CC BY
85
Oleg BUBENOK
D.Sc. (Hist.), chief researcher at the Department of Historiography and Source Studies of the A. Krymsky Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine (Kiev, Ukraine).
THE OSSETS IN THE SOUTHERN CAUCASUS: NATIVES OR NEWCOMERS?
Abstract
This article takes a look at the formation of the Ossetian ethnos in the Southern Caucasus. The author attempts to analyze the different approaches to this issue, particularly those relating
to the ethnogenesis and identification of the Ossets, and to coordinate these processes with possible ways to settle the South Osset-Georgian ethnopolitical conflict.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Since the end of the 1980s, the whole world has come to know South Ossetia as a place where the Ossets and Georgians are caught in an ethnic conflict. Today, not a single state (apart from the member states of CIS-2, which are unrecognized themselves) recognizes the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia (Respublikzh Khussar Iryston—Osset.). The “frozen conflict” situation that developed there after the “combat phase” became the topic of heated discussions at that time. This requires scientific research of the historic roots of the Ossets’ colonization of the Southern Caucasus in the context of their autochthony.
On the Concept “South Ossetia”
The population of South Ossetia consists of Ossets, Georgians, and other ethnic groups, whereby Ossetian and Georgian population settlements are situated side by side. The armed conflict at the beginning of the 1990s forced many Ossetian families to leave the region, finding refuge on Russian territory, mainly in North Ossetia. The toponym “South Ossetia,” along with other terms such as “mountainous Ossetia,” “the mountain zone of South Ossetia,” “South or Kartli Ossets,” and so on, were first used by the Russian military, and then by the civilian administration as early as the beginning of the 19th century. This placename was collective in nature and implied the mountainous areas of the historical and geographical regions of Georgia (Racha, Imereti, and primarily Shida Kartli), where a mainly Ossetian population lived. Application of the term “South Ossetia” to an administrative-territorial unit with specific administrative borders began in 1922 when the South Ossetian Autonomous Region of the Georgian S.S.R. was formed. This region also included the territory of low-lying Shida Kartli (for example, the city of Tskhinvali), which also had a mainly Georgian population.
Recently the Georgian authorities have been announcing their intention to restore the autonomy of this region, continuing to insert the name “Tskhinvali Region,” introduced into circulation as a compromise by President Eduard Shevardnadze, into official documents and statements. The name “Samachablo” (after the name of the Georgian Machabeli princes who at one time owned part of the territory of the former autonomous region) earlier proposed by President Zviad Gamsakhurdia is not popular among the Ossets of the region, but continues to be used in the Georgian press.
South Ossetia was formed as an administrative unit in 1921. A Resolution of the Presidium of the Georgian Communist Party Central Committee of 12 December, 1921 set forth the following:
1) To recognize the city of Tskhinvali as the site of the administrative center of the Autonomous Region of Ossetia with application of autonomous power to the territory populated by the Ossets, excluding the Chasaval community, which remains part of the Racha Uezd, and the Kobi District, which remains part of the Dusheti Uezd;
2) The borders of autonomous Ossetia shall be defined in detail by a special commission which is already working in that direction;
3) Until the population of the Tskhinvali District is in favor of incorporating this region into Autonomous Ossetia, control over the city and its surrounding Georgian villages shall remain in the hands of the district revolutionary committee that belongs to the Gori Uezd.1 Further changes in the status of South Ossetia were directly related to the ethnic conflict that flared up during Mikhail Gorbachev’s presidency.
On 10 November, 1989, the Council of People’s Deputies of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region of the Georgian S.S.R. adopted a decision on its transformation into an autonomous republic. The Supreme Soviet of the Georgian S.S.R. declared this decision non-constitutional, after which detachments of Georgians set up a blockade around Tskhinvali, which lasted for four months. Things did not go as far as armed clashes.
On 20 September, 1990, the Council of People’s Deputies of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region declared the formation of the Republic of South Ossetia. In response to this, on 10 December, 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Georgia adopted a decision to abolish the Ossetian autonomy. Three people died in the skirmishes that began on 11 December, 1990, and the Georgian leadership introduced a state of emergency in Tskhinvali and the Java Region as a countermeasure. During the night of 5-6 January, 1991, Georgian police and national guard units entered Tskhinvali. After meeting with resistance from the Ossetian self-defense and local police detachments, they were forced to leave the city three weeks later. During 1991, periodic armed clashes continued. The hostilities ceased after the Dagomys agreements were signed between Russia and Georgia. On 14 July, 1992, three battalions of peacekeeping forces (Russian, Georgian, and Ossetian) were deployed in the conflict zone.
Unfortunately, there is still tension in Ossetian-Georgian relations fifteen years later, as a result of which the Republic of South Ossetia, which is not recognized by any state, continues to exist separately from independent Georgia. Naturally many people ask: “Why can the Ossets and Georgians still not come to terms?” We must keep in mind that the conflict was unleashed by people who grew up in the Soviet system and were brought up in the spirit of that time. The stereotypes about the interrelations between the big and small nations in the Caucasus were tenaciously rooted in their way of thinking. Members of the intellectual elites of these nations, particularly historians and ethnographers, had a particular influence on forming the world outlook of the Ossets and Georgians.
It is also typical that in Soviet times too both the Ossets and Georgians only paid heed to their own historians and ethnographers. They sometimes tried to hide many facts from the past of both nations for the sake of immediate gain. As a result, both the South and North Ossets believe that they
1 See: Archives of political parties (Tbilisi), rec. gr. 14, inv. 1, f. 8, sheet 44.
are the successors of “Great Alania,” and so they should play the leading role in the Central Caucasus. V. Shnirelman justifiably noted in this respect: “As the tension grew in the 1980s in Ossetian-In-gush and Ossetian-Georgian relations, the Alanian identity proved increasingly tempting for Ossetian intellectuals. Being distinguished from their North Caucasian neighbors by a higher level of education and being very Russified, the Ossets felt alien among them. The hostility between them and the Georgians and Ingush only heightened this feeling... The situation within Ossetian society was also complicated, since its solidarity was undermined by the contradictory strivings of separate Ossetian groups (Digors, South Ossets). At the same time, the destiny of the national units was discussed at the federal level, and certain politicians insisted on their disbandment. All of this required defending their “individuality” and “uniqueness” with references to the specific characteristics of their historical path and the merits of their ancient ancestors. The Alanian identity was best suited for solving this task.”2
As a result, even before the Soviet Union collapsed, the Ossets were eager to declare the unification of the two Ossetias—North and South, despite the fact that this infringed upon Georgia’s territorial integrity. In this case, the local Ossetian elite tried to turn the people’s desire for unity to the benefit of its political interests, and it manipulated the ideas of the radical Ossetian historians and ethnographers to justify its right to liquidate the South Ossetian Autonomous Region. The assertion that the Ossets descended from the Alans made it possible for Georgian politicians to say that the Ossets do not have the right to autonomy within Georgia, since they are newcomers in the Southern Caucasus.
The statements of Zviad Gamsakhurdia in Izvestia in 1990 are very indicative in this respect: “Kakhetia has always been a demographically pure region in which the Georgian element always predominated, always reigned supreme. Present circumstances are such that we are in a quandary about how to save Kakhetia. The Tatars are raising their heads and competing with Kakhetia, there are Lakhs there, and Armenians, there are also Ossets, and they are about to swallow up Kakhetia. Power is on our side, the Georgian nation is with us, and we will make short shrift of all the traitors, we will call them all to account and we will drive out of Georgia all the malicious enemies who are sheltering non-Georgians here.”3 And this is what a Georgian leader, A. Margiani, had to say about the elections in South Ossetia at the end of 1990: “I have never before ever heard of guests, no matter where it may be, holding any kind of elections.”4 At this juncture it is fitting to ask those Georgian politicians and ordinary Georgians drawn into the Ossetian-Georgian ethnic conflict how they can prove that the Ossets in the Southern Caucasus are newcomers. Until now, the leading Caucasian researchers have been unable to give an unequivocal answer to the more universal question ofjust who the Ossets are in the Caucasus—autochthons or newcomers.
On the Ethnogenesis of the Ossets
For the past two hundred years, the problem of the Ossets’ ethnogenesis has been discussed in the works of many academics. Researchers have paid a lot of attention to the ethnogenesis of the North Ossets, but given less time to the question of where the South Ossets originated. As early as the 18th century-beginning of the 19th century, some historians and travelers expressed the cautious presumption that the present-day Ossets might be the descendants of the Caucasian Alans.5 V.F. Miller’s
2 V. Shnirelman, Byt’ alanami: intellectualy i politika na Severnom Kavkaze v XX veke, Moscow, 2006, p. 199.
3 Izvestia, No. 313, 1990.
4 Zaria Vostoka, No. 12, 1990, p. 12.
5 See: N.M. Karamzin, Istoria gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1989, pp. 127, 184-185, 273; P. Butkov, “O brakakh kniazey Russkikh s Gruzinkami i Iasyniami v XII veke,” Severnyy arkhiv, No. 4, 1825, pp. 317-329; A. von Haxthausen, Zakavkazskiy kray. Zametki o semeinoi i obshchestvennoi zhizni i otnosheniakh narodov, obitaiushchikh
work Osetinskie etiudy (Ossetian Essays) aroused the greatest response in the academic world. In the third volume printed in 1887, the Russian academic pointed to the ethnic succession of the Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, and Ossets. This researcher considered the Ossets to be the direct descendants of the Caucasian Alans. He proved the Iranian-speaking origins of the Ossets by making extensive use of the data of both written sources and linguistics. According to V.F. Miller, in the first half of the 13 th century, as a result of the Mongol crusades, the Alan population disappeared entirely from the steppes of Ciscaucasia and resettled in the mountains.6 The publication of Iu. Kulakovskiy’s works on the Alans was also a prominent event in historical science. The researcher came to the conclusion that during the Mongol crusades of the first half of the 13 th century, most of the Alans were exterminated, while those that survived resettled in the mountains of the Northern Caucasus, thus beginning the formation of the Ossets.7 These same ideas were further developed at the beginning of the 20th century in the works of West European academics, for example, in J. Charpantier’s studies.8
As early as the Soviet period, the ethnogenesis of the Ossets was presented from the Marxist perspective. But in 1926, G. Kokiev’s monograph came out entitled Ocherkipo istorii Osetii (Essays on the History of Ossetia), which was sustained in the traditions of pre-revolutionary academics. The author of the study believed the ancestors of the Ossets to be exclusively Asi(Osi)-Alans.9 Nevertheless, over time, G. Kokiev changed his mind and believed the Alans to be the ancestors not only of the Ossets, but of other mountain peoples too, apart from Kabardinians. In the 1930s-1940s, the ideas of “Nikolai Marr’s Japhetic theory” temporarily predominated in Soviet science. In compliance with his multi-stage theory, Marr believed that the Ossets, despite their Iranian-speaking nature, should be considered autochthons in the Caucasus. He regarded the Ossets as “Iranianized Japhetids.”10
And only in recent years has there been a return to the traditional approach in shedding light on the ethnogenesis of the Ossets. For example, the opinion of Z. Vaneev, who proved the identity of the medieval Alans, should be singled out. In his opinion, after the Mongol and Timur crusades, the Alans withdrew to the Caucasian mountains, thus laying the foundation for the formation of the Ossets.11 The research studies in this area during the second half of the 20th century by well-known Ossetian philologist V. Abaev became an important scientific event. He had already proven in his first works that the Iranian-speaking element represented by the Alans, who were genetically related to the Sarmatians and Scythians, was the main component in the formation of the Ossets. Nevertheless, the researcher noted the significant influence of the Caucasian substratum on the phonetics, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, semantics, and idiomatic nature of the Ossetian language. The well-known linguist, however, considered the Ossets to be primarily the remnants of a once vast Iranian-speaking world, the representatives of which predominated in the steppes of Eurasia.12 The publication of Iu. Gagloiti’s monograph Alany i voprosy etnogeneza osetin (The Alans and the Ethnogenesis of the Ossets) was a very noteworthy event in Ossetian studies. In this work, the author proved that not only should the Alans be considered the ancestors of the Ossets, but also of other ethnic Caucasian groups.13
mezhdu Chernym i Kaspiyskim moriami, Part 2, St. Petersburg, 1857, pp. 83-118; V.B. Pfaf, “Etnologicheskie isseldova-niia v Osetii,” KOIRGO Bulletin, Vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1894, pp. 13-56; M.M. Kovalevskiy, Sovremennyy obychay i
drevniy zakon, Vol. 1-2, Moscow, 1886, pp. 11-12, 15-21.
6 See: V.F. Miller, Osetinskie etiudy, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1887, pp. 66-68, 97-98.
7 See: Iu.A. Kulakovskiy, Alany po svedeniiam klassicheskikh i vizantiyskikh pisatelei, Kiev, 1899, pp. 46-69.
8 See: J. Charpantier, “Die etnographische Stellung der Tocharer,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, Bd. 71, 1917, S. 363-364.
9 See: G. Kokiev, Ocherki po istorii Osetii, Vladikavkaz, 1926.
10 N. Marr, Plemennoi sostav naseleniia Kavkaza, Petrograd, 1920, pp. 24-25.
11 See: Z. Vaneev, Srednevekovaia Alaniia, Staliniri, 1959, pp. 6-53.
12 See: V.I. Abaev, Osetinskiy iazyk i folklor, Vol. 1, Moscow, Leningrad, 1949; idem, Skifo-evropeyskie izoglossy,
Moscow, 1965; idem, “Etnogenez osetin po dannym iazyka,” in: Proiskhozhdenie osetinskogo naroda, Ordzhonikidze, 1967, pp. 9-21.
13 See: Iu.S. Gagloiti, Alany i voprosy etnogeneza osetin, Tbilisi, 1966, pp. 155-221.
A special conference held in 1966 in Ordzhonikidze was devoted to the ethnogenesis of the Ossets. It brought together not only historians, but also linguists, archeologists, anthropologists, and ethnographers. At this conference, anthropologists V. Alexeev and M. Abdushelishvili put forward the supposition that the Ossets should primarily be seen as the descendants of the local Caucasian mountain-dwellers who were assimilated by the Alanian newcomers.14 In his report based on the data of linguistics and written sources, V. Abaev confirmed the presence of Iranian and Caucasian components in the ethnogenesis of the Ossets.15 Archeologists also participated in the conference. For example, E. Krupnov expressed the opinion that the ethnogenesis of the Ossets began when the Sarmatian tribes, which were replaced by the Alans, penetrated the Northern Caucasus at the turn of the new era. The researcher believed that, subsequently, the Alans in the Central Caucasus, who became mixed with the local Caucasian population, became Ossets.16 V. Vinogradov, on the other hand, believed that the Sarmatians in Ciscaucasia had not begun assimilating the local Caucasian tribes yet.17 During the aforesaid conference, B. Kaloev showed that ethnographic documents can also be an important source for clarifying questions about the Ossets’ ethnogenesis. The researcher came to the rather interesting conclusion that ethnographic and folklore sources show the participation of two components in the Ossets’ ethnogenesis: the ancient Caucasian and the Scythian-Sarmato-Alanian. In so doing, he showed that it is difficult to say which traditions prevail.18 The conference on the ethnogenesis of the Ossets ultimately gave researchers reason to believe that two components participated in forming this nation—the alien Iranian and the local Caucasian. But they were unable to draw a final conclusion on which of these components was the determining one, that is, no consensus could be reached on whether the Ossets in the Caucasus were autochthons or newcomers.
The conference showed that archeological and ethnographic documents could be of great importance in clarifying the question of the Ossets’ origin. In this regard, we should single out the research studies of archeologist and historian V. Kuznetsov, who believes that the Ossets are a people of Caucasian origin who assimilated the Sarmato-Alanian ethnic component. He tried to show that the formation of the Ossets began after the Mongols drove the remnants of the Alans from the Ciscauca-sian lowlands to the mountains, as a result of which the local Caucasian population learned the Iranian language of the Alans.19
B. Kaloev took a slightly different approach to the ethnogenesis of the Ossets. The researcher saw the present-day Ossets as a fragment of the once numerous Alans who assimilated the Caucasian mountain-dwellers. By way of evidence, he presented numerous coincidences in the folklore, ideology, and material culture of the Ossets and other Iranian-speaking peoples. According to the academic, during the Middle Ages, right up until the Mongol invasion, the Ossets’ ancestors—the Alans—were widely scattered not only in the Northern Caucasus, but even on the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range. B. Kaloev believed that only after Timur’s invasion did the remaining Alans ultimately resettle in the Caucasian mountains among the local natives, thus beginning the formation of the Ossetian ethnos. And although the researcher believed that at least two components
14 See: M.G. Abdushelishvili, “Genezis gornokavkazskikh grupp v svete dannykh antropologii,” in: Proiskhozhde-nie osetinskogo naroda, pp. 125-141; V.P. Alexeev, “Antropologicheskie dannye k proiskhozhdeniiu osetinskogo naro-da,” in: Proiskhozhdenie osetinskogo naroda, pp. 142-173.
15 See: V.I. Abaev, “Etnogenez osetin po dannym iazyka,” pp. 9-21.
16 See: E. Krupnov, “Problema proiskhozhdeniia osetin po arkheologicheskim dannym,” in: Proiskhozhdenie ose-tinskogo naroda, pp. 22-41.
17 See: V.B. Vinogradov, “Antichnye istochniki i dannye arkheologii skifo-sarmatskogo vremeni o Tsentral’nom Predkavkaz’e v svete problemy etnogeneza osetin,” in: Proiskhozhdenie osetinskogo naroda, pp. 177-185.
18 See: B. Kaloev, “Dannye etnografii i folklora o proiskhozhdenii osetin,” in: Proiskhozhdenie osetinskogo naro-da, pp. 98-124.
19 See: V. Kuznetsov, “Nekotorye voprosy etnogeneza osetin po dannym srednevekovoi arkheologii,” in: Proiskhozh-denie osetinskogo naroda, pp. 42-66; idem, Alaniia v X-XIII vv., Ir, Ordzhonikidze, 1971, pp. 41-45; idem, Ocherki istorii alan, Ordzhonikidze, 1984, pp. 253-294.
took part in forming the Ossets—the local Caucasian and the alien Iranian—he nevertheless gave preference to the latter, as a result of which he quite often identified the medieval Alans with the present-day Ossets.20 Other Ossetian researchers had a similar approach.
It should be noted that the discussions about whether to consider the Ossets Iranianized autochthons in the Caucasus or give preference to their Aryan (Iranian) roots is still going on today. Over the past decades, the second approach has become dominant. In so doing, some researchers, for example, N. Berlizov and M. Abramova, even went as far as giving the leading role in the formation of the Ossets to the Scythians.21 As V. Shnirelman justifiably pointed out, in Ossetia “the collapse of the communist ideology and disintegration of the Soviet Union was accompanied by a return to the Alanian identity.”22 In this way, the ethnogenesis of the Ossets is still a separate academic problem.
It should be noted that the origin of the Southern Ossets currently living in South Ossetia was usually viewed in the general context of the ethnogenesis of all the Ossets, that is, in most cases, the territorial specifics of their formation were not taken into account. In so doing, the Ossetian researchers strove to find proof that the Iranian-speaking Alans settled in the Transcaucasus a long time ago as a counterbalance to the opinion of the Georgian opponents who relate the appearance of the Osi in the Southern Caucasus to the not-so-distant past. In recent decades, this question has acquired a political nature. Even today, based on the level of contemporary research, it is very difficult to say precisely when the ancestors of the South Ossets migrated from the Northern Caucasus to present-day South Ossetia—before Timur’s crusades against the Golden Horde at the end of the 14th century or after.
It turned out that during Soviet times multi-volume publications on the history of the Union or autonomous units in the Soviet Union reflected the viewpoint of a group of authors who were primarily guided by the ideological precepts of the leaders of their republics and autonomous regions, which sometimes clearly differed from the Soviet doctrine “on the friendship of nations.” By way of example, we can present a fragment from the first volume of the collective work History of Georgia, which sets forth the vision of Georgian historians regarding the initial appearance of the Ossets’ ancestors in Georgia: “In the 13 th century, the advance of the mountain-dwellers of the Northern Caucasus through the passes of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range to the south encompassed the entire northern boundaries of Georgia. In some regions, this advance happened slowly and relatively peacefully, in others, particularly in Kartli, it was rapid and accompanied by armed clashes. The chiefs of the Ossetian tribes supported by the Ilkhan took advantage of Kartli’s weakness, which was caught in the devouring elements of rebellion, occupied the Liakhva Gorge, and stormed into the interior of Kartli. Fierce fighting flared up. ...The feudal lords, under the leadership of Czar Georgi, Dimitriy’s son, drove the North Caucasian mountain-dwellers from the Kartli Valley, but the Ossets continued to reside in the mountain passes for a long time to come.”23 I think any comments are superfluous!
This is how the South Ossetian authors describe the same events of the 1260s in Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi avtonomnoi oblasti (Essays on the History of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region), who were clearly under the ideological pressure of the leaders of Soviet Georgia: “The Ossets wanted to take advantage of the invasion of the Ilkhan in the Northern Caucasus and throw off the
20 See: B.A. Kaloev, Osetiny, Moscow, 1971; idem, “Dannye etnografii i folklora o proiskhozhdenii osetin,” pp. 98-124; idem, “Etnograficheskie dannye o sviaziakh etnogeneza osetin so Sredney Asiey,” in: B.A. Kaloev, Osetinsk-ie istoriko-etnograficheskie etiudy, Moscow, 1999, pp. 56-78.
21 See: N.E. Berlizov, “Sarmaty-skify,” in: Istoriko-arkheologicheskiy al’manakh, Armavir, Moscow, 1996, p. 2144; M. Abramova, Tsentra’lnoe Predkavkaz’e v sarmatskoe vremia, Moscow, 1993; idem, “Katakombnye mogil’niki III-V vv. n.e. tsentral’nykh rayonov Severnogo Kavkaza,” in: Alany: istoria i ku’ltura, Vladikavkaz, 1995, pp. 65-78.
22 V. Shnirelman, op. cit., pp. 199-200.
23 N.A. Berdzenishvili, V.D. Dondua, M.K. Dumbadze, G.A. Melikishvili, Sh.A. Meskhia, P.K. Ratiani, History of Georgia, Vol. 1, Tbilisi, 1962, p. 248 (in Georgian).
Mongolian yoke with their help. But the Ossets’ reckoning was not justified. The Ilkhan were defeated in this struggle. Golden Horde khan Berke began persecuting those who joined his enemies in the struggle or did not render him the proper support. Driven by the Mongols from the North Caucasian plains to the Caucasian mountains, the Ossets (after settling in already populated mountain passes, thus creating surplus population), deprived of the possibility of returning to their former places of residence due to the prolonged dominance of the Mongols in the Northern Caucasus and the Ossets’ intolerance of them, moved south—to Georgia. Of course, it is true that the first group of Ossets that migrated to Georgia in the 1260s was made up of political emigrants and lived in the cities. But since these groups were large and it could be presumed that they would be replenished in the future by a new inflow of migrants, they could be considered the beginnings of a compact Ossetian population on the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range on Georgian territory.”24
The authors of Istoria Severo-OsetinskoiA.S.S.R. (The History of the North Ossetian A.S.S.R.) were very laconic and unequivocal about the circumstances leading to the Ossets’ migration to the Southern Caucasus. This is what they had to say about this question: “The Tatar-Mongols partially ousted the Asi-Alans from the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountain Range to the southern slopes. These slopes were assimilated back in the olden days (the 4th century), but by the 13th century, they became deserted due to migration of the Ossets to the valleys. Migrants from the north began to move into these deserted places.”25
G. Lazarashvili’s approach, who dated the migration of the Ossets to the Southern Caucasus to the 16th-18th centuries, is very typical of Georgian historiography. The researcher believed that the Ossets may have appeared in Georgia even earlier, but thought that these groups quickly became assimilated into the local Georgian population.26 It should be noted that in Soviet times, the stances of certain historians and ethnographers on this issue did not always coincide with the ideological precepts of the republics’ leaders. For example, Georgian historian V. Gamrekeli believed that the early migrations of the Osi-Alans to the Southern Caucasus should not be related to the ethnogenesis of the South Ossets, since these migrations primarily did not occur on the territory of historical Dvaletia— present-day South Ossetia. He presented the ethnogenesis of the South Ossets as the result of interaction between the Vainakh-speaking Dvals and the Iranian-speaking Osi-Alans at a later time, when the latter element was the most prevalent one in the process. But, relying on the data of the Georgian chronicles and Vakhushti, he dated the appearance of the Ossets in present-day South Ossetia to as late as the early 15th century.27 A similar point of view was upheld by D. Gvirtishvili, G. Togoshvili, and other Georgian researchers. South Ossetian historian Z. Vaneev28 also supported the proposed date for the beginning of the Ossets’ settlement on the territory of present-day South Ossetia (15th century), in which the influence of the Georgian side was felt. But those Georgian historians who pointed to the significant role of the Caucasian substratum in the formation of the South Ossets should be given their due, that is, they gave us to understand that the South Ossets should not be seen as the direct descendants of the Osi-Alans who came from the north. Unfortunately, not everyone took heed of their opinion.
The authors of Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi avtonomnoi oblasti tried to present the colonization of the Southern Caucasus by the Osi-Alans as a long process and, in so doing, took a rather compromising position between the opinions of their Georgian and North Ossetian colleagues: “The migration of the Ossets from the north ‘to the heart of the Caucasus,’ that is, to the territory of Ossetia during Vakhushti’s time, is seen as a long process that went on under the influence of external factors,
24 Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi avtonomnoi oblasti, Vol. 1, Tbilisi, 1985, pp. 85-87.
25 Istoria SO ASSR, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1959, p. 87.
26 See: G. Lazarashvili, “O vremeni pereseliia osetin v Gruziiu,” SE, No. 2, 1966, pp. 101-109.
27 See: V. Gamrekeli, Dvaly i Dvaletiia I-XV vv., Tbilisi, 1961, pp. 15-40, 114-145.
28 See: Z. Vaneev, op. cit., p. 182.
particularly by means of the conquest of the Dvals in the 15th century, and the final establishment of the borders in the mountain zone, lengthwise “from the Khevi to the Svanetian Caucasus, and width-wise from the Kartli Caucasus to the Cherkessian mountain.” This territory is a kind of springboard from which the Ossets gradually descended to Kartli through the gulches of the Greater and Lesser Liakhva, Ksan, and Aragva rivers, and later to some other regions of Kartli.”29
The approach of the researchers of the former Georgian S.S.R. to the history of the colonization of the Southern Caucasus by Iranian-speaking groups differs slightly from the opinions of the North Ossetian academics, in whose ideas the terms Alans and Ossets were used to designate the same people. In their opinion, these peoples already occupied a much larger area than present-day Ossetia in the early Middle Ages. For example, G. Kokiev and B. Kaloev believed that still long before the Mongol crusades to the Northern Caucasus, the Alans, the ancestors of the South Ossets, already lived on the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range, and the Mongol invasion led only to new migrations of the North Caucasian Alans to Dvaletia.30 This is how the idea became entrenched of the rather extensive presence of the Ossets’ Iranian-speaking ancestors in the Southern Caucasus.
It is typical that Slavic researchers also supported this idea of early colonization of the Ossets’ ancestors in the Southern Caucasus, in which we should see their particular affection for the Ossets. For example, in spite of the approach of the representatives of Georgian historiography, B. Skit-skiy, a native Ukrainian, essentially pointed to the primordial presence of the Ossets’ ancestors in South Ossetia. According to him, the Alans pushed through to the south of the Caucasus Mountain Range in several waves throughout the entire early Middle Ages. So it turns out that Dvaletia was long settled by the Ossets’ ancestors and, therefore, Georgia’s political influence was not established there until the 13th century. B. Skitskiy dated the last mass migration of Ossets to the south to the 15th-16th centuries.31 D. Lavrov dated the first migration of the Ossets’ ancestors to the Southern Caucasus to the 3rd century A.D., admitting at the same time that the Ossets’ ancestors might also have possibly migrated to the south after the Mongol invasion in the 13th century.32 We should note that during the Soviet era, not all the Ossetian and Georgian researchers took V. Kuznetsov’s opinion mentioned above into account. His approaches to resolving many questions of the ethnic history of the peoples of the Northern Caucasus were distinguished by a certain amount of neutrality and lack of compromise. As for the supposition about the Alans’ migration to the Southern Caucasus, V. Kuznetsov suggested that the Alans moved to the mountains in the first half of the 13th century as a result of the Mongol hostilities, due to which the population density significantly grew there. Over time, this led to the migration of separate groups of Alans to the south, to the territory of present-day South Ossetia.33
In this way, a certain biased approach can be noted among researchers in clarifying how the Iranian-speaking sub-ethnos, the Ossets of South Ossetia, formed in the Southern Caucasus. The reason for this can be found in the ideological approaches that appeared during Soviet times among the researchers of the former Georgian S.S.R., on the one hand, and among the academics of North Ossetia and the Russian historians and ethnographers who sympathize with them, on the other. Researchers from the former South-Ossetian Autonomous Region had to occupy an intermediate position between them. It should be noted that the Georgian academics strove to prove that the Ossets came to Georgia after the 15 th century, although they recognized the presence of a significant local Caucasian substratum—the Dvals—in the ethnogenesis of the South Ossets. Most North Ossetian researchers,
29 Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi AO, pp. 85-90.
30 See: G. Kokiev, op. cit., p. 22; B. Kaloev, Osetiny, pp. 33-34.
31 See: B. Skitskiy, Ocherki po istorii osetinskogo naroda s drevneyshikh vremion do 1867 g., Dzaujikau, 1947, pp. 129-133.
32 See: D. Lavrov, “Zametki ob Osetii i osetinakh,” SMOMPK, Issue III, Tiflis, 1883.
33 See: V. Kuznetsov, Ocherki istorii alan, pp. 263-264.
on the other hand, believed that the Ossets’ Iranian-speaking ancestors lived in the Southern Caucasus long before the Mongol crusades to the Northern Caucasus in the 13 th century, thus ignoring the presence of the Caucasian (Dvalian) substratum. South Ossetian researchers, in contrast to their colleagues from North Ossetia, recognized the presence of a local Dvalian substratum, but, in so doing, pointed to the multi-stage colonization of South Ossetia by Iranian-speaking migrants from the north, whereby their largest migration was dated to as late as the 15th century. This should be seen no so much as pressure from Georgian and North Ossetian colleagues, as a reflection of the ambiguous ethnic self-awareness among the South Ossets. Consequently, South Ossetian researchers came closer than anyone to clarifying the ethnogenesis of the South Ossets.
The Problem of Identification
But is it possible at present to resolve the problem of the South Ossets’ origin based on contemporary approaches to the theory of ethnogenesis? Unfortunately, in the Soviet period, the tradition of classifying peoples according to linguistic characteristics became widespread among ethnographers, that is, the ethnolinguistic classification of peoples became the most convenient approach. But this approach did not even correspond to Iu. Bromley’s generally accepted conception. He considered one of the most important elements of an ethnos’ existence to be ethnic self-awareness, which should be manifested by a common name they call themselves. But in the situation with the Ossets, we see the opposite.
The Ossets are the only people of the Central Caucasus who speak the language of the Iranian group of the Indo-European family, but there are certain linguistic differences among the Ossets themselves. The Ironian dialect, which is widespread not only in most of North Ossetia, but also in South Ossetia, has become the main one for the literary Ossetian language. The Digor dialect is used in the west of North Ossetia. This dialect significantly differs from the Ironian. According to this trait, the Ossets can be divided into three sub-ethnic groups, the members of which call themselves Irons, Digors (in North Ossetia) and Tualag (in South Ossetia). But the Ossets traditionally do not have a common name for themselves, so they call themselves by the name other nationalities know them by. The most widely used names of this people, the Ossets, and their country, Ossetia, come from the Georgian ethnicon ovs and the ethnotoponym Ovseti, respectively. In light of the most recent events, the Ossetian leaders do not like this and suggest returning to Alania, which is most likely a bookish term. The territorial and linguistic unity of the Ossets is confirmed again by the religious factor— most Ossets confess Orthodox Christianity, that is, in the Northern Caucasus, the Ossets are the only indigenous people who confess Christianity. It should be kept in mind that in the Caucasus, religion is quite often a means for preserving ethnic identity (it is enough to recall the Armenians, essentially the only Christian Monophysites in the Caucasus, or the mountain Jews who were classified as “Tats” because of their language). As written documents show, Georgian missionaries Christianized the South Ossets at approximately the same time as the North Ossets. The report of the head of the Ossetian Spiritual Commission, Archimandrite Illarion from Tskhinvali, to the exarch of Georgia of 18 December, 1815 talked of the Christianization “of the Ossets and other peoples in remote parts of the Caucasian mountains and passes mentioned below: Aragva, Geriskhevi, Greater Liakhva, Magland-valeti, and Khevsuri.”34 Such a heightened interest in the Christianization of the Ossets was aroused by the fact that at the end of the 18th-beginning of the 19th centuries the czarist government strove to create a “Christian corridor” in the region of the Daryal Gorge from Russia to Georgia, which was to pass through the land of the Ossets. The Georgians’ participation in the activity of the Ossetian spirit-
34 Istoria Osetii v dokumentakh i materialakh (s drevneyshikh vremion do kontsa XVII v.), Vol. 1, Tskhinvali, 1962,
p. 514.
ual mission was originally dictated by political considerations. In the event of a protest from the Turkish bloc, Russia could dissociate itself from the Christianization of the Ossets.
When speaking of the ethnogenesis of both the South and North Ossets, we should take heed of V. Abaev’s comment that the present-day Ossetian ethnos is not a result of independent development of the Iranian-speaking Alans, but primarily a consequence of the blending of alien Iranian-speaking tribes with the local Caucasian population.35 The data of linguistics and ethnographic research studies also show the ambiguous nature of the South Ossets’ origin. For example, the dialect of the South Ossets, Tual, is very close to the Ironian dialect of the Ossetian language, which became the basis of the common Ossetian literary language. It is precisely the linguistic proximity of the South Ossets to the Osset-Ironians, and not to the Digors, that enables us to conclude that the same Iranian-speaking groups participated in the ethnogenesis of these two sub-ethnoses. Moreover, it is precisely the South Ossetian dialect that has the greatest lexical parallels to the Georgian language. This can be explained both by influence of the Ossetian language through the South Ossets on the Georgian, and of the Georgian language on the dialect of the South Ossets.36 The linguistic and cultural rapprochement between the South Ossets and the Georgians resulted from the spread of the Georgian alphabet among the South Ossets, the beginning of which coincided with Christianization of the Ossetian population that took place at the end of the 18th-beginning of the 19th centuries by Georgian missionaries. As early as May 1820, Ivan Iagguzidze sent a written report to the exarch of Georgia “on the ecclesiastical books he translated into the Ossetian language and on his compilation of the Ossetian alphabet.” As the report indicates, 37 letters were used to record the language of the South Ossets—30 Georgian, 5 “newly invented,” and 2 from the Russian language. And as early as February 1826, archbishop Afanasiy Migivarianov reported to the exarch of Georgia “on teaching Ossetian children to read and write” in their native Ossetian language.37 It was precisely this factor that played a decisive role in spreading literacy among the South Ossetian population. It should be noted that thanks to the Georgian ecclesiastics, the South Ossets acquired their written language much earlier than the North Ossets, for whom A. Shegren did not create an alphabet based on the Cyrillic until 1844. In Soviet times, between 1923 and 1938, an attempt was made to transfer the written language of all the Ossets, both South and North, to the Latin script, but this venture was not successful. So in 1938, the North Ossets returned to the Cyrillic, and the South Ossets to the Georgian script. But in 1954 the South Ossets transferred to the Cyrillic, even though the Georgian script had long been adapted to the special features of their language.38
According to the observations of ethnographers, the South Ossets have much in common in terms of traditional culture with both the North Ossets and the Georgian population. The culture of the South Ossets is similar to that of the North Ossets in the protector of livestock cult, the sun cult, and the iron cult, to name a few. The following unites them with the traditions of the Georgians: certain familial-marital traditions, remnants of the agrarian cult, and so on. In this way, in the cultural respect, the South Ossets traditionally occupy an intermediate position between their neighbors—the Georgians and North Ossets.39
Consequently, it should be noted that a particular group of Ossets, culturally and territorially associated not only with their northern tribesmen, but also with the local peoples of the Southern Caucasus, primarily the Georgians, has formed over recent centuries to the south of the Caucasus Mountain Range. The authors of Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi avtonomnoi oblasti explain that the
35 See: V. Abaev, “Etnogenez osetin po dannym iazyka,” in: Proiskhozhdenie osetin, pp. 9-21.
36 See: V. Kuznetsov, Ocherki istorii alan, pp. 285-288; G. Akhvelianidi, Sbornik izbrannykh rabotpo osetinskomu iazyku, Book 1, Tbilisi, 1960, pp. 167-169; M. Andronikoshvili, Ocherki po iransko-gruzinskim iazykovym vzaimodeystvi-iam, Vol. 1, Tbilisi, 1966; G. Klimov, “O leksike osetinskogo proizkhozhdeniia v svanskom iazyke,” in: Etimologiia, Moscow, 1963, pp. 180-186.
37 Istoria Osetii v dokumentakh i materialakh., pp. 552-553.
38 See: M. Isaev, “Osetinskiy iazyk,” in: BSE, Vol. 18, Moscow, 1974, Column 1655.
39 See: Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi AO, pp. 134-165.
South Ossets’ primordial nature was preserved due to the remoteness of South Ossetia and its direct proximity to North Ossetia.40
Despite the Iranian-speaking nature of all the Ossets, there is reason to doubt their purely Aryan origin, particularly with respect to the South Ossets, on the basis of several factors. First of all, anthropological data show their autochthonous origin. According to the observations of V. Alexeev, the Ossets, like their neighbors, belong to the local Caucasian anthropological type. And this, in his opinion, means that this ethnos descended from mountain-dwellers who switched to the Iranian lan-guage.41 It is appropriate in this respect to ask how the South Ossets differ outwardly from the Georgian living next to them.
Ethnonymic data are also of special significance for resolving the problem of the origin of the South Ossets. We should recall that the names Ossets and Ossetia come from the Georgian terms ovs and Ovseti, which we know from the Georgian chronicles not only as a designation for the present-day Iranian-speaking residents of the Central Caucasus, but also as a general term for the extinct Iranian-speaking ethnic groups of the Northern Caucasus—the Alans, Sarmatians, and Scythians. As was noted above, the Ossets are divided into three sub-ethnic groups, the representatives of which call themselves Irons and Digors in North Ossetia and Tualag in South Ossetia, that is, Tuals. In this respect, we recall the following statement by V. Abaev: “The tribal names Digor, Iron, and Tual cannot be explained by means of the Iranian language, but are associated with the ethnic names of the pre-Ossetian population that still held on after Iranianization.”42 With respect to the Caucasian origin of the names Ir, Iron, we can argue with V. Abaev, since such ethnicons are also widespread beyond the Caucasus in places where Indo-Europeans have ubiquitously settled.43 The ethnic names Digor and Tual are undoubtedly primordially local, for they are not encountered anywhere else beyond the boundaries of Caucasian territory. Consequently, there is reason to regard the Tuals as an initially local Caucasian ethnos. There is the opinion that the name the South Ossets call themselves, Tualag, and the designation of the medieval ethnic group of the South Caucasus, “Dvals,” are genetically associated with each other, that is, they are versions of the same ethnicon. Consequently, the origin of the South Ossets should be correlated not only with migration of the Osi-Alans to the Southern Caucasus, but also with the local Caucasian Dvals.
As early as the end of the 7th century, when talking about the peoples living on the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range alongside the Alans, the anonymous author of Armenian Geography mentioned the ethnic group “Dvals.”44 A document of the same period entitled Muchenitstvo Nikolaia Dvali, about a Dvali Christian who came from the settlement of Tsai on the upper reaches of the Lesser Liakhva, can show that as early as the 14th century the Dvals were a separate ethnic group not associated with the “Osi.”45 The further fate of the Dvals proved to be directly associated with the settlement of the Osi-Alans in the Southern Caucasus.
There can be no doubt that individual groups of Alans could reach the Southern Caucasus through the Daryal Gorge at an earlier time, that is, long before the Mongol crusades. But this could not be the beginning of the compact colonization of present-day South Ossetia. In light of the aforesaid, a report by an unknown Georgian historian of the 14th century, so-called Zhamtaagmtsereli, is interesting, according to whom the “Osi,” who were persecuted by Golden Horde khan Berke, came to Georgia in the second half of the 13th century. Among the refugees was a woman called Limagav.
40 See: Ibid., p. 91.
41 See: V. Alexeev, “Antropologicheskie dannye k proiskhozhdeniiu osetinskogo naroda,” in: Proiskhozhdenie ose-tinskogo naroda, pp. 142-173; idem, Istoricheskaia antropologiia i etnogenez, Moscow, 1989, pp. 199, 272-277.
42 I. Abaev, Istoriko-etimologicheskiy slovar’ osetinskogo iazyka, Vol. I, Leningrad, 1958, pp. 380, 546.
43 See: V. Miller, Osetinskie etiudy, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1882, p. 55; R. Ageeva, Strany i narody: proiskhozhdenie nazvaniy, Moscow, 1990, p. 196.
44 See: K. Patkanov, “Iz novogo spiska geografii, pripisyvaemoi Moiseiu Khorenskoma,” ZhMNP, Part CCXXVI, 1883, p. 30.
45 See: Istoria Osetii v dokumentakh i materialakh., pp. 81-84.
She brought small children with her from the Akhasarfakaian family: firstborn Parejan, his younger brother Bakatar, and many princes. They passed through the Derbent Gates and came to see Georgian king David, who received them and sent them to his suzerain in Iran—khan Hulagu. Hulagu sent them back to king David to serve in the army, who deployed them in the towns of Dmanisi and Zhinvali.46 Kartlis Tskhovreba also names the third settlement of “Osi”—Tbilisi.47 But the version that during the second half of the 13 th century, the Osi-Ossets migrated to Georgia, which at that time belonged to the Golden Horde’s rival, the Hulagu state, not through the Daryal, but through the Derbent Gates, looks very dubious. Moreover, there is also a report on these events by Georgian historian of the 17th century Parsadan Gorgijanidze, where the Derbent Pass is not mentioned, but the “Daralam (Daryal) Road” is.48 So, despite the fact that, according to the data of the Georgian chronicles, the Osi had already appeared in the Georgian Czardom during the second half of the 13 th century, we should reckon with the fact that nothing was said in the written sources about the compact colonization of Dvaletia by the Osi.
In this respect, attention should be paid to the statement by Vakhushti, who wrote in the 18th century that during Batu Khan and Orkhan’s times, the Osi-Alans began to flee to the “interior of the Caucasus,” and during Tamerlan’s times, the Osi “marched into the Caucasus and subdued the tribes of Caucasians, who were essentially Dvals.”49 The data of Persian historians of the 15th century could provide information about the circumstances of the Alans’ migration from the high mountainous regions of the Caucasus to the Transcaucasus. According to their data, in 1395-1396, after subduing the Asi-Alans in the Elbrus region, Timur set off for the inaccessible fortresses of Kuli and Tausa, which “also belonged to the tribes of inhabitants of Elburz (Elbrus.—O.B.),” that is, to the Asi-Alans. As a result, according to Yezdi’s report, these fortresses were seized by Timur’s troops, a “large number of people from the Irkuvun tribe” were slaughtered.50 Shami’s essay about this says the following: “Many from the Irkuvun region were killed.”51 Attention must be drawn to the fact that Yezdi made use of Shami’s text, and in this case it looks more than convincing that Irkuvun is the name of a location and not of the tribe. By way of proof, I would like to present Iu. Gagloiti’s opinion, who believes that the name Irkuvun should be translated from the Ossetian as “shrine of the Irs.”52 It should be mentioned at this point that A. Gadlo believed that the Ikhran/Irkhan region was associated with the land of the Irons, which is mentioned in the chronicle Derbend-nameh. According to the researcher, during the early Middle Ages, the country Ikhran occupied the eastern part of Alania “and the foothills of Daghestan and present-day Chechnia and Ingushetia closest to it.”53 From the end of the 14th century right up until the end of the 18th century, the name “Irons” did not feature in the written sources, and then some of the Ossets began using it as their own name.54 In this respect, we should recall V. Abaev’s conclusion to the effect that the ethnic terms Iron and Tual“cannot be explained by means of the Iranian language, but are related to ethnic names the pre-Ossetian population called itself.”55 So, there is reason to regard the North Caucasian Irs and Tual Dvals of South Ossetia as local Caucasian ethnic groups. This all makes it possible to presume that after the destruction wrought by
46 See: M. Janashvili, “Izvestiia gruzinskikh letopisey i istorikov o Severnom Kavkaze i Rossii,” SMOMPK, Iss. XXII, 1897, p. 44; Kartlis Tskhovreba (History of Georgia), Vol. II, ed. by S.G. Kaukhchishvili, Tbilisi, 1960, p. 251 (in Georgian).
47 See: Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi AO, p. 85.
48 See: Ibidem.
49 Vakhushti, “Geografiia Gruzii,” in: ZKOIRGO, Book XXIV, Issue 5, Tbilisi, 1904, p. 153.
50 See: V. Tizengauzen, Sbornik materialov, otnosiashchikhsia k istorii Zolotoi Ordy, Vol. II, Moscow, Leningrad, 1941, p. 182.
51 Ibid., p. 122.
52 Iu.S. Gagloiti, Alany i voprosy etnogeneza osetin, p. 206.
53 A. Gadlo, Etnicheskaia istoria Severnogo Kavkaza X-XIII vv., St. Petersburg, 1994, p. 20.
54 See: B. Kaloev, Osetiny glazami russkikh i inostrannykh puteshestvennikov (XII-XIX vv.), Ordzhonikidze, 1967,
p. 89.
55 V. Abaev, Istoriko-etimologicheskiy slovar’ osetinskogo iazyka, Vol. I, pp. 380, 546.
Timur in the Northern Caucasus, most of the Iranian-speaking Alans of the high mountain areas, the Irs’ neighbors, could have advanced to the south, beyond the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range, to Dvaletia, thus laying the foundation for the compact colonization of the Ossets’ ancestors. In light of the above, we can agree with the opinion of the authors of Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi avtonomnoi oblasti that the mass migration of the Ossets to the south from the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range began during the second half of the 13th century and continued in the 14th century and later.56
As already noted, researchers believe the ethnogenesis of the South Ossets to be the result of interaction between the Vainakh-speaking Dvals and the Iranian-speaking Osi-Alans, which could have occurred at the beginning of the 15th century.57 Nevertheless, the question is when did the process of linguistic assimilation by the Iranian-speaking Osi of the Vainakh-speaking Dvals end?
As early as the 15th century, Pamiatnik eristavov noted the migration of the population from Ossetia to the south—to the country of the Dvals—due to the internecine wars among the Ossetian rulers.58 According to the observations of the authors of Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi avtonomnoi oblasti, the Georgian sources relating to the territory and population of present-day South Ossetia as early as in the 17th-18th centuries made parallel mention of the names Dvals and Osi, Dvaleti and Oseti, which, in their opinion, could show that “these concepts have become synonyms.”59 But this cannot mean full assimilation of the Dvals (Tuals) by the Ossets. The use of the ethnicons Dvals and Osi in the Transcaucasus in the 18th century is explained by Vakhushti’s information: “For the most well-known of them are called Osi, and the other not-so-well-known are again called Dvals.”60 Nevertheless, during the 17th-18th centuries, the number of Ossets in Dvaletia increased by means of the new migrants from North Ossetia. For example, Kartli King Georgi XI tried to revive Christianity among both the South and North Ossets, which made it necessary to draw the latter into the migration process to the south. As a result of this, at the end of the 17th century, the Ossets began to play a noticeable role in the political life of the Kartli kingdom.61 During the era of King Georgi XII, the Ossets migrated from North Ossetia, from the Tagaur Gorge, to the territory of present-day South Ossetia.62 After Georgia joined Russia in 1801, North and South Ossetia became part of a single state, which to a significant extent helped to strengthen the contacts between the southern and northern representatives of this ethnos. As early as the 19th century, there was no division of the population of South Ossetia into Ossets and Dvals. And this could mean that this was precisely when the assimilation of the Dvals by the Ossets took place, that is, at that time, the sub-ethnic group of South Ossets was forming, which began calling themselves by the local ethnic term Tual (Dvals).63 But the Georgians continued to call this mixed Iranian-speaking population Ossets, thus preserving the memory of the political domination of the Ossets here. So it makes sense to support the opinion of V. Gamrekeli, who presents the formation of the South Ossets as the process of their permanent resettlement on the territory of the Dvals from the north to the south with further Iranianization, which took place during the 13th-16th centuries.64 It was precisely the domination of the “Osi” newcomers among the Tual natives that should have promoted the spread of the dialect of the Ossetian language, which is very close to the Ironian. In so doing, this mixed population continued to call themselves Tual. It is precisely this, as well as anthropological evidence, that should lead us to regard the South Ossets as the Tual natives Iranianized by Ossetian newcomers, and not as newcomers who were absorbed by the local ethnic groups of the Southern Caucasus.
56 See: Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi AO, p. 87.
57 See: Z. Vaneev, op. cit., p. 182; V. Gamrekeli, op. cit., pp. 15-40, 114-145.
58 See: Materialy po istorii Gruzii i Kavkaza, Tbilisi, 1954, p. 114.
59 Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi AO, p. 102.
60 Vakhushti, op. cit., p. 138.
61 See: Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi AO, pp. 104-105.
62 See: Istoria Osetii v dokumentakh i materialakh..., p. 192.
63 See: V. Abaev, Istoriko-etimologicheskiy slovar’ osetinskogo iazyka, Vol. I, pp. 380, 546.
64 See: V. Gamrekeli, op. cit., p. 145.
In so doing it should be noted that the Ossets periodically migrated from the territory of Dvaletia to the rest of Georgia, frequently undergoing assimilation by the Georgian population. Geographically, Dvaletia (present-day South Ossetia) is the Naro-Mamison basin, from where the Ossets descended through the gulches of the Greater Liakhva, Lesser Liakhva, Ksan, and Aragva rivers to the territory of Kartli. In the 17th century, a few Ossets ended up in Kakhetia, and in the 18th century a small group of them moved to the right-hand bank of the Kura. After feudal law was abolished in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century, new colonization of the Ossets began throughout the territory of Georgia. At that time, many Ossetian settlements appeared in Kakhetia on the right-hand bank of the Alazani. From the 1870s through 1914, new Ossetian settlements formed in Lower and Upper Kakhetia along with the Georgian settlements that already existed. At that time, many Ossets settled on the territory of the present-day Gori, Dusheti, Khashuri, Ksan, Borzhomi, Mtskheta, and other regions of Georgia.65 According to the observations of G. Lazarashvili, from 1770 to 1893, the Ossetian population in Georgia increased from 20,300 people to 71,513 with no significant migration from North Ossetia to South Ossetia. In 1959, a rather interesting situation developed—out of the 141,000 Ossets of the Georgian S.S.R., only about half lived on the territory of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region.66 And according to the results of the All-Union Population Census of the U.S.S.R. in 1989, the size of the population of South Ossetia amounted to 98,527,000, 65,233 of them Ossets, 28,544 Georgians, 2,128 Russians, 984 Armenians, 472 Ukrainians, 396 Jews, and 771 representatives of other nationalities. In this way, it is very difficult to separate the fate of the South Ossets from the development of the Georgians living alongside them.
C o n c l u s i o n
It goes without saying that the very idea that the community of South Ossets formed in the Southern Caucasus, that is, that they are an ethnic group of local origin, is very unpopular among many present-day Ossetian and Georgian politicians who are making their political fortune on the smoldering Ossetian-Georgian standoff. The very recognition by the opposing sides of the fact that the Ossets in the Southern Caucasus are natives and not newcomers could remove several political problems. The question of uniting the two Ossetias would not be so urgent and conditions would be created for restoring the autonomy of South Ossetia in Georgia. But it is very possible that problems will arise with the official name of the new autonomous formation. For the Ossets, the modern names in South Ossetia widespread among the Georgians, such as Shida Kartli, the Tskhinvali Region, Sa-machablo, etc., are unacceptable. Even the earlier “South Ossetia” does not suit contemporary Ossetian politicians, because the word “Ossetia” is of Georgian origin (the “revival” of the name Alania for North Ossetia was a reaction to this). Nor can Respublikzh Khussar Iryston, the name the selfproclaimed Republic of South Ossetia calls itself, suit anyone, because South Ossetia has never been called the “country of the Irs.” Therefore, the double name, “South Ossetia—Dvaletia,” may be historically appropriate.
65 See: Ocherki istorii Iugo-Osetinskoi AO, pp. 90, 202.
66 See: G. Lazarashvili, op. cit., p. 109.
