Georgia on my mind

Sean Paul over at the Agonist defended his fascination with Georgia, saying

Part of the reason is that I think Georgia is a bellwether for the future direction of Russian foreign policy. What happens or does not happen there, to my mind, will be a key indicator of what Putin will be able to do in the near future.

While his analysis is generally on the right track, one must remember that Georgia and Russia also have a unique relationship not shared by other countries that Putin may decide to direct his foreign policy might towards. These are not just two neighbours that are squabbling about breakaway provinces, they are two neighbours with a long and complex history (as well as economic and social ties) that cannot be boiled down to two border conflicts. To use a rather childish metaphor, these aren't two roommates squabbling over a phone bill as much as a long term on-again off-again relationship where the partners alternately become mortal enemies (with booty call priveledges) and wild romantic lovers (while discomfiting all their friends who don't know quite what to do about it all).

First off, the breakaway provinces. When I was in South Ossetia last summer there were Russian soldiers swarming everywhere, and they really managed to get up even the Georgians' noses (let alone the Ossetians), which seemed to put to the lie the whole "Russians are arming the local militias" thing. The biggest problem seemed to be a huge Russian army base south of Tblisi that provides many economic kickbacks to the Georgian government as well as some small benefit to the surrounding area. The Georgians we talked to in Ossetia said that the government would never stand up for them as long as they wanted the Russians to keep driving down the military highway in large convoys. I must admit, I've never heard Saakashvili say anything about the Russian military presence in Georgia proper, although that was a huge issue for many of the Georgians we met. And although we couldn't get a boat into Abkhazia, the locals on the Georgian side near Zugdidi said that they wanted nothing to do with either Georgia OR Russia, since they were all in cahoots (I wonder very much what people think now that there's a new president). Again, it didn't really seem like Russians inciting a Georgian-separatist conflict: these provinces seemed to genuinely want to be independent of both sides, and so both Georgia and Russia seek to use them as destabilizers when necessary.

One thing that everyone I talked to could agree on, all over Georgia, was that they desperately wanted Communism back, although their reasoning differed widely. For instance, the Ossetians wanted the Soviet system because then they were united with North Ossetia as merely an ethnic group living in a region of the greater Soviet Union. The Georgians in the countryside near Kutai'isi said that they wanted Communism back because Georgia got the best of everything. Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia (more stories from the Stalin birthplace museum another time) so that helped more than a little when he was alive. Since they had good weather and great soil they were also the breadbasket of the entire Soviet system. "Everyone drank our wine. We were the best, the most expensive," said the owner of Kvanchkara Vineyards one afternoon over a thermos of freshly decanted wine from a huge vat. "Now no one wants it. Things were better under Stalin. And Krushchev and Gorbachev came every summer to their dachas here." At the seaside, the resorts had been build for vacationers from all over the Eastern bloc, and now lie mostly empty and far too large for the current crop of Georgian sunbathers.

These sorts of feelings complicate the issue immensely. It's all very well for Saakashvili to say that he'll shoot Russian boats out of the water or march into South Ossetia with whatever the full might of the Georgian army is at the moment, but newspapers in this country (ie. the US) need to really take the threats from both sides with a grain of salt. Georgia is not about to jeopardize its economic or historical ties with Russia, and I don't think Russia would want Georgia closing the military highway (something quite easily done, and much discussed in the village west of Kazbegi where we stopped one day for lunch) and cutting Russia off from its strategic bases near the Armenian border. Far more pressing at the moment is economic reconstruction and foreign investment, which will hopefully be more feasible with Saakashvili than it was with Shevardnaze.

Georgia's one of those countries that should have it made. It has gorgeous countryside, the most amazing people, lovely beaches, great skiing (yes, it's true) and Tbilisi is a graciously crumbling crossroads of Asia, the Middle East and turn of the century Europe that is one of the most enjoyable cities I've ever had the good fortune to spend a bunch of time in. Yet the legacy of communism clings to everything like radioactive dust, and unlike the Chinese, the Georgians were not born to commerce. Like Sean Paul, I'll also be watching Georgia closely, and hopefully returning in the very near future.

UPDATE: Sean Paul is too sweet. Glad to see someone liked my childish analogy though...

Comments

[Brooklyn Sword Style]

I'll go first - what were you doing in Georgia?

[praktike]

jeez, I get flak over a brilliant pirate joke and then you rip of a song title for an otherwise very intersting post? :)

[Zoe]

I was there for this wonderful spa they have in the mountains, darling - the Ossetian mud wraps are just divine.

Seriously though, I was there with my aunt who is the main press liason for the World Food Program. The head of the WFP was coming through so she brought me and her sister (another aunt) along to help and to travel around with the UN mission.

Georgia is officially one of the loveliest countries I've ever been to, and I highly recommend it. It also has the most beatiful harmonic patterns in its music that I've ever heard, which I won't bore anyone with at the moment, but if you ever get a chance to see either Georgian traditional dance or vocal music, you should jump at it.

[Zoe]

hey, i LAUGHED at your pirate joke praktike. maybe i'll take back my laughter now, shall i??

anyway, i thought my title was rather appropriate because whenever i say "i was in georgia last summer" everyone always asks me if i drove or flew to atlanta. i guess it doesn't work for people with the sense of humour of a run over newt, though - eh praktike? :-)

[praktike]

Hey, you said it was terrible. But at least you didn't title this post "Midnight Train to Tblisi" or something.

As for running over newt ... hmmm ... I'm a nice guy, so maybe simple banishment from the corridors of power will do.

Btw, a good blog (center-right, tho) covering the Caucasus and Central Asia is The Argus. Nathan was a Peace Corps volunteer in the magical land of Karimov. A thoughtful guy. He also has a good blogroll.

-p

[rd]

Sounds to me what they really want is the *Soviet Union* back, not so much communism. They're not necessarily the same thing. This would fit in with Stephen Kotkin's argument in the New Republic that national independence for the former Soviet republics has generally been disastrous, since their economies were set up to be part of the entire USSR, not stand alone, and that the "nationalism" of such places is a pretty shallow thing:

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020415&s=kotkin041502&c=3

[Zoe]

You're probably right, rd, but Georgian after Georgian that I met articulated it as "wanting communism back". I think they really thought it was a better solution, given that Georgia very rarely saw the short end of the stick in terms of authoritarian government until after the breakup of the USSR.

[Alice Marshall]

I was in Tbilisi in June of 1989 and my impression was very different. The Georgians struck me like the Lebanese, natural born merchants, but too busy hating all the ethnic minorities to do anything with their talent.

But I loved Tbilisi and if you get a chance to go to Georgia, take it and run.

[Mycroft]

I'm somewhat more alarmed over the threats and shots fired at Russian boats in the Black Sea. Saakashvili's government is a green, democratic government, and those tend to be more belligerent, not less, in their foreign policy. Probably something to do with a combination of moral righteousness and inexperience -- the classic American example of a new democracy picking a fight it can't possibly win is probably the War of 1812.

[Andrew Everett]

This was nice summary of the Georgian situation. I was in Georgia in 1989-1990, while rumblings for independence were all around us. There were hunger strikes, troops in the street, etc. Even then, the Georgians knew that as soon as they got independence, they would have to deal with the Ossetians and Abkhazians wanting to also break away from Georgia. My only disagreement with your story is your assertion that "the Georgians were not born to commerce." From my experience, that is patently untrue. If you looked at any major Soviet city, who was selling goods on the corners and who ran most of the black markets? Georgians. They took suitcases of produce and goods from Georgia to Moscow and sold it for profit. And many of the criminal enterprises that sprang up after Gorbachev's revolution were headed and or manned by Georgians. They were the first to be alert to commerce, albeit mostly illegal. Before capitalism was the way of life in Russia, the Georgians were already the strongest practitioners.

[Zoe]

I suppose after living in HK most of my life I have rather a skewed perspective of what "born to commerce" means ;-)

Another anecdote: I was a bit surprised when I was out in the countryside and workers would sit on the side of the highway all day, while their houses slowly fell down behind them. One of the WFP workers asked, "Why don't you repair your house?" (there were three sacks of concrete in the garage, plus other building materials that were more than adequate). He looked at her like she was from Mars, and said slowly, "But...that's not what I do. The men from Gori will come." After 10 years, this guy was still waiting for the builders from town to come fix his house! I couldn't help thinking that if it was Hong Kong, someone would have bought up all the houses, built a factory, speculated in hajpuri bread, fleeced all the local peasants of everything they had, and then bought matching Rolls Royces :-)

[David]

Have you seen Power Trip? It's a documentary about what happened when AES, an American energy group run by an evangelical Christian, bought Telasi, the Georgian electricity company. AES struggled to introduce Western business methods and increase revenue with such novel practices as installing meters and trying to get customers to pay their bills (which were beyond the means of the average Georgian). The company came up against a brick wall in the form of certain large industrial users which never paid their bills but were protected by friends in the Shevadnadze government, which ordered Telasi not to cut them off. Eventually, AES gave up and sold Telasi to a Russian company. They might now be wishing that they'd hung on long enough to get the benefit of Saakashvili's anti-corruption campaign -- unless, that is, that the new government is as accomodating towards large, non-bill-paying factories as the old one was.

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