fedya,

I’ve looked at the map and scratched my head. If the Roki tunnel is the only convenient route through that section of the Greater Caucasus, then how did all of those indigenous Ossets get there in the first place? It doesn’t look like an organic distribution – Ossets along the road and Georgians on the hillsides.

Of course, the Caucasus is such a crazy patchwork of ethnic villages – almost 50 languages. It is definitely the counter example for the notion of the nation state.