Ilia Chavchavadze, our cherished writer, once appealed to the nation: “What we inherited from our fore-fathers, are three saintly treasures, and if we do not prove ourselves their worthy possessors, what can be said of us, what shall we answer to our successors?”

Vaja-Pshavela used a more lively approach: “A nation without its land, resembles a bird without wings, a fish without water, and life without air”.

The world history counts not a few cases, when some nation, at a critical stage of its ethnic evolution, abandons its historical homeland, changes its values and priorities, the stereotypes which regulate the behaviour of the ethnos, picks up a new language or religion, and finally, undergoes – either, a transformation of its initial ethnic culture – or a complete assimilation.

Although, the Georgians faced many times the danger of loosing the features, determining their ethnic individuality, but - at the price of great sacrifice – they still succeeded in preserving the major part of their homeland, mother-tongue and religion, due to the fact, that from the earliest stages of their history, they understood the role of the utmost militant alertness and the unyielding strive for liberty – in order to save their own national identity” (72).

S.Janashia is justified in his remark: “Few are peoples, who have met as many perils in their historical existence, as the Georgians have. Numerous were the enemies of the country, and many disasters the nation faced, but the people succeeded in keeping their national existence and their old culture” (128, p.206).

Indeed, how much endeavour required the fate from Georgians, to retain the rich and beautiful land, endowed to the country, because the country “created like Eden”, attracted all kinds of invaders from all places and of all scope. And hard as all it is to say, the lands of Georgia became “a tasteful piece” even for ethnic groups, who at times of their utmost troubles, were assisted by Georgians in a brotherly fashion - and who had been provided with a territory to live – for the exiles and refugees they were.

A Russian author, A.Borozdin, in his description of one natural condition of the ancient parts of Georgia – Samegrelo, especially underlines, that: “The Europeans are extremely surprised at seeing the richness of the local soil… A gardener bent, picked a handful of earth and showed it to me, and then said with delight: “You know, a handful of this earth costs 20 francs in Paris; this is chocolate rather, than the soil. Ah, just imagine the camellias growing on such earth! What a pity, this land is in the hands of people who had no understanding whatsoever of how to utilize this earth and land”.

The cited lines are the standard illustration of a foreigner’s greed towards the major treasure of the nation, multiplied with the impertinent attitude to the historical owners of the place. We are facing here European insolence, classically revealed, that in fact from the beginning distorted the attitude of the Christian Europe towards Georgia – in developing the relations and in the right political course of the country.

Of course, we are not inclined to propound that any of our sensible countryman was capable of comparing the rich earth of Kolkheti – to chocolate, or insisting on growing camellias in Samegrelo, but this does not mean that Georgians had no idea of how to use this land, sprinkled with sweat and blood of their ancestors. And indeed, it is a grave mistake to ignore great traditions of land cultivation this nation had, since numerous generations of our forefathers sacrificed their lives to continue longstanding agricultural traditions. Anyway, the Georgians are in no need to be taught the ways how to use their land, likewise, they do not need to be taught, how to defend their traditional life-style and ways of life.

Vaja Pshavela was right, stating that: “The nation is ever alive and never dies, till the conditions of its life and existence bear its features; the nation that understands it perfectly, and keeps and cares for its living conditions is always alive, joyous and full of life-force, it will escape its ageing and its death.”
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Countless enemies of Georgia had always been trying to deprive the people from their traditional life-style, in order to ensure the assimilation of the Georgians. Whenever they were sure of the futility of their plans, they always switched to the most cruel and brutal methods of physical annihilation of the people, or their expulsion from their homeland. The fact is the wonderful land of Georgia had always been the dream of our enemies – but without the local population, the Georgians. So, another formula of Vaja Pshavela: “Till we are alive, we have enemies” – can be considered a quintessence of the historical existence of the Georgian nation.

I.Alkhazishvili retells in his “Legends of Javakheti”: “After going up the Mleta ascent, the Russian army made a rest at the Gudauri station. It was a beautiful May morning. Totleben took the binoculars and looked down at the Aragvi gorge... Then the delighted general, like a demon, cried out in Russian: “”A country of paradise, Georgia – the land of our dream, you we need, but not your people” (44, p.156).

That was a terrible motto and a guiding principle of all aggressors of all times against the blessed land of Georgia, beginning from Murvan-Kru and Temur-lang – and ending with Shah Abbas and Totleben. “Georgia – without Georgians, or Georgians – without Georgia” – this idea of Kartvelophobia became the matter, the stone-hearted invaders had always been trying to implement, attacking our land from all sides, and the same idea was also welcomed by certain ungrateful refugees and exiles. Therefore, Giorgi Leonidze is right in his remark that for centuries, “Georgia had the sole policy of survival”, staying as an island in the immense ocean of Islamism (from the XV century), and doomed by the “enmity under the guise of well-wishing” from the Russian side.

The whole chain of terrible disasters, leading the fate of our country to the problem of “to be or not to be”, can be called the ethnocide of the Georgians, and we have to note, too, that for the theory of ethnocide, the historical adventures of the Georgian people, provide an especially ample material.
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The definition of the term ethnocide (Greek “ethnos” – people, Lat. “caedo” – kill) is given in a study of Vakhtang Itonishvili: “According to the historical experience, ethnocide – in a wide, we can also use – a classical sense, implies the materialization of such antihuman and anticivilized facts, as: 1. Planned physical extermination of the representatives (the prisoners of war, or civilians) of some ethnos (or ethnic group) - according to ethnic, racial or confessional features (resp. genocide of condensed type); 2. Planned elimination of the statehood (or the embryos of statehood) of some ethnos (or ethnic group), and the destruction of the indispensable conditions needed for their cultural progress and normal ethnopolytical evolution; 3. Deportation of the ethnos (or ethnic group) by the forcible side – from their own historical homeland (or from another county’s territory) – for ethnic, racial, religious or political reasons, and forcibly depriving them of the stylized area of habitation and material values created there; 4. Hankering after the unity of an ethnos (or ethnic group), and attempts at the destruction of their culture and assimilation through the expansion in the aspects of demography, economics, culture, ecology and ideology; 5. The inter-elimination and liquidation of its own gene-fund by a concrete ethnos (or ethnic group), participating in the social, class or other types of inter-ethnic conflicts (civil wars, tribal and confessional conflicts, political repressions and terror); 6. The indulgence of compatriots in the process of economical, cultural and ethnical degradation, due to the wrong and antinational policy of the countries’ official administration. To express it in a simpler way, an ethnocide is a generalized name of criminal actions, when an ethnos (or ethnic group) carries out a purposeful physical extermination (resp. genocide) – or ethno-cultural absorption (assimilation) - of another ethnos (or ethnic group); or – the wrong and antinational policy of the official administration of a country, leads to an eventual – or instantaneous ethno-cultural digression of its own nation, thus surrendering it to the elimination. We can conclude now, that in one case, an ethnocide takes place in the form of pitiless bloodshed and violence – and the most disgusting of it is the practice of uncovered murder, realized by the pitiless laws of racism and nazism, but in the other case, the problem under question is revealed in a comparatively “lighter” form, lacking the external forms of cruelty – which is most strikingly represented by the implementation of insidious plans of ethnic assimilation. In spite of differing forms of ethnocide: the first – of an unmasked bloodshed, and the second – of bloodless and masked, both still lead to the same grave result – total elimination of ethnos (or ethnic group) chosen as a target” (70, p.12).

If we attach the given explanations to the bloody pages of the Georgian history, we shall be easily convinced that the Georgians had for centuries been a major target for the implementers of the policy of ethnocide, - as well as in the fact that the measures had been methodically carried out, aiming at the materialization of the Kartvelophobia idea of the “Georgia – without Georgians” (or “the Georgians – without Georgia”).
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“For seven centuries already, the Georgian nation, crucified onto the geopolitical cross, living under the conditions of ethno-psychological regime of the “minor evil”, and constantly facing the historical dilemma, has been the object of permanent aggression, and has been applying its utmost strength and force, to retain its ancient statehood and the rich cultural heritage. Although Georgia lost its independence only twice (beginning of the XIX c., and in 1921), and in both cases managed to restore it again – through great sacrifice, but the country exhausted from uneven struggle for saving its statehood of three thousand years, the country which appeared in the terrible clutches of “divide et impere”, underwent a catastrophe of territorial cuts and the gene fond of the Georgians suffered huge losses. Not even mentioning the period of “Golden Age”, when Georgia was spread onto 205 thousand sq. km, only the last three centuries brought the losses of almost half of Georgia’s former territories, historical lands and genuine provinces (Tao, Klarjeti, Shavsheti, Chaneti, Kola, Artani, Erusheti, Bambaki, Dvaleti, Saingilo, etc.) that foreign countries had seized. While the territory of Georgia was 130,4 thousand. Sq. km in the XVII century, in the XIX c. it became 102,0 thousand. Sq. km, in 1919 – 88,4 thous.sq.km, and after the Sovietization - only 69,7 thousand. Sq. km was left.

The given data, and bitter experience of the invasions of Tartars, Kizilbashis, Urum-Osmans, Lackies, Ossetians and Russians (which implied a negative practice of massive extermination of Georgians, deportation from their own historical motherland, or persecution in their own historical homeland, the wide-scale colonization of the Georgian land by foreigners – after the expulsion of Georgians, religious persecutions, robbing and pillaging of population, kidnapping and selling people abroad, ideological and economical diversions, degeneration of Georgians through cultural expansion, sacrificing the Georgians taking part in the foreign military campaigns, or their permanent expulsion and exile and other types of negative practices), clearly proves that the appetite of outer or inner enemies of the country , had been growing in the process of devouring by portions the lands sprinkled with Georgians’ blood, and consequently, what we face – is a heartbreaking illustration of the successive deterioration of the conditions, necessary for the normal ethnic evolution of the Georgians” (70, p.12).

If we take into consideration the bitter experience of the latest pages of the Georgian history, the recent years of aggressive separatism (the so-called Georgian-Ossetian and Georgian-Abkhazian ethnic conflicts) whith a plan of successive cleansing of the Abkhazian and Shida Kartli’s territories from the Georgians carried out insidiously and 10 thousand sq. km (i.e. 16% of the present territory of Georgia), in fact appeared under Russian supervision we shall not be mistaken in presuming that the negative process of cutting the Georgian lands has not yet finished (see pages 198-199).