Ushguli

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Ushguli Svaneti 1822.jpg
Ushguli Svaneti.jpg

Ushguli ( Georgian უშგული ) or Ushguli is the most famous village community among the mountain villages of Upper Svaneti . Ushguli consists of four districts at the upper end of the Enguri Gorge in Upper Svaneti , today's administrative region of Mingrelia and Upper Svaneti of Georgia .

These are spread over a stretch of just under two kilometers along the Enguri valley: from Murqmeli ( მურყმელი ), located on the right bank at an altitude of almost 2100 m, via Tschaschaschi ( ჩაჟაში , Chazhashi) and Tschwibiani ( ჩვიბიანი ) to Schibiani ( ჟიბიანი ) in almost 2200 meters above sea level. The three upper districts are on the left bank of the river; Shibiani just eight kilometers below the glacier from which the Enguri flows, and twelve kilometers southwest of Mount Shchara , the third highest peak in the Greater Caucasus and the highest mountain in Georgia.

Around 70 to 80 families (around 200 people) live permanently in the village community, which has a small school. During the main tourist season in summer, the number of residents doubles. There is snow in Ushguli for up to six months a year, which is why the road to the regional capital Mestia, 44 kilometers away , is often closed.

Ushguli is known for its defensive towers and the district of Tschaschaschi (ჩაჟაში, Chazhashi) has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage since 1996 , in the Soviet Union it was protected as the Ushguli-Tschaschi Museum since 1971. In addition to the typical Svanetian defense towers, there are various religious buildings, such as a chapel from the 12th century. The Upper Svaneti region in northern Georgia with the Chaschaschi ( ჩაჟაში , Chazhashi) district has one of the three attractive entries on the World Heritage List for the tourism industry.

Natural conditions

View from the Schara glacier into the upper Enguri valley

Ushguli is located at an average altitude of about 2150 m in the Greater Caucasus in the subdivision zone of the rock ridge (1500 m to 3629 m) below the Shchara (5201 m), the third highest peak in the Greater Caucasus. In the prevailing moderately humid climate, the vegetation changes with the rise in the Enguri Valley to Ushguli from mixed forests to coniferous forests and above the tree line to high alpine pastures to the Shchara glacier.

As a result of the prevailing climatic, topographical and geomorphological conditions, Ushguli, like the villages on the way to Mestia, is particularly vulnerable to dangerous natural events such as heavy rain, hailstorms, occasional floods, landslides, slope demolitions with rockfalls and avalanches, especially in the rainy months of October to May. Many collapsed buildings in Ushguli tell of avalanches in the past. The district of Murqmeli was hit hardest by an avalanche disaster in the winter of 1986/87. At that time, 87 people were killed in the entire region. Subsequently, the state moved more than 2500 residents to Lower Svaneti.

The natural area enables an alpine agriculture with agriculture (potatoes, garden vegetables; formerly grain cultivation on the sun-exposed slopes before the restructuring of agricultural production in the Soviet period in collective farms and sovkhozes ) and cattle breeding, which has declined in its productivity to the level of subsistence farming ( Dairy and slaughter cattle and sheep) and other livestock (especially horses) with grazing in spring, summer and autumn and stables in winter. Due to the height and dominance of succulent birch trees, timber management is only effective in lower areas.

Socio-economic cultural area

A central concern of human societies, especially those who live in border areas of land use, as is the case on the entire axis from Mestia to Ushguli, are questions of the distribution, safeguarding and valorisation of land resources that are available to their own family members and the members of village communities are available. In addition, there is the negotiation of territorial claims with relatives of outside persons or groups. The resulting local legal systems have an impact on all areas of daily activities, such as ways of doing business, marriage practices, regulating inheritance issues, dealing with social and economic crises, practicing religion, regulating authority and adapting to the values ​​of the community, etc. The World Heritage Commission saw the network of human practices and their environmental relationships preserved in Ushguli at the time of the award of the title as authentic and worthy of protection, especially since the possession of land, inherited over generations, is a central element of identity in Svaneti. The winter seclusion from the outside world was emphasized as a decisive factor in maintaining the traditional way of life.

In Svaneti, due to special historical circumstances, official and unofficial state and local legal systems that stand side by side have developed, both of which are still significant today for questions about the right to property and property, the valuation of land and the regulations resulting from it interpersonal relationships and actions.

Archeology of the Soviet Empire - wooden balcony with hammer and sickle

In the Soviet era, systematic state measures to reorganize and devalue traditional local legal systems took place for the first time. However, state power only succeeded to a limited extent, so that hybrid and parallel legal forms developed, which led to the fact that the traditional law of inheritance was retained despite the de facto communalization of all private property and mediators (councils of elders) continued to work to prevent blood feuds, To initiate marriage relationships and, in the event of a dispute, to decide on the distribution of land. Such regulations were and are partly sealed to this day by an oath on the icons (representations of saints) that are important for the community. The documentary " Salt for Svanetia " (1930) by the Soviet filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozow , which is controversial because of its colonialist perspective, shows in its ethnographic passages many traditional practices that have now disappeared in a patriarchal social system that was to be overcome by communism. The Soviet heritage is still preserved today, most often in the districts of Murqmeli, Tschwibiani and Schibiani, in furniture, house construction methods and decorations on balconies such as red star or hammer and sickle. Since the communist central power had a particular interest in proving to strongly traditional communities like Ushguli that a transformation into Soviet society could be achieved, the standard of living in Ushguli was high in the 1970s, so that the majority of the Ushguli population was of retirement age (status 2018), just like their children, have university degrees.

With the disintegration of the Georgian state after the collapse of the Soviet Union ( Georgia , Georgian-Abkhazian War ), there were violent trials in Svaneti such as blood feuds, bride robbery, robbery gangs, arbitrary land distribution and land grabbing, which the perpetrators often carried out on the basis of traditional law. By the local population, however, these acts were mostly seen as a violation of Svanese standards of honor, because they obviously served to implement the power interests of local elites. The films Dinola (2013) and Dede (2017) by the Georgian filmmaker Mariam Katchvani tell of this time , in which the director mixes such incidents in her cinematic fiction with events from the 1950s to 1960s, above all to show the survival of traditional patriarchal role models . The documentary “Men’s Worlds in the Caucasus” by the German director and producer Stefan Tolz provides an authentic insight into Ushguli in the 1990s and early 2000s . Due to the many films and documentaries shot in Ushguli, tourists are still imagining a society that lives uninterruptedly under almost medieval conditions to this day. This narrative of people who live on the edge of time, so to speak, has little to do with the socio-economic reality of the last 60 years and obscures current problems.

World heritage

Structural changes due to tourist uses in Ushguli.

The UNESCO World Heritage in Ushguli, in the form of individual monuments and groups of buildings, essentially exclusively comprises the district of Tschaschaschi (ჩაჟაში, Chazhashi) with an area of ​​1.09 hectares. In addition, there are 19.16 hectares of buffer zone (1 km radius around Tschaschaschi) , which includes the other districts with individual special buildings and the agricultural landscape. According to the UNESCO Commission, Ushguli represents a cultural area in which the construction methods of the defense towers and other, including sacred buildings of medieval origin, are uniquely combined with an impressive, authentic mountain landscape (criterion IV) and have been preserved to this day thanks to traditional forms of land use . This is closely connected with other authentic features of traditional Svanen life (criterion V) and guarantees the preservation of the existing human-environment relationship. Furthermore, the restriction to local building materials (stone slabs from broken slate) and traditional handicraft techniques are emphasized - with a total of 200 counted buildings of medieval origin, the other districts of Ushguli are also included. Due to structural changes due to human activity (especially Tschwibiani and Schibiani) or the destruction of the architectural heritage by natural events such as avalanches and landslides (especially Murqmeli), the other districts are not directly protected as building ensembles and were not protected during the Soviet era. However, according to the World Heritage Commission, changes may only be made with state approval. Preventing radical structural changes in the other districts is a prerequisite for maintaining the status of UNESCO World Heritage. To date, however, there is no sustainable management plan on the part of the Georgian state, which involves the local administration and above all the local population the preservation of the buffer zone (buildings, landscaping, sustainable agriculture) is guaranteed. Construction and maintenance measures are not financially supported by UNESCO.

Above all, it would be necessary to create conditions that enable the local population to continue to live all year round in Ushguli, as was largely the case in the time of the Soviet Union (e.g. stable power supply, inexpensive supply of heating means, medical care, secondary education, food and consumer goods shops, purchase of agricultural products). Furthermore, building measures compliant with listed buildings would have to be financially supported in order to avert the progressive deterioration of the building stock, since the local population depends primarily on subsistence farming and the summer income from tourism is unevenly distributed due to different starting opportunities.

tourism

The special tourist interest in Ushguli applies to its defense towers, eight kilometers north of the Enguri valley uphill mountain Shchara (5201 m), the third highest peak in the Greater Caucasus and highest mountain in Georgia. Already in the Soviet era, especially in the 1970s, Ushguli was a frequent destination for cross-border hiking, mountaineering and ski touring tourism. This is why the villagers have extensive experience in dealing with tourists and their needs.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, tourism was idle during the ethno-political unrest in Abkhazia and the civil war in Georgia. In Svaneti there were also intense violent processes such as blood feuds, armed gangs raids and the loss of state control because of the exercise of power by local militias. The infrastructure collapsed completely between 1992 and 1995. Since 1995, the state has succeeded step by step in re-enforcing state law and external security - the influx of tourists has been at a steadily growing, high level since around 2010.

Vehicles waiting for day trippers in front of the UNESCO World Heritage district of Tschaschi.

Tourism in Ushguli begins around May, has its peak with the largest number of visitors in July and August and ends in October. Since the intensification of road construction work in 2016 from Zugdidi to Mestia, via Uschguli and the pass above to Lentechi, Uschguli can be reached increasingly quickly for day trips from Mestia.

So today mountain guide and horse guide services are offered, as well as accommodation and meals; Most tourists, however, come to Ushguli as day visitors from Mestia in off-road vehicles, on which a large number of jobs as drivers in Mestia depend. Tourism is causing radical changes in the village community: some of the families can stay all year round thanks to income from the tourism business and family members who have already left Ushguli return during the season and build vacant houses for accommodation or hospitality facilities such as Cafes or small restaurants around. However, this results in profound changes in house construction methods: New building materials such as concrete, lime composite stones, plastics and sheet metal are used, new house construction methods are introduced, which are based on hotels and other tourist building types, as they are known from the European Alps. If you only return to Ushguli seasonally, you do not contribute to the preservation of the cultural landscape, as you cannot practice agriculture or animal husbandry. As a result of the competitive situation among the villagers and the organization of rental via online platforms, the prices for accommodation are permanently low, so that providers of private accommodation in particular do not receive sufficient value for their investments. The increasing number of seasonal returnees also increases competitive pressure. In addition, the amount of garbage generated by tourists is steadily increasing, which is also exacerbated by the fact that Ushguli does not have a sewage treatment system. In summary, it can be stated that Ushguli needs a sustainable management plan, implemented and controlled with the participation of the local population, which meets both the requirements of monument protection and criteria of gentle tourism, if the village community is to maintain its authenticity in the sense of the UNESCO criteria.

literature

  • Tony Anderson: Bread and Ashes. A Walk through the Mountains of Georgia . Vintage Random House: London 2004.
  • Mary Kay Judy: The Village of Chazhashi: Georgian Svannish Vernacular Architecture. In: APT Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 2/3, Association for Preservation Technology International, 2000, pp. 46-54
  • Lavrenti Janiashvili: Traditional Law in Soviet Times . Caucasus Analytical Digest 42 , 2012, pp. 5-7.
  • Peter Nasmyth: Georgia. In the Mountains of Poetry . Duckworth Overlook: London 2017.
  • Roland Topchishvili (2006): Svaneti and Its Inhabitants . National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, September 1, 2006 (PDF, 744 kB, English)
  • Stéphane Voell: Moral Breakdown among the Georgian Svans. A Car Accident Mediated between Traditional and State Law. In: Stephane Voell (Ed.). Traditional Law in the Caucasus: Local Legal Practices in the Georgian Lowlands . Curupira: Marburg 2016.

Web links

Commons : Uschguli  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörg Stadelbauer: Protect or use? Conflicts over the agricultural heritage in Georgia. In: Eastern Europe . tape 68 , no. 7 , 2018, p. 47 .
  2. ↑ Stefan Applis: View into the valley of the Enguri upper reaches. In: https://stefan-applis-geographien.com/ . 2018, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Antoni Alcaraz Tarragüel: Developing an approach for achievement analyzing the possible impact of natural hazards on cultural heritage: a case study in the Upper Svaneti region of Georgia. University of Twente, 2011, accessed February 19, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Jörg Stadelbauer: The Caucasus Natural Area: Diversity, Contrasts, Risks. In: Eastern Europe . tape 65 , no. 7-10 , pp. 14th ff .
  5. ^ Stéphane Voell: Local Legal Conceptions in Svan Villages in the Lowlands. Caucasus Analytical Digest 42, p. 2, 2012, accessed on February 17, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Eric Engel, Henrica von der Behrens, Dorian Frieden, Karen Möhring, Constanze Schaaff, Philipp Tepper, Ulrike Müller & Siddarth Prakash: Strategic Options towards Sustainable Development in Mountainous Regions. A Case Study on Zemo Svaneti, Georgia. SLE Publication Series, Faculty of Agriculture and Horticulture. Mestia, Berlin, pp. 10f., 2006, accessed on February 17, 2019 (English).
  7. ↑ Green Alternative (Ed.): Problems related to the Protection of Property Rights - The case of Mestia. Report within the framework of the Project “Protection for Property Rights in New Touristic Zones of Georgia”. Open Society Georgia Foundation, p. 6, 2011, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  8. ↑ UNESCO (Ed.): World Heritage List - Upper Svanetia. UNESCO, 1996, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  9. ^ Jan Köhler: Parallel and integrated legal systems in a post-Soviet periphery: Svaneti in the High Caucasus. Freie Universität Berlin, pp. 2–5, 1999, accessed on February 17, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Stefan Applis: View into the valley of the Enguri upper reaches. In: https://stefan-applis-geographien.com/ . 2018, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Stefan Applis: Towers, Mountains, Hammer & Sickle - What is part of the cultural heritage of the Ushguli village community in Georgia? In: stefan-applis-geographien.com. 2018, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Stefan Applis: Tourism sustains, and threatens, Georgia's highland heritage. Tales of an authentic society living at the edge of time fail to account for higher living standards in the Soviet heyday. eurasianet.org, 2018, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Stefan Applis: View into the valley of the Enguri upper reaches. In: https://stefan-applis-geographien.com/ . 2018, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  14. ↑ UNESCO (Ed.): World Heritage List - Upper Svanetia. UNESCO, 1996, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Antoni Alcaraz Tarragüel: Developing an approach for achievement analyzing the possible impact of natural hazards on cultural heritage: a case study in the Upper Svaneti region of Georgia. University of Twente, p. 3, 2011, accessed on February 19, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Antoni Alcaraz Tarragüel: Developing an approach for analyzing the possible impact of natural hazards on cultural heritage: a case study in the Upper Svaneti region of Georgia. Thesis paper. Ed .: University of Twente. Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation. Enschede, S. 87-92 .
  17. ↑ Stefan Applis: Tourism sustains, and threatens, Georgia's highland heritage. Tales of an authentic society living at the edge of time fail to account for higher living standards in the Soviet heyday. eurasianet.org, 2018, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Jörg Stadelbauer: High mountain tourism in the Soviet Union. Development, forms and problems using the example of the Greater Caucasus. University of Bonn. Erdkunde 37 (3), pp. 199–212, 1983, accessed on February 17, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Lela Khartishvili, Andreas Muhar, Thomas Dax & Ioseb Khelashvili: Rural Tourism in Georgia in Transition: Challenges for Regional Sustainability. Sustainability 11 (2), 410, pp. 3–4, 2019, accessed on February 17, 2019 .
  20. ^ Jan Köhler: Parallel and integrated legal systems in a post-Soviet periphery: Svaneti in the High Caucasus. Freie Universität Berlin, p. 1, 1999, accessed on February 17, 2019 .
  21. ^ Jan Köhler: Parallel and integrated legal systems in a post-Soviet periphery: Svaneti in the High Caucasus. Freie Universität Berlin, pp. 1–5, 1999, accessed on February 17, 2019 .
  22. ↑ Stefan Applis: View into the valley of the Enguri upper reaches. In: https://stefan-applis-geographien.com/ . 2018, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  23. ↑ Stefan Applis: tourism economic as a coping strategy and social crises (Georgia). In: stefan-applis-geographien.com. 2018, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  24. ↑ Lela Khartishvili, Andreas Muhar, Thomas Dax & Ioseb Khelashvili: Rural Tourism in Georgia in Transition: Challenges for Regional Sustainability. Sustainability 11 (2), 410, pp. 5–6, 2019, accessed on February 17, 2019 .

Coordinates: 42 ° 55 '  N , 43 ° 0'  E