A UNITED CAUCASUS: REALITY ROOTED IN THE PAST OR HIGH-FLOWN POLITICAL ILLUSIONS?
Abstract
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 the mountains of Azerbaijan and Daghestan), and Buddhism, the religion of the Kalmyks.1
Throughout its history the Caucasus has been and remains a bridge connecting the North and the South, and the West and the East, as well as a barrier separating them. The academic community on the whole agrees that the Caucasian peoples gained next to nothing from this geopolitical advantage, and even lost a lot because of it. With the exception of the Soviet period when the Caucasus, as part of the U.S.S.R., lived according to the laws of a “closed” society, it was part of the international communication network. Under Soviet power, however, it was deprived of its role of a North/South and West/East transportation corridor. Today, the region is free to regain this function.
There is no clear geographic definition of the Caucasus. Generally speaking, it is a mountainous country between the Black and the Caspian seas. Described in the demographic and historical terms
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Not all authors agree that the Kalmyks belong to the Caucasus. There are 122,000 of them living to the north of Daghestan and to the northwest of the Caspian; their contacts with the Caucasian peoples are intensifying.
See: K.S. Gadjiev, Geopolitika Kavkaza, Mezhdunarodnye otnoshenia Publishers, Moscow, 2001, pp. 44-45.
See: E. Ismailov, E. Polukhov, “The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Players in Caucasian Politics,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 4 (28), 2004, p. 46.
See: S.P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of the World Order, New York, 1996.
See: D. Senghaas, The Clash within Civilizations (Coming to terms with cultural conflicts), Routledge, London, New York, 2002, p. 74.
See: N. MacFarlane, “The Clash of Civilizations: A Critical Perspective,” Office of the President, Tbilisi, Septem-ber 1999.
See: S.E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers. A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflicts in the Caucasus, Curzon Press, Richmond, 2001, pp. 47-51.
See: N. MacFarlane, op. cit.
Z. Zhvania, “Georgia and the New Geopolitical Function of the Caucasus,” Caucasica (The Journal of Caucasian Studies), Vol. 2, Tbilisi, 1998, p. 7.
V. Asatiani, “Mirny Kavkaz: rol kul’tury v budushchem Kavkaza,” Caucasica, Vol. 2, p. 37.
See: M. Lordkipanidze, “K voprosu ‘Kavkazskogo edinogo doma’,” Caucasica, Vol. 2, p. 163.
See: L. Mroveli, “Mepeta tskhovreba” (Lives of the Czars), Kartlis tskhovreba, Vol. 1, Tbilisi, 1955, pp. 5-11.
K. Gadjiev calls this “world” “the pan-Caucasian empire,” whose vassals were Shirvan and Trebizond (see:
.S. Gadjiev, op. cit., p. 15).
See: D. Muskhelishvili, “K istorii samonaimenovania gruzin,” Matsne, “History, Ethnography and History of Atrs”series, No. 3, 1992, pp. 17-18.
For more detail, see: N. Berdzenishvili, Voprosy istorii Gruzii, Book VIII, Tbilisi, 1975.
See: L. Tukhashvili, Essays on the History of Georgian Diplomacy, Book 1, Tbilisi, 1994, pp. 78-79 (in Georgian).
See: L. Tukhashvili, “Relations between the Kartli-Kakheti Kingdom and the Peoples of the Caucasus and the Middle East in the Second Half of the 18th Century,” in: Problems of Georgian History of the Period of Feudalism, 1972,p. 14 (in Georgian).
See: “The Unity of the North Caucasian Peoples—Myth and Reality,” Bulletin of the Center of Analysis and Studies of Georgia’s Foreign Policy at the Foreign Ministry of Georgia, Tbilisi, No. 7 (16), 1999, pp. 20-21 (in Georgian).
See: Ibid., p. 23.
See: K.S. Gadjiev, op. cit., p. 81.
See: K.S. Gadjiev, op. cit., p. 81.
Khvalindeli dge (Tomorrow), 2 September, 2003.
A. Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki. Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii, Moscow, 1999, p. 351.
See: A. Panarin, Revansh istorii: rossiiskaia strategicheskaia initsiativa v XXI veke, Moscow, 1998, p. 382.
See: “Ibero-Amerika v mirovom tsivilizatsionnom protsesse,” Latinskaia Amerika, Moscow, No. 7-8, 1999, p. 140;B.I. Koval, S.I. Semenov, “Energiynaia priroda sovremennykh pogranichnykh tsivilizatsiy (Novy podkhod k chelovecheskomu izmereniu vsemirnoy istorii),” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 11, 2000, pp. 4-14.
See: K.S. Gadjiev, op. cit., p. 41.
See: Z. Kiknadze, “Religion and Caucasian Unity,” in: idem, The Church Yesterday, the Church Tomorrow, Tbi-lisi, 2002, p. 129 (in Georgian).
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