Summary

The chaotic process of disintegration of the Soviet Union provoked conflicts across the region. In the Southern Caucasus, the competing claims for sovereignty between the national elites of the constituent soviet republics (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) and the autonomous regions (South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabakh) descended into armed violence in the early 1990s, ending inconclusively with ceasefires but no peace deals, resulting in a situation of no peace, no war, leaving three ‘de facto’ unrecognised states. Meanwhile the North Caucasus region was also in upheaval, with first the Ossetian– Ingush conflict, the two Chechen wars, and latent conflicts brewing across the five North Caucasus republics. Significant escalations of war in Georgia in August 2008 and Nagorny Karabakh in the autumn of 2020 testify to the volatility in the region.

The role of community leaders has been pivotal in rebuilding these shattered communities across the region. Emerging from the soviet system, which oversaw a weakening of independent civil action by treating it as dissidence, it was the national intelligentsias or the elites that took it upon themselves to try to prevent further resumption of hostilities and build peace. They were well placed to do so, having strong social capital. Indeed at times there has been a blurring between what we might now call ‘civil society’ and the ‘ruling class’, as elites moved between the two.

This chapter examines how local intelligentsia drove community development in the conflict-affected regions, reaching out across the conflict divides and beyond to find allies in their mission. Much of it was spontaneous, a response to the emergency situation they found themselves in and a response to the needs of the conflict-affected societies. While the civil elites sought support from international organisations, they had their own clear agenda and were not passive beneficiaries, having no desire for dependency. One particularly bright illustration of NGOs is that which between 1998 and 2005 brought together active civil society from across the north and south of the region in a shared mission and mutual exchange. The format was an adaptation for the new and emerging ‘civil society’ of a traditional Caucasian method of dispute resolution, wherein neighbours are invited to play the role of mediator and facilitator.