Besides Bzhania and myself there were four other colleagues in the car. From time to time our headlamps picked out little groups of people, evidently trying desperately to get into town too. That is why I shall try to rely on my own impressions in the following remarks, even if this leads to the loss of that completeness which can come from the use of other sources. I don't know how it will end, but we simply must be there with our people - there are so few of us."Īt first Bzhania did not want to take me with him because of the danger, but I insisted - only one's own observations can fully guarantee accurate reporting, and certainly not accounts received at second- or third-hand. We have just been told that fighting has broken out in Sukhum between Abkhazians and Kartvelians, probably involving firearms. for the Preservation of Cultural Monuments of the Council of Ministers of the Abkhazian ASSR, had scarcely greeted me when he suddenly stunned me with the words: "It's started! What we were so afraid of has happened - I don't know whose nerve broke first, but it only took a spark to set off the whole mess into which the policies of the leadership have transformed the population of Abkhazia. Vadim Viktorovich Bzhania, scientific director of our expedition and Director of the Dept. On the Monday the Commission of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR finished its work in Sukhum, deciding against the partition of the University on the basis of nationality, and on 15th July something happened. Most importantly, it sets the Abkhazo-Kartvelian war, which erupted on 14 August 1992, into the sort of revealing context of which visiting journalists, politicians, diplomats and members of fact-finding missions should be aware but of which most in fact remain alarmingly and totally ignorant.) Whilst this does not make pleasant reading, we hope that from it you will learn something about the realities of life for the ethnic minorities living within the Republic of Georgia during the late Soviet and post-Soviet period. Funds were made available for the translation of the two chapters concerned with the Abkhazian problem, and the following is an abbreviated version of that translation. By the end of September 1989 it had proved impossible to find a publisher within the USSR, and so a copy of the manuscript was brought to the West. On the basis of what he saw he composed a work, consisting of three chapters, which deals with the Soviet nationalities' problem in general and with the local Abkhazo-Kartvelian conflict in particular. As soon as the fighting started on 15th July in the Abkhazian capital, Sukhum, he travelled there from his base in T'amsh. (Soviet journalist Viktor Popkov found himself spending the summer of 1989 in Abkhazia and became interested in the conflict that had been developing between the Abkhazians and the Kartvelians. He died in a military hospital in Krasnogorsk, Moscow Oblast. During the Second Chechen War, Popkov often was arbitrarily detained by the security forces and his humanitarian activities were severely hindered by the Russian military.[On April 18, 2001, Popkov was fatally shot near the village of Alkhan-Kala while delivering medical supplies to civilians in Chechnya. Afterwards, he became involved in attempts to restore contacts between Chechen Republic President Aslan Maskhadov and the Russian federal authorities. In 1999 he conducted a 40-day hunger strike in protest of the renewed war in Chechnya. He helped to release some of the Russian POWs held in the Presidential Palace in Grozny just before the Russian bombing in 1995 and filmed the aftermath of the Novye Aldi massacre in 2000. Working in Chechnya since 1995, Popkov negotiated release of dozens of civilian hostages and prisoners of war, delivered humanitarian aid to refugees, and documented atrocities. In 1992-1993 Popkov led a futile peace march in Abkhazia, delivered food to the starving town of Tkvarchel, besieged by the Georgian forces, and saved many people from summary execution after the fall of Sukhum. A deeply religious Old Believer and pacifist, he taught non-violence. He spent the last 15 years of his life in the hot spots of the falling Soviet Union, including the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, the Nagorno-Karabakh War and the war in Chechnya. Viktor Alekseyevich Popkov (JJune 2, 2001) was Russian dissident, humanitarian, human rights activist and journalist.
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