As Georgian people think about upcoming local elections scheduled to take place on October 4, they might think about lessons from the past, and how they might shape their future choices.
One of the most inaccurate and unhelpful generalizations Western pundits and politicians make about Georgia is that, under its current government, led by the Georgia Dream party, it has aligned itself with Russia, at the expense of the West.
First, consider that a huge part of Georgia’s modern history is, of course, the memory of its 70-year occupation by the Soviet Union, starting in 1921.
Wandering through the darkened hall of the Exhibition of Soviet Occupation at the State Museum of Georgia in Tblisi two weeks ago, I was brutally reminded of what the Soviet Union, and, by association, Russia mean to many Georgian people.
Between 1921 and 1953, tens of thousands of Georgians were either summarily executed or put in gulags, and hundreds of thousands more were deported, under the Soviet dictatorship of Lenin, and then Stalin, who himself was Georgian.
Even though the repressions eased under Khrushchev and others, there is a palpable sense that the deeply religious Georgian people felt like second-class citizens under a godless Soviet regime. The Georgian Nationalist movement never died. More than a year before the Berlin Wall fell, a group of prominent independence activists gathered regularly in an apartment on Chavchavadze Street to plot a course to Georgian independence.
One of those leaders was Irakli Batiashvili, who I was fortunate enough to spend an evening with during my recent visit in that same apartment, surrounded by the ghost of momentous discussion.
Irakli played a pivotal role in orchestrating widespread public protests, starting in 1988, against Soviet rule. These protests peaked on April 9, 1989, when tens of thousands of Georgians gathered for peaceful protests in Rustaveli Avenue, in Tblisi. Realizing they were losing control, the Soviet authorities sent in the army, which set upon the protestors with trenching spades and tear gas. In the ensuing melee, 21 people died and hundreds were injured, including Irakli himself. April 9 remains Georgia’s Day of National Unity in remembrance of those who died.
Irakli Batiashvili himself was beaten so badly that people assumed he was dead and took him to the mortuary before, as he said to me without irony, “they decided I was still alive.” Georgia would go on to declare independence in 1990 before attaining it in 1991: Irakli was its first national intelligence chief, working closely with the CIA on its establishment.
So, he’s not a dyed-in-the-wool Russophile willing to ignore or forgive the sins of the past.
Indeed, when I told him that I personally sanctioned all the members of Russia’s current National Security Council, including Dmitry Medvedev and Sergey Naryshkin, he offered a beaming smile and shook my hand. “Well done!”
Rather, he is a person deeply proud of his country and determined to prevent it from becoming the victim of a great power tug of love between Russia and the West today. He supports Georgia Dream, even though he is no longer active in politics.
We discussed how choosing between Europe or Russia, which is how Georgian elections are often unhelpfully framed, is a false choice.
I consider that, for small states, it is an intensely dangerous choice. For Ukraine, which is a large country, the choice has killed or injured over one million people since 2022, emptied it of 5.7 million citizens, further displaced another 3.9 million internally, tipped the country into bankruptcy and cast its leaders in the role of fiscal demanders. That is a disastrous choice.
Anyone who genuinely believes that the same or worse might not happen to Georgia should it sanction Russia or, worse, open a second military front, is either misled, deluded or dishonest.
That for me seems to be the point of difference between Georgia’s fragmented opposition and the Georgia Dream party. The former wants to sail Georgia blindly into the storm of a war it cannot win under the EU flag, in the hope Western nations will come to the rescue, which they will not. People like Irakli Batiashvili would sooner not repeat history and in that he appears to represent the Georgia Dream’s worldview.
The governing party is navigating the immensely complex challenge of avoiding disastrous foreign policy choices, preferring to focus on improving the nation’s economic and social condition. Post-pandemic economic growth soared to 9.4% in 2024, with a medium-term outlook of 5%, according to the World Bank.
The “choice” in the local elections isn’t about being pro-Europe or pro-Russia, it’s about how best to sustain the development of a country that remains poor by Western standards. The OSCE has thus far declined the Georgian government’s invitation to observe these elections, which seems churlish, to put it mildly. Non-engagement is a passive effort aimed at delegitimizing a government that Euro elites dislike.
If you think these elections should be about foreign policy, then, having reflected on my comments about Ukraine, I’d invite you to recall the war against Russia in 2008 that led to Moscow’s continued occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which remains deeply offensive to many Georgians.
The West egged on that completely avoidable war by encouraging Georgian NATO and EU membership, to humor then-President Mikheil Saakashvili. Were his actions rooted in a historical hatred of Russia, from 70 years of Soviet occupation? I don’t know. I just see them as the actions of a leader who may have thought, quite wrongly, that the West would underwrite reckless choices.
By comparison, Irakli Batiashvili epitomizes the Georgian people: he’s humble, culturally rich, rooted in the Orthodox faith and proud of his nation. His worldview isn’t shaped by a desire to be close to one nation more than another, but rather for Georgia to find its own place in the world, on good terms with everyone, without sacrificing its unique identity.
Having fallen foul of Soviet brutality in 1989, Irakli Batiashvili also fell foul of political repression in independent Georgia in 2006 when he was arrested on trumped-up charges. The case hinged on his efforts to mediate in a growing conflict between Abkhaz militias (Irakli sees Abkhazia as part of Georgia) and the Georgian military which was reneging on its promises to allow the separatists a certain level of local autonomy. Irakli appeared on a Georgian TV news broadcast to talk about his efforts, only for the TV station to leak an altered transcript of a tapped telephone conversation between Irakli and a separatist leader, provided to it by the Interior Ministry of Saakashvili’s government.
All told, Irakli spent 18 months in prison, across two separate periods of time between 2006 and 2008 before being pardoned, following protests in Georgia and by global human rights organizations like Amnesty International. The EU Court of Human Rights would later judge that, in imprisoning Irakli, the Saakashvili government had breached its treaty obligation towards him, that a suspect should be considered innocent until being proved guilty.
These days, Irakli leads a humble life, teaching philosophy and culture at Tblisi State University, and reading and writing, in that small, revolutionary apartment, packed with beautiful artwork, paintings and pictures of his family, and books, including those written by himself, his wife and daughter. What a brilliant and swashbuckling life he has led. His warmth and generosity in hosting me was remarkable and, more than anything, I was struck by the observation that he is living his life today and looking to the future, rather than allowing himself to remain a prisoner of the past.
It is perhaps, then, ironic that most passive observers of foreign affairs today have little sight of the past, which blinds them dangerously to the future. As people prepare to vote in local elections in October, it occurs to me, as a complete outsider with no say over how the Georgian people run their country, that the choice is simple — not between Europe or Russia, but between living in a chaotic and repressive past, fuelled by grievance, or reaching for a better future, filled with hope.
