Stalin полностью

42. Imperial Russia had annexed the Black Sea territory from Istanbul in 1864, which provoked a mass exodus to the Ottoman empire and a mass influx of settlers, especially Mingrelians from adjacent western Georgia, ethnic Georgians, Russians, and Armenians. The Abkhaz language belongs to a North Caucasus language group unrelated to Georgian or Russian, and the differences were strongly felt. Ethnic Abkhaz became concentrated in three districts: Gudauta, Kodor, and Samurzakan, while non-Abkhaz made up 90 percent of Abkhazia’s other districts. Voronov, Abkhazia.” See also Tardy, “Caucasus Peoples.”

43. Dzidzariia et al., Revoliutsionnye komitety Abkhazii, 253. See also Pritsker, Istoriia kurortov Abkhazskoi SSR; Orynianskii, Sovetskaia Abkhaziia; Grigoliia, Kurortnye bogatsva Abkhazii; Abkhazia had perhaps 150 available beds for patients and holiday-makers in 1922, which jumped to 3,680 by 1935, under Lakoba’s construction. Around 300 people took advantage in 1922, and 16,755 by 1935.

44. Tulumdzhian, S’ezdy Sovetov Abkhazii.

45. A party commission went after Lakoba, citing “the presence in the Abkhazia organization of elements of factionalism, degeneration, ‘private property-ism,’ nepotism and group cohesion reaching toadyism.” Stalin, vacationing on the Black Sea, got dragged into the intrigues and, in a letter co-signed by Orjonikidze (Oct. 19, 1929), faulted Lakoba for “sometimes not subordinating himself to the decisions of the provincial party committee.” The mild rebuke protected Lakoba from worse. Hoover Institution Archives, Lakoba Papers, box 1, folder 55, 56; Blauvelt, “Abkhazia Patronage,” 214 (citing Partarkhiv TsK KPG, f. 14, op. 7, d. 3516, l. 1–3).

46. Rikhter, Kavkaz nashikh dnei, 98; Blauvelt, “‘From Words to Action!,’” 243–4 (citing sakartvelos shss arkivi [II], f. 14, op. 2, d. 485, 49–56).

47. “When Stalin and I were there,” Orjonikidze had noted, “Comrade Lakoba made the best impressions of all the comrades present.” Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 58 (1925). See also Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 1–25, 1–26; and Kvashonkin, Bolshevistskoe rukovodstvo, 338–41.

48. Trotskii, “Yenukidze” [Jan. 8, 1938], in Portrety, 251–72 (at 264–6). “My ears hold me back, but so what,” Lakoba had written to Orjonikidze (March 12, 1922). Kvashonkin, Bolshevistskoe rukovodstvo, 237–8.

49. Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 188–9. Lakoba has only a single recorded listing in Stalin’s office logbook, Nov. 20, 1933, and for just twenty minutes. Na prieme, 114.

50. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 76–7. In 1929, a Lakoba confidant wrote to the Abkhaz leader that “being in Sochi I saw Stalin at the central executive committee rest house, and he asked the whole time, where are you, are you coming, Long Live Abkhazia and sang Abkhaz songs.” Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 59–60 (Ladariya).

51. “Autobiography, December 12, 1936,” Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, box 1, item 2; Bgazhba, Nestor Lakoba; Argun, Stalin i Lakoba; Lakoba, “History: 1917–1989,” 89–101.

52. Whereas Georgia was undergoing vigorous Georgification, the ratio of ethnic Abkhaz in the enclave’s population of 146,000 had fallen, to under 30 percent in 1926 (from 55 percent as late as 1897). By 1939, the Abkhaz share would shrink to 18 percent. By comparison, the Ajarians, a Muslim people in Georgia, accounted for around 70 percent in Ajaristan, an autonomous republic in Georgia. The penurious Abkhaz administration issued circulars in three languages (Abkhaz, Georgian, Russian). Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 115; Agrba, Abkhazskaia oblastnaia organizatsiia kompartii Gruzii v tsifrakh; Partarkhiv Abkhazskogo obkoma KP Gruzii, f. 1, op. 1, d. 180, l. 95–6: Lakoba at 7th province party conference. Abkhaz were almost never accepted at Georgia’s institutions of higher learning (where the instruction was solely in Georgian). Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 2–42.