Last year I had the privilege of living in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Although it may not be widely-known, it is a beautiful city surrounded by The Caucasus Mountains, full of khinkali houses, al fresco coffee shops, quirky wine bars (Georgia is, after all, the birthplace of wine), and florists selling bouquets of flowers in the summer.
According to legend, King Vakhtang I Gorgasali was hunting in the fifth century when his falcon chased a pheasant into a hot spring and both animals died from the heat. The King was fascinated by the abundant sulphuric hot springs, and decided to build a city there (the word “Tbilisi” comes from the Old Georgian “Tpili”, which means “warm”).
Georgia is an unusual country with a truly unique history. Straddling the edge of Europe and Asia, Tbilisi has been invaded dozens of times throughout history. The Sasanian Empire invaded Tbilisi in the 7th century, followed by the Umayyad Caliphate and the Abassid Caliphate (introducing Islam to the region). The Byzantines fought for influence in the 6th and 11th centuries, but ceded control to the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. In the 13th century, Tbilisi was invaded by the Mongol Empire, in the 14th and 15th by the Timurid Empire, and from the 16th century the region was hotly contested between the Persians and the Ottomans, who both invaded Tbilisi a number of times.
Georgia’s plight throughout much of history appears thus: a country with unique history, language, traditions and culture finds itself embroiled in the skirmishes of much larger empires.
By the 18th century both the Ottoman and Safavid Empires were in decline, but Georgia still wasn’t strong enough to defend itself. This culminated in some leaders seeking protection from the Russian Empire, whose influence in the region was growing. The most significant example of these was Erekle II, King of Kartli-Kakheti, who wanted to consolidate his kingdom and so accepted Russian suzerainty at the Treaty of Georgievsk (1783).
Unfortunately, this treaty didn’t protect Tbilisi as much as Erekle II may have hoped. Russian protection was largely absent in 1795, when Agha Mohamad Khan Qajar, Founder of the Iranian Qajar Dynasty, devastated Tbilisi, massacred thousands of inhabitants, and took scores of slaves back to Persia.
With Tbilisi destroyed once more, Erekle II died in 1798, and in 1801 the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti was formally annexed by Russia. Russia then expanded its influence in the coming years, and after the Kingdom of Imereti was annexed in 1810, all the major Georgian territories were under Russian control.
Over 100 years later, in 1918, Georgia declared independence from Russia and established the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Georgia’s independence was short-lived, as the country was promptly annexed again in 1921 by the Bolsheviks.
Georgia has now technically been independent since the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, but the independence hasn’t been entirely peaceful. In 2008, there was further conflict between Russia and Georgia, focused in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The two regions had both declared independence from Georgia (in 1990 and 1992 respectively), amidst the fall of the Soviet Union, but this had only been recognised by a small number of countries in the international community — notably: Russia.
Much of this tumultuous history is visible in Tbilisi’s buildings, which are a bizarre tapestry of architectural styles including Traditional Georgian, Russian Imperial, Art Nouveau, Soviet Modernist, Contemporary and Neoclassical. A 10 minute Bolt journey through the city will be enough to see examples of most of these styles, giving the city a somewhat disjointed aura.
ქართული
However, the most fascinating part for me was the Georgian language, the most popular of the Kartvelian languages. Khartuli does not have any genetic links to any other language families in the world, which I found to be particularly intriguing given how many times Tbilisi has been invaded and how many people have tried to conquer the Georgians. Despite spending so much time in Tbilisi, I never managed to wrap my head around Georgia’s unique alphabet — it still looks like hieroglyphs to me.
“ბრძენი სიბრძნეს ეძებს, გიჟი გგონია, რომ იპოვა.”
“A wise man seeks wisdom; a madman thinks he has found it”
— Rustaveli
The Caucasus has historically been quite a politically entropic region, occupying a unique geopolitical position between East and West. Nevertheless, despite being in the crosshairs of empires for its entire history, Georgia has managed to maintain its unique language, culture and traditions.
March 2023’s protests
Since I don’t speak Khartuli and wasn’t particularly well-versed in Georgian politics, I had no idea that there were going to be protests at all. In fact, it wasn’t until I was sat in my flat and heard what I presumed to be fireworks that I had any inclination whatsoever that that week would be anything out of the ordinary.
I turned on the news and realised the extent of my ignorance: the television showed Shota Rustaveli Avenue, where I had been eating sushi only a few hours earlier, and it was completely rammed with protestors. It also showed clips of earlier in the day, when a fight had broken out in the Georgian Parliament. Why?
The Georgian Dream Party had proposed a new law called The Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence, which would require all media outlets and NGOs that receive at least 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “Foreign Agents”, which could make them more susceptible to monitoring and sanctions. Given that Georgia is not such a wealthy country, Kremlin supporters are particularly conscious of the influence that Western-backed NGOs wield.
Authorities claimed that the law was designed to improve transparency, but many Georgians felt that the law threatened their democracy and would be used to suppress speech. Most significantly: the law would have dashed Georgia’s dreams of joining the European Union.
I went to some of the protests on Shota Rustaveli Avenue in the early evenings, but it was obvious that as they went on they were going to get more violent and that the riot police were going to clamp down, so I always left before tensions rose — as a general rule for life: if you find yourself behind The Iron Curtain next to an upturned police car and people are throwing molotovs, its best to go elsewhere.
This turned out to be a good idea. I was still able to watch live streams of the protests happening down the road without being on the receiving end of truncheons, water cannons, and tear gas — and most importantly, without anyone confusing me for a Russian.
In the first few days it wasn’t immediately clear how the protests would develop, and the uncertainty was almost tangible. Would the government rescind the proposal? Would the protests fizzle out? Might the protests continue to grow more violent until things became really problematic?
Some were drawing comparisons with the Euromaidan Protests in the Ukraine, which started after President Yanukovych decided to opt for closer ties with Russia rather than sign The Association Agreement with the EU. It was largely expected that Yanukovych would sign this agreement before he unexpectedly changed course, in a decision that many attribute to political pressure from the Kremlin, and the possibility of an economically-contentious trade war.
Or perhaps the protests would boil over into something more similar to Belarus’ in 2020 and 2021? The protests in Minsk flared up as Lukashenko sought his sixth term in office, and although the protestors made some headway in the first few days, the authorities ultimately clamped down. Hard. The crackdown was brutal, and culminated in over 30,000 arrests. In May of 2021, Belarusian police raided the offices of Belsat TV, shutting down the country’s last independent media outlet — Lukashenko remains very much in control.
Fortunately, everything in Tbilisi calmed down. Protests started on the 6th March and largely subsided after the government withdrew the bill on the 10th, by which time 58 police officers had been injured and 135 protestors had been incarcerated. In addition to withdrawing the bill most of the protestors were released, subsequent to mob demand.
On one of the last days of the riots, just before the government conceded to the protestors and withdrew their proposal, there was a video circulating of a police officer hanging up his uniform and joining the protest. I always wondered what happened to him.
Since then, things have appeared to calm somewhat: no more riots, no more tear gas. However, in September, Georgia’s State Security Service accused Georgi Lortkapanidze, Deputy Head of Ukrainian Counterintelligence and formerly the Georgian Deputy Minister of the Interior, of plotting a violent coup to overthrow the pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream Party. According to Euronews, this marks at least seven times, since they came into power in 2012, that The Georgian Dream Party have claimed a threat of a coup is looming.
The Georgian Dream
It surprised me to see that there were so many US and EU flags being waved outside the Georgian Parliament at these protests, but perhaps it shouldn’t have.
I don’t have that much faith in the EU, and believe that Britain is better off not being part of the bureaucratic cesspit. Whilst there are some noticeable demographic similarities such as higher support for the EU amongst the younger generation, for Georgia, the debate over the EU is entirely different to the debate in the UK. The concern isn’t overly concerned with economic pragmatism, nor is there much of a debate over bureaucratic entanglements.
As has been the case for most of Georgia’s history, the core question is one of sovereignty, but not whether or not sovereignty should be ceded to a foreign power; rather, to which empire should suzerainty be ceded?
Feels like a part 2 is necessary