«THE POLES OF THE CAUCASUS»

In many ways, modern Georgian culture still carries the imprint left by native nobility and clergy at its nineteenth-century inception. The presence of an extraordinarily numerous native noble class in Georgia was in itself a peculiar outcome of medieval Caucasian geopolitics. The lands that later became Georgia were sufficiently fertile to support a relatively large peasant population that, in turn, provided a tax base for a panoply of warrior and ecclesiastical lords. At the same time, geography rendered these lands sufficiently remote to prevent their direct incorporation into the great Middle Eastern empires, whether Persian, Arab, Greco-Roman, or later Ottoman Turkish. The combination of a geographically fractured landscape and competing imperial pressures hampered the formation of a centralized Georgian state. Instead, elites organized in a typically feudal pattern of extensive personal vassalage and perennial rivalry. Medieval Georgian principalities survived by balancing between ever-shifting geopolitical configurations while importing prestigious elements of their neighbors’ imperial cultures such as Greek Orthodox Christianity or Persian court etiquette, cuisine, poetry, and code of chivalry. The result was a syncretistic yet uniquely Georgian tradition famed for its gallantry and a lavishly hospitable culture of conspicuous consumption. As anthropologist Timothy Earle explains, in a stateless political landscape the flimsy guarantee of a chieftain’s life was his reputation as fierce foe and generous host.
Russia was the first empire to invade the Caucasus from the north and to fully incorporate the region. The incorporation process proved much longer and costlier than Russian empire-builders had expected. Despite its reputation for bureaucracy, tsarist Russia rested on the local personal control of lords over peasant serfs and was held together by a thin grid of gubernatorial towns and garrisons. The Georgian nobility thus played a pivotal role both in resisting and supporting the Russian incorporation of the Caucasus. Soviet historical propaganda drew examples from the latter to support its claim of the «voluntary and objectively progressive» joining of nationalities. In contrast, Georgian textbooks today draw examples of national resistance mainly from the former. In reality, often the very same personalities (such as Prince Grigol Orbeliani) were youthful rebels who later in life turned into distinguished servants of the tsars.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Russian administration learned only painfully how to deal with native noblemen, who to the uniformed officials appeared haughty, irresponsible, slothful, and as «Asiatic» barbarians despite the antiquity of Georgian Christianity. Traditional attitudes, however, were quite rational in the Georgian setting of parochial feudalism, in which a lack of formal authority or written titles meant that noble status was determined by one’s behaving like a prince. This posed a special problem since an extraordinary proportion of Georgian subjects claimed nobility. The Russian census of 1891 recorded as nobles a whopping 17 per cent of Tiflis (Tbilisi) and six to seven percent in the Georgian countryside. By comparison, only 0.5 percent of British enjoyed knightly titles, in the French ancien régime the «first estate» was around 1.5 percent of the population, and in Russia’s heartland the proportion of noblemen was three percent. These numbers are suggestive in explaining Russia’s problems with Georgians. The high-status aspirations of such a numerous elite could not be absorbed by the imperial state, but suppressing them also proved an ongoing challenge. Outsized and downwardly-mobile nobilities often prove more revolutionary than the proletarians who are the usual suspects.
Georgian national ideology bears a striking similarity to that of Poland, another nation with a large noble class (in Poland, one in ten inhabitants claimed nobility). Both Polish and Georgian national ideologies held that their Christian nations had not developed to contemporary European levels because they had been bled pale in medieval times defending Europe from the onslaught of Turco-Mongol hordes. Christianity, however, remained the basis of Georgian and Polish claims that their nations properly belonged to Western civilization. Finally, the notorious unruliness of the Polish and Georgian kingdoms prior to their submission to Russia was perceived as the manifestation of an innate libertarian spirit and truly Western individualism that had to be freed from Russian despotism and find its rightful place in Europe, somewhere next to Italy and France. Just as the Poles liked to call themselves «the French on the Vistula,» modern Georgians have also come to liken themselves to the French of the Caucasus.

CONTRADICTIONS OF IMPERIAL RULE

During the legendary benevolent rule of Viceroy Mikhail Vorontzov from 1844-54, the Georgian aristocracy was admitted into the ranks of Russian nobility, and many made good careers during the numerous wars of the time. Massive investment helped rebuild Tiflis into a splendid Russo-Caucasian metropolis whose charm is still cherished today. Instead of competing in aristocratic hunts and village banquets, Georgian elites now competed to acquire Western-style residences in the capital, attend balls and Italian operas, and educate their children at the best European standards. Leaving behind the material and symbolic elements of their tradition, which now smacked of the Orient, Georgian elites used their new positions in the Russian empire to acquire Western manners.
This move, however, incurred a direct material cost. During Vorontzov’s tenure, the mortgage debts of Georgian nobility multiplied twelvefold. Successive generations of Georgian elites now had to seek livelihoods in occupations favoring cultural capital. This led to an impressive overproduction of world-class intelligentsia heavily bent on artistic achievement and much less on science and technology.
The Bolshevik terror decimated the aristocracy and old intelligentsia in Georgia as grievously as anywhere else. Nevertheless, their cultural model continued to shape the attitudes and behavior of twentieth-century Georgians to an amazing degree. Georgia was relatively unaffected by heavy industry through the Soviet period, as its climate and geography rendered less promising the creation of giant factories or collective farms. This allowed Georgia to preserve the essentials of its village life and an urban society sustained by networks of «good families.» Moreover, since the 1950s, Georgia greatly benefited from the increasing consumption of Russian industrial urban populations, who actively sought out Georgia’s winter fruits and summer resorts. The cash flows generated by Soviet consumerism fed the channels of Georgia’s underground markets, creating all sorts of material opportunities across the social hierarchy. This is the political economy behind the notorious corruption of state institutions in Soviet Georgia, which ran apace with the proudly outgoing empowerment of ethnically Georgian society.

THE POLITICS OF THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENTSIA

The positional configuration that first shaped the modern Georgian worldview in the late nineteenth century could thus re-emerge towards the end of Soviet period. The national intelligentsia, characterized by high cosmopolitan culture and manners, successfully extended their self-ennobling vision to the whole ethnic community. Unlike in the majority of post-communist countries, in Georgia bureaucrats, industrial managers, the military, and the police could not match the exceptional symbolic power of the intelligentsia. The continued domination of national intelligentsia in post-communist politics, however, has rendered the latter extraordinarily factionalist and rhetorical.
Identity and cultural symbolism play an unusually large role in this kind of politics because they lack the usual mechanisms of bureaucratic, economic, or military power. This is why the regime of President Mikheil Saakashvili, who declared his ambition to make a historical difference, finds a closer precedent in the Jacobin revolutionary dictatorship rather than any conventional democracy. Such a regime must compensate for its institutional weaknesses by mobilizing the emotional energy of the masses and by offering dizzyingly rapid promotions to its young commissars. Such a system functions through active confrontation, which seeks foes and deals with challenges by turning them into national emergencies. Jacobinism, however, faces three sets of dangers: it provokes the rebellion of old vested interests, sparks foreign interventions, and, in Danton’s memorable words, «devours its own children» in factional clashes.

DANGER AHEAD?

The Russians, of course, possess their own stereotypes regarding Georgians. Until recently, the prevalent stereotypes of Georgians were either positive (especially among Russian intelligentsia who still fondly remember Soviet Georgian cinema) or at a more popular and ironic level as Mediterranean machos and crafty market vendors. The shift to a more negative attitude started in the late 1980s with the emergence of a new pan-ethnic stereotype labeled by the police «persons of Caucasian nationality.» Today, Russian attitudes have grown alarmingly hostile. Interstate politics that reach Russian audiences through state television have played a major role in conditioning this turn. Paradoxically, in Soviet times the majority of Russians could hardly distinguish among the Caucasian republics. Today, many Russians have acquired a sense of distinction based on fairly crude religious and political criteria: Muslim and alien Azeris, friendly and neutral Christian Armenians, violent and clannish Daghestanis, actively hostile and dangerous Chechens. The definitions used for Georgians suggest a relatively early stage of conflict when the intentions of the other side are perceived as odd, incomprehensible, and troubling. The image of Mikheil Saakashvili, however, is clear and much more negative. Even Russians who otherwise hold quite liberal views have not hesitated to call Saakashvili a fascist. This might be a discursive tactic: shifting the blame to the leader excuses ordinary Georgians whom these Russians would still like to see positively. It is nonetheless very troubling because a large proportion of Russians seem emotionally prepared for an even worse confrontation with Georgia.
At the level of policy makers, the danger is that in Moscow and Tbilisi, state power belongs to leaders with very different social origins, life trajectories, and outlooks. Cognitive dissonance would not be so troubling if the two sides were each bound by strong institutions. They are, however, distinctly personalistic enterprises. It makes things worse that Vladimir Putin and Saakashvili are young and ambitious upstarts who replaced their aged political patrons and gained considerable domestic popularity on promises of restoring national pride and putting their countries in order. The most troubling element is that the two regimes attribute ideologically and emotionally opposed vectors to their quite similar projects. Georgia’s restoration is revolutionary and Westernizing while Russia’s restoration is counter-revolutionary and nativist. In geometry, parallels never intersect, but in politics they clash all the time.