Letter From Tbilisi: Georgia Between Two Powers

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On Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilisi's main drag, the Museum of the Soviet Occupation stands right across from Georgia's national parliament. Constructed in 2006, the museum takes visitors through the history of Georgia's encounter with the Soviet Union, from the Red Army's invasion in 1921, through the mass murder of the Georgian political and cultural leadership over the following decades, all the way up to the end of the Cold War and Georgia's declaration of independence in 1991. Not long after the museum opened, then Russian President Vladimir Putin complained about it directly to his Georgian counterpart, the young and exuberantly pro-Western Mikheil Saakashvili, protesting what he considered to be its anti-Russian tone. After all, he pointed out, some of the most ruthless figures in the Soviet hierarchy -- including Joseph Stalin and Lavrenty Beria -- were themselves Georgian. Saakashvili responded sarcastically that Russia was free to open a museum to memorialize Georgian oppression of Russians, and that he would even donate the funds.

The occupation museum is not just about documenting the past; it also seeks to address the present. Take the quote embossed on a wall from Noe Zhordania, the journalist who led the Georgian government in exile from the initiation of the Soviet occupation until his death in 1953: "Soviet Russia offered us [a] military alliance, which we rejected. We have taken different paths, they are heading for the East and we, for the West." Hanging on the wall near the exhibit's exit is a map of Georgia with the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia marked in dark red, a result of their being occupied by Russia since the Russian-Georgian war of August 2008. (In addition to Russia, Nauru, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are the only countries that recognize the territories as independent.) Tour guides refer visitors to a 1955 report issued by the U.S. Congress' erstwhile Select Committee on Communist Aggression titled "Communist Takeover and Occupation of Georgia," copies of which are distributed at the museum's entrance. The message, as my guide said: "The Bolsheviks could not tolerate an independent Georgia on its border," and neither can the Kremlin today.

Georgia recently marked two important milestones in its development as a small, embattled democracy in a tough neighborhood. On May 26, thousands of Georgians poured into Tbilisi to celebrate their independence day. The country staged its first military parade since the 2008 war, and Saakashvili warned of the continuing threat from "outside forces."

A few days later, Georgians voted for the first time since the war in local elections that, while hinging on municipal-level issues and not foreign policy, nonetheless demonstrated widespread concern about Russia. Despite criticism that he foolishly led Georgia into war against its giant neighbor, Saakashvili's United National Movement won a resounding victory with over 65 percent of the vote. The lackluster performance of the country's opposition led to the dissolution of the Alliance for Georgia, the main opposition party.

Visiting Georgia last month on a trip sponsored by its government, I met with several members of the radical non-parliamentary opposition, who protest against Saakashvili in the street. They were vehement in denouncing their president, at times likening him to Putin. But even they were steadfast in insisting that Russia should end its occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and that Georgia should join NATO and the European Union. (One recent poll found that 83 percent of Georgians consider Russia to be the country's greatest security threat. Another revealed that 56 percent believe that the government's "first priority" should be to "restore territorial integrity"; "create more jobs" came in second with 33 percent.)

Attempting to move west has been Georgia's great project since 2003, when the popular Rose
Revolution ousted Eduard Shevardnadze, a corrupt former Soviet bureaucrat, from the presidency. Leading the effort today are Western-oriented leaders who are almost uniformly young.

The government ministries in Tbilisi feel more like the offices of McKinsey & Company than the bureaucracies of a developing, "functional but imperfect democracy," as one young Foreign Ministry official put it to me. European Union flags stand alongside Georgian ones in the marbled hallways. In his parliamentary office, David Bakradze -- the 38-year-old speaker whose waiting room walls are covered with photos of him beaming alongside Western leaders from Nancy Pelosi to David Cameron -- proudly recounted what former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar used to say when he advised Saakasvhili on economics: "What I dreamed I couldn't do in Estonia, I am doing here." Indeed, the young Turks running the country repeat libertarian mantras that bring to mind a CATO
Institute confab. "You cannot create jobs by job redistribution, only by job creation," one of Saakashvili's senior economic advisers says.