deadlines and make any necessary editorial changes. Brian Kinsey initiated the project in 2001 and Shawn Corridor joined the editorial team in the spring of 2003 to supervise final author corrections and entry preparation. We have been fortunate to have such outstanding professionals working with us.
JAMES R. MILLAR EDITOR IN CHIEF
Abkhazians call themselves Apswa (plural Ap-swaa). Abkhazia (capital: Sukhum/Aqw’a) comprises 8,700 square kilometers (between lat. 43°35’-42°27’ N and long. 40°-42°08’ E) bordering the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Mingrelia, and Svanetia. The early Soviets’ drive to eradicate illiteracy saw Abkhaz attain literary status; like Circassian and Ubykh (extinct since 1992), Abkhaz is a northwest Caucasian language. Christianity arrived two centuries before its official introduction under Justinian sixth century. Sunni Islam spread with Ottoman Turkish influence from around 1500. Traditional paganism has never entirely disappeared, making adherence to either major religion relatively superficial, although within Abkhazia most Abkhazians are nominally Christian.
Life revolves around the extended family, morality (including respect for elders) being essentially determined by the dictates of custom (akjabz) and an ever-present sense of “Abkhazianness” (ap-swara). Local nobility fostered their offspring among the peasantry to cement societal relations- only captured foreigners served as slaves. English visitor James Bell noted in the 1830s that Abkhazians rendered this concept by their ethnonym for “Mingrelian” (ag?rwa). Milk-brotherhood was another social bond, symbolic establishment of which between two warring families could end vendettas.
A semi-tropical climate with abundant water resources, forests, and mountain-pasturage dictated an economy based on animal husbandry, timber, and agriculture, with fruit, viticulture, and millet (yielding to maize in the nineteenth century) playing dominant roles; tea and tobacco gained importance in the twentieth century. Greece, Rome, Persia, Lazica, Byzantium, Genoa, Turkey, Russia, and Georgia have all influenced Abkhazian history. In the 780s Prince Leon II took advantage of Byzantium’s weakness to incorporate within his Abkhazian Kingdom most of western Georgia, this whole territory being styled “Abkhazia” until 975 when Bagrat’ III, inheriting Abkhazia maternally and Iberia (eastern Georgia) paternally, became first monarch of a united Georgia. This medieval kingdom disintegrated during the Mongol depredations (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries), and part of Abkhazia’s population (the Abazinians, who speak the divergent Abaza dialect and today number around 35,000) settled in the north Caucasus. The Chachbas
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An Abkhaz Army soldier stands in front of an armored personnel carrier in Kodori Gorge, October 2001. © REUTERS NEWMEDIA INC./CORBIS group in prewar Abkhazia. The conflict remained unresolved as of the early twenty-first century. Abkhazia declared independence in October 1999 but remains unrecognized. There are roughly 100,000 Abkhazians in Abkhazia (or ex-Soviet territories) and up to 500,000 across the Near East, predominantly in Turkey, where the language is neither taught nor written. See also: CAUCASUS; CHERKESS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
Benet, Sula. (1974). Abkhasians: The Long-Living People of the Caucasus. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Hewitt, George. (1993). “Abkhazia: A Problem of Identity and Ownership.” In Central Asian Survey 12(3): 267-323. Hewitt, George, ed. (1999). The Abkhazians: A Handbook. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press. Hewitt, George, and Khiba, Zaira. (1997). An Abkhaz Newspaper Reader. Kensington, MD: Dunwoody Press.
B. GEORGE HEWITT
controlled Abkhazia, the Dadianis controlled Min-grelia, vying for dominance in the border regions; the current frontier along the River Ingur dates from the 1680s.
Abkhazia became a Russian protectorate in 1810 but governed its own affairs until 1864 when, in the wake of imperial Russia’s crushing of North Caucasian resistance (1864) and again after the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, most Abkhazians (along with most Circassians and all the Ubykhs) migrated to Ottoman lands. Soviet power was established in 1921; this Abkhazian SSR was recognized by Georgia, the two then contracting a treaty-alliance that lasted until Abkhazia’s 1931 demotion to an “autonomous republic” within Georgia. The Stalin years were characterized by forced (largely Mingrelian) immigration and suppression of the language and culture in an attempted Georgianization.
Post-Soviet Georgian nationalism led to war in August 1992. Abkhazian victory in September 1993 resulted in the mass flight of most of the local Mingrelian population, numerically the largest
ABORTION POLICY
The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to legalize abortion, but its goal was to protect women’s health and promote motherhood, not to advance women’s rights.
Abortion was a criminal offense punishable by exile or long prison sentences before the Bolshevik Revolution. As part of its effort to reform Russian society, the Soviet government legalized abortion in a decree issued November 18, 1920. Supporters of the decree believed legal abortions were a necessary evil to prevent women from turning to dangerous and unsanitary back-alley abortions. Their goal was not to protect a woman’s individual reproductive rights, but to preserve the health of the mother for the common good. Furthermore, the legalization only applied to abortions performed by trained medical personnel, and in 1924 a system was established that prioritized access to legal abortions according to class position and social vulnerability (unemployed and unmarried working women topped the list).
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In 1936, the state recriminalized abortion in an attempt to increase the birth rate and to emphasize the value of motherhood. Although the policy shift temporarily reduced the number of abortions, in the long term repression failed to have the desired effect and abortion rates increased. Abortion was again legalized in 1955 on the premise that women had become sufficiently aware of the importance of their maternal roles. Despite the changes over time, Soviet abortion policy consistently focused on protecting women’s health and encouraging motherhood. A lack of alternative methods of contraception, however, ensured that Soviet women relied on abortion as their primary means to control reproduction throughout the Soviet period. See also: FAMILY CODE OF 1926; MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
Buckley, Mary. (1989). Women and Ideology in the Soviet Union. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Goldman, Wendy Z. (1993). Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917- 1936. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
SHARON A. KOWALSKY
The idea of founding an Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg was first mooted by Peter the Great, but it was not until 1757, primarily on the initiative of Ivan Shuvalov, that the project was realized. Shuvalov, its first president, commissioned a large, neoclassical edifice on the banks of the Neva to house the institution, and in 1764 Catherine II gave it its first charter, based on that of the Acad?mie de Peinture et de Sculpture, which had been established in Paris in 1648. Following the French example, the Academy developed a system of instruction in painting, sculpture, architecture, and the decorative arts that emphasized the study of old masters and the antique, and which prioritized subjects of historical significance. However, the Academy was not created primarily to fulfill state commissions, as had been the case in France, but aimed instead to professionalize practice in the visual arts. Students followed a regimented system, and all graduates who fulfilled the program were entitled to fourteenth rank in the civil service Table of Ranks. Those who won the major gold medal competition were also granted the opportunity to study abroad for three to six years with a travel scholarship from the Academy. Students were required to complete regular assignments, which, along with the Academy’s growing collection of casts, copies, and original works by western European artists, formed an invaluable teaching resource.
