Anti-Abkhaz Hysteria on Social Media: Who, How, and Why Georgia is Rewriting the History of Abkhazia, by David Dasania
As long as I can remember, Georgian Soviet historians, and later the historians of independent Georgia that emerged after the collapse of the USSR (the latter, incidentally, doing so in a more sophisticated manner), have been deliberately engaged in the Georgianisation of the history of Abkhazia and the Abkhaz people. This process has affected everything: from Abkhaz surnames and personal names to culture and toponymy. Yet instead of offering a natural and honest repentance before the Abkhaz people, who played an outstanding, foundational role in the creation and strengthening of Georgian statehood itself, Georgian nationalists continue their dangerous game. They seek to mislead the world community by promoting an anti-scientific thesis that modern Abkhazians are merely “Apsua”, descendants of the Adyghe who descended from the mountains 300–400 years ago and forcibly “Apsuaised” some mythical “West Georgian tribe of Abkhaz”.
At the same time, Georgian politicians, intellectuals, and a significant part of society spread their hands in bewilderment, asking: “What are the Abkhaz unhappy about again? Why are they so ungrateful? When will they understand that Georgians are their brothers, wishing them only good?”. I believe they are not simply performing for the public, they are genuinely troubled by this. But in my view, such questions point to a kind of social schizophrenia. What did they expect from us? You deprive us of our Homeland; you deny us the right to our own history; you forbade us to have Abkhaz schools and to use our own alphabet. You declare all our heritage to be Georgian, and for that we are supposed to thank you?
The term ‘Apsua’ (Apsw’a) is the self-designation of the Abkhazian people, also known as an auto-ethnonym. On the other hand, ‘Abkhaz’ is the more widely used exonym, or the name by which they are referred to by other nations. Similarly, for Georgians, ‘Kartveli’ is their auto-ethnonym, while terms such as ‘gurji,’ ‘gruzin,’ ‘vrats,’ and ‘Georgian’ are their exonyms. Therefore, ‘Apsua’ and ‘Abkhaz’ do not refer to different nations.
Many representatives of the Georgian people (including Mingrelians and Svans) sincerely believe in the theory that Georgia has simply been “unlucky” with today’s Abkhazians. In their imagination, historical Abkhazia was populated exclusively by “West Georgian tribes”, while today’s “Apsua barbarians” merely took someone else’s place. This is the mindset of those who, boasting of their culture and placing it above all other Caucasian peoples, continue to call themselves a humane, tolerant, and civilised society.
But thank God, far from all Georgians are possessed by this hatred. I have been fortunate to have among Georgians, Mingrelians, and Svans truly worthy friends and relatives who treat the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples with immense love. I am proud of this friendship, I thank the Almighty for it, and I pray for these people. However, this does not отменяет my mission: I have been and will remain a defender of Abkhaz history, culture, and language. I command my native speech flawlessly, down to the smallest atoms of language, and I am ready—if my people support me—to carry out deep reforms of the language in order to popularise it on a global scale.
+ Rewriting History? A Critique of Modern Georgian Historiography on Abkhazia, by Stanislav Lakoba+ The Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis and the historiography of Abkhazia, by Kevin Tuite+ The Georgian-Abkhazian Conflict | The value of the past, by Victor A. Shnirelman+ Greeks and “Georgians” in ancient Colchis, by Philip L. Kohl and Gocha R. TsetskhladzeWhen I think of the long-suffering fate of my people, I lose my peace. I see both the advantages and the shortcomings of our current stage of development, but I pray fervently for the prosperity of Abkhazia. My goal is to unite society for a bright future. Despite the lack of financial support, I devote myself day and night to research work in order to return to the world the authentic history of our people. I am deeply grateful to Yuri Kvitsinia and Alina Achba for their readiness to join this great work, and to Lev Kazhevich Amichba for his willingness to provide material support for the project. With respect, I await a response from my other compatriots as well.
One thing genuinely amazes me: how do aggressive Georgian nationalists manage to lull the vigilance of a number of other Caucasian peoples? It is no secret that many in the North Caucasus still gravitate towards Georgia, despite the fact that Georgia’s academic elite often looks down on them, insulting them for the late emergence of their written traditions, while completely forgetting that it was precisely these peoples who more than once saved Georgians from total physical annihilation.
A couple of days ago, I published an article about the Abkhaz origin of a number of Georgian aristocratic surnames. My intention was peaceful: I wanted to sober up the organisers of the anti-Abkhaz hysteria with the fact of our genealogical kinship. Instead, I found myself in a real witches’ sabbath of amateurs and haters masquerading as experts. Now I am forced to give them a proper historical literacy lesson. I will prove that several generations of scholars deliberately deceived them, and until I achieve the triumph of historical truth, I will not rest.
Tuite, Kevin. The Rise and Fall and Revival of the Ibero-Caucasian Hypothesis Historiographia Linguistica Vol. 35:1/2 (2008), pp. 56-57
I am outraged by the unending lamentations of the majority of Georgian ideologues who, appealing to God, claim that they have been “terribly unlucky” with their neighbours, with the Abkhaz and the Ossetians. Allow me to clarify, on the basis of dry historical facts: you have been as lucky with the Abkhaz as no people anywhere in the world has ever been.
Not being Georgians by origin, and possessing a language that differs from Georgian as radically as Finnish differs from Chinese, it was precisely the Abkhaz who freed the territories of present-day Georgia from foreign influence and laid the foundations of a powerful state. It is important to remember that in the period when the Abkhaz Kingdom stood at the zenith of its power, no “Georgia” existed at all, there were only scattered, weakened, and politically disoriented regions.
It was the Abkhaz Kingdom, whose capital was first in Anakopia and was later transferred to Kutaisi, that became the political locomotive which, by force and diplomacy, united the fragmented principalities. The unified state of the eleventh century did not arise out of nothing; it emerged on the basis of legitimacy that the Abkhaz King Bagrat II (whom Georgian historiography deliberately calls Bagrat III) received above all as the direct heir, through the female line, of the Abkhaz kings of the Leonid dynasty.
Consequently, the historical truth is this: it was not the Abkhaz who “became part of Georgia”, but Georgian lands (Kartli, Kakheti, and others) that were annexed to the powerful and monolithic Abkhaz Kingdom.
The state that modern textbooks slyly prefer to call “West Georgian” was, in all sources contemporary to it, referred to exclusively as the “Abkhaz Kingdom”, and its rulers proudly bore the title “King of the Abkhaz”. To call the polity of the eighth to tenth centuries “Georgia” in the modern ethno-political sense is a glaring historical distortion. It was a comparatively compact, yet great in spirit, empire created and led by the Abkhaz elite. To ignore this is not merely to be mistaken: it is to consciously reject the direct testimony of the chronicles and to undermine the foundations of one’s own legitimacy.
The thesis that the Abkhaz (Apsua) allegedly migrated from the North Caucasus 300–400 years ago does not withstand any scientific criticism. This concept is purely politicised, anti-scientific, and fundamentally contradicts the data of archaeology, linguistics, and genetics.
The question of the origin of the Abkhaz people is clearly addressed in academic scholarship and rests upon a powerful source base that requires no conjecture.
+ Responses to Some Fanciful Ideas of a “Historian” from Paris, Badri Gogia, by Denis Gopia+ Giorgi Soselia’s Critique of Pavle Ingorokva’s ‘Giorgi Merchule’ and the Misrepresentation of Abkhazian History+ Georgian Myths vs. Historical Facts: The Reality of Abkhazian History+ Questions of Abkhazian history in the book by P. Ingorokva ‘Georgi Merchule - Georgian writer of the 10th century’, by Zurab V. Anchabadze+ Zviad Gamsakhurdia: “Abkhaz Nation Doesn’t Exist!”Ancient and Byzantine authors of the first to sixth centuries CE (such as Pliny Secundus, Flavius Arrian, Strabo, Procopius of Caesarea, and others) consistently record on the territory of present-day Abkhazia the tribes of the Apsilians (Ἀψίλαι) and the Abasgi (Ἀβασγοί). Their localisation remains stable over the centuries and coincides with the principal historical and geographical regions of Abkhazia.
Linguistic evidence irrefutably confirms ethnic continuity: the Abkhaz self-designation, Apsua, correlates directly with the ancient ethnonym “Apsilians”. The exoethnonym “Abkhaz” derives from the form “Abasgi”, recorded in the Byzantine tradition. This is recognised by the overwhelming majority of serious Caucasus specialists.
The archaeological cultures of the region, most notably the famous Tsebelda culture, demonstrate an unbroken line of development of the local population from the earliest times. Genetic studies of modern Abkhaz confirm their deep autochthony.
Moreover, the linguistic distance between Abkhaz and the Adyghe language shows that their divergence occurred millennia ago. This makes the scenario of their “sudden” appearance from the mountains in the seventeenth century physically and logically impossible. We are not newcomers; we are an indigenous people who have preserved our identity on our own land, despite all attempts to rewrite our history.
Abkhazian archaeology vividly demonstrates cultural and demographic continuity from antiquity to the Middle Ages. In the soil, in the foundations of fortresses, and in burial sites there are not even the slightest traces of a mass migration or population replacement in later times. The ethnolinguistic characteristics of the Abkhaz language, its unique and complex structure, also entirely rule out its emergence in the region in a historically recent period.
Thus, the totality of written sources, linguistics, and archaeology leads to a single scientifically grounded conclusion: the Apsilians and the Abasgi are the direct historical ancestors of modern Abkhazians (Apsua), and the Abkhaz people represent the autochthonous population of Abkhazia with profound historical continuity.
Georgian authors often point to Georgian inscriptions in Abkhazian churches as irrefutable proof of the “Georgianness” of the territory. However, this argument collapses when compared with world history. In the Middle Ages, the Georgian language in the region, following Greek, fulfilled the role of the Church’s liturgical language and the language of chancery, much as Latin served all of Europe.
The presence of inscriptions in Latin in Germany does not turn Germans into Romans; nor does the presence of Arabic script on monuments in Central Asia make local inhabitants Arabs. The construction of great spiritual centres, Pitsunda, Lykhny, Bedia, was carried out by the will, at the expense, and under the patronage of Abkhaz kings. This is the direct legacy of Abkhaz statehood, which only much later was integrated into the broader Georgian cultural context.
+ What AW Receives from Georgians Daily+ In Defence of the Homeland: Intellectuals and the Georgian-Abkhazian Conflict, by Bruno Coppieters + After 30 years Georgians still refuse to acknowledge their own responsibility for the conflict, by George Hewitt+ On some issues of ethnic identity and placement of the Abkhazians (Regarding the work of P. Ingorokva ‘Giorgi Merchule’), by Ketevan LomtatidzeThe Georgian people do indeed possess one of the most ancient scripts in the Caucasus: the Georgian alphabet is attested from the fifth century CE. This is an outstanding cultural achievement, and no one disputes the fact that Georgian literature and the Christian tradition made an enormous contribution to the shared history of the Caucasus.
However, to use the antiquity of one’s writing system as a pretext for civilisational arrogance, contempt, and daily insults towards the Abkhaz and other peoples of the Caucasus is morally base and unworthy of an enlightened nation. Peoples who preserved their identity through the centuries without a written word, or who restored it later, have no less right to respect and to historical subjecthood.
True tolerance, hospitality, and generosity, qualities Georgians so often like to speak about, are incompatible with systematic humiliation of neighbouring peoples online, with sophisticated mockery of “late” literacy, and with attempts to erase another identity. This is not pride in one’s culture, but a manifestation of a superiority complex which, in the twenty-first century, looks especially pathetic and archaic. A people who present themselves as “the most hospitable and civilised” while daily pouring filth on Abkhaz, Ossetians, and representatives of other peoples on social media simply lose the moral right to such claims.
There are serious grounds to believe that the proto-Abkhaz–Adyghe peoples possessed an ancient writing system, discovered on the Maykop slab of the fourth to third millennium BCE, which some researchers associate with proto-Abkhaz writing). In the Abkhaz language, indigenous words have survived to this day: “аҩра” (ayurá – to write), “аҩыра” (ayuýra – writing), “анҵара” (antzará – to record), “ашәҟәы” (ashvkú – book), “аҧхьара” (ápkhyara – to read), “адырга” (sign, symbol)—these are not borrowings, but evidence of a lost ancient tradition. But we will discuss this in a separate publication.
This article was published on David Dasania’s personal blog and is translated from Russian.
First published on AbkhazWorld