ATOTSI, Georgia — As Crimeans danced in the streets this week, giddy at the prospect of being gathered into Russia, few were watching as closely as the residents of the tiny mountainous enclave of South Ossetia, who, five and a half years ago, were similarly ecstatic.
On the day in 2008 when Russia formally recognized the enclave as independent of Georgia, young men hung out of their car windows, waving Russian flags and spraying pedestrians with Champagne. Officials daydreamed about building an economy based on tourism, like that of Monaco or Andorra.
That has not happened. These days South Ossetia’s economy is entirely dependent on budgetary funds from Russia. Unemployment is high, and so are prices, since goods must now be shuttled in through the tunnel, long and thin like a drinking straw, that cuts through the Caucasus ridge from Russia.
Its political system is controlled by elites loyal to Moscow, suddenly wealthy enough to drive glossy black cars, though many roads are pitted or unpaved. Dozens of homes damaged in the 2008 war with Georgia have never been repaired. Dina Alborova, who heads a nonprofit organization in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, said her early hopes “all got corrected, step by step.”
RUSSIA
Caspian
Sea
ABKHAZIA
Atotsi
Tskhinvali
Black
Sea
GEORGIA
SOUTH
OSSETIA
GEORGIA
ARMENIA
ARMENIA
AZERBAIJAN
TURKEY
IRAN
50 miles
“During the first winter, we still thought, ‘The war just ended,’ ” she said. “By the second winter, frustration had taken root. When the third winter came, everything was clear.”
When Russia invaded Georgia, repelling a Georgian attack on South Ossetia and taking control of the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it seemed most unlikely that the Kremlin was thinking about long-term consequences.
As in Crimea, the war was presented to Russians as a humanitarian effort to protect its citizens, and more broadly as a challenge to encirclement by the United States, which was aligned with Georgia. Television stations gave the intervention blanket coverage, and it was wildly popular in Russia, lifting the approval ratings of Dmitri A. Medvedev to the highest point of his presidency.
The aftermath of recognition, however, has presented Russia with a long series of headaches. This week, economists have warned repeatedly that Crimea, if it is absorbed, will prove a serious drag on Russia’s budget, but their arguments have been drowned out in the roar of public support for annexation.
Aleksei V. Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Russian officials “will be shocked” with the challenges they face when trying to manage Crimea — reviving its economy, distributing money and influence among its ethnic groups, and trying to control the corruption that accompanies all big Russian projects. And, judging from precedent, the public’s euphoria will fade, he said.
“I think that in Russia, the majority of the society forgot about Ossetia, and if it weren’t for the Olympics, the majority of the society would also forget about Abkhazia,” Mr. Malashenko said. “Of course, Crimea is not Ossetia. But anyway, the popularity of Crimeans, and the Crimean tragedy, will be forgotten in a year.”
South Ossetia’s president, Leonid Tibilov, a former K.G.B. officer, was among the first to celebrate Russia’s decision to absorb Crimea on Tuesday, calling it “the only possible step to grant solid peace to Crimea, which is the main and essential condition for its further prosperity.”
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Publish Date March 18, 2014. Photo by Pool photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko.He has some insight into the question: South Ossetia for years lobbied Russia to absorb it, voting for accession as far back as 1992. Russia did not respond until 2008, sending tanks across the Georgian border and recognizing South Ossetia as an independent country.
People were delighted to see the Russian soldiers.
Separatists here had spent two decades locked in conflict with the Georgian authorities, and had little economy to speak of, apart from apple orchards and the smuggling of drugs, counterfeit money and bootleg vodka through the tunnel into Russia. Georgian forces had shelled Tskhinvali, forcing many residents to cower for days in basements, and when Russia formally recognized South Ossetia, it meant a guarantee of protection.
“Finally, finally, Russia has acknowledged that we exist, and that we have suffered,” one Ossetian militiaman exulted that day. “Ossetia thanks its defenders,” read graffiti on one building, and another read, “Shame, Georgian bootlicker!” One South Ossetian official wondered aloud which country would be the next to offer recognition — Serbia, China, Syria or Belarus. None ever did.
Russia, for its part, was lavishly demonstrating its commitment to South Ossetia; the conductor Valery Gergiev, who has close ties in the Kremlin, flew the entire orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater in to perform a symphony under floodlights near a ruined building.
Some measure of that warmth has lasted. Ms. Alborova, director of the Agency for Social, Economic and Cultural Development, still remembers being in her basement with a few family members during the Georgian bombardment, with the “sense that these were the very last seconds of my life.” Now, she said, “thank God, we sleep peacefully.”
But within a few months of Russia’s recognition, shivering through the winter behind windows made of plastic sheeting, people began to wonder when the billions of rubles of aid pledged by Russia would reach them. The answer seems to have been that much of it was stolen: Mr. Malashenko said he estimated that 30 percent of the aid pledged by Russia had reached its target.
Russia’s federal audit chamber found that six months after the conflict, only $1.4 million had been spent on reconstruction out of a disbursement of $55 million in priority aid. By last year, the chamber estimated that $33 million had been lost or misused. South Ossetia’s government eventually opened 70 cases against former officials, alleging that they stole a total of $22 million.
The flows of cash changed South Ossetia, complained an academic from Tskhinvali, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering the local authorities. Officials who once lived modestly began to build lavish houses in “apricot and pink” and cruise the streets in “black cars with blacked-out windows,” she said, adding that she had recently paid $6 for a cup of green tea.
“It will be sad if Crimea turns out the same way,” she said. “This culture of Russian expansion, it means lots of money, but terribly distributed. It destroyed the good ways of a small people.”
Though many in South Ossetia had hoped to be absorbed into Russia, the Kremlin has so far refused to consider annexation, most likely because it would prove destabilizing for Russia’s turbulent Caucasus region, Mr. Malashenko said. Despite 15 months of lobbying by Moscow, only four nations followed Russia’s lead in recognizing South Ossetia as an independent country, and two of them were Pacific islands with populations of fewer than 15,000.
Moscow has also stumbled in its attempt to maintain political control. When Kremlin “political technologists” tried to engineer a victory for its preferred presidential candidate in 2011 and 2012, they prompted street demonstrations that nearly ended in civil unrest.
Varvara Pakhomenko, a researcher with the International Crisis Group, said that the corrupt reconstruction process “created a very critical mood” toward Russia, and that South Ossetians had begun to complain about the behavior of Russian soldiers based outside Tskhinvali.
“More and more, you can hear people saying that Russia is actually not interested in the people of South Ossetia, they ignore their opinions, and there is now fear that if the political situation changes, Russia might revoke its recognition or in some way return South Ossetia to Georgia,” she said. Many, she said, pin their hopes on the dream of finally acceding to Russia, which they think will entitle them to higher pensions and salaries. Others have begun to leave the region, she said, “feeling the impossibility to change the situation.”
As Crimea hurtled toward accession this week, South Ossetia’s isolation deepened. Villagers in Atotsi, in Georgian-controlled territory, watched men in unmarked military uniforms build a five-foot-high barbed-wire fence across a stretch of pasture, part of a 30-mile barrier that officials say will eventually surround the entire enclave. A poster read, “The state border of the Republic of South Ossetia.”
Zemfira Plieva, 43, who grew up inside South Ossetia and now lives just outside it, once crossed the boundary several times a week to sell vegetables or visit her sister, and she watched the spiky fence rising with dismay. When her mother died, three years ago, she was so afraid of being arrested that she did not attend the funeral. When asked what would happen if South Ossetia were formally annexed by Russia, she started to cry.
“I will never again see anyone from my family,” she said. “I don’t even want to think about it.”
An article on Wednesday about problems Crimea may face, judging from those South Ossetia has encountered since Russia declared it independent of the Republic of Georgia in 2008, misstated the middle initial of an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, who noted Russia may find Crimea hard to manage. He is Aleksei V. Malashenko, not Aleksei A.