A Dangerous Balance: An Essay on Caucasian mentality
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Subject: A Dangerous Balance: An Essay on Caucasian mentality
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Original sender: Guram Svanidze <[email protected]>
A Dangerous Balance: An Essay on Caucasian mentality
A Dangerous Balance
by Guram Svanidze
Some years ago, I visited an artist's exhibition in Moscow, and one
particular picture attracted my attention. The painter was an
Ossetian, but lived in Moscow. In the picture, a man, painted to
represent what for Russians is the stereotypical "Caucasian," was
wearing a circus tricot and riding a bicycle. Over one of his
shoulders, an old man was pointing out directions, despite the fact
that he was clearly blind. A pretty young Russian girl leaned against
the clown's other shoulder. Between these two the Caucasian was
trying to maintain his balance, a feat made substantially more
difficult by the fact that he was riding along a tightrope!
In this allegory I saw something crucial about the ambivalence of the
Caucasian mentality. On one hand, the ancient traditions embodied by
the old, blind man; on the other hand, the temptations of Russified
sophistication. Between these two, the "Caucasian" has to constantly
maintain his balance. Did he lose it in Abkhazia?
Unexplained Hatred
Commenting on the Abkhazian crisis, a Georgian politician, himself
from Abkhazia, once exclaimed, "Why do they hate us so much?" Then he
added, "they can't explain their hatred towards us. They certainly
can't explain it by themselves". The common point of view is that the
Abkhazian conflict is purely political. Is this really the case?
Political behavior can be explained rationally. It implies the
presence of clear interests, political, economic and so on. In the
policies of the Abkhaz separatists, however, there are many
irrationalities. The most prominent is the fact that such a
numerically small group was able to allow itself to be drawn into such
a conflict. Instead of resurrecting the Abkhazian race, the war
foolishly put the gene pool in danger of being completely
annihilated. The idea of Abkhazian �self-determination� has proved
to be not only opposed to Georgia's interests, but also suicidally
destructive of attempts to preserve the Abkhaz identity.
The root of this paradox can be found in above mentioned ambivalence
of the Caucasian mentality. Throughout the Soviet period, Russian and
Abkhaz culture were mechanically interwoven, and this is reflected in
the double orientation of today's Abkhazians: on one hand, they look
to Moscow, on the other, to the Federation of North Caucasian Mountain
Peoples. These two orientations are mutually incompatible. The
Abkhaz and the other Caucasian ethnic groups still venerate their
ancient traditions, which were developed long before the coming of
literacy - a comparatively recent arrival, brought to them by the
Soviets. Written language and literate culture were imposed onto
these groups, and mechanically integrated into their way of life.
Traditional cultures are in a disadvantaged position when faced with
universal ones, such as Russian culture. The main means of maintaining
identification in traditional cultures is through rites, which are
inherently conservative and function with limited resources. In such
cultures, mythology is often more prominent than history, leaving
historical memory less deep than it is in literate cultures. Without
an established historical tradition of its own, there is a temptation
for a traditional culture to ascribe to itself the merits of other
peoples and cultures - or, to speak simply, to appropriate these
cultural elements.
The privileged position of the Abkhaz in the Soviet nomenklatura
promoted such intentions. The ethno-nationalist policy of the Soviet
nomenklatura, which granted forms of statehood to various ethnic
groups who had no historic experience of it and who lacked the
demographics and the economic and political resources to function as
states, must be taken into consideration. The desired statehood, when
taken at the cost of full dependence on the Russo-Soviet system,
proved sometimes to undermine the self-identification of ethnic groups
instead of promoting it. The Abkhaz case is an example of this
phenomenon.
Symptomatic of the moment, some Abkhaz representatives of the mass
media, even some politicians, used to joke sadly about the pressure of
trying to maintain a traditional lifestyle while keeping a
Moscow-centered orientation: "It's better to drowned in the ocean,
than in a pool".
This joke reveals an inner strain in the Abkhaz mentality; a mentality
that was already self-destructive before the most recent conflict.
Living in the Soviet system turned hopes for Abkhaz self-determination
into self-alienation. This pressure became unbearable, and the
aggressive impulse that the Abkhaz felt against themselves was
subsequently acted out against their neighbors, the Georgians. They
ascribed to Georgians motives that the Georgians themselves couldn't
have imagined having. They blamed Georgians for attempts to
assimilate the Abkhazians, but Tbilisi had lost cultural jurisdiction
over Abkhaz affairs long before it lost political control. Tbilisi
had, and has, problems with its own sub-ethnic groups, such as the
Mingrellians and the Svans - let alone the Abkhaz - but has not faced
violent confrontations with these groups. The explosion of the
Abkhazian situation could be explained by a lack of the economic,
political and technical capability in the early 1990s to carry out a
widescale dissemination of Georgian culture; or it could be explained
by an egocentric overlooking of the Abkhaz altogether. The Abkhaz
have forgiven the Russians for carrying out a nineteenth century
genocide, but have so far been unable to forgive the Georgians for
ignoring them.
The alienated self-determination of the Abkhazis intensified by the
deep scars left by the genocide that they suffered at the hands of
the Russians in the nineteenth century. This has left a neurotic
fixation in their mentality, which lies at the root of their
accusations that the Georgians are planning a second genocide against
them. The constant repetition of this charge is revealing: it is
like the chanting of a shaman's prayers. Like a child who is
petrified of something but can't resist the thrill of feeling it again
and again, the Abkhaz cannot let go of the idea of their own
annihilation. They feel a neurotic need to experience their great
tragedy again and again, to see it reflected in every aspect of their
lives. What is the means of the resolution of this ambivalence?
Political orientation towards Russia is only a way of deepening this
ambivalence. Orientation along traditional Caucasian values, has no
prospects in the modern era. Orientation towards Georgia isn't
prestigious because of the provinciality of present Georgian values.
The pipeline
This technological and economic development presents an opportunity
for all of the Caucasian peoples to elaborate a new way of life and to
develop a new orientation in their mentality. But will it be less
painful than russification? The Western modernization may cause new
frustrations for Caucasions. The pipeline will transport not only
crude oil and Western material goods but Western values, Western
discipline and Western technology as well. The latter are so
incompatible with their traditionalistic orientation. But one must
admit that they seem willing to drowned in a pool of oil.
----------
Guram Svanidze is a journalist and sociologist from Tbilisi. In 1992 -
1996 head of department on Ethnic Minorities, State Committee of Human
Rights, since 1996 - leading specialist of the Committee of Human
Rights and the Committee of Civil Integration of the Parliament of
Georgia. Author of 35 essays dealing with problems of youth, sports,
ethnic minorities, migration and human rights, self-governance, as
well as of two books "Emigration from Georgia" (1994) and "The
Problems of National Minorities in Georgia" (1999)
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