This article delves into the complex historical and contemporary relationships between Russia and the former Soviet republics. It reflects on the impact of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the rise of nationalism, and the resulting tensions and conflicts. The author, a retired colonel, emphasizes the importance of understanding historical ties, addressing national issues with respect, and fostering diplomatic efforts to rebuild and strengthen friendships.

The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century were filled with events that could have severe consequences for the peoples of the former Soviet Union. Undoubtedly, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy for tens of millions of people who had to drastically change their way of life, becoming refugees, victims of national conflicts, and losing loved ones.

The Collapse of the Soviet Union

I will not discuss whether the collapse of such a vast and powerful country was objectively justified. Perhaps the union republics needed to become independent. After all, they had the right to do so. But why couldn’t this be done in a civilized, respectful manner, honoring the dignity of all peoples involved? We built this country together with great effort. We shed blood together defending the country and liberating the peoples of Eastern Europe from fascism. No nationality or people living in the former Soviet Union has sons who did not lie on the battlefield, defending the honor and dignity of our Motherland.

The Lost Friendship

Respecting the blood shed together by the older generation of our peoples, we should have maintained friendship and mutual respect among the citizens of the former great country. But where has the friendship of the peoples of the USSR gone, the source of our victories and might? Why is there now national discord, enmity, hatred, and bloody conflicts instead of friendship? A normal Soviet person could never have imagined that a time would come when a Georgian would shoot at a Russian, and vice versa! That Ukrainian Slavs would shoot down Russian planes over the Caucasus with missiles. I am not even talking about the Georgian-Ossetian conflict.

A Historian’s Perspective

Where did all this come from? How did we come to a point where a museum of Russian occupation was created in Tbilisi, Georgia? It is said that Russia occupied Georgia for 200 years. I cannot comprehend this. I am an Ossetian who grew up in Tbilisi. I graduated from a Georgian school and then from the history department at Tbilisi University. As a historian, I have read and know under what circumstances Georgia joined Russia and who initiated this act. I would recommend that those who organized this so-called museum reread the history of Georgia, especially the conditions of the second half of the 18th century. It would not hurt these “patriots” to remember what happened in Tbilisi in 1795 and what Aga Mohammad Khan did, and what condition all of Eastern Georgia was in. Tbilisi was burned and destroyed, and the same fate befell all of Eastern Georgia. King Erekle II hid in the mountains. It would not hurt these gentlemen to remember who saved Georgia from complete destruction by the wild horde of Omar Khan in 1800. A small Russian force under the command of General Lazarev defeated the 20,000-strong detachment of Omar Khan, which was on its way to destroy Tbilisi. In 1803, the Queen of Georgia killed General Lazarev, the savior of Georgia, with a dagger. Perhaps these “patriots” should remember who shed blood to return the beautiful region of Adjara to Georgia. Was it the Americans, whom the Georgian elite now so love? No, it was the Russian soldier who returned Adjara to Georgia. I had the opportunity to serve in Adjara. An interesting fact is that the Adjarians have Georgian surnames but Muslim names. The population is half Christian and half Muslim. If Russia had not taken Georgia under its protectorate, Georgia would likely not have remained Georgia. Those who run the country should at least know the history of this country and draw the right conclusions from it.

Misunderstanding Occupation

Of course, it cannot be said that everything went smoothly and without any excesses. There were those who were dissatisfied with being subordinated to Tsarist Russia. Such a complex process could not have passed without pain. But the main thing was done: the people, who have a rich culture and have given the world Shota Rustaveli, Yakob Tsurtaveli, Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, Akaki Tsereteli, and Vakhtang Chabukiani, among others, preserved their dignity and made a worthy contribution to world culture.

As for the “occupation” of Georgia by Russia, our country, unfortunately, knows all too well what occupation is. Therefore, to use such terms towards Russia is both offensive to Russia and shows that the person using such a term has never experienced real occupation. Moreover, it indicates a complete lack of knowledge of Russian history. Throughout its existence, Russia has never occupied any country. However, Russia has had to liberate other countries from foreign occupation multiple times.

Personal Experiences

As an officer in the Soviet Army, I have been to different corners of our vast country and seen firsthand how our Soviet people lived. I served in Tiksi, Krasnoyarsk, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and so on. I remember very well that in Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk, by the late 1960s, there were difficulties with meat products. From 1970, I served in the Moscow region and saw how all of central Russia traveled to Moscow for meat products. Once, on a business trip to Borovsk, Kaluga Oblast, I entered a store and saw only sprats in tomato sauce. That was all the food available. At that time, I regularly went on leave to my relatives in Tbilisi every year. The situation was entirely different there, with plenty of meat products. In Tbilisi, for a Georgian to buy frozen meat was considered bad form. Meat had to be fresh and from Russia. After all, Georgia never provided for itself with food products. Meat, dairy products, cereals—all came from Russia. Remarkable! What kind of “occupiers” are these who take from their own people and send to the “occupied”? It would be good to have more such “occupiers.” Now, there are no “occupiers” there. Instead, “kind uncles,” the Americans, have arrived. What do we see? My relatives, pensioners, receive a pension of 75-80 lari, which is about 35-40 dollars. A kilogram of meat costs 13-14 lari. Undoubtedly, during Soviet times, Georgians, especially Georgian peasants, lived ten times better and wealthier than a peasant in the Tambov region. In 1989, I attended a wedding in a Georgian peasant family. It is unlikely that any Russian peasant could set such a table.

National Questions Ignored

And yet, where does such malice and enmity towards everything Russian in Georgia come from? Unfortunately, practice shows that this is not only the case in Georgia. One of the main reasons for such a state of affairs, in my opinion, is that during Soviet times, not enough attention was paid to national issues. We convinced ourselves too strongly that we had unbreakable friendship among nations. We stopped thinking about the fact that each people has some unique qualities inherent only to them, developed by their history. We began to say that in the era of “developed socialism,” the national question lost its relevance altogether. We were all Soviet people, and our nationality was Soviet. We reached such absurdity in our patriotic slogans and political speeches. In reality, this political blindness regarding national issues had severe consequences. I will give an example from Georgia. In February 1956, the famous 20th Congress of the CPSU took place, where Khrushchev exposed the cult of Stalin’s personality. On March 5, almost immediately after the congress, on the day of Stalin’s death, the Central Committee of the CPSU sent instructions to all republics, prohibiting the population from visiting Stalin’s monuments and laying flowers on the day of his death. Such instructions were sent to all educational institutions, enterprises, and organizations in Georgia. A more foolish and provocative instruction for Georgia was hard to imagine. Maybe in the Vologda region, such a document could have been perceived more or less neutrally, but sending it to Georgia was akin to detonating an atomic bomb. Perhaps no one planned to visit Stalin’s monument on his death anniversary, but this document caused a storm of indignation in Georgia, especially in Tbilisi. On March 5, the entire population of Tbilisi, from young to old, with flowers and wreaths, went to Stalin’s monument on the embankment of the Kura River. A spontaneous rally emerged. Anti-Russian and anti-Soviet banners appeared. The crowd surged to Rustaveli Avenue to seize the central telegraph and radio stations. The “Action Committee” was formed from the rally’s activists. The “Action Committee” declared the main demands to the Soviet Government at the rally:

• Abolish the Communist Party of Georgia
• Georgia withdraws from the Soviet Union
• Remove Soviet Armed Forces from Georgia
• Georgia becomes an allied state with Turkey
• Georgia joins NATO They say the Kura River turned red from these demands. All of this was told to me by my Georgian friends when I visited them on leave in 1956, and they advised me not to walk around in military uniform. One of the active members of this “Action Committee” was the 17-year-old son of the famous Georgian writer Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who had a pathological hatred for everything Soviet, Russian, and Ossetian.

Rise of Nationalism

In the 1960s, he became a human rights activist, which in those years was synonymous with anti-Sovietism. In the 1970s, he was imprisoned for his active anti-Soviet activities but was released early under the pressure of the Georgian artistic community. I watched his speech on central television, where he acknowledged his political errors and promised not to engage in anti-Soviet activities anymore. However, the wolf swore off sheep-stealing. In April 1989, he organized an anti-Soviet rally in Tbilisi, during which 18 women were trampled to death. Later, a commission led by the “democrat” Sobchak blamed our soldiers for this tragedy. I served in our army for 31 years and I know our soldiers well. I will never believe that our soldier could beat a woman with a shovel. If they were to beat someone, they would target those who attacked and mocked them. But the soldiers did not respond to the provocative actions of the Georgians.

Georgia in the Hands of Nationalists

In August 1989, I visited my relatives in Tbilisi. Having some free time, I decided to take a walk around Tbilisi. Near Rustaveli Avenue, there is a small park. The entire park was plastered with “dazibao” (big-character posters) in Georgian. When I started reading these proclamations, my hair stood on end. As a political worker by profession, the goals and tasks of those who composed and posted these papers were clear to me. But I was surprised that these anti-Soviet, anti-Russian posters were freely displayed all over Tbilisi, and no one was removing them. And what about the posters? I read the Georgian press. The entire press, both official and yellow, was thoroughly imbued with anti-Soviet and anti-Russian sentiment. And this was still during Soviet power and the existence of the Soviet Union! By 1989, all actual power in Georgia was in the hands of Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Officially, he held no state position, but all government bodies followed his orders. His main task, as we saw in 1956, was to separate Georgia from Russia, to withdraw from the Soviet Union. All anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda in the press was based on a distorted and false presentation of the events of April 9, which he himself had organized. Using the fact of the death of 18 women during the dispersal of the rally on April 9, Gamsakhurdia organized an election campaign and in 1990 became the first president of much-suffering Georgia. He became president, but besides criticizing everything Soviet, he knew nothing else. It so happened that in 1990 and 1991, my wife and I went to Tsqaltubo for the waters, and I had the opportunity to observe political events in Georgia.

Leadership Challenges

Who was Gamsakhurdia? A philologist. Did he know anything about how to govern a state, especially in such a difficult period? Of course not. Did he have a well-founded economic program for further developing Georgia? No. He replaced his incompetence in state governance with “patriotic” slogans. Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. This was precisely the case. When Hitler came to power, within two years he declared Jews a second-class people. Gamsakhurdia didn’t wait that long. He immediately divided the population of Georgia into those deprived of all civil and political rights. The category of “non-Georgians” first included Russians and Ossetians. Ascending the throne, Gamsakhurdia first abolished the South Ossetian Autonomous Region by his decree in 1990, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. In November 1989, Gamsakhurdia organized a march of Georgian nationalists to Tskhinvali with a 50,000-strong contingent. Soviet Armed Forces and Ossetian militias blocked their way before they reached the city. They were not allowed to pass. It is frightening to imagine what would have happened in Tskhinvali if the 50,000-strong frenzied crowd of fanatics had entered the city, whose population barely reached 40,000 at the time.

Georgian-Ossetian Conflict

I have a document. This document was created when the Georgian fanatics’ crowd couldn’t break into Tskhinvali. It is called “The Appeal of the Headquarters of National Security of Georgia to the Ossetians Living in Tskhinvali,” signed, of course, by Gamsakhurdia. A more disgusting and insulting document for the Ossetian people is hard to imagine. The problem is that this ideology of Georgian fascism, expressed in this appeal, finds quite broad support among the ruling elite of Georgia and gradually penetrates all layers of Georgian society. I will allow myself to quote an excerpt from this “appeal” to the Ossetians living in Tskhinvali: “You must appreciate the kindness of the Georgians. You do not live in Ossetia, but in Shida Kartli. There is only one Ossetia in the world, and it is beyond the Caucasus ridge. Do not believe the illusions created by the Bolsheviks that there is a so-called South Ossetian Autonomous Region. Look ahead, evaluate your future. Live today so that you have the right to live in Shida Kartli tomorrow. You must condemn and expel the Ossetian separatists from Georgia, abolish ‘Adamont Nykhas’. Why do you need this organization that supposedly protects you from Georgians? Have Georgians ever offended you? On the contrary, you have repeatedly had the audacity to try and offend the Georgians, but in the end, you were punished and quite rightly so. Remember history and be convinced that Ossetian arrogance in Georgia always ended badly for the Ossetians. And now it will be the same because we Georgians have always been right before you, and now we are right, and therefore God is with us.”

The Threat of Nationalism

What can one say about this? It’s the conversation of a master with a serf: “If you don’t behave as I want, I’ll whip you, I’ll expel you.” This happened when there was still Soviet power and Georgia was part of the Soviet Union. What happened to Ossetia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and what is happening now we have seen and continue to see. If not for Great Russia, there would simply be no South Ossetia. Remember August 2008, and everything will be clear.

Perhaps I have delved too deeply into the events in Georgia and South Ossetia. I wanted to show what happens to peoples when the state does not develop a correct national policy. Why did some former Soviet republics become so unfriendly towards Russia? In my opinion, it is primarily because they equate Soviet power with Russia and attribute all the sins of the Soviet government to Russia. But no one bothers to say that this is completely untrue. Has anyone analyzed the harm the Soviet government inflicted specifically on Russia? No. Has anyone considered how hard it was to feed a number of republics almost for free? Certainly not. How much effort did Russia put into the economic, industrial, and cultural development of the union republics? There is no answer. But our scholars, historians, economists, and political scientists should analyze the enormous contribution Russia made to the development and preservation of the peoples living in the former Russian Empire. Maybe then, in these republics, there would be no museums of Russian occupation, but museums of how Russia helped them live and develop. By the way, isn’t it time to create museums in Russian cities to show how Russia helped the peoples of the Soviet Union? Perhaps we should introduce special programs on central television channels that objectively cover the history of the peoples of the former USSR and their relations with Russia.

Today’s Challenges

We are indeed at a dangerous borderline. Efforts by short-sighted politicians, or rather those hostile to Russia, are destroying historical ties between Russia and the peoples for whom Russia was a friendly and brotherly country.

To be fair, it must be said that sometimes the leaders of our country also behave, to put it mildly, not very wisely and not very respectfully towards the leaders of other nations, and we get the corresponding results. I remember very well how many times Dzhokhar Dudayev asked Yeltsin to invite him for negotiations. The Chechen people were not in favor of leaving the Russian Federation. If there had been respectful relations towards the leadership of Chechnya and the Chechen people, there would not have been this bloody war, hundreds of thousands of victims, and terrible destruction. Yet we re-elected Yeltsin as president. In his first presidential term, he drank and squandered the country, and in the second term, he was treated for his alcoholism while the country was left to its own devices.

We are still conducting incorrect policies with our neighbors. Fine, we have cut off all ties with Georgia! To whom have we handed Georgia? America? Western Europe? This is exactly what they wanted. We should give every opportunity for the Georgian peasant to sell his goods in our market. We should create as many joint ventures as possible. Let the diplomats wage their war, but the people should communicate with each other. Then our influence will increase. The task of diplomacy is to turn enemies into friends, but we are doing the opposite. The danger is that the young generation of our neighbors is being brought up in a spirit of hostility and hatred towards us, towards Russia. What kind of fruits this upbringing will bear in 50 or 100 years can only be guessed. This is something today’s leaders of the former Soviet Union countries need to think about. Yes, we are now experiencing a very critical and dangerous historical juncture. While those who worked hard to create a great and mighty country are still alive, while those who defended our great Motherland in a bloody battle with fascism are still alive, while the memory of those who defended the freedom and independence of the great country at the cost of their lives is still alive, there remains an opportunity to revive and strengthen the friendship between the republics of the former Soviet Union. If we let this opportunity slip away now, I fear that Russia will find itself surrounded not just by unfriendly countries but by outright hostile ones. The signs are already there: the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia, some Central Asian republics, and even our allied Belarus are not entirely satisfied with us. Unfortunately, we do not pay enough attention to the fact that in some former union republics, young people are being raised in a spirit of fascism and chauvinism. These young people will eventually come to power in their countries. They will be the future ministers of defense in their republics, and where they will direct the barrels of their guns with such upbringing is a big question. All of this personally causes me great concern. I may not live to see such a situation, but I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and the kind of neighbors they will have to live with worries me.

The Role of Diplomacy

Diplomacy should aim to turn enemies into friends, but our current approach seems to be doing the opposite. We must change our policies and work towards rebuilding the bonds that once held the peoples of the Soviet Union together. By focusing on mutual respect, economic cooperation, and cultural exchange, we can hope to mend the fractured relationships and prevent the spread of hostility.

A Call for Unity

In conclusion, it is crucial for the current and future leaders of Russia and the former Soviet republics to recognize the importance of unity and cooperation. We need to learn from our history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Only by working together can we ensure a peaceful and prosperous future for all our peoples.

Colonel (Retired) Chigoev S.A.