OF HEARTS, MINDS AND WALLETS IN SOUTH OSSETIA
By Shaun Walker
The Moscow Times, Russia
Oct 5 2006
My visit to Tskhinvali this summer, the capital of the breakaway
republic of South Ossetia, provoked a sense of disappointment
similar to that which I felt when visiting Tiraspol, the capital of
Transdnestr, last year. With my information about the places filtered
through the occasional sensationalist Western media report, I turned
up in both cases excitedly expecting to find the final frontier;
a gangster-ridden epicenter of weapons and human smuggling; a dark
and wild version of the Soviet Union. Instead, what I got in both
wannabe capitals was a sleepy provincial town, with tree-lined
streets and ordinary people going about their business trying to
make ends meet. Tskhinvali is little more than a village, with a
population similar to a medium-sized dacha colony somewhere outside
Moscow. Children play on the swings, old ladies chatter noisily on
benches and mothers carry enormous circular lavash bread home to
their families.
As Georgia and Russia this week moved beyond verbal sparring into
something more serious, the fate of these breakaway regions again came
under discussion. That Moscow supports the Abkhaz and South Ossetian
separatist regimes is one of the biggest problems Georgia has with
Russia. The South Ossetian leadership promised Monday to withdraw
from peace talks, and the conflict over the small patch of land on
the southern side of the Caucasus Mountains rumbles on with no end
in sight. While South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity is something
of a suspicious character, and many in the leadership there are
obstructionist and unhelpful, the idea of them as Soviet throwbacks or
Russian puppets resisting the forward march of a modern and democratic
Georgia needs some adjusting. Actually visiting the unrecognized
republic has made me rather skeptical about pronouncements about
re-integrating South Ossetia in order to restore Georgia’s territorial
integrity, in the way that many Georgians seem to think is possible.
If Tskhinvali seems for all the world like a normal provincial town
in the Caucasus, the one thing that is noticeably different is the
lack of working- age people, especially men. Almost every family
has someone working in Russia earning money, which they send home to
support their families. In South Ossetia, as Vakhtang Dzhigkayev, an
economic adviser to the administration, told me, there are two choices:
"Work in the government, or go to North Ossetia."
Unlike Transdnestr, there is no Soviet-era industrial complex
and there are no natural resources. Unlike Abkhazia, there is
no strategic coastline providing an outlet to the world beyond
Russia and Georgia and the chance to attract tourists. And unlike
Nagorno-Karabakh, there is no wealthy diaspora coming to invest in
rebuilding infrastructure. This makes the Ossetians dependent to a
large degree on support from Moscow.
The Georgians would have people believe that Russian influence in
South Ossetia is simply the Kremlin maneuvering to punish Georgia for
its pro-Western stance. There is certainly an element of that. But
aside from the Russians installed in high positions in the Ossetian
leadership and the propaganda posters of a grinning Vladimir Putin
with the slogan "Nash Prezident," any visitor to Ossetia will notice
significant ground-level pro-Russian sentiment, or at least an
appreciation of the possibilities that being close to Russia offers.
The "passportization" of the region by Russia (more than 90 percent
of residents hold Russian passports) is usually represented as
Moscow’s meddling hand stirring up trouble. But on the ground,
a Russian passport represents a lifeline for South Ossetians — a
way to get an education or a job in Vladikavkaz or Moscow. Walking
the streets and talking to people, it seems inconceivable that these
people could integrate back into the Georgian state without it being
a long and painful process. For a start, only the eldest generation
speaks the language well. On the streets, people speak Ossetian, an
Iranian language very different to most of the surrounding Caucasus
languages. Almost everyone speaks Russian fluently, but as for
Georgian, "We only know the swear words," one young man told me with a
smile. These people would not be able to get jobs or study in Tbilisi.
Russia provides them with their only chance to do something with
their lives.
Few in the Ossetian leadership seem ready to address their image
problem, however. When I visited, I was told by the head of the
republic’s press and information committee that for many months
entrance had been barred to foreign journalists, because they weren’t
trusted to write positive articles. Dzhigkayev, the economic advisor,
told me that he had worked for days to persuade people to allow
three constitutional experts from the Council of Europe to visit the
republic. Officials had been suspicious of the experts and had wanted
to keep them out. But it is exactly this type of contact that will help
the Ossetians in the long run — letting in as many Western experts
and journalists as possible, explaining their position and problems,
and putting across their side of the argument. It might not lead to
recognition of their right to self determination, but it would at
least help people to understand their position better.
As things stand, it’s hard to see any progress any time soon. One
respected Georgian journalist told me: "There is not a single person
in Georgia who would be willing to compromise over South Ossetia
remaining part of Georgia in some way." Meanwhile, a senior Ossetian
official said: "While there is anyone still alive in Tskhinvali,
the Georgian army will not be here." These sentiments are so far
apart that a solution in the near future seems inconceivable. If the
starting positions of both sides were two circles in a Venn diagram,
they would not even come close to touching.
But the Ossetians’ hatred for Georgia does not translate into
unquestioning admiration for Russia. "We know Russia only supports us
because it’s in their interests to do so," Irina Gagloyeva, the head
of the republic’s Press and Information Committee, told me. People
are wary of Russia and its intentions, and admit they are no more
than Russia’s plaything in the South Caucasus. "But we at least want
to be a plaything treated in a dignified manner," said Gagloyeva.
It really doesn’t seem much to ask. It also suggests that if Georgia
begins to offer more carrots than sticks and works at trying to
build a prosperous society, one day more ordinary Ossetians might
come to think that looking south towards Tbilisi is a better option
than looking north to the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz and
Beslan. After all, when joining the Russian North Caucasus seems like
your best option, your other options must be pretty bad.
For now, the Georgian rhetoric, especially coming out of the Defense
Ministry, confirms all the Ossetians’ fears about Tbilisi’s intentions.
Military construction in Gori and the insistence that the New Year
will be celebrated in Tskhinvali are clearly more reminiscent of
shock and awe than hearts and minds. Back in Tbilisi, Mamuka Kudava,
the Georgian deputy defense minister, met me in his office — which
contains a large NATO flag – and told me: "There are only 10,000
people in Tskhinvali. It makes no sense to talk about what they
want." Barring the unlikely options of an ethnic cleansing campaign
in South Ossetia or a Chechnya-style destruction of the territory,
Georgia might have to start talking about it soon.
Shaun Walker is a Staff Writer for Russia Profile.