The Georgian Velvet Revolution
(Sort of)By Andreas Hernandez
countercurrents.org
30 November, 2003The Georgian people have, perhaps once and for all, shed the spectre of Eduard Shevardnadze, which has haunted that mountainous land for the past 30 years - beginning with Shevardnadze's tenure as the Georgian KGB boss in the 1970's. Shevardnadze is most remembered in the West for his critical role as the Soviet Foreign Minister in the opening of the Iron Curtain, and of the Soviet Union itself. In Georgia he is known as the leader who just wouldn't go away, morphing from Georgian Party Boss and ruthless employer of the Soviet security system, to a US backed Pinochet-like Free Market Autocrat taking power in a 1992 coup against a fledgling democratically elected administration. Georgia's strategic location between East and West, and more recently its location next to Caspian oil reserves, has made for a violent past of nearly constant invasions by among others: the Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Turks, and in the past two centuries, the Russians who then became the Soviets. Many argue that Georgia's survival as a distinct culture has come from rooting itself firmly in its unique traditions, especially as the second country in the world to adopt Christianity in 304 AD, an event critical to the formation of a national identity.
Without wishing to diminish the incredible accomplishment of evicting a tyrant with minimal bloodshed, this article argues that the new directions of a post-Shevardnadze Georgia have long ago been set by core Western powers and global financial institutions. It was during the critical time of transition in 1991/92 from Soviet central planning to Western capitalism that Georgia's possibilities were violently aborted by Shevardnadze's coup which overthrew a democratically elected president and subsequently brought Georgia into the fold of the World Bank (one of its favorite clients), the Council of Europe and the United States. The almost certain next president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, has been hand-picked and groomed by Richard Miles, the American Ambassador to Georgia, who has stated in past months that Shevardnadze was no longer the ideal person to hold the Georgian Presidency. Mr. Saakashvili, a US trained lawyer, is a staunch advocate of growing closer to Europe and the US - exactly the qualities which led to US support for Shevardnadze's 1992 coup against a highly nationalist administration.
The Fall of the Soviet Union was in no small part due to the many Georgian movements for national independence against Moscow. During the final months of the Soviet Empire, millions of Georgians took to the streets demanding national independence. Shevardnadze, then Soviet Foreign Minister, along with Mikhail Gorbachev, ordered tanks to crush this mobilization - a move which ultimately radicalized Georgia and led to its declaration of independence from the crumbling Soviet Union. Elections were held soon after and Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a prominent Soviet dissident and leader of the Georgian independence movement was voted into office with an 87% majority over 12 other candidates. Gamsakhurdia, a philosopher and writer, and son of Georgia's most celebrated author of the Twentieth Century, began a program of creating a Georgian Democracy. Georgia seemed poised for its own unique development into a new global democratic world. The new government moved to privatize slowly and equitably, as the only Georgian entitied with capital after independence were the former Communist Party leaders and Mafia powers (the new government wished to not simply hand the country's resources back to these two interwoven groups). The former Party officials and Mafia forces had been trounced electorally, and thus took to profoundly undemocratic means to retake economic and political power in Georgia. Both the overwhelmingly popular new government of former dissidents and the old communist and Mafia powers had little experience in oppositional politics, which resulted in countrywide violence.
Close aids of Shevardnadze, who at that time was in Russia, formed paramilitaries which were armed and sometimes backed by Russian troops, looting defunct Soviet military bases, and terrorizing the countryside. The nascent democracy pleaded for help from a newly elected Bill Clinton who never responded. Over a period of a few months, Georgia came to a standstill, and Gamsakhurdia (who had not acted aggressively towards these forces for fear of an excuse for Russian intervention), was bombed out of the Parliament building and fled to Chechnya, where he was soon after assassinated by forces linked to Shevardnadze. A Military Council of Shevardnadze allies began martial law and then "invited" Shevardnadze to come lead Georgia in this time of crisis.
An exhausted and impoverished population which had just thrown off an imperial yoke and suffered months of armed chaos, seemed to submit to the inevitability of the coming of the "Georgian Giant" to run their "tiny Caucasian stage". Gamsakhurdia, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was replaced by force by the very same man who had imprisoned him in the 1970's for anti-Soviet activities. The US embassy was pleased with the arrival of Shevardnadze who better represented their interests than the unpredictable and nationalist Gamsakhurdia and strongly supported Shevardnadze throughout the 1990's. In the end, the former Soviet powers became the new capitalist powers and quickly plunged Georgia into the unrestrained neoliberal order of the 1990's, making millions of dollars of personal profit by selling off the country's resources and pocketing International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans.
Soon before his assassination Gamsakhurdia was reported in a Russian newspaper saying:
'Democracy has become an empty word that is being arbitrarily used to mask political interests of one kind or another. When it is necessary for the governments of a number of Western countries to strengthen their influence and military presence, they first and foremost, try to buy the governments of the countries in which they are interested. In the event of resistance on their part, they overthrow the lawful government. This attitude toward other countries, this expansionist approach, is typical most of all of NATO member countries'
Georgian Civil Society was held down violently, and pro-Gamsakhurdia forces shot at in the streets. The US Department of State reported all manner of human rights violations from extrajudicial killing to torture. It was in this time that Shevardnadze began close ties with the IMF and World Bank, borrowing almost a billion dollars over the last decade, much of this money vanishing in a highly corrupted system, and leaving the small country of five million people in heavy debt, and with public utilities, factories and access to natural resources sold to foreign multinationals.
Shevardnadze in recent years has been isolated from the realities of Georgia, surrounding himself almost exclusively with old Party "Yes Men" and marginalizing younger generations, to the point where Georgia is crumbling and has become one of the ten most corrupt countries on the planet. No longer useful to Western political powers and other forces of foreign capital, the US began looking for alternatives, and groomed a successor for Shevardnadze. Taking advantage of deep nationalist sentiments, and long held anti-Shevardnadze feelings of the population, this newer generation, exiled from short stints in the seats of power, with the help of the US embassy, took advantage of a third Shevardnadze rigged election forming a mass mobilization. US funded pollsters conducting a "parallel count" were an important part of the propaganda machine to spread news quickly of problems with the election. Within weeks Shevardnadze was forced to resign after the military began backing the opposition. The US is, of course, familiar with engineering democratic change in key countries - a tactic used in Serbia and Belarus among others, and attempted throughout much of the Middle East.
Students have already taken to the streets denouncing the "New Dictator". Only the coming years will show the true meanings and possibilities of this Georgian power shift and velvet revolution. However, the deeper power shift occurred in 1992 when the people of Georgia, particularly those who had fought for democracy against the Soviet Union, learned that the parameters for a democracy are quite narrow inside global economic structures.
Andreas Hernandez
Department of Development Sociology
Cornell University
[email protected]