Touchedie – Wikipedia
The Touched (in Georgian: Tusheti , sometimes transcribed Leisure ) is a historic region of Georgia, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site [ first ] .
Historically, the touchdown is made up of four distinct communities, division based on the four valleys of the region:
- To the north, the Piriti -Tachetie (“Toucheté beyond [mountains]” in Georgian), the villages being built along the Pirikitis-Alazani river;
- In the south, Gommetsaria, along the Tushetis-Alazani river;
- To the east, the Tchagma -Tack, bringing together the main village of Omalo and other neighboring villages;
- To the west, the Tsova -Touch, that is to say the people of the Bate Touches in the Tzovatis-Tskali river valley.
Touchetius, as well as the neighboring regions of Khevsouretia and Pchavie, located on the borders of northeast of Georgia, are regions still strongly landlocked because without real access road, but real natural sanctuaries and bastions of the Georgian national soul where pastoral life (shepherds, sheep, transhumance) remains very important.
On the borders of Daghestan, from which it is separated by the Grand Caucasus, it is a country of shepherds that raise their sheep by practicing transhumance (summer). It is a region still without electricity or telephone where the villages are at hours of walking of each other and accessible only by mule paths where the horse remains the main means of travel. Even all-terrain vehicles find it difficult to serve the region.
Omalo is the main village, located in the center of the region; It has an aerodrome and helicopters allow easy tourists to move [ 2 ] . Current road access, six months a year, is done by Telavi (Kakhétie) and the Col d’Abano (in) (2826 m.).
The shortage of written historical sources prevents the drafting of a reliable history of the region. The region would have been converted to Georgian Orthodox Christianity to the VII It is century.
After the Soviet invasion of Georgia in 1921, the Communist regime was quite slowly established in the countryside. The local economy is then based on pastoralism, with an annual transhumance between mountain pastures and winter pastures in the Kakhétie plain: certain aristocratic families, as well as the Mamasakhlisi (მამასახლისი: local lords) had up to 6,000 sheep, 60 to 70 horses, 10 to 15 cattle. Everyone finds themselves dispossessed during the forced collectivization ordered by Stalin in 1930: the business of wool became a state monopoly. This encounters strong reluctance: many peasants prefer to shoot down or let their cattle die rather than seeing them for the benefit of Kolkhozes, that is to say, in practice, nomenklatura. Out of 90,000 sheep, more than half are lost, as well as 15% of cattle. Qualified as “koulaks”, risking deportation, these refractory peasants prefer to kill themselves in their mountains, or even form bands of brigands. This is why communist propaganda insists on the civilizing action of the regime in touch: the churches are transformed into schools, which aim to eradicate superstitions, clanism (the main clans were tsova, pirikiti, gometsari and tchagma ) and Vendetta, in order to transform this picturesque region into a tourist place for workers from the whole of the Soviet Union. The local breed of the sheep, robust and well suited to local conditions, is modified by crossing with the merino. The possessions are not, as elsewhere, completely prohibited, but are limited to 0.25 ha , 40 sheep, one horse and two dairy cows per family, everything else going to Kolkhoze. In the harshness of the Caucasus, these individual lots do not allow a family to survive: many touches must migrate to the cities and certain villages are abandoned [ 3 ] .
During the Second World War, the Soviet authority relaxed and bands are formed to fight the agents of the administration; Resumption in hand did not occur until 1946. Under the government of Khrushchev, the constraints softened: the peasants are entitled to a livestock of 200 sheep per family and some discreetly exceed the authorized threshold; These constraints were lifted in the 1980s [ 3 ] .
The Government of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia has built the first carrosable route to the Touchetie in the 1960s, but it was immediately deteriorated by landslides and the floods of the rivers.
The first works and ethnographic and sociological articles on the keys – mainly written in Georgian and Russian – are published from the end of XIX It is century. In French, Georges Charachidzé’s work, The religious system of pagan Georgia – structural analysis of a civilization (edited by François Maspéro in 1968), is probably the best source of information on the keys.
Pork and pork are or were traditionally prohibited in touch and in close mountain regions.
Abandonment of touch and migration to kakhétia [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
The Kakhétie plain, long used as a winter grazing, gradually becomes an intermediate station area, halfway through transhumance between the mountain pastures and the Gourdjaani plain. In the middle of XIX It is A century, part of the population begins to settle there in winter, occupying the villages of Touchetie until summer. The first are the touches of the clan, or “theme”, of Tsova, which had the most important herds for the most small territory. They are at the origin of the creation of the village of Zémo Alvani. Following them come from those of Pirikiti’s “theme”. The village of Kvemo Alvani was created later by the Gometsari, as well as the tchagma, part of which also lives in the village of Lalisq’uri [ 3 ] .
Filmography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
- Julia Finkernagel, Georgia: the secret valleys of Touchetie , documentary, 2018, Germany
Related articles [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
external links [ modifier | Modifier and code ]
- Valérie leger-Baron « The collectivization of the sheep house in eastern Georgia », Notebooks of the Russian world: Russia, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, Independent States , vol. 35, n O 3, , p.683-701 ( read online ) .
Recent Comments