TSKHINVALI, GEORGIA — A year after war broke out in this tiny provincial city in the breakaway region of South Ossetia, the roads are still rutted with jaw-rattling potholes and downtown buildings are shells open to the sky.

But great effort has gone into commemorating last year's war. Near midnight on Friday, precisely a year after Georgia began shelling Tskhinvali, thousands of people gathered in the city's main square, where a Russian-made documentary was projected on a huge screen overhead. Images of Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and President George W. Bush were juxtaposed with footage of dead Ossetians, as a floodlit violinist played melancholy music.

Georgia, too, offered heavy symbolism. In Gori, which came under Russian bombing in the war, authorities erected a replica of the Berlin Wall, a pointed commentary on Russia's foothold on Georgian land. Georgians observed a nationwide moment of silence in the afternoon, and 500 schoolchildren dressed in red and white formed a living replica of Georgia's flag. A year after the war, the question of who is to blame is still being fought out in public life. On Friday, the presidents of both Russia and Georgia took pains to justify their decisions to send their armies into South Ossetia.

Both have faced pressure over the war; Russia set itself at odds with the West by sending its troops into Georgia and again, more permanently, when it recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Georgia's other separatist enclave, Abkhazia.

Saakashvili, meanwhile, is blamed by domestic critics for losing control over the territories.

Meanwhile, in this valley, the rage has not abated, not at all. As they prepared to mark the war's anniversary, Ossetians here referred to Georgians as “;swine”; and “;livestock,”; and said they would never live in peace with them again. The commemorations seemed only to stoke those feelings.

“;If at some point I see a young Georgian man, and I know that he served in the army, I will kill him,”; said Seldik Tedeyev, a bus driver whose son and mother died trying to leave Tskhinvali last Aug. 8. “;Years will pass, time will pass, but I will kill him anyway.”;

An escalating conflict here erupted into full-fledged war when Georgian forces began shelling Tskhinvali on the night of Aug. 7. Russia responded by sending columns of armor into South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia routed the Georgian army, and then recognized the regions as sovereign nations, pledging to protect their independence with its military.

Georgia has reported more than 400 deaths in the war; Russia's prosecutor's office has so far reported 162. Some 30,000 ethnic Georgians who were driven from their homes remain refugees, according to Amnesty International, and Ossetian militias razed their villages to the ground.

In a speech on Friday, Saakashvili made the case he has made since the beginning: that a Russian invasion was already under way on the night of Aug. 7, and that the attack on Tskhinvali was defensive.

“;Our beloved nation was fighting for its very existence,”; he said. “;The heirs of the old KGB decided to put an end to what they call the 'Georgian project,' our collective attempt to build a European state in a corner of Europe that had never before had one.”;

President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, in remarks to filmmakers in Moscow, described the decision to send in troops as the most difficult of his life.

“;Each time I remember these events, I rewind the tape, as they say, and realize that on one hand, we had no other choice in that situation,”; he said. “;On the other hand, the events were unfolding under the worst-case scenario, probably, the most sorrowful scenario.”;

Russia responded “;harshly”; to Georgia, he said, “;saving hundreds and thousands of lives and restoring peace in the Caucasus that was at serious risk.”;

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, South Ossetia has been cut off from Georgia politically and economically, and Tskhinvali came to feel less like a city than a village, with passing cars kicking up clouds of dust. Its pre-war population was estimated at 70,000—including Ossetians and many ethnic Georgians, who farmed on the lush strip of land north of the capital. Both groups, on Friday, were thinking about what they had lost.

Tedeyev, 47, sat in the shade of a tree in his courtyard, stone-faced. He has four memorial services to go to next week—among others, for his 22-year-old son, who was shot by advancing Georgian infantry when he tried to drive north to Russia. Tedeyev's mother was killed moments before, when a shell hit the car.

Tedeyev grew up in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, and has many relatives in Georgia, but since his son's death he has severed all contact with them. He has heard from only one of them—a favorite aunt—and when he heard her voice on the phone he hung up. He smokes two packs of cigarettes every night, he said, thinking obsessively about that drive out of the city.

“;I don't like to see people,”; he said. “;I sit quietly alone in a room.”;

On the other side of the border, Nana Tsitsuashvili, 50, dissolved into tears as she stood in Gori's central square before the Berlin Wall exhibit. A year ago, she fled Gori when it was under bombardment; nine of her neighbors were killed, she said, and she still has trouble conceiving that Russia would use bombs on civilians. But Nino Gabinashvili, 16, one of the students who gathered to form a Georgian flag, had no such difficulty.

“;August showed us that Russia is our enemy,”; said Gabinashvili, whose family fled Gori as Russian soldiers entered. “;Ossetians are not enemies, they are just toys in the Russians' hands, but eventually they will realize this.”;

Olesya Vartanyan contributed reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia.