Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Alexander Murinson
Central Asian Survey, 1465-3354, Volume 23, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 5 – 26
I would like to gratefully acknowledge B. George Hewitt’s 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
haunt humankind as the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and Transcaucasia
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
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 21 st century. The Foreign
Minister of the Republic of Nagorny Karabagh, Arkadi Ghukasian noted in this regard,
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
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
be presented. This model is a modification of the Birch and Heraclides models. Using
Karabagh. These two cases deserve study because they share many common
features with the other significant secession in the area - the secession of the
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
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.
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
This article will focus on the factors which are disregarded in some explanatory models
of the volume of the article allows only for a cursory treatment of such substantive
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
former Soviet republics limited the possibilities for more exhaustive analysis of the
The same author also expressed another view of secession as "a social process
patterns of accommodation and intransigence."11 The last definition seems be the most
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 only with regard to the colonies of the Western powers and the Trust territories
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
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.
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
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
19
republic participated in the referendum, and 94.4% voted "Yes". 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
declared that Abkhazia and its autonomous status were not mentioned in the Georgian
Constitution.20 On the basis of the 1925 Abkhazian Constitution, Abkhazia was united
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
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,
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
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
from Azerbaijan on the basis of their right to self-determination in July of 1988. This
and 99% voted for independence. On January 6th, 1992, the leaders of
A group of Russian sociologists concluded that the current conflicts in the Caucasus,
important. They claimed that the problems of the preservation of ethnic identity, cultural
27
heritage and national education "to a large extent lost their urgency." It was
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
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
Horowitz, Alex Heraclides and Anthony Birch, a modified model, which combines some
Donald Horowitz constructed an explanatory matrix for the process and timing of
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 of
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
between Armenia, which was the most advanced, and Azerbaijan, which was the most
to join the Russian Federation, because Russia symbolized protection against the
imperialist claims of the nationalist leaders of the "Round Table", the first independent
nationalist rallies in Tbilisi on April 8th, 1989, leaflets were distributed which said: "Let
Abkhazians immediately leave the territory of Georgia and let us annul the autonomy of
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 secessionist
movement as the Horowitz matrix predicted.37 The original Abkhazian demand for the
federal relationship within an independent Georgia also went unheeded by Zviyad
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
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
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
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
Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union was considered a backward region. The
Azerbaijan SSR had one of the lowest levels of urbanization among the Soviet
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
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,
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
historical reasons, which are always most salient for secession, only as a footnote.
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
normative criteria.
Heraclides based his model on a premise derived from the Deutsch thesis "...that
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
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
50
Anthony Birch proposed a liberal theory of secession. In my opinion, the third factor
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 conditions
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
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
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.
combines structural and normative factors has better predictive power. An explanation
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 of
the imperial policies of control; the failures of the nation- and state-building by the
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.
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
between the centre and the seceded entity; mass ethnic expulsions; separate episodes
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,
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
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.
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
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)
Sasanids. Later, the Armenian melikates (fiefdoms) of the Karabagh plateau became
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
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
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-
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
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
had a status of a third order division. Its regional council possessed very limited
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
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-
Religious factors play a more prominent role in the secession from Shiate Azerbaijan
(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
Tsarist policies.
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
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
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
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 19 th
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
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
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
continued in 1875-1879. So that by the end of the 19th century they made up only over
historian, an estimated 400,000 Abkhazians from the regions of Dal, Tsabala, Pskhu,
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
The Russian administration used the Russian Orthodox and Georgian Churches in its
Georgians, Armenians, Greeks and Russians into the vacated towns and villages,
whilst excluding the Jews and Muslims .75 The Government-sponsored Society for the
1868. The use of Georgian as the language of prayer and proselytism, however,
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
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
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
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 Christian
Armenians 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
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
from eastern Turkey to Karabagh at the invitation of the Russian authorities in the 19th
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
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
The Caucasus is one the most multiethnic regions in the world. After its incorporation
into the Empire in the 19th 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
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.
of both republics adopted the policies of forced national integration. These policies
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
The Menshevik government of Noe Zhordania relied more on the policies of state
special forces. He remarked that Mazniev's punitive actions surpassed in their brutality
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 a
result of the Armenian massacre perpetrated by the Turkish army of Nuri Pasha in
Shushi. 86
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,
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
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 7th, 1923, Nagorny
Karabagh was granted the status of an autonomous region (NKAO) within Azerbaijan.
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
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.
ENDNOTES.
2 See for example, Charles Beitz's Political 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 his Issues in the History of International
Relations (New York: Praeger,1987), p. XI.
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.,United
States 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.
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's Nagorny Karabagh's Right to State Independence according to
International Law (Boston: Armenian Rights Council,1993),pp.10-12.
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 UNPO
Coordinated 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.
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.
24 Quoted in Mutafian,Ibid,p.149.
25 Quoted in Mutafian,Ibid,p.152
27 Ibid,p.2.
30 For instrumentalist view of ethno-national conflict see for Paul Brass's Ethnicity and
Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (New Delhi: Sage Publications,1991) and John
Breuilly's Nationalism 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.
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.
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's
Dilemma’ 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, Pravda of September 21, 1989; Read also the conclusion to Slider's, op.
cit.,pp.61-63.
41 See for destails Levon Chorbaijan's Introduction in Levon Chorbaijan et al., The
Caucasian Knot,op.cit,p. 12.
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.
46 Ibid,p. 229.
51 Anthony Birch,Ibid,p.69.
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 towards
the 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)
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 in
Transcuacasia (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.
61 See Encyclopaedia of Conflicts and Disputes in Eastern Europe, Russia and the
Successor States, ed. Bogdan Szajkowski(High Harlow: Longman Current
Affairs,1993),p.1.
65 Alexandre Bennigsen & Enders Wimbush, Muslims of the Soviet Empire (London:
C.Hurst & Company, 1985)
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.
70 See for detailed accounts of the expulsions in Grigory Smuir, op.cit.,p.97; C. Bassaria
Abkhazia 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.
75 Piotr Nadezhdin. The Caucasus. Its Nature and Its People (Tula:
Sokolov,1901),p.119.
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.
81 Luchterhandt, op.cit.,p.20.
82 See evidence of the anti-Armenian violence and pogroms in Baku C.E. Ellis The
Transcaspian Episode 1918-1919 (London: Hutchinson of London,1963),p.121.
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.Becchofer In 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.Achugba
et 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.
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.
91 See, Ibid.,10-11.
95 See Ibid,p.143.
96 See Ibid,p.140.
97 Darrel Slider,op.cit.,p.52.