The only “autonomy” the oblasts and ASSRs had was to teach their native language in school and practice their “colorful national folkarts”. Administratively they were controlled by the SSR in which they were located. The ASSRs, like Abkhazia had a better deal because their leader was also an ex officio member of the government of the SSR, while the oblasts were only represented in the Chamber of Deputies.

They were originally called national oblasts, but the name was changed in the late 1970s.

North Ossetia was the Ossetia ASSR under the RSFSR, but the Ossetia AO and Abkhazia ASSR were both ruled by the Georgian SSR from Tbilisi.

The only reason South Ossetia isn’t part of the Russian Federation is that South Ossetians, unlike their North Ossetian neighbors but like their Georgian neighbors to the south, sided with the Mensheviks rather than the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. So when the lines got drawn after the Mensheviks in Georgia got crushed in 1921, they got drawn on the Menshevik/Georgian side of the line, rather than the Russia side of the line. But they were still treated as an autonomous province, and were not ruled from Tbilisi.

The point, the point… South Ossetia has not been ruled by Georgia at any point during the past 200+ years, and the main problem causing all the recent unpleasantness was Georgia trying to cancel their status as an autonomous province and impose rule from Tbilisi during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Regardless of who is “to blame” for any particular military action, this isn’t going to get resolved until Georgia either manages to do some ethnic cleansing to get rid of the Ossetians, or gives up their expansionist aspirations to rule a territory they’ve never ruled and comes up with some sort of reasonable federation status for South Ossetia rather than trying to impose Georgian rule. Or Russia simply annexes South Ossetia, which they may very well do eventually if Georgia continues to be intransigent about their “right” to impose their rule upon Ossetians who by this time want absolutely nothing to do with Georgia and Georgians.

As for the facts, the Georgians have been in that location before the Greeks “discovered them” and Homer wrote about them.

The Ossetians and Abkhazians were pushed into the area by the Russian expansion that began in the 16th century. I assume the Ossetians, who were known as the Alans at the time got fed up with the constant arguing in what is Afghanistan and moved out to the Steppes. They are actually related to the Pashto.

Too bad the Georgians didn’t have Lou Dobbs to tell them how to deal with immigration at the time.

I have found it *amazing* just the sheer number of human interest stories in my local paper about Georgia. Its pretty amazing that when the US isn’t in the conflict that appropriate justification for the use of military force and civilian casualties suddenly matter!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Russia’s actions were wholly unnecessary and greedy, as Kevin Drum so aptly stated. Had they simply defended South Ossetia and not entered Georgia proper, they might have not been so resoundingly condemned by the whole of Europe. They certainly would have stood in positive contrast to the asinine BushCo™.