Pro-European Protests Sweeping Across Georgia Stir Memories of a Darker Past 

The sound ricocheted through an otherwise pacific quiet hanging over Lia. A series of staccato snaps from firecrackers thrown out across the road by a troop of perhaps 20 teenagers, making certain and steady progress through the small village nestled at the foot of the Svanetian mountains, where the day was bright and cold and blue. 

For all its earnestness and sincerity, Monday afternoon’s demonstration felt far more than just 215 miles from those currently raging on the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, after the ruling party announced last Thursday it would be suspending the South Caucasian nation’s constitutionally-enshrined bid for EU membership.

Georgian Dream’s decision to nix this historically Western-facing country’s long-held aspirations for European integration followed just hours after the European parliament had voted, by vast majority, to reject Georgia’s October 26th parliamentary polls as rigged, calling for a new election to be held within a year and sanctions brought against those responsible for stealing the recent vote. 

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Garnering praise from Russian President Putin and prompting the suspension of an almost 15 year strategic partnership with the United States, the disputed government’s move represents the latest episode of an ongoing descent into violent authoritarianism critics say is designed to leverage Georgia, a former Soviet state that fought its own wars with Moscow and Russian-backed separatists in 2008 and the early 1990s, back into the Kremlin’s good graces following the launch of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In a country where more than 80% of people have expressed support for EU membership, hundreds of thousands have turned out for the gathering protests in Tbilisi over the past five nights. More than 250 have been arrested so far, with reports fast emerging of horrific violence visited on those detained by gangs of masked, black-clothed operatives under the command of Zviad ‘Khareba’ Kharazishvili. 

A feared senior Interior Ministry official, Khareba was sanctioned by the US this September for his role in overseeing what the State Department described as “brutal crackdowns on peaceful protestors and political opponents” during a spate of demonstrations earlier in April and May. 

Members of the mounting anti-government movement, bracing for what may prove a long and bitter fight, are beginning to adapt their tactics, with a particular focus on maintaining the mobility of simultaneous gatherings held at different locations so as to frustrate and confuse increasingly stretched and exhausted enforcement authorities.

Videos shared on social media show protesters blasting fireworks in rapid succession at lines of riot forces from custom-made launchers. Some have taken to using oil-filled balloons to impede their pursuers as they escape, while others have been seen carrying cut-off water jugs to neutralise tear gas canisters, for now as much a staple of Tbilisi nights as darkly thundering techno at the city’s clubs, Saperavi wine at its bars, or khinkali dumplings at its restaurants. 

Buoyed by a growing number of diplomatic resignations, including Georgia’s ambassadors to Italy and the US, and letters of dissent from inside different ministries, the crowds have also lately been swelled by the sheer number of people travelling in from outside the capital, some of them expats who’ve spent up to thousands of pounds on last-minute flights home from Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, even Los Angeles. 

But for many, perhaps the most extraordinary development is how the protests have within a matter of days spread like wildfire to almost every corner of the country, with other rallies now being held in the major urban centres of Kutaisi, Batumi, Rustavi, Zugdidi, Gori and Telavi, as well as more than 25 smaller cities, towns, villages and hamlets. 

“That so many protests are taking place in other cities, outside Tbilisi, shows the extraordinary situation in Georgia at the moment,” said Hans Gutbrod, a professor of public policy at Tbilisi’s Ilia State University. “Traditionally, protests have only taken place in the capital. Seeing citizens in so many places have come out shows how strong the groundswell of opinion is, and how many people feel that Georgian Dream is trying to steal their future.”

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Pro-EU fervor was high among the students gathered in Lia on Monday, but many also expressed anger at the ruling party’s decision, announced earlier in November, to remove several topics from the country’s university entrance exams. In particular, these included classic works of Georgian literature on various uprisings against the Russian Empire, as well as writings by several prominent anti-Soviet figures. 

A ‘Whitewashing’ of Resistance to Russia

For 16-year-old Mariam (who chose not to provide her real name), the changes have amounted to a “whitewashing” of Georgia’s history of resistance against Russian imperialism, and therefore an act of appeasement toward Moscow amid the war in Ukraine. “We feel like this defies the entire point of learning about history, and we don’t want to be taught things that are not true or real,” she told Byline Times. 

Residents of Daba Jvari, another small village not five miles north of Lia in Georgia’s west, had staged a similar protest earlier on Friday by blocking the main road through to Mestia, a popular winter tourist destination located further up in the nearby mountain range. Nino Kolbaia, a local NGO leader, explained that resentment had been simmering for some weeks over alleged cases of intimidation, bribery and vote buying ahead of the recent election, before finally spilling over as the news of mass demonstrations in Tbilisi came through last week. 

Like many in this corner of Georgia, Kolbaia is a refugee from Georgia’s wars with Russian-backed separatists in the neighbouring breakaway territory of Abkhazia, which has remained under Moscow’s de-facto control since the now-frozen conflict first broke out following the USSR’s collapse. 

“Oppression breeds rebellion,” she said. “I was a student when I was forced to flee. Most of the population here are IDPs, who endured the hardship of the late Soviet Union and the chaotic 1990s, and now the government is trying to drag us back to those dark and challenging times.”

Nor is Daba Jvari the only place in Western Georgia to have seen forced road closures in recent days, with the main highway access into Poti port, where some 80% of containers coming into the country are processed, now under blockade by demonstrators since Sunday evening. 

Giorgi Pirtskhalava, a 37-year-old father-of-two who similarly fled the war in Abkhazia, and who runs a local freight-forwarding business, said that despite years of neglect and a lack of investment from successive administrations in Tbilisi, this direct action marks the first protests Poti has witnessed since Georgia’s independence more than three decades ago. 

“Georgia has suffered enough under Russian influence – wars, corruption and repression,” he explained over a cup of coffee at a cafe in the coastal city. “I have children, I don’t want them to endure what I experienced, a society of lies, war, and servitude. No parent would want that, and that’s why so many have joined this unprecedented movement.”

The historic significance of the moment was also not lost on attendees of a Monday afternoon rally in nearby Tsalenjikha – a town of just over 3,000 people, and once home to feted anti-Stalinist poet, Terenti Granelli. “I have never seen anything like this in my whole life,” said Lonto Tolordava, a 80-year-old former teacher outside the local mayor’s office. “What the government is doing is an absolute shame to our nation, […] I should be at home, enjoying my retirement!”

Among Georgia’s various political commentators, a growing consensus has emerged over the past few days that Georgian Dream’s now 12-year tenure appears to have long relied on two broad but nevertheless fundamental principles: upholding a constitutionally-protected promise of moving toward EU integration, and an aversion toward state violence of the scale and extent associated with the final years of the previous ruling party. 

Led by then-President Mikhail Saakashvili, the former United National Movement government had sailed into office following the bloodless 2003 Rose Revolution, but was eventually defeated by Georgian Dream at the polls in 2012 amid reports of serious human abuses in the country’s prison system and mounting evidence of corruption among senior officials, as well as a series of vicious crackdowns on political opponents and critical media organisations.

Davit Nachkebia, a teacher from the western townlet of Chkhorotsku, suggested any social contract between Georgian Dream and the public has now been irrevocably broken by not only the government’s comprehensive sabotage of Georgia’s EU aspirations, but also a level of violence at the very least on par with, and possibly in excess of anything witnessed during the last days of Saakashvili’s reign. 

“Last time I protested was back [in 2012], when I was a student. Our general feeling all those years ago was that we were coming together with one voice to rid ourselves of a government that had turned down the wrong path,” Nachkebia explained. “Now I realise, we have since only replaced them with an even greater evil.”

But for Irma Jalagonia, a senior fellow teacher, recent events have dredged up painful memories stretching even further into the past, to the early years of the country’s struggle to break free from the Soviet Union. “In the 1990s, we saw everything ruined before our very eyes,” she said tearfully outside the local government headquarters in the dying light on Monday evening. “We are out today for the very same reason we were back then – to protect and fight for our national independence as Georgians.”

Khatia Pochkhidze contributed reporting for this story.