But the move for an independent Georgia also revealed the fissures that existed within the small state. In fact a fierce, ethnic conflict had intermittently threatened to tear apart the country, since initial skirmishes around the time of the Bolshevik revolution. While most of Georgia
desired to break away from the USSR, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions in Georgia's north, firmly aligned themselves with Moscow.
Later that same year, the South Ossetian Supreme Soviet approved a decision to unite South Ossetia with the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and thus declared itself free from Georgia. However, a day later, the Georgian SSR Supreme Soviet revoked the decision and returned status quo, a move that still fosters bad blood between the rival, competing camps.
By 1991, Georgia had declared its independence, and the world watched the USSR unravel. South Ossetia and Abkhazia have seen tensions flare throughout the last two decades, but Georgia had resolved to keep the two districts under its control, and has managed to do so till now. The country's politics, however, is constantly coloured by this conflict.
Image: Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili gives a speech about the nation's confrontation with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Photograph: Burak Kara/Getty Images
Also read: 'No wrinkles in India-Russia relationship'
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