Sukhumi: The history of the region became ashes Neal Ascherson
is a well known British foreign correspondent. He is also the
author of a book of history and reportage about the Black Sea.
It was written as the Soviet Union crumbled and in the period
just afterwards. It was first published in 1995. In 2007 a new
and updated version came out. This is not surprising. For an
English language readership Ascherson's book had established
itself as the single best and most readable introduction to the
region and it has lost none of its freshness and poignancy.
Given the conflict in Georgia in 2008 the idea of bringing out a
new edition was timely indeed. One chapter, from which these
extracts are taken, is devoted to Abkhazia, the breakaway part
of Georgia which is now recognised as independent by Russia. In
a painstakingly fair-minded way Ascherson explains how the
ancestors of the Abkhaz were already there when the first Greeks
arrived in the sixth century BC, and how by 1992 they had become
less than 20 per cent o