The collapse of the USSR
Georgia is a country dominated by outsiders, surrounded by enemies. They have no identity as a modern state. They were emasculated on every level by 74 years of Soviet tyranny. As a friend of mine says, “The mind boggles…” 74 years … Now the Soviets are gone (sort of), but the Georgians remain fixated on Russia. They have a longing for the order the Soviets once provided, and yet they resent having been so dominated. As I said yesterday, their national character is intractable. They are intelligent, they are rebellious, they are schemers and wheeler-dealers (Georgians have taken the concept of a black market to a whole different level), they are deeply religious, and they also refuse to give up who they are. They speak their own language, etc. However, once the Russians retreated, taking the Russian language with them, the Georgians were left hugely isolated in their mountainous country. They have no experience with needing to speak to the rest of the world. Someone else was always speaking for them. Now they have no way to communicate, no way to participate. They have never had the opportunity to join world events, the world economy, and they are completely unprepared. Russian was the only language that connected them to the world, so the collapse of the Soviet Union, although positive in some respects, left a massive void in Georgia which has yet to be filled.
In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union (of course) began to crack up and began to grant all of the various republics more autonomy. They were allowed to choose their own destinies, make their own way, tear down the Berlin Wall if they wanted to. Georgia, like all the other breakaway republics, immediately set about to become a modern democracy. Change was fast, furious, chaotic. Even reporters at the The New York Times seemed unable to keep up with everything that was happening. Georgia raced to have elections. Of course, elections are just a symbol. We know that NOW, looking in. Elections mean diddly-squat if the country itself does not have the institutions to support democracy. America hashed stuff out, concepts, desires, ideals…creating the system of checks and balances which was necessary to the development of a democratic society. Georgia had none of this. So their first experiment with democracy was (just like it was elsewhere, all over the former Soviet Union) a complete and utter disaster.
The first democratically elected president in Georgia was Zviad Gamsakhurdia. He was the leading dissident during the Communist-era period. A very idealistic man. (I hate to say it, but being “very idealistic” is a terrible quality to have if you are going to be a President of anything. You need to have your feet on the ground and know how to get shit DONE.) Anyway, I know it’s so easy to judge standing on the outside. Georgia needed to make its mistakes, and learn, and grow, in order to transform itself. This process is still going on.
But regardless: Gamsakhurdia completely friggin’ destroyed Georgia. He walked Georgia right into civil war.
There are, actually, a lot of similarities between Gamsakhurdia and Slobodan Milosevic. Gamsakhurdia came along and fanned the flames of ethnic hatred, racism, xenophobia, and historical grievance. His entire “platform” had to do with needing revenge against what the Communists had done. Additionally, though, Georgia is a country overflowing with minority groups. Armenians, Ossetians, Abhazians, and many many others. Gamsakhurdia saw them as second-class citizens, and began a program of oppression and discrimination against them. His motto was “Georgia for Georgians”. All this did was fill people with hate. You can’t run a government efficiently on hate.
Here’s a quote about Gamsakhurdia from Michael Dobbs’ great book Down with Big Brother:
“Georgia is a unitary independent state, and therefore there can be no concessions to the separatists in Abhazia or southern Ossetia,” [Gamsakhurdia] told the meeting outside the parliament building. “The representatives of all other nations are merely guests on Georgian land, who can be shown the door at any time by their hosts.”
In many ways, Gamsakhurdia’s brand of xenophobic nationalism was as authoritarian and myopic as the Communist ideology it sought to replace. He convinced his followers that independence would lead automatically to prosperity, as the Kremlin would no longer have the opportunity to “exploit” Georgia economically. In his patriotic zeal he ignored the fact that Georgia relied on other Soviet republics for practically all its oil and gas, 94 percent of its grain, 93 percent of its steel, and 82 percent of its timber. His assumption that ethnic minorities would meekly accept the will of the Georgian majority turned out to be another fatal miscalculation, which laid the basis for a prolonged civil war.
In the emotional aftermath of the Tblisi massacre (in April 1989, when Soviet soldiers gunned down a peaceful protest in Tbilisi’s main square, a la Tienamen) reason and common sense were in short supply. Revolted by the shedding of innocent blood, Georgians rallied around the leaders who denounced the Soviet “imperialists” the loudest. At this point the Communist authorities made a series of blunders that played right into the hands of the nationalists. They arrested Gamsakhurdia and other opposition leaders, endowing them with the halos of martyrs. Then, for almost two weeks, the army denied using toxic gas against the demonstrators. Panic swept the city as hundreds of people were admitted to local hospitals with symptoms of poisoning. Anti-Soviet sentiment reached a fever pitch. By the time Gamsakhurdia was released from prison several weeks later, the role of one of his father’s heroes seemed ready-made for him. A year and a half after “Bloody Sunday”, he was to win the first free election in Georgia’s history, by a two-to-one margin.
Ah, what a mess, what a mess. It’s obvious that all of this is going to go badly, but what happens next is quite surprising. Gamsakhurdia is, of course, ousted. Run out of Georgia on a rail.
And somebody appears to save the day from a most unexpected place.
