Ossetia
The areas in which the Ossetians make up the majority of the population alongside other residents can be called Ossetia . Politically, these areas now belong almost exclusively to two republics: the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania within Russia and the separatist South Ossetia , which under international law belongs to Georgia but has been declared de facto independent and is militarily supported by the Russian army.
geography
Ossetia is a mountainous area in the central Caucasus . It borders in the north-west on Kabardino-Balkaria , in the north on the Russian region of Stavropol , in the north-east on Ingushetia and Chechnya (see also North Ossetia-Alania ), and in the south, south-east and south-west on Georgia (see also South Ossetia ).
Language and religion
The Ossetian is an Iranian language . The Ossetians are mostly Christians of the Russian Orthodox Church . About a fifth - mainly, but not only, Digor-Ossetians from western North Ossetia - are Sunni Muslims . In addition, as with many Caucasian ethnic groups, pre-Christian-pre-Islamic religious practices have been preserved and a part of the population is not or hardly religious after the Soviet period.
Settlement history and political history
Early Alans and establishment in the Caucasus
The Ossetians are the only Indo-European ( Northern Iranian ) ethnic group living in the Central Caucasus. They are surrounded by ethnic groups (Ingush, Kabardians, Georgians) who use the languages of the three Caucasian language families . In the 1st millennium BC Iranian horsemen - nomadic tribes of the Scythians , later Sarmatians , immigrated to the steppe foreland of the North Caucasus . The Ossetians go back to the Sarmatian tribe of the Alans , who first appeared in written sources in the 1st century BC. Appear. From the 1st century AD they lived on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, mainly in the central part, where they gradually passed from nomadic to semi-nomadic and sedentary lifestyle, forming castles and urban centers. In the 9th century AD, the state of Alania came into being . Some buildings from this period are still there today. In Georgian sources this state is called Owseti / Osseti (the Russian name for the Ossetians comes from Georgian). The connecting routes from Georgia to Ossetia ran through the valley of the river Terek (Georgian Tergi), on the upper reaches the Darial gorge . The name Dariali is of Persian origin: Dar-i alan means the gate of the Alans . Even if preserved linguistic monuments have proven that the language of (most) Alans was an early variant of Ossetian, experts consider it possible that some associates based on tribal names and local and land names for mountains and rivers and numerous loan words in Ossetian Tribal associations also used other idioms, such as the Dwali mentioned by Georgian medieval sources in the highest elevations of the Caucasus and, to the west of it, the Malchi , who spoke perhaps Native dialects of the Northeast Caucasian languages , as well as each other since the 12th or 6th century Western Alania's Turkic dialects may have spread as the forerunners of today's Karachay-Balkarian . The area of today's South Ossetia belonged to the Kingdom of Georgia at that time , only the northern parts around the Caucasus passes and their surroundings in the high mountains were controlled by Alania, but fell under Georgian control at the time of Dawit IV the builder around 1120.
In the 13th century Alania was ravaged by the Mongols and the kingdom as a state destroyed. Most of the Alans / Ossetians either fled higher in the Caucasus Mountains than Jász did in Hungary or entered Mongolian service, where travelers Wilhelm von Rubruk and Giovanni de Marignolli describe several thousand Alans within the Mongolian army. Some historians consider it likely that the name of the southern tribal group of the Tual goes back to the name of the high medieval Dwal (i) , who was perhaps only linguistically Iranized at this time through the influx of Iranian-speaking refugees. This hypothesis has been vigorously denied by Ossetian nationalists. While the mountain regions south of the main ridge of the Caucasus remained under the sovereignty of the successor states of Georgia, the kingdoms of Kartlien and Kakheti , which in turn became vassals of the Persian Safavid Empire , the northern settlement areas fell under the influence of the Circassian Kabardines who immigrated from the west . The upper class of the principality of Kabarda also included Ossetian and Balkarian princely and aristocratic families, and the settlement areas belonged to Kabarda alongside that of the Ingush .
Ossetian expansion and incorporation into Russia
With the crises of the Safavid Empire, the following campaigns by Nadir Shah , the Zand dynasty and finally the first Qajar Shah Aga Mohammed Khan in the 17th-18th centuries. In the 19th century, the mountain tribes of the relatively densely populated Greater Caucasus became restless and began to move. The sovereignty of the weakened Georgian states diminished and many Ossetian villages, clans and tribal groups became virtually independent. The migration movements of the Ossetians increased when the Eristawi (= Duke) of Aragwi (seat in Ananuri ) conquered the area around the Darial Gorge on the upper Terek in the 18th century and secured it with the Georgian population, which largely displaced the Tual Ossetians from the region. At the same time, Georgian aristocrats tried to compensate for the population losses of the 18th century by recruiting in part Ossetian farmers, which also resulted in Ossetian villages in southern South Ossetia and in the Inner Cartilia (see top map).
In Russian and Ossetian official historiography, an oath of allegiance by several Ossetian clans in 1774 (immediately after the entire Principality of Kabarda became a client state of Russia in the peace of Küçük Kaynarca ) has been celebrated as an annually celebrated voluntary entry of the Ossetians into the Russian Empire since the 19th century . In the absence of a state structure, this was the vassal oath of several large Ossetian clans in the east of what is now North Ossetia, not all Ossetians, the others followed later. If such oaths of allegiance were often interpreted by Russia as "eternal submission", the mountain clans closed them as vassal oaths for mutual, temporary benefit and also quickly neglected them. In this case, with the expansion of Russian fortresses at the north entrance of the Darial Gorge, permanent Russian rule began the influence of the Orthodox Church under the Ossetians increased. After the suppression of a great uprising by Kabardian princes against Russia in 1779-85, Russia spun off most of the North Ossetian settlement areas from the Kabarda and allowed the settlement of the Ossetians in northern plains, which until then had been mainly inhabited by Kabardians, had already begun. This made the Ossetian area among the first in the Caucasus region to come under Russian sovereignty. Under Imperial Russian rule, the boundaries of the internal administrative units were based on geographical (Caucasus main ridge) and historical circumstances: North Ossetia belonged to the Terek Oblast of the Russian Empire , South Ossetia to the Tbilisi Governorate , and a small western part also to the Kutaisi Governorate .
Development of North Ossetia
During the period of the very bloody Russian Civil War after the 1917 revolutions, northern Ossetia initially belonged to the Autonomous Mountain Republic , but from March 1918 came increasingly under the influence of the Bolsheviks . Even then, a nationalist conflict was developing in the east around the city of Vladikavkaz , where Ossetians and Ingush had lived mixed since the 17th century . Both ethnic groups had early meeting places and religious centers, early modern schools under Russian rule and early culturally and historically interested groups of modern poets and pioneers of the national movements, which is why nationalistic Ossetians and Ingush stylized this region as their core area. The first violent clashes occurred as early as April 1918, but the regional Bolshevik commissar Samuil Buatschidze, known as Noj, was able to settle them. After the self to the moderate Mensheviks belonging, a native Ossetian Ataman of the Terek Cossacks Georgi Bitscherachow in July 1918 an uprising against the settlement policy of Chechens led to the middle Terek and the resettlement of the Terek Cossacks to the north, he conquered with the help of Ossetian units in August and Vladikavkaz and around by the Bolsheviks, who shortly thereafter were only able to recapture the region with the help of Ingush militias. This led to mutual pogroms against the Ingush and Ossetian population and, according to the memory of the Cossack officer Baratow, Vladikavkas had been "a dead city, one fifth of which was destroyed" since the late summer of 1918.
After the civil war, at the time of the Soviet Union , North Ossetia was initially part of the Soviet Mountain ASSR , within which Vladikavkas formed its own urban district, immediately to the west of the city limits, the North Ossetian National Circle ( okrug ) joined, immediately to the east, the Ingush National Circle. At the initiative of regional KP leaderships , however, the national circles were gradually spun off as Autonomous Oblasts (AO) 1921-24, most recently in 1924 the North Ossetian and Ingush AO. The city of Vladikavkaz initially remained outside and both AO vehemently claimed it. Finally, the city was given to North Ossetia in October 1928 by the administration of the North Caucasus under Andrei Andrejewitsch Andrejew, on the grounds that North Ossetia had more residents to repopulate the still partially abandoned city. Persistent Ingush protests finally led to the merger with the Chechen AO in 1934 to form the Chechen-Ingush AO, since 1936 the Chechen-Ingush ASSR . In the same year North Ossetia also became an ASSR.
With the Stalinist deportation of all Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia in February 1944, the region immediately east of the city limits of Vladikavkaz fell to North Ossetia, at the same time a region around Mozdok from Kabardino-Balkaria to North Ossetia, which had been required by Ossetians for a long time, was given with a connecting corridor leading to the following years were increasingly Ossetian colonized. Even after the return and rehabilitation of the Chechens and Ingush and the re-establishment of Checheno-Ingushetia, these areas remained with North Ossetia.
Especially around the affiliation of this eastern part of the Prigorodnyj Rajon (Russian: "suburban district") the nationalist Ingush-Ossetian conflict revived during the breakup phase of the Soviet Union and from October 31 to November 5, 1992 there was an open war between Ossetians and Ingush militias as a result of which almost the entire Ingush civilian population was expelled from the disputed region. Although part of the Ingush population returned later, the region remained with North Ossetia, and some nationalist Ingush circles are demanding its return to this day.
Development of South Ossetia
The southern Ossetians fell under the domination of Russia with the Treaty of Georgievsk in 1783, which placed the eastern and central Georgian kingdom of Kartlien-Kakheti under Erekle II under Russian protection, and annexed to Russia in January 1801, some mountain villages spoke at the time 1774–1801 made own oath of loyalty. Under Russian rule, as under Georgians, there was seldom direct resistance to the rule of Russia, but peasant revolts against the legally strengthened nobility (e.g. 1802, 1804, 1809 and 1859).
With the disintegration of Russia from 1917, the settlement area fell under the influence of the TKDFR , which was autonomous in January 1918 and was independent in April, and its Georgian republic, which declared itself independent on May 28, 1918 as the Democratic Republic of Georgia . Because the moderate social-democratic Mensheviks among Georgians achieved a dominant political position (70-80% approval in elections) due to their program (rebirth of the Georgian statehood, land reform in favor of small farmers , social legislation), the rival, revolutionary-oriented Bolsheviks only had a strategic alliance with them the national minority movements ( Abkhazians and South Ossetians), whose separatist wings increasingly came under their influence. There were three Ossetian uprisings against Georgia in March 1918, October / November 1919 and May / June 1920, all of which were suppressed by the Georgian army (see Georgian-South Ossetian conflict (1918–1920) ). Especially when the third uprising was put down by Waliko Jugheli, pogroms broke out, which killed several thousand Ossetians. In the last ten years, the Ossetian and increasingly Russian media have labeled these events as genocide and give significantly higher estimates of the number of victims than the usual estimates, which is probably also due to propaganda reasons.
After Georgia was conquered by the Soviets in February / March 1921, the South Ossetian AO was established here on April 20, 1922 within the Georgian SSR within the borders known to this day.
Unification plans
In order to advance the conflict settlement in Tskhinvali, the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin and the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia in Georgia met in the town of Kazbegi. A number of important conflict resolution measures were agreed, most notably a decision on a new agreement between Russia and Georgia. The agreement should be signed in Tbilisi. A protocol was signed that included some normalization steps.
On August 26, 2008, Russia recognized South Ossetia as an independent state. The unification of Ossetia was immediately up for debate. On August 29, 2008, the President of the South Ossetian Parliament, Snaur Gassiev and his representative, Gassieva Kokoti , announced that an unification of Ossetia within the Russian Federation had been agreed with Moscow, which would take place in a few years. However, the Kremlin denied the existence of such an agreement. The President of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity , declared on September 11th that South Ossetia did not want to be independent but part of Russia. This matter has already been decided by history. The ancestors have already made this decision. On the same day Kokoity and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied the connection plans and affirmed the independence of South Ossetia. Kokoity's statement referred to Ossetia's voluntary accession to Russia in 1774.
literature
ThomasKunze / Thomas Vogel: The end of the empire. What happened to the former Soviet republics. Links, Berlin 2015. ISBN 978-3-86153-644-4 . Published under license from the Federal Agency for Civic Education (2016), ISBN 978-3-8389-0676-8
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The press: Ossetia from 1198 to the present day
- ↑ Vladimir Kuznetsov: Alanen-Owsen and Georgia, first part. (Russian), 7. – 4. last paragraph. Chapter 9 from Очерки истории алан (German: Abriß der Alanischen Geschichte). Vladikavkaz 1992.
- ↑ Vladimir Kuznetsov: Alanen-Owsen and Georgia, first part. (Russian), ninth paragraph. Chapter 9 from Очерки истории алан (German: Abriß der Alanischen Geschichte). Vladikavkaz 1992.
- ↑ The Caucasus historian Artur Zuzijew (Tsutsiev) from Vladikavkas shows the development in this map (Russian) for the years 1774–83 . All arrows show migration movements of the hill tribes at this time, including light red in the Central Caucasus, the expansion of the Ossetians to the north and south.
- ↑ Zuziyev depicts this inconsistent situation by drawing the South Ossetian mountain areas with dots : some of the villages, mostly Ossetian inhabited, were in fact independent, while some, mostly Georgian, continued to be under the rule of Georgian noble families.
- ↑ http://cominf.org/2008/09/10/1166478244.html ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Information from the Republic of South Ossetia
- ↑ For all events 1774–87 and their assessments cf. Jeronim Perović : The North Caucasus under Russian rule , Cologne 2015, pp. 59–61. (The Eastern European historian Michael Kemper: Herrschaft, Recht und Islam in Daghestan Wiesbaden 2005 shares this assessment of the very limited scope of the vassal oath in the chapter on the vassal oath: The great non-binding nature , pp. 129-132.)
- ↑ Perović, p. 217.
- ↑ Perović, p. 219.
- ↑ Perović, pp. 347-351.
- ↑ On the mixed Ossetian population (purple) and Ingush population (green) east of Vladikavkaz, cf. this map of North, South Ossetia and Ingushetia from Zuzijew with battlefields (as detonation symbols) .
- ↑ From Georgian and Ossetian memoirs, including von Kozojew and von Jugheli, valued older literature such as David Marshall Lang : A Modern History of Georgia. 1962, pp. 228-236, et al. a. approx. 3000–7000, most likely 5000 Ossetian victims of the events of 1918–21.
- ↑ The 1886 census determined 57,786 Ossetians in the governorates of Tbilisi and Kutais-only for the area of the later South Ossetia, the first Soviet census in 1926 then 60,351 Ossetians in the autonomous South Ossetia. Taking into account the population growth of these 40 years, 3–5000, max. 7,000 victims possible, which of course was dramatic. But because there were no resettlement campaigns from North Ossetia, and the Ossetian population there also increased , the 9,000 or even 18,000 deaths that are sometimes claimed today are very questionable. The Ossetian population did not change fundamentally either at 70.7% or 69.1%, and the Georgian population, which was not affected, hardly changed from 26.4% to 26.9%.
- ↑ NEWSru.com: Спикер парламента ЮО раскрыл соглашение Медведева и Кокойты: РФ присоединит олЮО "в теченит олЮО" в теченит August 29, 2008
- ^ Spiegel.de: Caucasus conflict: South Ossetia wants to join Russia
- ↑ Spiegel.de: Caucasus conflict: South Ossetia's president denies accession to Russia
- ↑ http://www.ag-friedensforschung.de/regionen/Georgien/ossetien.html AG Friedensforschung Uni Kassel
