The Ethnoterms 'Abkhazian' and 'Apsua' in the 19th – 21st Centuries and the Reconstruction of Historical Memory

• In Event: Imperial Modernities: Religious, Ethnic, and Political Identities in Eastern Europe and Eurasia in Historical Perspective

Abstract

The report discusses the linguistic and extralinguistic factors of the ethnoterm “Apsua” denoting the ethnosubject living in the occupied territory of Abkhazia (Georgia) in a diachronic perspective in the 19th – 21st centuries.
Memory and public discourse regarding Abkhazia revolve around several “fundamental,” Soviet-era and firmly rooted narratives both in occupied Abkhazia and in the Russian Federation. It is precisely these narratives and the memory constructed during the Soviet period of the 20th century that have been and continue to be the basis of the Russian Federation’s policy towards Abkhazia in the 1990s and today.
The report discusses the use of the ethnoterm “Abkhazian” by the Apsua ethnos, who settled in Abkhazia, a historical region of Georgia, from the North Caucasus, to designate the local Georgian ethno-subject - Abkhaz. The paper discusses the views existing in the discourse surrounding Abkhazia, both in the territory of the Apsua settlement in Georgia and in the Russian Federation. This is the result of Soviet propaganda in the memory of the Abkhazians: 1. Abkhazia belongs to the Abkhazians and there is no place for Georgians there; 2. The Georgian ethnic term “Abkhazian” refers to the Abkhazians, not Georgians; 3. Georgians are oppressors and without Russia the Abkhazians will be defenseless.
The aim of the research is to initiate both public and academic discussion around the three fundamental narratives listed above in order to review the fragmented memory and established dogmas under the Soviet regime; first of all, the incorrect use of ethnoterms should be reviewed.

Authors

• Tsira Revaz Baramidze, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State U (Georgia)

• Gabriela Dorota Abrasowicz, U of Silesia in Katowice (Poland)