Gagra within the Russian Empire

Palace of the Prince of Oldenburg

In the 16th century, Gagra and the rest of western Georgia were conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The western merchants were expelled and the town entered a prolonged period of decline, with much of the local population fleeing into the mountains. By the 18th century, the town had been reduced to little more than a village surrounded by forests and disease-ridden swamps. Its fortunes were restored in the 19th century when the Russian Empire expanded into the region, annexing the whole of Georgia. The swamps were drained and the town was rebuilt around a new military hospital. Its population, however, was still small; in 1866, a census recorded that 336 men and 280 women, mostly local families or army officers and their dependents, lived in Gagra. The town suffered badly in the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878, when Turkish troops invaded, destroyed the town and expelled the local population. Russia won the war, however, and rebuilt Gagra again.

View of Gagra's wharf sometime between 1905 and 1915.

In 1904 the town was discovered by Duke Alexander of Oldenburg, a member of the Russian royalty.^[7] He saw the potential of the region's sub-tropical climate and decided to build a high-class resort there. Having raised a large sum of money from the government, he built a palace there for himself and constructed a number of other buildings in an eclectic variety of architectural styles from around Europe. A park was laid out with tropical trees, and parrots and monkeys were imported to give it an exotic feel. Despite the expensive work, the resort was not initially a success, although it did later attract a growing number of foreign tourists visiting on cruises of the Black Sea. Following the founding of the resort, the area was ceded from Sukhum Okrug to Black Sea Governorate in 1904.^[8]

Gagra under the Soviet Union

In the Russian Revolution of 1905, a local uprising produced a revolutionary government in the town, which founded a short-lived Republic of Gagra. This was soon defeated and the revolutionaries were arrested en masse. The First World War a few years later was a disaster for Gagra, destroying the tourist trade on which it depended. The Russian Revolution shortly afterwards saw the Bolsheviks take over the town; despite a brief French attempt to repel them during the Russian Civil War, the town was firmly incorporated into the new Soviet Union within Georgian SSR.

Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin issued a decree in 1919 establishing a "worker's resort" in Gagra, nationalising the resort that had been built by Oldenburg. It became a popular holiday resort for Soviet citizens and during World War II gained a new role as a site for the rehabilitation of wounded soldiers. After the war, various state-run sanatoriums were built there. The resort grew and was developed intensively as part of the "Soviet Riviera". A 1985 musical film Winter Evening in Gagra further popularized the resort.

Gagra in post-soviet Abkhazia

In the late 1980s, tensions grew between the Georgian and Abkhazian communities in the region. An all-out war erupted between 1992-1993 which ended in a defeat of the Georgian government's forces. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians were expelled from their homes in Abkhazia and thousands were massacred in an outbreak of mass ethnic cleansing.^[9] Gagra and the Abkhazian capital Sukhumi were at the centre of the fighting and suffered heavy damage. To this date ethnic Georgians have an IDP status and have not been able to return to their homes.