The South Caucasus

White people here in these United States are sometimes referred to as "Caucasians," which is strange, because the Caucasus is actually a specific mountain range in eastern Europe, lying between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and is a highly multi-cultural, multi-lingual region, and rife with ethnic tensions. Down yonder, there are no general "Caucasians," but Chechnyans, Ossetians, Georgians, Armenians, Abkhazians, Azerbaijanians, etc, etc--each group with it's own language, nationalistic identity, history, culture, cuisine, etc, and each looking upon the other with suspicion. Somehow that hyper-diverse region came to be the general catch-all term for "whitey," go figure.

I feel up to speed on my Caucasians, because for the past school year, I've been working with a grad-student from Georgia, a country in the South Caucasus. That was the country briefly invaded by Russia back in '08, if you remember. In fact, all you probably remember is that Russia invaded Georgia, and probably just assumed that the ex-superpower was surreptitiously starting wars with its former Soviet-satellite states, all to reify its regional dominance.

And frankly, that probably is what the Russian government was up to. But as I worked with this journalism-grad-student, helping her edit papers in her third language, I learned what an absolute mess the Caucasus is at the moment, and is perhaps not so far from how us American "Caucasians" behave anyways. I include my own notes here for future reference.

First, the North Caucasus is in Russia itself, and is where resides Chechnya, the region that has multiple times tried to separate itself from Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As you shall see, Chechnya is not the exception, but the rule for the Caucasus.

For also in the North Caucusus lies North Ossetia; this is important because just south of North Ossetia is--surprise!--South Ossetia, which is not a separate nation, but an autonomous region under the jurisdiction of Georgia.

For when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, long-dormant nationalistic identities flared up, leading to the whole of the South Caucasus, namely Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, rising up and swiftly declaring their independence. (As the Chechnyans likewise tried to do, but with far less success).

But nationalistic pride is a two-edged sword--even as Georgia's David was throwing off the shackles of the Russian Goliath, Georgia itself contained two small autonomous regions with their own language and culture, that decided that they would like to be independent too. These regions are South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.

National borders also got sticky, as Armenia and Azerbaijan had a war over the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh, a conflict that stretched back even into the Soviet era. Yet as those two states duked it out, Georgia was struggling to maintain its "territorial integrity" over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Further complicating the struggle was the fact that significant Georgian minorities exist in South Ossetia (where the Georgians claim to be discriminated against), and are even the majority in Abkhazia, where the Abkhazians still have not fully returned after the forced Abkhazian diaspora conducted under Stalin (himself a native Georgian).

Now, South Ossetia ain't no dummy, so when they found themselves outnumbered and outgunned by Georgia, they allied themselves with the other regional heavyweight, which is--wait for it--still Russia.

Now, Georgia has been among the most openly pro-Western of the former Soviet Republics, itching to join the EU, campaigning for U.S. investment (you might remember, as I do, the pro-Georgian commercials that aired on late-night TV roughly a decade ago), and having even received military training and equipment from the U.S. Russia had doubtless been itching for awhile to re-exert some regional hegemony. Nevertheless, just as the Georgians yearned to be free of the Russians, the South Ossetians had yearned to be free of the Georgians, and so the Ossetians allied with Russia. Consequently, the 2008 Russian-Georgian War had been a long time coming.

Russia justified their invasion by claiming to be assisting an oppressed people that just happened to be near massive natural-gas pipelines (and frankly, given NATO's current involvement in oil-rich Libya, we really don't have much room to talk there); Georgia claimed to be invaded by an imperialist power. Both are right--and wrong, I suppose, at least according to this grad-student. Further complicating the picture is the fact that, according to this grad-student, Georgia, for all its pro-Western sympathies, is no closer to having a free news media, one free of nationalist-rhetoric and government propaganda, than is Russia.

Conflicts like these interest me because it reminds me of a quote from Foucault: "There is subversion, but not for us." For it's so easy for an American like me, so far away from the Caucasus, to wonder why there has to be so much needless violence between such small countries so snugly close to each other, why they can't all just get along, and instead of disputing territory, to unite territory, maybe even make a little South Caucasian Federation--a United States of Caucasia, if you will--as was once even proposed before the Bolshevik Revolution.

But then I remember the slaughter of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, and the disenfranchisement and exploitations of the Irish, Italians, Chinese, and currently the Mexicans--and how we needlessly complicate issues of "states' rights" and "territorial integrity" that are clear cases of oppression and ethnic hatred to any outsider watching. We can clearly see others' problem, but not our own. There is subversion, but not for us. And I wonder if perhaps "Caucasian" isn't the exact right word for us after all.