Dispatch by Joshua Kucera from South Ossetia (before war) "Why Can't We Live Together?"

Slate ^ | May 19, 2008 | Joshua Kucera

[Tolik]

Michale J. Totten: If you want some solid background reading about the hell that broke loose in Georgia a few days ago, take a look at this dispatch by Joshua Kucera from South Ossetia that Slate published a few months ago. You’ll learn a lot more reading that than you will from wire agency reports that focus mostly on tank movements and body counts

---

TSKHINVALI, South Ossetia—The first time I enter Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, the hotel staff immediately calls the police. They tell me that no one can process my journalist accreditation until Wednesday. It is a Sunday afternoon, and the following Tuesday is the May Day holiday, making it a four-day weekend. Can't I just stay until then and see the town as a tourist, I ask? Nope.

....

I'm visiting South Ossetia as part of a tour across the southern edge of the former Soviet Union, looking at the wildly different directions the newly independent countries have taken since 1991. In the case of South Ossetia, a self-proclaimed independent country that is, in fact, neither independent nor a country, "nowhere" is probably the best way to describe where it's gone. It's perhaps the closest you can get today to experiencing the old Soviet Union, as well as a good place to get the flavor of a good old-fashioned, Cold-War-style proxy war between the United States and Russia.

 

Billboards around Tskhinvali show Vladimir Putin with the legend "Our President." (This is during the summer of 2007.)

[Tolik]

Don't miss the slide show in the article - quite interesting

[Tolik]

Interesting!

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[FReepaholic]

Fascinating article. Thanks.

Obviously there is a lot of history behind this conflict.

[Brian S. Fitzgerald]

Russia - Georgia Conflict Timeline

[TigersEye]

Good article.

Saakashvili’s Televised Address on S.Ossetia

[<1/1,000,000th%]

If this comes from Slate, is there any reason to think any of it is true?

[Tolik]

On the scale from very-very crazy left to normal left - Slate is kind of OK :^)

Christopher Hitchens is more articulate on Iraq war and WOT than administration, and he is Slate’s regular. Plus, I respect Michale Totten (if you’ve never read him, you must - he goes to places MSM won’t and reports how he sees it)- and he recommended this article. It passed my own smell test (for what it worth - having no personal experience with Ossetia, but lots with USSR).

All said, read it and judge by yourself.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I’m not sure I would call Slate OK.

On the other hand I have no knowledge of that part of the world to make a judgement.

So I’ll take your word for it.

[Steve Van Doorn]

This is very interesting.

[Alia]

Thank you for posting the url to this informative article:

--snip

In the case of South Ossetia, a self-proclaimed independent country that is, in fact, neither independent nor a country, "nowhere" is probably the best way to describe where it's gone. It's perhaps the closest you can get today to experiencing the old Soviet Union, as well as a good place to get the flavor of a good old-fashioned, Cold-War-style proxy war between the United States and Russia. South Ossetia broke away from Georgia after a chaotic 18-month war that killed 1,000 (of a population of 60,000) between 1990 and 1992. Today, South Ossetia is propped up by Russia:

--end snip

[JerseyHighlander]

If you want to get a complete understanding of the several hundred year old conflict, and especially to highlight the Russian claims to South Ossetia, and georgia’s claims to Abhkazia, read this 260 page dissertation. It’s taken me about 7 hours to read 2/3rds of it, and I now know more than almost every talking head in the US media.

http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/publications/0419dissertation.pdf

Autonomy and Conflict
Ethnoterritoriality and Separatism in the
South Caucasus – Cases in Georgia

ABSTRACT

Cornell, Svante E.: Autonomy and Conflict: Ethnoterritoriality and Separatism in the South Caucasus
– Cases in Georgia. Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Report No. 61. 258 pp. Uppsala.
ISBN 91-506-1600-5.

Providing minority populations with autonomy is gaining appreciation as a method of solving,
managing, and even pre-empting ethnic conflict. However, in spite of the enthusiasm for autonomy
solutions among academics and practitioners alike, there is reason to argue that the provision of
autonomy for a minority may under certain circumstances increase rather than decrease the likelihood
of conflict. In certain political conditions, autonomy strengthens the separate identity of a minority; it
thereby increases its incentives to collective action against the state; and most of all its capacity to seek
separation from the central state, through the state-like institutions that autonomy entails. The
objective of this dissertation is to investigate whether territorial autonomy was a contributing factor to
the violent ethnic conflicts that have erupted in the South Caucasus since the late 1980s. It presents a
theoretical argument to explain which qualities of autonomy solutions increase the likelihood of
conflict; and then seeks to outline possible rival explanations derived from the theoretical literature.
The dissertation then examines the explanatory value of autonomy as compared to nine other possible
causal factors in a study of nine minorities in the South Caucasus. Finding that autonomy has the
highest explanatory value of any of the factors under study, it then moves on to study in depth the five
minorities existing on the territory of the republic of Georgia. Three of them, Abkhazia, Ajaria, and
South Ossetia, were autonomous, whereas two (the Armenians and Azeris in Southern Georgia) had
no autonomous status. The dissertation shows how the institution of autonomy, by promoting an
ethnic elite in control of state-like institutions, and by enhancing factors such as leadership, economic
viability, and external support, played a crucial together with these factors in the escalation to conflict
in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whereas the absence of autonomy mitigated conflict in Javaheti’s
Armenian and Kvemo Kartli’s Azeri populations.

Keywords: Autonomy, Caucasus, Ethnopolitical Conflict, Georgia (Republic), Ethnic Relations,
Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Javakheti, Ajaria, Kvemo Kartli

Svante E. Cornell, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Box 514, SE-
75120 Uppsala, Sweden

© Svante E. Cornell 2002
ISSN 0566-8808
ISBN 91-506-1600-5
Printed in Sweden by Elanders Gotab, Stockholm 2002
Distributed by the Department of Peace and Conflict Research,
Uppsala University, Box 514, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden
Phone +46 18 471 00 00
Fax. + 46 18 69 51 02
E-mail: info@pcr.uu.se
Website: www.pcr.uu.se

[JerseyHighlander]

The South Ossetians have a valid claim to be Russian citizens, their nobility voluntarily joined the Russian Empire in 1774, and all Ossetians have been subjects/citizens of Russia continuously since then, except for a brief period 1918-1925 during the Russian revolution when the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, White Russians and Mountainous People of the Caucasus Federation, were fighting in the Caucasus.

In the years preceding the Russian annexation of Ossetia, Georgian nobles had continuously attempted to reconquer the territory, but Georgian power was in steep decline due to continuously war with expanding southern polities.

Georgia was conquered by Russia in 1801. Ossetians had already pledged fealty to the Russian crown for a generation by that time.

[rbmillerjr]

“The South Ossetians have a valid claim to be Russian citizens, their nobility voluntarily joined the Russian Empire in 1774, and all Ossetians have been subjects/citizens of Russia continuously since then”

Well hoist up the Union Jack America, because if we’re going back in time, Britain certainly has a right to come in and defend enclaves of British subjects in the States.

[Tolik]

Thanks for the info and warning of how many pages. One day...

As for autonomy - I think any territory that referendum of it citizens votes to secede - should be able to. If NYC votes to secede from United States, go. Basque want out of Spain, go. Chechnya wants out of Russia, yes. Tatars out of Russia - yes. Siberia out of Russia - yes. California out of US - yes. I don’t care - as long as its free will of free people.

[rbmillerjr]

It’s called Balkanization and it leads to the hatred and cleansing that we’ve seen throughout the Balkans. It’s actaully a never ending cycle of claims and counter claims. There will always be another “ethnic minority” to use as a pretext to invade sovereign countries, as Russia just evidenced.

[JerseyHighlander]

The Georgians and Ossetians both have historical claims on the same territory though. Georgians/Mingrelians/Ajarians have had constant presence in Shida Kartli goes back at least 2000 years, and about 1300 years under the current exiled Bagratide monarchy, the Oseetians have been in South Ossetia for at least 700.

From 1774 and 1801 neither were independent of Moscow except for short moments during and after the Russian Revolution and Civil wars.

[Alia]

Thank you for that information. It is very helpful in understanding the mindset of So. Ossetians.

Obviously, Schverdnadze (President before current President Saakashvili), former Soviet Foreign Minister, was involved with Georgia's liberation as an Independent State. At some level, certainly. Now, the 18 months after "independence" were bloody awful between Georgia and So. Ossetia. Do you know why So Ossetia, with such long-held fealty to Russia wasn't able to "break away"?

George Soros and Schverdnadze go all the way back together to the 1980s. If the plan was to have So. Ossetia be the "ruling" party, why didn't that happen? George Soros helped shoot down Schverdnadze and helped Mr. Saakashvili be elected President. And years after So Ossetia was holding its own elections.

Do you know or have data about this pls?

[Alia]

Tolik, I would like to flat out agree with you; but I'm from California. The SF Bay Area. There's a small enclave in Contra Costa County (Port Costa) which voted, as a town, to secede from California. The town is filled with moonbats. They were serious.

However Port Costa has a marvelous, outstanding microbrewery.

[JerseyHighlander]

I haven’t gotten to read up on the Schverdnadze regime and it’s inner workings, I don’t think Soros had as much influence as you would believe, he wasn’t outfitting militias or paramilitaries, and the other parties in the region were.

Simply put, the South Ossetians were and are dirt poor, they have only been the majority population of Tskhinvali for less than five decades, and they have no resources nor sources of foreign currency or trade. In 1929 Tskhinvali had only 1000 Ossetians on the census rolls. The Ossetian people were hit hard by Stalin’s Purges and large amounts of Ossetians were sent to northern Russian work camps. The Ossetian population didn’t start increasing rapidly until the 1970’s due to this.

The status of Autonomous Oblast that South Ossetia has within Russian law was set during the shake outs of the Bolshevik conquering of the Menshevik regime in Tblisi in the 1920’s, and the consolidations of the 1930’s. A lot of this history are flukes of history, it’s hard to explain it in a short form.

[Alia]

I don’t think Soros had as much influence as you would believe, he wasn’t outfitting militias or paramilitaries, and the other parties in the region were.

So, the fact that he was actually talking to politicians and Russian party members rather than shooting up civilians is somehow a "less effective" political technique?

Ttruth be told... sounds pretty effective to me! lol

We can see when a guy "shoots a gun", but seeing what goes on in talks and negotiations which sets policy to motion is far harder to pinpoint.

It's like the difference between physical and emotional battery: You can point to the bruise, but emotional battery can have far more lasting, deleterious effects.