagh have a self-image of the "advanced group". They have a high level of

educational achievement and are generally representative of the Soviet middle class by

socio-economic indicators.41 Many members of the Soviet Armenian cultural and

intellectual elite were born and grew up in Karabagh. 42

Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union was considered a backward region. TheAzerbaijan SSR had one of the lowest levels of urbanization among the Soviet


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Republics. In 1985, 30% of Azerbaijani population were occupied in agriculture .43

However, despite the high economic costs of the political disintegration and the

expected breakdown of regular trade and the energy network that connected the

Armenian enclave with an outside world, the Armenian population overwhelmingly

voted for self-determination even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to

Horowitz's matrix, the advanced group in a backward region would have to forego the

high opportunity cost in seeking secession.44. The timing of secession must be late,

which also contradicts the fact of the early Karabagh secession.45

Arguably, Horowitz built an escape clause in his theory by stating that: "The conditions

that promote a disposition to secede, though derived from group and regional position,

are subject to intervention and deflection."46 He also mentioned that political factors

served as an independent variable for regions, which did not fit his model. By stating

this, Horowitz tacitly admitted his reservations about his own model. The Horowitz

typology appears to be economically deterministic. It also considers exogenous and

historical reasons, which are always most salient for secession, only as a footnote.

Heraclides' model of the "aetiology" of secession seems to me to be the most flexible

and open for empirical testing.47 In particular, he identified important structural factors

which can be observed in both the Bahamian and the Armenian secession cases.

Birch determined the normative preconditions of secessions which were also evident in

both secessions.

The models of Alex Heraclides and Anthony Birch were complementary in some

important elements. Whilst Heraclides proposed a more general model which includes

both structural and normative conditions of secession, Birch focused on secession's

normative criteria.


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Heraclides based his model on a premise derived from the Deutsch thesis "...that

national disintegration (leading to ethnic secession movements) occurs when

mobilization of the ethnic community occurs before its assimilation."48 Heraclides

advanced in his thesis the two preconditions for secession: external threats leading to

the ingroup-outgroup boundary formation and the type of policy chosen by the Centre

in order to resolve the ethnic conflict. He noted that the secessions in post-colonial

(most of them are in Asia and Africa), pseudo-federalist societies (such as the former

Yugoslavia or the former Soviet Union) and culturally biased democratic societies

(Canada, the United Kingdom) had their origins in the colonial policies and served as a

response to them. The policies of the Centre can be generally divided into policies of

denial of the separatist group as "a people or interlocuteur valable " and policies of

acceptance. The policy of denial almost certainly leads to the rise of secessionist

movement.49

According to Heraclides, the structural factors that determined the existence of

conditions for secessions were: 1) one territory and territorial base for a collectivity; 2)

existence of a sizable human grouping, the collectivity that defines itself as distinct; 3)

the type of relationship existing between the centre and this collectivity. Heraclides also

stressed that the perception of victimization, whether created by secessionist

propaganda or based in fact, is the most salient feature of secessionist movement. He

proposed a well-rounded thesis of secession which gives equal weight to structural

and primordial causes of secession.

Anthony Birch proposed a liberal theory of secession. 50 In my opinion, the third factor

in the Heraclides model essentially summarizes Birch's normative conditions of

secession. According to Birch, several factors provide the normative conditions for

secession from the liberal perspective. All of the normative conditions are present in

both the Abkhazian and Nagorny Karabagh secessions. However, these conditionsmay be necessary but not sufficient to cause secession.


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The apparent strengths of Anthony Birch's analysis of historical factors should be

noted. Among the factors, "which made minority nationalisms attractive", he listed a

number of factors. In particular, they include the impact of the modern means of

communication on, and the rise of the educated elites, among the ethnic minorities.51

The existence of such normative regimes as the OSCE and international organizations,

which protect minority rights, made the micro-secessions in the former Soviet Union, if

not feasible, at least, possible. However, Birch practically disregarded the role played in

secessions by geographical, demographic or primordial factors.

Birch also stressed the significance of a specific "eruptive" event or factor which usually

triggers the massive drive for secession. This factor can be of social or economic

character and has important implications for the process of secession. The impact of

the communitarian ideology on the rise of secessionist movements, mentioned in

Birch's model was also very salient for secession movements in Transcaucasia. Other

correlates of secessions, indicated by Birch, are important, but they have secondary

significance.

Heraclides's analysis is useful as a framework for broader understanding of various

mechanisms of secession that arise in modern societies. But an analysis that

combines structural and normative factors has better predictive power. An explanation

of the specific features of post-Communist secessions also necessitates an

introduction of additional causal and intervening variables.

It seems that in order to construct a better model of explanation of post-Communist

secessions a modification of the Heraclides and the Birch models is required. The

model proposed in this article combines the elements of the two aforementioned to

models and focuses on the following independent variables or causes: the impact ofthe imperial policies of control; the failures of the nation- and state-building by the


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states concerned in the period of interregnum (in the case of post-Soviet secessions

the period between the Russian Revolution and the reintegration into the Soviet State;

in the case of the former Yugoslavia the period between the collapse of the Hapsburg

empire and World War II); the failures of the (Communist) Soviet nationality policies.

The common patterns of development (intervening variables) include: breach of a

treaty (treaties) or military conquest by the centre ; policies of denial by the titular

nationality, and cultural genocide which represents a threat to the survival of distinct

ethnic language and culture; continuous political demands for secession to the Soviet

government; nationalist discourse of the dominant nationality in the wake of

independence52 ; demonstration effect; eruptive event. The consequences (dependent

variables) of post-Soviet secessions are: military conflicts at the stage of mediation

between the centre and the seceded entity; mass ethnic expulsions; separate episodes

of genocide or voluntary flights of the threatened civilian population.

The Two Cases of Post-Soviet Secession.

Recent history has demonstrated the failure of the Leninist-Stalinist programme of

assimilation of the peoples of the Russian empire into the unified, monocultural entity of

the Soviet people. The three new Transcaucasian states joined the United Nations as

full and sovereign members in 1992. All of the post-Communist states to a various

degrees are plagued by the problems associated with the post-colonial state-building.

In the Caucasus, these problems have become particularly poignant, not only because

both the Tsarist and Soviet authorities had applied and institutionalised the imperial

policies with a particular severity in that region,53 but also because the populations in

this multiethnic region preserved very strong ethnic and cultural identities. 54 Another

peculiarity of the region is the vital tradition of tribal and clan affiliations. For example,

the Adygh peoples of the north-western Caucasus, with their kin, the Abkhazians,consider their people as an extended genetically-related kin-group.55


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All Caucasian, but Different.

Despite the fact that the observed cases of secession occurred in a single region,

Transcaucasia, they are worthy of comparative study because the regions concerned

exhibit a number of significant differences.

Myths or historically corroborated precedents of statehood are an important factor in

the development of a secessionist movement. 55 It provides the secessionist movement

with the territorial focus and aspirations for the renaissance of the "old" state as their

goal. The Abkhazians in this regard present a much stronger case than the Karabagh

Armenians.

Abkhazia constituted a sovereign principality before its annexation by the Russian

empire. The Abkhazians enjoyed independent statehood, until their principality by the

voluntary act of the ruler, Prince Saphar Bey Shervashidze (Chachba), became a

subject of the Russian empire in 1810.56 The kingdom of Georgia, inclusive of the

historical Kartli-Kakheti, became a Russian subject (1801) separately and earlier than

the Abkhazian principality. After the Bolshevik revolution Abkhazia formed an

independent state within the North Caucasus Confederation in 1917. In 1918, the

Mensheviks gained power in Georgia and claimed Abkhazia as a part of the Republic

of Georgia. When the Bolsheviks took control of the whole of Transcaucasia in 1921,

Abkhazia was declared the Abkhazian Soviet Socialist Republic, a titular national

republic

The period of the union of Artsakh (the Armenian place name that incorporated

Nagorny Karabagh) with the ancient Armenian kingdom is removed into the primordial

past and is highly contested by Azerbaijanis.

57

But it is established that in 426 A.D.,with the fall of the Great Armenian Kingdom, it was occupied by the (Persian)


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Sasanids. Later, the Armenian melikates (fiefdoms) of the Karabagh plateau became

vassals of the Persian Safavid Shahs.

From the beginning of the 18th century, under the rule of Turkish khans of Shushi

Karabakh, they preserved a partial independence. However, the meliks did not

possess full sovereignty over the Karabagh territory. When the Russian Empire

annexed the terrirory of Nagorny Karabagh by the Treaty of Gulistan (1813), it was

ruled by the Turkish Khan Ibraghim. When the khanates of Yerevan and Nakhichevan

were joined together to form the imperial Yerevan province, a precursor of the

independent Armenian state, Karabagh became a part of the Yelisavetpol province.

Under the Tsarist regime, the only institutional tie which linked all Armenian

communities in Transcaucasia was not a political one, but the religious jurisdiction of

the Katholikos (Archbishop) of the Armenian Church in Echmiadzin.58

Nagorny Karabagh declared its de facto independence on August 5th, 1918 before its

occupation by the "white" Azeri-Turkish forces on August 22nd, 1919.59 When the

Turkish troops came to "help" to found the Republic of Azerbaijan, the independence-

seeking Nagorny Karabagh and other mixed Armenian-Turkish areas (Nakhichevan

and Zanzegur) were occupied.

In demographic and institutional terms, both seceding communities also differ. The

Abkhazians before the secession represented clearly a minority in their own republic.

There were only 97,000 (17.8%) Abkhazians out of the total population of 525,000

(1989) in the Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, while the Kartvelians

(Georgians and Mingrelians) comprised a majority with 250,000 or 46% of the

population. But their republic possessed a status of the second order division in the

Soviet federal system. The Abkhazian ASSR had the same type of government

institutions (a Supreme Soviet, ministries, etc.) as the titular nationality.

60


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Whilst the Armenians represented the overwhelming majority in the seceding region, it

had a status of a third order division. Its regional council possessed very limited

authority. Nagorny Karabagh had a population of approximately 200,000 people, 75%

of whom were Armenian. The remaining 25% were mainly Azeri.61

There are marked geo-political differences between the regions. Abkhazia has a

compact territory, adjacent to the Russian Federation, on the coastal plain of the Black

Sea. Its access to the sea and the possession of the major seaport of Sukhum

represent important assets which both its neighbours, Russia and Georgia, covet.

Linguistically and culturally, the Abkhazians are related to the Muslim peoples of the

North Caucasus, which belong to the Abazgo-Cherkess language group.62

Armenian Nagorny Karabagh is a high-land landlocked enclave separated by 10-mile

corridor from the Armenian republic. It has an area of about 1,700 square miles.

Karabagh represents the easternmost tip of the Armenian plateau. It disrupts an ethno-

cultural continuity of the Muslims in Azerbaijan and Turkey. 63

Religious factors play a more prominent role in the secession from Shiate Azerbaijan

by Christian Armenians. The Armenians perceive themselves as an island of

Christinity in a sea of Muslims. Abkhazians are predominantly Orthodox Christians

(60%) and the rest are Sunni Muslims (40%).64 But the Georgian nationalists branded

in their rhetoric the leadership and the whole population of secessionist Abkhazia as

"the Muslims republic."65

Why did the secessions occur?

Tsarist policies.


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The pursuit of the imperial policies in the region under consideration is one of the

important causative variables in the study of secessions. Generally, the impact of the

policies that imperial powers adopt in the process of the "empire-building and

empire-maintenance" has a direct relevance for the study of secessions in the

post-Soviet space.66 The policies of genocide, mass population transfers and their

exchange, and the use of religious or ethnic animosities among multiethnic populations

of colonies always serve imperial political ends. Historically, the policies of control

affected numerically small ethnic minorities in a qualitatively different way from large

ethnic groups. They put small minorities at risk of physical extinction. They also

produce deep psychological traumas and entrenched suspicions of the dominant

groups among the members of the minorities. Eventually, the policies of control

produce a strong urge for the minority's secession because the minority feels that self-

government and political independence are the only safeguards for its physical and

communal survival.

Abkhazia was the self-contained homeland of such peoples of the Caucasus as the

Abkhaz-Abazinians; the Ubykhs (near Sochi), Sadzs, and Shapsugs (a sub-group of

the Cherkes people). Most of these peoples are almost fully extinct (or assimilated)

now as a result of the Russian (and Soviet) genocide and forced expulsions in the 19th

century. Before the conversion to Islam in the 16th century, the Abkhazians were

predominantly Christians. The Abkhazians preserved the respect for Christianity even

after the adoption of Islam. The Russian authorities used this receptive attitude toward

Christian religion as an instrument of the their imperial policy at the first stage of ther

colonial annexation of Abkhazia.67

The Russian empire vied for domination over the western Caucasus with the Ottoman

Empire since the beginning of 19th century. In 1810, Abkhazia voluntarily succumbed

to the Russian Empire, after Prince Saphar Bey (baptised as Georgy) Shervashidze(Chachba) asked for the Russian protection.68 But soon, the Abkhazian Islamized tribes


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of the Ubykhs and Shapsugs rose in a series of anti-Russian rebellions of 1824, 1844

and 1857. During the Crimean war (1855-1856), Abkhazia had been occupied by the

Turkish troops. The Tsarist authorities made a groundeless accusation that Abkhazia

was occupied because of the collaboration of the local population. After the occupation

of Abkhazia in 1864, the Russian troops began the first campaign of the deportations of

the Abkhazian population.69 Alexandre Bennigsen characterized this Russian imperial

policy as the "genocide by expulsion."70 The forced expulsions of the Abkhazians

continued in 1875-1879. So that by the end of the 19th century they made up only over

53% out of 106,200 of the population of Abkhazia.71 According to an Abkhazian

historian, an estimated 400,000 Abkhazians from the regions of Dal, Tsabala, Pskhu,

Gagra were forced to resettle in Turkey. 72

The Russian government also practised frontier genocide.73 As thousands of

Abkhazians had left for Turkey, those who remained were deprived of their best land.

Between 1861 and 1865, 16000 Russian families, including 150 officers were resettled

in the vacated territory.74

The Russian administration used the Russian Orthodox and Georgian Churches in its

imperial design of colonizing the local population. In order to Christianise Abkhazia,

the government used the directed policy of settlement of Christians, predominantly

Georgians, Armenians, Greeks and Russians into the vacated towns and villages,

whilst excluding the Jews and Muslims .75

The Government-sponsored Society for the

Reconstruction of the Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus (SFOCIC) was created in

1868. The use of Georgian as the language of prayer and proselytism, however,

proved counterproductive. It alienated the predominantly paganistic and Islamised

Abkhazian population which did not know the language. The roots of the sensitivity to

linguistic issues in the current secessionist movement in Abkhazia might have been

planted at this period.


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Tsarist government used Georgian nobility as a proxy in its imperial policies. Georgian

nobles were assigned to the high positions in the local administration and civil service.

Many Georgian public figures called for further colonization of Abkhazia at the end of

the 19th century. Georgy Tsereteli wrote,

There is no more the former population of the Abkhazians or Circassians here. Circumstances

made them leave their own country. There is too much land here, even more than one can

expect. What do our people think of it, why haven't they explored it yet? Is it difficult for them to

leave the area, wherever they are? Isn't the Caucasus is ours? 76

As a result of the organized settlement of Kartvelians (Georgians, Mingrelians) in

Abkhazia, their population there increased from 4,600 in 1886 to 25,000 in 1895.77

In the pursuit of the domination of south-eastern Transcaucasia, which was under the

sovereignty of the Persian empire, the Russian imperial rulers sought allies among

their Armenian coreligionists in the area. When the Persian Safavid Empire entered its

stage of decay, the Ottoman Turks and the Russian Empire started to compete for the

possession of Nagorny Karabagh. Beginning with their rebellion in 1722, the ChristianArmenians of Nagorny Karabagh sought support for their independence from their

Islamic rulers and appealed to Russian tsars. The Armenians of the five meliks

(fiefdoms) of Karabagh were used by the Russian imperial policy-makers as the

guardians of Russian interest in this part of Transcaucasia.78 After the conquest of the

Nagorny Armenian enclave by the Turks in the 1750s, the khanate of Shushi-Karabagh

was established. The Russians encouraged the insurgent activity of the Armenian

meliks of Karabagh between 1780-1784. In response, the first significant campaign of

physical persecutions of Armenians was conducted by the Turkish Khan Ibraghim. 79

When the Russian Empire annexed the khanate of Karabagh by the Treaty of Gulistan

(1813), the Armenian population of the melikates had been depleted, but had not

disappeared. Thousands of the Armenian refugees, fleeing the persecution, migrated

from eastern Turkey to Karabagh at the invitation of the Russian authorities in the 19 th


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century. Between 1823 and 1897, the Armenian population of Karabagh increased

from 30,850 to 106,363, whilst the Tartar (Azerbaijani) population only increased from

5,370 to 20,409.80

The Tsarist government manipulated ethnic and religious animosities in the region to

consolidate its rule. In the wake of the 1905 Russian revolution, the massacre of

Armenians by Azeri Turks occurs in Baku with the connivance of the Russian

authorities. As a result, 30,000 Armenians were murdered.81

The Turkish atrocities against Armenians of 1915-16 only strengthened mutual hatred

and suspicion of the Armenian and Azeri Turkish communities of Transcaucasia. The

interethnic violence erupted again with the dissolution of the Russian Empire. When

the Russian troops withdrew from the Caucasian front in 1918, the Turkish troops

crossed the border and instigated the pogroms of the local Armenians in Baku by the

Azeri Turkish militants. 82

Failures of Nation- and State-Building.

The Caucasus is one the most multiethnic regions in the world. After its incorporation

into the Empire in the 19 th century, Tsarist government purposefully divided the Nagorny

Karabagh region into provinces which incorporated several different peoples and

contrasting topographical formations. The boundaries between the provinces had been

continuously redrawn. When the Russian empire collapsed, no true ethnic

administrative boundaries existed. This led to the very complicated process of nation-

and state- building among the Transcaucasian states, which had separated from

Bolshevik Russia.

The failures of nation-building in Georgia and Azerbaijan during the period ofinterregnum are important causative factors of the secessions of Abkhazia and


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Nagorny Karabagh. Quite predictably, the historical memories of the events in the

immediate post-Revolutionary period were revived by the nationalist discourses

adopted by the government of Zviayd Gamsakhurdia in Georgia and Abulfaz Elchibey

in Azerbaijan in the late 80s. The post-Revolutionary governments of the independent

republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan as well as the post-Communist nationalist leaders

of both republics adopted the policies of forced national integration. These policies

ranged from attempts of forced assimilation to genocide.

In their attempts at nation-building, the post-Revolutionary regimes in Transcaucasia

continued largely the policies of control inherited from their Tsarist predecessors. After

the new nationalist regimes had briefly consolidated their power in Tbilisi and Baku, in

the period between 1918 and 1921, they had neither created democratic mechanisms

nor adopted policies for the protection of the communal rights of minorities. The

Georgian Constitution, which included some guarantees of minority rights, was adopted

only in February of 1921, on the eve of the Bolshevik intervention.

The Menshevik government of Noe Zhordania relied more on the policies of state

terrorism, forced cultural assimilation, and accelerated settlement of Georgians and

Mingrelians to change the demographic balance in Abkhazia in favor of its Kartvelian

residents.83 As a result of the Menshevik government -sponsored settlement policies,

the population of Abkhazia dramatically increased. ( See Table 1 )

Leon Trotsky, in his account of post-Revolutionary Georgia, noted the atrocities

against the Abkhazian population perpetrated by the Menshevik General Mazniev's

special forces. He remarked that Mazniev's punitive actions surpassed in their brutality

the Tsarist regime's treatment of the Abkhazians.84 A British correspondent in Tbilisi

commented about Menshevik Georgia in 1919,


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In a year or two Georgia has traversed the long road from a colony of Russsia to a small empire

of her own. The difference between the Georgian attitude toward Abkhazia, or Ajaristan, and the

attitude of Russia toward Georgia, or Armenia, was not one of principle but of scale. In their own

backyard, the Georgians proved to be as imperialistic as the Russians.84

The Armenians of Karabagh sympathized with the Baku Commune, created in 1918,

because it was led by the Armenian Bolsheviks. The "white" National-Turkish

government of Azerbaijan, with the tacit approval of the British government, occupied

Nagorny Karabagh and forced its leadership to recognize their military authority over

the region in August of 1919.85

The conflict over Karabagh flared up again in 1920 as aresult of the Armenian massacre perpetrated by the Turkish army of Nuri Pasha in

Shushi. 86

How It Was Done?: Soviet Nationality Policies.

The policies of the past seventy years, directed at the building of the unitary multiethnic

state, the Soviet Union, emulated , in the main, the imperial policies of tsarist Russia.

In many cases, the Soviet authorities even outdid their predecessors in the

thoroughness and the scale of the measures they undertook to pursue their nationality

policies. But Lenin and Stalin introduced an important innovation in their nationality

policies. They institutionalised ethno-territorial divisions with the creation of the quasi-

federal Soviet state system in 1921, a policy which proved fatal in the long run.87

The Soviet federative system was based on complete cultural and linguistic autonomy

of the new territorial units. But they were not granted effective political sovereignty.

Lenin and Stalin realized that the cultural autonomy would provide legitimacy among,

and attract to the Bolshevik cause, the peoples which had not had any statehood or

any form of self-government in the Russian empire. The architects of the Soviet regime

constructed the federative constitution which allowed the most effective control over

organizational means (local institutions of authority), political entrepreneurship,


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mobilizational resources (mass media, education and publishing) in the created

administrative national units. Within each Union republic, the titular nationality was

granted exclusive authority in education, linguistic, affirmative action, cultural and

economic policy.

In a classic divide-and-rule fashion, the Soviet central authorities charged the titular

nationalities with the imposition and the maintenance of control over the ethnic

minorities in the respective Soviet Union republics.88 It was the particular systems of

control adopted by the titular nationalities in their republics, in my opinion, which

eventually drove Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh to the declaration of their

secession, when the Soviet regime began to disintegrate.

The policies of the Soviet government were directed at the preservation of the ethnic

animosities and continuous Russification of the populations in the Union republics. The

local party cadres of the titular nationality in the Union republics, however, were

allowed to pursue the national policies of forced assimilation, demographic dilution and

cultural genocide of the ethnic minorities within the framework of the Soviet

indigenisation (korennizatsia) policy.

After the establishment of the Bolshevik regime in 1921, Abkhazia was granted the

status of a Union republic and became part of the Transcaucasian Federated Soviet

Socialist Republic. Both Russian and Abkhazian were declared the official languages

in the republic. In 1926, Abkhazia joined the Georgian republic as a sovereign state on

the basis of recognition of equal rights. This status of Abkhazia as a treaty-republic

was enshrined in both Abkhazian and Georgian Constitutions of 1925. In the same

year, a Latin-based alphabet was created for the development of indigenous

literarure.89

When Stalin (an ethnic Georgian) gained absolute control of the Soviet state, he

demoted Abkhazia to the status of an autonomous republic within Georgia in 1931. By

this unwarranted act, the Union-treaty between Abkhazia and Georgia of 1925 was

abrogated. Lavrenti Beria (an ethnic Mingrelian) became the head of the Georgian

Communist Party and took charge of the nationality policy in Abkhazia. Between 1933

and 1953 (the year of Stalin's death), the Georgian authorities introduced and pursued


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a comprehensive integrationist anti-Abkhazian policy. This policy was based on the

cultural genocide and the mass settlement of Kartvelians in Abkhazia. This policy in

the cultural area included: the change of the Abkhazian script into Georgian; the

abolition of teaching of, and in, Abkhazian; the closing of Abkhazian schools; ban on

publication of literature in the Abkhazian language. In 1937-38, the Abkhazian cultural

and political elite was eliminated. During the same years, the Georgian authorities

revived the policy of Georgianization of Abkhazia.(See Table 1)

During the period of de-Stalinization, many prohibitions in the cultural area were lifted.

But Abkhazian-speaking students were deprived of access to the higher education in

the Georgian republic until 1978. Publication of books and periodicals in the Abkhazian

language, however, was promoted by the Soviet authorities. The policy of the ethnic

dilution by the Georgian titular nationality of the Abkhazian population continued until

the Gorbachev era.90 The cultural and demographic domination by Georgians in their

own republic led the Abkhazian political elite to demand secession from this "small

empire." According to Dominic and Anatol Lieven," Fear of cultural extinction was an

important factor in Abkhaz defence of their language, educational system, hold on

government jobs, and overall autonomy against Georgian pressure."91

It seems clear that the Bolsheviks used Nagorny Karabagh as a tool of imperialist

policy in the Transcaucasia. After the conquest of Nagorny Karabagh, the Bolshevik

government , at first, awarded it to Armenia for its support of the Red Army in 1920.

But a few months later, under pressure from Stalin, a resolution was adopted by the

Caucasian Bureau of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which

incorporated Nagorny Karabagh into Soviet Azerbaijan. On July 7 th, 1923, Nagorny

Karabagh was granted the status of an autonomous region (NKAO) within Azerbaijan.

Following the incorporation of Nagorny Karabagh, Azerbaijani authorities used a

number of discriminatory policies in effort to displace Armenians from the region. They

treated the autonomous region as an agricultural zone. The chronic low investment

hindered the development of industry in Nagorny Karabagh. When industrial

production in neighbouring Armenia increased 221-fold between 1913 and 1973,

compared with an 40-fold increase in Azerbaijan, it increased only 14.8-fold in the

NKAO.92 The Moscow authorities fostered a mutually exclusive conception of the


25/34

ethnic territory, but the central Azerbaijani authorities controlled the cadre policies in the

Armenian enclave, including the staffing of the NKAO local administration.

Azerbaijanis, as the titular nationality of the republic, controlled also cultural and

educational affairs in Nagorny Karabagh. As a result, Armenian schools were

dependent on the Azerbaijani Ministry of Education, where no one spoke Armenian.

The teaching of Armenian history was banned in high school, even though Armenian-

language instruction was allowed. The Armenian medieval monuments, khachkars or

'stone crosses' were left to decay. Television in the Armenian region was broadcast

only in Azeri or Russian.93

As a result of blocked social and economic mobility and the cultural repression, the

Armenians were migrating from Karabagh at an ever increasing rate.(See Table 2)

Since 1926 an average of 2,000 Armenians have left annually.94 An Armenian historian

called the policies of the cultural genocide committed by Azerbaijanis in the NKAO

"Nakhichevanization" of the territory. (Nakhichevan is a former Armenian ethnic

enclave ceded by the Soviet authorities to Azerbaijan in 1924).95

5.4. Incremental Secessions.

Originally, both secession movements in question had an incremental character.

Incremental secessions usually involve political activity of a violent or non-violent

nature aimed at a form of self-government or a merger with another state, but short of a

declaration of independence. The incremental stage in both Abkhazia and Nagorny

Karabagh spanned the period since their forced merger within the larger ethno-

territorial units of the Soviet Socialist Republics. In light of the negative demographic

trends, the nationality problems in the Abkhazian republic increasingly engaged native

Abkhazians with the Georgian plurality in Abkhazia, as well as with the government of

the Republic of Georgia. Ethnic disturbances and anti-Soviet riots occurred in

Abkhazia in 1957, 1967 and 1978.96 The Abkhazian separatist movement came into

being after the clashes with Georgians over the issue of the establishment of the

branch of Tbilisi University in Sukhumi in the summer of 1989.


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In Nagorny Karabagh, the Armenian representatives formally appealed to Khrushchev

for the reunification of Karabagh with Armenia in the 1960 s. Violent clashes with

Azerbaijanis took place in 1967. In 1977, an Armenian terrorist from Karabagh

exploded a bomb in the Moscow underground. Nagorny Karabagh declared its

independence after a series of pogroms against 400,000 Armenians resident in many

urban centres of Azerbaijan. In December of 1991, the Republic of Nagorny Karabagh

declared its independence.97

Concluding Remarks

This comparative analysis of two post-Soviet micro-secession has shown that the

general pattern of Soviet nationality policies have neither assuaged the perennial

animosities between the peoples of the Transcaucasus, nor erased the historical

memories of the atrocities committed against them by Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman

empire. Indeed, Stalin's harsh nationality policy, under the slogan of "proletarian

internationalism", not only failed to extinguish nationalist aspirations among the peoples

of the new Soviet empire, but engendered new ones. This has led many specialists to

believe that Soviet nationality policies preserved and indeed continuously amplified the

ethnic socio-psychological boundaries between the Soviet nationalities. 98

But it was the failures to establish cohesive nation-states in Transcaucasia during the

period of interregnum, which have led, in my view, to the violent secessionist

movements in Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh over recent years. The past attempts

at the forced assimilation and genocide of the ethnic minorities in the fledging states

shaped the attitude of these minorities toward the dominant ethnic groups. The militant

nationalist rhetoric and provocative actions of the Georgian and Azerbaijani leaders in

the post-Soviet period revived historical memories among the minority groups.

In conclusion, it appears that the economically reductionist models of ethnic

mobilization and secession failed not only to predict, but also to explain retrodictively

the genesis of secessionist movements in the post-Communist societies. The


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Heraclides model seems to be more satisfactory. But it fails to take into account the

impact of past failures of nation-building upon mobilized ethnic minorities. The

proposed modification of the Heraclides and Birch models needs a lot of improvement.

A further careful analysis is needed to substantiate this tentative conclusion. But one

historical phenomenon seems beyond doubt. When the Communist empire turned into

a "black hole", its ethnic minorities rekindled their claims for genuine self-determination.

ENDNOTES.

1 Read Brendan O'Leary's relevant criticism in his On the Nature of Nationalism, an

unpublished paper, 1995,p.39 of James Mayall.Nationalism and International

Society(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990),p.64.

2 See for example, Charles Beitz'sPolitical Theory and International Relations

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) and a collection of essays International

Ethics (Princeton: Princeton Univesity Press, 1985)eds. Charles Beitz & Alexander

Lawrence, et al.

3 An interesting theoretical insight into the changes of the global state-system was

provided by Robert Randle. He hypothesized that the resolutions of the international issues

define a constitution of the global state-system in hisIssues in the History of International

Relations(New York: Praeger,1987), p. XI.

4 Interview inRepublica Armeniya , February 24th,1995

5 Compare with the similar process in Northern Ireland in John

Mc Garry and Brendan O'Leary'sExplaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images,(Oxford:Basil Blackwell,1995),pp.348-351.

6 This group of authours compiled an atlas and an exchaustive compendium of

territorial claims and ethnonational conflicts in the former USSR in Ethno-Territorial

Conflicts and Boundaries in the Former Soviet Union,(Durham,U.K.: IBRU Press, 1992)

7 See the detailed classification of the mobililized ethnic minorities in Ted Gurr's

Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflict(Washington,D.C.,UnitedStates Institute of Peace Press,1993)

8 This is also noted by Gertrude Schroeder Nationality and the Soviet Economy in

The Soviet Nationality Reader, ed. Rachel Denber, (Boulder: Westview Press,1992),p.283.

9 See Alex Heraclides' The Self-Determination of Minorities in International Politics

,(London: Frank Cass,1992)

10 See Ralph Premdas' introductory chapter inSecession Movements in Comparative

Perspective,eds. Samarasinghe S.W.R de A. & Anderson, Allan, Premdas Ralph (London:

Pinter,1990,p.12.


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11 Ibid, p.14.

12 Randle, op. cit., p.45.

13 See the United Nations Human Rights Convention of 1966, Art.1, Paragraph 1 of the

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;a more explicit statement on the right of

self-determination is made in the Declaration of the UN General Assembly on 'Principles of

International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in

accordance with the Charter of the United Nations; the same right is reaffirmed as the eigth

principle in the CSCE-Final Act of 1975. The discussion of the application of this right in

Otto Luchterhandt'sNagorny Karabagh's Right to State Independence according to

International Law(Boston: Armenian Rights Council,1993),pp.10-12.

14 See Otto Luchterhandt,Ibid; Cristopher Walker's Armenia and Karabagh: the

Struggle for Unity, (London: Minority Rights Group,1991) Mutafian,op.cit.,p.115.

15 For an excellent treatment of Lenin's dialectical approach to the right of self-

determination see Walker Connor's Soviet Prototype in Denber, op.cit., pp.17-21.

16 Article 76 of the Soviet Constitution of 1978 states,A Union republic is a sovereignSoviet socialist state which has united with otherUnion republics into the Union of the

Soviet Socialist Republics.

17 A UNPO report stated the sovereignty proclaimed by the Supreme Soviet of the

Republic of Abkhazia was misinterpreted as the declaration of independence in the West.

The report, however, wrongly stated further that... in the Soviet legal use, all Soviet

Republics, even autonomous, were sovereign.... See Pauline Overeem's Report of a UNPOCoordinated Human Rights Mission to Abkhazia and Georgia; November/December

1993,The Hague, July 1994, p.11; cf. Article 82 of the Soviet Constitution of 1978.

18 Encyclopaedia of Conflicts,Disputes in Eastern Europe, Russia and the Successor

States,ed.Bogdan Szajkowski(High Harlow: Longman Current Affairs,1993),pp.1-2.

19 It is noteworthy that 45.7% of the population of Abkhazia identify themselves

ethnically as Georgians. This part of the population of Abkhazia most likely followed the

directives of the central Georgian authorities. See for details in the Apendix 1.

20 Actually Abkhazia was mentioned only once in the draft of the Georgian Constitution

adopted in 1921. The Chapter 11, Article 107 stated, Abkhasie (district of Sukhumi)...enjoys

an autonomy in the administration of their affairs. But in the next article, 108, the autonomy

was essentially suspended:...the statute concerning the autonomy of the district mentioned

in the previous article will be the object of special legislation. (See Appendix 6 in The

Georgian Question before the Free World(Paris: S.N., 1953),p.204.

21 See Report of a Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) mission to

Abkhazia, Georgia and the Northern Caucasus, November 1992, The Hague,p.13.


29/34

22 Jonathan Aves, Post-Soviet Transcaucasia (London: Royal Institute of International

Affairs, 1993),p.41.

23 See Decision of the Plenum of the Regional Committee of Mountainous Karabagh in

Appendix VIB ofThe Caucasian Knot, (London: Zed Books 1994), p.180.

24 Quoted in Mutafian,Ibid,p.149.

25 Quoted in Mutafian,Ibid,p.152

26 S.A. Arutyunov; Yu. D.Anchabadze; N.G. Volkova; et al.The Ethnopolitical Situation

in the Northern Caucasus in the Project on Ethnicity and Nationalism PublicationsSeries

on the INTERNET(International Research and Exchanges Board,1994),p.2.

27 Ibid,p.2.

28 A divergent analysis can be found in Robert Baumann's National Movements in TheTranscaucasus and Central Asia in The Soviet Empire: The Challenge of National and

Democratic Movements , ed.Uri Raanan (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books,1990),p.125.

29 See Svetlana Chervonnaya's Conflict in the Caucasus:Georgia, Abkhazia and the

Russian Shadow(London: Gothic Image Publications,1994)

30 For instrumentalist view of ethno-national conflict see for Paul Brass'sEthnicity and

Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (New Delhi: Sage Publications,1991) and John

Breuilly'sNationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993)

31 Compare Horowitz's reasoning about ethnic groups' competition with Michael Banton

in his Ethnic Groups and Rational Choice and the Theory of Rational Choice in UNESCO

Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (Paris: UNESCO, 1980)477 and Michael

Hechhter's A Theory of Group Solidarity in The Microfoundations of Macrosociology,ed.

Michael Hechter (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983),pp.16-57.

32 Horowitz, DonaldEthnic Group in Conflict, (Berkeley: University of California

Press,1985),pp.236-244.

33 B.Ashuba, N.Bushina, A.Gulia et al. The Problems of Development of the RegionalEconomy in the Abkhazian ASSR (Tbilisi: Ekonomika, 1982)p. 56.

34 For relevant comparisons see Darrell Slider Crisis and Response in Soviet

Nationality Policy: The case of Abkhazia in Central Asian Survey,1985, Vol.4,No.4,pp.51-

64.

35 See a detailed analysis in Gertrude Schroeder's Transcaucasus since Stalin: The

Economic Dimension inTranscaucasia: Nationalism and Social Change, ed.Ronald Suny,

(Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press,1983),pp.236-240.

36 See an exhaustive documentation on the extremely violent anti-Abkhazian rhetoric ofGeorgian nationalist leaders in the wake of the declaration of Georgian independence in


30/34

Anatoly Sobchak's The Tbilisi Fracture or the Bloody Sunday of 1989

(Moscow:Sretenie,1993)58-64) and Yegor Ligachev's The Tbilisi

Affair,(Moscow:Codex,1991),pp. 69-79.

37 Robert Baumann noted a high salience of the linguistic issue for the secession in

Abkhazia in his National Movements in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia: Moscow'sDilemma in The Soviet Empire: The Challenge of National and Democratic Movements,ed. Uri Raanan (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1990,pp.125-127.

38 Cited in the speech by the first secretary of the Georgian Communist party, Georgy

Gumbaridze,Pravdaof September 21, 1989; Read also the conclusion to Slider's, op.

cit.,pp.61-63.

39 See a well-developed cricitique by Walker Connor in his Eco-or ethno-nationalism?

inEthnic and Racial Studies, Vol.7,N3, 1984,343-356) with which I agree.

40 Theresa Rakowska-Harmstone The Dialectics of Nationalism in Denber,op.cit,p.401.

41 See for destails Levon Chorbaijan's Introduction in Levon Chorbaijan et al., The

Caucasian Knot,op.cit,p. 12.

42 See Ronald Suny'sLooking toward Ararat: Armenian Modern History

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993),p.194; Claude Mutafian's Karabagh in

Twentieth Century in The Caucasian Knot, 1994,pp.142-143.

43 Gertrude Schroeder in Denber,op.cit.,p.296

44 Horowitz predicted that the advanced group will secede if ... only economic cotsts

are low in Donald Horowitz,Ethnic Group in Conflict,op.cit., p.244.

45 See Table 3 in Ibidp.,270.

46 Ibid,p. 229.

47 See Alex Heraclides, The Self-Determination of Minorities in International

Politics,op.cit.,p.186.

47 Karl DeutschNationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, Mass.:M.I.T

Press,1996),p. 233.

49 Alex Heraclides,op.cit., p.191.

50 See Anthony Birch'sNationalism and National Integration (London: Hyman

Unwin,1989)

51 Anthony Birch,Ibid,p.69.


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52 A nationalist discourse includes such elements as ...ethnic or state symbols, historical

(or primordial) claims, character (pluralistic, ethno-national,etc.); coherence.- quoted from a

personal communication with Ronald G. Suny on March 9th, 1995.

53 For the details of the ethnocides and deportations in the Caucasus under tsarist

regime see Marie Broxup's The North Caucasian Barrier: The Russian Advance towardsthe Muslim World,(Hurst:London,1992). The Soviet atrocities with some statistical data are

documented in Robert Conquest's The Nation Killers- Soviet Deportations of Nationalities

(London: Macmillan, 1978) and Alexander Nekrich The Punished People (New York:

Norton,1978)

54 The ethno-linguistic boundaries between the nationalities of Transcaucasian republics

have been clearly maintained. See also Tables 1 and 2.

55 See for example,Maxim Kovalevsky's The Law and Custom in the Caucasus

(Moscow: Mamontov,1890),pp.16-45.

56 See Victor Shnirelman The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics inTranscuacasia (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2001),pp.3-17.

57 See the text of the Imperial Charter of 17 February 1810, under which Abkhazia came

under the protection of Tsarist Russia in George Hewitt's Abkhazia: A Problem of Identity

and Ownership in Central Asian Survey,1993,12(3),p.317.

58 See discussion A. Melikian's About the Question of the Formation of Armenian

Nation and its Transformation into a Socialist Nation, (Erevan: University of Erevan,

1957); Patrick Donabedian The History of Karabagh from Antiquity to the Twentieth

Century in Levon Chorbajian, op.cit.,pp.53-73; Cristopher Walker'sArmenia and

Karabagh: the Struggle for Unity, (London: Minority Rights Group,1991). An opposite

opinion is expressed in Victor Porkhomovsky's Historical Origins of Interethnic Conflicts in

Central Asia and Transcaucasia. in Central Asia and Caucasus Ethnicity and Conflict. ed.

Vitaly Naumkin, (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994),p.28; R.B. Geiushev

Khristianstvo v Kavakazsli Anbanii(Baku: Elm,1986)

59 Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot,op.cit.,p.115.

60 Ronald Suny'sLooking toward Ararat: Armenian Modern History (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1993); Luchterhandt,op.cit.

61 SeeEncyclopaedia of Conflicts and Disputes in Eastern Europe, Russia and the

Successor States , ed. Bogdan Szajkowski(High Harlow: Longman Current

Affairs,1993),p.1.

62 See Ibid,p. 230; Otto Luchterhandt,op.cit.,p.19; Mutafian,op.cit.,p.115.

63 Dominic Lieven and Anatol Lieven,op.cit.,p.6.


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64 See Richard Hovanissian's The Armenian Conflict Over Mountainous Karabagh,

1918-1919 in The Armenian Review, Summer 1971,p.5.

65 Alexandre Bennigsen & Enders Wimbush,Muslims of the Soviet Empire (London:

C.Hurst & Company, 1985)

66 See Anatoly Sabchak's The Tbilisi Fracture...,op.cit., p.58.

67 For an elaboration of the methods of imperial control see John McGarry and Brendan

O'Leary, The Politics of Ethnic Regulation, (London:Routledge, 1993),pp.6-8.

68 Grigory Smuir OnIslam in Abkhazia (Metsniereba : Tbilisi, 1972),

p. 45.

69 Grigory Smuir, Ibid ,p.97

70 See for detailed accounts of the expulsions in Grigory Smuir, op.cit.,p.97; C. BassariaAbkhazia in its Geography, Ethnography and Economy(Sukhumi,1923)p.97; for a Russian

imperialist's view see Nikolai Butkevich' report in The Caucasian Collection ,(Tiflis,

1877)v.2,pp.246-270.

71 See Alexandre Bennigsen's The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State, op.cit.,p.124

72 Report of a UNPO,op.cit.,p.9.

73 C.Bassaria,op.cit.,1923,p.99.

74 See McGarry & O'Leary,op.cit.,1993,p.8.

75 Piotr Nadezhdin. The Caucasus. Its Nature and Its People (Tula:

Sokolov,1901),p.119.

76 Grigory Smuir,op.cit. 1972,p.99.

77 Georgy Tsereteli in the newspaperDroeba (The Time), Tbilisi , n.399,1873.

78 B.Sagaria; T.Achugba et al, eds.Documents Testify (Sukhumi:Alashara, 1992)

79 For the evidence of this Russian policy and the influence of the Karabagh meliks see

for example P.G.Butkov The Materials for the New History of the Caucasus, (St. Peterburg,

1869),vol.2,pp.181-220.

80 Patrick Donabedian Karabagh-Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, in The Caucasian

Knot, op.citp.,75 and V .Potto The Caucasian War,(Stavropol:Strizhamet, 1995)

vol.2.,p,603.

81 Luchterhandt, op.cit.,p.20.

82 See evidence of the anti-Armenian violence and pogroms in Baku C.E. Ellis TheTranscaspian Episode 1918-1919 (London: Hutchinson of London,1963),p.121.


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83 For the details of the Menshevik policies regarding Russians and ethnic minorities

read Firuz Kazim Zadeh's The Struggle for Transcaucasia, (New York: Philosophical

Library, 1951); See a most telling account by C.E.BecchoferIn Denikin's Russia and the

Caucasus,1919-1920. (London: W.Collins Sons & Co.,1921; for details of the mass

population transfers Documents Testify (Sukhumi:Alashara, 1992) eds. B.Sagaria; T.Achugbaet al. , a recently published collection of documents from the Abkhazian KGB archives.

84 Leon Trotsky Between Imperialiasm and Revolution, (Berlin: Novy Mir, 1922),p.55.

85 C.E. Becchofer, op.cit.,p.14.

86 Richard Hovanissian, The Armeno-Azerbaijani Conflict over Mountainous

Karabagh, 1918-1919, op.cit.,p.13.

87 Mutaffian,The Caucasian Knot,op.cit.,p.126.

88 See the discussion in Richard Pipes The Establishment of the Soviet Union,Philip

Roeder Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization;Helene Carrere d'Encausse When the

'Prison of Peoples' was Opened in The Soviet Nationality Reader, ed. Rachel Denber,

Boulder:Westview Press, 1992.

89 See Svetlana Chervonnaya,Conflict in the Caucasus:Georgia, Abkhazia and the

Russian Shadowop.cit., 33.

90 SeeAn Ethnological Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires (Westport,

Conn.:Greenwood Press,1994)pp. 2-5

91 See, Ibid.,10-11.

92 Dominic and Anatol Lieven,op.cit.,7.

93 See Luchterhandt,op.cit., 60.

94 Mutafian,The Caucasian Knot,op.cit.,112.

95 See Ibid,p.143.

96 See Ibid,p.140.

97 Darrel Slider,op.cit.,p.52.

98 SeeAn Ethnological Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires (Westport,

Conn.: Greenwood Press,1994),pp.2-5.

99 See the discussion in Philip Roeder's Soviet Federalism and Ethnic

Mobilization;Helene Carrere d'Encausse When the 'Prison of Peoples' Was Opened

in The Soviet Nationality Reader, Ed.Rachel Denber, op.cit.


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The Secessions of Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh

Documents

Transcript of The Secessions of Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabagh