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rfmcdonaldTwo recent articles from The New York Times touching on the aftermath of the recent war in Georgia have caught my attention. Ellen Barry's "Soviet Union’s Fall Unraveled Enclave in Georgia" takes a look at the course of South Ossetia's alienation from Georgia as experienced by Ossetian Ireya Alborova.
Dan Bilefsky and Michael Schwirtz's "Within a Russian-Infused Culture, a Complex Reckoning After a War" takes a look at Georgia's complex relationship with Russian culture and the Russian language, and at
The intensity of ethnic warfare in a particular region varies according to the distance from the battlefield. In a South Ossetia marked by bitter disputes between neighbourhoods and even between family members, the net result of the Ossetian victory is the (likely) permanent displacement of ethnic Georgians from their territory. In Tbilisi, spared the direct impact of warfare in bouts of ethnic warfare, ethnic Russians and other Russophones survive more-or-less well. This is common throughout: In the former Yugoslavia, the only ethnic cleansings of ethnic minorities in inner Serbia or Vojvodina occurred in the Croat villages f the Vojvodina and perhaps in the intimidation of Muslims in the Sanjak area, while the bodies of ethnic Albanians who, massacred, were dumped into various bodies of water in inner Serbia came not from Belgrade or Kragujevac or Novi Sad but from Kosovo.
It is not easy for Ireya Alborova to root through the events that cracked this city in half, but one small bright memory stands out from 1989, when she glanced at the building across the street from her high school and spotted a flag.
[. . .]
In the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, some 50 miles to the southeast, Georgia’s first post-Soviet leader was emerging. Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a longtime anti-Soviet dissident, based his campaign for the presidency on a vaulting Georgian nationalism — an idea powerful enough to fill the vacuum left by Communism’s collapse.
The platform, known as Georgia for the Georgians, cast ethnic Georgians, who made up 70 percent of the population, as the country’s true masters. Mr. Gamsakhurdia derided South Ossetians as newcomers, saying they had arrived only 600 years ago and as tools of the Soviet Union.
On the street in Tskhinvali, small changes began to appear.
Ms. Alborova’s aunt was exasperated to go to the store and see that pasta manufactured in Russia had been put in packages labeled with Georgian script. Her neighbor Emma Gasiyeva kept hearing slogans: “Brush them out with a broom!” and “Who are the guests, and who are the hosts?” a reference to the theory that Ossetians had been brought to the area as agricultural workers.
The government in Tbilisi established Georgian as the country’s principal language, enraging the Ossetians, whose first two languages were Russian and Ossetian. A few months later, more than 10,000 Georgian demonstrators were transported to Tskhinvali in buses and encircled the city, until they were repelled by Ossetian irregulars and Soviet troops. A true war began in 1991, when thousands of Georgian soldiers entered Tskhinvali. The city was shelled almost nightly from the Georgian-held highlands, and Medeya Alborova recalls holding pillows over her teenage daughters’ heads, as if that could protect them.
When Mrs. Alborova got to Tbilisi to see her relatives, it was like stepping into a parallel universe. She sat with them watching news on Georgian television, as the announcer recited a litany of crimes committed by Ossetians against Georgians. At times, she said, she was not sure she was on the right side of the conflict.
Dan Bilefsky and Michael Schwirtz's "Within a Russian-Infused Culture, a Complex Reckoning After a War" takes a look at Georgia's complex relationship with Russian culture and the Russian language, and at
“Georgians have always had a deep affection for Russian people and Russian culture going back centuries,” said Mr. Varsimashvili, speaking in fluent Russian at his theater in a multiethnic neighborhood of Tbilisi plastered with posters showing graphic pictures of Georgians bombed in the recent war.
“We perceive a modern Russia that is big and sometimes monstrous,” he said. “But the difference between Georgians and Russians is that we have never mistaken the Russian people for the Russian government.”
[. . .]
Yet the reality here is more complex. Although the Georgian government has spent the years since the Soviet Union fell promoting Georgian identity, Georgian society remains infused with an appreciation for Russian culture that Georgian sociologists and historians say will outlive this latest round of tensions.
A monument to Alexander Pushkin, a Russian poet and icon who once visited Tbilisi for inspiration, stands in a park just off Freedom Square in the city. Georgian television channels routinely broadcast old Russian films, kiosks sell Russian-language fashion magazines and Russian pop music blares from taxi radios. While Georgians proudly cling to their distinct centuries-old language, Russian is the second language here.
[. . .]
“We hate the policies of the Russian government, but we do not hate the Russian people,” said Zura Pushauvi, looking over the rubble of his bombed-out casino in Gori, a central Georgian city. A statue of Stalin, Georgia’s best-known son, peered from outside a shattered window. “This war was a spat between two global powers. It was not an ethnic war between Georgians and Russians.”
[. . .]
Some ethnic Russians living in Georgia, of which there are around 70,000, said the war had forced them to choose sides. Nadejna Diakonova-Giuashvili, an ethnic Russian whose late husband was a Georgian officer in the Russian Army, recently escaped to a refugee center in Gori after fleeing from her bombed-out Georgian village near South Ossetia. She said she was now ashamed to be Russian.
“I’m so ashamed to look in the eyes of my neighbors after what Russia has done,” she said, speaking in both Russian and Georgian. “I only learned my husband was Georgian when he signed his name on the marriage registry the day we were married,” she said. “He spoke fluent Russian, and he tricked me. But I didn’t care. We have the same blood.”
Some ethnic Russians here said bubbling anti-Russian sentiment had forced them to conceal their Russian identity, even as they insisted they had no intention of leaving Georgia, where they had lived for decades.
Vera Tsereteli, who moved from Moscow to Tbilisi more than 30 years ago, said her Georgian friends still greeted her with a kiss even as they teased her by calling her an “occupier.” She is unable to speak Georgian, and she said she was now wary of speaking Russian in public.
[. . .]
“During Soviet times, it was prestigious to speak Russian and a sign of being educated and refined,” she said. “Now, Russia is associated with occupation, annexation and refugees.”
Irina Minasyan, a Russian-speaking Georgian of Armenian descent, said she feared her 13-year-old son, Edgar, could face limited career prospects because he attended a Russian school in Tbilisi. “A lot of people have switched their children from Russian to Georgian schools since the war began,” she said. “The young generation is anti-Russian, and I worry about Edgar’s future.”
The intensity of ethnic warfare in a particular region varies according to the distance from the battlefield. In a South Ossetia marked by bitter disputes between neighbourhoods and even between family members, the net result of the Ossetian victory is the (likely) permanent displacement of ethnic Georgians from their territory. In Tbilisi, spared the direct impact of warfare in bouts of ethnic warfare, ethnic Russians and other Russophones survive more-or-less well. This is common throughout: In the former Yugoslavia, the only ethnic cleansings of ethnic minorities in inner Serbia or Vojvodina occurred in the Croat villages f the Vojvodina and perhaps in the intimidation of Muslims in the Sanjak area, while the bodies of ethnic Albanians who, massacred, were dumped into various bodies of water in inner Serbia came not from Belgrade or Kragujevac or Novi Sad but from Kosovo.
