Zygmunt DzieciolowskiOpenDemocracyAugust 14, 2009I'm not sure I can recommend
the Abkhazian house wine that gets served in the bars and restaurants of Sukhumi. The Abkhazians make some drinkable wine, like the ‘Psou' brand that is served in Moscow's upscale Aromatniy
Mir supermarket chain, but their rough and ready house wine is something to be avoided. That's why, on a summer evening in a Sukhumi café, in the company of
tourists from St
Petersburg, I was sticking to glasses of chacha - a
local grappa that is as strong as hell and as cheap as bananas in
Central America. Saturday evenings in Black Sea
resorts are times for promenading,
browsing the bars and restaurants
and possibly planning a late night visit to a disco. At least that is
what happens in the other resorts that circle the Black Sea, from
Sozopol and Yalta to Sochi,
Constanza, and even Batumi, just down the coast in Georgia. But this was Sukhumi, the capital of the self-proclaimed independent
country of Abkhazia. I stepped out of the bar on to a side
street away
from the sea and was enveloped by silence and the feeling that I was
lost. Side street met side street in the darkness, and I wandered past
half-ruined buildings, their broken doors and
smashed windows not yet
repaired after the war that had finished a decade and a half earlier. Around one corner I at last found a sign of life, a poorly-lit grocery
store that was open
around the clock. A couple of customers were
inside, buying beer and Coke. Something about the scene depressed me. This Black Sea town had none of
the sounds, lights and life of a resort at
the height of the summer
season. It seemed rejected, outcast, cursed. What unspoken sin had it
committed to be condemned to such total abandonment? Left, left, right, straight a bit and then
left again. I wandered
aimlessly through the gloomy streets, leaving the grocery store
vignette behind, hoping to find something to lift my melancholy. On the
corner where Lakoba Street met
Confederates Street, I found it. Café Lika was still serving its guests. They sat outside, their drinks
arranged on two tables set on the sidewalk. It was like a scene from a
Jim
Jarmusch film: strange types, absurd questions and answers, and all
lit by dim, moody lights. A fat oriental-looking woman with black hair invited me to sit down. I
sat, and we both watched
two unshaven characters talking drunkenly in
front of their damaged old Lada car. "At first I thought it was a UFO landing on my car," one of them explained. "Have
you ever seen a UFO with horse's hoofs?" countered the other. "I
knew it was a horse on the car from the moment it made a horsey noise.
Jihahahhaaa!" The man started trying to neigh,
just like the horse that
had landed on their car. The two had been driving slowly along a bumpy, muddy country road, down
from the mountains towards Sukhumi. Suddenly a horse had jumped out
of
the bushes, nearly killing them both. "Does this happen in your country too?" one of them asked me. "Horses
jumping out and smashing up cars? Where else do things like thishappen?" I ordered another glass of chacha, and watched the two guys driving
away with a screech of tyres. The large woman who served me was Lika,
the owner of the café. She too
took another drink - rough house wine,
drunk from a coffee cup with a broken handle - and began talking. It's a pity, she said, that we didn't meet twenty years earlier, when life was at its
best. Back then she used to work for Sovyetskaya Torgovlya,
the Soviet retail industry. At a time of massive shortages of food and
consumer goods, working in department stores or supermarkets
was a
dream job. Her old store was located in the northern suburbs of
Sukhumi. It was destroyed during the 1992-1993 war against Georgia, its ruins a haunting reminder to drivers passing by of happier
times. Back in 1992, when Georgian troops entered Sukhumi, her job put her on
the mafia wanted list. Lika was thought to be rich, as everybody knew
that shop staff accepted bribes or
channelled goods to favoured
customers at inflated prices. Luckily she was in Sochi when the looters
came. If she had been at home, she would have been killed trying to
protect her possessions. She isn't an ethnic Abkhazian, although that wouldn't have saved her.
Lika Bogdanesyan is Armenian, one of the sizeable Armenian minority
that has always lived along the Black Sea coast. Even now,
over forty
thousand Armenians live in separatist Abkhazia, making up a fifth of
its population. When Lika returned from hiding with friends in Sochi, she found her
flat looted and empty.
There was nothing left. No carpets, no
furniture, no television set, no clothes, no refrigerator. "Our Georgian neighbours did that. One guy who lived in another part of
our apartment
block was seen taking furniture away. Two others in the
block tried to protect their belongings and were killed. But not all
our Georgian neighbours behaved like that. There was one couple living
next
door - he drove a taxi and she was a nurse in the drug addiction
clinic. We were like one big extended family. Whenever somebody needed
something - sugar, butter, money, washing powder - we always
knew we
could borrow from the others." The couple offered to hide the valuables of their Abkhazian friends so
the looters wouldn't find them. When the danger was over, they returned
the
items. But then they realized that Abkhazian troops were about to
recapture Sukhumi and they fled. Lika has not heard from them since. Many other Georgians lived in their concrete apartment
block in the northern suburbs. They were mostly Svans,
highland Georgians who had moved in from nearby villages. They had all
left, and when the war ended they were replaced by new tenants, mostlyAbkhazian. "Shevardnadze and the Georgians shouldn't have started the war,"
continued Lika. Even fifteen years on she could barely hide her anger.
Her friends in the café
felt the same. "The Georgians were our
neighbours. We lived peacefully for generations. There were mixed
marriages. And then in one single moment this peace was ruined." "How
can I forgive a man who was my neighbour for years and then
suddenly wants to loot and kill me? You never know what these Georgians
have on their mind. Blood stains can't just be wiped away like
water." But Lika doesn't hate Georgians. How could she? After all she married
one. It was a true love story. They had founded Café Lika together ten
years ago. Without her he
probably would have left Abkhazia, moving
away just like all his relatives. "Was it dangerous for him after the war?" I asked Lika. "To live as a Georgian among Abkhazians? He suffered terribly during the war, she replied. "He faced firing
squads on three different occasions. The Georgians wanted to shoot him
as a traitor. The Abkhazians wanted to shoot him
because he was
Georgian. Each time he walked away alive it was a miracle. But his
heart couldn't take it. He had two heart attacks afterwards, and the
doctors were able to save him both times. But
then he had a third one a
year ago, and the doctors couldn't do anything." None of his relatives came to his funeral - only Lika and her son. A
few months ago his sister was allowed to
make the journey from her home
in Georgia to pay her respects at his grave. The couple had worked hard to make the café a success. In the
beginning, penniless, they brought every cup,
plate and glass from
their own home for their customers to use. Friends also helped them. At
first Lika and her husband lived in the café around the clock. Step by
step they built the business
up, buying new equipment, fridges, an oven
and a microwave. Two or three years ago they had made enough money to
hire a waitress and an extra pair of hands in the kitchen. In the
summer season they
helped visiting Russians to find holiday
accommodation, bringing in a few more pennies. Lika agrees that life has improved in Abkhazia a great deal over the
last few years. The worst time
was straight after the war, in 1993. Yeltsin's Russia introduced sanctions
blocking supplies of food and medecine. People were surviving by
shuttling back and forth to Russia, selling Abkhazia's most
popular
produce - tangerines. They were restricted to 20 kilos per visit. So
Russian "kommersanty" would park their lorries just over the border, and set off back for
central Russia as soon as they were full. I remembered that overcrowded border on the outskirts of Sochi from a
visit in the nineties. Under the October rain thousands of people with
bags,
boxes, or trolleys full of tangerines were waiting patiently for
their passports to be inspected. On the way back to Abkhazia they would
take salt, sugar, rice and other basics. When Putin's Russia lifted sanctions and opened the border
for its own citizens Abkhazia became attractive as a tourist
destination. It did not matter to Russians who could not afford
holidays abroad
or in the neighbouring Sochi that service in Abkhazia
was poor. Most were just happy to be able to return to a region they
fondly remembered as a Soviet paradise. "Of course there are
more customers in summer. But if only the
politicians could sort their problems out it would be even better." The locals keep coming even in the winter months. Now that her husband
is
dead, it is their companionship that keeps Lika going with the café.
She meets people, she socializes. Otherwise she would suffer the bitter
loneliness of living alone at home. "Now they are preparing for war again". Lika watched TV every night
and had no doubts about what the politicians were cooking up in their
political kitchens. "They don't care
about us ordinary people", she
says. She had lost any respect for presidents, ministers or members
of parliament a long time ago. "Saakashvili, Putin, Bagapsh, why don't they sit
down together at the negotiating table and sort things out?" Lika's monologue was suddenly rudely interrupted by the sound of a car
being badly parked in front of the café with
the engine being revved to
breaking point. When it was switched off a different noise took over. "Liiiihhhhahaaa!" "Brouhhhhhhahahhhhaaaa!!" "Jiaaahahhehaaa!!!" The two drunken men were back, still trying to make the sound of a
horse landing on their car. They had also picked up a passenger, the
owner of that very same
car-damaging horse. The three were determined
to have at least one more drink before the night ended, and Lika's café
was the only one remaining in Sukhumi open so late. How lucky, I
thought,
that they had not tried to bring the horse along too. I returned to my Ritza hotel room late at night. From the balcony I
watched the dark sea barely lit by the moon and the stars. The room
in
which I was staying was very special: none other than Comrade Lev Trotsky, one of the top Bolshevik leaders, had stayed there in the early twenties.
Stranded in Sukhumi, unable to return to
Moscow for Lenin's funeral, he
delivered an inspired speech to the local residents praising the
achievements of the leader of the October Revolution. His absence from
Moscow cost Trotsky dearly.
Stalin took firm hold of the reins of the
communist party and several years later expelled his chief rival from
the USSR. This was life in Abkhazia in early August 2008. The holiday season
was
quiet: increasing tension over the preceding months meant that there
were fewer visitors. The border with Georgia had been closed after the
spring terrorist attacks in the south Abkhazian
district of Gali and there had been media reports of military incidents involving unmanned aircraft. Officials in Sukhumi were alarmed by Tbilisi's summer military
exercises. Even before
that they had the impression once or twice that
the Georgians might attack at any time. Abkhazia's armed forces had
been on the highest degree of combat readiness for months. Their
biggest worry was
the enemy military presence in the upper part of the Kodori gorge. "For the Georgians it is the shortest way to recapture Sukhumi. Their
military vehicles can be here in two
hours," pointed out Nugzar Ashoba,
speaker of the Abkhazian parliament, before proposing a toast for
peace. We were sitting in a small café on the outskirts of the capital,
tasting
Abkhazian wines and eating that favourite dish of Abkhazians, mamalyga, better known as polenta. Ashoba, a former Soviet Komsomol apparatchik, had become an expert on
wine
since the fall of communism. Using his Russian passport he had
travelled to France and South America to learn more about wine
production. He much preferred discussing chardonnay or merlot grapes totalking about politics. A couple of years ago he had invited a well
known Georgian wine grower to come to Abkhazia and establish up new
vinyards. A Georgian? I was more than surprised. Wouldn't he be
afraid
to come here? He should not be, Ashoba replied, for he personally would
guarantee his safety. Ashoba is confident that if Abkhazia's soil is fertile enough to grow
first class
tangerines, it can produce wine of the highest quality. He
looks forward to the day when Abkhazian wines will be able to hold
their own in Moscow, or any city in the world. After the first
bottle we discussed the Abkhazian budget. The breakaway
republic did not have its own currency. It used Russian roubles. At one
stage he feared that the state budget would not be able to meet itsobligations. But for the last few years the thousands of Russian
holidaymakers who had flooded into Abkhazia, the old Soviet Union's
Costa del Sol, had brought with them badly needed roubles.
Even those
who just came from Sochi for the day spent at least 100 dollars a head.
For those who remember the good old Soviet days, Lake Ritsa, the monastery Novy Afon, Stalin's dachas scattered round
Abkhazia and the old resorts of Gagry and Pitsunda are national treasures, like Stonehenge or Windsor Castle for visitors to Britain. Abkhazia has a much stronger economic potential than
South Ossetia.
Ashoba, who has helped set up his sons in business, is confident that,
if peace could be brought to the republic, its economy would soon
prosper. One of his sons rents TV sets out to
Russian tourists living
in the local hotels. For the last few months he has been afraid of outright military
confrontation, on the scale of the war of the early nineties. BringingAbkhazia back under Georgia's power appeared to be a much higher
priority for Mikheil Saakashvili than regaining control over South
Ossetia. "If the Georgians attack us, we will retaliate",
declared the
Speaker of the Abkhazian Parliament. He seemed fairly confident that
Abkhazia's independence could be defended. "In 1992 the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasusmobilized volunteers representing ethnic groups like the Cossacks,
Adygees, Abasins, Kabardians, Circassians, Ossets, Chechens and many
others. They will do it again - the whole of the northern
Caucasus will
rally to our side." - And Russia? - Yes, Russia would help Abkhazia too. But for all that, on the following day, August 1, one week before war
broke
out in South Ossetia, he was preparing to go on vacation, in
Sochi. Abkhazia's president Sergei Bagapsh was also planning his summer break
with never a thought of war. The Bejing
Olympics were only a few days
away and he saw no reason to cancel his holiday. After all, Abkhazia
didn't exist officially, and there would be no Abkhazian athletes in
Beijing for him to cheer. Zygmunt Dzieciolowski's last year travel to Georgia and Abkhazia was
supoprted by the grant from Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting See this artice as it ran in openDemocracy Learn more about this reporting project Back to top
People grieve as they take part in the commemoration ceremony for those killed in Georgia's war conflict with Russia over South Ossetia in Tskhinvali, August 7, 2009. Silent tribute and bitter ...
