This day of victory

Return

The “Airbus -310”, on which I flew from Moscow, landed at the Sochi airport, where the rain just ended, refreshing the autumn southern vegetation riot. At the exit of the passengers, a handful of people with homemade posters offering the posters expected, and the swarm “drove”, vying promising to deliver where only the soul would wish. I called: Abkhazia. The swarm immediately scattered. As Liana Quarchelia later told me - an expert at the Center for Humanitarian Projects at the Foreign Ministry of Abkhazia, you can get to the border without any problems, but to get into Abkhazia itself, you will have to stand for a long time at the checkpoint in the queue, and this time is counted in the fare. If you don't want to wait, give a bribe. It comes out the same for money. Liana referred to the experience of the Frenchman who had recently visited Abkhazia, from whom the hotel in Sochi for a taxi to Sukhum demanded ten thousand rubles, which, by Abkhaz standards, was a racket.

Several drivers continued to expandly pull me, almost grabbing a suitcase from my hands. I chose a thin, small growth of a young man, modestly standing behind his energetic colleagues. And we went. First, Adler, who noticeably changed during the time that passed after my last arrival here. On the way, the guy gave me valuable advice on how best to cross the border of Abkhazia. He said that there are two options: legal - long and, accordingly, expensive, bypass, or a short, but semi -legal path that will cost me almost for nothing. I chose the second option.

We drove up to an unremarkable gate. The driver stopped the car and explained to me what to do next. I paid, and we said goodbye. I open the gate and enter the yard. At the entrance is a small table. Behind him in a chair is an elderly man in a dark suit and a white shirt, demonstrating with his appearance that he is “in performance”. I hold him two hundred rubles. He looks at money in bewilderment and asks: “Why are there so many?” "How much is it necessary?" "Twenty". I was ready for an affordable price, but I did not expect that it would be so small. I take my two hundred, give twenty, and we are calculated. I have to cross the courtyard, which was provided for passing to customs for more than the divine fee of his entrepreneurial mistress. A person “when performing” shows me with a hand where to go, and I am heading along the puddles and potholes towards customs. Towards the wooden bridges, people rolled their suitcases and carts with a goose.

I also rolled my suitcase to the checkpoint of the border point, which is two passes in the sheds of the shed. Over one, it is written “from Russia”, over the other - “to Russia”. I go to the first passage. The queue is ten. Approaching the window, put her passport there and a minute later she received it back, without any mark. I took a step, and I am in Abkhazia. It was surprised by the simplicity of the procedure and the absence of a huge crowd, storming the crossing of the border of Abkhazia, which was heard about. Probably, the whole thing is in the season, when there are already fewer tourists and the tangerines have not yet ripened.

Liana of Quarchelia does not use the cherished gate. She drives up to the automobile bridge over the PSOU River, goes with a suitcase to the first car in front of the barrier and begs the driver to transport it to the other side. According to Liana, the existing procedure for crossing the border of Abkhazia can not be called a person with concern for a person. Everything is done so that people languish in lines, and those that are richer, do not skimp on a bribe. With the recognition of Abkhazia, the situation has not changed much.

Well, I continue my way. Now you have to get directly to the rest of the rest where I was heading. Immediately a driver of the battered "Lada" jumps to me. They were encountered about the price and moved towards Gagra (as it appears on the roadside sign). I anticipated to see the paintings that became familiar for repeated stay in Abkhazia. Casteas washed by rain, eucalyptus, cypresses, magnolias pleased the eye. But nothing more reminiscent of the Abkhazia that I remember. Against the backdrop of the usual festive nature, I did not see the houses of house, which were once in the environment of well -groomed fruit gardens, once beckoning the “savages” that once gone here from all over the Soviet world - that was the name of people who are resting in the private sector.

Outside the window, the cars of the past Georgian-Abkhaz war swim: houses with empty eye sockets instead of windows, with empty doorways, but with a surviving roof. They stand on a burned, overgrown with stormy earth. Orphaned fruit gardens, which have not seen the master's hand for a long time. Strong walls of the houses indicate that they were built for a successful convenient life of many generations. Now there are no owners or guests in them. Houses and earth, forcibly deprived of their destiny, are dead. Where are the people who lived in these houses and nurtured these gardens? Are they alive? Where did the shelter find?

"What is this at home?" I asked the driver. He answered briefly: "There was a war here." According to his tone, he realized that he was not inclined to conversation. Later I learned that these are the houses of local Georgians, who during the war were expelled from them at best. Many barely managed to take at least any of their property. The remaining good went to the winners. On some houses, a number has been preserved above the empty doorway.

Who and when decides the fate of this looted housing, abandoned land, people for whom Abkhazia was the birthplace? To this, Liana Kvarchelia noted that almost all Georgian houses are already busy, destroyed houses have become much less, especially in the Gagra region. The local population created many small hotels to ensure a convenient rest for the growing flow of vacationers.

The state of the road brought me to despondency. The rusted, solarmed, half -overwhelming road signs and the names of the villages, miserable bus stops - all testified to poverty and orphans. Liana later told me that they had already repaired the road from PSOU to Athos for Russian money, updated stops there, put modern toilets, shops appeared along the highway, and instead of chainsaws, modern gas stations. So Abkhazia recovers.

A little about Georgin Lesha

I met Lesha at the Codra Rest House. Lesha is a guard. He has a Russian face and competent Russian speech, but he suddenly turned out to be a Georgian. Lesha is on duty for a day in “codes”, three - plows on a tractor at the citrus state farm, where, in addition to him, there are only a cleaning lady of the workers, and from the administration the director and accountant, who are not at all at all. We are talking to Lesha evenings on a bench at the guard house. I ask him about the war, about life.

Lesha lives in Abkhazia for 27 years. He lives uncomfortable surrounded by completely Abkhazians, although he does not feel discrimination against himself from both superiors. In his youth, Lesha was a football player, defended the sports honor of Georgia, and traveled the whole union.

According to Lesha, Zviad Gamsakhurdiya started a war against Abkhazia. The flame of the war, he believes, flared up from a match abandoned by the first president of Georgia, when he, having arrived in Sukhum (in Georgian Sukhumi), publicly stated that there was no Abkhazia, there is Georgia and only Georgia.

About the war

Liana Cvarselia comments: “The statement by Zviad Gamsakhurdia caused a powerful public protest of nonsense, which united in the People's Forum“ Aidgylar ” -“ Unity ”. The locomotive in him was, of course, the Abkhazians, who made up his backbone, but the Armenians and Russians joined them, who feared the manifestations of nationalist sentiments from the Georgians, who began to create the Moedrioni militarized detachments in Georgia and Abkhazia, which became the main striking force of the Georgian army. The Abkhazians answered this with universal mobilization, the creation of volunteer units and a call to defend the independence of their homeland.

Representatives of the Abkhazians and sane Georgians attempted to prevent the war. They even conducted negotiations on a federal state. But in the leadership of Georgia they did not want to hear about this. The Zviadists did not let up in the Gallic district. According to Liana of Quarchelia, under the pretext of pacing the Gallic-Zviadists, Georgian troops were introduced into Abkhazia. The Tanks of the State Council of Georgia crossed the Ingur River, entered Abkhazia, captured part of Sukhum, but stuck on the Red Bridge. The leadership of Georgia decided to enter into negotiations with the leadership of Abkhazia. We agreed that both sides would withdraw troops outside the city so as not to destroy it and not to endanger the civilian population. The Abkhazians held the promise and left the Gumista river, and the Georgian troops took advantage of this and occupied the whole city.

The war began on August 14, 1992. The Tanks of the State Council of Georgia crossed the Ingur River and entered Abkhazia. Georgian troops captured Sukhum, Gagra. Abkhazia answered fierce street battles. Through the pass to the aid of the Abkhazam, volunteers from the republics of the North Caucasus and other regions of Russia rushed. Many of them died in battles on the Gumista River.

About life

On one of those days that I spent in Abkhazia, namely September 30, the republic celebrated the next anniversary of its victory over the troops of the State Council of Georgia. The people selflessly indulged in the triumph. People were cheerful, sociable, friendly. On TV, all day, with small breaks, showed a chronicle of war, shot by Russian television and Abkhazian journalists. The fighters recalled the past days. The staff of the chronicle interspersed with reports from festive events in honor of Victory. The horrors of war, the roar of weapons intertwined with national melodies, incendiary songs and dances. It was not, it seemed to me at home where they would not celebrate the holiday at the family festive table. People paid tribute to the deceased, paid off the heroism of the defenders of independence of the republic.

The people celebrated the anniversary of peaceful life, which was not easy and cloudless. Abkhazia, ruined by the war and exhausted by the sanctions that lost its economic support from the outside, hardly healed the wounds inflicted on it.

As Liana Quarchelia testifies, it was necessary to survive in conditions when men from sixteen to sixty were forbidden to travel outside Abkhazia, where the situation with unemployment turned out to be catastrophic. “We were not allowed to import medicines, for a year we were deprived of telephone connection with the outside world. They could take a sigh only in 2001-2002, when Russia began to gradually weaken the regime of sanctions, and then began to pay pensions to the residents of Abkhazia with Russian citizenship. Economic assistance increased, but there was no question of serious investments due to the political situation.

In the former sanatorium "Codra", where in peaceful times, the workers of the law enforcement agencies of Georgia were rested and treated, the war was reflected in a visible one - of three well -maintained buildings, there was only one suitable for life. Two others, including medical ones, are standing with broken windows and continue to collapse - entire shrubs are branched from those formed during the shelling. The preserved case is in a deplorable state. Only a few numbers slightly touched on cosmetic repairs.

And around the subtropical flora still blooms and smells with the southern pressure. Under the windows are huge sprawling palm trees through which the sea shines through. Nature did not want to give in to its rights by the hostile plan of the "unreasonable man."

In the republic, no tension was felt. Among the devastation and desolation, islands of well -being have already appeared. In the boarding house "Pine Grove", in the neighborhood, is a full house. Vacationers rejoice at the sun, sea, goodwill and hospitality of the local population. A few more boarding houses work. True, the pride of resort Abkhazia - Pitsunda, unfortunately, is difficult to recover from a heavy long -term ailment. Two twin towers were restored, to relax in which the Soviet man seemed to be the limit of pleasure. And although the conditions in the opening boarding houses are still modest, and the famous relic pines look drooping, the resort life in the height of the season, albeit not with the same force as before, but already seething. The same in Gagra.

The strength of the weaker sex

In the conference hall of the Pine Grove boarding house, business women of the South Caucasus and guests from Russia gathered for their first forum. Several men modestly support the walls. The forum is attended by the Minister of Economy of the Government of Abkhazia - an elegant young woman, her hair is collected from behind in the “tail”, she is beautiful and well -groomed, like most successful women, and in this hall these are these - from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bashkiria, Ossetia, Tatarstan, Sochi.

Business women were welcomed by the President of Abkhazia Sergey Bagapsh, who transferred his international flight an hour later to tell them a parting word. He thanked the women of Abkhazia for helping the republic to survive the economic blockade. “ Look for business partners. Establish good human relations based on mutual interest, with representatives of the peoples of the Caucasus and neighboring states , he said. “ You have gathered here for this today .” The language of communication on the forum is Russian.

Upon learning of the forum, of course, I could not pass by the hall, where he passed, miss the opportunity to listen to what my former compatriots are talking about, to see how they communicate with each other, to get to know them!

Azerbaijani: “ I am a diplomat by training. And then I will not change my profession . ” He speaks calmly, carefully. Not a single extra word. The fact that you can make good money on the sale of ideas. “ We develop a family business, open private kindergartens, schools. We export flowers, agricultural products, it is competitive in our country. Thanks to the oil boom, entrepreneurs receive preferential investments . ”

In Tatarstan, women organized a transport business, transporting people to resorts. They started the construction business - they build individual houses, monolithic, warm. Representative of Armenia: “ Uniting, we are power. We create an assembly of civilian non -profit organizations, the structure of business cooperation with the authorities, we try to find the form of the interaction of an elephant with an ant . ” The head of the Business Center of the Nagoric Karabakh: “ We do not have discrimination against women's business by the authorities. We lend a shuttle business, trade. Some started with the counter, and now they have their own store. We loan the agricultural sector, construction, education. "

Nadezhda Stupak (Sochi): " The Civil Code of Abkhazia coincides with the Russian, we work in one legal field, which helps business cooperation ."

The forum was about the variety of forms of entrepreneurship, creating the basis for economic stability, about how to achieve a sparing tax policy, to fight corruption, localism. The forum resolution emphasizes the inadmissibility of solving any issues in force. " No drop of blood should fall on this blessed earth ."