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The Curse of Displacement: Local Narratives of Forced Expulsion and the Appropriation of Abandoned Property in Abkhazia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2020

Andrea Peinhopf Open the ORCID record for Andrea Peinhopf [Opens in a new window]
Andrea Peinhopf*
Affiliation:
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
*
*Corresponding author. Email: andrea.peinhopf.14@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Since the end of the Georgian-Abkhaz war, the often-precarious status of the Georgians displaced from Abkhazia has received significant academic attention. In contrast, the consequences of displacement from the reverse perspective—how it has affected the people who stayed behind—remains underanalyzed. Drawing on narratives collected during several months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article argues that although ethnic Abkhazians see themselves as victims of ethnic violence rather than perpetrators, the re-distribution of Georgian property nevertheless caused significant distress. Many condemned the practice of appropriation, suggesting that taking what is not one’s own is not only a violation of the property of the original owner, but also of the Abkhaz moral code and therefore shameful. To them, the trophy houses were a curse, both literally—as spaces haunted by former occupants—and metaphorically, as a source and reminder of a certain “moral corruption” within Abkhazian society. However, while the stories around the trophy houses reflect substantial intra-communal divisions, I suggest that they are also an expression of a shared postwar experience. Like the horror stories of Georgian violence, and the tales of Abkhaz heroism, they have become part of an intimate national repertoire constitutive of Abkhazia’s postwar community.

Keywords

forced displacementethnic cleansingnarrativesvictimhoodAbkhazia
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 49 , Issue 4: Special Issue on 1918 and the Ambiguities of “Old-New Europe” , July 2021 , pp. 710 - 727
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Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2020

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