Here is a map of a region in Georgia that is no longer a conflict zone. In the late Shevardnadze era (i.e., the early 2000's), Tbilisi's tenuous control over Ajaria (a.k.a. Adzharia, Adjara, Achara) was often mentioned in the same breath as the de facto independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as evidence of Georgia's failed statehood.
Relatively soon after the Rose Revolution, however, in May 2004, Ajaria's wily ruler Aslan Abashidze, who had run the province pretty much as a personal fiefdom since the Soviet breakup, was ousted from his perch in Batumi and forced to flee - to Moscow, I believe, to take advantage of the hospitality of his pal Yuri Luzhkov, who had earlier tried unsuccessfully to insert himself as a mediator in the conflict between Batumi and the Georgian center.
The only real tragedy of Abashidze's ouster was the sad fate of his many fancy dogs. The departure of the long-time leader did not fully quiet the dissatisfaction of the local population, however, and the fact that it was accomplished without violence may have fostered an early and unjustified sense of confidence among Saakashvili's team that the other regions which had strayed even farther from Tbilisi's control would somehow be easy to bring back into the fold. The region retains nominal autonomous status, which it also enjoyed during the Soviet era.
Anyway, here's a map of the region made in less chaotic times - circa 1985:
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This map took much longer than I'd care to admit to scan in, since it had to be scanned in bits and then digitally assembled - and I don't really have the proper software for that, so sadly I had to use the very basic MS Paint. I might have given up if the thing wasn't so visually spectacular. It dates from 1970 and has thumbnail photos and brief summaries of tourist attractions on the back.
Through sometimes painful experience, I've concluded that Flickr is a better photo host than Blogger, so I've uploaded the images there - if you want to see larger-sized versions, click on the picture or the link underneath it and then once you have been taken to Flickr, look for the "all sizes" icon above the photo. I've also added a link to the very largest version of each image in the captions below.
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Continuing my recent spate of posts about Abkhazia, here is another map I found in one of our boxes of stuff from Moscow, most likely purchased at Izmailovo or some other flea market - a tourist's guide to Sukhumi from the early 1980s. I scanned it in at a fairly high resolution, so if you click on the images and view the full-sized files you should be able to read the narrative text describing the city's various tourist attractions.
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I'm not in a position to try to follow the breaking aspects of the story and provide updates on the escalation or de-escalation of tensions, various visits to the region by foreign dignitaries, etc., but I did want to post a few more maps as well as point out that the International Crisis Group has just issued a report on the situation in Abkhazia. I haven't read it yet, but if it's anything like their past reports on the conflict it will be interesting and useful. I normally skim over the "recommendations" portions of their reports and head to the meatier narrative portions, which contain insights from interviews conducted by ICG which you might not see elsewhere.
As for the maps, I've scanned them in from a book I recently acquired, Konflikty v Abkhazii i IUzhnoi Osetii: Dokumenty 1989-2006 gg. I was expecting a dry compilation of documents and perhaps some black-and-white maps - imagine my surprise when the book arrived with two inlaid full-color maps and maps on each of the endpapers.
The book is published in Moscow and at least one of the maps appears to have been authored by a relative of Abkhazia's de facto leader Sergei Bagapsh, so it is quite possible that the maps are designed to make subtle and perhaps deceptive political points (this is also suggested by the somewhat tendentious title of the second map - rough translations of the map titles appear as captions below).
Nevertheless, they are so well-designed that I couldn't resist posting them (though I'll be happy to take them down if the copyright holders object!), and I would imagine that at least the ones based on 1989 figures are reliable. The map titled "peacekeeper deployment" also contains ethnic breakdown figures, but they are based on the questionable 2002 census figures arrived at by the de facto Abkhazian authorities.
Click on the images to expand them:
Ethnic minorities in Georgia (based on the 1989 census)
Ethnic minorities within (the internationally recognized borders of) Georgia
(based on 2002 figures)
Abkhazia: an ethnic map based on the 1989 censusRead More...
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I heard an extensive and pretty even-handed report about Abkhazia on NPR's Morning Edition today. I guess that means it's finally "arrived" as a mainstream news topic - that, or they are trying to inform their listeners before open hostilities break out there.
In the meantime, I've been reorganizing some of my old books* which have been languishing in boxes since we moved back to DC from Moscow - the reorganization is in preparation for our move later this year to London, although we won't be taking these books with us. Before re-boxing them, I took some quick photos of a few of the books and the maps of the region therein which might be of interest to Caucasophiles (photos are of book covers and then one map from each of the books):
Caucasus Travel Guide, c. 1929
Schematic map of agriculture, industry, oil pipelines,
electrification, and railroads planned and under construction
Georgian Military Highway, 1925
Map of the Transcaucasian SFSR
Abkhazian Alps, 1930
Schematic map of the eastern portion of the Black Sea coast* Please note that all of these books were exported from Russia with the appropriate permission from the Ministry of Culture!
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