Georgia Historical Background
Figure 11. Georgia, 1994
GEORGIA'S LOCATION AT a major commercial crossroads and among
several powerful neighbors has provided both advantages and
disadvantages through some twenty-five centuries of history.
Georgia is comprised of regions having distinctive traits. The
ethnic, religious, and linguistic characteristics of the country
as a unit coalesced to a greater degree than before under Russian
rule in the nineteenth century. Then, beneath a veneer of
centralized economic and political control imposed during seventy
years of Soviet rule, Georgian cultural and social institutions
survived, thanks in part to Georgia's relative distance from
Moscow. As the republic entered the post-Soviet period in the
1990s, however, the prospects of establishing true national
autonomy based on a common heritage remained unclear.
Although Saint George is the country's patron saint, the name
Georgia derives from the Arabic and Persian words,
Kurj and Gurj, for the country. In 1991 Georgia--
called Sakartvelo in Georgian and Gruziia in
Russian--had been part of a Russian or Soviet empire almost
continuously since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when
most of the regions that constitute modern Georgia accepted
Russian annexation in order to gain protection from Persia. Prior
to that time, some combination of the territories that comprise
modern Georgia had been ruled by the Bagratid Dynasty for about
1,000 years, including periods of foreign domination and
fragmentation.
Data as of March 1994
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