Georgia’s Biggest Problem

In 1999, while speaking in front of the European Council, the late Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania said the following: “I am Georgian and therefore I am European.” These words were very important at a time as they marked the beginning of Georgia’s pro-European aspirations. After decades of Soviet domination, Georgians managed to choose their own path and they unequivocally chose to reintegrate back into the European community. In general, Georgians have always associated Europe with peace, prosperity, equality, and democracy. After being conquered by multiple oppressive powers throughout the course of history, reintegration into Europe has always been the only way Georgia could redeem itself from stagnation and all of its hardships. I still feel very lucky that I was born in an independent country, and that I was able to see it progress and develop into a nation that someday could make me proud. However, as it happened with all post-Soviet nations, Georgia’s path for progress was and still is quite uneasy.

The effects of Communism are still visible throughout the country. It is not only exhibited through the brutalist architecture from the Soviet period, but also in people. The ethics, mentality, overall ideology and the worldview of people born in the Soviet Union is drastically different from that of the younger generations that have only lived in an independent country. For that reason, the democracy in Georgia is under constant threat of regression. Despite facing many challenges, I still believe that we as a country are part of the European community. The Soviet Union is already gone, and it is only a matter of time for its remnants to finally disappear. That being said, it is the duty of all of us who want progress to ensure that what is left from the Soviet Union leaves as soon as possible. The modern history of Georgia has been marked with various turbulences; first being the loss of territories, and then proceeding with societal divides, political revolution, and governmental changes. Despite having hopes that the new times will take us to a better place, we still end up repeating the same mistakes. In order to be hopeful for the future, it is necessary for us to understand what results in the majority of the problems within Georgia. Our biggest obstacle as a nation is to understand that the prevailing Soviet ideology is our biggest enemy. Once Georgia evolves from it, it will finally be the country that my generation and I want it to be.

First of all, I believe that I should clearly define what is ‘mentality’ as I will be using this word throughout my work. The conventional definition of this word is “the particular attitude of a way of thinking of a person or a group,” with its synonym being the word ‘mindset.’ However, in Georgia ‘mentality’ is usually defined in a different way. People use it as a word that describes the national character. To be more specific, ‘mentality’ is what governs us to be who we are, to make certain decisions, and to lead a certain type of life. Some parts of our mentality — such as culture and traditions — will remain embedded. However, historical developments can induce changes to one’s mindset. I strongly believe that socio-political factors can have a very big influence on the way people think and behave. When speaking about oppressive and strict authoritarian regimes such as the Soviet Union, people’s mindset could have been easily influenced by the political and economic factors that existed in the country. Since the word mentality is generally very broad, I want to concentrate on political and economic mentality, as mindest in regard to these two issues are responsible for large scale socio-economic problems that exist in modern-day Georgia.

I fully acknowledge that I am providing very limited information on life in the Soviet Union and on the description of Soviet citizens. However, I believe that there are only two major factors in the Soviet mentality which is constituting the generational gap in modern-day Georgian society. The post-Soviet mentality, which started to form when the Soviet Union collapsed and the old mindset of people was oriented towards the newly established country of Georgia, maintained two important parts of the overall Soviet mentality. People were still unwilling to engage in critical thinking, and they were unable to let go of their inclinations towards corruption. These two attributes might now be of the same scale today as they used to be back in the days of the USSR, but they are still maintained in some form among the representatives of the previous generations that lived some part of their overall lives in the Soviet Union. I don’t doubt that the majority of people in Georgia support democracy, but I strongly believe that our understanding of what democracy should look like and how it should be established varies. At the moment, the non-profit organization Freedom House characterizes Georgia as a ‘partially free’ country. Georgia is not the perfect democracy for now, and I find the term ‘partially’ very interesting in this case because not only are we a partially free democracy, but we are also a country that is partially free from our Soviet past.

The older generations who lived either most or some part of their lives in the Soviet Union are not capable of letting go of the Soviet economic and political mentality very easily, and that is the main problem that holds our society back. To describe what the mentality of the older generation in Georgia is like, it is necessary to describe what was the overall mentality of a typical Soviet citizen. There have been many scholars and philosophers who studies and characterized the phenomena Homo Sovieticus (a term popularized by the Soviet writer and sociologist Alexandr Zinovyev which is translated into English as the “Soviet Man”), however, I want to concentrate on Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili’s analysis.

Mamardashvili traced the origin of the Soviet mentality back to 1917, which was the early starting point of the Soviet Union when the idea of revolution and the formation of the Communist state was gaining popularity. The distinct characteristics of the Soviet citizen included “wretched thinking,” and “risk of non-existence.” Mamardashvili has said that “we [citizens of USSR] have been nodding for so long that today we should learn anew how to distinguish life from death, reality from a dream […] Diminished in the Soviet way and without any energy, we lost the ability to understand the politics […]; unreality of things and zombie-like nature of humans has become the rule of life.” After spending time thinking about the subject of Soviet mentality, I was unable to find any descriptions that would analyze this issue as well as is explained in the Mamardashvili quote mentioned in this paragraph. The totalitarian regime and the Communist ideology in the Soviet Union replaced all values and any type of worldview that people had before its formation. Individualism was replaced with collectivism, and each individual was no longer responsible for himself. Communist Party representatives were the only major decision-makers in Soviet society, and all that citizens were asked for was conformity to the regime and the state.

To describe this situation in terms of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, citizens could only see the “shadows on the wall.” The ideals of Communism were in general simplified to the most basic form, and those ideals were spread across the entire Union. Such a scenario was futile, because it completely eliminated the moral sense, and instead it created a society that was forced to follow the government blindly, without questioning its validity.

The lack of critical thinking in Soviet society made people numb towards certain actions committed by the governing body which would be heavily criticized in democratic nations. George Orwell’s famous quote from his 1945 novel Animal Farm is something that comes to my mind every time I think about the society of the Soviet Union. “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others ‘ is the quote that perfectly managed to characterize the corrupt life of the Soviet Union. Communism was supposed to ensure equality for all, but the government officials and those who were close to them (that included mostly their family members or relatives) often received benefits that came with bribery and embezzlement. It is important to note, however, that corruption has been common to this day even in democratic countries. Nevertheless, the Soviet-style bribery was unique due to its incredibly large scale. Speaking of Georgia, in 1970 it was reported that 40% of all crimes committed in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia consisted of crimes associated with corruption. Politicians would often build lavish and extravagant houses, or ‘dachas’ as they were called in the Soviet Union.

Corruption became so common that it eventually became normalized. I have heard many stories from my relatives about this particular issue; they were occasionally all involved in it because it was impossible to achieve certain accomplishments otherwise. For instance, due to high competition in universities in Moscow, it was common to bribe professors or deans. Many had to also bribe universities in order to obtain degrees, while sometimes it was even possible to buy a diploma without obtaining higher education. Getting a driver’s license and buying apartments with good locations could hardly be possible without bribery.

Overall, the reason for such large-scale corruption was that the centralized government, which played a pivotal role in encouraging such illegal activities. The USSR was a communist state, meaning that the free market was absent, and all regulations, productions, and employment were dependent on the government. To describe the situation in a few words, the scarcity of resources proved to increase the levels of bribery and illegal economic activities in order to get what is in demand. However, the purpose of mentioning corruption, in this case, is not to describe how uncontrolled it was in the Soviet Union, but to highlight the fact that it became normalized in Soviet societies, and particularly in Georgian society.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and all 15 Soviet republics gained independence. Some, particularly Baltic states, which include Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, managed to stabilize relatively faster than other nations, eventually becoming members of the European Union. Other republics, such as Russia, Azerbaijan, and those located in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan) did not manage to establish proper democracy and get rid of its endemic corruption. Georgia, on the other hand, has been relatively successful in becoming more stable.

The first few years of independence were turbulent due to a large societal divide, the inability of the government to get control over the entity of its territories, the wars with ethnic minorities, and the economic crisis. Everything became relatively more stable in 2003, after one of the major events in the modern history of Georgia. It was the Rose Revolution which was led by the politician who later became the president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, and Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the future prime minister whose famed statement still holds relevance in Georgian society and politics. The dominant party after the Rose Revolution, United National Movement (UNM), was in support of the reforms. Georgia got rid of its own endemic corruption and it criminalized bribery. Moreover, the UNM also supported Georgia’s integration into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Saakashvili’s party ruled Georgia until 2012, when a new party called Georgian Dream, with Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in leadership, came to power. The elections of 2012 were the first elections in the history of Georgia when power was transferred from one party to another. Based on recent history, it might seem that Georgia is on the right track of moving further and further away from its Soviet past. Nevertheless, the Soviet mentality is still prevailing.

The major problem is that Georgian democracy is that people generally do not vote based on party interests, they vote based on particular individuals running for office. According to the survey conducted by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), “According to the CRRC survey, 63 percent of Georgians agree that modern Georgian history has been mainly a personality-driven rather than an institution-driven process” (Sartania, 5). The truth with both UNM and Georgian Dream is that the basis for these two parties is not political values or particular political orientation, but charismatic leaders. From the very beginning of Georgia’s independence, people had very strong feelings towards their leaders or prospective leaders. This issue is very strongly tied to Mamardashvili’s description of the Soviet citizen; people who have affection towards their leaders are more likely to fall into blind fanaticism, as they are not attracted to the party because of values, but because of the leader.

I have seen people who had such blind affection towards the third president Mikheil Saakashvili in particular, and I noticed that such people are not capable of detecting any wrongdoings of their beloved politicians. This is the overall problem of Georgian society; people are navigated by their personal matters when choosing the fate of the country, rather than by their conscience. UNM and Georgian Dream are labeled as pro-European countries, but they have no specific agenda on how to develop a country. The one-party rule in the Soviet Union surely affected the future of Georgian politics in this matter.

The post-Soviet mentality is also expressed through the authority of the church. The Georgian Orthodox Church currently holds a large role in Georgian society. It is one of the most trusted institutions in the country and it has been part of our national identity for centuries. I do not have a problem with religion, especially since I identify myself as an Orthodox Christian and my faith has always been very important to me. However, the problem is that the church in Georgia is very powerful and it often interferes in politics and in certain domestic issues that do not require any interference from religious institutions. The unfortunate truth is that the GOC is abusing its power; our constitution states that Georgia is a secular country and it strongly advocates for the separation between the church and a state. There are many issues that concern the GOC, but the biggest one is probably the opposition towards liberal values and Europe in general, particularly LGBTQ+ rights.

The phrase “they are taking away our Georgianness” has been widely used by the church officials, meaning that the tolerance of homosexuality is capable of creating an existential threat to Georgian society. This issue is very much linked to what Mamardashvili said about the character of the Soviet citizen, particularly in terms of the common ‘fear of extinction’; the current state of Georgian society lacks universal values that could unite the whole country. As a nation, we are undergoing our own identity crisis because we start to gradually change. The post-Soviet generation is not as actively religious as the previous generation. The Church has been the major unifying factor for society, and the rise of globalization also led to the rise of insecurity within the society. The younger generation started questioning the validity of GOC, something that has rarely been happening before. The church, just as the Soviet government, requires allegiance which does not involve any questioning of its legitimacy. They often use techniques to scare people, saying that the second coming of Christ is on its way, and by saying that the west will be destroyed due to its ‘perverted’ actions. According to their logic, if we follow the west, we will lose our Georgian identity.

The people who fanatically follow the church today are not different from those who were frantically loyal to the Soviet regime. Those who neglect critical thinking and are ready to submit to authority can follow any type of institution which holds power. The Soviet Union created people who later started following the church and its unchristian dogma.

Besides fanaticism, another common trait of the post-Soviet generation is the numbness and/or inclination towards corruption. The GOC gets benefits from the taxpayer’s money, and its representatives are often seen riding expensive cars, having modern and trendy technology, and living in lavish buildings. The same can be said in regards to politicians. As mentioned previously, the endemic corruption was brought to an end by the Rose Revolution. We have progressed ever since, but based on my personal experiences, I am not convinced that we are over this problem. The people are still inclined towards bribing others to get what they need; politicians are often misusing their power for personal gains by often creating monopolies for the benefits of their businesses, or by simply acquiring public territories for the construction of their real estate. Such cases are not documented, but they are often discussed within society, which is why I wanted to emphasize this issue in my writing. What is documented, however, is bribery during elections. Voters are often being paid by political parties. The majority of the Georgian population is poor, and even small sums of money given to people before they cast their votes is a big deal to them. This shows that bribery and corruption is still embedded in the nature of people, and political reforms are not enough to combat this issue. For now, there is no guarantee that such instances won’t occur in the near future as such actions are natural.

Overall, Georgia is still a country at a crossroads. We have yet to achieve full progress and get further away from our Soviet past. Many people of my generation are hopeful for our future and believe that the governmental reforms can put us on the right path, but many are looking forward to immigrating from Georgia and settling in a relatively peaceful country. I agree that we need governmental support, but I doubt that it will be the solution to our problems. For Georgia to succeed, we need to first be determined about our European aspirations. The support for integration into the EU is large, but it is not the accession that matters the most, but the proper value-orientation. As a society, we need to find purpose and actively work towards achieving it. The purpose is reintegration into European society and the European way of life, which includes liberty, the rule of law, democracy, and stability. Zurab Zhvania’s statement “I am Georgian, and therefore I am European” has managed to create a path for us in self-realization. Once my generation becomes louder and more powerful in determining the fate of our country, we will finally break away from the ghost of the Soviet Union, and we will once and for all establish a country that will make all of us proud.

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