Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The History of Georgia and the Anarchist Republic of Guria: Part 2

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

THIS IS A PREIVEW. FOR THE WHOLE EPISODE GO HERE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/141288475?pr=true

Hello, you are listening to Lions, lead by donkeys, and it's Omar Tso Soria again. Georgian leftist speaking about leftist stuff here, our leftist history, let's say. Today, I want to thank the hosts of this beautiful show, Joe and Annie. And I was telling the story of Curia, Republic of Free People of Curia, let's say. We were in the middle of really interesting story. Yeah, it just started picking up, you know. A priest got shot, a priest who was a trained traitor, you know. Georgians yet again trusted a priest, they shouldn't have done that.

Another thing that Georgians and Irish people have in common, they learn not to trust the local priests. No, no. They just don't learn anymore. I mean, speaking of, you know, just merge again the history and the current times of both of our countries here. Like the earlier, Omar, you mentioned in the other episode that Armenians are less religious in those terms than Georgians in terms of when.

comes believing in church as an institution, things are a little bit changing in Armenia, which is kind of a reflection of our political reality at the moment when, you know, we don't like the current government, we don't like the older regimes. Now the current government is going after the church, like, I mean. Also don't like the opposition. Yeah, that's what I meant by former regimes, because that's what the opposition is. And currently going out to the church And there's this whole talk and conversation, just discourse in general, that, oh, but like the church is about tradition, the Armenian church has spent less time being a state than Georgia has. And a lot of those times, like priests were kind of the leaders, the political leaders, the organizers, the management, if you will. Cultural touched point as well after the reformation of the first republic after the genocide.

Yeah. So when we got, I think this was around 2023, the movement. that was led by a priest, that was shocking to me. Yeah, because I wouldn't believe that a priest could gather even 10 people. They're not part of a church, but they did get a people who aren't. And now currently having one prime minister who is not, I mean, his popularity has declined massively, you know, over the years. And having our prime minister launching this campaign against the church is bringing more

people on the church's side. So that's just an interesting... Is it church bringing people in the church or it's like railing people against the government? Because it can be two different things. I think what we're seeing is an example of what we often say on the show is the greater unifying theory of fuck that guy. And that is especially because like that priest's movement died out quite quickly and the people siding up with like being on the side of the priest. It's not like they're starting to go to service or anything. There's like, oh, finally, someone that isn't completely insane, asterisk, I do think the priest is unwell.

Also in prison for attempting to violently overthrow the government, allegedly. But they saw a rallying point who happened to be a priest. Yes, that is true. I think there is a little bit of, yeah, it's not joining the church's movement against the government, which church also has. an anti-government campaign, whether they like to, whether they like to admit it or not, but like it's not necessarily them, oh, all of a sudden, we are complete believers in church, we are religious again, no, it's more like, you know, this is the, um, for the sake of balancing the scale, you know, the church could be potentially a little bit more popular than the other

opposition that we have in hand. Like the church is kind of seen, for many people in this scenario, as kind of that ultimate opposition, the one institution that is standing against the government, which is kind of, yeah, it is a bit different. It's not that kind of belief you have in Georgia when, you know, if patriots is something is, right? It's not a big different and it's really different. Our church, every time the government changed in Georgia,

and it happened more than once in the past 30 years, the church was always pro-government. Always, there was no exception. I mean, new government came and the church was pro-dead government. Yeah, I remember that. I'm a little bit hopeful for today's generation, mainly in the big cities they see through this shit to our church and they are always trying to play on the both sides. In the end, I don't think you can really compare a church and Armenian churches. No, no.

Because like Armenian church, at least it has some independency, but our church, like, main, I mean, if today is Satan, not Grigul Rathals is Satan, but the Satan would come as a guy. as a ruler of Georgia, the church would be pro-saintiff. I can guarantee you that. I think a pretty good comparison could be made to like why Armenians' reality around that that priests is very similar to why

the Gorean Revolutionary shot the priest. And that is because not because of he's a priest, but because what he represents in the Gurria's story is like, well, he's an agent of the bourgeoisie. He's an agent of the landlords. Like he's got to fucking go. he's working with the he's working with the empire meanwhile in armenia is just like well this guy isn't

connected to the opposition even though he was yeah and you know he isn't a fan of the prime minister yeah okay that guy could be a used car salesman people would still be behind it you know yeah i absolutely agree with you yeah man that is that is very true and part of the independence of the church in armenia comes from its power in diaspora and all the church institutions that Armenia has outside of Armenia, which is exactly what the government of Armenia is now really, really trying to take away from them. I don't think they will necessarily succeed, but there is already some friction. So, you know, maybe one day we'll see as things go and maybe we'll do an episode about that because that's quite interesting. We look forward to the next elections next year where the prime minister wins again.

Absolutely. I have no doubt. And I'm not saying it's going to be not free and fair. No, I think it'll be a completely free and fair election. And you think he will win by a landslide, it will be an easy win for him. I mean, I don't think it'll be a landslide. I don't think it'll be a landslide. I think civil contract will still be able to form a majority

in parliament just because, like, again, the voting that is available, the options available are dog shit. Yeah. And everyone knows that the opposition would be worse. And all, again, like the priest had a lot of baggage as well because like in our modern day, I think we did an episode on this. He couldn't even be prime minister.

because he was a dual citizen that he lied about he's a Canadian citizen that he was just lying the entire time Oh my God I love Armenia underlying to Armenians but you cannot trust the priest

Anyway Back to our traitor priest Yeah I mean Traitor Priest has been like Longshot and dead But the things in Guria Were already in motion And by 1904

Gouria's revolution Had gained international attention Like famous revolutionary Victor Taratuta have visited the region and he was astonished by what he saw. He wrote, Everything is controlled by a revolutionary committee. The police either do not exist or hold no power over the people. Guriya became so popular that even Leotostoy wrote a letter to Gourians. In the letter, Werthal Stoy referred to himself as an old man who is probably unknown to Gourians,

and one point he says, if possible, tell them, Gourians, how great my joy was when I learned that what I have been thinking and writing about for years. What's so-called wise don't understand. has been realized by thousands of people on their own, with their own minds and consciousness. Yeah. I hear myself, I like that. I love Tolstoy. And, yeah, this guy was amazing. It's quite powerful, actually, what he said, because the first thing that he said,

I'm probably unknown to these people. And that also was part of the reality back in the day, right? Like, who gets to be, I know that Gurians have been quite literate for the time. Yeah, we'll speak about this. They were quite literate because, like, There were many, many libraries in Guilla. One of the main reasons for uprising was closure of the libraries. They hated them.

Hated this event because libraries were not just books there. There were journals as well. So they were quite literal because when they read this letter was read out loud many times to many groups of Gurians. And the story goes that Gurians love the letter, but at least on one occasion, when it was read aloud, some of them objected saying, we know who Tolstowe is. We read his... Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

They're like, no, we know who is. We know those stories, yeah. We read his fables to our children. That's what was said, yeah. Yeah, but it wouldn't be uncommon for the time for many, many people in the region to not even be able to read or have access to books in general. Yeah. And it wouldn't be.

It's not that surprising that Tolstoy writing about a rural population is probably like, these people must be illiterate. Yeah. Yeah. Tolstoy is still who he is. The imperialism is still there, you know, somewhere. So I do understand. I mean, I understand the objection there, of course.

Yeah, yeah. But no, we know this guy. It would be, like, offensive. Like, imagine if someone, imagine if I wrote a book and, like, wanted to distribute it in George. And I was like, I don't know if you guys could read. Yeah. But if you do, like, it's a bit fucked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But anyway, the Tolstoy was really loved here. He was quite, I mean, this was the era of Tolstoy when he was, like, really anti-imperalist. And his books were even prohibited in the end, if I'm not mistaken. These books were evil prohibited in death by the time of Russian history. But he was really like, I don't know how he knew about everything was happening in Russia and in like parts of Russian Empire, but he was really, really active.