 As Austin Kilroy travels through Georgia, he finds people enlightened by the spirit of change and modernisation yet constrained by their large northern neighbour.
"Is it a Rolex?" The taxi driver glanced inquisitively at my shiny watch-strap. I was sitting in the front of a decrepit Lada, having just crossed the lonely border between eastern Turkey and Georgia. We jolted along the 'road' - actually a series of ditches last resurfaced in the Brezhnev era - and I began to survey the Georgian countryside through the cracks in our windscreen. I pulled back my sleeve, revealing my watch: an old Soviet brand. "Ah!" my driver exclaimed with derision, "an Electronika!", and motioned to throw it out of the window.
So began my two-month trip through the South Caucasus. The joke was a simple one, but conveyed in a nutshell two maxims of present-day Caucasian life. Number one: most waste goes out of the window; there isn't much regard for the natural environment. Number two, and more profoundly: old is bad by default; the region is gripped by a cult of the new.
In Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, progress since 1991 has been slow. Fierce wars in Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh have afflicted most of the population; even those not directly involved have to share their towns and cities with thousands of refugees driven from the conflicts. Corrupt governments have blighted chances for development, and only the 'rose revolution' of Mikhail Saakashvili in Georgia has given much political hope. Natural resources are scarce, except in Azerbaijan where oil from the Caspian Sea has flowed into the pockets of a select few.
I spent my first night in Borjomi - a spa town in southern Georgia, retreat for the Soviet elite and fountain of mineral waters famous all over the Soviet Union. Now the town is carpeted with autumn leaves, falling gently on rusting fairground rides. Under an immense parabolic concrete arch there's a small tap where one can drink directly from the mineral source. It is used mainly by elderly people who queue to fill up their water containers, lugging them back home where the plumbing no longer works.
Not far along another potholed highway one reaches the Georgian capital, Tbilisi - the Tiflis of ancient chronicles. Huge concrete blocks surround a city-centre of pleasant wooden houses, and alongside the river a flea-market swarms with buyers and sellers each weekend. One gains glimpses of some of Tbilisi's one million lives, as people bring some of the contents of their homes to sell on the street. Old televisions, cheap glassware, electric shavers. Then something really valuable, with the saddest story behind it. A man introduced himself to me in good English and started leafing through his book of old postcards. They were collector's items, first editions. But as a university scientist his savings were simply running out, and his monthly wage of $30 didn't go far to support his family. So the time had come to sell his prize possessions.
Readers of this website will be familiar with such stories. The former Soviet Union has become a byword for concrete towerblocks and depression. But why haven't things improved? Why, thirteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, has GDP barely regained its 1991 level? Many Georgians answer with one word only: Russia.
Any map shows that Chechnya is not far away. And while Russia continues its devastating war - bitterly resisting autonomy for Chechens - it is actively supporting secessionist movements in Georgia. In 1993, Russia supported Abkhazians who drove the Georgian military - and 250,000 ethnic Georgians - from Abkhazia. Over the next ten years it gave tacit assistance to Aslan Abashidze, who ran the Georgian province of Adjara as his personal fiefdom. It deployed peacekeepers in South Ossetia, even though that region's separatist regime survives on smuggling alcohol, fuel and weapons - some of which find their way into the hands of Chechen militants. Until 2003 there remained an uneasy balance, partly because Georgian President Shevardnadze (a former Soviet foreign minister) let the status quo prevail.
But then Shevardnadze was overthrown in the 'rose revolution', and new President Saakashvili began bringing those three errant regions of Georgia to heel. In May 2004 Abashidze was unseated from Adjara and went into exile in Moscow; the following month the smugglers' market in South Ossetia was shut down; the Abkhazians are beginning to feel apprehensive. President Saakashvili also declared Georgia's aim to join NATO and the European Union - so keenly that EU flags are already flying outside all government ministries. And President Bush's visit to Georgia in May 2005 was an unprecedented landmark.
Russia is displeased. And this displeasure has real consequences. Apart from the vital lifeline tunnel from Georgia to North Ossetia - which Russia can close at its pleasure - Russia is able to shut down a significant proportion of Georgia's power infrastructure, and indeed has previously threatened to do so during winter months. Despite Russia's recently-trumpeted decision to close its military bases in parts of Georgia, significant numbers of Russian troops remain as 'peacekeepers' in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And Russia has been pretty adept at using instruments of 'soft power' too: Russian passports have been handed out in South Ossetia, and pension-payments to Abkhazians are inflated by Russia to levels much higher than the normal Georgian rate.
The future in Georgia has always been notoriously hard to predict. But Russia still holds many of the cards with which it can be determined. If Georgia continues its attempts to reassert sovereignty in South Ossetia, Russia may at some stage be 'forced' to protect the Russian-speaking population by augmenting its peacekeepers. On that pretext, it could plausibly send in its 58th Army (currently based in North Ossetia), cutting the main east-west road in Georgia which lies a few miles south of the South Ossetian boundary. Georgia would be crippled. But if Russia wanted to regain some of its old sphere of control, harking back to Soviet days, there are few better places to start. And few chances that anyone could stop them. President Bush may have said a few words on a podium in Georgia, but Georgians are realists enough to recognise that he wouldn't jettison his relations with Putin over 'little Georgia'. "Georgia is an orphan," observed Alex Rondeli, a veteran of Georgian politics, and President of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies. "Armenia has its diaspora; Azerbaijan has its Muslim friends and Turkey; Moldova has Romania; the Baltics are already in the EU. Who does Georgia have?"
Russia's interest may not merely be for the sake of imperial nostalgia. The long-awaited Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline opened in May 2005, pumping oil from the Caspian all the way to Turkish tankers bound for the US and Europe. It meanwhile brings Georgia millions of dollars in transit revenues each year. Russia was upset to miss out from the start but, if it can control Georgia, the pipeline is at its behest. Moreover, it would gain a buffer against Turkey and NATO, become direct neighbours with Armenia - its closest friend in the South Caucasus- and could secure a gateway to the Middle East.
Meanwhile daily life continues in Tbilisi, and political enmity with Russia has very practical implications. In a manifestation of the 'cult of the new', Russian script is scrubbed-off buildings, signs and metro stations - the wiggly Georgian script is now supplemented only with English. As a second language, Russian is spoken by millions more Georgians than is English, but that is immaterial. Statues of Lenin have long-since gone. However, seventy-years of a one-party state leaves a psychological legacy of longer endurance: Stalin is permitted to stay, and Georgians remain proud of their national hero.
Austin Kilroy is a former researcher to Shirley Williams in the British House of Lords, and now hopes to pursue a career linking insights across academic disciplines for better practice in post-conflict recovery. He has a website at http://www.geocities.com/aufloki |
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| Written by Austin Kilroy on 2005-09-12 18:54:13
Jonathan - thanks for your Council of Europe correction - I hope the very conspicuous placement of those flags in Georgia is still consistent with my observations.
I certainly found fondness for Stalin extends well beyond Gori and older people; and you'll agree that the number of remaining Stalin statues is many magnitudes greater than in other former Soviet republics - not simply explained by Georgians' tardiness in removing them...
In response to the passionate interlocutor below, I could probably have clarified my final sentence with 'many Georgians', but the opinions on Russia were those I heard pretty consistently during my few weeks there. The observation on 'mentality' was the interpretation of my editor rather than the point of my article, and I'll see if it can be changed.
As for the other arguments, I'm happy to spark a debate!...
| Written by Jonathan on 2005-08-06 18:22:40
The "EU flag" that you see flying everywhere is also the flag of the Council of Europe, of which Georgia is a member.
And the "Georgians love Stalin trope" is really tired. Yes, some old people fondly remember his time in the USSR, as do some old Russians. Outside of his hometown of Gori, you'd be hard pressed to find many Georgians who think of Stalin as a great Georgian.
| Written by your name on 2005-07-30 12:49:24
I'd be careful in generalizing all Georgians are proud of "their national hero" Stalin.
That is a weak observation and unfair for all those who would like to forget Stalin was Georgian. Perhaps if you had talked to some people yu would have realized this.
To say Georgian mentality is stuck in Stalin's era is another inaccurate observation. While communism's negative effect on present-day society cannot be ignored, so called Georgian mentality is unique in that it is comprised of deep-rooted traditons going back centuries.
To understand Georgian reality today one cannot ignore the role this fact plays in the development of the country.
However, I understand how difficult it is to
write down all your impressions in a thousand words of a trip which lasted several weeks. Georgia is a complex country which cannot be nutshelled easily.
If you had spent more time in Georgia or done more research, you may have answered your question:"Why, thirteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, has GDP barely regained its 1991 level?" differently.
You have fallen into the trap in which Georgia lays the blame for its woes on Russia. Sure Russia has been manipulating Georgian affairs (much ike the US does in Central America), but Georgians were killing Georgians in their civil war (which you failed to mention), Georgians were bleeding their own country dry while toasting it - they failed themsleves like so many nations who one day looked into the mirror and said "we're independent." Then it cracked.
I fail to see how Russian "control" over Georgia would put the pipeline at its behest. Insinuating that the pipeline is a stake in Russian interests in Georgia and that they could someday control Georgia to the point of profiting from the pipeline is frankly quite far-fetched.
They would have to invade the country don't you think?
As to the gateway to the Middle East, you forget the country Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea, which incidently has a much longer border with Iran than Armenia does.
You brought up some relevent and accurate points, but it is unfortunate that as a researcher you failed to research Georia thouroughly enough before publishing your observations.
| Written by Beckilina on 2005-07-28 15:10:43
I am working in Tbilisi at the moment and really enjoyed this insight into your impressions of Georgia - interesting and thoughtful - thanks!
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