Salme (Georgian: სალმე), also known as Psou (Abkhaz: Ԥсоу) is a village in the Gagra District of Abkhazia. It lies near the Black Sea coast, on the left bank of the Psou River, about 25 km north of Gagra, and falls within a Russian-controlled border security zone. Administratively, it is treated by Georgia as part of Gagra Municipality, while since the 1992–1993 war in Abkhazia it has been governed de facto by the separatist Republic of Abkhazia.
The village was established in 1884 by Estonian settlers and became one of the principal Estonian colonies in the Caucasus. Salme has historically been an agricultural community. During the Soviet era it was organized into collective farms, and in the post-war period subsistence farming and cross-border trade have predominated. The population, once overwhelmingly Estonian, declined sharply after the 1990s conflict, when hundreds were evacuated to Estonia. Today it remains the largest Estonian community in Abkhazia and retains limited Estonian-language schooling and cultural activities.
Name Official name The official name of the village is disputed between Georgian and Abkhaz authorities. According to Georgia, it is officially known as Salme (Georgian: სალმე), a name received in 1885, having previously been referred to in Russian administration as Estonskaja ("Estonian village").
Following the 1992–1993 war in Abkhazia, the de facto authorities of the self-proclaimed Republic of Abkhazia adopted a resolution on 4 December 1992 renaming the settlement "Psou" (Abkhaz: Ҧсоу), after the Psou River, which flows along the Abkhaz–Russian border adjacent to the village. In Abkhaz, the form Psou-akhabla ("Psou settlement") is also used, though the official decree used only Psou. Abkhaz sources frequently describe Salme as the "Estonian name for Psou" and claim that Psou was the locality's original name, despite the fact that no settlement existed there before its foundation by Estonian migrants.
Under Georgian law, however, the official name of the village remains Salme. The Government of Georgia continues to treat all unilateral acts of the de facto authorities in Abkhazia, including renamings, as legally void. Since 2008, Georgia's Law on Occupied Territories has explicitly declared null and without consequence any such acts issued by authorities in Abkhazia.
In Abkhaz- and Russian-language materials aligned with the separatist administration, the name Psou predominates, while Georgian legislation and international actors often retain Salme. For example, the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) has referred to its field work in "the ethnic Estonian village of Salme, in Abkhazia." Among local inhabitants, the historical name Salme also continues to be widely used.
Etymology
The settlement was officially given the name Salme in 1885, after a common Estonian female given name that also figures prominently in Estonian folklore and literature, in line with a series of other Estonian settlements in the Caucasus: villages such as Salme, Linda, and Sulevi drew their names from characters in the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg, while others, like Estonia and Novo-Estonija ("New Estonia"), referred directly to the settlers’ homeland. In contrast, Russian imperial officials often imposed generic or collective labels, such as Estonskaja ("Estonian [village]"), a designation also used for Salme during the late imperial period before the name Salme was formally recognized.
According to later accounts, the name was proposed by Jüri Ponamar, a former ship's captain among the settlers, in parallel with the contemporaneous naming of Linda village, with which Salme forms a literary pairing in Estonian folklore. Modern villagers sometimes offer alternative explanations, such as linking the name to the eponymous Salme village in the Estonian island of Saaremaa, however most of the first settlers originated from the region of Kuusalu in mainland Estonia and had no known ties to Saaremaa.
Some Abkhaz sources have claimed that Psou was the original name of the settlement, though no village existed before the arrival of Estonian colonists in the 1880s. Abkhaz toponymist V. E. Kvarchia has also noted a resemblance between Salme and the name of Hajji Salam, a prince of the local Tsanba clan who ruled the area until the 1860s. This, however, is not considered a genuine etymological connection as no evidence exists in Estonian or local records to suggest that the settlers named the village after him.
History Founding
Before the arrival of Estonian settlers, the site of present-day Salme was a dense, swampy woodland prone to malaria, which discouraged permanent habitation. Historically, the area formed part of the territory known as Gechrypsh, associated with the noble Gechba family, whose prince Rashid Gechba maintained a residence there in the mid-19th century. In the mid-19th century, the region was profoundly reshaped by muhajirism, when large numbers of Muslim Abkhazians were expelled or emigrated to the Ottoman Empire following the Russian victory in the Caucasian War in 1864. The depopulation of the Psou river valley gave the imperial government the opportunity to promote colonization. From the 1860s onwards, authorities settled Georgians (especially Mingrelians), Russians, Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Latvians, Germans, and later Estonians in Abkhazia, both to stimulate agriculture and to secure the empire's volatile borderlands with loyal Christian populations.
Abkhaz historians have suggested that a small plot of land where Salme lays today had been worked in earlier decades under the serfdom of a Jiketi prince, though it lay abandoned by the 1860s. In any case, when Estonians arrived in the 1880s, the land at Salme was still regarded as largely unsettled forest, cleared and cultivated only after colonization began.
In 1884, a group of Estonian peasants from Kuusalu Parish in northern Estonia resolved to establish a new settlement on the left bank of the Psou River. Their decision followed several public meetings in late 1883 and Candlemas 1884, where rising rents, loss of common lands, and restrictions on hunting were debated. At these meetings the villagers voted to emigrate and to send scouts to locate land, considering both the St. Petersburg Governorate and the Black Sea coast. On 20 February 1884, community leader Juhan Lindvest left Kuusalu with funds collected "per male soul" for the journey. Near Sukhumi he found only poorer upland plots, but on his return he encountered a Latvian who directed him to unused crown land near Adler. There he examined roughly 1,300 hectares of forest and wetland on the Psou's left bank. The state offered a cash grant of 40 rubles once a first shelter was built, access to soft loans, and reduced railway tariffs for resettling families, with children under ten traveling free. Although the Black Sea administration briefly froze new in-movers in spring 1884, Kuusalu's petition was approved on 23 August 1884 by Black Sea District chief Nikolai Nikiforaki, and on 9 October a nominal roll of 62 families was approved for settlement.
The first families began moving in May 1884, with the main body following after the permits were granted. On 21 and 31 October two groups received travel certificates, and on 1 November 1884 they departed Estonia by rail and continued by ship to Adler. On 1 December a general meeting was held on the Adler shore, where the settlers chose community leaders and decided to name the lower part of their new settlement "Salme". In the following days they crossed the Psou, divided homestead plots by lot, and began marking out farmland. By early 1885 additional families established an "upper" settlement that would become the neighboring village of Sulevi, which at first was administratively part of the same community. In official documents and maps of the 1880s both Salme and Sulevi were grouped together under the name Estonskaja ("Estonian village"), and only in 1900 was Sulevi recognized under its own name following the opening of a village school.
The first impressions of the Psou lowlands were of wilderness, dense forest, marshes, wild animals, and frequent outbreaks of malaria. Settlers wrote of wolves, bears, and vipers in the thickets and of the hardships of cutting forest, digging drainage canals, and defending their households in isolation. Yet they also remarked on the fertility of the soil, with one settler writing, "Here we will be masters ourselves." By late 1884 and early 1885 the village took form with about 1,200 desiatina of cleared ground, where settlers erected shelters and planted plum orchards, vegetable plots, and market gardens. Within two years the population had expanded with further arrivals from Kuusalu, as well as families from Kolga and Kõnnu parishes, and the settlement of Salme became a permanent feature of the Psou valley. Salme and Sulevi belonged administratively to the Sochi District of the Black Sea Governorate, while the other Estonian colonies of Abkhazia lay in the Sukhumi District of Kutaisi Governorate.
By the late 1880s the settlers had erected a small sawmill and a fruit-drying house, cleared large tracts of forest, and drained the swamps. Plum orchards were planted, along with vegetable plots. The subtropical climate led to a gradual switch away from northern grains toward maize; later, fruit and tobacco were added. Produce was sold in nearby towns such as Gagra, Adler, and Sochi. Yet the site's marshy conditions continued to bring malaria, known locally as "swamp fever" or "cold disease," which left settlers weak and disfigured and carried off many children. Hunger was common in the early years, families surviving on millet porridge and herbs until new crops took root. Some settlers considered leaving the Psou lowlands altogether, with proposals to move toward the Bzyb valley, and several families returned to Estonia or resettled elsewhere in the Caucasus. Those who remained endured, encouraged by community leaders known as Meibbaum and Kratsov, and eventually prospered through tobacco and corn planting and the steady sale of vegetables at coastal markets.
A school was organized in the late 19th century, where Estonian children learned to read and write alongside religious instruction. Freed rooms after harvest served for choir rehearsals, amateur plays, lectures, and Sunday meetings. Choirs formed in both Salme and Sulevi and sometimes joined together for larger performances. Villagers pooled funds to build up a small library of Estonian books. The colony also maintained links to the Russian Lutheran Church and took part in larger cultural Estonian activities, sending choirs to the 1914 Estonian Song Festival in Sukhumi.
On the eve of the First World War the village had become relatively prosperous. Families cultivated tobacco, maize, and gardens of potatoes, cabbage, and carrots, kept small livestock, and carried produce to markets in Sukhumi and Sochi. A major fire in the 1910s destroyed dozens of houses, barns, and stores of grain, remembered as one of the worst disasters after the malaria years.
Disputes In 1917, at the beginning of the Russian Civil War, the Estonian settlements in the Caucasus showed neutrality toward all warring factions, but that did little to prevent raids: from 1917 to 1921 Salme and other Estonian villages were plundered by Red and White troops as well as Georgian Mensheviks. Horses, carts, hay, and food were seized, leaving families with heavy losses. Villagers tried to avoid mobilization orders issued by every side and some armed themselves against intruders. The village briefly came under control of the Kuban-Black Sea Soviet Republic, before becoming a battling ground between the Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG) and Anton Denikin's White movement amidst the Sochi conflict.