As Soviet Union dissolved, enclave\'s fabric unraveled

Tag : Fabric

Its foundation was eventually picked apart to build trenches. Andthe citizens of Tskhinvali became a resistance.
"It's not a question of whether you choose to or not," saidAlborova, who is now 34 and lives in Toulouse, France. "Sometimesyou are obliged. In some situations you don't choose anything."
Tskhinvali is a city of low-slung, sand-colored buildings suspendedbetween urban and rural life. Roosters crow in the cool of themorning, and almost every house has its own grape arbor, used tomake sweet pink wines that are stored in plastic soda bottles andbrought out for the slightest occasion. There were also monumentalStalinist-era apartment buildings where the elite lived, and agrand neoclassical theater.
Alborova practically grew up in that theater. Her mother, Medeya,was Georgian. (Though her mother's mother had been Ossetian,children in the Caucasus take their father's ethnicity.) Medeya metGelim Alborov in a state folk dancing troupe, and when they marriedin the 1970s, unions of Georgians and Ossetians were stillunremarkable.
To a teenager's eyes, the two ethnic groups were woven togetherinextricably. Children in Alborova's class were given their choiceof language for classroom use, and though most of them wereOssetian, 28 out of 32 opted to study Georgian.
"Our teacher was embarrassed," Alborova said. "No one wanted tolearn Ossetian."
In the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, some 50 miles to the southeast,Georgia's first post-Soviet leader was emerging. ZviadGamsakhurdia, a longtime anti-Soviet dissident, based his campaignfor the presidency on a vaulting Georgian nationalism — anidea powerful enough to fill the vacuum left by Communism'scollapse.
The platform, known as Georgia for the Georgians, cast ethnicGeorgians, who made up 70 percent of the population, as thecountry's true masters. Gamsakhurdia derided South Ossetians asnewcomers, saying they had arrived only 600 years ago and as toolsof the Soviet Union.
On the street in Tskhinvali, small changes began to appear.
Alborova's aunt was exasperated to go to the store and see thatpasta manufactured in Russia had been put in packages labeled withGeorgian script. Her neighbor Emma Gasiyeva kept hearing slogans:"Brush them out with a broom!" and "Who are the guests, and who arethe hosts?" a reference to the theory that Ossetians had beenbrought to the area as agricultural workers.
In 1989, Alborova was 15, and she saw only shadows. She heard thather Georgian classmates were gathering for some kind of meeting,but she was not invited. "They stopped talking to us," she said ofher Georgian neighbors. "It was done very quickly."
Over the next three years, Tskhinvali became something like Belfastin Northern Ireland.