sentences:  The exact status of Abkhazia as a "treaty republic" was never clarified during its existence, and historian Arsène Saparov has suggested even officials at the time did not know what the phrase meant.The status had symbolic meaning to the Abkhaz people, who never forgot they had, at least in theory, an independent state.With the advent of glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s, calls for Abkhazia to restore its status began.