As is usual in the case of armed conflicts, the war that broke out between Georgia and Abkhazia in the autumn of 1992 also raised the theme of refugees. The Republic of Estonia decided to evacuate Estonians from Abkhazia, whose ancestors had emigrated there in the 1880s and established the villages of Estonia, Lower and Upper Linda, Salme and Sulev. The evacuation that Estonia carried out in the autumn of 1992 was the first humanitarian mission of the once again independent (1991) Republic of Estonia. It was motivated by an essentialist discourse of relations between homeland and diaspora: the metropolis forms a common ethnic space with the diaspora and compatriots going from abroad to the motherland are persons who are returning home. The young Estonian state, where nationalist sentiments carried great weight, wished to help its compatriots to return home.

The rescue operation attracted a great deal of attention in Estonia’s media. It provided subject matter for discussion on the theme of what the relationship of the motherland to communities living in diaspora is and should be like. Or as was written in the press a few years later, the once again independent Republic of Estonia had the opportunity during this conflict to show for the first time that the “nation state is capable of helping people closely connected to it”. Thus the need unexpectedly arose to quickly work out a repatriation policy. Repatriation makes it necessary to establish acclimatisation conditions for the evacuated persons, and requires the existence of an integration policy – the events of that time provided material for discussion from this aspect as well.

The events of that time are reconstructed in this article on the basis of the recollections of different participants, both evacuators and evacuees. The reasons for the evacuation, and at whose initiative the evacuation of Estonians from Abkhazia took place back then, are considered, along with what the motives for action were of the different sides. The acclimatisation processes of the evacuees in Estonia are also analysed.

One hundred seventy Estonians and members of their families were brought from Abkhazia to Estonia using three airplanes (on 23–24 October, 29–31 October and 21–23 November) in the course of the evacuation operation. The overall coordination of the rescue operation was delegated to the Estonian Migration Board, while at the same time the Rescue Board team did much of the actual work. Both of these agencies had just been established and tried to prove themselves in the best possible light in the course of the operation. Both were sufficiently ambitious to lead the substantive coordination of the operation, which caused mutual tensions. Similarly, the professional background of the employees of the two different agencies inhibited mutual understanding: the visions of the Migration Board’s people with civilian backgrounds and of the Rescue Board’s people with military backgrounds regarding the operation’s tactics differed considerably based on the recollections of participants. Differences of opinion nevertheless did not directly inhibit the success of the operation since the aim was unambiguously comprehensible.

Forty-two of the 170 evacuees that arrived in Estonia were children and 20 were of retirement age, the remainder were of working age. Why did primarily younger people capable of working leave, while older people mostly stayed at home? To the extent that there is no reason to believe that elderly people would suffer less in wars than younger people, such statistics bear witness to selective factors. For instance, there were also people among the evacuees who by evacuating carried through with their long-time wish to leave Abkhazia. Alongside actual fear of war, which certainly cannot be underestimated, socio-economic calculations also played a role.

What followed the rescue operation, including the acclimatisation of the evacuees in Estonia, is considered in Estonian public opinion mainly on the basis of the back to one’s roots discourse, so to speak: Estonians whose forefathers left Estonia more than a hundred years ago are now returning home. Interviews conducted a few years later with Estonians who relocated from Abkhazia to Estonia bear witness to the fact that for them, the concept of home is associated more with their home village in Abkhazia. This also induced the circumstance that many of them experienced difficulties in acclimatisation and integration in Estonia. It emerges from this that the essential homeland discourse that ties the motherland and the diaspora together into a unified cultural-territorial body based on nationality, and views the movement of members of the diaspora to the motherland as returning home, so to speak, certainly does not apply in every individual case. Nor is it capable of explaining why people who have returned home feel uncomfortable at home, are in some cases altogether motivated to reformulate their hitherto existing identity, and in many cases yearn to return abroad. Returning to one’s roots does not necessarily always mean arriving home.