Resources for Crafting Sovereignties in Breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Politics of Nationhood within the Rivalry between Russia and Georgia

Abstract

This thesis is aimed at analysis of nation making in Georgia’s breakaway territories engaging certain aspects of foreign and domestic affairs that might be viewed as sources for crafting sovereignties in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. For this purpose, I deal with historiography and collective memory as a source of justification of secession and sovereignty, and relevant political interpretation of these discourses that have mobilising effects in the respective societies. Demographic changes and politics of ethnic consolidation after the wars for independence in 1990s and Russian-Georgian war in 2008, and their influence on legitimacy of elites of the respective political entities, are also examined in order to gain more understanding of state building in Georgia’s breakaway republics. Russia’s efforts to support nation building in Abkhazia and South Ossetia through financial, human, symbolic-emotional and political investment is one more aspect brought into analysis. Overall goal for studying domestic and international resources of crafting polities in breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is to understand how these post-war societies construct their identities, institutions and statehood under influence of the contested geopolitical environment. This will benefit an academic approach in regional studies that will meet interests of scholars, international organisations, non-state actors and policy-makers focused on conflict transformation and resolution.