Uncertain Democracy. Lincoln A. Mitchell

       Chapter 2

       Illusions of Democracy

       The First Years of Independence

      During the last two decades of the Soviet Union, Georgia was one of the most affluent of the country’s fifteen republics. An economy buoyed by the sale of wine, tea, fruit, and mineral water as well as its position as one of the major tourist destinations of the Soviet Union meant that Georgians enjoyed a higher standard of living than most of their compatriots in other parts of the USSR. In these years, Georgia was also viewed as an important cultural center where artists, film makers, and others worked and had an impact on the entire USSR. Distance from Moscow and the relatively competent leadership of Communist Party first secretary Eduard Shevardnadze from 1973 to 1985 also contributed to quality of life in Georgia.

      The impact of the Soviet Union on the development of Georgian nationalism in the twentieth century is important for understanding the struggles that country now confronts.¹ The 1921 Soviet takeover destroyed the nascent, independent Georgian state, but it did not destroy Georgian nationalism; it froze it. As in other areas of the Soviet Union such as Ukraine, nationalist uprisings in Georgia persisted well into the 1920s, primarily in the difficult to access mountainous regions. These uprisings were brutally repressed. However, when the Soviet Union began to collapse, Georgian nationalism began to thaw. For Georgian nationalists, there is a strong continuity between the 1920s and the 1980s and 1990s. The activism of the late 1980s and early 1990s opposed the authoritarian Soviet regime, but independence and self-determination, not democracy, were the movement’s primary goals.

      The end of the Soviet period instigated dramatic change throughout the fifteen newly independent countries that had once formed the Soviet Union, but Georgia was something of an extreme case. Georgia had been one of the wealthiest of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union, but its economic decline was greater and more rapid than that in almost any of the others, and by 1995 it was one of the poorest of the newly independent states.

      Ironically, the newly independent Georgia might have seemed to an outside observer in 1991 like a likely prospect for a smooth evolution toward stability and democracy. As a small republic with a relatively homogeneous population by Soviet standards; a border with Turkey, a NATO member, potentially important ally, and trading partner; an educated population; and an established market niche, Georgia seemed to have many positives. Sadly, by the mid-1990s, all this had been squandered; the country had devolved into an impoverished, wartorn, almost lawless country in a period of only a few years.

      The modern Georgian state was born in March 1991 when the Georgian people overwhelmingly approved a ballot referendum calling for independence. A few months later, they went to the polls again to elect the government for the new state. The winning party in that election, Round Table, was led by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a dynamic, popular Georgian nationalist who was viewed as one of the leaders of the renascent Georgian nationalist movement. Gamsakhurdia was not, however, either a democrat or prepared for the task of governing.

      Georgia’s first years of independence under the leadership of Gamsakhurdia were not easy ones. Rather than initiate a new democratic era, Gamsakhurdia sought to create a new one-party system. The Round Table, which had come together during the late Soviet years as a rallying point for Georgian independence activists, proved unable to govern. Although elected by a substantial majority in an election that was essentially free and fair, Gamsakhurdia was in many ways an undemocratic leader. He did not tolerate opposition, often calling political opponents traitors and other epithets. Effective institutions such as courts, legislative bodies, and bureaucracies did not evolve during these years. Gamsakhurdia’s behavior became increasingly erratic and divisive. He did, however, manage to maintain a reasonable degree of popularity among the Georgian people who had elected him to office.²

      Under the ineffective leadership of the Round Table in the early 1990s, Georgia rapidly slipped into civil strife, territorial instability, and economic collapse. Indeed, Gamsakhurdia’s inability to govern effectively led to a descent into nearly anarchic conditions. The government failed to deliver services, maintain infrastructure, or implement the law. The economy rapidly collapsed as infrastructure fell into disrepair or was destroyed or stolen. Difficult relations with Russia, Georgia’s largest trading partner, rapidly dismantled the tourist market as well as the external market for products such as wine, mineral water, and other foodstuffs.

      Political strife of various hues exacerbated the economic collapse. First, two regions of Georgia, South Ossetia in 1991 and Abkhazia in 1992 (inhabited by Georgians as well as Ossetians and Abkhazians), declared independence, precipitating civil conflicts that ended in 1993 when Georgia lost control over both regions. The Abkhaz and Ossetian opponents of Georgia were supported by Russia, but their actions can also be partly attributed to Gamsakhurdia’s heated nationalist rhetoric. Efforts to bring them back into Georgia through some kind of federalist arrangement are still being undertaken and remain central to the ongoing tension between Russia and Georgia. An estimated 250,000 Georgians living in those regions fled to other parts of Georgia, creating a problem of resettling internally displaced persons (IDPs) that has still not been resolved.

      A third region, Ajara, also declared de facto independence from Tbilisi during this time. The regime of strongman Aslan Abashidze, who would later play a key role in the Rose Revolution, remained semi-autonomous until May 2004, when Abashidze, in the face of aggressive efforts from the new government, fled to Russia and Tbilisi regained control of Ajara.

      Even with Ajara, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia excluded, Georgia was still far from stable. Civil strife between supporters of Gamsakhurdia and opponents of various stripes were rampant. Armed gangs controlled parts of western Georgia, particularly in the Samegrelo region. In 1991–92, civil war appeared imminent as armed conflict took place on the streets of Tbilisi, the parliament building was shelled, and armed gangs intimidated residents of the capital, bringing work and commercial activity to a virtual standstill. Georgia, in short, was on the verge of collapse.

      A motley collection of Gamsakhurdia opponents, including gangsters, intellectuals, former Communist party leaders, businesspeople, and even a few democrats, sought to replace the democratically elected president with someone who might be able to hold the country together, bring it sorely needed international recognition and support, and perhaps even behave a little bit more rationally and democratically. The man they turned to was the former first secretary of Georgia, who had moved on to international renown as the foreign minister of the USSR. Thus Eduard Shevarnadze returned to his native Georgia from Moscow to serve as its second post-independence leader.

      In the West, the return of Shevardnadze was viewed, and to a great extent continues to be viewed, as unambiguously positive for Georgia. The experienced and mature Shevardnadze, so the narrative goes, a man