From 1937 one of the darkest periods in the contemporary history of Abkhazia started. Lavrentiy Beria initiated a wave of terror and repressions in the Republic in order to annihilate the political and intellectual elite of the Abkhaz people. The policy of intensified Georgianisation was pursued: Georgian script was imposed instead of the Abkhaz writing, original Abkhaz names were changed to Georgian ones, teaching in schools was in the Georgian language, the Abkhaz population was prohibited from calling themselves a people, a purposeful policy of resettlement was pursued with a view to altering the ethnic and demographic composition of the population. During the period from 1937 to 1953, tens of thousands of Georgians were moved from Georgia to Abkhazia, which considerably increased their share in the population of Abkhazia. The Abkhaz people had difficulties with making a career unless they changed their names so that they sounded as Georgian ones.
2) Developments around Ossetia took place along the same lines. In 1774, the Ossetian people with all their lands voluntarily became subjects of the Russian Empire, and in 1843 an Ossetian district of the Tiflis province (gubernia) was established in the southern part of Ossetia, which formed part of the administrative and territorial system of Russia.
Following the break-up of the Russian Empire in 1917, Georgia's leadership made an attempt to annex the southern part of Ossetia by force, in response to its willingness to stay within Russia. In 1920, it was subjected to an armed aggression accompanied by the most cruel repressions and genocide (approximately 20 thousand people were killed, more than 50 thousand were ousted to the North beyond the Greater Caucasus Range). In Soviet times, Ossetian people were subjected to the same oppressions and discrimination as the Abkhaz people.
Following the establishment of the USSR, South Ossetia was made part of Georgia as the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast, while North Ossetia was made part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
3) In the period of the Soviet Union's disintegration the then Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia set out to create a unitary national state. Under the slogan "Georgia for Georgians" he declared: "We should deport Ossetians to Russia, we should divide Abkhazian territory, we should abolish Adzhariya's autonomy as there should be no autonomies in the territory of Georgia where only the title nation should rule".
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