Misha And His Team
October 26, 2009 – March 7, 2011
Gela Vasadze
Translated By Tim Blauvelt
Originally in published in Russian on Грузия Online as Миша И Его Команда
Today Georgia has once again drawn the attention of Russian readers, which is natural. Life is overflowing with events in that country which not so long ago was part of the united Soviet Union. Some look at Georgia with hope, others with hatred. I often find myself confronting simple ignorance about Georgia on the part of those who idealize my country. This is entirely natural, since most of the available information about Georgia is pure propaganda from one side or another. I won’t try to convince you, dear readers, that I am objective. Of course I am subjective, as a citizen and a patriot of my country, and as a direct participant in some of the events I will describe. I will say only that in describing these events from recent Georgian history I will try to be as objective as possible. Exactly six years ago the ratings of one political party, which in that period had been in the 10-15% range, began to increase exponentially. The reason for this rise was the savage beating in Batumi of a small group of demonstrators from the “United National Movement” by Aslan Abashidze’s special forces troops and by “aggrieved citizens.” At the time this did not seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Aslan Ibraimovich was very careful with regard to the issue of his private space: a whole part of the former Lenin Street (from Stalin to Rustaveli) where the personal residence of the head of Ajara was located was considered something of a sacred cow. Normally citizens would pass by this area under the intense scrutiny of several armed persons, to say nothing about the snipers on the roof. It was strictly forbidden to take pictures, move in groups of larger than three, or even to cross over to the residence side of the street. At night this was usually the only lighted area in the city. For the uninitiated, I would mention that we’re talking about the very center of the city, practically at the entrance to the seafront boardwalk. Residents and guests in Batumi were long accustomed to these limitations on their movements in Babu’s (“Grandpa’s”) vicinity and no longer complained particularly. Or at least the security measures of Aslan Abashidze’s guard more usually caused smiles than other feelings.
And so imagine that a group of several hundred people with white flags with red crosses tries to disturb this established order and to march past Aslan’s own residence. The “Nationals” were beaten and beaten severely, by five or six to one, chased into courtyards and entranceways, trampled and hunted down throughout the city, their hated flag with its five crosses stomped into the dirt. The core of National Movement activists were hunted down with particular enthusiasm and beaten most severely, among them Koba Davitashvili, Givi Targamadze, Vano Merabishvili, and Gia Arveladze. The National Movement coordinator in Ajara, Koba Khabazi, was taken to the emergency room with severe trauma. All of this was filmed in good conscience by journalists from all the Georgian television companies, except for Ajara Television, of course, and it was already clear by the next day that there had appeared in Georgia a new and powerful political force able to surpass in elections the “Citizens’ Union” [Shevardnadze’s party] and “Rebirth” [Abashidze’s party], who had started to compete more and more with one another. It is unlikely that the National Movement had planned for this result, since unlike the team of former Parliamentary speaker Zurab Zhvania that was made up of intellectuals nurtured on Western grants, the people around Misha Saakashvili were primarily revolutionaries – enthusiasts supported by the Open Society Foundation and the Liberty Institute.
The National Movement was created ahead of the Tbilisi municipal elections in 2002, and it immediately won a stunning victory in those elections. The party chairman, Mikheil Saakashvili, a young lawyer who had returned from the United States several years before and who had already successfully served in the national Parliament and as Justice Minister, became the chairman of the Tbilisi Sakrebulo (the representative institution of the capital city municipality). True, in order to accomplish this there had to be an agreement with the Laborites, for which their eternal leader Shalva Natelashvili has never been able to forgive himself, but one way or another, the Tbilisi Sakrebulo was a good springboard for attaining power. Incidentally, it might have happened the other way around, since no other party tried as hard to discredit the authorities as the National Movement. I won’t say that all the attempts to associate Mikheil Saakashvili with Vladimir Volfovich [Zhirinovsky] as the local madman straining for the presidency were entirely without results. Outside the capital many perceived Misha as a sick little boy who was trying to change the world but would never be able to beat the system. Saakashvili started work as chairman of the Sakrebulo with a simple and understandable program of fixing the roofs and elevators in tall apartment buildings at
the expense of the city budget. The National Movement could not be considered an ideologically consolidated party at this time, but their mood was for a Georgia without corruption. The people sympathized with the “Nationals,” but at the same time they didn’t believe that they could win. I won’t say that the rank and file Nationals believed particularly either, but as they say “the eyes hurt and the hands act.”
And act they did: the Fall electoral campaign for the Parliamentary elections was unusually tense, and by some animal instinct the authorities sensed that the fundamental threat came not from the Rebirth party of Aslan Abashidze or even from the United Democrats of the then current and former speakers of Parliament, but rather precisely from this small group of radical supporters of Saakashvili. After Batumi the Nationals started getting beaten up all over the place, with the exception of Tbilisi, and the more they were beaten the higher their ratings rose. Few people remember today how the convoy of National Movement cars was pelted with stones in Kvemo Kartli, and how they were shot at in Zugdidi. During one of the multitude of talk shows at that time the acting speaker of Parliament, Nino Burjanadze, was about to try to justify the actions of the attackers when she was shamed into silence both by the audience and by members of her own party. Both Burjanadze and Zhvania understood that the Nationals’ ratings were increasing, and primarily at the expense of their party (formally Nino Burjanadze was not a member of a party, but of the electoral bloc “Burjanadze-Democrats”), but there was nothing they could do about it.
In order to understand what was happening in Georgia at that time, one must return to the beginning of the 1990s, when upon returning to power Eduard Shevardnadze turned his attention to the young biologist Zurab Zhvania, the head of the Greens Party.
It was precisely around Zhvania and his team of young and energetic politicians that the Union of Georgian Citizens party was formed. Shevardnadze recommended to Zhvania the daughter of his friend Anzor Burjanadze, Nino, as a good lawyer. Zhvania’s attention was also drawn to a talented young person named Vano Merabishvili who had created an association of Georgia landowners. He also invited the young lawyer Saakashvili, who had worked in the United States, to take part in the elections to the new Georgian parliament. One would be entirely justified in considering Zurab Zhvania to be the father of civil society institutions in Georgia. It was on his initiative that a whole network of non-governmental organizations of all different stripes was created with financing from Western donors. A bit later he would repeat this in Ajara on the regional level. These non-governmental organizations were an ideal foundry for molding future personnel. But for a number of reasons, both objective and subjective, Zhvania himself could not aspire to the post of president. In the Fall of 2003 he did not conceal that he desired to see Nino Burjanadze in that post, the very same Nino whom he had managed with enormous effort to place as speaker of Parliament after his own resignation from that position as a result of the governmental crisis of Fall 2001. But we shall focus on that crisis a bit later on.
At the start of the 21st century Georgia was a country fully submersed in absolute corruption, with no hope for positive changes. The President, Eduard Shevardnadze, had practically exhausted h imself. Taking over a country wrecked by civil war, Shevardnadze succeeded in introducing order and dragging the country out of international political isolation. Under Shevardnadze a class of landlords appeared, primarily from the former party-state elite. The key spot in the system of control over the most profitable branches of the economy was held by “the family.” Small and medium business was not overly burdened with taxes, which in reality nobody paid anyway. The classical scheme suggested that at the end of the year the tax inspectors, literally straining at the bit, would gather from the industrialists as much as they could cough up, and the rest of the time they would put what money they could collect into their pockets, sharing with their bosses. The same system existed in the Interior Ministry, on which Eduard Amvrosievich traditionally relied, in the army, which was half-starved and made up of those who couldn’t buy their way out of conscription, and in other spheres. It was entirely usual for state salaries and pensions (which comprised $7 a month) to be delayed for many months. Electrical outages in the winter were explained by the fact that energy purchased cheaply from Russia was resold for three times the price to Turkey, and the Georgian officials and their Russian colleagues divvied up the proceeds amicably. The regions were the “feeding troughs” of the governors, and Ajara only formally answered to the central government. Thus profits from the Batumi port and customs did not even go to the regional budget, but rather directly into Aslan Abashidze’s pocket. As concerns the separatist regime in the Tskhinvali region, it subsisted on producing and exporting contraband alcohol to Russia and
importing smuggled goods back from there, which were then sold on the Ergneti market (on territory controlled by the Georgian authorities). A no less lively trade in contraband was carried out on the borders of the other separatist region of Abkhazia, although there was no single bazaar and there the traffic in smuggled cigarettes was handled by figures more weighty than small traders. One way or another, the government swelled and the people went hungry.
In general it was just an extreme variant of the typical post-Soviet state, except that the former USSR foreign minister, thanks to his contacts abroad, was able to attract interest to Georgia from Western countries as a possible alternate energy delivery route to Europe, bypassing the existing ones. What was more, Western leaders supported their former colleague through the multitude of international organizations working in Georgia, which Zurab Zhvania used to create non-governmental organizations. Thus the food deficit problem in the early 1990s was solved with help from the World Food Organization that worked in for a long time in Georgia, even continuing for several years after the real hunger problem had been overcome. In general, such organizations found it easy and pleasant to work in Georgia, since the divvying up of resources was carried out according to all the rules of the art of corruption. But the activities of Western organizations had its positive side as well: institutions of civil society began to emerge, and particularly strong among them were those in the sphere of freedom of speech and the media. Despite the chaos in the country, citizens saw the freedom of speech as an inexorable right that they had won. Freedom of speech was restricted only in Ajara, which provoked the reemergence of a Soviet era joke: in an argument between a Tbilisi and a Batumi resident, the Tbilisi resident says that he has freedom of speech to go onto the street and should “Down with Shevardnadze!” The Batumi resident logically objects that he too was free to go out onto the street in Batumi and shout “Down with Shevardnadze!”
One way or another, freedom of speech became absolutely natural, all the more so after the most popular TV station, Rustavi 2, went into open opposition to the government. This station was founded by the businessman Erosi Kitsmarishvili with support from none other than the very same Zurab Zhvania. As soon as the team of young reformers from the Citizens’ Union began to drift into opposition to the president, the tonality of the channel, which had earlier allowed critical programs to be aired but had avoided directly criticizing the head of state, now began to change. It started energetically delving into the textbooks on public opinion manipulation. Expose programs flowed as if from the Horn of Plenty, the most popular being a live call-in show with the talented young journalists Giorgi Sanaya and Eka Beridze. The most delicate topics for the Georgian leadership were brought up, including the issue of militants in Pankisi Gorge. The all-powerful Interior Minister Kakha Targamadze, who had positioned himself as the most aggressive opponent of the young reformers, also came under heavy criticism.
Things were going well – the public was outraged and entertained at the same time. Until one August evening the beloved program didn’t come on. The screen showed an awkward text that nobody wanted to believe: Giorgi Sanaya had been killed. Shock was soon replaced with indignation, and hundreds of thousands of people turned out for Sanaya’s funeral. It was now clear that society had awakened from its slumber. Those who lived in Russia in the early 1990s can easily understand what the residents of Georgia experienced if they recall their emotions following the murder of the journalist Vlad Listeiv. Add to that the southern temperament and you’ll get the precise atmosphere in Georgian society in that humid August of 2001.
And then an event took place to which few paid attention at the time: the chairman of the agricultural committee of the Georgian Parliament, MP Vano Merabishvili, harshly criticized the policies of President Shevardnadze in the pages of The New York Times. It was by then already obvious that Merabishvili’s close friend Misha Saakashvili and the other young reformers in the Citizens’ Union would soon go over to the opposition. This finally happened in the fall of that year, when the tax police and interior ministry operatives tried to close down Rustavi 2. The pretext was rather artificial: they said the station wasn’t paying its taxes, in a country where nobody paid their taxes. The tax men also framed their accusation particularly stupidly, saying that they had compared the advertisement timing with the cost per minute. The reaction came swiftly, and by evening there were many thousands of demonstrators at the walls of Parliament demanding the resignation of the Interior Minister. Parliamentary speaker Zhvania supported the protesters, and several days later he announced his agreement to resign if the Interior Minister would also resign. This was the dress rehearsal for the Rose Revolution.
Few in Georgia could imagine on that cold November night that the fate of the country was being decided for many years to come. The situation was paradoxical: the national Parliament, which until recently had seemed extremely stable due to the clear majority of the Citizens’ Union and opposition from Rebirth, suddenly turned into a very wobbly configuration of political forces that now had to choose a future speaker. I think that even few of the deputies really understood that the real thing up for grabs that night was not the speaker’s chair, but rather power in the country itself. It would be interesting to see how those deputies would have acted if they were told what would happen exactly two years later.
So that night, as could be expected, three camps, each now already openly hostile to one another, advanced their candidates. The government’s candidate was Vazha Lortkipanidze, an interesting figure in many regards. A professor of history, Lortkipanidze was Georgia’s ambassador to Russia and was then brought back to serve as the State Minister (practically the head of the government). He was considered by many to be a future presidential candidate, not only because of his work experience and good looks, but because of his friends, or because of one friend in particular: his close chum was none other than the man who had returned hope to Georgia – the Russian oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili (the group of companies that Patarkatsishvili founded in Georgia was called “Imedi,” or “hope”). Another candidate was Jemal Gogitidze, a meek scientist whom fate and blood relations with Abashidze had thrown nearly to the pinnacle of the political Olympus. And finally, the young reformers backed the candidacy of the virtually unknown parliamentary External Relations Committee chairperson Nino Burjanadze. It should be noted that to a certain degree Nino was a compromise figure: on one hand she was considered to be entirely a member of Zhvania’s team, and on the other her pedigree as the “Bread Princess” also went some way towards reassuring the old guard. The daughter of Anzor Burjanadze, the flour magnate and close friend of Eduard Amvrosievich, was one of their own.
Nevertheless, the fact that many of the deputies immediately expressed a lack of confidence in the parliamentary apparatus was telling about the situation in the parliament, since of course the apparatus was full of Zhvania’s people. The head of the apparatus was Khatuna Gogirishvili, whom the opposition had been accusing for many years of falsifying elections in favor of the Citizens’ Union. This time the Citizens’ Union deputies themselves feared becoming victims of falsification. According to the results of the first round of voting, which concluded at midnight, none of the candidates were able to gain the necessary 118 out of 235 votes. As might be expected, a scandal broke out during the voting: the ballots, which had been produced by the parliamentary apparatus, turned out to be numbered with invisible ink. Lortkipanidze demanded that new ballots be prepared immediately in the hall and that the voting place there in the open without voting cubicles. The rules commission agreed to this suggestion. Another candidate, Jemal Gogitidze, raised the question of immediately removing all of the heads of the apparatus from their positions. Khatuna Gogirishvili, the head of the apparatus, agreed to address the deputies at their demand, and stated that five officials of the apparatus had been involved in printing the ballots. She categorically denied involvement in preparing the numbered ballots and said she would resign only if her guilt was proven in court. Immediately afterwards, acting speaker Gigi Tsereteli (also a member of Zhvania’s team) made the decision to cut the live transmission of the parliamentary session. It is interesting to think what the result would have been if the voting procedure had been direct and open. So Nino Burjanadze was elected speaker of parliament in the second round of voting. For the uninitiated reader I would explain that according to the Georgian Constitution, in the case of the resignation of the president it is precisely the speaker of parliament who becomes the acting head of state.
Incidentally, to fully understand what was happening in Georgia at that time it is essential to know about not only the court intrigues, but also the mood on the street. The mentality of the Georgian population during the course of the 20th century experienced several serious fractures. The first was the arrival of the Bolsheviks, when the whole Georgian population, like other peoples of the Russian empire, was put through the meat grinder of the Great Turning Point. The new generation that grew up in the “country of heroes, the country of dreamers, the country of scientists” were the romantics of Soviet power. Belief in the Great Leader and in the Party was strengthened by the ethnic identity of that Great Leader. The pride of the people who gave the world the Velikii Stalin became entangled in genuine proletarian internationalism. To be a Georgian in the USSR in those years was to be honored by definition, although this honor did not result in particular material preferences, and it brought a certain responsibility.
Soviet romanticism was shot dead in March 1956 and the belief shattered, and although truck windshields displayed Stalin pictures up through the 1980s, and old men whispered amongst themselves and expected that Stalin would
one day be returned to the pantheon of Soviet heroes, nobody believed in Communism any more. Other values arose, among which was first of all concern for one’s own family, along with a corresponding increase in material well-being. A “burgherization” of society rapidly began to take place, and the Soviet system of that period gave a wide berth for entrepreneurialism. So called “tsekhi,” or underground shops – in essence small private industries that received huge profits by using state owned raw materials practically free of charge – began to appear in Georgia like mushrooms after a rain. A new type of economy arose that one could confidently call Socialist in form, Capitalist in content. Theft from the state was total, and brings to mind the Soviet era joke about the man who came home with two buckets of water everyday because he worked on a canal and there was nothing else to steal. Of course, not everybody in Georgia was rich, but there appeared a whole class of owners who knew how to make money, and this money was inevitably redistributed among the population. The absence of material difficulties inexorably led to changes in mentality in society, but it wasn’t hypocritical: socialist slogans had about the same significance in Georgia at that time as they did in China under Deng Xiaoping. That is to say, no one took them at all seriously. The campaign begun by Georgian Communist Party First Secretary Eduard Shevardnadze to clean up the “capitalist cesspool” that Georgia had turned into did not meet with success. In essence, the mass arrests and executions of the early 1970s were the first redistribution of property and a struggle for consolidating personal power. A similar thing happened again in the mid-1980s, only in a somewhat milder form, when Jumber Patiashvili took over the leadership after Shevardnadze was promoted to Moscow. If during the Stalin period it was “honorable” to be a Georgian, in the 1960–80s it was simply comfortable.
Now let us think about how a country with a blooming economy could in market conditions turn into ruins over the course of literally a few months. Of course, it would be easy to attribute everything to the civil war and economic blockade, but don’t waste your time. Even having survived the dark time of Zviad and the first civil war (in the Tskhinvali region and in Tbilisi), the economy, built on the principles of freedom in the vacuum of the collapse of the Soviet union, worked and worked well, all the more so since the opening of the borders with Turkey gave the economy a new impulse. Georgia was the natural gateway to the Turkish market for the entire post-Soviet space. But what happened, happened. Few remember the death blow to the Georgian economy that was dealt by Shevardnadze in the summer of 1992: the government had the initiative to invest resources in Sberbank and thereby to double the sum. The old fairytale about the Field of Miracles in the Country of Fools sucked the blood from the Georgian economy, and problems with infrastructure, the breaking of lines of supply, and war eliminated any chances for a turnaround.
So this was the Georgian economy under Shevardnadze. As I mentioned earlier, the lucrative spots were taken up by the “family”: mainly trade in oil products and in mobile communications. But Eduard Amvrosievich was not called the “Grey Wolf” for nothing. There was no full monopoly on anything, so for example in mobile communications Shevardnadze’s son-in-law’s company “Magti” had to compete with “Geocell,” founded by Turkish investors. The main source of earnings for those in power was the state sector: customs, the tax inspectorate, the traffic police, together with the entire Interior Ministry, the Energy Department, and the mass of city and state industries that worked in everything from road construction to street sweeping. Streams of money flowed from everywhere to the central authorities, turning into a flood of finance. One more means of profit was the so called “krysha” (“roof,” or protection racket). Having dealt with the criminal element, the government itself took over the protection business with great enthusiasm, and every bureaucrat, from corner cops to parliamentary deputies, had their own businesses. Sometimes businessmen swindled (“kidali”) one another, and then things depended on who had the stronger “krysha.” Many of them had both criminal and bureaucratic “kryshas.” Again, in general it was the typical post-Soviet mess, only even more vile. At the same time the state did not particularly interfere with money-making, and the country turned into a giant bazaar. The multitude of grants and humanitarian assistance was simply stolen away. But there was one issue that concerned all residents of Georgia, and that was electricity.
Georgia was in first place in water resources in the Soviet Union, so during the Soviet period there were never problems with electricity. True, power was still turned off in December for a half hour over several days in small cities and villages, but this was because the power grid officials received big prizes at the end of the year for conserving resources rather than because of any deficit. The situation changed in 1993, when the capital was left without electricity and gas one cold January day. One can imagine the shock to people who were caught entirely
unprepared for such a turn of events. It was only later that Turkish gas lights, batteries, water heaters and other delights of micro-infrastructure would appear. Those who had kerosene stoves were lucky, and the others went into their yards to chop wood to cook food to feed their children. Shortages of bread suddenly appeared and huge lines formed. Then there came the concept of the “grafik,” or schedule. In the winter, residents of the capital received electricity from seven until nine in the morning, and from eight until twelve in the evening.
The schedule was not always held to, and the cables in apartment buildings often broke, forcing residents to replace them by themselves. The electricity was in fact there: Russia supplied it in return for the export of power to Russia in the summer when the rivers were high. But this electricity was resold to Turkey, and the profits went into the pockets of the energy mafia bureaucrats. And there was a particular exception: as a rule electricity was provided according to the schedule from October 1 in those years when elections were taking place, and it would be shut off immediately as soon as the results were declared.
The first mass demonstrations in the Georgian capital began in the Fall of 2000, when the population closed streets with demands for “light and heat.” In essence these were the first public demonstrations since the early 1990s. The government reacted almost immediately, and already from the next spring the energy shortages in the capital were reduced, although true, the rest of the country remained in darkness. Some villages went years without light. But the lessons of autumn did not pass unnoticed: the people understood that by going out into the street and making their demands they could achieve a practical result. There were still three years to go before the Rose Revolution.
“I always recall one and the same, the twenty-third, the first day . . . ,” if the reader will forgive me for paraphrasing the poetry of our great countryman [Mayakovsky], but whenever I think of the Rose Revolution that line constantly comes to my mind. For a long time Russian-speaking readers were told that these events were planned and organized in the corridors of Langley, the techniques worked out and the roles planned down to the precise minute. Even today, years later, many in Georgia think it was a planned spectacle. I won’t try to dissuade the conspiracy theorists, but I will give my own personal impressions, and the conclusions that I reached in thinking about the events of those days. I immediately add the disclaimer that my conclusions are entirely my personal opinions, and I do not pretend to have the final truth.
By the end of the 1990s it was clear that the “Old Fox” had run out of steam. The country that might have started to rise from the ashes like the Phoenix had become mired in an inescapable swamp. To make a cynical but also an obvious observation, if Eduard Amvrosievich had been killed in the assassination attempt in February 1998, he would have gone down in Georgian history as a hero and a martyr. But this is not what happened: the armored Mercedes, a present from his friend Helmut, withstood the direct rocket impact, and traffic policeman Armen, out for some nighttime “fishing,” drove the frightened President to safety in his own Lada. One way or another, all of Georgian history that followed was the story of the sluggish attempts of the authorities to preserve the system.
The issue of change of power, after all, is one of the hardest questions all over the post-Soviet space. This is simple to explain: in the absence of institutions guaranteeing the inviolability of property, the issue of the change of power almost inevitably becomes a question of transfer of property, and this is a more than serious question. In the post- Soviet space the usual scheme of money-power-money becomes replaced by another: power-money-power. So from the start of the 2000s the question of how power would change hands in Georgia was given serious consideration in the corridors of power in Tbilisi and also in Washington, Brussels and Moscow. Naturally, the preparing of an heir started long before X hour, which was supposed to take place in 2005. The problem was that there were no clear candidates. Shevardnadze, like other post-Soviet leaders, couldn’t stand any implication of a competitor. And although there was constant discussion about a successor, nobody seemed to measure up to the president’s chair. The final individual suggested was entirely cartoonish: Avtandil Jorbenadze, Eduard Amvrosievich’s personal doctor and family friend who had been named as State Minister, which was indicative not only of the weakness, but also of the hopelessness of the existing regime.
The more credible and natural candidate for the post of successor would have been Zurab Zhvania, the young and energetic politician who had support from the West and was able to weave complex intrigues in the best Byzantine traditions. But there were several serious issues here that put a brick wall in front of Zhvania’s ambitions. Nearly all of the then Speaker’s political opponents understood the great likelihood of his coming to power. Smear campaigns
to discredit him followed one after another, and the potential candidate was accused of every possible thing, from Armenian-Jewish heritage to a non-traditional sexual orientation. Zhvania himself was not a charismatic figure or a skilled orator, which reduced his chances for victory in presidential elections to nil. But there were plenty of people in Zhvania’s camp able to play the role of president under a strong prime-ministership. The most promising of these candidates were Mikheil Saakashvili, who was young and charismatic, and Nino Burjanadze, who could serve as a link between generations. It was entirely natural that in the end the choice should be made in favor of Burjanadze: the young woman was a good lawyer and her father’s daughter, and she clearly won out compared to the impulsive Saakashvili, whom even the Tbilisi elite did not entirely accept as one of their own. But Mikheil Nikolaevich himself disagreed with this choice. He had taken too literally the words of the President of Georgia, spoken in a metro wagon heading for the newly opened Vazha Pshavela metro station: Shevardnadze had laid his hand on the knee of the young parliamentary candidate in a fatherly manner and said before the television cameras: “This guy is your future president.” Several years later the President’s words would turn out to be prophetic.
So Saakashvili gathered his team around him and began to play his own game. The most significant members of this team were the parliamentary deputies Vano Merabishvili, Zurab Adeishvili, Koba Davitashvili, former deputy Justice Minister Irakli Okruashvili, the businessman Beso Jugeli, the journalist Gia Arveladze, and many other young and talented people. Of course, it is very important for a party to have a charismatic leader, able to inspire and lead the masses. But it is no less important to have a first class organizer beside him. For those who have at least a passing knowledge of Georgian reality, it will not be difficult to guess that this was the party general secretary Vano Merabishvili.
Vano was able in a short time to create a party structure that could organize a march on the capital from nearly all regions of Georgia without significant financial resources. The main thing that distinguished the Nationals from activists of other parties was the critical mass of “people of strong will,” ready to take risks and even to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the eroded but nevertheless still concrete idea of freedom. What was more, in order to draw the supporters of the first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the Nationals joined up with one of the staunchest Zviadists, Zviad Dzidziguri, and in order to gain votes in Batumi they linked up with the Republican Party, headed by the Berdzenishvili brothers.
The elections of November 2, 2003 went as usual, with total falsification and a cynical and predetermined result. But nobody could agree with such results. During the week the votes were being counted first the Union of Georgian Citizens came out ahead, and then the National Movement, and the final vote count results from Ajara and Kvemo-Kartli were delayed. These two regions were the “administrative resources” of Rebirth and the Citizens’ Union, respectively, and it was clear that whoever would turn in their number last would win. After the results from Ajara were published, as might be expected Rebirth jumped into first place, and then a day later the results “arrived” from Kvemo Kartli. The final vote tally looked as follows: the Citizens’ Union was in first place, followed by Rebirth, and the National Movement was third. In any other situation the population would feel deceived and that would be the end of it. In any other situation, but not in this one. “They’ve stolen our votes!” shouted the National Movement leader to his electorate. The people, who had already become accustomed over the preceding two years to demonstrating en masse, instantly came out onto the streets. Few then supposed that this was not simply a demonstration, but a revolution.
It is difficult to say if anybody was planning for a change in power in the beginning of that November. Even without that the stakes were already very high: gaining the majority in parliament during the period of the changing of power would be a huge advantage. It is absolutely obvious that this is what Misha and his team were aiming for. Once it became clear that the street was strongly in the mood for protest, the Democrats also unhesitatingly joined the demonstrations. Nino Burjanadze and Zurab Zhvania joined hands and marched with their supporters on a cold November evening from the Philharmonia to the parliament building. By then it was clear that the strategic initiative was in the hands of the Nationals and the Democrats, who had hoped for a painless transfer of power into their hands, found themselves in secondary roles. And so the revolution happened, and to paraphrase the poet: if revolutions happen, it means somebody needs it.
Plainly, Mikheil Saakashvili and his supporters needed it. Understanding that the successor issue had already been resolved, Saakashvili moved out in front, as in the case with the publishing of Vano Merabishvili’s article in the New York Times and as now, bringing the people out onto Rustaveli Avenue.
But for a revolution to become a reality it is not enough just to bring people out. In the end they’ll stand for a while and then disperse. For any revolution you need money, access to mass media, and support from the “world community.” Those who try to show that the Rose Revolution was planned in the West usually bring up as proof the fact that the US Ambassador to Georgia at that time was Richard Miles. “What else do you need, he’s a specialist in colored revolutions,” they would say. But they are forgetting that before Georgia Miles had only the experience of Serbia, and there the situation was fundamentally different. Miles, of course, is a specialist, not in colored revolutions but rather in the transfer of power to the preferred group of individuals. I will venture to say that neither the State Department nor any other agency planned the Rose Revolution. Power was supposed to be calmly and peacefully transferred to Nino Burjanadze, that is, in reality to Zurab Zhvania. When the newly-elected President Saakashvili presented Zurab Zhvania as the new Prime Minister in January 2004, Saakashvili made a joke at Zhvania’s expense, saying he would have hoped to see a woman as Prime Minister. “Well, a woman should have become President,” Zhvania immediately parried.
*** So who supported Saakashvili in his struggle for power at that time? Lying on the surface is the Open Society Foundation, i.e. Soros. It was they who financed the Kmara!”(“Enough!”) youth movement, and it was with their money that young people provided the demonstrators standing in the piercing November wind with sandwiches and hot chocolate. Kmara!, headed by Gigi Ugulava and Tea Tutberidze, made life a living hell for corrupt bureaucrats, which earned them the genuine sympathy of the public. The ideological base for the Nationals was the non- governmental organization The Liberty Institute, whose activists had become known to the population thanks to their self-sacrificing defense of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were being beaten up by members of the radical Orthodox group of the defrocked priest Vasili Mkalavishvili. It was because of these terrifying scenes of people being beaten, burning biblical literature and pogroms that names like Giga Bokeria and Givi Targamadze became known around the country. It should be pointed out that to stand up openly for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Georgia at that time required no small amount of civic courage. In difficult social and economic conditions people turned to the Church as one of the only consolations that remained for them, and anathema rang out from all the pulpits towards the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who had been aggressively proselytizing. The future state ideology was being worked out in the bowels of the Liberty Institute, although it should be mentioned that the program of the National Movement itself was extremely eclectic, made up of populist slogans about struggle against corruption and the return of state deposits. Saakashvili’s activity as chairman of the Tbilisi Sakrebulo, when on his initiative the roofs, basements and elevators in many apartment buildings had been repaired with the help of the city budget, also played no small role. A considerable part of the National Movement financing came from donations by individual industrialists, whom the Nationals proposed to protect from the arbitrariness of the tax and law enforcement organs. The urban joke that “Misha made us a roof [“krysha,” i.e., protection]” had an entirely double meaning.
A separate mention should be made of the role of television, and particularly of the channel Rustavi 2, founded by a member of Zurab Zhvania’s team, Eros Kitsmarishvili. Over the course of several years various talk shows and even cartoons had shaken the authorities’ foundations. The practice of broadcasting demonstrations live had been tried out back in November 2001, and constant political advertisements were aimed not at supporting any particular party, but against the sitting government. Residents of Georgia certainly must remember the impressive ads that said “This is not their face” or “Enough! Why? Because I love Georgia.” Later the TV station of the oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili also began supporting the opposition. But we’ll speak about his role in recent Georgian history a bit later on. For now we will limit ourselves to mentioning that it was precisely Badri Patarkatsishvili who was financing Zurab Zhvania’s team. Some people say that that the Nationals were funded by another oligarch, Bdzina Ivanishvili. I have no information about this, and knowing Ivanishvili I could imagine that there might have been some kind of one-time assistance, but it is unlikely that he would get seriously involved in the Georgian political game. All the more so since he has no business interests in Georgia, and in his homeland he is engaged exclusively in philanthropy.
But money isn’t everything. Before the 2003 elections it seemed to everybody that the West had bet on Zhvania’s team, and Misha was seen as a possible reserve candidate and as an ideal opposition. But something happened that I think no one could have expected: Saakashvili again got ahead of the game. When speaking about Richard Miles everybody for some reason forgets that the successor in Georgia was supposed be a figure that satisfied not only Washington, but Moscow as well. Shevardnadze, with his endless flitting back and forth between Moscow and Washington had annoyed both. Obvious Moscow clients like Aslan Abashidze or Jumber Patiashvili would not have suited the West. I really don’t know how Mikheil Nikolaevich was able to get an OK from the Kremlin, but the fact is that at a certain point in time Saakashvili seemed to be more acceptable to the Kremlin than Nino Burjanadze.
Meanwhile, very interesting events were taking place in Tbilisi. Following the weeks-long vigil in front of Parliament, the Nationals were preparing for the final showdown. The Democrats and activists of the pro-Russian Unity Party of Jumber Patiashvili were already standing together with them at the parliament. Having demonstrated their strength, the revolutionaries took their people off Rustaveli Avenue and headed for the regions. At the same time Eduard Shevardnadze turned to his sworn friend Aslan Abashidze for assistance. Having unlimited administrative and financial resources, Abashidze sent to Tbilisi no fewer people than the revolutionaries had gathered. Rustaveli reverberated with shouts of “Babu, Babu” (“Grandfather, as Aslan’s supporters called him) and the blue flags of the Revival party. It’s difficult to say if Aslan Abashidze was thinking at that time what might have been if his representative in Tbilisi, Tsotne Bakuria, had not simply “privatized” most of the money allocated for the elections, or if it seemed to Aslan that his star had risen and he would not miss the chance to replace the old Fox in the presidential chair. Fact remains fact that the demonstrators, receiving 20 Lari a day, spared no effort in expressing supportive feelings. The date of the first session of the new parliament was looming inexorably close. To preserve his power Shevardnadze would not even have to annul the election results – all he would have had to do was declare a recount and give more seats in the parliament to the Nationals. But the Old Fox’s instinct betrayed him.
On the evening of November 21 residents of the Georgian capital became witnesses to a surprisingly beautiful spectacle, shown on live air on Rustavi 2, of a kilometers-long convoy of car headlights and blaring horns making its way to Tbilisi over the course of several hours. Everyone who was watching television that evening had a feeling of involvement in a historical moment, and at that moment the whole country was watching television. That same evening many of Abashidze’s supporters hopped on the Tbilisi-Batumi train and went home. The decisive day had come, a day that would go down in history.
The first and last session of the new parliament began as planned. Deputies from the Citizens’ Union and from Rebirth sat in the chamber, but there was no quorum. The Patriarch of Georgia, Ilia II, was also absent from the hall. The situation changed when the deputies of the New Rights, headed by Davit Gamkrelidze, decided to enter the chamber and take their seats. The session began, and President Shevardnadze appeared at the podium. All of this could be seen on Georgian Channel 1, but hardly anybody in Georgia that day was watching Channel 1. Rustavi 2 was showing completely scenes: small screen in the upper corner was showing the parliamentary session, while the rest of the screen showed what was happening on Freedom Square and Rustaveli Avenue, where Saakashvili had gathered more than a hundred fifty thousand of his supporters. For some time the space in front of parliament was occupied by Abashidze supporters, blocked off by busses and dump trucks filled with sand. This was the most dangerous moment, as supporters of revolution began climbing over the buses, and anything could have happened. But the people who stood on the other side of the barricades were just the same kind people, worn out by problems and with no more desire to preserve the hated authorities. Soon the busses and dump trucks were pulled away and all of Rustaveli Avenue, Freedom Square and the adjoining streets turned into a sea of people demanding change.
It would have been impossible in principle to stop such a mass of people, and in practice nobody tried. The unimaginable happened when the deputy Interior Minister Irakli Alasania, on the direct order of his chief, who incidentally was Vladimir Putin’s good friend Valery Khaburdzania, opened wide to the demonstrators the central gates of parliament. The exalted crowd carried their leaders practically on their hands to the legislative organ. The final interesting moment of that day, which might not be widely known to the public, was the unexpected hesitation
that took place at the doors to the chamber. According to the existing legislation, only deputies had the right to enter, and Zurab Zhvania reminded the crowd of this, supported by Nino Burjanadze. At that moment Mikheil Saakashvili said something that would change forever the history of Georgia: “Either this will be our revolution, or my revolution. You choose.” The scenes that followed this were seen all over the world, as Saakashvili stormed into the hall of the parliament with a group of his supporters and shredded the legitimization of the new legislature. President Shevardnadze was hurriedly evacuated by his bodyguards. Power practically shifted to the hands of the revolutionaries, and Russian Security Council Chairman Igor Ivanov arrived in the Georgian capital to discuss with Shevardnadze the conditions for the transfer of power and guarantee of his safety. A day later Shevardnadze would resign, and Nino Burjanadze, as speaker of parliament, would step in as acting president of Georgia. But on that same evening nobody had any doubt that Mikheil Saakashvili would become the new President of Georgia. He had earned it.
Thorns of the Revolution
Much has been said about revolution: that it eats its children like Saturn; that revolution is thought up by geniuses and carried out by fanatics, and its fruits are made use of by scoundrels. This is all true, but nobody ever thinks about such things in the first days after a revolution. The sense of participation in victory makes even those who the day before rolled their eyes at the huge crowds demanding change feel like victors. And the Georgian revolution was no exception. In the end of November 2003, one could observe many irrationally happy people all over Georgia. Now everything will change, now we will live in a new way – this is the leitmotiv of any revolution. People never realize that getting rid of the old does not at all mean the triumphal creation of the new. But this is human nature, and nothing can be done about it.
Misha’s coming to power in many ways resembled the coming of the Bolsheviks. Over the course of the months- long pre-election campaign, and then during the struggle for justice, our ardent revolutionaries had promised all things to everybody: bread to the hungry, peace to the soldiers, factories to the workers, and land to the peasants. Now the time had come to bring to life at least some of these promises. On the outside everything seemed like a celebration, although I imagine that for the revolutionary troika – Saakashvili, Zhvania and Burjanadze – the mood was far from celebratory. Any leader who unexpectedly finds himself in a high position spends some time in a state of shock. It would seem that no matter how much one thinks about what must be done and how, reality always turns out to be different. They had to think about how to preserve the power that had fallen to them, and how to divide it, which is much more complicated, and how to start to satisfy elementary expectations, since the revolutionary mood of the masses is always a dangerous thing for any government. There is no shortage of examples from history of how yesterday’s victors find themselves under the guillotine.
Since Shevardnadze’s time the main foothold of the Georgian authorities was the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was no coincidence that Shevardnadze himself came to power in Georgia in the distant 1970s from the post of state security minister. As First Secretary of the Communist Party he used the repressive apparatus of the Interior Ministry to its fullest, and arrests and executions followed one after another. Over a few months the young First Secretary was able not only to eliminate all those cadres who were hostile to him and to place his own people at the commanding heights, but to implement an enormous propagandistic struggle with corruption in Georgia, which earned him both support from the population and approval from the USSR Politburo. It should be noted that Eduard Amvrosievich turned out to have worthy disciples, and thirty years later the aged Poobah of Georgian politics was forced to watch history repeat itself as his cadres mercilessly smashed the machinery he himself had created. But everything in its turn.
Immediately after the revolution only one of the power ministers was replaced. Kakha Narchemashvili, who defended his patron to the end and was ready to have a fistfight with Saakashvili outside of Parliament, was replaced by Giorgi Baramidze. It’s hard to say what would have happened if the interior minister in those November days had been the experienced Kakha Targamadze rather than the youthful Narchemashvili, but as we remember, Targamadze had been forced to resign as a result of a clever gambit back in November 2001, and the ministry of state security, on which Eduard Amvrosievich had tried to rely in recent years, turned out to be a poor foothold. The appointment of Baramidze as interior minister should have been seen as a victory for the Zhvania team, but it was particularly this appointment that displayed the main weakness of this team: namely, the absence of
“people of strong will.” Baramidze looked even more out of place as interior minister than Narchemashvili had. But the system functioned well enough, and most importantly it was ready to carry out the will of its new masters.
The first victim of the revolution was Energy Minister Davit Mirtskhulava. Nobody loves a turncoat, and Mr. Mirtskhulava was no exception. Having been a member of Zhvania’s team, he was enticed to the post of energy minister and participated with enthusiasm in the divvying up of the enormous resources of the Georgian energy market that we discussed earlier. The arrest of Mirtskhulava had another subtext: the energy crises let itself be felt in the middle of winter not only in the regions, but in the capital as well. The system could not be changed in the course of several weeks, and that was all that remained until the new presidential elections. There had to be a scapegoat, and one was found easily enough. The sight of the Energy Minister being led into a prison cell had a powerful effect on the population. Several months later highly visible arrests of bureaucrats would become a commonplace in Georgia, but then the country was still getting used to the new realities.
The 2004 presidential election in Georgia resembled a festival. Even the election of the first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, did not take place in such an atmosphere of unanimity. People knew the result in advance, but all the same they congratulated each other with Saakashvili’s victory as they would a holiday. Several days before, the presidential candidate had celebrated New Year’s together with a poor Tbilisi family, telling his son that he was taking power so that there would be no more poverty in Georgia. Few were entering into a social contract with Saakashvili on January 5, 2004, but the majority trusted their fate to him, seeing in the young and energetic politician salvation from all ills. With time this would do President Saakashvili a disservice.
And there was intrigue around these elections. Aslan Abashidze still held power in Ajara, and the main question was how people there would vote, or if they would vote at all. We’ll speak more about Ajara later, but it will suffice for the time being to note that the Ajaran Lion held out to the very end, and arrived at the polling station fifteen minutes before closing. It was probably amusing to observe how the Ajaran bureaucrats rushed to vote after their master. Certainly not all of them made it in time.
Mikheil Saakashvili received 96.5% of the vote, a result that, considering that the elections were conducted democratically, is worthy of the Guinness book of records. I cannot divert my attention as well from the pompous inauguration ceremony that continued for two days and began at eight in the morning in the Batumi port. Abashidze tried not to look in the direction of the beaming Saakashvili, who was reviewing a parade of naval officers in sharp white coats. And then the unimaginable happened, when a crowd of people, having learned of the President’s arrival, broke through the cordons and threw themselves at the podium with shouts of “Misha! Misha!” Aslan Ibraimovich was hurriedly evacuated by his bodyguards, while Misha waded out into the thick of the exalting crowd. One can imagine how this scene acted on the aging dictator, who suffered from a multitude of phobias.
I will not exhaust the reader with details of the formal ceremony, with the exception of two incidents. After visiting Batumi and Poti, Saakashvili took the oath at the grave of David the Builder in the Gelati monastery. This was a beautiful and necessary step, symbolizing dedication to traditions, all the more so since David the Builder went down in Georgian history as the ruler able to unite a divided Georgia. But there was something else: while waiting for the start of the ceremony the exhausted Misha sat down on the throne in the temple. This might seem insignificant, but for an Orthodox person this looks very inappropriate, and television, that very same Rustavi 2, continued showing the President on live air, sitting in the temple and chatting with one of the archbishops. The treacherous thought came into my head that maybe he was being set up, since during the time before the ceremony started they could just as easily have shown picturesque scenes of Kutaisi. The other thing was the President’s speech, in which he devoted most of the foreign policy part to improving relations with Russia, while also directly stating Georgia’s aspiration for European integration. From that moment the flag of the European Union, as a symbol of that aspiration, took its place in all official Georgian institutions, from the office of the president to the office of the administrative head of the most far flung region.
The holiday ended quickly, leaving behind some pleasant memories, and the working days began, the working days for a new country that in essence remained the old country. It is not entirely known how much form influences content, but nobody particularly argued that the country didn’t need a new flag, anthem, and coat of arms. Of
course, the accusations that the cross on the flag was wrong, that lions not really stand like that, and that only Hitler had made his party symbols the symbols of the country could not be avoided, but nobody paid particular attention to these protests. The existing state symbols, borrowed from the Georgian Democratic Republic, were genuinely worn out, and the national anthem was a nearly exact copy of the German Social Democratic one. But to enough about form – the content is much more interesting.
I would suggest that governance reforms in Georgia had been planned long before, under the supervision of Zurab Zhvania. The schema was rather smart: a cabinet of ministers would be created, Nino Burjanadze would become president and Zhvania the prime minister, and Georgia would turn into a parliamentary republic. The Rose Revolution shuffled all the cards, and an absolutely new configuration had to be worked out in keeping with the political realities. What was more, Nino Burjanadze suddenly started to feel herself more of a relatively independent figure, although clearly leaning towards her personal friend, Zurab Zhvania.
At this point it becomes necessary to make a lyrical digression. Moving from Kutaisi in the 7th grade as a chubby and self conscious young girl in big horn-rimmed glasses, Nino found herself in the Tbilisi beau monde of that time. The family of Anzor Burjanadze, for whom Nino was a late and only child, settled on Kipshidze Street in Vake, the well-to-do district of Tbilisi. Nino did very well in school, and was accepted without difficulty to the Law Faculty of Tbilisi State University, and the corresponding circle of acquaintances and level of education gave her a ticket into the world of the capital elite. Recall that Saakashvili went to university not in Tbilisi, but in Kiev, which had both its minus and its plus. The minus was that it made it harder to select personally loyal cadres, while the plus was that a person linked with the Tbilisi elite by the umbilical cord would find it extremely difficult to carry out reforms that directly affect the interests of that very same elite. It is no coincidence that the “Vendee” arose precisely in Vake, although in 2004 that was still a long way ahead.
And so let us consider the changes that were made to the country’s Constitution. Most important were the creation of a cabinet of ministers and the consequent establishment of the post of prime minister. The cabinet of ministers must resign upon the re-election of the president, the resignation of the prime minister, or by the decision of more than three-fifths of the parliament. If the cabinet of ministers resigns, the president has a week to present a new composition of the cabinet, and if the parliament fails to confirm it three times, the president has the right to dissolve parliament. During this time the parliament cannot impeach the president. An interesting thing is that the president appoints not just the prime minister, but the other ministers as well, although the prime minister has the right to remove them. In case the parliament votes no confidence in the government, the president has the right to disagree with this decision, and to raise the question again in the course of three months. The president has the right to sack the government entirely, and to remove the security service, interior ministry and defense ministry heads. It is not hard to see that all of this is warped in favor of strengthening presidential power, but, as everybody knows, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and Misha would have to pay a political price for these concessions from the Zhvania team.
In my opinion, the price was too high: this was the combining of the United National Movement with the United Democrats. In my view this was the most tragic moment in recent Georgian history. Georgia lost the chance for a strong impulse for the development of the institutions of civil society. Political competition moved from public life to back office intrigues. Perhaps Zhvania thought that he could easily outplay Saakashvili on this playing field. If that is the case, then he was sadly mistaken. But it was the National Movement that suffered the first losses, as the general secretary Koba Davitashvili and Zviadist representative Zviad Dzidziguri quit the party in protest over the unification. The Nationals’ allies in the Republican Party also did not conceal their dissatisfaction, and the decision resulted in open protest on the part of rank-and-file members of that party. Attempts to name the party “National Movement – Democrats” ran into such difficulties up through the fall of 2004 that by the first national party congress on November 23 of that year it was decided to leave the name of the party unchanged as “United National Movement.”
Those who lived in the autonomous republics during the Soviet period should recall the principal of appointment by ethnicity. In the Tatarstan ASSR, for example, the first secretary of the regional party committee had to be a Tatar, while the second secretary was always a Russian. This principle of appointment by ethnicity extended practically
down to the level of collective farm chairmen. A similar picture emerged in personnel appointments in the first days of the revolution. Bitter struggles took place around political appointments at the ministerial level, but after that everything was simple: if a minister was from one team, the deputy minister would be from the other team. Zhvania’s attempts to outplay Misha by introducing Nino Burjanadze’s independent team did not meet with particular success. Further, Saakashvili was stacking more and more the power ministries with his own people. The first and most effective step was the appointment of Vano Merabishvili, with whom we are already familiar, as secretary of the Security Council, and from that moment all decisions about the power ministries were made precisely by this organ. The effective and talented manager Irakli Okruashvili, who did not belong to any grouping within the National Movement and was personally devoted to Saakashvili, was appointed as Prosecutor General. Next was the appointment as Justice Minister of Zurab Adeishvili, a person who by all parameters resembled his friend and colleague Merabishvili. And finally, concluding the accord, Saakashvili’s personal friend Gela Bezhuashvili was appointed as Defense Minister. This left the Ministry of Internal Affairs, headed by Giorgi Baramidze, and this is where things got tricky. In order to gain control over that most powerful of power structures, Saakashvili named Petre Tsiskarishvili as Deputy Minister. A distinguished lawyer from an elite family and who graduated from a prestigious American university, Tsiskarishvili was the kind of figure who should have been acceptable to everybody. It is not entirely clear why, perhaps because of his natural hot temper or maybe in order to feel out the strengths of his opponents, but immediately after his appointment Tsiskarishvili made a shocking announcement, accusing Nino Burjanadze of protecting corrupt individuals. This was a blow to one of the leaders of the revolution. Misha immediately reined in the errant Deputy Minister, but it was already too late: the powerful media machine of the Zhvania team launched into action (recall that Rustavi 2 was still under the control of Erosi Kitsmarishvili). After a series of “expose” segments connected with the construction of a house of some sort, Saakashvili had to remove his favorite far away from the clashes of the capital, naming him governor of Kakheti. Meanwhile, the punishing sword of the revolution was swinging at full strength.
In the winter of 2004 the entertainment TV channel 202 aired the following advertisement: “Dear friends, we understand that the viewership of the news program “Kurieri” (on Rustavi 2) is much higher than our channel, since everybody is interested in finding out who’s been arrested today and to what country Mikheil Saakashvili is flying this time. But “Kurieri” only lasts an hour, and the rest of the time our audience is no smaller than Rustavi 2’s. So remember that advertising on our channel costs ten times less than on Rustavi 2.” This commercial was funny because it was true. We’ve already spoken about Davit Mirtskhulava. The most high-profile case was the arrest of Shevardnadze’s personal friend Akaki Chkhaidze, who for many years was head of the Georgian railroad. One can imagine the resources of this individual, considering the scale of corruption in the agency entrusted to him. Understanding full well what was awaiting him, Chkhaidze took refuge in Batumi, territory outside the control of the new authorities. What happened next amazed everybody: a special helicopter team headed by Interior Minister Baramidze himself seized Chkhaidze from a Batumi hospital and delivered him to Tbilisi. Other large scale arrests concerned high-level officials of the customs service, interior ministry, energy ministry (naturally), and other ministries and agencies. Transportation Minister Merab Adeishvili was arrested, as was Deputy Interior Minister Davit Todua, Education Minister Aleksandre Kartozia, and Communications and Post Minister Fridon Indjia, who had rushed to give testimony to the Prosecutor in the week before his arrest, and the chairman of the Chamber of Control, Sulkhan Molashvili. The revolutionaries’ most ardent opponent, Kvemo-Kartli governor Levan Mamaladze, fled the country. In March 2004 Shevardnadze’s son-in-law, Gia Jokhtaberidze, owner of the Magticom mobile telephone company, was arrested. Of course this is not a complete list by far, and arrests became commonplace as purges both in the center and in the regions reached their apogee. Observing all of this, the population boiled with righteous anger, and very few stopped to consider the simple fact that the basis of any revolution is the redistribution of property.
Naturally, personnel purges took place in all ministries and agencies without exception, as in January all the heads of the Georgian customs service were dismissed and on March 1, 2004 the heads of police administrations and departments tendered their resignations all over the country, with the exception of Ajara, of course. A week later the members of the Energy Regulating Commission did the same.
But not all bureaucrats resigned or found themselves behind bars. The arrests and resignations turned out to be a rather effective instrument in the struggle for power. A demonstrative example is Shalva Ogbaidze, the head of one
of the most corrupt structures in the Interior Ministry, the traffic police. He was able to avoid arrest despite the fact that many assumed it was only a matter of time. Several years later Shalva Ogbaidze would receive a rubber bullet wound during the storming of the Georgian police administration while standing together with opposition leader and close personal friend Nino Burjanadze.
One can talk endlessly about that time. The storytelling format does not allow me to dwell on all of the very interesting events, such as the sealing of all the property of the Omega company, the owner of which, Zaza Okuashvili, was the son of one of Eduard Shevardnadze’s closest friends, the arrest and trial of Vasili Mkalavishvili, the false priest who attacked Jehovah’s Witnesses together with his supporters, or the individual initiatives of Shida Kartli governor Irakli Okruashvili, who began bringing order to the region by raiding a bordello for truck drivers. For the time being I will simply point out that besides the struggle for power and the absolutely radical measures to pull the country out of the swamp, the main concern of the new authorities was Ajara.
Ajara
Muslim Georgia, as this region was still called by the beginning of the 20th century, Ajara had been torn away from the Princedom of Guria and was part of the Ottoman Empire for three hundred years. Much changed in those three hundred years, and it would be incorrect to say that the residents of Ajara viewed the Russian troops as liberators. Just as three hundred years ago Chorokhi and Ajaristskali were stained with blood in the war against the Turks, this time many Georgian “mukhajiri” fought in Machakhela against the new Russian invaders. Many could not accept the Russian conquest and left for Turkey, while others remained to live in the Russian Empire. The subsequent history of Ajara differed little from that of other parts of the expansive empire: the economic boom of the end of the 19th and early 20th century, the first Baku-Batumi pipeline, free port status, revolution, wars, German and British occupation, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. By the end of the 20th century the population of Ajara was practically indistinguishable from that of the rest of the Georgian, aside from the occurrence of unusual first names such as Ali, Haidar or Refide, usually among people of the older generation. Thanks to the educational activities of Ilia Chavchavadze and his successors and the universal literacy policies and atheistic propaganda of the Bolsheviks, the differences between Muslim and Christian Georgians practically disappeared in the course of several generations. But there was another side of the coin that flowed directly from the Bolsheviks’ personnel policies. According to the conditions of the Treaty of Kars, Ajara became an autonomous republic within Georgia. As a result, a cadres system was put in place in the party and government organs in which the first secretary of the regional party committee had to be an Ajaran and the second secretary a non-Ajaran, the first secretary of the Batumi city committee to the contrary had to be a non-Ajaran and the second secretary an Ajaran, and so on. Thus in one way or another the system of division was preserved at the state level that was characteristic for any region. For example, the first secretary of a regional committee in Kakheti had to be a Kakhetian, in Guria a Gurian, and so forth. As a result, tribal identity remains sufficiently characteristic for Georgia, so that if you ask Georgians about their place of origin, as a rule they answer “Mingrelian,” “Rachan,” “Kakhetian” or “Ajaran.”
The changes in the party leadership in Georgia naturally were instantly reflected in the party leadership in Ajara. The blessed land of mountains and sea was one of the richest regions in Georgia, and since Ajara was one of the main suppliers of citrus produce for the Soviet market, one can picture how much money was made on these yellow tasty delights for the New Year’s table. One of the most prestigious posts was that of the director of the tangerine receiving station. One can only imagine the distortions and machinations that took place there. But the mountainous regions of Ajara had neither tangerines nor sea. The residents of these regions, living in a “closed zone” in a border region, thanked their lucky stars when Ajaran Regional Party First Secretary Vakhtang Papunidze implemented his idea of growing “Samsun,” one of the most expensive varieties of tobacco, in his native Kedi region. More generally, Papunidze’s name is associated with many positive things, such as the building of new districts in Batumi, the reconstruction of the Batumi boardwalk, and the opening of high-rise hotels on the sea shore. But, as often happens, he bet on the wrong horse, and later as rector of the Tbilisi Financial Institute, where he was transferred after the coming to power of the new Georgian party first secretary Jumber Patiashvili, he committed suicide, according to rumors because of a criminal case brought against Patiashvili’s main competitor, Suliko Khabeishvili. But this was really the only serious scandal to hit Ajara. Usually everything flowed calmly in this paradise where the sea met the mountains.
The situation changed in the end of the 1980s, and it changed not just in Ajara, but throughout the whole country. The powerful wave of the national liberation movement swept over Georgia, and by 1990 it became clear that the Soviet system could not withstand it. Not immediately, but gradually, the leaders of the movement began to shake up the situation in the regions, and if in 1988 the secretary of the Kobuleti regional committee could take the liberty of telling Zviad Gamsakhurdia to get lost, after April 9, 1989 nobody could take such a liberty. It was indicative that while the first demonstration in Batumi took place in the Adlia stadium outside the city, and after April 1989 demonstrations took place right in Lenin Square in front of the party regional committee building. It was a heady time, and the leaders of the national liberation movement were constantly thinking up new extravagances, such as tearing down Lenin’s statue. This was a real theatrical show, with the participation of thousands of people who the evening before were loyal supporters of Soviet power. The authorities practically dissolved themselves, and they observed from the party building windows the movements of these revolutionaries who came out of nowhere, preparing themselves for a new life in a capitalist tomorrow. There was no resistance, and not only because the majority of the functionaries sympathized with the people in the street.
According to the memoirs of Murman Beridze, who that that time worked in the apparatus of the Party Central Committee, when during a Committee meeting devoted to the Autumn electoral campaign in 1990 one of the regional committee secretaries proposed a plan for victory in his region, he was stopped in his tracks by the First Secretary, Givi Gumaridze: “You seriously thing you can win?!” In general, the situation in the country was strange: the Communist Party, with an enormous apparatus of ideological workers and control of all the mass media, practically dissolved itself. All things considered, the victory of the “Round Table” (Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s political organization) was inevitable. It is interesting that the election of Gamsakhurdia as the first President of Georgia did not at all mean victory at the local level, since local elections were not held together with parliamentary ones. Until the introduction of the institution of prefects, the party elite still governed the country in the regions. An interesting situation resulted in the autonomies. If the leadership of the South Ossetian autonomous district engaged in open confrontation with the Tbilisi authorities, and clashes took place in the corridors of power in Sukhumi between the supporters and opponents of the new authorities, the young and energetic chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Ajara and simultaneously First Secretary of the Ajaran regional committee of the party, Tengiz Khakhba, skillfully balanced between the Scylla and Charybdis of the revolutionaries and the party guard. Perhaps under different circumstances Khakhva would have been able to stay in power, but he was too honest for the political games in Georgia at that time. Many years later, as deputy chairman of the Russian Federal Properties Fund, he would be removed from his post for being one of the only bureaucrats to refuse to testify in the case against Khodorkovsky. But that’s a different story.
At that time a struggle for power began in Ajara of an intensity that could only occur during a vacuum of power. The best known Batumi joke at that time was as follows: “We used to think that Lenin was born in Simbirsk, but now we’re sure that his place of birth was Shuakhevi (the regional center in mountainous Ajara).” The thing was that for a long time Shuakhevi was the only place in Georgia where a Lenin statue still stood in the central square. And it was no coincidence that it was the first secretary of the Shuakhevi regional party committee, Ioseb Khimshiashvili, the descendent of a prince who wrote his name into Georgian history in golden letters, decided that providence had given him the opportunity to take power by right of birth, replacing on the land of his ancestors the half-breed Khakhva. A “Committee for the Salvation of Ajara” was created on his initiative, and it was timed well. Georgia had just declared that its withdrawal from the union government, and the prince-communist certainly bet on support from Moscow. The newly elected President of Georgia had to take extreme measures. It must be admitted that Zviad Gamsakhurdia resolved this problem brilliantly: as a balance to the rebellious prince who had failed to demonstrate his loyalty to the president, Gamsakhurdia brought his own candidate to Batumi: Deputy Minister of Consumer Service of Georgia Aslan Abashidze. The brilliance of the solution was that Aslan Abashidze was also the descendent of a princely line, and his grandfather, Memed Abashidze, was a member of the first parliament, the Ajaran Mejlis. It was only later that court historians would inflate the rank of Memed Abashidze, who himself was repressed in the 1930s, calling him the chairman of parliament, which is not true. But the fact that Aslan’s grandfather left his mark in the history of the region is incontrovertible. The only problem was that Aslan Abashidze was not a member of the Supreme Soviet of Ajara, but nobody at the time paid attention to such insignificant details, all the more so since the Georgian President declared to the deputies that whoever supports the
independence of Georgia should vote for Abashidze. This step was not much to the liking of the democratic community or to the supporters of the communists, but the deputies did not dare go against the will of the great leader. Demonstrations by thousands of people from the mountainous regions of Ajara and the Muslim clergy could change nothing, and only served to solidify the position of the newly elected head of Ajara. A direct participant in the events of those days, now a famous blogger and then a beginning journalist, Tina Mzhavanadze, wrote about this demonstration in her essay “A Reporter’s Sunny Day in the City of B.” Thus on April 22, 1991 Aslan Ibraimovich Abashidze became the head of Ajara for the next 13 years. And having named as Abashidze’s deputy Nodar Imnadze, an active leader in the revolutionary movement and former Stalinist who was a well known figure in the city, the President of Georgia left Batumi with a feeling of accomplishment. All the more so since the two central streets of the beautiful resort town, previously named Lenin Street and Stalin Street, were soon renamed for Konstantine Gamsakhurdia and Memed Abashidze, respectively.
It cannot be said that Aslan Abashidze was unknown in the city, as unlike Ioseb Khimshiashvili he grew up in the very center of Batumi. An outgoing boy who had problems with his spine despite his small size, he made a very strong impression on his peers. It was as if he radiated strength, and unlike his father, the highly respected builder Ibraim Abashidze, a quiet and warmhearted person, Aslan had a turbulent temperament. People of the older generation recall a story about how Aslan wounded a passer-by in the leg as the result of an accidental gunshot. Mind you, this was in the 1950s. As often happens, despite the hooliganism of his youth Aslan Abashidze cleaned up his act and became a respectable member of society, going from a university teacher to Ajaran Minister of Consumer Service, after which he was brought to Tbilisi as Deputy Minister of Consumer Service of Georgia. If anybody thinks that the Ministry of Consumer Service was a minute and insignificant agency, I would hurry to correct this misconception. In previous parts of this essay I discussed the appearance in Georgia of a class of entrepreneurs called the “tsekhoviki,” or underground industrialists. It was precisely through the Ministry of Consumer Service that the vast majority of these tsekhoviki “legalized” their activities, naturally with the required tribute to the leadership of this agency. Aslan himself was a talented and extravagant person. He painted remarkably, loved to cook, which he also did very well, and he even cut his children’s hair, or at least that of young Giorgi. On the whole this was a townsman in the best sense of the word. A happily married father and man of authority in the region, descended from an ancient Imeretian princely line, born and bred in Ajara, he seemed the most appropriate leader of the region.
If they ever make a monument to Aslan Abashidze, I would advise the sculptor to use the idea that Ernst Neizvestny employed in his renowned Khrushchev monument, using black and white marble. The first black spot in Aslan Abashidze’s biography took place on April 30, 1991. On that day, the residents of Batumi, frightened by hitherto never felt underground tremors – this was the strongest earthquake in these parts in the memory of the current generation – were afraid to go back into their homes, especially the twelve story apartment blocks that stand on the central square of the city. The weather was fine and people were chatting, mainly about the earthquake of course, when shots rang out from the building of the Supreme Soviet of Ajara. Soon the news spread around the city that Nodar Imnadze, the deputy chairman, had been killed. According to witnesses, Imnadze entered the chairman’s office in an intoxicated state and let loose a burst of automatic rifle fire in the direction of Aslan Abashidze. Murman Omanidze, the vice-premier of the Georgian government, was in the office at that moment. According to some accounts Nodar Imnadze was wounded by the vice-premier’s body guard and then finished off by Abashidze. According to other accounts Abashidze dispatched Imnadze without any assistance. Nodar Imnadze was a striking example of a revolutionary who could not fit into the system of power. In order to consider the jurisprudential aspects of this story, I would mention that even the prosecutor of Mikheil Saakashvili’s time refused to bring a criminal case based on this episode, admitting that Abashidze’s actions were necessary self-defense. But thus began the undivided reign of Aslan Abashidze in Ajara. Thirteen years later, on April 30, 2004, Nodar Imnadze’s daughter Nata gathered a demonstration by the building of the city court dedicated to the anniversary of her father’s death. This was the start of the revolution in Ajara.
The period of Aslan Abashidze’s rule in Ajara can be fairly neatly divided into three stages: the dawn – the time of Zviad Gamsakhurdia; the zenith – from the start of the civil war in Georgia up to November 2003; and the dusk – the agony of a regime unable to withstand the new currents. Abashidze used the peaceful period of Zviad’s rule to the fullest to strengthen his establishment of personal power, appointing his relatives and personal friends to all the
key posts in the autonomy. He harshly, but not brutally, crushed the opposition, showing who was the king of his castle. In those days the head of Ajara could be seen in a popular coffee house in the seafront, where he met with residents, mainly his friends from childhood. Abashidze did in essence what all rulers in the post-Soviet space were supposed to do: he took control of the financial flows and property. Batumi in that period was the sole window to Turkey for the entire post-Soviet area, and tariffs for transport of goods were set arbitrarily on both sides of the border. To Turkey went mainly Soviet photo and optical technology, gold, and anything else that could still be brought out from the underground stashes of the empty Soviet shops. Turkish consumer goods flowed in the opposite direction. Soon the first large-scale entrepreneurs began exporting to Turkey lumber, coal, cotton and other of the raw materials with which the post-Soviet states were so well endowed. Customs profits grew exponentially. The Batumi Port was no less profitable. These sources of income alone were enough to create a powerful economic basis for the regime. In principle they became the basis for the flowering of Aslan Abashidze’s clan, and a curse for Ajara. It should be particularly noted that during the time of Abashidze’s rule not a single tetri went to the central Georgian budget.
Income from customs and from the port could well be compared to the profits from energy resources of certain dictatorial regimes. When money appears practically from nowhere, the attitude towards it is the same. In the first phase, Abashidze tried to use at least part of the money for the development of the region. Several bridges were built, the main building of the university was remodeled, a port kindergarten, a new customs terminal, tennis courts and the “Oasis” hotel complex were built, and an opera troupe and a children’s opera were created. This, I suggest, is the entire list of projects completed during the Abashidze period. It’s possible I’ve left something out, but even then you have to admit that this is not a large list by today’s standards. But at that time, when nothing at all was being done in Georgia, even this made a big impression. The fact that the kindergarten and the university building were exclusively for show in the direct sense of that word – that is, children didn’t go to this kindergarten and university students didn’t study in the remodeled auditoriums – was beside the point. Abashidze’s hours long speeches on Ajara Television made an indelible impression, especially on visitors. Plans for a white city, where all the buildings and the taxis would be white, and a free economic zone and so on and so forth had a strong effect on many people. True, Batumi residents were already calling Abashidze a “TV star” and Ajara Television “Aslankino,” but there was no irritation. To the contrary, they felt respect and even thankfulness towards Abashidze. And there were reasons for this.
The main reason was the prevention of civil war in Ajara. In the beginning of 1992, having deposed the legal government of Georgia, the “Mkhedrioni” and the National Guard headed west, plundering everything in their path. Naturally Ajara seemed a tasty morsel to the plunderers, especially since it was rumored that dollars grew on trees there. Drawing up to the administrative border at Choloki, the dashing warriors to their great disappointment were met by Russian tanks and the special forces of the Ajaran Interior Ministry and KGB. They decided not to engage in a fight, the outcome of which was already decided, and took off in the other direction. It was only later that many residents of Ajara would say that Aslan was saving first of all himself, and they were correct to say it. But at that moment Abashidze was a national hero. Legends spread far and wide all over Georgia about the just and wise ruler, and there was a certain truth to these legends. At that time, when all of Georgia sat without electricity, there was light in Batumi, and although the bread crises also touched Ajara, it lasted for a shorter time than anywhere else in Georgia. The main staples did not disappear in Batumi, and this was at a period when the rest of the country was facing a real threat of starvation.
In essence it was from this moment that Abashidze became the genuine leader of the region, enjoying the support of the majority of the population. He was christened the “Ajaran Lion” in the Russian press, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin awarded the Ajaran Supreme Soviet Chairman the military rank of Major General of the Russian Armed Forces. Of course, way back in 1992 the minor fact that Abashidze was the head of a region of a different state and not even a citizen of the Russian Federation didn’t bother them. To its own surprise, the Kremlin had found a reliable ally and a powerful lever to put pressure on Tbilisi, and Aslan’s system worked with doubled energy with the help of friendly bayonets.
Abashidze managed to create in Ajara a kind of quasi-state model, and with time he solidified its borders, and not just with Turkey, but also on the Choloki River with the rest of Georgia. This quasi-state had its own armed forces
– 25 brigades of the Georgian Army always answered exclusively to Abashidze – and its own navy of coast guard ships. It had its own national guard, as Abashidze’s personal bodyguard had more than three thousand troops, and its own ministry of foreign affairs with under the signboard of the Assembly of European Regions, and even a Senate and a Parliament. Aslan Ibraimovich began to proudly call himself the Head of Ajara, and the treasury of this state, being in essence his own treasury, never knew a deficit, unlike the constantly sequestered Georgian central budget. In domestic policy, as a true Batumi-ite, Abashidze ruled according to the ideals of “Friendship of Peoples,” creating many diaspora organizations of various ethnic groups living in Batumi. In order to demonstrate his loyalty to these ideals, seven deputy mayor positions were introduced in the Batumi city hall that were occupied by a Russian, an Armenian, a Kurd, an Abkhaz, a Greek, and two Georgians, respectively. Things went to such comical lengths that the vice-mayor in charge of transport, or more simply put, in charge of gathering contributions from marshrutka drivers, had to change his Georgian surname to that of his Russian grandmother. And this didn’t bother Koba Grigoriev, speaking with a noticeable accent, in the least: it was worth it, since although the salary of a vice mayor was a whole 150 Lari per month, every one of them drove their own jeeps worth at least $50,000 a piece. On the whole, Aslan Abashidze’s project, if one takes into account the specifics of that time, could be considered entirely successful. But the quasi-state that Abashidze created had one essential flaw: it its core, it was feudal.
Believe me, when speaking about the feudal character of Abashidze’s regime I am not trying to attach a negative connotation to this word. I am speaking only about the establishment of a fact. Having been bitterly disappointed with the relatives from his own side after the all-powerful Asanidze brothers nearly deprived him of his live, Aslan Abashidze began to depend entirely on the relatives of his spouse, who came from a well-known and influential Ajaran family. The cornerstone of the security system and the punitive apparatus of the regime was the Ajaran ministry of state security, headed by Abashidze’s brother-in-law, Soso Gogitidze. Not possessing a specialized education, this individual had the ministry functioning like clockwork, preventing a coup attempt by the Asanidze brothers and monitoring the entire region though an extensive network of informers. In that period, if anybody said anything bad about Abashidze, it was only in a whisper, and one could lose one’s job in state service for as much as an innocent anecdote. At the same time, Abashidze tolerated the “harmless” opposition, like the Republicans, and he even appointed his “competitor” Ioseb Khimshiashvili to a post, albeit a minor one. He had a different attitude towards the supporters of the Asanidze brothers, the majority of whom, like the brothers themselves, ended up with indefinite sentences in the inner prison of the ministry for state security. When Ajaran interior minister Alik Bakuridze, who had also participated in the crushing of the rebellion, got into a conflict with Soso Gogitidze and realized that he had lost, he had to flee from Ajara in fear for his life.
The political party “Union for the Rebirth of Ajara” was created, which later, when the Ajaran Lion began to have all-Georgian ambitions, was renamed the “Union for the Democratic Rebirth of Georgia.” You can sense the difference in the names. In the first parliamentary elections the Union for Rebirth ran as a regional ally of Shevardnadze’s newly created Citizen’s Union of Georgia, although the paths of the former allies soon parted. Many years later they would reunite again in the face of a common enemy, although this was not enough to save them from the inevitable outcome. Abashidze’s entry into the Georgian national political arena was linked to the entirely logical hope that the Kremlin would support him in his struggle for power. Perhaps this would have happened, but not for the fact that the influence of the Kremlin itself in Georgian politics steadily decreased. And the Kremlin always had at hand a different favorite for Georgia, Abashidze’s sworn enemy, the former Georgian KGB head Igor Giorgadze.
In speaking about that time, one extremely important factor must be mentioned: very soon the dominant factor of Abashidze’s character became fear for his own life. The Ajaran ruler became practically a prisoner of his entourage, and particularly of the organs of state security, which constantly frightened him with real or imagined assassination attempts. It is difficult to say what started this fear, the wounds he received from his deputy in April 1991 or particularities of his character or something else. But one way or another Abashidze began living far from reality in his own world. Perhaps this is why most of his grandiose projects, that may really have turned Ajara if not into a heaven on Earth, then at least into a modern developed region, were abandoned half finished. But there was one more reason that seems to me to be fundamental.
During Abashidze’s time a practically perfect fiscal system was created in Ajara. Everybody paid, from the lowest street cop to ministers, but they paid not into the state budget, but into the pocket of the ruling bureaucrat. It was the classic feeding system: the most profitable spots were, of course, in customs, the port, and city hall. It was because of this that the positions of port director and city mayor were fused in the person of Aslan Smirba, and Jambul Ninidze held three positions: director of the port, head of customs and first vice-mayor of the city. In essence, these positions were the equivalent of a minister of finance, which answered for the majority of the treasury of the Head of Ajara. It is practically impossible to monitor such a system, and one can imagine what percentage of the gathered tribute did not make it all the way to the Boss. Thieving bureaucrats were removed from their posts and forced to return the “stolen goods,” but as a rule none of them were imprisoned. It was understood that there was actually nothing to be imprisoned for.
It is said that the regime did not shy away from dealing in weapons and rare elements, and that a whole narcotics factory was functioning in Kobuleti. I don’t think that the drugs factory story was true, and at any rate it was never confirmed after Abashidze was deposed. But it was a fact that the regime was absolutely unrestrained and could do whatever it wanted. The regime’s vulnerability was the desire to control all and everything. Ajara is truly a paradise, and many entrepreneurs, seeing the region as an island of stability, were ready to invest their capital. But it was practically impossible to do this, since the authorities demanded a share of the profits from the start, from thirty to fifty percent, and financial guarantees. Naturally it was beside the point to speak about real investment under such conditions. As a result, the economy of Ajara was a sorry sight, despite the presence of a significantly large amount of monetary resources. The participation of the existing business under the control of Abashidze’s family and the state enterprises in absurd and ruinous projects, such as the reconstruction of Pioneer Park, brought irreparable harm to these enterprises, and the projects themselves were never brought to completion. Model businesses like “Rebirth M” were closed down after producing only a few sample products. Those few enterprises that continued working no matter what naturally could not provide employment for everybody who wanted it. But then work in the state organs was more prestigious. Even a small post in city hall could provide for an entirely respectable existence, to say nothing about a job in customs or in the port.
On the whole, given the state of affairs in Georgia during the Shevardnadze period, the Abashidze regime was sufficiently viable. But Abashidze’s ambitions grew far beyond the boundaries of Ajara. Already by the end of the 1990s regional offices of the Union for the Democratic Rebirth of Georgia were opened all around the country, and the party of Aslan Abashidze positioned itself as the second and only serious opposition force. Abashidze began to cultivate people of the arts, and many representatives of the Georgian intelligentsia came to the Black Sea coast and made friends with Aslan Ibraimovich. Abashidze even counted Mstislav Rostropovich among his personal friends. Many Russian businessmen and politicians were Abashidze’s frequent guests. True, the renown “House of Luzhkov” on the seafront was never completed, creating a serious headache for the city authorities, but the desire was there.
Still one more characteristic of the regime was the institution of favoritism. Under Aslan Abashidze there was always an ideologist. At first this was Leonid Zhghenti, who after his fall into disfavor left for the US. He was replaced by the young and talented Giorgi Targamadze, who fell victim to intrigue and temporarily withdrew from politics, touchingly bidding farewell to his colleagues from the speaker’s podium in parliament. And finally, the dictator’s last confidant was Tsotne Bakuria, who “was not able” to make use of the enormous financial resources assigned to him for the 2003 parliamentary elections. Today Tsotne Bakuria lives in the United States, from where he periodically publishes angry articles in pro-Kremlin publications attacking Saakashvili. As concerns Giorgi Targamadze, having worked as the head of the information service of the Imedi television company, he then took leadership of the Christian-Democratic Party of Georgia, today the most significant opposition force in parliament. But in the fall of 2003 nobody could foresee the rabid and inglorious end of the reign of the Ajaran Lion. On the contrary, it seemed that success was quite near. Just a bit more, and history would make the descendent of the Abashidze princes the ruler of all of Georgia. But it was only an illusion.
In speaking about Aslan Abashidze it is essential to remember that he was a child of his time. Could he have created something more qualitatively new? Categorically no: no, because he grew up and was educated in the Soviet system; no, because he was a Soviet bureaucrat, fully co-opted into a corrupt system; no, because he was a
Georgian politician in a time of strife. Was Abashidze a patriot of his country? Of course he was, and he served his country to the fullest of his strengths, possibilities, and conceptions of good and evil. It was just that after thirteen years of his rule the population of the region became tired of him, and he himself, abandoning forever the his Batumi residence on that warm May evening, looked very tired, tired of power. But more about that in the next part.
May Rose bodyguards. Journalists clustered around the supremely exhausted Ajaran Lion, who turned to a handful of his supporters and said: “A huge military force is coming here. I don’t want bloodshed. Go to . . . home” (I’ve preserved the style here – G.V.). A short time later the silvery plane would carry Aslan Abashidze together with his family to the capital of that foreign northern state that he had visited so often recently. On that night everybody in Batumi was happy, or almost everybody.
publics faced the same complicated problem: that of the legitimacy of property. If the Baltic republics were able to overcome this problem simply through the only possible means, restitution, for the rest of the republics the problem not only remained unresolved, but it determined the course of development for years to come. Of course Georgia was no exception, although in my view Georgia in fact had a chance to follow the Baltic countries. As it happens, a restitution law was passed under Gamsakhurdia, and several families were able to have their property, particularly buildings, returned to them. But after only several months the law was suspended and then finally halted entirely. The main obstacle to returning properties to their former owners was not the possibility of social tension, but rather the sadly notorious ethnic issue. The problem was that before the Bolshevik revolution most of the merchant class in Tiflis was made up of Armenians. Georgian aristocrats had their estates in the countryside and apartments in the city, but the landlords from whom they rented them were again usually Armenians. After the establishment of Soviet power, these buildings were naturally confiscated from their owners. Thus the Gamsakhurdia government would have to return buildings in which several generations of Georgians had grown up to Armenians, who were often their neighbors. In many cases, the Soviet authorities showed an uncharacteristic humanitarianism when expropriating property, leaving one of the apartments in a building to its previous owners. That was in the city. The situation was much worse in the countryside. For seventy years everything was collective, so returning the land to the descendents of Chavchavadze, Gurieli, Dadiani and whomever else might have led to a Georgian peasant rebellion no less pointless and bloody than the Russian one, about which so much has been written. So even though there was a chance to show society that the right of ownership is sacred and inviolable if only the Georgian leadership of that time had displayed sufficient political will, all the same I would not hurry to unequivocally condemn Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his supporters for the failure of restitution.
In considering any event, one must always take into consideration the condition of society and the state at that given stage of historical development. The Rose Revolution and the first years of Saakashvili’s governance are no exception. Let us then take a close look at that Georgia. The formation of the modern Georgian nation (not to be confused with medieval or more ancient analogies) began in the period of Ilia Chavchavadze. It was then, during the economic boom at the start of the 20th century, that various Georgian ethnic groups began to feel themselves to be a united people, linked not only by Chavchavadze’s well known triad of “Language – Fatherland – Faith,” but also by solid economic ties. The development of the cities, particularly Tiflis, Kutaisi, Batumi and Poti, where Kakhetians settled together with Kartlians, Gurians with Mingrelians, and Rachans with Imeretians, and also the colossal educational efforts of the Georgian intelligentsia of the period, laid the foundation of the new Georgian nation. The acquisition of statehood in 1918 was an entirely logical step, and despite the rapid Sovietization of Georgia, several generations of Georgians grew up with a sense of conscious belonging to a new commonality, one that gradually became dominant over belonging to a specific smaller ethnic category. By the early 1990s, Georgian society was prepared for the creation of its own national government, precisely on an ethnic foundation. Thus the “nationalism” of Zviad Gamsakhurdia was historically determined. The first step in the formation of this national government, starting with the raising of ethnic self-consciousness on April 9, 1989, reached its conclusion with the creation of the institutes of state under Shevardnadze.
Mikheil Saakashvili’s team faced a task of an entirely different order: to complete the process of creating a European-type state based on the principle of citizenship. But in order to fulfill this task they had first of all to preserve power, that is, to create a vertical of power in the conditions of that society that existed in Georgia in early 2004. In modern Western society there is a functioning triad of money – power – money. That is, the leading
political forces gain financial support from particular circles who in turn receive dividends in the form of one or other economic policy implemented by the government. In the post-Soviet space there is an entirely different schema of power-money-power, that is, that politicians who come to power try to concentrate control over monetary flows in their hands as much as possible in order to preserve power. In this sense, the policies of Saakashvili’s team differed little from those of other post-Soviet elites. What is more, if one were to analyze the arrests and confiscations that took place in the first years after the Rose Revolution, they would serve as perfect textbook examples of how to strengthen power through taking hold of the commanding heights of the economy. Immediately after coming to power, Saakashvili stated that he believed the political ambitions of his team members were much greater than their financial ambitions, and therefore he was hopeful for a quick and total victory over corruption. I have no basis to think that the president was being dishonest, and accusing Saakashvili’s team of excessive material greed would not be methodologically sound. The problem was that in those conditions of post- Soviet reality it would have been political suicide to give their opponents the opportunity to make use of major financial resource streams. It was not particularly difficult to reorient these streams towards themselves, since any property that had been acquired during the period of primary capital accumulation was inherently illegitimate. Did the Nationals use Bolshevik methods? Undoubtedly. Did they have any other choice? Unquestionably, no.
It should also be taken into consideration that the government was composed of two opposing camps, each of which was trying to provide itself with the best advantages. At first the Zurab Zhvania team looked more solid, first of all because it had the backing of one of the wealthiest Georgian industrialists, Badri Patarkatsishvili, and when the Prime Minister was able to bring back to Georgia another Russian oligarch, Kakha Bendukidze, it seems that its financial possibilities were practically limitless. This was particularly relevant during the period of total privatization, which meant the serious and long-term legitimization of capital. True, everything was not really so rosy within the Zhvania team: for example, Patarkatsishvili’s relationship with Erosi Kitsmarishvili (the owner of TV company Rustavi 2) was far from ideal, and the business interests of a number of Zhvania’s “friends” were continuously clashing with one another. The Prime Minister had to endlessly broker between domestic and foreign business partners, at the same time that Saakashvili, having command over the power ministries, could freely provide his people with control over business sectors that had previously belonged to “enemies of the revolution.” Under these conditions, the first person in the government after the president became, of course, not the prime minister, but the chief prosecutor, the minister of state security or the minister of internal affairs. It was no coincidence that Saakashvili used the most effective managers in his team for these roles, such as Irakli Okruashvili, Zurab Adeishvili and Vano Merabishvili.
One way or another, the country was in a precarious state of equilibrium when tragedy struck. On a cold March morning in 2005, Georgia was shaken by news of the death of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania. His body was discovered in an apartment on Saburtalo Street, and the official explanation was that the death had been caused by gas poisoning. The deputy governor of the Kvemo-Kartli region, Raul Yusupov, died together with him. Naturally nobody believed the official explanation. I don’t want to get into speculation, and I say honestly that I don’t know who killed Zhvania, but for a number of indirect reasons I will risk maintaining that Saakashvili had nothing to do with this death. The main reason for this is the statements of former (among other things) interior minister Irakli Okruashvili. This person hates Saakashvili as much as any person can hate another who has taken everything from him. He is in relative safety, with political asylum in France. As the result of the positions he has held he cannot help but know the whole truth about the death of Zhvania. And nevertheless, at that moment when it would have been extremely beneficial for him to accuse Saakashvili of murdering the Prime Minister, he restricted himself to talking about how Mikheil Saakashvili knows that Zhvania did not die a natural death. There was nothing new in this statement, since all of Georgia could guess that Zhvania did not die a natural death. The Georgian authorities of that time could be accused only of concealing the fact of Zhvania’s murder. But then who could commit this crime? Who was so powerful that even the top leadership of the country decided not to make a case? Of all of the theories that I’ve heard, the most convincing for me would seem to be that the murder was arranged by one of the large international corporations. The motive was the transfer to competitors of a business project that had particular political significance. Too many members of the Georgian political elite, including friends of the Prime Minister, shake their heads when thinking about his death, saying that the poor fellow got caught up in his own intrigues, and he was killed over big money. But it is very hard to say anything concrete. This is only one theory, and in reality I don’t think that the public will ever know the whole truth about the tragedy on Saburtalo Street.
After Zhvania’s death the political configuration in the country could not but change. Despite many people’s expectations, Zhvania’s team members did not fade away into political obscurity, but instead flowed entirely organically into a new team, comprising a backbone of reformers. Much has been written about the reforms of Mikheil Saakashvili: the reducing of the bureaucratic apparatus, the reform of the system in the ministry of internal affairs, the military reforms, and so forth. Here the new authorities were able to reduce corruption at the lower and middle levels to a minimum and to create comfortable conditions for the citizenry. The bureaucratic feeding trough was mercilessly annihilated. Did bureaucrats of that time still take bribes and participate in corrupt schemes? Naturally, but to the same degree as in practically all other countries. What was new was that the level of bribe- taking was severely reduced because the bribe-takers were completely terrified. Practically no bureaucrats willing to take bribes at their own risk remained, and those who did this under the protection of a higher patron became with enviable regularity tools in the political game. Thus it became so dangerous to take bribes that today this is done by only the most desperate bureaucrats of the middle rank. As concerns corrupt schemes, participation in these is possible only for political leaders of the highest status.
An interesting detail is that the reforms in Georgia were linked exclusively to personalities. For example, it is hard to imagine the reforms of the Interior Ministry system without the name of Vano Merabishvili, the most talented manager in Saakashvili’s team. In precisely the same way, the complete eradication of corruption in such a sphere as higher education would have been absolutely impossible without the ferocious energy and staggering work ethic of Alexander Lomaia. The reform of the Georgian military is undoubtedly linked with the name of Irakli Okruashvili. And the economic successes would be impossible to imagine without Kakha Bendukidze. Unfortunately, the selection of talented managers in Saakashvili’s team was limited. This was precisely the reason for the endless “personnel carousels” that the president manipulated with predictable regularity.
But perhaps the hardest task in that period was to change people’s behavior. One can replace the fat traffic cops with shiny new patrol cars, create a modern contract army or a new system of education, reduce taxes and perfect a state administration system. It is much harder to force people to abandon old stereotypes, not to pay off beseeching bureaucrats and to obey the law. For this a change in mentality was required, but more about that later.
It is simple to carry out reforms in a given country. You eliminate the corrupt system of governance, purchase new cars and uniforms for the police, fix up schools and hospitals, put bribe-takers in jail, and take property away from the bad and give it to the good. All of this has been done many times over in many different places, sometimes successfully, other times not so successfully. As a rule, correct reforms lead to economic miracles, and incorrect ones to the emergence of awful regimes. But in this case we are interested in one concrete country.
The main enemy of Georgian reforms was not the corrupt bureaucrats, nor the criminal element that felt itself king of the roost in Georgia, nor even the persistent external threat, the constant small and large indignities and the fact that nearly a third of the country’s territory was outside the control of the central government. The main threat to reform was homo sovieticus, that is, practically every citizen of Georgia, even those who consciously supported the reforms. One can write endlessly about the mentality of Soviet peoples. Despite all of our ethnic particularities, we all have the same birthmarks of socialism. More than one generation grew up for whom “natural rights” was an empty concept. What is more, the disdainful attitude towards the rights of others was oddly combined with an infantile belief that society, personified by the state, was obligated to provide for its citizens. At the same time the state was seen as an absolute evil from which nothing good could be expected, and which should be swindled by every possible means. Add in that decades of the artificial and false politics of proletarian internationalism brought out the most sinister demons of cave-dwelling ethnonationalism and the total taboo on religion that instilled in many a religious ecstasy akin to fanaticism, and we get the phantasmagorical picture of a serious sly ill society. The period of Eduard Shevardnadze’ s rule did not enable healing, and instead the disease became chronic. No doctor would dare to give a positive prognosis under such a diagnosis.
The disease of homo sovieticus in Georgia afflicted absolutely everybody without exception. Notice that we’re not talking just about the opponents of reform, those who suffered as a result of losing their jobs or who were arrested for banal bribe taking. The reformers themselves grew up in the Soviet system and had once been exemplary
Pioneers and even successful Komsomol members. Most of them were from families of the Soviet nomenklatura elite, who by will of fate, the education they received, or for some other reason realized the necessity of reform for their country. But it is a well known fact that it’s one thing to understand the need for reform, and another thing entirely to carry it out, breaking society and themselves. If anybody thinks that the change in mentality taking place in Georgia is any less painful than the one that took place decades earlier, this is an illusion arising from the absence now of the cannibalistic methods of the last great change. Naturally, the difference is that this process, in essence, is a return to people’s natural state. But imagine a bear that is released from a zoo. I think the process of return to free will is no less painful than the process of becoming accustomed to the cage, if not more so. Let us try to illustrate this with several examples.
One of Mikheil Saakashvili’s first initiatives back when he was chairman of the Tbilisi Sakrebulo was to repair the roofs on large apartment buildings from the city budget. Elevators and basements were repaired at the same time. When he came to power this project was extended to other cities of Georgia. Naturally it was a brilliant move that immediately brought the young politician enormous popularity. But all things have both a positive side and a negative side. We’re not talking here about the fact that the property of individual citizens was being repaired at the expense of taxpayers’ money. The main problem was that in that period there were not enough budget resources or even workers to go around. Dilapidated roofs became a real nightmare for municipalities, and they were flooded with petitions from affected citizens. The creation of waiting lists didn’t help, and receiving citizens turned into an endless tragicomedy called “help me first!” City bureaucrats simply had to find some solution to this situation. Everybody dealt with it as well as they could, and I personally, working in a Mayor’s office, thought up a rather effective means of forcing citizens to wait their turn. Upon hearing about the necessity of repairing a citizen’s roof right away, I proposed bringing in an investor to build a penthouse, and the problem of the roof would be resolved once and for all. It’s funny that not a single petitioner agreed with this, always giving the same answer: “No! The roof is mine!” Then wait your turn or repair the roof out of your own pocket.
On the whole this example reflects perfectly society’s expectations from the new government. After the revolution the majority of the population entirely seriously thought that the new authorities would fix all of the bad things that remained from the previous government, while at the same time leaving alone the “good things,” not understanding, and sometimes not wanting to understand, that this is impossible. It’s impossible to have good roads, high state pensions, quality state education, and a healthcare system without high taxes. In fairness it should be mentioned that the authorities themselves encouraged this attitude, at the same time promising social wellbeing like in Switzerland and a tax system like in Singapore. The president, bursting forth from a session of government to personally deliver the news to small businessmen that they would be freed from taxes, to no small degree solidified the belief among the population that such a thing was possible. But economics has its rules. So long as the tax system was filling the vacuum that remained from Shevardnadze, the budget grew like gangbusters, and expenditures in the social sphere could increase rather significantly, all the more so since the starting level was close to zero.
But as soon as the effect of administrative resources wore off and the state began privatization, not so much to fulfill the budget as to create new sources of tax revenue, our society began to grumble.
Kakha Bendukidze, the father of Georgian economic reforms, could properly be considered the poster child for privatization in Georgia. His words “We’ll sell everything but our conscience” provoked particular annoyance in society. Certain individuals expressed their protest against privatization in a particularly “original” way: supporters of Manana Archvadze-Gamsakhurdia [the widow of Zviad Gamsakhurdia] came every day to the Economics Ministry as if to work to chant “Bendukidze is a pig! Bendukidze is a pig!” Just as if going to work, from ten to six with a break for lunch. The explanation of why Bendukidze is a pig was very simple: he was selling off the Motherland. The fact that the Motherland was non-functioning factories, empty fields, abandoned farms, smashed electrical stations and so forth was of little interest to anybody. Of course only a very few resorted to such marginal methods, but if you were to ask, something like nine out of ten residents of Georgia would express confusion or even dissatisfaction that everything in Georgia was for sale. The thought occurred to only a very few people that Georgia was lucky that state property was being sold not at voucher auctions (an ugly phenomenon that is known to be infectious), but rather for real money.
Occasionally the emergence of dissatisfaction reached humorous proportions. For example, the majority of Tbilisi residents were unhappy with the construction of high-rise buildings of doubtful artistic value in the Sololaki district of old Tbilisi. But as soon as the authorities demolished one of these, which incidentally was erected illegally, public opinion turned sharply against this approach, considering the government’s decision to be unjust. The situation could have been “settled” if all such buildings had been demolished, but thankfully the authorities didn’t have the brains to do that. In general, the real complaint against the government lay precisely in the sphere of justness.
In essence, the whole question of change in mentality came down to one simple thing: forcing citizens to obey the law. But it turned out to be not so simple. The reforms, as we’ve already mentioned, were carried out by people who also grew up in the Soviet reality, and this naturally left a specific imprint on them. After all, laws are supposed to be obeyed by all citizens, regardless of rank or position. The constant personnel merry-go-rounds and even arrests were not enough to force bureaucrats to become completely honest, and systemic changes lagged behind the course of events. More generally, the issue of bureaucrats is a special question. During the “old regime,” the salary of a deputy mayor of a large city was about 80 US dollars a month, although nobody was surprised that bureaucrats in the Shevardnadze and Abashidze epoch drove the latest model SUVs and built mansions that many EU citizens with exponentially higher salaries would have been envious of. As soon as the new team came to power, George Soros made a grand gesture. The Open Society Foundation allotted funds for additional salaries for state employees in order to root out corruption in governmental administrative bodies. As a result, in 2005 bureaucrats’ salaries approached the minimum subsistence level. For comparison, that same deputy mayor started to receive $500 per month. Not a huge sum: enough to keep from starving, but not a salary to write home about. About sixty percent of salaries were financed from the state budget, and the rest from the resources of George Soros. It was from this that the legend arose that Georgian officials’ salaries were being paid by the Americans, a legend in which the majority of citizens of the Russian Federation are absolutely convinced.
But let us return to the painful reforms. The issue of street traders was one of the main problems of the first years after the revolution. Under Shevardnadze cities turned into enormous bazaars. People subsisted, and survived as well as they could, through selling right on the street, naturally in unsanitary conditions. This of course looked very unaesthetic. Therefore the decision was taken to do away with street trading. In essence, the decision was more or less correct and supported by the majority of the population. The majority, that is, except for the street traders themselves, who had no desire to give up their accustomed spots and move into the proper markets, where nobody was particularly happy to see them. If the authorities had decided to create better conditions for street trade, success would have been guaranteed. But they chose a different path and received the opposite result. The bitter conflict continued until November 2007, after which the authorities backed down. This could be called “dizziness from success,” when it seemed that high popularity ratings could cover over any unpopular decision. But even the most ardent proponents of the street trading ban must have experienced mixed emotions when seeing the faces of these people, whose lives were far from easy, on the nightly news. The attitude towards the government began to change from enthusiasm to indifference, and even to irritation.
The main problem of the Georgian authorities of that time was one of communication. There were surprisingly few people among them who were able to speak with the populace in anything other than the language of slogans and PR adverts. The authorities undercut the positive effect of many of their initiatives because of their preference for strong-armed solutions to urgent problems. Most of the dissatisfaction, in essence, could have been avoided if painstaking efforts had been made to reach out to the population to explain things. A clear example of this is the fixing up of apartment building yards. It is something of an axiom that people prefer to live in clean, well maintained yards with playgrounds for children and comfortable benches to sit on. But the problem was that it was impossible to fix up yards that had been filled up with illegally erected garages and storage sheds, built during the hard times for storing firewood. It should have been the simplest thing to explain to the population that these would be removed and that cars could be parked in well-lit lots in those same yards. It would have been simple, but it wasn’t done. Garages and sheds were torn down as illegal constructs to the outcry of the population, and the yards were fixed up only several months later. So unsurprisingly, most people never made the connection between the two events, and the sense of insult remained.
He who does nothing makes no mistakes, as they say. But sometimes the mistakes were utterly stupid. For example, it’s impossible to understand why they had to take away from distinguished citizens the apartments that had been given to them by Tbilisi City Hall, only because these gifts at the time it had contravened the law. There was no corruption involved, and those who received the apartments were not at all rich, even though they were well- known. All of Georgia empathized with a famous actress, raising a child on her own, who was turned out onto the street. Even stupider was the demolition of a church that was built, albeit illegally, on a mountain in the outskirts of Batumi. This was later blamed on a mid-level bureaucrat who could never have taken such a step without orders from above. As a result, the community was so aggravated that the church was rebuilt at the government’s expense. These are only a few examples that shed light on the causes of November 2007.
Of course the residents of Georgia were not prepared for reforms, and of course in their imaginations the supporters of the reforms drew an idealized picture and the opponents an apocalyptic one. Today one can discuss endlessly how and where the authorities made mistakes. But today, thinking about whether things could have been better, one involuntarily reaches the conclusion that they could not have been. The causes of this are what I tried to explain at the start: all the residents of Georgia were nurtured in the Soviet system, including those who carried out the reforms. Changing mentality is a long and painful process that takes place over a period of time after the creation of particular conditions. In November 2007 society was taught a painful but unavoidable lesson. But more about that next time.
Any credit has to be paid back sooner or later. This is even more the case with credit of trust, and in the case of Mikheil Saakashvili’s team that debt was enormous. The most important thing that the revolution gave the Georgian people was hope, but different people had different hopes and expectations. Fall 2007 revealed the government’s main problem: communication. In conducting the proper reforms, the authorities did not have the resources to convey the meaning of these reforms to the population in a precise and succinct way. Besides the president himself, only one person, Giga Bokeria, could elucidate what was taking place. Perhaps this might have been sufficient for economic reforms, but as reforms in mentality were also taking place, and being initiated from above to boot, it was absolutely vital that any middle-ranking bureaucrat be able to explain to the population on the ground the essence and purpose of the changes, and not lose genuine connection with the electorate. It was this that was lacking.
This gap might have been filled by grassroots level party work, but the powerful ideological apparatus of the party had been transformed entirely into a machine for carrying out elections. I recall well Saakashvili’s words as National Movement Chairman spoken at a party conference in Batumi: “The main task of the party is to both promote government policy and to oversee the activities of officials and their connection with the masses.” It was precisely in this task where the party of power failed. There were subjective (personnel) and objective reasons for this. Lack of financing led the majority of people involved in party work to dream only about moving into the executive branch, where the salaries were higher. As a result, even though the party had a sufficient material and technical base, it found itself in the background of political life. Nearly everybody who was following current events at that time drew the conclusion that the authorities had no mechanism with which to communicate with the masses. If we look at the mass media, even taking into account the relativity of viewer ratings, a situation in which an opposition TV channel is in the first place with three times higher ratings than its closest competitor can hardly be considered normal. The TV station Imedi was a powerful informational weapon, able to smash the hopes of Georgian society to the ground and leave no stone standing.
But all the same, such a turn of events could have been avoided, if not for the tragedy of form. The population of the country would have understood and accepted fully well the demolition of a house on Tabukashvili Street, the eviction of tenants from the Samshoblo editorial building, and much more besides that was correctly considered a liability for the government. Instead of liabilities these things could have been made into assets if there had been a well thought out plan in addition to an effective public relations effort – a plan that could be understood and accepted by the majority of citizens. What is more, at some point the government acquired an attitude that it could do anything it wanted and that it had absolute truth on its side, which slowly but surely began to generate aggravation on the part of the populace. The unpleasant story of Sandro Gvirgliani stirred up the whole country.
Even the most devoted supporters of the government shook their heads in condemnation, so all Patarkatsishvili had to do to make PR use of the story was add in some filigree. Thus the seed fell on well fertilized soil.
The appearance of former defense minister Irakli Okruashvili live on Imedi TV signaled the start of the most serious political crisis in the country in four years. For nearly two days Georgia discussed the scandalous interview with the former Shida Kartli governor, interior minister, prosecutor general, defense minister and revolutionary. The fact that the media, and Imedi in particular, had been hyping from the moment of his resignation the thesis that Irakli Okruashvili had some exclusive compromising information on the Georgian government and would sooner or later use it to return to the political Olympus added spice to the situation. So when he promised on Imedi to “tell all,” the whole country froze in anticipation.
That evening, Okruashvili, whose oratory skills are a rule are limited to saying things like “fecal matter,” said a great deal and said it coherently. But he didn’t say anything new. The country’s formerly highest-ranking bureaucrat simply repeated all of the opposition’s accusations, maintaining his own personal participation in “criminal activities.” To the question of why he did these things, the ex-minister answered plainly that “I believed that it would help return the lost territories.”
The disgraced politician began with concrete accusations against the president. He said that Georgian Interior Ministry officials had arrested the president’s uncle, Temur Alasania, on charges of extortion, and as interior minister at the time he informed Mikheil Saakashvili about this. Then, without excessive emotion, the president ordered him to close the case, and the case was closed. So what forced Irakli Okruashvili to obey, thus committing a crime by abusing his authority? It’s impossible to believe that Interior Ministry officials would bring a case against a relative of the Head of State without informing their superior. That means that Okruashvili knew about the preparations for the arrest and did not inform the president about this. And if this is so, then Okruashvili was gathering compromising materials on the leadership of the country. Or was he simply creating them? No criminal case was officially opened, but with the help of a strong informant network any case can be fabricated. Okruashvili thus publicly admitted committing a crime.
His next accusation against the government was that the president and his circle “obstructed” Okruashvili in returning South Ossetia to Georgia: “We’re not talking about a war or a military campaign. We’re talking about fulfilling a plan that existed. It was a detailed plan, whereby as the result of a small operation and without heavy losses Tskhinvali would be returned. It was to be conducted in the spring of 2006.” So it was to be a “small operation.” For some reason nobody in the media asked what a “small operation” meant, if not a war or a military campaign. Was this plan accepted on the state level or did it exist only in the head of one excitable hawk? Were the international consequences of this “small operation” considered at all? Irakli Okruashvili gave no answers to such questions.
Of course, the ex-minister’s political striptease would have been incomplete without mention of one of the most tragic pages of recent Georgian history – the death of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania. Here Okruashvili simply “blew smoke,” stating that he did not know how the Prime Minister died or what was the cause of death, but he insinuatingly said that he knew for sure that Zhvania died not on Saburatalo Street, but in a different place. Could a person in the president’s inner circle know only part of the “truth”? Perhaps Okruashvili was concealing something? No, in all other matters he went all out. The logical conclusion is that the disgraced politician did everything he could to make society believe that the authorities were complicit in Zurab Zhvania’s death without saying anything essentially new.
One did not need to possess any exclusive information to understand that Okruashvili and Patarkatsishvili were preparing a blow – to understand this one only had to watch the news broadcasts on Imedi TV. The interests of Okruashvili and Patarkatsishvili intersected, and these interests were composed not so much of hatred for the existing authorities as of the desire to return the power that they had once possessed, but now without any limitations. As concerns Okruashvili everything is clear: the once all-powerful minister had lost out in the “Byzantine” struggle with his alter-ego, Vano Merabishvili. Not so long before “Iron” Irakli had considered himself Saakashvili’s heir to the presidency after the latter’s two terms were up. And as for Patarkatsishvili, after the Rose
Revolution he had used his proximity to Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania to decide many “political-economic” issues, which gave the oligarch power that was no less, if not more, than that of Irakli Okruashvili.
It is obvious that Okruashvili was the only politician in Georgia besides the president to have particular charisma. But charismatic leaders can be divided into “standard bearers” and “servants of the people”. “Standard bearers” have their own vision of reality, have a goal, and are able to draw people to them and to define the character and pace of events. “Servants of the people” express the interests of their followers, act in their name, and say what they expect to hear. Saakashvili is a typical example of a “standard bearer”, while Okruashvili positioned himself as a “servant of the people.” In his television appearance Okruashvili said exactly what the majority of viewers expected him to say, and this was easy to do since the answers to all the questions had been formulated in society’s consciousness as the result of all of Imedi TV’s painstaking efforts.
After this performance the government was placed in a no-win situation. Okruashvili’s arrest was due to several causes. The two principal ones were the threat of the physical elimination of the ex-minister, which would inevitably have lead to a real danger of public disorders, and the understanding on the part of the authorities of the vulnerability of Okruashvili’s accusations, that were lacking in proof. With the help of a powerful PR campaign one can create the impression in society that something could be true. But to prove it one needs much more serious arguments. Speaking on live air from Munich later, Okruashvili said that pressure had been used on him in prison. I think that this was probably so, and the main argument of this pressure was that he had lost. After his “tele- repentance” the “revolution” (or coup d’état) in preparation had lost its real leader and was practically doomed to failure.
November 2007 clearly showed that change of power, either by constitutional or by “revolutionary” means, is possible only given the appearance of a strong leader who is able to win over large segments of the population and who has the necessary charisma. Okruashvili had been blocked from this, and there were no other leaders. But the main result in November was the general destabilization of the country.
The start of large-scale demonstrations on Rustaveli was preceded by an intensive information campaign, and the whole country was frozen in anticipation of November 2. That date was chosen deliberately, although the majority of people who went out onto Rustaveli Avenue on that warm, sunny day probably didn’t associate it with the November 2 of four years prior. Dates have a more sacred character in Georgian politics for politicians than for the electorate. Exactly four years earlier parliamentary elections had taken place in Georgia, the falsification of which had led to the Rose Revolution. The opposition did all it could to make this analogy with the events of four years earlier visible to the naked eye. The same protests in the regions, the same convoy of automobiles, the same bus from Tsalenjika heading the convoy from Mingrelia, the same standing on Rustaveli Avenue.
But in essence November 2 this time became a continuation of Tbilisoba, the crowds of people in their holiday best going to Rustaveli Avenue not so much to express opposition to the government as to participate in events for the sake of participating. Since 1988 demonstrations in Georgia became something of a national pastime. This is what Tsotne Gamsakhurdia failed to understand when he criticized opposition leaders in an [intercepted telephone] conversation with his brother for bringing out, according to his information, 150,000 people to Rustaveli and not using the moment to “bring down” the hated “Saakashvili regime.” Tsotne understands the psychology of our people poorly. Even if a half million people had gathered on Rustaveli Avenue, it would have been impossible to cause a “revolution” on that day. The people gathered to show their dissatisfaction, to see and be seen, but not to overthrow the existing government.
Understanding the mood of the people, the opposition began to raise the temperature with the help of ultimatums, while the government, of course, balked. The result was a gradually dragging out demonstration, supported with the help of a concert of beloved performers. On the evening of November 6 there were all of about 200 people at the demonstration. It became clear that society had grown tired of “revolutions” and dreamed of an evolutionary path. It is not at all coincidental that the quantity of demonstrators began to decrease in geometric progression as soon as the so-familiar shouts of “Go away! Go away!” started to be heard on Rustaveli.
Thunder beaconed in the early morning of November 7. On this red-letter day, the authorities for some reason decided that it was time to put an end to the all the ugliness of hunger strikers on the capital’s central street, all the more so since they (the opposition) had stated their desire to set up a tent city in front of parliament, which pushed the government out of its indifference. There would later be rumors of a government meeting at which ill-fated decision was taken. Those “in-the-know” maintained that the most active supporter of force was Tbilisi mayor Gigi Ugulava, while Vano Merabishvili was categorically against it. It’s difficult for me to judge how reliable this information is, but the fact that Mikheil Saakashvili bears personal responsibility for this decision is absolutely obvious. The smart thing to do would have been to provide the hunger strikers with nice tents and hot food (if they decided to partake in it), and to bring groups of foreign tourists and show them the level of democracy in the country. But history bears no conditional clause. What happened, happened.
Demolishing the tents on live TV caused a consequential reaction in society. On the morning of November 7 the protesters were not coming to a peaceful protest action, they were coming to overthrow the government. The desire to close off Rustaveli Avenue spilled over to a brawl with the forces of law and order, and fists and then the “weapons of the proletariat” were put to use. At that moment the authorities had to take a difficult step, but the only one that was possible in such a situation. Riot police were given the order to bring the disorders to a halt using special means. From that moment an emergency situation in reality began in the country. The authorities must answer for the fact that the official emergency situation regime was declared only that evening. The demonstrative closing of Imedi TV is yet another flub on the part of the authorities that has cost the country dearly.
The results were negative all round. The country’s international prestige was dealt a serious blow, many analysts called the situation in the country a human rights crisis, and it is difficult not to agree with this evaluation. The population was divided in two, with one part violently hating the authorities and the other ready to go out on the street, even under the conditions of the emergency situation regime, to support their beloved government. The economy was also dealt a serious blow. These days people often speak of the involvement of the special services of the neighboring state in the November events, I think with some justification. This brings to mind the episode in Ganmukhuri, which was meant to demonstrate the complete incapacity of the Georgian authorities. As far as the main actors are concerned, most likely [the neighboring country’s special services] made dark use of Irakli Okruashvili, and with Badri Patarkatsishvili there is no clear answer. Answering the question of why all of this happened precisely when it did inevitably leads to conclusions about how destabilization in Georgia was necessary in order to block it from receiving the Membership Action Plan to enter NATO. After all, if the goal was just the seizure of power, then Okruashvili’s performance would have been much more effective closer to the parliamentary elections, or even better during the presidential ones. Destabilizing the situation precisely at that time was objectively beneficial precisely for the Kremlin. This does not at all take away responsibility from the Georgian authorities, however.
In such a situation Mikheil Saakashvili again showed himself to be a brilliant anti-crisis manager. The decision to hold extraordinary presidential elections and a plebiscite on the date of parliamentary elections was risky, but it was the only decision possible. But that’s another page of history.
The year 2007 in Georgia can be divided into two unequal parts, almost according to Kant: the precritical and the critical. In the precritical period there was the Russian economic blockade, the detention of Turkish ships off the coast of Abkhazia, energy summits, and much more. It makes sense to closely analyze this period in order to understand why “the Olmecs began to demand human sacrifices.” There was a surplus budget, a strong national currency, reduction in foreign debt, high rates of physical infrastructure development, attraction of foreign investment and job creation, which seemed to assure further stability in the country. But not everything in life follows a linear path. The reforms were impossible without a change in mentality, and change in mentality is not a pretty phrase, but a painful breaking of an entire way of life, and even more importantly a break in the psychology of the individual. If before the average resident of Georgia knew very well that the world was unfair, the Rose Revolution gave people the hope, and even the certainty, that the opposite was true. However, the conception of justice held by the majority of Georgia’s residents was a holdover from that previous life. Of course, it’s a good thing not to have to pay bribes at every step, but, as it turned out, you have to pay taxes. And even though taxes had been sharply reduced, sometimes the total amount due was higher than people used to spend on bribes. Electricity,
water and other utilities are also great, but they had to be paid for as well. Add to this the often Bolshevik methods of the authorities (although nothing else would have worked), together with the lack of desire to explain the motivations behind their actions (which was a critical mistake), and you get the events of November 2007, with all of the consequences that flowed from it.
One such consequence was early presidential elections, in conditions of a sharp decline in the approval ratings of the ruling party and of Mikheil Saakashvili himself. According to the experts, the ratings of Saakashvili and his team dropped to the critical level of 10–15%. In such conditions, the president found himself in a Zugzwang situation: not submitting to an election would mean losing the support of the international community, which ultimately would be the same thing as losing power; holding parliamentary elections would lead to a crushing defeat, as it would be simply impossible for the ruling party to increase its approval ratings in such a short pre- electoral period. Mikheil Saakashvili took the only possible decision in such circumstances: to hold presidential elections.
And so we once again saw the Misha of old, the enthusiastic, outgoing, driven Misha, passing on his energy to the entire country. This was a leader, demonstrating to the population that the country needed him. Misha on a tractor, in a car, on a train, with teachers and scientists, villagers and city-dwellers, and so on and so forth. It was rather amusing to observe an electoral campaign in which promises of libertarian reforms were combined with populist PR moves, like handing out fertilizer or foodstuffs to pensioners.
In addition to this, unpopular figures were kept off the TV screens. Some of them disappeared into political insignificance, and some of them transferred into the executive power system, where they continued to play important roles in defining the policies of the ruling team, but without publicity. At first glance, the replacement of the prime minister seemed entirely illogical. Zurab Noghaideli had been so passive, and even silent, that he was simply invisible. It only later became clear why Saakashvili needed the flashy and even daring Lado Gurgenidze in place of the flaccid Noghaideli. Quite simply, the main focus of the pre-electoral campaign was reviving the country’s economy, which was in a state of shock following the events of November 2007. Relying on the scholarly Noghaideli was not an option in such a situation, and later events demonstrated that the president had been right in making this decision.
It was a forceful campaign in the best traditions of modern political technology. One can snicker all one wants at political technology, but the unexpected happened, and people started to love Misha again. Not everybody and not immediately and, of course, not everywhere. In the capital and in the downtown parts of Batumi people didn’t forgive Misha so easily for the sense of injury and insult that many, even those far from the opposition, felt on November 7, 2007.
Meanwhile, the opposition leaders were not able to put forth a single candidate. Or more correctly, they put forth Levan Gachechiladze, perhaps the only realistic choice, besides the other serious candidate, Badri Patarkatsishvili. How and why the oppositionists could not reach agreement with the out-of-favor oligarch is understandable: each of the opposition politicians had presidential ambitions. In essence, the choice of a candidate from the opposition was sort of like playing in a lottery. But Badri Patarkatsishvili was not of their flock. They saw him more as a milk cow than as a partner. Patarkatsishvili himself was burdened with the experience of organizing the Rose Revolution and the unrealistic fantasies that came after it. Of course, the oligarch had his own candidate, Irakli Okruashvili, but he would not turn thirty-five years old by the time of the presidential election. Thus the oligarch was obligated to hoist the cross of being a candidate himself.
Had Patarkatsishvili supported the opposition, the chances of a single candidate, in this case Levan Gachechiladze, would have been extremely high. Had the opposition supported Patarkatsishvili, he had a chance at victory. But in splitting the vote, the opposition was doomed to defeat. According to some sources, Patarkatsishvili had a plan to become the single opposition candidate several days before the election. But there was one factor, about which we will speak later, that obstructed him from carrying this out.
Immediately after the victory of the Rose Revolution in Ajara in May 2004, some particularly talented individual in the ruling team decided that participation of government representatives in television talk shows and discussions was unnecessary and even potentially harmful. Reality demonstrated that this was incorrect. As it happens, the sharp rise in Mikheil Saakashvili’s popularity started with his appearance in a talk show together with his main opponent, Levan Gachechiladze. In replying to the aggressive tone of the opposition candidate, Saakashvili proposed a clean fight and cooperation in the name of the unity of the country. In doing this, Misha clearly outplayed his competitor, as Gachechiladze was confused and couldn’t think of how to react. Indeed, the opposition had placed all its hopes on the feelings of antipathy and even hatred towards the government and towards Saakashvili personally.
All the same, in a country without democratic traditions and a developed civil society, truly clean elections are an illusion. Both Saakashvili and his opponents understood this. The main stimulus for the opposition was the fact that the only consistent support Saakashvili was receiving was from US Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza and his boss, Daniel Fried. Not to say that this was insignificant, but it would not mean much the case of a violent seizure of power. Thus the contest was serious, considering the stakes and the tradition of politics in the Caucasus. The key moment, which deserves special attention, was the publication of the recording of a telephone conversation between Badri Patarkatsishvili and Interior Ministry Department Head Irakli Kodua.
In essence, what happened was that Patarkatsishvili made contact with General Kodua, who at the time was in unofficial disgrace, and proposed organizing a state coup immediately after the announcement of the results of the presidential election. General Kodua was a very serious figure, who had control of nearly all of the Georgian Interior Ministry’s special forces troops, and was also very close to Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili. What came to light was a demonstrative conversation between Patarkatsishvili and Kodua, in which Kodua indicated that the main problem in removing Saakashvili from power was Vano Merabishvili. In the final result, Kodua framed Patarkatsishvili into recommending “neutralizing” Merabishvili by all available methods.
There are various theories concerning the details of the revelation of this conversation. The official version is that General Kodua had been prepared from the start by the Interior Ministry to participate in this game, and therefore his disgrace and dissatisfaction had been staged for precisely this reason, which actually is believable. What is not so believable is that Irakli Kodua was able to record the conversation with Patarkatsishvili in his residence, considering that the latter was under the protection of the best security specialists that money can buy, the majority of whom were former Russian GRU officers. There was one other version, according to which the recording might have been made by officers of the British Secret Services. But a more likely explanation is that the recording was made by Patarkatsishvili himself, and it then fell into the hands of the Georgian authorities as the result of treachery on the part of somebody he trusted. Of course, in the end it’s not particularly significant how the recording was made. What’s important is that Badri Patarkatsishvili himself, in an interview with his own TV station, Imedi, could not refute the fact that the conversation had taken place, and he appeared very unconvincing.
After this event it became clear that the opposition would not be able to defeat Saakashvili, and the gauge of public opinion swung sharply in favor of the government. It is noteworthy that the authorities did not remove Patarkatsishvili’s candidacy from the ballot, as this would not be beneficial, and a criminal case against the disgraced oligarch was launched only after the election results were announced.
All the rest became a technical question, and despite losing in Tbilisi and Batumi (yet another paradox, as it was in these cities that the most had been done following the Rose Revolution), Saakashvili managed to win the January 2008 election. A decisive role in this victory was played by the ethnic-minority regions, particularly Borchalo [Kvemo-Kartli] and Javakheti, which became the pretext for wicked tongues among the opposition to declare Saakashvili the president of the Azeris and Armenians of Georgia. To Saakashvili’s credit, he answered this by stating that he truly was the president of all ethnic groups.
In his pre-electoral campaign, Saakashvili named as his main opponents “poverty” and “pessimism.” Meanwhile, Saakashvili’s main opponent, Levan Gachechiladze, presented the country with practically no positive program of action in the case of his winning the presidency. The opposition candidate’s main message was the promise that
“I’ll come to make you free.” It may seem paradoxical at first glance that Saakashvili received the least votes in the places where he had achieved the greatest successes. If one looks at the central districts of Tbilisi or Batumi, it’s clear that the populations of these cities are the most opposition oriented. But this is logical only on the first glance. It must be remembered that it was the population of Tbilisi that “suffered” the most from the events of November 7. What was more, the capital dwelling voter was not inclined to connect economic increases with the actions of the government. With regard to Batumi, I would dare to suggest that, if not for the improper actions of riot police in Batumi on November 8 of the preceding year, Saakashvili would have drawn significantly more votes there. One way or another, the fact remains that Saakashvili owed his victory in the first round to precisely those regions where much remained to be done.
In essence, those who voted for Misha in that election did so no longer “with their hearts,” that is, not because of emotions, but rather because of reason and hope. All that had been done by Misha and his team in the four years after the Rose Revolution gave the basis for this hope, and the election had in general been motivated by hope. For example, the high results in Mingrelia were connected not only with the vocal and physical capabilities of the First Lady, but also with the hope that Abkhazia would be returned. The example of Sighnaghi is typical, as there the authorities had done everything possible to turn this Godforsaken town into a distinguished tourist center. The population of that region gave their votes to the hope that this course would be continued, and that the government’s bold plans would be brought to life. The situation was analogous in Akhalkalaki (hoping for the Tbilisi-Kars railway), in Poti (a free economic zone), in other regions of Kakheti (the return of Georgian viticulture), in Ajara (the development of tourism and agriculture), and so forth.
After January 5, 2008 a new phase in modern Georgian history began. Later would follow the resignation of Nino Burjanadze, parliamentary elections, war, the civil confrontation of spring 2009, and much more. But these are the topics for another conversation.
