What is the connection between the five persons below?

So Saakashvili is the President of Georgia, right? And Basescu is the President of Romania. Moreover, Voronin is the President of Moldova. Good.

Now it gets more complicated. The breakaway region of South Ossetia (small area bordering Russia, with a population of less than100,000) has not one, but two governments. One is led by a chap called Kokoity, elected by the Ossetian population and supporting secession. The second one is led by Mr. Sanakoev, formerly involved with the separatist struggle of the Ossetians. Since those days he mysteriously switched sides and finds himself at the helm of a Tbilisi-sponsored government. He was elected with votes from Georgian-controlled villages in the region and backs Saakashvili’s policies of keeping an autonomous South Ossetia within Georgia.

Back to the point. Sanakoev is in Brussels these days, in a public relations campaign aimed at winning the Europeans over while establishing his European credentials. This is where it gets interesting, and where Voronin, and especially Basescu come into the equation.

Talking to the EU-Georgian Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, Sanakoev delivered a speech (in Ossetian!), which included the following sentence: “Georgia is coming back to Europe and with Georgia, my region – South Ossetia – should also go back to Europe.” More about this here: http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=15335

This kind of discourse reminds me of the kind of speeches Basescu was making regarding Moldova, using EU integration as an instrument for facilitating the rapprochement of the two countries (a better word would probably be “unification”). In a declaration made during the hot summer of 2006, Basescu made a puzzling statement, saying that “Romania has given the Republic of Moldova the chance to join together the European Union,” while at the same time “recognizing Moldovan authorities’ wish to be an independent state.” More on this here.

Basescu’s words can be translated as “Romania is coming back to Europe and with Romania, Moldova should also go back to Europe.” See the similarities?

I wonder if this kind of discourse will work with the Ossetians. My guess is that, for many of them, the EU still seems a distant prospect (if not necessarily a dream), while Russia is much less distant and more real.

In the case of Moldova, with over 1 million people already working in the EU, the Union is definitely a less distant prospect. Therefore, most Moldovans might be more susceptible to Basescu’s rhetoric than Ossetians from the Tskhinvali region.

Another issue where the parallel between Moldova and the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia works in an interesting (if controversial) way is “passportization.” Russia has been facilitating the issuing of passports for Ossetians and Abkhaz people, making them de iure citizens of Russia. This, of course, made the Tbilisi government very upset, and plugged into the usual accusations of a Russian grand conspiracy behind Georgia’s minority problems.

It’s been many years now that Moldovans have been queueing to get Romanian citizenship – and thus passports. Basescu recently claimed that Romania had 800,000 active applications for citizenship from Moldovans. Check out this article for more on this.

The benefits accrued by Moldovans with Romanian citizenship are similar to those of Abkhazians or Ossetians with Russian citizenship: both passports open up access to travel and work abroad, which would be much more difficult otherwise in the Moldovan case, and nearly impossible in the Abkhaz or Ossetian case (since neither state is officially recognized by the international community, travel documents issued by the de facto governments are virtually worthless).

I am aware that my above comments have probably caused rage among most of my Romanian friends (of course I know that Moldovans are really Romanians and thus have the right to a Romanian citizenship). Having said that, I think that drawing a parallel between Moldova and the two separatist regions nevertheless is an interesting framework for looking at these issues.

Coming up in my next posts:

• Tbilisi night life: Taking control of Traffic Bar
• Why the Romanian President may have his approval ratings increase by up to 10 points by the end of July.

Politics...

As one might expect, Georgian politics is complex, arcane and byzantine. In a nutshell, it is quite a mouthful. Since my understanding of it is still primitive, I will try to just offer a few rough observations based on my discussions.

Shevardnadze’s time was bad. There was no electricity, bad roads, and rampant corruption. It is a good thing that Shevardnadze left because his time had passed.

Soviet times were also bad. Even though Georgia was very rich during those years, nothing compares to sweet freedom and independence.

Rose revolution was not really a revolution. Saakashvili used to work for Shevardnadze. (Indeed he did, but he resigned a few years before the revolution. I was unable to find more about why the Rose Revolution was not a real revolution. Feel free to pick your own scenario/conspiracy theory, as I surely have.)

Saakashvili is quite controversial. There seems to be general agreement about the success of his education and police reforms. Also, people generally tend to like the better roads and more or less constant electricity supply. In general, most people tend to agree that corruption levels are lower now than before 2003.

Criticisms are varied and range from the quality of architectural lighting to concerns about foreign investment and privatization, sweeping through the whole range of political and economic issues.

My own personal assessment (unconfirmed as of yet) is that there seems to be a glaring gap between people’s expectations with Saakashvili when he first came to power, and what he was able to deliver during the several years since the Rose Revolution. To be sure, improvements are numerous and easily observable, yet the overall economic situation remains problematic and reflects in low salaries (according to one source, pensions can be as low as 15 Euro, while average salaries are around 100 Euro) coupled with high prices.

To make things more complicated, there is the perception that, despite criticism towards the President, the next elections will largely maintain the current status quo.

Finally, I must say that I left out many of juicy bits for the sake of discretion.

In the next posts I am planning to talk a little bit about Tbilisi night life. Also, depending on developments within the next few days, I may introduce you to a new and unexpected turn in my research which may just lead to some interesting findings.

Mtskheta

No, the above word is not a typo. Au contraire, it is the name of the ancient Georgian capital, and hence incredibly important. Just in case you were wondering, ‘kh’ in Georgian is pronounced with the expectorant voluptuousness of a middle-Eastern ‘h’. And, no, there are no silent letters.

One thing I probably need to work on is remembering names of places around here. My memory is somewhat hampered, however, by the extreme proliferation of consonants, that make any Southern Slavic language sound like Italian by comparison. So for now I will use my guide book as reference, and having avowed that, I will need to beg for your understanding if at any one time a particular name eludes me or is misspelled (again, this is definitely not the case for the title of this post).

So Mtskheta is the old capital of Georgia. Considering that Tbilisi itself was founded around the fifth century, this makes Mtskheta pretty darn old. In fact, it has been the centre of Georgian spirituality since Christianity became the official religion during the first half of the fourth century. While there is little left of the town itself, there remain four churches, as well as a stunning view of the confluence of Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers.

The first church I visited was the 11^th century Sveti-Tskhoveli Cathedral, which consists of an imposing Georgian-style building, dominated by its conic dome and surrounded by a walled-in interior courtyard. According to the legend, this is where Christ’s robe ended up after being taken here by two Jewish merchants in the 1^st century. Unfortunately, the robe location is enclosed by a square structure in the middle of the church, and as a result out of sight. The church lies on the site of the first ever Georgian church (dating from the 4^th century C.E.) and has been damaged, destroyed and rebuilt several times since the 11^th century. It is the burial site of many kings from East Georgia.

While Sveti-Tskhoveli lies close to the banks of the river, Jvari church is visible from far away thanks to its strategic location on top of one of the surrounding hills. The church itself (as the other sites around Mtskheta) is classified as UNESCO World Heritage, and rightly so. At the time of my visit, there was a religious ceremony in progress. Rites and chanting reminded me of Romanian Orthodox churches, and so did the garb of priests and monks. Yet religious songs had a melodic beauty that seemed to stray from the Gregorian-style chanting you hear in most Orthodox churches.

Probably the most stunning thing about the trip to Mtskheta was the view from Jvari. The hill overlooks the valleys of Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers, and offers a perfect viewpoint from observing the surrounding valleys, mountains and hills that dot the landscape. It is obviously pointless to offer any more description without providing photographic evidence. Suffice it to say that the beauty of the area dwarves most of the landscapes I have seen throughout my journeys.

Georgian Food

Back to the real stuff. I can’t believe that so many posts have gone by without any serious discussion of the clef de voute of Georgian culture – food.

To start with, one must avoid any confusion whatsoever between Eastern and Western Georgian food.

I will first talk about the latter, since my exposure to it has been minimal and all my information is based on Revi’s account of it. Supposedly, West Georgian cuisine relies heavily on vegetables, and the resulting dishes are mostly very spicy salads. (As a side note, the propensity of Georgians to give otherwise placid vegetable salads an incredibly devilish spicy twist was revealed to me early on, when my forays into said salad were shortly interrupted by flames engulfing my oral cavity, shortly followed by an activation of my tear glands and a literally burning desire to drink massive amounts of any liquid within sight. It turned out that the side effects were caused by massive amounts of paprika-style chili peppers sprinkled all over the tomatoes and cucumbers).

A second staple of West Georgian cuisine is cheese. According to Revi, gouda is a very traditional Georgian cheese, the delicious taste of which is only exceeded by its foul smell. (I tried to point out that the term gouda is normally associated with a yellow dairy product originating from the North European lowlands, yet my assertions were swiftly dismissed).

More interestingly, West Georgian cheese includes a variety that is mixed with a certain type of herb that in the West most people would associate with Amsterdam, Bob Marley or the 1960s hippie movement. Alas, it appears that the Saakashvili government is trying to curb the production of said cheese, with dramatic effects on the hallucinogenic dairy product industry in the region.

Back to East Georgia and its cuisine. This one I had the opportunity to experience first hand. First, khinkali. This was presented to me as meat dumpling, which immediately evoked memories of various Central European varieties of fried potato or flour dough with the ability to incorporate incredible amounts of calories in a tight, greasy package. Big mistake. The Georgian khinkali is indeed what one might call a dumpling, yet its thin and light boiled dough and fig-shaped silhouette look nothing like what I had seen or expected. The process of eating khinkali involves holding the fig’s end with one’s fingers, sprinkling the dumpling with pepper and then trying to slurp or drink the boiling juice that fills it, while eating the minced meat inside and concurrently avoiding the embarrassment of having juice drizzling from your chin or the even worse scenario of sustaining massive burns to the inside of your mouth. Once one has mastered the technique of eating khinkali, the experience resembles that of having ciorba de perisoare (or, for English-speakers, boiled meatballs swimming in soup-like juice) and tortelloni at the same time. Overall assessment: surprisingly light, yet tasty.

Khachapuri is basically bread filled with goat’s cheese and somehow fried. It is shaped like a pizza, and tastes somewhat like a flat gogoasa (Romanian donut). However, it must be added that khachapuri comes in different varieties. Because of time and stomach constraints, I was only able to have the classic version. I am told other types may include eggs. Assessment: heavy and filling. There is further need of sampling to establish quality of taste.

Aubergine (eggplant) with nuts. This dish is a Georgian twist on the aubergine salad one finds throughout the Balkans, supposedly originating from Turkey. The remarkable addition here are nuts, and the result is quite nice.

Kebabi are basically sausage-shaped meatballs (of varying lengths), with various spices on top – of which coriander (or cilantro) plays a major role – and wrapped into thin pita bread. The taste is somewhat close to the Romanian mici or the Bulgarian kebabcheta, although the particular spices make it unique. Georgians usually dip it into a tomato-based sauce.

Shashlik sounds incredibly Turkish to me, yet seems to be a constant feature in Georgia. Essentially it is made of chunks of grilled meat, sometimes accompanies by pieces of onion or sauce. My favorite so far.

Books and Vodka

I left off the story of my Georgian adventure at a point where statistics and graphs had taken center stage. At the end of the lecture on Tuesday, I was advised do dig into the pile of surveys on Georgian attitudes as a way of substantiating claims and adding flesh to the shaky bones of my research.

Instead, I did exactly the opposite. Diving right into the middle of the expat social scene, I proceeded to make friends, wander around city bars, restaurants and (overpriced) pool halls, and in the process imbibed with large quantities of Georgian beer, Georgian cognac and (Russian) vodka. Needless to say, my daily stint at the GFSIS office sharply shrunk to no more than 4-5 hours a day spent trying to churn through hundreds of pages of material while coming up with a list of people suitable to interview (and fighting the inevitable hangover).

In my defense, the last few days have been filled with non-stop interviews with expats and some locals, conducted in smoky bars with blaring techno music or in the quieter ambiance of outdoor cafes. People like Winston, Big John, William, Revi, George, Stephanie or Erekli were all happy to bombard me with priceless pieces of insight about Georgia, ranging from smoking habits to more serious depictions of the political scene.

So, what are the preliminary conclusions, you might ask? First, that books, scholarly articles and ICG reports are of limited use when trying to understand the complexity of real life and politics in Georgia. Even though I came here with a significant amount of facts, statistics and history bits about Georgia under my belt, I soon found myself as clueless about the real issues as if I had just been parachuted here from outer space.

Second, that my project is much tougher than I had initially thought. Providing an informed, realistic and comprehensive analysis of Georgian self-perception and its connection to frozen conflicts already seems like an arduous task. And while it is clear to me that by the end of my stay here I will have amassed enough data and knowledge to write a perfectly boring, allegedly insightful yet overly simplistic scholarly piece, I am not sure if the underlying question that drove me here will ever find a satisfying answer.

Tbilisi: Then and Now

Reading Thomas Goltz’s journalistic account of Georgia in the times of troubles, I came across a description of old Tbilisi. While the portrayal is evocative and keen, it is unclear whether Goltz is talking about Tbilisi in the days of nineteenth century Russian empire, or rather presenting it as he saw it in the heady days of civil war and ethnic conflict inferno. My guess is that the account below blends the two together.

“Nestled under the walls of the oft-rebuilt Narikala Castle on Mount Mtstaminda, and split and defined by the Mtkvari River, ‘old’ Tbilisi was a chaotic series of cobblestone streets filled with more churches, mosques and synagogues than one could count or reasonably attempt to visit in a week. Mulberry trees dropped their sticky fruit underfoot, and straggling vines grew out of the cement, creeping up the red brick walls of once grand but now mainly long-neglected mansions. Old wooden balconies leaned dangerously over the narrow lanes, and many doors still boasted ornamental gargoyle brass knockers. Once regal, most of the older homes had been turned into communal apartments, entered through mysterious courtyards defined by a high density of draped laundry and illegal electricity lines, strung from window to spiral staircase and then the street.”

Meet the Expats

After staying in last night and doing work, I felt so good about myself that somehow today I was able to devote a lot of my time to socializing and, hence, did very little productive. In an attempt to blend in with the locals, I arrived at work slightly later, although at 9:30 the office was still eerily quiet.

I had a late lunch with three of the interns: Alex, Melissa (a senior from University of Michigan) and Shannon (a second year MA student at Pepperdine), and in the process got to know them a bit. We ended up walking quite a lot to a pedestrian street in the old center of Tbilisi, and had Mexican food, out of all things. I was not expecting much of it, which was good because I was pleasantly surprised by the “stuffed tacos”, which basically consisted of juicy chunks of meat (probably pork) with sauce and a leaf of lettuce wrapped in a tortilla. Alex and I had beer and chatted about different kinds of ale. It turns out that the waitress spoke German, so again I ended up pretending I spoke a language I don’t really speak (Claudia saw first hand my skill at pretending I speak said language) and ended up being asked if I am from Germany. Prost! (which, for Romanian speakers, means “cheers” in Germany, as opposed to “stupid”).

Afternoon in the office was dull, and filled with complaints about the internet being down. Fortunately I had printed a thick stack of articles, but still my productivity levels were at an all time low.

I left early to catch a talk at one of the local think tanks (Caucasus Research and Resource Center, for those of you who know or care). In the process of traveling to the lecture location, I got the chance to practice some more “Georgian”, which by now increasingly includes pantomime, some two or three Georgian words as well as some supposedly Russian, featuring prominently resolute “DA’s”. In the end, I was able to somehow navigate the taxi through the various universities of Tbilisi (apparently there were no less than 250 of them in Georgia in 1989) and found the one named after Mr. Chavchavadze, which boasted a huge bas-relief of a fellow called Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jughashvili (better known in the west by the name of Stalin).

The talk itself was called something like “Looking at the Caucasus: the Role of Data,” and therefore promised to be excruciatingly boring. Vivid memories of Monday mornings of research training ran through my head, causing anxiety and distress. To my surprise, however, the lecture turned out to be a very interesting compilation of data presented as a sequence of graphs and looking at social, economic and political views in the South Caucasus. I do not intend to bore anyone with the details. However, it is probably worth mentioning a couple of facts that struck me as particularly relevant or interesting. First, Georgians obviously started off with sky high expectations from Saakashvili when he came to power. Continuing poverty and hardship created a significant gap between high expectations and everyday realities of slow economic recovery. As a result, Georgians have the most negative perception regarding their current economic situation. Fair enough. Now, what I find strange and, to a certain extent, hard to explain on top of my head, is that they also seem to be the most optimistic regarding their future (out of the three South Caucasus countries). How do you reconcile frustrated expectations in the present with continued optimism for the future? I guess it is true what they say, that hope is the last to die.

Second, it seems that Armenians have a very positive self-perception regarding their current wealth levels. By contrast, they are by far more pessimistic than Georgians about the future. The expectations gap is particularly interesting for me at this point, since high expectations can lead to instability and political turnover. In the context whereby Saakashvili seems to have the tendency to amass more and more power, instability may not bode such good things.

Back to the title of this post. After the lecture I met some of the expat crowd, many of which were students coming here for the summer to do research or internships, including several medical students. Other than that, a couple of World Bank folk, and a few other NGO workers. I was able to get introduced to the lecturer, who is also the CRRC director for Georgia, who enquired about my project and recommended some data sources. I am increasingly considering using surveys in my work, although I will of course have to rely on ready-made ones for that purpose (not least because I simply cannot remember all those damned sampling techniques!).

I think this easily qualifies as the dullest post so far. I am sorry about that. I guess my work might surface here and there throughout different posts. Just scroll.

As a proper follow-up to the lecture, I joined Anthony (who happened to be there as well) and walked home through Vake Park. After a while he suggested buying two beers for the road. Haven’t done that in a long time. It still works.

Getting home, I meet Nino (Anthony’s wife) and their 2 and a half month-old daughter Lizzie, who is absolutely adorable, has beautiful eyes and seems utterly unfazed by the attention shown by three adults, watching us with unabashed boredom. I guess we, grown-ups, tend to be rather boring people. That’s why I always wanted to stay a child. But then people told me I was immature.