UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Ethnic and civic identity: incompatible loyalties? The case of Armenians in Post- Soviet Georgia Hin, J.A. Publication date 2003 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Hin, J. A. (2003). Ethnic and civic identity: incompatible loyalties? The case of Armenians in Post-Soviet Georgia. Universiteit van Amsterdam/AGIDS. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:27 Sep 2021 11 INTRODUCTION 1.11.1 Multi-ethnicity and the legitimacy of post-Soviet states Withh the collapse of the Soviet Union about a decade ago, post-Soviet states came into being.. This statement may seem logical and lacking substantive content but a collective conceptt for the newly independent states that emerged from the former Soviet Union is valuable.. These states, no matter how different they are, not only have a common past but sharee a particular legacy of a regime that profoundly changed the structure of its society andd the attitudes of its people. Nowadays, while trying to develop democratic regimes, all thee post-Soviet states are having to deal with this specific heritage from Soviet times. Thee struggle around a crucial issue facing these newly independent states, the questionn concerning the legitimacy of their democratic regimes, clearly reveals distinct tracess left from Soviet times. A regime can be regarded as legitimate if the citizens of the statee consider it to be legitimate, even though it may be considered 'wrong' according to universall standards (Bakker & Schulte Northolt 1996: 21). The former Soviet regime so oftenn used arbitrary policies and high-ranking officials abused their power so frequently thatt nowadays most people in the post-Soviet states distrust the institutions coordinating thee civil administration, the police and the military. This distrust is reinforced by the fact thatt the former leaders - the so-called Nomenklatura - still hold most of the high-level positionss within the regimes of these recently established states. Since there has been no traditionn of participation in state structures and only punishment for those who chose to challengee the previous regime, there is not much significant or effective protest to be heard,, in spite of the high level of education in these states, the relatively modern infrastructuree and the large number of civic organizations - for example, political parties, culturall organizations, youth organizations. Nevertheless, one cannot conclude that the citizenss of a state regard a regime as legitimate on the basis of a lack of organized protest againstt it: people might be disinterested in politics or accept the regime but disobey the basicc political laws thereby undermining its authority. Itt is generally assumed that the legitimacy of a regime is complicated when the compositionn of the population is multi-ethnic - as it is in almost all the newly independentt states in the former Soviet Union. The proposition that ethnic and civic identityy comprise incompatible loyalties stems from the fact that an integration of various ethnicc groups is uncertain and potentially destabilizing since people tend to identify with theirr own (ethnic) group and view other (ethnic) groups as a threat to their position and status.. In order to establish a legitimate regime, however, the various ethnic groups need too be integrated to such an extent that they all support the regime and comply with basic politicall laws. In post-Soviet states, the integration of various ethnic groups is complicatedd by their specific history. The regime of the Soviet Union not only stressed butt even institutionalized the ethnic identity of people, and linked ethnicity to status by assigningg dominant political and cultural positions within the fifteen Union Republics onlyy to the members of the titular groups of these republics, for example, Georgians in Georgiaa and Armenians in Armenia. Some non-titular ethnic groups were granted more authorityy than others through the establishment of autonomous regions and areas within 15 5 thesee Union Republics. These features have left their mark on post-Soviet citizenries and theirr states. Legitimizationn of the state is essential but problematic in multi-ethnic states, and post-Soviett states have encountered specific problems in this area. Important questions arise:: Is the authority in post-Soviet states firmly in the hands of the newly established regimes?? Are the various ethnic groups in post-Soviet states integrated to such an extent thatt they support their regimes? Do they generally comply with basic political laws? To whatt extent is this legitimization in post-Soviet states the result of the multi-ethnic compositionn of its populations? What is the influence of the specific Soviet heritage? Transcaucasiaa is an interesting region in which to study these questions because of its strategicc location and its links to Russia and the Middle East. The recent rivalry between thee United States, Russia, Iran and Turkey to gain influence in the region and control overr the enormous oil reserves in the Caspian Sea has emphasized once more the importantt geopolitical position of Transcaucasia. Stability in the three Transcaucasian statess including the legitimization of their regimes by their citizens is an important issue nott only to the region itself but also to other countries eager to exploit the oil fields and layy pipelines for the transportation of this oil. Anotherr factor that makes a study of the legitimacy of Transcaucasian regimes interestingg is that they have to deal with an unprecedented entanglement of smaller and largerr nations, clans, tribes, cultures, religions, alphabets, traditions and customs in the region.. (The Arabs used to call the Caucasus range 'The Mountains of Languages'.) That legitimizationn by such a diverse population is difficult has become clear ever since the disintegrationn of the Soviet Union. The political situation in the newly independent states off Transcaucasia - Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan - has remained turbulent and troublesome.. While Azerbaijan and Armenia have been in conflict over the Nagorno- Karabakhh region since 1988, Georgia has experienced three civil wars since the late 1980s. Off the three Transcaucasian states, Georgia has the largest number of ethnic minoritiess living within its borders. According to the last Soviet census of 1989, 30 percentt of the population in Georgia did not belong to the Georgian ethnic group. Among thee population of Azerbaijan, the same census found only 17 percent without the titular ethnicityy - of which most of the Armenians outside Nagorno-Karabakh (4%) have since leftt as a result of the conflict in this region. In the population of Armenia only 6 percent weree recorded as not belonging to the Armenian ethnic group, of which most were Azeri (3%)) and do not live there anymore for the same reason (Anderson & Silver 1996). Thatt multi-ethnicity has been problematic for the Georgian state is illustrated by thee record of civil wars in Georgia since independence: two out of the three wars which ragedd through the state were based on ethnic conflicts, and the third was the result of tensionss over nationalistic policies and the nationalistic attitude of the country's first democraticallyy elected president. Peace returned in the end of 1993 though the problems inn the areas of conflict have not been solved and a cease-fire is in effect. Since then the state,, under the leadership of President Shevardnadze, has made a fresh start: a new democraticc constitution was passed, parliament became more decisive, and in 1995 the 16 6 economyy started to grow for the first time in years.' But a regime has to be legitimized by variouss ethnic groups if stability is to be retained and consolidated in Georgia. Sincee Georgia faced complications of legitimacy from having a multi-ethnic populationn but has found political stability (at least temporarily), it is interesting to focus onn Georgia in a study on the legitimacy of a post-Soviet regime. Georgia finds itself at thee center of geopolitical games around the oil reserves in Azerbaijan and while Armenia hass been excluded from transporting oil from Azerbaijan as a result of conflicts between thee two states, Georgia has already become involved in various options related to oil- pipelinee (re)construction. 1.21.2 The Republic of Georgia Thee Republic of Georgia regained its independence in 1991. Like the other two Transcaucasiann republics, it was independent for a short period after the collapse of the Russiann Empire until being invaded by the Bolsheviks (1918-1921). The first time the Georgiann state appeared on the map as a unified kingdom was in the twelfth century. Georgiaa is thus an ancient entity but the centuries and decades in which it was not an autonomouss unity account for most of its history. The Transcaucasian region was conqueredd time and again by various invaders because of its important geopolitical locationn at the crossroads between East and West, between the Christian and the Muslim worlds. Thesee various conquerors left their mark on the Georgian land, among other thingss in the diversity of the population whether by converting groups to another religion, byy changing their mother tongue, by welcoming new ethnic groups or by deporting other ethnicc groups.