South Ossetia

The Block

South Ossetia is a small territory in the Caucasus that formally declared independence from Georgia in 1990 (which in turn became separate from the Soviet Union in 1991) but is only formally recognized as an independent state by five UN member states. Due to this lack of international recognition, South Ossetia does not have a block on the Quilt of Belonging made for them. Information on the identity of this polity can be found in the Cultural Profile section below.

Cultural Profile

South Ossetia is a small landlocked region in the Caucasus mountains that declared independence from the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1990 as the South Ossetian Soviet Democratic Republic. When the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in turn broke up, South Ossetia officially called itself the Republic of South Ossetia. Since that time, South Ossetia has only become recognized as an independent state by five UN-members: Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru, and Syria. Since 2008, South Ossetia has actually been occupied by Russian military forces with the outbreak of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. South Ossetia’s government has declared an actual desire for annexation since then that to date has been unfulfilled. Most of the world’s nations consider South Ossetia along with Abkhazia to be Russian occupied territories of Georgia.

The Ossetian language is noteworthy as being an isolated pocket of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family in a region where the other language families predominate. Such Ossetians make up 89.9% of the region with 7.4% being Georgian, 1.1% being Russian, 0.7% being Armenian, and the rest belonging to other groups. Its official languages are Ossetian and Russian with Russian Rubles serving as the main currency. The capital is Tskhinvali. The total population is around 56000.

The small territory of South Ossetia means that there are few natural resources to serve as an economic base beyond some natural gas. Agriculture forms the vast majority of the economy.