1989 Sukhumi riots

Coordinates: 43°00′12″N 41°00′55″E / 43.00333°N 41.01528°E / 43.00333; 41.01528
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1989 Sukhumi riots
Part of
Rioting, street fighting, looting, siege
Parties
Abkhaz civilians
Georgian civilians
Soviet police
Casualties
Death(s)18
Injuries448

The Sukhumi riot was a

civil unrest
in Sukhumi and throughout Abkhazia.

The riots started as an Abkhaz protest against opening of a branch of

Georgian-Abkhaz conflict
.

Background

See also: History of Abkhazia

Abkhazia, being part of medieval

Abkhaz ASSR and fully under the control of the Georgian SSR.[2]

In 1956, Georgians

Abkhaz State University, but also wide over-representation of the Abkhaz in the nomenklatura.[8][9]

As the Georgian dissidents began to campaign for the Georgian independence and mobilized large number of protesters in the late 1980s, on 17 June 1988, an 87-page document, known as the 'Abkhazian Letter', was sent to Mikhail Gorbachev and the rest of the Soviet leadership. Signed by 60 leading Abkhaz Communists, it outlined "the grievances the Abkhaz felt", and argued that despite the concessions of 1978, autonomy had largely been ignored in the region. Thus, it asked for Abkhazia to be removed from the Georgian SSR, and to be "restored as a full Soviet republic, akin to the SSR Abkhazia".[10]

Further issues occurred on 18 March 1989. Around 37,000 people met at the village of

anti-Soviet and pro-independence rally on 9 April 1989, which was violently dispersed by Soviet Interior Ministry troops, resulting in the deaths of at least nineteen, mostly young women, and the injury of hundreds of demonstrators.[12] At a plenum of the Georgian central committee the following day the Communist party first secretary, Jumber Patiashvili, resigned and was replaced by the former head of the Georgian KGB, Givi Gumbaridze.[13] The 9 April tragedy removed the last vestiges of credibility from the Soviet regime in Georgia and pushed many Georgians into radical opposition to the Soviet Union, and exacerbated ethnic tensions between Georgians and other groups, in particular the Abkhaz and Ossetians.[14]

The university controversy

The status of Abkhazian State University, pictured here in 2013, was the source of the riots.

The issue of a

Georgian national mobilization in defense of their language and culture. The university had three sectors: Abkhaz, Georgian, and Russian.[15] However, Georgian students repeatedly complained of discrimination at the hands of their Abkhaz and Russian lectors and administration.[16] In the aftermath of the 9 April events, Georgian students at Sukhumi State University started a hunger strike, calling for the Georgian sector of the university to be transformed into a branch of Tbilisi State University, and in effect controlled by Georgians and not Abkhaz.[17] Joined by students and faculty from the Subtropical Institute, this was part of a campaign started by ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia for greater cultural separation, and more clear division between the two ethnic groups. Aware it would cause unrest in Abkhazia, the authorities approved the measure on 14 May.[18] In response Abkhaz organized a sit-in. The Supreme Soviet in Moscow also launched a commission, which ruled that the Georgians had no authority to establish the university, as that was solely under its purview.[19] They concluded that a region the size of Abkhazia had no need for two universities.[20]

The riots

Despite the ruling against the legality of the university, entrance exams were scheduled for 15 July.[21] Attempts by Abkhaz to photograph the crowds of Georgians congregated in the city is said to have started the violence.[22][21] By 7:00pm the university was under attack.[22] Late on 16 July, a crowd of five thousand Abkhaz, many of whom were armed, surged into the building. Several members of the Georgian exam commission were beaten up, and the school was looted.[23]

This set off a chain of events that produced further casualties and destruction as the both sides engaged in armed fighting for several days to come. That evening, Abkhaz and Georgians began mobilizing all over Abkhazia and western Georgia. Svans, an ethnic Georgian subgroup from northeastern Abkhazia, and Abkhaz from the town of Tkvarcheli in Abkhazia clashed in a shootout that lasted all night and intermittently for several days afterward.[19] Meanwhile, up to 25,000 Georgians from western Georgia, and the predominantly Georgian Gali district in southern Abkhazia, gathered near Ochamchire.[24] Soviet Interior Ministry troops were sent in to restore order, and by 17 July the violence had largely dissipated.[25]

Aftermath

The July events in Abkhazia left at least 18 dead and 448 injured, of whom, according to official accounts, 302 were Georgians.[26] It also marked the first case of inter-ethnic violence in Georgia; while previous protests and demonstrations had occurred in Abkhazia, none had seen any casualties.[27] Although a continuous presence of the Interior Ministry troops maintained a precarious peace in the region, outbursts of violence did occur, and the Soviet government made no progress toward solving any of the inter-ethnic problems.[28] The Georgians suspected the attack on their university was intentionally staged by the Abkhaz secessionists in order to provoke a large-scale violence that would prompt Moscow to declare a martial law in the region, thus depriving the government in Tbilisi of any control over the autonomous structures in Abkhazia. At the same time, they accused the Soviet government of manipulating ethnic issues to curb Georgia's otherwise irrepressible independence movement. On the other hand, the Abkhaz claimed that the new university was an instrument in the hands of Georgians to reinforce their cultural dominance in the region, and continued to demand that the investigation of the July events be turned over to Moscow and that no branch of Tbilisi State University be opened in Sukhumi.[29]

Tensions remained high in Abkhazia, and saw the Abkhaz totally disregard Georgian authority in the region. This was confirmed on 25 August 1990, when the Abkhaz Supreme Soviet passed a declaration, "On Abkhazia's State Sovereignty," which gave supremacy to Abkhaz laws over Georgian ones.

October 1990 only further led to increased issues, as the newly-elected Chairman of the Georgian Supreme Soviet, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was outspoken in his desire to reduce the autonomy of the non-Georgian population in the country.[33] By this point, however, Georgian authority had effectively ceased in Abkhazia: Abkhazia took part in the Soviet referendum on 17 March 1991, which the rest of Georgia boycotted, while the non-Georgian population of region (along with South Ossetia, another autonomous region of Georgia), in turn boycotted the referendum on independence on 9 April 1991.[34][35]

A power-sharing deal was agreed upon in August 1991, dividing electoral districts by ethnicity, with the

Abkhaz–Georgian conflict.[38] In the aftermath of the 1992–1993 war, the Sukhumi branch of Tbilisi State University, which had remained open, was relocated to Tbilisi as the city fell out of Georgian control. It was re-established in Tbilisi in December 1993, and remains there.[39]

Notes

  1. ^ Rayfield 2012, p. 326
  2. ^ Suny 1994, p. 321
  3. ^ Lang 1962, pp. 264–265
  4. ^ a b Suny 1994, pp. 304–305
  5. ^ Cornell 2002, pp. 146–149
  6. ISBN 9781799889137
    .
  7. ^ Lakoba 1995, p. 99
  8. ^ Hewitt 1993, p. 282
  9. ^ Slider 1985, pp. 59–62
  10. ^ Hewitt 1996, p. 202
  11. ^ Francis 2011, p. 73
  12. ^ Sources differ on the number of dead: Stephen Jones, a historian of the Caucasus, states 19 (Jones 2013, pp. 31–32), while the BBC and Eurasianet, a news website focusing on the Caucasus, both claim 20 (Eke 2009; Lomsadze 2014); Donald Rayfield, a professor of Russian and Georgian literature and history, has written that 21 died (Rayfield 2012, p. 378)
  13. ^ Jones 2013, p. 35
  14. ^ Rayfield 2012, pp. 378–380
  15. ^ Slider 1985, pp. 62–63
  16. ^ Slider 1985, p. 63
  17. ^ Francis 2011, p. 74
  18. ^ Chervonnaya 1994, p. 65
  19. ^ a b Kaufman 2001, pp. 104–105
  20. ^ Hewitt 2013, p. 75
  21. ^ a b Kaufman 2001, p. 105
  22. ^ a b Popkov 1998, p. 115
  23. ^ Beissinger 2002, pp. 301–303
  24. ^ Popkov 1998, p. 118
  25. ^ Popkov 1998, pp. 118–120
  26. ^ Kaufman 2001, p. 238: "Citation 111, which references Elizabeth Fuller, "The South Ossetian Campaign or Unification," p. 18 Report on the USSR, 1, No. 30 (July 28, 1989)."
  27. ^ Zürcher 2005, p. 89
  28. ^ Ozhiganov 1997, p. 374
  29. ^ Suny 1994, p. 399
  30. ^ Jones 2013, p. 44
  31. ^ a b Zürcher 2005, p. 95
  32. ^ Hewitt 2013, pp. 47–48, 80–83
  33. ^ Suny 1994, p. 325
  34. ^ Francis 2011, p. 75
  35. ^ Zürcher 2005, p. 93
  36. ^ Zürcher 2005, pp. 95–96
  37. ^ Saparov 2015, p. 65
  38. ^ Rayfield 2012, pp. 383–384
  39. ^ Sokhumi State University 2014

Bibliography

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