The exact status of Abkhazia as a "treaty republic" was never clarified during its existence, and historian Arsène Saparov has suggested even officials at the time did not know what the phrase meant. The status had symbolic meaning to the Abkhaz people, who never forgot they had, at least in theory, an independent state. With the advent of glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s, calls for Abkhazia to restore its status began. An assembly at Lykhny in 1989 called for the Soviet authorities to make Abkhazia a full union republic, claiming the SSR Abkhazia as a precedent for this move. When Abkhazia declared independence in 1990, it requested the restoration of the 1925 constitution, which called for Abkhazia and Georgia to unite, allowing for the possibility of a future union between the two states. The restoration of the 1925 constitution was a pretext for the 1992–1993 war and the ensuing dispute over the status of Abkhazia, which has led to Abkhazia being "de facto" independent of Georgia since 1992.