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As I wandered the streets, I tried to imagine the horror. No small task when confronted with the throngs of Russian tourists plying the beach and surrounding area. Yet, there were still monuments to war strewn about the city, not the least of which was the Council of Ministers building gutted during the conflict. Many members of the deposed Abkhazian government refused to flee, a decision that led to their not-so-glorious deaths.
The ruin still stands, serving as a grim reminder. I wondered if it remained as a testament to independence and victory over the Georgians. The “Alley of Glory” monument dedicated to Abkhazia's fallen war heroes…
The causes of the 1992-93 Abkhazian War are complex and too numerous to expand upon here. A lot of very bad people did a lot of very bad shit on both sides. All the mayhem and bloodshed led to the ethnic cleansing of about 250,000 Georgians. Russian government actors, or various rogue elements therein, were (allegedly) behind much of the instability in the former soviets after the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Chaos reigned supreme, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever have a full accounting…
The institute began as a Soviet project to create a race of hybrid super humans with the strength to carry out the laborious work of industrialization without the mental capacity to complain about it. Scientists injected sperm into female chimpanzees without success. Allegedly, they took it a step further, inseminating human females with monkey sperm, though no one has ever admitted this publicly. I’m guessing, if you’re willing to do the former, the latter ain’t so much of a reach. (For more info, see Stalin's space monkeys)…