South Ossetia

• 1. Introduction

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  South Ossetia sits in a narrow fold of the Caucasus Mountains, covering just 3,900 square kilometres and home to just over 56,500 people. Yet this small territory has been a flashpoint for wars, a bone of contention between Russia and Georgia, and a test case for what happens when the map drawn by Soviet bureaucrats in Moscow collides with the ambitions of nations. Only five members of the United Nations recognise it as an independent state. Every other country on earth regards it as Georgian land under Russian occupation. How did a mountainous region no bigger than a medium-sized county become one of the most contested patches of earth on the planet? The answers reach back centuries, to nomadic Iranian tribes crossing the Caucasus, to Soviet administrators drawing borders that satisfied no one, and to a war fought in the heat of August 2008 that ended in five days and changed the region forever.

• 2. Alans, Migrations, and Medieval Roots

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  The Ossetians trace their origins to the Alans, a nomadic Iranian people who had carved out a consolidated kingdom in the northern Caucasus by the 8th century. That kingdom, known in the sources of the period as Alania, collapsed between around 1239 and 1277 under successive assaults by the Mongols and later by Timur's armies, which massacred much of the Alanian population. Survivors retreated into the high mountain passes of the central Caucasus and began drifting south into the Kingdom of Georgia. The first large-scale clash between Ossetians and Georgians came in the 13th century, after the Mongol invasion left vast North Caucasus lands depopulated. The Alans moved into those lands and then pressed further, taking territory from Gori south to Mtskheta. In 1306, after a siege of Gori that lasted three months, the Georgian ruler George V retook the city and the territory of South Ossetia, expelling the Alans from Shida Kartli and Dvaleti. A tombstone inscription in the Ossetian language written in Syriac-Nestorian script, found at the village of Zakagori, dates to 1326 and stands as one of the earliest physical traces of Ossetian presence in the area. A second wave of migration came in the 17th century, driven by pressure from Kabardian princes. The Georgian King of Kartli permitted Ossetians to settle, and by the early 1600s Russian ambassador Mikhail Tatishchev noted a small Ossetian community already living near the headwaters of the Great Liakhvi. Baltic German explorer Johann Anton Güldenstädt, who visited Georgia in 1772, recorded that the plains of modern South Ossetia were populated by Georgians, while the mountainous areas were shared by both peoples. By the end of the 18th century, the furthest reaches of Ossetian settlement on the territory of modern South Ossetia extended to gorges along the Greater and Little Liakhvi rivers, the Ksani River, and the Terek estuary.

• 3. Soviet Lines and Early Bloodshed

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  Russia absorbed the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, including modern South Ossetia, in 1801. Ossetians resisted the new administration and considered themselves independent. A formal campaign of annexation ran from 1821 to 1830, ending when Paul Rennenkampff completed the conquest of South Ossetia that year. After the Russian revolution, the territory briefly became part of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Conflict began in February 1918, when landless Ossetian peasants, sympathetic to Bolshevism and demanding ownership of the land they worked, killed three Georgian princes and seized their estates. The government in Tiflis sent the National Guard; the Georgian unit retreated after engaging the Ossetians. Ossetian rebels then occupied Tskhinvali and attacked the ethnic Georgian civilian population. During uprisings in 1919 and 1920, Soviet Russia covertly backed the Ossetians, yet the uprisings were still crushed. Ossetian sources allege that the suppression of the 1920 uprising alone killed 5,000 Ossetians, with hunger and epidemics claiming more than 13,000 further lives. After the Red Army invaded Georgia in 1921, the new Soviet Georgian government created the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast in April 1922, under pressure from the Caucasian Bureau of the Communist Party. Critics argued the Bolsheviks granted this autonomy as a reward for Ossetian loyalty in fighting the Democratic Republic of Georgia. The boundary-drawing was contentious: many Georgian villages were included within the new oblast over protests from Georgian residents, and Tskhinvali was made its capital despite not having a majority Ossetian population. By 1989, two-thirds of Ossetians in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic lived outside the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast altogether.

• 4. The Collapse Into War

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  Tensions that had been dormant for decades cracked open in 1989, as nationalism rose among both Georgians and Ossetians. The South Ossetian Popular Front, called Ademon Nykhas, had been formed in 1988. On the 10th of November 1989, the South Ossetian regional council asked the Georgian Supreme Council to upgrade the region's status to an autonomous republic. The Georgian parliament revoked that decision the following day. In summer 1990 the Georgian Supreme Council barred regional parties, which the South Ossetian council interpreted as a direct attack on Ademon Nykhas. On the 20th of September 1990, the council declared a South Ossetian Soviet Democratic Republic within the Soviet Union. Parliamentary elections in Georgia that October were won by Zviad Gamsakhurdia's Round Table bloc. On the 11th of December, Gamsakhurdia's government declared the Ossetian election illegitimate and abolished South Ossetia's autonomous status entirely. Gamsakhurdia stated publicly that Ossetians "have no right to a state here in Georgia" and called them "newcomers". When the Georgian parliament declared a state of emergency on the 12th of December 1990, troops entered the region. Georgian forces entered Tskhinvali on the 5th of January 1991. The 1991-1992 South Ossetia War that followed was marked by general disregard for international humanitarian law on all sides. Mikhail Gorbachev ordered a Soviet ceasefire in January 1991; Soviet interior troops reported disarming militias on both sides through March and April. Gamsakhurdia himself accused the Soviet leadership of deliberately stoking South Ossetian separatism to keep Georgia from leaving the USSR. When the fighting ended, around 100,000 ethnic Ossetians had fled into North Ossetia, while 23,000 ethnic Georgians fled to other parts of Georgia. Between 60 and 100 villages were burned down or abandoned. An earthquake struck western South Ossetia on the 29th of April 1991, killing more than 200 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless. South Ossetia held an independence referendum on the 19th of January 1992; both independence and reunion with Russia were approved, but neither result was recognised internationally. The South Ossetian regional council declared the independence of the Republic of South Ossetia on the 29th of May 1992, and on the 24th of June, Eduard Shevardnadze and the South Ossetian government signed the Sochi ceasefire agreement, brokered by Russia.

• 5. The 2008 War

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  Following Mikheil Saakashvili's election as Georgia's president in 2004, the Georgian government moved to bring South Ossetia back under Tbilisi's authority. Georgia shut down the Ergneti black market, one of the region's main sources of revenue, which had been selling foodstuffs and fuel smuggled from Russia. Hostage-taking, shootouts, and shelling of Georgian villages followed, with dozens killed and wounded before a ceasefire deal on the 13th of August. Tensions escalated again from April 2008. A bomb explosion on the 1st of August 2008 targeted a car carrying Georgian peacekeepers and injured five of them. South Ossetian separatists began shelling Georgian villages that same day, drawing periodic return fire from Georgian troops. At around 19:00 on the 7th of August, Saakashvili announced a unilateral ceasefire and called for peace talks. Escalating assaults nonetheless continued, and Georgian troops moved toward Tskhinvali that night, reaching its centre in the morning of the 8th of August. Russia accused Georgia of aggression and launched a large-scale land, air, and sea invasion on the 8th of August, with the stated pretext of a peace enforcement operation. Abkhaz forces opened a second front on the 9th of August by attacking the Kodori Gorge. Tskhinvali was seized by the Russian military by the 10th of August. Russian forces then occupied the Georgian cities of Zugdidi, Senaki, Poti, and Gori, with the Russian Black Sea Fleet blockading the Georgian coast. South Ossetian forces conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing, destroying Georgian villages around Tskhinvali after the fighting ended. The war displaced 192,000 people, and a year later around 30,000 ethnic Georgians remained unable to return. South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity told the newspaper Kommersant that he would not allow Georgians to come back. President of France Nicolas Sarkozy negotiated a ceasefire on the 12th of August. Russia recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent on the 26th of August. An EU-sponsored fact-finding mission, reporting on the 30th of September 2009, concluded that open hostilities had begun with a large-scale Georgian military operation against Tskhinvali on the night of the 7th to the 8th of August 2008, while noting the months of mutual provocations that preceded it.

• 6. The Integration Question

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  Since the 2008 war, South Ossetia has stated its intention to join the Russian Federation. In 2015, South Ossetian President Leonid Tibilov proposed renaming the territory South Ossetia-Alania, in direct analogy with the Russian federal subject North Ossetia-Alania. A referendum on the name was held on the 9th of April 2017; over three-quarters of voters supported giving the names "Republic of South Ossetia" and "State of Alania" equal constitutional status. That same presidential race was won by Anatoly Bibilov, who, unlike the incumbent Tibilov, was not inclined to heed Moscow's preference that the integration referendum be delayed. In March 2022, Bibilov announced that South Ossetian troops had been sent to assist Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. On the 30th of March 2022, he announced plans to begin legal proceedings toward integration with Russia. A referendum was scheduled for the 17th of July 2022. Bibilov then lost the 2022 presidential election to Alan Gagloev, who suspended the referendum on the 30th of May. Gagloev announced in August 2022 that border crossings with Georgia would be open ten days a month. The "alliance and integration" treaty signed by the South Ossetian and Russian presidents on the 18th of March 2015 had already moved the territory toward near-full integration; it incorporated parts of the South Ossetian military into Russia's armed forces, merged South Ossetian customs into Russia's, and committed Russia to paying state worker salaries at rates equal to those in the North Caucasus Federal District. By 2010, Russian donations made up nearly 99% of South Ossetia's budget; by 2021, that figure had fallen somewhat but still stood at 83%.

• 7. Land, Climate, and Economy

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  More than 89% of South Ossetia lies above 1,000 metres above sea level, and its highest point, Mount Khalatsa, rises to 3,938 metres. The only direct road connecting South Ossetia to Russia runs through the Roki Tunnel, completed in 1986, which passes under the Greater Caucasus mountain range into North Ossetia. The tunnel proved decisive in the 2008 war, when Russian military units moved through it before Georgian forces had completed their action in Tskhinvali. The climate ranges from subtropical influences in the lower elevations to Alpine conditions above about 2,100 metres, where the average January temperature across South Ossetia hovers around 4 degrees Celsius and July averages around 20.3 degrees. South Ossetia's economy is primarily agricultural, though less than 10% of its land is under cultivation; cereals, fruit, and vines are the principal crops. A 2002 study estimated the territory's GDP at around US$15 million, or roughly US$250 per capita. By 2017, South Ossetian authorities put the figure at nearly US$100 million, still a fraction of the economic scale of neighbouring regions. Before the 2008 war, South Ossetia's industrial base consisted of 22 small factories; by 2007 only 7 were functioning, and a March 2009 report found most production facilities standing idle. The largest single employer in local industry was the Emalprovod factory, with 130 workers. In 2008, South Ossetian authorities increased the area planted with wheat tenfold, from 130 hectares to 1,500 hectares, aiming to cut flour imports. By the end of 2021, the number of employed people stood at 20,734, with 2,449 registered as unemployed, against a working-age population of 34,308. A new backup power transmission line from Russia, costing more than 1.3 billion rubles (approximately US$17 million), was put into operation in November 2021 to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply.