Another old Caucasus map Check out this very high-res (but unfortunately in eight parts) map of the Caucasus from sometime in the 19th Century or perhaps earlier.
The Caucasus in 1927 - "New Political Boundaries"
More fun with maps Regular readers will recall my summertime practice of scanning in and posting maps, mostly of the Caucasus and various regions thereof - see the photoset here and previous map-themed posts here.
More Maps of Georgia A couple more maps that I had the chance to scan in before leaving DC last week. Complaints about the white line through the larger images can be directed to the folks at A.U.'s library, although since they make an otherwise nice scanner fairly freely accessible I didn't have the heart to complain. The first is a map of tourist routes through Georgia which dates from 1966 ...
More maps of the Caucasus A friend of mine who's based in Tbilisi has emailed me these four maps: three interesting German maps of the changing political geography of the Caucasus (sorry, I don't know the source or copyright holder), and a fourth one (also quite interesting in its own way) which goes more toward the present-day situation in a small part of the region.
Even more Caucasus maps I found one last book with scan-worthy inlaid maps in my attic archives - Kavkazskii Krai - Putevoditel' (Caucasus Territory - Guidebook) by Sergei Anisimov, from 1928. The book's largest and perhaps most spectacular map - a map of Caucasus tourism routes - is something I'm still trying to stitch together from four digital files, since the original was too big to scan in one piece, even on a large flatbed scanner. But the ones which scanned in easily are still quite lovely and - as with many artifacts of the Caucasus - susceptible to being invested with all kinds of meaning.
The one that got worked out Here is a map of a region in Georgia that is no longer a conflict zone. In the late Shevardnadze era (i.e., the early 2000's), Tbilisi's tenuous control over AjariaAdzharia, Adjara, Achara) was often mentioned in the same breath as the de facto independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as evidence of Georgia's failed statehood.
Relatively soon after the Rose Revolution, however, in May 2004, Ajaria's wily ruler Aslan Abashidze, who had run the province pretty much as a personal fiefdom since the Soviet breakup, was ousted from his perch in Batumi and forced to flee - to Moscow, I believe, to take advantage of the hospitality of his pal Yuri Luzhkov, who had earlier tried unsuccessfully to insert himself as a mediator in the conflict between Batumi and the Georgian center.
The only real tragedy of Abashidze's ouster was the sad fate of his many fancy dogs. The departure of the long-time leader did not fully quiet the dissatisfaction of the local population, however, and the fact that it was accomplished without violence may have fostered an early and unjustified sense of confidence among Saakashvili's team that the other regions which had strayed even farther from Tbilisi's control would somehow be easy to bring back into the fold. The region retains nominal autonomous status, which it also enjoyed during the Soviet era.
Anyway, here's a map of the region made in less chaotic times - circa 1985:
Another Abkhazia-related map Continuing my recent spate of posts about Abkhazia, here is another map I found in one of our boxes of stuff from Moscow, most likely purchased at Izmailovo or some other flea market - a tourist's guide to Sukhumi from the early 1980s. I scanned it in at a fairly high resolution, so if you click on the images and view the full-sized files you should be able to read the narrative text describing the city's various tourist attractions.
More on Abkhazia I'm not in a position to try to follow the breaking aspects of the story and provide updates on the escalation or de-escalation of tensions, various visits to the region by foreign dignitaries, etc., but I did want to post a few more maps as well as point out that the International Crisis Group has just issued a report on the situation in Abkhazia. I haven't read it yet, but if it's anything like their past reports on the conflict it will be interesting and useful. I normally skim over the "recommendations" portions of their reports and head to the meatier narrative portions, which contain insights from interviews conducted by ICG which you might not see elsewhere.
As for the maps, I've scanned them in from a book I recently acquired, Konflikty v Abkhazii i IUzhnoi Osetii: Dokumenty 1989-2006 gg. I was expecting a dry compilation of documents and perhaps some black-and-white maps - imagine my surprise when the book arrived with two inlaid full-color maps and maps on each of the endpapers.
More on my favorite topic I heard an extensive and pretty even-handed report about Abkhazia on NPR's Morning Edition today. I guess that means it's finally "arrived" as a mainstream news topic - that, or they are trying to inform their listeners before open hostilities break out there.
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