In the very heart of the Georgia is situated Tskhinvali / South Ossetia. At an altitude of 1000 meters and more above the sea level is to be found 89.3 % of the territory of South Ossetia. The mountain landscape also determined largely South Ossetia's climate. It is shielded against the cold northern winds by the Main Caucasus Range, which results in the fact that even at great heights it is warmer here than in the Northern Caucasus. Administratively it is divided into four regions: the Tskhinval, Dzhava, Leningori and Znaur. The industrial, cultural, and administrative centre of the Republic of South Ossetia is it's capital, the city of Tskhinval. In South Ossetia reside Russians, Georgians, Armenians, Greeks, - a total of 40 nationalities.

On 20 April 1922, after the Sovietization of Georgia in 1921, the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast (AO) was formed. Georgian writers have claimed that, like the Abkhazian ASSR, the South Ossetian AO had been formed by the Bolsheviks to create permanent sources of tension, so as to enable the Kremlin to control Georgia more easily. Both Abkhazia and South Ossetia were said to be run on an ethnocratic basis, to the detriment of Georgian national interests. Hence the perceived Georgian need to curtail if not abolish these autonomous entities. The response from the South Ossetes was either to try to secure federal status within Georgia or, failing that, to seek to be reunited with North Ossetia, forming part of Russia.