#26 - JRL 2006-131 - JRL Home
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006
From: Sergei Roy <SergeiRoy@yandex.ru>
Subject: Rejoinder to Timothy Blauvelt JRL 131 #26

In my comments in JRL #130 on the “Untimely Thoughts” panel on the Montenegro case as precedent for North Ossetia and Abkhazia I adduced several arguments to support the view that the case of these republics for independence was not just different from the Montenegrin precedent but much stronger, the two republics being already quite independent from Georgia which does not have any control over them at all.

My comments elicited an emotional reaction from Mr. Blauvelt in JRL 131 #26. It is hard to discuss rationally a text that is, in fact, a collection of Mr. Blauvelt’s beliefs and disbeliefs rather than a fact-based discourse. But let me try.

(1) Mr. Blauvelt does not believe President Putin’s statement that Russia has no plans to incorporate any territories outside its borders, citing sundry Russian politicians who have expressed the opposite view (I am happy to see Mr. Blauvelt does not quote Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s eloquent statements on the subject). Mr. Blauvelt can naturally believe or disbelieve anyone he likes or rather dislikes. I hope the same right is vouchsafed me, and I choose to believe the president ­ not just because he has not been known to tell a whopping lie or because, president or not, he is going to remain a dominant figure on the Russian political scene for quite some time.

The reason for my belief was stated in my comments on the original debate: the two republics are already economically incorporated in Russia. More correctly, they never split from Russia; they split from Georgia, which can offer them nothing in the way of economic well-being except threats of war. Formal political union might be a nice outcome for the two republics and Russia, but substantively it is not necessary at all. This is an aspect of the situation that Mr. Blauvelt prefers to bypass altogether.

(2) Mr. Blauvelt does not believe that there can be “no possible way that the Caucasians can resolve a complex political issue through negotiation and compromise.” I was not talking of abstract “Caucasians,” Mr. Blauvelt. I was talking about peoples that have a centuries-long history of animosity (I might enlarge on that) and a recent history of a bloody war during which unspeakable atrocities were committed by both sides.

I wonder if Mr. Blauvelt has ever heard of a “Chechen tie.” Well, let me tell you. Chechens, just like Kabardinians, Adygs, Abazins, Dagestanis, and other members of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples, fought on the Abkhaz side in the recent conflict, and it was then that they invented the Chechen tie: you slit the victim’s gorge and pull his or her tongue down so that it hangs out of the slit. Mr. Blauvelt can keep his pure faith in these people resolving “political issues through negotiation and compromise,” forgetting little things like that. Permit me to keep my certainty that forgetfulness is a long way off. It is a fact that Georgian “partisans” keep infiltrating Abkhaz territory, laying landmines and killing Abkhaz civilians and Russian peace-keepers. There is also the fact of continual saber-rattling by Mr. Saakashvili and the Georgian parliament. If Mr. Blauvelt takes this as signs of the Georgian side’s intention to “resolve a complex political issue through negotiation and compromise,” I can only observe this kind of mental processes with mild astonishment.

(3) Mr. Blauvelt believes that Abkhaz and Abaza peoples do not have the right to be re-united and calls my argument to this effect “absurd.” Just like that ­ “absurd,” period; no further discussion needed.

I wonder if Mr. Blauvelt has ever spoken to a single Abazin in his life. Well, I have, to quite a few. A long time ago I was not yet privy to many niceties of kinship relations in the Caucasus, and I wondered aloud whether there was kinship between Abkhaz and Abaza peoples ­ their names sounded so alike, as did their speech. The gentleman I was talking to flared up: My odin narod! “We are one people!” as if my doubt, or what seemed like doubt, had insulted him. When German crowds chanted in 1989 in Leipzig, “Wir sind ein Volk!”, I had a distinct impression I had already heard something like that somewhere.

Now, I would say it is “absurd” to ignore such facts. As I’ve mentioned already, Abaza men went to fight alongside Abkhaz people against Georgians, and if that is not proof of their sense of unity, I wonder what is.

(4) Mr. Blauvelt believes that Mr. Jensen was quite right to call Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples “pawns” in the regional conflict: in his view, this is “exactly what they are.” I can only express my sorrow that neither of these gentlemen will have an occasion to repeat their opinions to an Abkhaz or Ossetian to their face. I wouldn’t, you know. Nor would I dare call any of the peoples of the Caucasus my “feral little brothers” ­ I value my life, what is left of it, too much for that. Interestingly, Mr. Blauvelt refers to my own attitude as “patronizing.” That’s curious, that really is.

(5) Mr. Blauvelt does not believe that “the fact that these peoples were issued Russian passports (which in itself was a move of questionable legality)” changes anything in their status as “pawns.” “These peoples” were not issued Russian passports by Russian authorities harboring sinister designs against their will, Mr. Blauvelt. “These people” exchanged their Soviet passports for Russian Federation ones out of their own free will ­ just like I did, just like countless Georgians I know have done. Do we question these Georgians’ right to do so, too? They might have something to say on this score, you know. Their livelihoods depend on these little bits of cardboard. According to Mr. Blauvelt’s “four legs good, two legs bad” logic, what Georgians do, the Abkhaz can’t, or mustn’t. That is even curiouser than the above.

(5) Mr. Blauvelt disbelieves the estimated figure of one million Georgians living in Russia and providing the livelihood of their families back home. Sadly, he gets a bit confused about what constitutes a third of the five-million population of Georgia, conveniently forgetting that I was speaking of able-bodied workers, not the whole of the population, and totally leaving out of account the picture that is too familiar to the police, say, here in Moscow: they bitterly complain that to every single illegal migrant they catch, there are hundreds that evade capture. That might surely ring a bell to folks on Capitol Hill right now, I guess.

One just wonders what Mr. Blauvelt wants to prove with his juggling of figures. That Georgia is totally independent of the Russian economy? This past winter, someone in the Caucasus (my guess is, some Abazins still nursing a grudge ­ the area where that happened was just right) blew up one (1) power line leading from Russia to Georgia. What ensued was as good as a national disaster ­ judging, at any rate, by the hysterics in the Georgian parliament and of their excitable president. Playing with “World Bank estimates” is one thing, Mr. Blauvelt; life in the raw, quite another.

Finally, Mr. Blauvelt does not believe that I have any “expertise in the region.” In any case, he doubts it ­ and I quite agree. I do not claim to have any special, Blauvelt-type expertise in the region. I mean, I did not pay a flying visit to the region to collect material for a Ph.D. That I concede. I was merely born in the Caucasus. My ancestors have lived in the Caucasus since 1780. I have their gravestones scattered over the region, some carved with resounding Georgian names. I lived there for more than 20 years, and I still go there twice a year, in spring and autumn (I’ve just returned from a month-long stay). I crawled all over the Caucasus, rock-climbing. A Karachai saved my life on a certain glacier. I have countless relations, friends, former colleagues and students, and just acquaintances, on both sides of the Main Caucasian Ridge.

These are just a few random facts from the life of a single individual, and there are millions of us here with this sort of “expertise.” I guess this is reason enough to have our judgments taken into account ­ over the judgments of individuals who buff up their preconceived opinions and beliefs by conducting a few conversations with a few locals through an interpreter, and then speculate on ways of shaping local “situations” to their own satisfaction. And that’s at best. At worst, they just watch TV, read each other’s papers, and mull over geopolitical maps ­ at a safe distance.

No, Mr. Blauvelt, Russian intellectuals do not have a “patronizing attitude” toward “increasing Western involvement in the region.” Our attitude is one of alarm and apprehension, and not just among intellectuals. Let us be honest and speak of increasing American, not abstract Western, involvement ­ and we have every reason to fear that. People of my generation still have memories of American involvement in Korea, in the course of which General MacArthur came up with a cute plan to atom-bomb a dozen or so Soviet cities. We can easily recall American involvement in Vietnam. America was heavily involved in Pakistan and Afghanistan, nurturing the Taliban ­ it can now enjoy the fruits of those labors. Latin America is studded with memories of American involvement. Serbs still have plenty of ruins to remind them of American involvement. In Iraq, America is involved up to its eyebrows. The list is much longer, actually.

In each of those cases there were certainly individuals with a distinctive brand of “expertise” in local affairs who prodded American authorities into greater involvement ­ which in crude, real-life terms meant the use of missiles, supersonic bombers, depleted uranium cannon shells, and similar gadgets. In the present instance, Mr. Blauvelt’s “expertise” also has a clear aim: to prod the “international community” into helping Georgia establish an occupation regime in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

This is a dangerous, irresponsible pastime, which can only bring the usual trail of death and destruction in the wake of “Western involvement.”