Dynamics of State-Building in Georgia

style="color: maroon;font-weight: bold;">Presentation

NODIA: It is my pleasure to be here at Harvard to speak about Georgia. It was a great experience for a political scientist to live through recent Georgian developments, but it is also an intellectual challenge to present a coherent picture of Georgian attempts at state-building. It includes several stories, in a sense, because in the period which I will cover since 1988-89, Georgia had to undergo several rather important transitions which rarely coincide in time in a nation''s history, but which did coincide in the case of the post-Soviet republics. These transitions were, first, the break-up of the old communist system and the transition to democracy, which is itself a very important thing; second, the break-up of the communist economy, the centralized command economy, and the transition to some kind of market; and third, the creation of an independent state out of just a Soviet province.

When you try to tell the story of Georgia in these last years, it is really, I would say, three story lines which run parallel to each other but sometimes meet -- three different types of dynamics (although I do not mean here the same three problems which I have just outlined which Georgia has faced). One of them is the story of the creation of the new Georgian political elite, the story of the battles between the different political factions of Georgia, of the attempts to build new political institutions, and so on. This is the story of Georgian political life per se. Another story is that of ethno-territorial conflicts in Georgia, the conflicts between the Georgian majority, the Georgian political elite, and those political elites and respective ethnic groups which did not want to be part of the new Georgian state and which pursued separate arrangements for themselves, namely the Abkhazian and Ossetian minorities. Then there is a third story, the story of relations between Georgia and Russia. Each of these themes has its own internal logic, so we have to think about each separately.

Each of these stories alone is crucial to our understanding of what has happened in Georgia, and which of these three themes you choose as the leading one depends on who you are and what your perspective is. If you are a Western scholar, you are more often expected, I think, to choose the story of ethnic conflict as the leading one. Most Western research projects on Georgia in the last year have been about ethnic conflict in Georgia, and ethnic conflicts are things for which we are sort of famous and interesting; it has become a trademark of Georgia. If you are a Georgian, you are likely (at least that is what I would expect from a lot, though not all Georgians) to choose relations with Russia as the factor that determines everything else. According to this school of thought, you can only understand what has happened in Georgia by means of looking at specific relations with Russia and how they have developed; you have to demonstrate how ethnic conflicts arise out of this, and how all internal Georgian political conflicts come from this. Contrary to these perspectives, I tend to think that internal Georgian political developments are the leading events, in the sense that they are the key and crucial events for understanding everything else which has happened in Georgia. Thus I will single out this story line as the leading one, having in mind, of course, that you cannot speak about any of these topics without somehow touching on others.

To speak of some peculiarities of Georgia as compared to other post-soviet countries, I want to say that Georgia has been notable for especially tense developments in each of these directions. I mean, there were and are problems in all post-soviet countries, but Georgia has had extremely tense conflicts within each of these three spheres. We have had two ethno-territorial wars which have continued for a long time. Apart from them, we had a coup and sort of civil war (not along ethnic lines), and we have had extremely difficult and controversial relations with Russia. So if Georgia is noted for something, it is noted for very dramatic developments in each of these directions.

Now I will propose some kind of periodization of our political developments. Just naming these periods, or stages of our development, means mentioning major events that happened in Georgia. I think we have very clear landmarks which divide these periods from one another. The first is the time between 1988, roughly, and the fall of 1990. This is the stage of the rise of the Georgian independence movement, when this movement gradually came to dominate Georgia''s political discourse and its political scene. It ended when one of the coalitions which represented this movement, the Round Table, led by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, became the government of Georgia as a result of democratic elections. The second period is the first attempt, an unfortunate and failed one, to build a nation-state of Georgia. This period covers the rule of Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his Round Table coalition from the elections of Fall 1990 to his ouster as a result of two weeks of fighting in December-January 1991-92. The third period is one of disorder, mess and chaos which resulted from the Georgian coup, or insurrection, when Georgian statehood experienced an almost complete breakdown of state institutions and order. This story continued from this coup through the fall of 1993, and the climax of this was losing Abkhazia and the anti-Shevardnadze insurrection in western Georgia.

Paradoxical as it is, losing the war in Abkhazia prompted a period of gradual stabilization in Georgia. Different warlords which were really in charge of the country after the coup were gradually pushed to the margins of political life and the civil government headed by Eduard Shevardnadze gradually solidified its base thus becoming a real government. The end of this process is marked by the failed assassination attempt on Shevardnadze in August 1995. Having survived this attempt, Shevardnadze turned it into an opportunity, getting rid of his last armed adversaries. He then finalized his victory in the elections of November 1995. November 1995 ushered in a period of relative stability and normalcy, so you can say that the second attempt at state-building was held to be successful. This is a general outline, a framework of recent Georgian history. Now I will just try briefly to characterize the peculiarity of each of these periods, and this will be my talk today.

As for the period of the rise of the national independence movement, there was one thing for which Georgia was notable more than any other Soviet republic. Georgia was the only place among these republics where the pro-independence movement was dominated by its radical factions. There were radical groups like this everywhere (their trademark was a refusal to take part in any official elections until Soviet rule had been formally abolished), for instance in the Baltic states: I single them out because Georgians tried sometimes to model their movement on them. But nowhere save for Georgia did the radicals become the predominant opposition force. This very much determined everything that happened after they came to the fore. The domination of the radicals explains the extremely confrontational character of Georgian politics and the feature that I would define as revolutionary aestheticism. Political struggle (for whatever cause) was interpreted as a set of heroic-aesthetic gestures, and anything like pragmatism or political calculation was considered to be a disgrace, hence unacceptable. Notional rejection of any compromise with the projected "enemy" (Russia, or "the Kremlin") practically resulted in failures to achieve any compromise between different factions of the national-independence movement (whether between radicals and moderates or between various radical groups). It was this confrontational character of political discourse and activities that was primarily responsible for the different kinds of conflicts that eventually developed in Georgia: those between various political groups or factions which in due time led to a kind of civil war, as well as the ethnic-territorial wars and, in part, especially strong tensions with Russia.

Turning to the period of Gamsakhurdia''s rule, the most important fact about him is, of course, that he failed. This requires explanation. He was a popularly elected president who came to power as a leader of the national independence movement whose slogans definitely dominated the political agenda. Here, one has to keep in mind another feature which was specific to Georgia: at that time, there was really no political agenda in Georgia other than independence and democracy. Unlike the Baltic states, there was no organized political force which would say in public that Georgia should not be independent, or that it is good to retain a communist state. There was the Communist Party to be sure, but after the massacre of April 1989, when Soviet troops killed 20 peaceful pro-independence demonstrators, it became impossible for anybody to say anything in favor of Communism or the Soviet Union in public. One can say that although the Communist Party was nominally in power until the fall of 1990, the legitimacy of Soviet rule in Georgia really ended in April 1989, and the agenda was being completely and definitely set by the nationalist movement. Gamsakhurdia came to power as the leader of this movement, so his legitimacy seemed to be extremely strong.

Yet it was quite soon that everything ended up in a crushing defeat for him. Why? One may refer to many different factors, but I will highlight certain crucial dilemmas which Gamsakhurdia failed to handle. This is important because the government after Gamsakhurdia, that of Shevardnadze, had to face the same dilemmas, but handled them with much greater success. One was the dilemma between democracy and autocracy, and the other was that between idealism and pragmatism. These problems were objective ones, and whoever would be the leader of Georgia has to face them.

In the revolutionary situation involving the fight for independence, there was no chance for anybody to avoid using some autocratic methods and being blamed for that. But at the same time, there was a consensus that only a democratically elected government could be a legitimate one. The exclusive legitimacy of the democratic idea was not so much based on a commitment to democratic values on behalf of the public or the new political elite, but rather on the general pro-Western orientation of Georgia. There was not much in real life on which the new political elite could base its attempt to build a new society or a new state; there was only ideology, or allegiance to a national project, the idea that Georgia should follow the Western model. Democracy, alongside the nation-state, is another element of this model, so it was taken for granted that Georgia should be a democratic state, a democracy. On the other hand, the logic of revolutionary struggle with a very strong enemy image brought about a siege mentality and calls for unconditional national unity, which legitimized autocratic methods as well.

When Gamsakhurdia was ousted, his removal was legitimated by the claim of the liberal elite that he was a dictator, and this claim was not altogether groundless. His supporters, on the other hand, said that he lost because he was too mild really to crush his opposition. He was a legitimate authority and anybody who fights against a legitimate authority, with illegitimate methods, with arms, should be crushed. But he failed to do that. There was a good element of truth in that, too. Of course, it was part of his strange personality that he alienated everybody, or almost everybody who had stood by him, and his character has lots to do with his failure. But part of the problem with his character was that he could not find the right middle way between the poles of a democratic leader and an autocrat. He sounded like a dictator and did things that provided grounds for accusations of dictatorship; but in reality, he thus instigated stronger resistance instead of building up a strong power basis for himself.

A second dilemma was that between idealism and pragmatism. Being a tough one for any Georgian leader, this was particularly challenging for Gamsakhurdia. When he came to power, the radical faction of the independence movement dominated political discourse; but he now was the head of state, not an opposition figure. In his new position, he had to make lots of concessions and compromises. Once he tried to act in this way, however, he came into contradiction with his previous image. He was elected as a hero, as a person who sacrificed a lot for the fight for independence, who had been in jail and suffered for his cause; a politician who had to maneuver and make compromises did not fit in into this image.

One has to remember that his legitimacy was undermined in the first place not by his being a radical nationalist, but by his not being radical enough. The breakdown of his legitimacy began with the August putsch in Moscow, during which he failed to take the stand which was expected of him. He behaved like a coward. And on exactly the next day, part of the national guard broke away and this was really the beginning of the Georgian coup d''etat. He was ousted not because he was too radical a nationalist, but vice versa. The people who deposed him were nationalists in their own right, with their often-idealist nationalism and democratic idealism. The claim by the liberal intelligentsia that he was not democratic enough was the idea on which this insurrection against Gamsakhurdia was based. Of course, the people who actually took arms and fought, they might have their own personal interests in power, and it is extremely difficult to call them "democrats." But they who had really vested personal interests in getting rid of Gamsakhurdia were too few and weak to succeed without a reasonable element of popular legitimacy and political idealism. Gamsakhurdia failed because he could not live up to his image.

Here comes Shevardnadze and his new attempt to build a Georgian state. The comparison between the two leaders and their records is extremely ironic: contrary to Gamsakhurdia with whom it was hard to understand how a person who had been so strong in support and legitimacy came to such a fast and crushing defeat, Shevardnadze had an extremely weak power base initially. He was really invited by a group of warlords who were not intending to give him real power. They just wanted a visiting card in their relations with the West; they knew he had powerful friends and was a famous person there. After Kitovani, one of those warlords, developed an open conflict with Shevardnadze about one year later, he publicly complained that they had invited this guy to handle foreign policy, while now he wanted to meddle in real things, which was unacceptable. But this person who had no power base eventually acquired real power. That''s another paradox of recent Georgian history.

Again, personalities play a very important role in this. If Gamsakhurdia was very good at alienating people and making enemies out of friends, Shevardnadze was the opposite -- he was very good at attracting people and making friends (or allies, at least) out of enemies. He really showed himself to be an extremely skillful political gambler.

In the mean time, the political agenda, the mentality and the expectations of the public changed a lot, and this was very important for his success as well. While Gamsakhurdia was brought to power in the period of romanticist revolutionism, Shevardnadze had to deal with the new mind-set for which stability and order became the major political values. This change was not something peculiar to Georgia, but the great shock of the coup and the following breakdown of legitimacy fostered it very much. Shevardnadze quite skillfully appealed to these values in his fight against his adversaries.

Another thing which paradoxically helped him was losing the war in Abkhazia. He had always kept saying that if Georgia lost the war in Abkhazia, he would resign and that his forces could not afford to lose Sukhumi. To be sure, it was a big shock for Georgia to lose Abkhazia, and to have over 200,000 refugees as a result of it. It was not only losing Abkhazia which was a shock, but making concessions to Russia in its aftermath. This war is a very complex thing and it could be definitely the topic of another talk, but at least for the Georgian public it was primarily a war with Russia. The majority of the Georgian public believed that as a matter of fact it was Russia which waged war against Georgia, making use of local separatist forces. The rationale of that war appeared to be punishing Georgia for its pro-independence orientation. Joining the CIS does not really mean much in real terms, because the CIS does not involve too much that is real. But Georgia''s joining the CIS, which happened immediately after losing the war in Abkhazia, was perceived in Georgia as a sort of dismantling of the national project. It implied giving up -- it was just kneeling down and asking Russia for pardon. Thus, after that, Georgia''s signing of the agreement on Russian military bases on its territory, which is of course a much more substantial concession than joining the CIS, was accepted much more easily because the first recognition of fundamental defeat, the dismantling of national project, in essence was believed to have already occurred, and this was the joining of the CIS. So after taking this defeat in Abkhazia, and defeat at the hands of Russia, symbolically giving up the national project, you have Shevardnadze''s gradual rise to power, real power, not nominal power which he had possessed before that.

To understand this paradoxical development, one has to have in mind, first, that losing the war actually shattered not so much Shevardnadze as those paramilitary formations or groups which claimed to be the Georgian army, and which had actually fought the war. They shattered themselves in a material sense because they lost their arms and people and everything. But they also lost legitimacy; they were the primary losers of the war, and this helped Shevardnadze.

First, Shevardnadze got control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which he did not control before the fall of 1993. Having this ministry as a base of support, he used the slogan of order which was extremely popular, and for very good reason, because the country was a mess and had suffered from very high criminality for several years. He gradually played one person off against the other, managing to weaken and eventually to imprison his major adversaries. Of course, it was an immense task, as one can imagine the several layers of conflict which he had to handle at the beginning. There was a Georgia which had very difficult relations with Russia. There was a Georgian political elite at large which had to handle this conflict with the ethnic separatist elites of Abkhazia and Ossetia. It was the part of the Georgian elite which ousted Gamsakhurdia against those people who supported him. Within this victorious part of the political elite there was a coalition between Shevardnadze and Ioseliani, the leader of the powerful Mkhedrioni militia, which went against Kitovani and other warlords. And then, of course, there was some bottom line conflict between Shevardnadze and Ioseliani as well. He had to make all kinds of very sophisticated Byzantine political steps, to make friendships and break them in time, and he succeeded. It is still a kind of miracle for me how he did it, but he did it.

He was of course very lucky as well, especially to survive the assassination attempt in August 1995. That attempt turned out to be so fortunate for him that, of course, many people claim it was he himself who organized it. I am not an expert on ballistics and the like, but at least those experts with whom I have talked do not believe that it was possible. If he could really organize that much, then he really is a genius and so he deserves what he has.

As a result, we have this sort of "return to normalcy" period. I think, that it is only over the past several months that one could say that Georgia is a sort of state. Now it is not only a legal entity in international relations; but it meets at least some qualifications for statehood. Number one, of course, is that the government enforces a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, which is, as you know, the classic Weberian definition of the state. After more than 200 members of Mkhedrioni were imprisoned during the fall of 1995 in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, the Georgian government first became able to enforce this monopoly. I don''t mean, of course, the break-away regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but that part of Georgia which is under the control of the central government.

There are also some attempts to raise taxes, a function which is also one of the features of government of the state. Of course, two or three years ago, the government would not dare to ask for taxes because it did not exist, and why should anybody pay for government if there is no state? Now there is relatively great progress, keeping in mind that it is easy to have progress when one is starting from almost zero. But there is definite progress in the sense that there is some state budget. While last year''s state budget was 53 percent foreign credits, loans, and grants, there was still some budget and there were some state revenues which the Georgian state itself raised. This represents great progress.

Another new thing which exists now, unlike two or three years ago, is some kind of economic policy. Before, Georgia was the freest market in the world because there were no restrictions on anything at all. Now there are some restrictions, like, for instance, that we have one currency. You can only trade in that currency, and it is quite stable. Of course it is stable because of IMF loans, but you can have IMF loans and still not have a stable currency. The Georgian government has succeeded in taking advantage of this loan and enforcing monetary stability.

One of the features of political normalization is that, as a result of the last elections, moderate forces definitely dominate the political scene. Neither neocommunists nor radical nationalists made it into the parliament. There are now three parties in the parliament. The ruling one is Citizens'' Union, or Shevardnadze''s party. First it was just a movement in support of Shevardnadze, without any political agenda other than the support of Shevardnadze. Now, within this party, there is a core group of people who are not former nomenklatura; most of them are former Greens, or people from other young and new political elites which are trying to make the organization into a real party with a real agenda centered around making Georgia a Western-type state. And they are actually now making the parliament the most viable working institution in Georgia, a competent institution in its own way. There is also a relatively small nationalist opposition faction. It is the National-Democratic Party which used to be a radical one but has now become a fairly moderate political force. The third one is the Union of Revival of Georgia, a regional party from the Ajarian Autonomous Republic, which, however, claims it is going to become a national force. Communists and radical nationalists (followers of the late president, Gamsakhurdia) still play certain roles, and I think if we had really fair elections, both of them would make it into the parliament, overcoming the five-percent cut-off. Despite clear violations in a number of regions, however, the Georgian elections were considered to be reasonably free and fair, at least by the standards of the region. The result is that we now have a reasonably moderate, stable parliament which is oriented to making Georgia a Western-type democracy.

If we speak about democracy, Georgia is of course far from meeting full democratic standards. Like most post-communist countries, it has some of its elements but lacks others. Most Western experts who travel in the Caucasus say that Georgia is a freer place than its neighbors, although this may not be a particularly high measure. I can say that after years of turmoil and mess, one could expect worse since there was much pressure to have an iron hand introduce law and order. I think Shevardnadze should take some credit not just for succeeding in his fight against different warlords, but also for winning without becoming a real dictator, although he is sometimes accused of that, too. I cannot be sure that he is a committed democrat; but it is very important that he has a certain prestige, a certain background, which is not only the background of a Communist leader of Georgia, but also of a person who in some sense is responsible for destroying the Berlin Wall. Having an international image as a democrat, he wants very much to live up to it, first, because he likes it, and second, because it is a very important part of his political capital.

One more recent development is that the economy is becoming the major political issue. When you speak professionally in an American political science environment, you are supposed to speak a lot about the economy and how important it is for politics. Of course, there was some economic element in the background of Georgian political developments, but it did not dominate people''s minds, and definitely was not the central thing on the political agenda. Georgia did not have a division between left-wing and right-wing political parties in the conventional sense because the issue number one, almost the sole issue in Georgian politics, was the relationship with Russia. The kind of relations with Russia you supported defined where you stood politically. It may be the foremost feature of "normalcy" that the economy has become the major political issue in Georgia. New political divisions which are developing now depend on one''s stand on economic issues.

style="color: maroon;font-family: Arial;font-weight: bold;">DiscussionQUESTION: You have talked about the return of stability, normalcy, to Georgia. Is Georgian society still polarized between pro- and anti-Gamsakhurdia forces, in your opinion, or is that gradually disappearing?

NODIA: I think that polarization continues in some sense, but the problem is not so acute or important as before. Time heals. First, this is because politically the Zviadists have divided into several factions which have problems with each other. Of course, the Zviadists are politically still a very special group. They have their own agenda, their own newspapers, and they have a fairly closed community. It is not a problem which has been overcome, but it is not so important anymore.

On this subject there is one thing I should have mentioned earlier. There has been a major change in the Georgian political agenda, and this is reflected in the constellation of political forces in Georgia. Earlier, before last summer, the major fight had always been between the government and forces which criticized the government for not being nationalist enough. This was more or less true with Gamsakhurdia, and it was clear also with Shevardnadze, who was accused of being pro-Russian by his opposition. Shevardnadze''s supporters said he was just pragmatic or was a realist; but his opponents called him pro-Russian.

But last summer, things turned out to be very different. Now the main challenge to Shevardnadze comes not from the nationalist, but from the neocommunist opposition. In the last elections, Jumbar Patiashvili, who was the candidate of the neocommunists and who criticized Shevardnadze for being too pro-Western, was the major opposition candidate in presidential elections. This put the nationalists in a difficult position. If the main challenge to Shevardnadze comes from the neocommunists and genuinely pro-Russian forces, and Shevardnadze is the proponent of independence, who are they then, and what is their agenda? All of this eases this tension between the existing government and the more nationalist opposition of Gamsakhurdia''s type.

QUESTION: I was wondering if you have changed somewhat your thesis about the role of nationalism in the process of democratic transition for post-communist societies, the thesis that you mentioned in your article in the Journal of Democracy. Do recent developments not show that nationalism is not the positive element in the transition that you described in your article?

NODIA: I don''t think I have changed my view. I have never claimed that the main thing is whether nationalism is positive or negative. The key is that it is inevitable, and you have to deal with it as sort of an inevitable thing in democratic transitions. That''s what I claim.

QUESTION: I wonder if you could tell us something about the role of Georgia in Caspian oil politics and the activity surrounding the oil pipeline.

NODIA: When Shevardnadze came back to Georgia, his favorite subject was his vision for Georgia as a transit country and as the crossroads of East and West, North and South. Shevardnadze is often criticized for being a politician without a vision, possibly with some good reason, but this was the vision by which he is sometimes too driven, I think. His major hope for turning Georgia around was in communications and transport, especially oil pipelines, highways and railways. Of course, in 1992-93 Georgia would not have been taken very seriously, especially as a transit country, because it was a mess. But as soon as there was some movement towards greater stability there, this oil pipeline became the number one issue for Shevardnadze. Of course, he understood that this was very upsetting for Russia because many Russians saw this pipeline through the Transcaucasus as undermining their monopoly on the transportation of oil from the Caspian area as well as their domination of the Caucasus. So he tried to be very cautious; but putting through this oil pipeline was definitely the number one issue on his foreign policy agenda. Now the issue is much more complicated. The oil consortiums made a decision last fall that there should be two pipelines, one through the North Caucasus and the other through Georgia. The Georgian pipeline requires much more initial investment than the Russian pipeline; but in the long run the Georgian one might make more sense. Turkey also has high hopes, because once the pipeline goes through Georgia, eventually one branch of it could go to the Mediterranean Sea, to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey. Turkey would thereby gain greater control over Azeri oil. Of course, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey have lots of common interests in this pipeline, and this would especially be true if the Russian communists come to power and do not have a very friendly attitude towards Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze is thus, in a sense, pushed to look in other directions as well. Aliev came to Georgia in February, and then Shevardnadze went to Turkey. Shevardnadze''s trip to Turkey was not simply a visit -- the symbolics of the visit, the red carpet treatment he was given, made people feel that Shevardnadze is becoming more daring in conducting a more independent policy vis-Ã -vis Russia. This is based on greater stability in Georgia as well as on this oil pipeline project.

QUESTION: Could I ask you a little bit more about the broader geopolitical situation in the Caucasus and the Caspian, and what kind of role you see Georgia playing in the long run if the current trends of stability continue? I mean its relations with Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia, as well as further afield.

NODIA: As I have mentioned, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the West in general are essentially allies when it comes to the oil pipeline project, which is an important part of Georgia''s future role.

In addition to the pipeline project, Georgia may be a natural peacemaker, or mediator, within the Caucasus. The Armenians and Azeris are embroiled in a conflict and, clearly, these two countries will not become friends soon. Georgia is thus sort of a natural meeting place for the conflicting parties. Of course, Shevardnadze is aware of this fact and he tries to use it. In a geo-economic or geopolitical sense, Azerbaijan is a natural ally; but the Georgian government tries not to be one-sided and develops relations with Armenia as well. It seeks to play a mediating role and Shevardnadze is frequently given credit for the fact that Georgia has actually had quite good relations with all of its neighbors. It is indeed quite an achievement, and it makes sense for him to try to capitalize on that. Of course, Shevardnadze''s recent peace initiative in the Caucasus may be seen as a charm offensive, a purely symbolic gesture. I don''t know what specifically he can do right now; but at least it is sort of a claim, a statement that we are here, that we are working in that direction and that we are going to play an active role in the region. And that is the right thing for him to do, I think.

QUESTION: Including Chechnya?

NODIA: Chechnya, no -- it is more difficult. Chechnya is too alienated, and Shevardnadze was terribly cautious not to upset Russia in any way about it. He was criticized by his opposition over this, and I think for good reason, because he never dared even criticize Russia for its methods in dealing with civil population; he just politely said that this was OK, that Russia had the right to protect its territorial integrity, and things like that. So, of course, with that, and with the history of Gamsakhurdia''s being the guest of Dudaev, this makes Shevardnadze a very unlikely mediator for the Chechens.

QUESTION: It seems to me that Georgia has chosen democratization over economic growth. What do you think determined that choice? And in the future, should this democracy prove incapable of delivering economic growth, might democracy itself be undermined?

NODIA: As I understand it, you mean that a country might choose economic progress as sort of a key element over democratization; first, the country might have some economic reforms and economic progress under an autocratic regime, and then later it would proceed to democratization. This was a popular idea in Russia and in Georgia, and Pinochet was a very popular person, and frequently mentioned. At some point perhaps Gamsakhurdia tried to use this idea, and sometimes some of Shevardnadze''s supporters have said that we do not have time for an opposition now, and things like that.

But in reality it did not work out like that, and I think there are several reasons why. Of course, there is some pressure from the West to be democratic. If you are not democratic, you are not acceptable. But another thing, I think, is that the choice in favor of democracy was based primarily on identity orientation, as one would say. For Georgians, the idea of civilization and their identification with Christianity, being part of the Christian world, were very important. And the Christian world today is the Western world, and the West does not now have models available other than the model of democracy. So the only way to be Western is to be democratic. This was not true until just recently. In the 1960s, for instance, you could be Western, but follow the model of Franco. Some people, some Georgian politicians, might have liked Franco, but modern circumstances make following a model like this impossible. There is only one way to try to be Western, and that is democracy, democratization.

This document is a part of the Caucasus and the Caspian Seminar Transcripts collection.

Dr. Ghia Nodia is the Chairman of the Board of the Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development and one of the foremost scholars in Georgia. He is also the head of the Political Philosophy Department at the Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences in Georgia, and a professor in the Department of Sociology at Tbilisi State University. He is currently a visiting fellow at the International Forum for Democratic Studies which is part of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC. Dr. Nodia is a prolific writer and his current research focuses on democracy and nationalism, and the post-communist transition in Georgia and the other states of the former Soviet Union.