Z. V. Anchabadze
Essays on the History of the Peoples of the North Caucasus in the Middle Ages
Part I (6th–8th centuries)
Tbilisi, 1982
(pp. 325–336).

Zurab V. Anchabadze (Achba)
(22 April 1920, Gagra – 14 January 1984, Sukhum)
A distinguished historian and Caucasologist, honoured as a Merited Scholar of the Abkhaz ASSR (1961). He held a Doctorate in History (1960), became Professor in 1963, and was elected Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR in 1980.

Otar P. Dzidzaria (Dzari-ipa) is an Abkhaz linguist, lexicologist and lexicographer. After graduating in 1976, he taught Abkhaz language and literature and later continued his research at the Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He served as Head of the Department of Abkhaz Language and Dean of the Faculty of Philology at Abkhaz State University.

He is the author of the monographs Maritime Vocabulary in the Abkhaz Language (1989) and The Sea and the Abkhazians (2002), pioneering the study of Abkhaz maritime terminology. He earned his Doctor of Philological Sciences degree in 2006.

Translated by AbkhazWorld

This chapter is translated from “Bolschewistische Ordnung in Georgien: Der Große Terror in einer kleinen kaukasischen Republik (Bolshevik order in Georgia: The Great Terror in a Small Caucasian Republic)” by Marc Junge and Bernd Bonwetsch, pp. 275–276 (“Abstammung statt Staatsbürgerschaft”).

Ethnic Origin in Place of Citizenship

The aim of the Great Terror in Georgia, unlike the deportations, was not the physical expulsion of entire ethnic groups, but rather the systematic violent disciplining and marginalisation of nations in order to punish them for their alleged lack of loyalty to the Soviet system. It should be noted that the already fragile balance that had for decades underpinned the coexistence of various peoples in Georgia had been seriously undermined by collectivisation, but it was only the Great Terror that became its ultimate gravedigger.

Thus, the national component of the mass repressions of 1937–1938 should be viewed as a radical element of the long-term policy of ethnic homogenisation pursued by the party and state elites of the Georgian Soviet state. From the perspective of Georgian realities, the thesis formulated by the German historian and political scientist Gerhard Simon with regard to the entire Soviet Union appears overly risky. According to Simon, beginning in 1933, Stalin slowed down the process of nation-building, which only gained a new dimension in the 1950s.[321]

Abstract

Even during Stalin’s time, some Abkhazians protested against Tbilisi’s anti-Abkhazian policies, such as renaming places and closing Abkhaz schools. In 1947, Giorgi Dzidzaria, Bagrat Shinkuba, and Konstantin Shakryl sent a complaint letter to Moscow and were later persecuted. Over the following decades, Abkhazia saw repeated unrest (1957, 1967, 1978) over Georgian rule. In 1977, 130 Abkhaz intellectuals petitioned the Kremlin to remove Abkhazia from Georgian control, leading to job losses and mass protests. Eduard Shevardnadze was sent to calm tensions, promising reforms such as a university and limited Abkhaz-language broadcasts. However, while the establishment of Abkhazian State University seemed a victory, it ultimately increased Georgian presence in Abkhazia.

(Published in: Abkhazovedenie: Istoriya, arkheologiya, etnologiya. Vypusk II. Sukhum, 2003, pp. 151–158.)

V.A. Nyushkov, 'Abkhazia and the Arab Caliphate in the First Half of the 8th Century' [PDF Version] (Абхазия и Арабский Халифат в первой половине VIII в.), from War and Peace in the History of the Caucasus , Materials of the International Scientific Conference, (Sukhum: Abkhazian Institute for Humanitarian Research, 2016).

Translated by AbkhazWorld 

V.A. Nyushkov, Sukhum

Having emerged as a result of the Muslim conquests in the 7th-9th centuries as an Arab theocratic state of an early feudal type, the Arab Caliphate surpassed the Roman Empire in size, incorporating significant territories through victorious wars. It 'began military operations beyond Arabia in the 630s, and in the same century seized Syria, Palestine, Egypt and other eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire, subjugated Iran, and invaded North Africa, Transcaucasia and Central Asia. Within a century, it had conquered a vast territory, nominally stretching from the Atlantic Ocean and the borders of Southern France in the west to India and Western China in the east'.¹ The ideology of the Arab Caliphate was Islam. In the Middle Ages, the very word 'Arabs' meant 'Muslims'. 'All of them, at once, with a single word. It made no difference whether the peoples of Arabia, Egypt or Syria were in question. A Muslim, therefore, an Arab. Dozens of peoples became Arabs overnight'.²