A UNITED CAUCASUS: REALITY ROOTED IN THE PAST OR HIGH-FLOWN POLITICAL ILLUSIONS?

Nino CHIKOVANI

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Nino Chikovani, D.Sc. (Hist.), professor, Department of Cultural History and Theory, the Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia)

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Coming Back to World Politics

The Caucasus was drawn into the sphere of international politics in the 1990s and has remained there ever since. Along with Yugoslavia it owes its international prominence to the acute ethnic and political conflicts and wars on its territory.

Its geographic, ethnic, linguistic, confessional, and cultural diversity has largely determined its history and the relations among its nations. It is not for nothing that the Caucasus is called a “museum of nations:” it is home to over 50 large and small nations and ethnic groups (about 20 million people in all). The smallest number several hundreds, while the largest ethnic groups have several million people.

At all times the region remained a link between Europe and Asia; throughout its history the Caucasus or its regions were either a buffer zone between the rivaling empires or part of them. Rome, Parthia, Byzantium, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, the Iranian, Ottoman, and Russian empires all met or clashed here. Confessional and ethnic diversity is another of the region’s prominent features: there are Christians and Muslims (Sunni and Shi‘a), as well as peoples belonging to various Indo-European groups, the Iberian-Caucasian, Turkic, and Semitic ethnic and language groups.

The Caucasus is home to the four world religions: Christianity represented mainly by Orthodoxy and Monophysitism and a small number of Catholics and Protestants; Sunni and Shi‘a Islam; Judaism practiced by the Georgian and mountain Jews (the latter living mainly high up in………………

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