List of Abbreviations; List of Illustrations; PREFACE; Plan of the Book; note On Transcription; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Peoples and their Languages; Non-Caucasian Peoples and Languages of the Caucasus; Caucasian Peoples and Languages; North West Caucasian; South Caucasian/Kartvelian; Nakh-Daghestanian; States; Georgia (in Georgian /sakartvelo/); Abkhazia (in Abkhaz /Apsny/); South Ossetia (in Ossetic /Xussar Iryston/); History; Greeks Colonise the Eastern Black Sea Coast; The Abkhazian Kingdom and Dynastic Union with Georgian-speaking Lands
Breakup of the Mediæval Georgian KingdomPost-Mongol Abkhazia; Mediæval Ossetians; Turkish and Persian Encroachment; Russia's Encroachment and Tsarist Rule; Georgia's Attention Turns towards Abkhazia; Beginnings of Mingrelianisation; Post-Revolutionary Abkhazia and Independent (Menshevik) Georgia; South Ossetians under the Mensheviks; Georgia's 1921 Menshevik Constitution and Loss of Independence; Abkhazia's Status 1921-1931; Creation of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region (1922); Death of Nestor Lakoba and Implementation of Stalin's Nationality Policy; Deportations: Actual or Threatened
Genesis of the 'Ingoroq'va Hypothesis'Abkhazians Start to Voice their Grievances; Summation of the Period 1953-1979; Perestrojka, Glasnost and the Road to War in Georgia; Georgian Dissidents Take Advantage of Glasnost ; Results of Glasnost in Abkhazia and South Ossetia; The 'Abkhazian Letter'; Georgia's Draft Language-Law; Reason for Ingoroq'va's Non-election to the Georgian Academy; Tit-for-tat Exchanges Begin in the Press; The 'Lykhny Declaration' (Abkhazia) and the Reaction; The 9th-April Tragedy (Tbilisi); Anti-Abkhazian Agitation Intensifies
Revival of the 'Ingoroq'va Hypothesis' (and Variants)The 'War of Linguists and Historians'; Moves to Open a Branch of Tbilisi State University in Sukhum; Georgia Experiences its First Fatal Inter-ethnic Clashes; Tensions Rise Even Further After the July Deaths; Andrej Sakharov's 'Mini-empires' and the Inevitable Backlash; Viktor Popkov's Corrective; The Assembly (Later Confederation) of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus; Death of K'ost'ava. Attention Shifts to South Ossetia; New Leadership for Abkhazia's National Movement
Tbilisi Sets Out Towards Independence and the Reaction in Abkhazia and South OssetiaRestoration of Abkhazia's Republican Status of the 1920s and Tbilisi's Reaction; South Ossetia Moves to Raise its Status; New Union Treaty Proposed in Moscow; Gamsakhurdia Becomes Supreme Soviet Chairman. Moscow's Reaction and 1st War in South Ossetia; Gorbachev's 17th-March 1991 Referendum for Reshaping the Union; Gamsakhurdia and Yeltsin Gain their Respective Presidencies, and Gorbachev's Fall; South Ossetia Rescinds Its Compromise-offer; New Electoral Law in Abkhazia
Summary
Drawing heavily on Georgian sources, the author offers readers a unique opportunity to appreciate why the Abkhazians and South Ossetians have seen no alternative to resisting the threats emanating from Tbilisi by refusing to join an independent Georgia
