What is your ethnicity

After the end of the Cold War, everybody thought that there would only be the peace and love in the world. But, in fact, the worst things started to happen, especially, in Balkans and former Soviet space. People who once lived in peace together started to fight.  

There are Upper and Lower Avnevi, two villages in South Ossetia

“Out of 400 homes only 2 have remained whole from Lower Avnevi which was settled by Georgians before the August 200. Ossetian women from upper Avnevi (Ossetian settlement) guarded the two untouched houses. One of the local people, Anna, showed us the house of the remaining inhabitants of the village Zalina Bestaeva and Durmshikhan Sekturashvili. According to Anna and Zalina the village lived harmoniously until the war, they worked with the cattle together. Zalina and Durmshikhan have been married for 49 years – she is 66 and he is 68. They have two daughters, 8 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. One of their daughters is married to a Georgian, the other to an Ossetian. In 1992 their only son was shot by a former friend on the way home from the village of Khtagurovo. In the beginning of August Zalina and her daughter’s family went to Tbilisi. But she returned after a few days to her husband, as he refused to leave the house. In their house now they have no electricity, water or gas. The mobile phone works, which the old couple use to talk to their daughters and grand children. Their grandchildren miss their grandfather terribly... Their daughter’s house was burnt down but they would be ready to come back if they are allowed to. They would first of all live with Zalina and then rebuild their home…

The second family was also a mixed family; the father was a Georgian and the wife an Ossetian. The head of the house – a farmer, self-respecting man, was in a deep depression. It was harder for him than for Zalina and her husband to survive recent events. Perhaps this is because Zalina and Durmshikhan deeply and sincerely believe in the next New World, where they will be reunited with their dead son, and they will all be happy again.”  (story here).

Ossetians were one of the most numerous ethnic groups in Georgia. According to 1989 Soviet census, Ossetians numbered 164,055 persons, with 98,823 resident outside the former autonomous region of South Ossetia. Now Approximately 38,000 remain in the rest of Georgia.  There were several mixed villages in South Ossetia. Much of the inter-ethnic mixing that existed before 1990 has been lost. A handful of ethnically mixed villages survived.

It is fascinating how neighbors and friends turned into enemies, how people who once had a lot in common end up having nothing in common. I reject the idea that there have been an ancient tribal hatred between Ossetians and Georgians. This was not so. Traditionally, both people lived peacefully with high rate of intermarriages. How did it happen, that people once ignorant to their ethnic identities no start to stick to this identity and furthermore, attack and insult people once they called friends. Why did they fight against each other? Why did they burn down houses of each other? Because of the survival of their “nation”?. But that was not the concern just few years ago….

I wish I could travel to South Ossetia. I want to find out answers to those questions. I would try to look at the similarities between Georgians and Ossetians. To me they are all the same. :)