Some History of Georgian Territory (Esp. vis-à-vis South Ossetia)

It’s been a while since I paid a lot of attention to the complex subdivisions of the former Soviet Union1 but a comment left this afternoon made me go back to look at the evolution of the territory. If we look at Georgia during the Soviet era, Georgia itself was a Soviet Socialist Republic (remember, USSR stood for “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” of which Russia was the largest and clearly most dominant, but many states that are currently independent states (e.g., Ukraine, the “Stans”, the Baltic states and others) were also Soviet Republics. The USSR also had a number of other sub-divisions including Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, Autonomous Oblasts, Autonomous Okrugs and perhaps some other divisions that I am forgetting. Each division was considered a rung lower in status that the division above, but theoretically were autonomous from those other units. Indeed, in theory the USSR was a collection of autonomous elements...