It was not so long ago that prolonged organised opposition by the Namakhvani Movement forced the Turkish construction company Enka and the Georgian government temporarily to reconsider the construction of a gigantic hydroelectric power station, and to think whether yet  again it had become necessary to protect Georgia’s natural resources from privatisation. The Namakhvani Movement has on this occasion made its priority a protest against the appropriation of 104,000 hectares of forest in Racha. The chief Georgian oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, handed over, with a 49-year licence for hunting, an area of forest of roughly the same size in Ochamchira district to a businessman with a Georgian name (Khidasheli) operating in Russia: the Namakhvani Movement’s determined opposition has forced the state to annul this licence.


In a somewhat parallel process, in Abkhazia a protest (by the Hara H-Pitsunda, ‘Our Bichvinta’ movement) has shifted into its active phase, opposing the handover to Russia of a state-owned landholding near the coastal spa of Bichvinta (Pitsunda): the protest is focussed on the prospect that worries the Abkhaz, that the best part of Bichvinta spa will be handed over to the Russian Federation for 49 years, to form, as they put it, an aspect of the question of sovereignty, while the land (and other natural resources) would be the main guarantee of this sovereignty, something that in the constitution is characterised as ‘the basis of their lives and livelihood’. [i]

During an overnight sitting, the Abkhaz parliament ratified the existing agreement between Russia and Abkhazia on the handover of 300 hectares of land and adjacent sea-front to Russia. The Hara H-Pitsunda movement, together with a section of Abkhaz society, is carrying on with its protest in a peaceful way, but the tandem of Bzhania and Ardzinba is managing to dispel the Abkhaz opposition movements by one trick after another, among them a so-called  ‘law on apartments’, a recently initiated law project to allow Abkhazia’s police forces to collaborate with the Russian Federation’s National Guard providing with, whereby Russia’s armed forces are allowed to interfere directly in Abkhazia’s political processes, or the law project on foreign agents, initiatives to privatise energy plants, and so on.

For Georgia, the Abkhaz war was one that involved defending territorial integrity, whereas for Abkhazia it was a patriotic war. Questions of land, of land rights, of territorial control, etc., were central to this conflict, and more than 30 years after the war for both the main parties to the conflict once more the defence of land becomes the main topic, but this time not because of one another, but because of commercialisation. In the case of Namakhvani, we are dealing with the appropriation of an enormous area of a valley and forest, while in the Abkhaz case the protest is against the appropriation of a scenic area and embezzlement of ‘sovereignty’. The Georgian-Abkhaz conflict has its own political, historic, cultural, and other dimensions, but there has probably not been any attempt to find a politico-economic dimension for this conflict. Our modest venture is limited to preserving the land, not simply as a symbolic denominator, but as a real economic or politico-economic actor which will give us not only the best conditions for a broader understanding of the past, but will enable us to visualise a different type of future.
 

What land means

The interest of capitalist centres, and also of peripheral centres in the global south, extends to land, as well as to natural resources. As the economist Utsa Panaik says, their middle classes need coffee, tea and cocoa, they want tropical produce and fresh vegetables, fruit and flowers in the middle of winter, whereas the centre doesn’t have the means to satisfy their own citizens’ needs for these supplies. .[ii] This is the reason for the existence of the countries and societies of the global south: their land can be harvested, sometimes as often as three times a year, and the lands have to be invaded. As Panaik puts it, this is the focus of the WTO’s main mantra: ‘open up your agriculture.’ To this extent, in the global south the land question is to a significant degree linked to the agrarian question, although in our region land has not yet taken on this significance, and the main focus is more on natural resources and, apparently, on the exploitation of scenery. (Here we should take into account that the export of mandarins and other citrus fruits from Abkhazia to Russia is increasing, even if it is so far insignificant when compared with Russia’s overall stocking of citruses).

For Karl Marx, land was ‘the main source for every kind of production and existence’; at the same time, Marx and Engels distinguished ‘natural capital’, as something linked in one way or another to land, from ‘mobile capital’, which is connected with trade, with banks, money and so on. [iii]

The concept of ‘natural capital’ is, in its exploitation and valuation, connected with the structure of the economy and essentially with land, unlike capital, as a means of exchange and valuation, or of finance. As Bellamy-Foster puts it, if capital was primarily viewed in physical terms, along with the development of capitalism, it has been at the same time been more and more assessed as a form of exchange value.

At a later stage, Karl Marx suddenly makes known the terms ‘land-as-material’ and ‘land-as-capital’ — land which has so far not been put to use as a means of production is not seen as capital. After it has been changed to a means of production, land-as-material remains unchanged, but land-as-capital increases: in other words, its volume doesn’t change, but it does change as capital. Land-as-material does not change, but land as capital becomes a source of profit, providing pleasure or political control. To put it another way, land as permanent material differs from land which becomes capital, but the land remains essentially the same, having two dimensions at the same time, which are so much intertwined in their material sense, as a potential source of capital.  In the course of realising this potential (which according to Marx is mostly realised by becoming the object of rent), ‘Land becomes instead of just material land-as-capital’. [iv] Capitalism turns land into capital.

For colonial policies land is of special importance from the point of view of geography, geo-politics, as well as agriculture and resources, As Marx puts it, ‘The colonial question is not only a national question, but also a question of land and means of existence.’[v] To put it in a more comprehensible way, land, inasmuch as it is a social question, being a question of existence — or a question of life or death for the majority of human beings — is because of this transformation a national question. The Abkhaz were quick to denote land, when they wrote it into their constitution, as a guarantee of their political sovereignty. That is why any attack on land arouses pain or forebodings in the minds of most Abkhaz. The impression one has is that the Russian Federation is preparing a final solution for the tough-nut Abkhaz question. The proof of this must be a simultaneous attack made on land, on energy infrastructure and on real estate, as well as projects for military collaboration, etc.

Following on the construction of Ochamchira port, Russia wants the very best piece of Bichvinta’s land for its own bourgeois officialdom in Abkhazia, as confirmation of its permanent establishment in the region, which is impossible without implying the so-called ‘holiday resort colonisation’ project.

For example. the Abkhaz historian Dzidzaria talks of Abkhazia’s ‘holiday resort colonisation’ plans, when in 1872 a Special Commission decided on dividing up the land and handing it over to its officials and officers. This process, however, was converted into one of turning it into a ‘Caucasian Riviera’ as early as the 1890s. But because of the 1877 rebellion, the Abkhaz inhabitants of Gudauta, Gumista and Kodori districts were declared to be ‘criminals’, and consequently their land was confiscated, and they were forbidden to settle anywhere less than 20 kilometres from Sukhum/i or in the coastal region.[vii]

Russia is trying to break up the Abkhaz, by promoting the idea of privatising real estate and energy infrastructure, partly by force and partly by a process of maturation, and, when all is said and done, by asserting its  own immutable presence. A break-up of the Abkhaz is to happen by imposing full-scale capitalist relations on its periphery. And as land occupies a central position in these relations, land which at the moment is a guarantee of the horizon of the Abkhaz’s collective political future, their opposition has an elementally anti-capitalist character.

Today Abkhazia is half a dotational society (50% of its budget is provided by the Russian Federation), and Russia is now attempting to turn Abkhazia into a source of profit for its capital investments and for its pleasure by commercialising Abkhazia’s real estate etc. For the Abkhaz, however, everything that is on their territory is part of their museum of victory, and therefore the idea of their sovereignty extends to their scenery, too. It is logical for elemental feelings of anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and class struggle to arise here.

Quite apart from the Enguri hydroelectric station, where these processes developed in the shortest intervals of time and which Bendukidze was in charge of, land and natural resources are also becoming urgent topics, albeit with a different chronology, the fact that we are now made to defend our land, our valley, our forest or canyon from privatisation is an immutable logical stage of a post-socialist, capitalist project being realised. This stage, following on the privatisation of energy, medicine and other industrial wealth, has now permanently moved onto nature, with its commercialisation in mind. To put it another way, the commercialisation of nature has been realised in our case as a logical stage of a capitalist project, while the Abkhaz are faced with this development, albeit in a different sequence — if the process of selling natural and other resources to Russia has in our case left us a simulation of political independence, allowing us to enjoy a western orientation, for the Abkhaz setting such a process of privatisation in motion means burying any future political projects.

Furthermore, in our case, in the battle against the process of commercialising nature, the silent majority of the population has been up to now carving out its own political subjectivity. In contrast to this, however, in Abkhazia an already traditionally active democracy appears for the time being to be helpless when faced with this process.

But the main difference between us and the Abkhaz is nevertheless that in our case any defeat in the process of combatting the commercialisation of nature is not inevitably tragic: we are already living in conditions where lakes, forests and pavements have been sold off. In the Abkhaz case, however, it is possible that there will be a politically tragic outcome.
 

The Shadow of Privatisation

Some Abkhaz historians, using historical analogies, say that the limitation of Abkhaz political independence began with an economic limitation.

Nestor Lakoba, the leader of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia, said that the kulaks as a class did not exist in Abkhazia and used that logic to oppose collectivisation, thus arousing Stalin’s fury. The pressure coming from Stalin was increasing, and for that reason there was a relentless demand for collectivisation. Stalin left Lakoba with a choice: either carry out collectivisation, or become a component part of Georgia. Lakoba chose the latter path. As Abkhaz historians put it, apart from direct political pressure, it was economic pressure that turned out to be decisive in the process of diminishing Abkhazia’s sovereign status, and the chief role in this diminution was played by the incorporation of the Abkhaz SSR as a component part of Georgia. [viii]

Economic tensions themselves in Georgian-Abkhaz relations have not been absent either in the Soviet republic period or after it.

As Derluguian asserts, the Soviet republic’s most productive black market, which was based on a monopoly of holiday resorts and citrus plantations, was one of the most important sources of Georgian-Abkhaz economic conflict. It was the control of these sources that determined almost every level of Georgian-Abkhaz adversarial relationship. The disruption of local state structures and their economy, in Derluguian’s opinion, gave birth to the causes of conflict, which were primarily economic in nature, even though they were tinged with nationalism.

With the onset of the prospect of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and a transfer to a market economy, the prospect of privatising state property also seemed imminent, and, as the Abkhaz remained in the framework of Georgia, their economic influence was being irreparably weakened — beginning with control of holiday resorts and plantations and the income derived from them. This may be considered as a significant reason for the acceleration of conflict, although this question will require future economic, historical and anthropological research.

There is one unconfirmed story which Giorgi Derluguian, using his field notes, relates: in 1989 Jaba Ioseliani, the leader of the paramilitary organisation Mkhedrioni, descends in person to the Georgian villages around the spa of Gagra. Ioseliani announces to the Georgian population, as part of the post-socialist reforms, the privatisation of Gagra’s land and spas, while those Georgians who become members of Mkhedrioni are to receive privileges in this privatisation. The ranks of Mkhedrioni were noticeably swollen by inhabitants of these Georgian villages. Two years later, a group of Abkhaz and Chechens, led by Shamil Basaev, razed those villages to the ground. [ix]

The shadow of privatisation is a source of fear for the Abkhaz: they fear that Russians, by throwing their economic levers — land, resources and real estate —, can force Abkhaz into a closer relationship with Georgians, or just sell us out to the Georgians.
 

Prolonged liminality

Liminality is a term devised by the ethnographer Arnold van Gennep. He defined this phenomenon as a so-called ‘transfer ritual’, such as, for example, the transition from one age group to another. The same applies to a change of social circumstance, let us say, a wedding, the election of a new leader, someone losing a person they love, etc. Liminality is a phase, a circumstance, which is preceded, for example, by division, by separation, the time for a parting of the ways for a person or a group, leaving their previous designated place in a social structure. After the separation stage we have liminality and a third stage which is called a phase of re-aggregation or restoration, during which the subject or group finds a new social status. Thus liminality, or the second stage, is a period of transition, an unstable period which has occurred between two relatively stable situations.

Victor Turner later on adopts these ideas of van Gennep. As Turner says, at the stage of liminality a person or group of persons finds themselves neither here nor there: they are conventionally and ceremonially between established positions. Or else they are in a position of alienation and uncertainty.

The anthropologist Rebecca Bryant states that we can describe de facto states as ones in extended liminality, being cast in a political form somewhere between what they once represented and the avowed political state which they wish to attain. Such states, to put it metaphorically, are standing at the entrance to the international arena, but cannot step across the threshold which would really make them a sovereign state. Standing at the threshold of this door for any length of time is what Bryant calls extended liminality. [x]

De facto states are more concerned with the crisis of liminality than with the crisis of legitimising, says Bryant, for liminality is an unstable, precarious position.

Like the Turkish Cypriots, the Abkhaz, too, do not know what will happen after their long wait. But Russia now has a plan for them to emerge from their liminality: this project to bring them out of liminality cannot be looked at by the Abkhaz with any delight. This emergence, or synthesis, re-aggregation, once it is given the go-ahead, is weighed in Russia’s favour. Such an emergence from liminality would mean the Abkhaz becoming, if not citizens of Krasnodar district, then (as Akhra Bzhania suggests[xi])possibly finding themselves in something like the position of the north Caucasian republics. The Abkhaz may possibly keep their decorative political freedom, but an emergence from liminality in this version will not end up beneficially for their actual independence, nor for their integration into the international arena.
 

The Pine Trees of Bichvinta

What does the present situation tell us about the question of land on either side of the River Enguri? On this side of the Enguri the process gives us a chance of strengthening popular democracy: it creates yet another precedent and, possibly, could play a real and significant role in the process of democratisation, as part of a general class struggle. But on the other side of the Enguri this process is moving along a different trajectory — Abkhazia’s political future may depend on its success or failure. At such a crucial point, Georgia’s authorities, the Abkhaz may presume, give the same impression as theirs, as states which are selling land and nature, leaving the Abkhaz with only one conclusion: that ‘Abkhazia is becoming a second Monaco’ and that ‘Sukhum/i will be a second Monte Carlo’[xii] When the bourgeoisie chats about deepening ‘economic relations’, they have in view their own interests: the rich people of their class, who in joyful cooperation cut the ribbons for new hotels and restaurants and have exclusive use of natural resources and scenery, and for whom fencing off and exploitation is their main source of profit.

Unfortunately, Georgia’s authorities, and the whole political class, has nothing better to offer the Abkhaz except ‘colonisation for holiday resorts’. But on both sides of the Enguri there is experience of popular resistance, and it is precisely this which, if we now defend something from someone, which should create a desire to know one another better. The main task for Georgians must be to admit that the Abkhaz exist despite Russia, that they exist as a subject of their own aspirations, by their own cultural traditions and everyday life. The Abkhaz, for their part, will have to confirm that they will be defending the land not just from the Georgians.

And then something will be born or renewed, eternally new like Bichvinta’s pine trees, to cite Aleksandr Ankvab’s poem, which seems to date from just yesterday, even though there are centuries behind it. [xiii]

Endnotes

[i] Constitution of Abkhazia. Source: https://apsnypress.info/ru/home/dokumenty/item/239-konstitutsiya-respubliki-abkhaziya © APSNYPRESS

[ii] “How Imperialism Starves the Global South: An Interview with Utsa Patnaik.” New Socialist, https://www.newsocialist.org.uk/utsa-patnaik-interview/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.

[iii] Global, John Bellamy Foster Nature as a Mode of Accumulation: Capitalism and the Financialization of the Earth Monthly Review, 1 Mar. 2022, https://monthlyreview.org/2022/03/01/nature-as-a-mode-of-accumulation-capitalism-and-the-financialization-of-the-earth/.

[iv] ibid

[v] Speech by Karl Marx 1867. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1867/irish-speech.htm. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.

[vi] G. A. Dzidzaria The Period of Exile and Problems of History [in Russian] Sukhumi: Alashara, 1990, pp 442-3

[vii] S. Lakoba Sketches of Abkhazia’s Political History [in Russian], Sukhumi: Alashara, 1990. p. 35.

[viii] A. S. Gabelaia The Economic Factor in the Process of Diminishing the Abkhaz SSR’s Political Status (1921–1931) [in Russian]

[ix] Derluguian, Georgi. Abkhazia: A Historical Theory of Conflict https://www.academia.edu/6471942/Abkhazia_a_historical_theory_of_conflict. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.

[x] Bryant, Rebecca. 2014. Living with Liminality: De Facto States on the Threshold of the Global. The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 20: pp 125-43

[xi] Elena Zavodskaia, 2023. Akhra Bzhania ‘Whose Task is the Minister of Foreign Affairs Carrying out?’ [in Russian] Ekhokavkaza.com, https://www.ekhokavkaza.com/a/32593227.html [last accessed: 29/03/2024]

[xii] ‘Abkhazia may become Monaco, we may get a $10 billion investment’ [in Georgian] https://netgazeti.ge/news/648382/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024

[xiii] ‘Aleksandr Ankvab’s poem ‘The Pine Tree of Bichvinta’ was read at a poetry evening’ Echo of the Caucasus, 20 Sep. 2022 [In Russian] https://www.ekhokavkaza.com/a/32043232.html.