From the History of the Occupied Ksani Gorge Villages (Kveriati – the Past and the Present)

Abstract

This paper examines the village of Kveriati in the Ksani Gorge, historically part of the Karchokhi community. It situates Kveriati within its broader historical and geographical context and explores the religious life of the settlement, with particular emphasis on its sacred architecture— most notably the Church of the Savior and the Church of St. George. The reconstruction of the village’s demographic profile draws on the expenditure records of the Samtavisi episcopal seat from the latter half of the eighteenth century, as well as the 1774 and 1783 statistical descriptions of the Ksani Saeristavo. Together, these sources enable a diachronic analysis of population dynamics, household fiscal obligations, the structure and scale of agrarian activity, and the socio-economic relations that defined interactions between serfs, peasants, and the landowning elite. The study of nineteenth-century data begins with the Princely Census of 1803 and continues through the Russian cameral censuses conducted between 1804 and 1886. The demographic trends of the twentieth century are reconstructed on the basis of the 1923 enumeration and the union censuses of 1939, 1959, 1970, 1979, and 1989. Special attention is given to the early twenty-first century and to the demographic consequences of the occupation of Akhalgori Municipality. Notably, most of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century cameral and union census materials used in this study are published here for the first time, which significantly enhances the scholarly originality and value of the work. To offer a more comprehensive picture of the village’s past, the analysis also integrates folkloric materials preserved among the inhabitants of the Ksani Gorge alongside written historical sources. The conclusion addresses the village’s present state under occupation, noting that, following the August 2008 war, Kveriati has effectively become a depopulated settlement.