BATTLE FOR ABKHAZIAN HISTORY IN THE POST STALINISM GEORGIAN SSR

Abstract

After World War II Josep Stalin spends his holidays in Sochi, mostly meeting with friends from his childhood and walking in parks. In 1946 he phoned the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Georgian SSR Kandid Charkviani and asked him to organize a meeting with two Georgian historians, Simon Janashia and Niko Berdzenishvili. The subject of the discussion should have been a textbook of Georgian History for the secondary schools published in 1943 in the Georgian language. Stalin had read the book in advance and was well prepared for the discussion. He was promoting the Soviet policy of ”indigenization”(korenizatsia) and looked at such texts through this lens. Apparently, he wanted the Georgians as the titular nation in the republic to enjoy all the privileges, hence, supporting the policy of Georgianazation of the other ethnicities within the republic. That policy caused a protest (mostly hidden, and sometimes even open) of ethnic minorities. One of the first protest letters was sent to Moscow by three young Abkhaz intellectuals in 1947. After the death of Joseph Stalin, the problems in relation of Tbilisi and Sokhumi, the center and periphery, became more profound. The Georgian Soviet nationalistic policy, especially reflected in historiography, helped formatting Abkhazian “reciprocal” nationalism. Control over the national history helped to form rival political groups to struggle for power, i.e. the control of economic and social life.