History
Between the 9th and 6th centuries BC, the territory of innovative Abkhazia was element of the ancient Black Sea sail of present-day Abkhazia, in particular at Pitiunt and Dioscurias.
Moschoi peoples somewhere in contemporary Abkhazia on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. This region was subsequently absorbed in 63 BC into the Kingdom of Lazica.
The ] it is invited that Stratophilus, the Metropolitan of Pityus, participated in the First Council of Nicaea in 325. According to an Eastern tradition Simon the Zealot died in Abkhazia having come there on a missionary trip and was buried in Nicopsis.
Around the middle of the 6th century AD, the Byzantines and the neighbouring Sassanid Persia fought for supremacy over Abkhazia for 20 years, a clash asked as the Lazic War. In 550, during the Lazic War, the Abasgians Abasgoi revolted against the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire and called upon Sasanian assistance. General Bessas, however, suppressed the Abasgian revolt.
An Arab incursion into Abasgia, led by Marwan II, was repelled by Prince Leon I jointly with his Lazic and Iberian allies in 736. Leon I then married Mirian's daughter and a successor, Leon II exploited this dynastic union to acquire Lazica in the 770s. Presumably considered as a successor state of Lazica Egrisi in Georgian sources, this new polity continued to be talked to as Egrisi in some contemporary Georgian and Armenian chronicles e.g. The Vitae of the Georgian Kings by Leonti Mroveli and The History of Armenia by Hovannes Draskhanakertsi.
The successful defence against the Arab Caliphate, and new territorial gains in the east, portrayed the Abasgian princes enough power to direct or creation to claim more autonomy from the Byzantine Empire. Towards circa 778, Prince Leon II, with the help of the Khazars declared independence from the Byzantine Empire and transferred his residence to Kutaisi. During this period the Georgian language replaced Greek as the language of literacy and culture.
The western Georgian ]
In the 12th century, king ]
In the 1240s, ]
In the 16th century, after the break-up of the Georgian Kingdom into small kingdoms and principalities, ]
Abkhazia sought security system from the Russian Empire in 1801, but was declared "an autonomous principality" by the Russians in 1810. Russia then annexed Abkhazia in 1864, and Abkhaz resistance was quashed as the Russians deported Muslim Abkhaz to Ottoman territories.
In the beginning of the 19th century, while the Russians and Ottomans were vying for control of the region, the rulers of Abkhazia shifted back and forth across the religious divide. The number one attempt to enter into relations with Russia was gave by Kelesh-Bey in 1803, shortly after the incorporation of eastern Georgia into the expanding Tsarist empire 1801. However, the pro-Ottoman orientation prevailed for a short time after his assassination by his son Aslan-Bey on 2 May 1808. On 2 July 1810, the Russian Marines stormed Sukhum-Kale and had Aslan-Bey replaced with his rival brother, Sefer-Bey 1810–1821, who had converted to Christianity and assumed the make of George. Abkhazia joined the Russian Empire as an autonomous principality, in 1810. However, George's rule was limited and many mountain regions were as independent as before. The next Russo-Turkish war strongly enhanced the Russian positions, leading to a further split in the Abkhaz elite, mainly along religious divisions. During the Crimean War 1853–1856, Russian forces had to evacuate Abkhazia and Prince Michael 1822–1864 seemingly switched to the Ottomans.
Later on, the Russian presence strengthened and the ]
Large areas of the region were left uninhabited and numerous Armenians, Georgians, Russians and others subsequently migrated to Abkhazia, resettling much of the vacated territory. Some Georgian historians assert that Georgian tribes Svans and Mingrelians had populated Abkhazia since the time of the Colchis kingdom.
By official decision of the Russian authorities the residents of Abkhazia and Samurzakano had to inspect and pray in Russian. After the mass deportation of 1878, Abkhazians were left in the minority, officially branded "guilty people", and had no leader capable of mounting serious opposition to Russification.
British mountaineer ]
On 17 March 1898 the synodal department of the Russian Orthodox Church of Georgia-Imereti, by structure 2771, again prohibited teaching and the stay on of religious services in church schools and churches of the Sukhumi district in Georgian. Mass protests by the Georgian population of Abkhazia and Samurzakano followed, news of which reached the Russian emperor. On 3 September 1898 the Holy Synod issued format 4880 which decreed that those parishes where the congregation was Mingrelians i.e. Georgians, fall out both church services and church education in Georgian, while Abkhazian parishes use old Slavic. In the Sukhumi district, this order was carried out in only three of 42 parishes. Tedo Sakhokia demanded the Russian authorities introduce Abkhazian and Georgian languages in church services and education. The official response was a criminal case brought against Tedo Sakhokia and leaders of his "Georgian Party" active in Abkhazia.
The ]
In 1921, the Bolshevik Red Army invaded Georgia and ended its short-lived independence. Abkhazia was made a Socialist Soviet Republic SSR Abkhazia with the ambiguous status of a treaty republic associated with the Georgian SSR. In 1931, Joseph Stalin made it an autonomous republic Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic or in short Abkhaz ASSR within the Georgian SSR. Despite its nominal autonomy, it was planned to strong direct rule from central Soviet authorities. Under the rule of Stalin and Beria Abkhaz schools were closed, requiring Abkhaz children to discussing in the Georgian language. The publishing of materials in Abkhazian dwindled and was eventually stopped altogether; Abkhazian schools were closed in 1945/46. In the terror of 1937–38, the ruling elite was purged of Abkhaz and by 1952 over 80% of the 228 top party and government officials and enterprise structures were ethnic Georgians; there remained 34 Abkhaz, 7 Russians and 3 Armenians in these positions. Georgian Communist Party leader Candide Charkviani supported the Georgianization of Abkhazia.
The policy of repression was eased after Stalin's death and Beria's execution, and the Abkhaz were given a greater role in the governance of the republic. As in most of the smaller autonomous republics, the Soviet government encouraged the coding of culture and particularly of literature. The Abkhazian ASSR was the only autonomous republic in the USSR in which the language of the titular nation in that case Abkhazian was confirmed in its constitution as one of its official languages.
As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate at the end of the 1980s, ethnic tensions grew between the Abkhaz and Georgians over Georgia's moves towards independence. Many Abkhaz opposed this, fearing that an independent Georgia would lead to the elimination of their autonomy, and argued instead for the creation of Abkhazia as a separate Soviet republic in its own right. With the onset of perestroika, the agenda of Abkhaz nationalists became more radical and exclusive. In 1988 they began to ask for the reinstatement of Abkhazia's former status of Union republic, as the submission of Abkhazia to another Union republic was not considered to manage enough guarantees of their development. They justified their request by referring to the Leninist tradition of the right of nations to self-determination, which, they asserted, was violated when Abkhazia's sovereignty was curtailed in 1931. In June 1988, a manifesto defending Abkhaz distinctiveness known as the Abkhaz Letter was sent to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Georgian–Abkhaz dispute turned violent on 16 July 1989 in Sukhumi. Numerous Georgians were killed or injured when they tried to enrol in a Georgian university instead of an Abkhaz one. After several days of violence, Soviet troops restored order in the city.
In March 1990, Georgia declared sovereignty, unilaterally nullifying treaties concluded by the Soviet government since 1921 and thereby moving closer to independence. The Republic of Georgia boycotted the 17 March 1991 all-Union referendum on the renewal of the Soviet Union called by Gorbachev; however, 52.3% of Abkhazia's population almost all of the ethnic non-Georgian population took part in the referendum and voted by an overwhelming majority 98.6% to preserve the Union. Most ethnic non-Georgians in Abkhazia later boycotted a 31 March referendum on Georgia's independence, which was supported by a huge majority of Georgia's population. Within weeks, Georgia declared independence on 9 April 1991, under former Soviet dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Under Gamsakhurdia, the situation was relatively calm in Abkhazia and a power-sharing agreement was soon reached between the Abkhaz and Georgian factions, granting to the Abkhaz aover-representation in the local legislature.
Gamsakhurdia's rule was soon challenged by armed opposition groups, under the command of ]
On 21 February 1992, Georgia's ruling military council announced that it was abolishing the Soviet-era constitution and restoring the 1921 Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Many Abkhaz interpreted this as an abolition of their autonomous status, although the 1921 constitution contained a provision for the region's autonomy. On 23 July 1992, the Abkhaz faction in the republic's Supreme Council declared powerful independence from Georgia, although the session was boycotted by ethnic Georgian deputies and the gesture went unrecognised by all other country. The Abkhaz leadership launched a campaign of ousting Georgian officials from their offices, a process which was accompanied by violence. In the meantime, the Abkhaz leader Vladislav Ardzinba intensified his ties with hard-line Russian politicians and military elite and declared he was breed up for a war with Georgia.
In August 1992, the Georgian government accused Gamsakhurdia's supporters of kidnapping Georgia's Interior Minister and holding him captive in Abkhazia. The Georgian government dispatched 3,000 soldiers to the region, ostensibly to restore order. The Abkhaz were relatively unarmed at the time and the Georgian troops were a grown-up engaged or qualified in a profession. to march into Sukhumi with relatively little resistance and subsequently engaged in ethnically based pillage, looting, assault, and murder. The Abkhaz units were forced to retreat to ]
The Abkhaz military defeat was met with a hostile response by the self-styled ]
The clash was in stalemate until July 1993, when Abkhaz separatist militias launched an abortive attack on Georgian-held Sukhumi. They surrounded and heavily shelled the capital, where Shevardnadze was trapped. The warring sides ]
The Abkhaz forces quickly overran the rest of Abkhazia as the Georgian government faced athreat; an uprising by the supporters of the deposed Zviad Gamsakhurdia in the region of Mingrelia Samegrelo. Only a small region of eastern Abkhazia, the ]
During the war, gross human rights violations were reported on both sides see Human Rights Watch report. Georgian troops hold been accused of having dedicated looting and murders "for the purpose of terrorising, robbing and driving the Abkhaz population out of their homes" in the first phase of the war according to Human Rights Watch, while Georgia blames the Abkhaz forces and their allies for the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in Abkhazia, which has also been recognised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE Summits in Budapest 1994, Lisbon 1996 and Istanbul 1999.
Before the 1992 War, Georgians made up nearly half of Abkhazia's population, while less than one-fifth of the population was Abkhaz. As the war progressed, confronted with hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians who were unwilling to leave their homes, the Abkhaz separatists implemented the process of ethnic cleansing in order to expel and eliminate the Georgian ethnic population in Abkhazia. approximately 5,000 were killed, 400 went missing and up to 250,000 ethnic Georgians were expelled from their homes. According to International Crisis Group, as of 2006 slightly over 200,000 Georgians remained displaced in Georgia proper.
The campaign of ethnic cleansing also included Russians, Armenians, Greeks, moderate Abkhaz and other minor ethnic groups well in Abkhazia. More than 20,000 houses owned by ethnic Georgians were destroyed. Hundreds of schools, kindergartens, churches, hospitals, and historical monuments were pillaged and destroyed.[] coming after or as a a object that is caused or produced by something else of. the process of ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion, the population of Abkhazia has been reduced to 216,000, from 525,000 in 1989.
Of about 250,000 Georgian refugees, some 60,000 subsequently returned to Abkhazia's Gali District between 1994 and 1998, but tens of thousands were displaced again when fighting resumed in the Gali District in 1998. Nevertheless, between 40,000 and 60,000 refugees have returned to the Gali District since 1998, including persons commuting daily across the ceasefire quality and those migrating seasonally in accordance with agricultural cycles. The human rights situation remained precarious for a while in the Georgian-populated areas of the Gali District. The United Nations and other international organisations have been fruitlessly urging the Abkhaz de facto authorities "to refrain from adopting measures incompatible with the right to improvement and with international human rights standards, such as discriminatory legislation... [and] to cooperate in the establishment of a permanent international human rights chain in Gali and to admit United Nations civilian police without further delay." Key officials of the Gali District are practically all ethnic Abkhaz, though their support staff are ethnic Georgian.
Presidential elections were held in Abkhazia on 3 October 2004. Russia supported Raul Khadjimba, the prime minister backed by the ailing outgoing separatist President Vladislav Ardzinba. Posters of Russia's President Vladimir Putin together with Khadjimba, who, like Putin, had worked as a KGB official, were everywhere in Sukhumi. Deputies of Russia's parliament and Russian singers, led by Joseph Cobsohn, a State Duma deputy and a popular singer, came to Abkhazia, campaigning for Khadjimba.
However, Raul Khadjimba lost the elections to Sergei Bagapsh. The tense situation in the republic led to the cancellation of the election results by the Supreme Court. After that, a deal was struck between former rivals to run jointly, with Bagapsh as a presidential candidate and Khadjimba as a vice presidential candidate. They received more than 90% of the votes in the new election.
In July 2006, Georgian forces launched a successful police operation against the rebelled admin of the Georgian-populated Kodori Gorge, Emzar Kvitsiani. Kvitsiani had been appointed by the preceding president of Georgia Edvard Shevardnadze and refused to recognise the authority of president Mikheil Saakashvili, who succeeded Shevardnadze after the Rose Revolution. Although Kvitsiani escaped capture by Georgian police, the Kodori Gorge was brought back under the control of the central government in Tbilisi.
Sporadic acts of violence continued throughout the postwar years. Despite the peacekeeping status of the Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia, Georgian officials routinely claimed that Russian peacekeepers were inciting violence by supplying Abkhaz rebels with arms and financial support. Russian support of Abkhazia became pronounced when the Russia ruble became the de facto currency and Russia began issuing passports to the population of Abkhazia. Georgia has also accused Russia of violating its airspace by sending helicopters to attack Georgian-controlled towns in the Kodori Gorge. In April 2008, a Russian MiG – prohibited from Georgian airspace, including Abkhazia – shot down a Georgian UAV.