SUMMARY:

Based primarily on archival documents of the Constitutional Committee of the Georgian Constituent Assembly concerning the drafting of the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1918–1921, this article focuses on a critical moment in the negotiations over autonomous status for Abkhazia. It explores the intrinsic tensions between the drafters’ commitment to creating a unitary and nationalizing state while at the same time accommodating the demands of a regional ethnic minority with its own contested conception of identity. In the context of domestic and international political turbulence and in the course of protracted and often contentious deliberations, the negotiating parties attempted to “square the circle” that would concede meaningful autonomy within unitary sovereignty.