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15 Brown J. World Aff. 183 (2008-2009)
Abkhazia and Georgia: Time for a Reassessment

handle is hein.journals/brownjwa15 and id is 485 raw text is: Abkhazia and Georgia: Time for a Reassessment GEORGE HEWITT Professor of Caucasian Languages SOAS, London University MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN SINCE the summer of 2008 about Russian-Georgian relations and the rights and wrongs of the August fighting that erupted in and around both South Ossetia and, to a lesser extent, Abkhazia. Most commentators, such as foreign correspon- dents, media opinion-formers, NATO spokesmen, and politicians forgot, or chose to ignore, the issues underlying the conflicts in both of these long-suffering Transcaucasian regions, preferring to take their cues from Georgia's well-oiled, or at least well-financed, spinning machine. Thus, the line of argument held by most commentators has been that President Dmitry Medvedev and Premier Vladimir Putin have embarked on a mis- 183 sion to revive the Kremlin's imperial ambitions that had been dormant since the 1991 collapse of the USSR, along the former Soviet periphery, beginning with punishment of Georgia for the avowedly pro-Western stance of its president Mikheil Saak'ashvili, since his overthrow of the Eduard Shevardnadze regime in November 2003. Ultimately, it has been the larger matter of East-West relations that have mostly been debated, whilst the voices of those trying to argue their respective cases against Tbilisi for some two (if not nine) decades have been drowned out. This article seeks to redress the balance, with special reference to the Abkhazian cause.' HISTORY During its roughly seventy years of existence, the Soviet Union's internal frontiers and administrative structures have interested very few in the outside world. Georgia might have been better known for a time than most of the far-flung republics, thanks to its GEORGE HEWITT has held the title Professor of Caucasian Languages at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies since 1996 and been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1997. He is the author of Georgian: a Structural Reference Grammar (1995) and Georgian: a Learners Grammar (1996; 2nd ed. 2005); he edited 7he Abkhazians: a Handbook (1998) and is currently preparing a self-tutor for Abkhaz. He has written extensively on the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict since 1989. Copyright © 2009 by the Brown Journal of WorldAffairs SPRING/SUMMER 2009 - VOLUME XV, ISSUE II

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