History of Civil Society in the Caucasus

Abstract

In order to explore the relationship between the legacy of one regime and civil institutions of its successor states, we have to first understand the dynamics of the antecedent regime’s civil sector, investigate its main characteristics and analyse its organisational structure and operational environment. This chapter provides an in-depth examination of the historical origins of civil society in the Caucasus. The break-up of the Soviet Union led to rapid growth and proliferation of independent civil societies. While there is a plethora of civil society organisations in the post- communist public sphere, many scholars of post- communist studies saw a genuine civil sector only emerging in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s (Biddulph, 1975; Lewin, 1988; Starr, 1988). More recent scholarship on civil society, however, argues that civil society of the former Soviet Union dates back to Tsarist Russia. It claims that voluntary civic associations are not merely a post- communist phenomenon but existed and prospered well before the creation of the USSR (Bradley, 2002; Conroy, 2006). However, the academic literature to date makes scant reference to civil association in the pre-communist and Soviet Caucasus.