Abkhazia: Recasting ‘Ethnic’ War

Abstract

This article seeks to nuance previous conceptions of the 1992 Abkhazian conflict by developing an alternative framework for understanding what is commonly known as ‘ethnic’ war. The resulting ‘non-framework’ conceptualises ethnicity and its mobilisation through a combination of constructivist and instrumentalist readings of ethnicity and nationalism with a radically contingent understanding of events. Creating a novel explanatory vector, this approach questions the nature of generalisable frameworks in themselves, suggesting the case of Tatarstan as a comparative example. To this extent, the model developed here suggests the analytical weakness of ‘ethnic’ war as an overarching category and urges us to treat each case within its own causal matrix.

Notes

1 Charles King has objected to the use of the term, arguing that instead these conflicts have been ‘relatively successful examples of making states by making war’ (King 2001, p. 525).

2 For an influential primordialist reading, see Anthony Smith (1993). While excellent on the particular modalities of mobilisation, his conception of ethnicity is slightly simplistic; namely, ethnic conflict is derived from ethnic nationalism, which in turn arises from the ‘crystallisation into ethnic communities’ and the ‘impact of nationalist ideology’ (Smith 1993, p. 37). Smith’s analysis misses several significant constructivist, instrumentalist and contingent features laid out below. More recently, Azar Gat (2013) has made a shrewd and perceptive case for resurrecting a form of primordialism. For other examples of this strand of thinking, also in a post-Soviet Eurasian context, see Rabushka and Shepsle’s (1972) influential monograph, as well as Bates (1983) and Horowitz (1985). For an alternative discussion of the differences between primordialism and instrumentalism that does, however, neglect the significance of Barth (1969), see Rupert Stöger’s (1996) work.

3 This is also the position of Derluguian (1998, pp. 263, 285–86).

4 In a similar vein, Giuliano (2011, pp. 11–2) contends that ethnic affiliations do not ‘endure over time’.

5 It should be noted at this juncture, and this will become clearer in the subsequent section, that Georgian troops invaded Abkhazia first in 1992, after Abkhazia had reinstated the 1925 constitution that allowed for its secession from Georgia (Coppieters 2002, pp. 90–104). See also King (2001, pp. 533–34).

6 The other two—a ‘ramified sequence of occurrences’ that is ‘recognised as notable by contemporaries’—are fulfilled in the cases that follow.

7 A fact lamented by Gagnon (2004) in his study of the Yugoslavian struggles of the 1990s.

8 See Handelman (1977), Martinelli (1986) and Brubaker (2006).

9 On the specifics of the early Soviet Union policies and their impact on later separatist movements, see Suny (1993, in particular chapters 3 and 4) and Brubaker (1996).

10 See Giuliano (2011, pp. 6, 11–2, 17). It stands to reason that committed ethnic entrepreneurs would have found other vessels—whether political, social or economic—for their grievances. This presents an inherent link with another central aspect to which we will return briefly below: greed.

11 A full reckoning of the applicability of Gagnon’s thesis that the ‘ethnic wars’ in Yugoslavia were prompted by ‘imported violence’ as a strategy of ‘demobilisation’, unfortunately lies outside the scope of this article. See Gagnon (2004, pp. 149–54).

12 These are two of the ‘seven fundamental trends’ identified by Suny as leading to the ‘explo[sion]’ of ‘mass ethnic nationalism’ following the Soviet collapse. Suny (1993, pp. 102–12). See also Brubaker (1996).

13 Indeed, it was Beria who decided that Georgians should flood into Abkhazia, ‘in part to help boost agricultural productivity there, in part to alter the ethnic balance in favour of Georgians’ (King 2008, pp. 215–16). On the poisoning of Lakoba, see Coppieters (2002, pp. 92–4). However, Terry Martin (2001a, p. 72) notes that ‘on the basis of his experience in Georgia, Stalin insisted that Georgian nationalism was also characterized by Great Power exploitation of their Ossetine and Abkhaz minorities’, a type of exploitation he feared and condemned.

14 For a classic study on Russian policy in the Caucasus during the nineteenth century, see Barrett (1995).

15 On collectivisation and the Great Purges see also Brown (2003); for a general account, see Kiernan (2007, ch. 13).

16 Of course, the fact that Derluguian is able to place each ‘ethnic’ group into its own sector is testament to the previous construction of identity that went on before. It simply was not a factor.

17 This is the factor of ‘greed’. For another important, though problematic from the purview of our framework of contingency, study, see Grossman (1999). King (2001) also touches upon this, employing the specific case of Abkhazia, but he is more concerned with the ‘retention’ of conflict rather than its outbreak. See also Allen (2013) for the application of this model to the ‘ethnic tension’ in the Solomon Islands in the period 1998–2003.

18 As one reviewer helpfully pointed out, the Adjarians were in fact the titular people of Adjara.

19 According to Coppieters (2002, note 20), the thesis had first appeared in 1889, advanced by the Georgian historian David Bakradze. See also Derluguian (1998, pp. 266–67).

20 On ‘dekulakisation’, see Brown (2003) and Kiernan (2007, ch. 13).

21 See, for instance, Giuliano (2011).

22 See also Kemoklidze (2016, note 32).

23 For the defining study of nationalism as a ‘mass phenomenon’ rather than an elite construct, see Weber (1976). See also, Connor (1990, pp. 92–100).

24 For a potent case against arguments for the vocabulary of ‘playing the ethnic card’, see Gagnon (2004, pp. xvi, 102–20, 196).

25 See also, Martin (2001b). It should be noted that Russians also dominated the technical and skilled labour market. See Giuliano (2011, pp. 98–100).

26 See also Giuliano (2000, pp. 304–7).

27 On triadic structures of nationalism, see Brubaker (1996, ch. 3). According to King (2001, p. 538), the situation was even more complicated than a ‘mere’ triadic one.

28 Georgia also attempted to split the multilingual Abkhaz University in Sukhumi into an Abkhaz and a Georgian institution, the latter of which was to become a branch of Tbilisi State University (Coppieters 2002, p. 98).

29 The university was ‘awarded’ to the Abkhaz following the 1978 clashes in a conciliatory move. This move also encapsulated a surge in television and radio stations, as well as giving rise to newspapers and journals (Derluguian 1998, p. 271).

30 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this point to my attention.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marc Dorpema

Marc Dorpema, Department of History, New York University, 53 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012, USA. Email: [email protected]