page_title: Russo-Georgian War
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Russo-Georgian War / Background / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Turkey In Asia And The Caucasian Provinces Of Russia. Published By J.H. Colton &amp; Co. No. 172 William St. New York. Entered ... 1855 by J.H. Colton &amp; Co. ... New York. No. 25
context_page_description: The Russo-Georgian War was a war between Georgia, Russia and the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The war took place in August 2008 following a period of worsening relations between Russia and Georgia, both formerly constituent republics of the Soviet Union. The fighting took place in the strategically important Transcaucasia region. It was regarded as the first European war of the 21st century.
  The Republic of Georgia declared its independence in early 1991 as the Soviet Union began to fall apart. Amidst this backdrop, a war between Georgia and separatists left parts of the former South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast under the de facto control of Russian-backed but internationally unrecognised separatists. Following the war, a joint peacekeeping force of Georgian, Russian, and Ossetian troops was stationed in the territory. A similar stalemate developed in the region of Abkhazia, where Abkhaz separatists had waged war in 1992–1993.
context_section_description: In the 10th century AD, Georgia for the first time emerged as an ethnic concept in the territories where the Georgian language was used to perform Christian rituals. After the Mongol invasions of the region, the Kingdom of Georgia eventually was split into several states. In the 19th century, the Russian Empire gradually took over the Georgian lands. In the aftermath of the Russian revolution, Georgia declared independence on 26 May 1918.
  The Ossetian people are autochthonous to North Ossetia (located in the North Caucasus). Controversy surrounds the date of Ossetian arrival in Transcaucasia. According to one theory, they first migrated there during the 13th and 14th centuries AD, and resided alongside the Georgians peacefully for hundreds of years. In 1918, conflict began between the landless Ossetian peasants living in Shida Kartli, who were affected by Bolshevism and demanded ownership of the lands they worked, and the Menshevik government backed ethnic Georgian nobility, who were legal owners. Although the Ossetians were initially discontented with the economic stance of Tbilisi authorities, the tension shortly transformed into ethnic conflict. During uprisings in 1919 and 1920, the Ossetians were covertly supported by Soviet Russia, but even so, were defeated.
  The independent Democratic Republic of Georgia was invaded by the Red Army in 1921 and a Soviet government was installed. The government of Soviet Georgia created an autonomous administrative unit for Transcaucasian Ossetians in April 1922, called the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast. Historians such as Stephen F. Jones, Emil Souleimanov and Arsène Saparov believe that the Bolsheviks awarded this autonomy to the Ossetians in exchange for their help against the Democratic Republic of Georgia, since this area had never been a separate entity prior to the Russian invasion.
  Nationalism in Soviet Georgia gained momentum in 1989 with the weakening of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin endorsed South Ossetian nationalism as a counter against the Georgian independence movement. On 11 December 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Georgia, responding to South Ossetia's attempt at secession, annulled the region's autonomy. A military conflict broke out between Georgia and South Ossetian separatists in January 1991. Georgia declared its restoration of independence on 9 April 1991, thus becoming the first non-Baltic state of the Soviet Union to do so. The South Ossetian separatists were aided by the former Soviet military units now controlled by Russia. By June 1992, the possibility of a full-scale war between Russia and Georgia increased as bombing of Georgian capital Tbilisi in support of South Ossetian separatists was promised by Russian authorities. Georgia endorsed a ceasefire agreement on 24 June 1992 to prevent the escalation of the conflict with Russia. Georgian, South Ossetian, Russian and North Ossetian peacekeepers were posted in South Ossetian conflict zone under the Joint Control Commission's (JCC) mandate. Some, mostly ethnically Georgian parts of the former South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast remained under the Georgian control. The Tskhinvali-based separatist authorities of the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia were in control of one third of the territory of the former South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast before the 2008 war.
  This situation was mirrored in Abkhazia, an autonomous republic in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, where the Abkhaz separated from Georgia during the war in the early 1990s. The population of Abkhazia was reduced to 216,000 after an ethnic cleansing of Georgians, the single largest ethnic group in the region, a decrease from 525,000 before the war. The upper Kodori Gorge (in northeast Abkhazia) remained beyond the unrecognised Abkhaz separatist government's sway.
caption: Fragment of the 1856 map by J. H. Colton, showing the territory of modern South Ossetia within Georgia and Imeria. Modern North Ossetia corresponds to "Ossia" (Ossetia) in the North Caucasus.
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