In a jab at Moscow, Georgia on May 20 became the first country to recognize
as genocide Tsarist Russia’s massive slaughter of ethnic Circassians in the
mid-19th century. The decision constitutes part of Tbilisi’s ongoing argument
that the Caucasus is a region where Russia comes as an outsider, not as a native
with the right to rule. On a more tactical level, the vote is widely perceived
as an attempt to even the score with Moscow for its recognition of breakaway
Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
Applauding Diaspora
Circassians who attended the May 20 parliamentary hearings rose to their feet in
respect when the Georgian parliament unanimously passed the genocide resolution. The
vote came on the eve of Circassian Memory Day, which commemorates the 1864
slaughter.
"We have to face the truth, and the truth for the whole of
the Caucasus is that Russia is an occupant, which used the policy of
annihilating and uprooting Caucasians,” said Giorgi Gabashvili, a senior
parliamentarian from the ruling United National Movement for a Victorious
Georgia Party.
It all goes back some century-and-a-half to the brutal
expansionist war waged by Tsarist Russia to clear the Caucasus of hostile
locals. Large numbers of Circassians, Abkhaz and Adyghe were rounded up and
expelled, mainly to Ottoman Turkey. An unconfirmed number are reported to have
died making the trip in shoddy vessels across the Black Sea.
The
memory of these events still lives on strongly in the North Caucasus, and also
in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, where flowers are cast each year into the
Black Sea to commemorate the Abkhaz who perished during the
crossing.
Georgia seeks to exploit Russia’s weaknesses on this count by
playing both ends against the middle, commented Caucasus analyst Mamuka
Areshidze. With one hand, Tbilisi is massaging its own ties with the Caucasus’
ethnic communities, while, with the other, it is punching Moscow in a sore
spot.
"Adopting this resolution comes as a certain kind of reprisal
to Russia [for recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia],” Areshidze said. "At
the same time, the decision came in the context of Tbilisi’s policy to style
itself as the center of united Caucasus.”Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili
told the United Nations Assembly last fall that Georgia would lead the way to a
"free, stable and united” Caucasus.
But if the genocide vote – or
Tbilisi’s united Caucasus mission -- has caught Russian politicians up short,
they are not giving any public sign. Leonid Slutsky, first deputy chairperson of
the Duma’s International Affairs Committee, dismissed the resolution as "legal
nonsense.”
"For almost a century already there hasn’t been such a
state as the Russian Empire,” Slutsky scoffed, Regnum news service reported.
"It’s anybody’s guess against whom this resolution was aimed and with what
purpose.”
The 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in Russia's North Caucasus
city of Sochi is one clear target. Tbilisi has raged against Russia’s use of
labor and other resources from neighboring breakaway Abkhazia to prepare for the
games. Circassian groups, meanwhile, have spoken out against holding the
Olympics in the city that was the site of their ancestors’ last stand against
invading Russians.
But Tbilisi could have opened a Pandora’s box by
backing the Circassian claim of genocide, Areshidze cautioned. "This is likely
to open the floodgates for more similar requests, which will put Tbilisi in a
troublesome position with other countries in the neighborhood, such as
Armenia.”
Armenia, which borders Georgia to the south, has requested
Tbilisi to recognize Ottoman Turkey’s 1915 massacre of hundreds of thousands of
ethnic Armenians as genocide. Georgia, so far, has stopped short of doing so
lest it antagonize its key regional partner, Turkey. "Russia, which probably
will refrain from any direct retaliatory move [for the Circassian genocide
resolution], will try to use this issue against Georgia,” Areshidze
predicted.
Some minority parliamentarians had had second thoughts
about the resolution for that reason, but their earlier misgivings apparently
vanished amidst the government's clarion call to support the Circassians as a
way to support Georgia itself.
"[W]e are establishing completely new
relations between Georgia and the North Caucasus peoples, which is good for
regional security and stability,” declared the genocide resolution’s principal
promoter, ruling party parliamentarian Nugzar Tsiklauri.
Editor's note:
Giorgi Lomsadze is a
freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.
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