If History Is a Guide, Crimeans' Celebration May Be Short-Lived

[David Morris]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/south-ossetia-crimea.html

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."
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