Rev Left Radio - Soviet Georgia: Socialism, Stalin, and the Collapse of the USSR

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Sopiko Japaridze and Bryan Gigantino from the podcast Reimagining Soviet Georgia join Breht to discuss the history of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Together they discuss Georgian-born communist Joseph Stalin, what socialist construction in Georgia was like, daily life for working class people in Soviet Georgia, the collapse of the USSR and the hard times of the 1990's, the politics of Georgia today, the Russia-Ukraine war, and more!    Check out the Reimagining Soviet Georgia podcast here: https://anchor.fm/sovietgeorgia Support them on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/reimaginingsovietgeorgia Follow them on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/reimaginingg     Outro music: "Gaprindi Shavo Mertskhalo" by Hamlet Gonashvili (word has it that this was Stalin's favorite song) Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio  

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. I have a wonderful episode for you today. This is honestly one of my favorite episodes I've had in a while. I found it so interesting. I found it so educational. I have on Sopo and Brian, who are based in Tbilisi, Georgia, and they're the co-host of the podcast, Reimagining Soviet Georgia. It's a really fascinating podcast.

I only very recently came across. I reached out to Sopo on Twitter, asked if they would want to come on to talk about, you know, the Georgia, Soviet Georgia, this republic that I think even people who are very familiar with the USSR might not know much about. And, you know, she agreed. And her co-host Brian came on. And we just had this really wonderful conversation.

We cover, you know, lots of Soviet history. We cover the importance and the crucial role of Georgia in the USSR more broadly. we talk about Stalin who of course was from Georgia and has deep Georgian roots and how that played out we talk about modern Georgia you know what's what's happened to Georgia since the collapse of the Soviet Union what is going on in relation to the Russian Ukraine War which is happening just north of Georgia's northern border etc

so so much fascinating stuff from two really really wonderful principled Marxist guests who know a lot about what they're talking about and Sopo also has deep family ties. So, you know, why Brian can have, you know, this high-minded materialist analysis of the situation, Sopo comes in with these fascinating anecdotal, you know, tellings of her family, her grandparents, and sort of traces the emergence and pinnacle and then collapse of Soviet Georgia in the context of multiple generations in her family. So I just really love this conversation.

really love reimagining Soviet Georgia, the podcast. Highly recommend people go check that out. And the last thing I would say as well, because I just do think that a lot of people probably in the West might not have a great idea of where Georgia is or the role it's played in history. I think it would be helpful if you're not immediately aware of where it is, is to go look at a map and to see where Georgia is, where the caucuses are in relation to the rest of the world, see why this is obviously a crucial area of the world at crossroads, if you will. And it will really help as far as understanding sort of schematically and conceptually the geographical and geopolitical role that Georgia plays in the world political system

and in the Soviet Union specifically. So if you're just kind of a little blurry, if in your head you don't have an immediate image of exactly where Georgia is on a map, it's kind of cool to go check that out. and then listen to this conversation, I do think it kind of helps. So without further ado, here's my wonderful conversation with Sopo and Brian from reimagining Soviet Georgia on Soviet Georgia, Stalin, socialism, and the collapse of the USSR. Enjoy. I'm Sopo or Sopiko Jappariz.

I am currently living in Georgia. I am Georgian, but I also. lived in the U.S. for a very long time. I am the head of the service sector union in Georgia, and I also am part of the co-creator of Reimagining Soviet Georgia podcast. And I'm also sometimes write about social and economic issues in Georgia. My name is Brian Gigantino, and I also live in Tbilisi, Georgia. I'm originally from the San Francisco. Bay Area and I am a aspiring historian and like to write about the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet world with a focus on the caucus and in particular Georgia. And I also am a co-creator of the

reimagining Soviet Georgia podcast with Sopo. Well, beautiful. It's an honor and a pleasure to have both of you here. As I was saying before I started the recording here, I really was getting into the podcast in general, and then especially in prep for this specific episode, and I really love it. So let's actually maybe start there before we get into the history and the details of Georgia itself. Let's just talk about the podcast. Can you tell us about reimagining Soviet Georgia, why you both decided to create the project and kind of what you were aiming to do with it? Soap and I decided to create this project of reimagining Soviet Georgia because, first and foremost, there's like a huge distance between how the history of Georgia in the Soviet era is remembered in the country today and the sort of way that it's abused and anti-communist politics are used in this post-Soviet transition. And what we both found was very interesting was that everyday people in Georgia, working people, taxi drivers, nurses who lived in the Soviet period had very fond memories of it.

And yet at the same time, the sort of like mainstream nation building narrative in the post-Soviet period has been one of demonization of the Soviet Union. And so we thought that it was very important, especially when considering what a future of left-wing politics in Georgia and in the region might look like, you know, we thought it was very important to try to bring some of these conversations about the Soviet past in a more public-facing and open forum so that people could have a more honest conversation about what the Soviet past was actually like. We also found that a lot of historians and people who write about the region had a lot different understanding of what Soviet Georgia and the Soviet experience was like in Georgia than the mainstream memory politics and the mainstream politics of the country, sort of how the Soviet past is used. So, Po, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I think personally, when I came back, to Georgia in 2014, I had a much worse understanding of Soviet Union. I thought it was an experiment that, you know, should not be replicated or really thought about that much. I mean, I grew up in more left-com sort of Trotsky circles where, you know, we talked about the Russian

revolution, and then it would like, in the 1920s, it would sort of end the conversation. for some even earlier. And so when I came here, I had full intention to completely disregard it and never talk about it, except that it was constantly put force by people who, like the right-wing parties, well, we only have right-wing parties

who constantly using anti-Soviet Union, anti-Soviet politics, anti-Sovic consciousness to completely destroy social welfare, you know? to force neoliberalism down people's throat, to champion the free market, to continuously harass people who were not going along with this, calling them Soviet people, you know?

Soviet mentality, just making fun of older people that they are stuck somewhere, you know, they're terrible. Everything that was bad is Soviet, you know, or communist. And so I realized that this was a huge elephant in the room that if it's not, addressed, talked about, really reckoned with, it continues to pervade every part of Georgian politics

and life. And so at the same time that the right wing, you know, which is saying all the parties in Georgia are weaponizing Soviet Union, the anti-Soviet Union, or whatever their perception is, people miss it, miss it so much. And not just miss it because it's some kind of nostalgia, which I feel like some people try to frame it. But they really miss the material gains of the Soviet Union. You know, they had a better life. And it's funny because everybody thinks it's like caricature, but they're really, in every possible way, if you look at indicators,

and if you talk about their everyday experiences, they just had a much more secure life, much more freedom in the sense of fulfilling a better, like more of a life that's really, realized as opposed to now because everything is based on money so they can't actually realize themselves their ability to even let go for entertainment is limited by their income and also what's available right um environments degraded people miss trees that are no longer there you know the disorganized chaotic developments everywhere it's very very anti-soviet

which was much more thoughtful and planned designs. You know, women miss maternity leave. Like they miss being able to have children and then have their job saved for them and get maternity leave. So there's so many ways that and so many reasons that people miss the Soviet Union. That's real and based on their better life and not because they have something, you know, like they just miss the old, good old times.

There really has been a huge decline in living standards for them. Yeah, and, you know, that's just something that we cover from many different angles. On this show, we've talked to people who have experiences in the former Yugoslavia. We've talked to, and I know you've had Kristen Gatsi on your podcast as well. We've had her on several times on Rev left to talk about the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union, a brutal 90s period, which we'll get into a little bit in this outline. And the nostalgia that older people who lived in that period have is not merely, as you were saying, you know, sort of this empty nostalgia, but is actually substantive, material nostalgia for the way

life used to be and what was available to them that under the reign of capital no longer is. So I think it's incredibly important. But of course, Georgia is a country that I think, even those that have a pretty good understanding of the history of the Soviet Union know little about and so I'm really excited to kind of explore that in this in this um conversation and I do want to say and I'll probably be plugging it multiple times but you know your podcast reimagining Soviet Georgia is really good and that opening um episode that you did is called episode zero where you're just kind of introducing the podcast both of you have a really interesting and a really great intro podcast episode to a to a new podcast and you guys go into more detail about why you wanted

to do this project, what the ideological leanings are of the people in Georgia today and the Georgian youth. And I found that conversation incredibly fascinating. So let's go ahead and move into the history of Georgia itself. And I just wanted to say up front that, you know, these are really big questions. As always, I have a propensity to do that. So just take these questions in whatever direction you want and answer them to the best of your ability. But for anybody that is listening to this conversation and gets interested in it, definitely go over to reimagining Soviet Georgia, and you can do a deeper dive into a lot of these, you know, questions that we're going to be asking on this episode. So with that said, let's go ahead

and get into the history. For those that don't know, can you kind of talk about the history of Georgia, how it became a country, and its eventual integration into the Soviet Union? This is, when I was speaking to Brian about this, this is a very touchy subject because it is often framed as Red Army invasion, you know, forced Sovietization. And yeah, we can say it's definitely an invasion and it was

forced. But I think it's like a larger question of what were the debates happening around that time? And so like I think what is incorrect is saying this was some kind of a Russian invasion because often people say Russian

because that's the, you know, that's the new way of discussing. Everything is like now Russia. But actually it was, it was, you know, Stalin and like Georgians that were debating actually on the pro and the against side, you know. And so Russia, so Russians actually Lenin was the one against it, you know, Trotskyists was against it. So it was really the Georgians that their line, one of the Georgian lines, that one of the Georgian lines that won out why there was a Sovietization of

Georgia. So you know, in 1917, Russian Revolution, Georgia de facto gets independence and it's run by social Democrats. Mensheviks, who in many ways had taken the best of, not

all of the best, but they've taken the best of Bolsheviks, ideas and so on. So the Mensheviks in Georgia look very different and the Mensheviks and the rest of the Russian Empire. They take over, and this has been a long struggle between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in Georgia,

where it's really interesting because it's happening now in Georgia reminds me in the methodology. It's sort of the Bolsheviks lost the internal struggle within Georgia. But they leave, you know, Stalin leaves Georgia, and so many others do and they're militants everywhere doing the party work Bolshevik work

and the Mensheviks who they win out especially among Georgians a lot of the Bolsheviks then are relegated to non-Georgians in Georgia and so Stalin has to leave Georgia

because he's locked out of all the sort of revolutionary committees and revolutionary work because of the Mensheviks So I look at the invasion as also part of the larger struggle of Georgian Mensheviks versus Georgian Bolsheviks. And we have to remember that Georgia Menchiviks and Bolsheviks were also very prominent in a lot of areas, even like Petrograd was first chairman was Georgian Menshevik, you know. So Georgians have been an incredibly important part of creating the Soviet Union or creating social. socialism in the Russian Empire.

And so in 1921, Georgia gets integrated through military, through invasion into the Soviet Union. And really the falling out between Stalin and Lenin happens then when London's on his deathbed. And he's like very angry with Stalin because he doesn't know what's happening. It's called a Georgian affair. And he's incredibly angry with Stalin. and asked Trotsky to take up the cause of Georgia the next meeting, but then he dies. And Trotsky never does it. So this is sort of the falling out of Lenin and Stalin is over the annexation of Georgia.

Yeah, Bray, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I just want to reiterate that one of the important things, I think, for people to understand is that when the Russian revolution took place in 1917, it was a empire-wide revolutionary struggle of the people and led by the people on the periphery. And so Georgians, of course, were, as SOPA already mentioned, very, very, very involved in the social democratic committees that were empire-wide. And so these very, very long-standing debates about what a socialist society would look like and where, nations and nationhood would fit in became central to how the social Democrats, especially from those in areas like Poland, the Baltic states, and through Transcaucasia, Transcaucasia, meaning what is now Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, where they would even fit into this

sort of like, you know, socialist form of social organization. And, you know, how can they actually have an anti-imperial and an anti-imperial approach to building a social society. And on top of that, I also wanted to reiterate that when the Russian Civil War started, you had three republics in the caucuses that de facto declared independence. But what most historians, you know, argue is that these three independent republics, This is Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, who were each led by nationalists of different kinds, Georgia being led by Mensheviks, social Democrats, were doing it out of necessity less, and in the moment of sort of like, you know, is unclear who is going to, you know, be in control of what. At the same time, the Bolsheviks, of course, are trying to hold on to control of Petrograd and the rest of, well, what is then Russia. and cadre, of course, in other areas of the empire are also fighting.

So when Sovietization happened, when the 11th Red Army led by Orjanikidzei and Stalin, Jujushvili, entered and overthrew the Mensheviks, this was, as I've already mentioned, a continuation of a longstanding tension, but also we have to remember that, you know, Georgians had been playing such a central role in the Russian Social Democratic committees as well in the empire-wide movements, even taking, you know, having a role in Europe. And so it was sort of an extension of those tensions. And the first act was that after Soviet, the three republics were Sovietized, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, the Bolsheviks went into, created what was called the trans-Caucasian socialist, federative Soviet Republic, which actually was a form of regional

integration and of the three formerly, you know, shortly independent territories. So when you had someone, you know, as we all know, Joseph Stalin, who was the commissar of nationalities, you know, who was tasked by Lenin to write about the national question, he knew very well that these nationalisms in the South Caucus were not only quite powerful, but very dangerous and explosive. And so this idea, this was actually the idea of Orjanikidze to create a regional form of federalism in the South Caucus as a means to not only economically integrate the three states, but also try to overcome some of the ethnic tensions that had been plaguing the region during the civil war. So one of the most, I would say, clear examples of this and a reason why we have to

understand that Bolshevik nationality policy in the region was not some preordained, you know, plan to, you know, hold on to all parts of the Russian Empire, but instead was a response to on the ground tensions and a response to the demands of local cadres during the civil war, during the time of Georgian independence. There was a fight between Ossetians and Georgians. Ossetians are a ethnic group in the North and South Caucus. Today, there's North Ossetia and South Ossetia. North Ossetia is a region of the Russian Federation. South Ossetia, there's a region that was called South Ossetia, which is a territory that during the Soviet period was an autonomous oblast inside of the Soviet Georgia, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.

And what's important to understand is that during the independent Georgia, there had been a war basically constant fighting between the Georgian Menshevec, the Democratic Republic of Georgia, known as the First Republic, and Ossetians. And the Ossetians were rebelling basically against Georgian landlords in the region. They had appealed to the Bolsheviks and had become, you know, integrated into sort of Bolshevik formations. And when the, you know, Sovietization of Georgia happened and they were trying to organize where the borders were, the idea that South Ossetia, predominantly Ossetian, but mixed, ethnically mixed region should be an autonomous region within Georgia was seen as a settlement to the ethnic tensions that have been playing out violence. during the Civil War. So I think this is actually really important.

There's a much more I can say, but I think this is an important thing to understand that the Sovietization of the region was not only this extension of the domestic fights that were happening between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks internally in Georgia, but there was also this desire to say, how do we organize a region with such a complex,

you know, it's kind of a cliche to say, but tapestry of ethnic groups and different languages and religions. And how can we create a political logic where everybody is not only interconnected economically, but has a shared sort of political future? And I think that this piece of the puzzle is like, has to be front and center when we're understanding the region, right? Instead of some idea that, you know, each independent nationhood without some sort of interconnected logic was going to be able to overcome these tensions. Absolutely fascinating. And,

and, you know, kudos to both of you because that was a absolutely huge question and you handled it expertly. Really fascinating stuff. But something both of you mentioned, of course, or someone, is Stalin. And I think when Western communists especially think about Georgia, the first thing that probably jumps to mind is precisely Joseph Stalin. So can you talk about Stalin's Georgian roots a little bit, what his life was like in Georgia before the revolution, and his sort of relationship to Georgia throughout his political career. Yes. So Stalin is so Georgian, like just physically when I see him like in his videos, right? Pictures. He's just, he looks like a very typical peasant man, you know? And he spoke Russian with a heavy accent. They sort of make fun of our accent like Russians do,

like we're sort of southerners and then you know we we talk kind of like american southerners you know like drawl and stuff and so like even his his russian was very um the head accent it's funny because camo his like armenian uh one of the armenian bolsheviks is named camo because he could not speak russian very well like he made mistakes instead of like i think it was like camu he said camo or something so it's funny because these these are people on the sort of margins of the Russian Empire who don't speak Russian the same fluency or perfect Russian as, you know, St. Petersburg or Bedrograd.

But they are very much, and which Stalin is really interesting, I really highly recommend Sunni's book, Passage to Revolution, or at least listen to the podcast, about young Stalin, how he's formed. I do feel like that does the best job of his younger life to see how he, his, understanding because he's very much a Caucasian revolutionary, right? I'm talking about the caucuses in case. Make some mistake. So he comes, he's sort of forged in this incredible, you know, revolutionary time in the caucuses. And so he's very much stamped with that, from that time, which is very violent time.

Like this was not some, you know, everyone tries to pretend things are like, oh, it's a democracy or not democracy and so on. But no, this is like very violent time. There are honor killings, isn't like retribution killings, revenge killings all the time. You know, there's Cossacks, constantly following,

blowing up Bolsheviks, mensheviks, like revolutionaries, murdering people. know, very like on the streets and so on. So it's like a very violent time. And he survives this very violent time. And especially because he, it's funny because at the beginning, you know, the Bolshevik, the Bolshevik, the Menshevik split is not really happening in Georgia. It was sort of forced upon them. He doesn't want to really split. And he's trying to keep this social Democrats together and he's doing a lot of work like he starts off with the rough child refinery in batumi he organizes workers there you know huge confrontation lots of workers die

um he is uh from worker agitator to then he he's um you know robbing banks because he'll do sort of whatever they can get into because you have to think about access right so before Before 1905, the committees, the revolutionary committees that they're connected to workers and doing revolutionaries or worker agitation and what we call maybe now salting, like when you go and you work somewhere with the intention of organizing them. A lot of those places start because of the committees get, the Bolsheviks get voted out. through a very aggressive campaign by the Mensheviks. And not only just the campaign in the beginning to get them out, but then, I mean, the Mensheviks are the first to actually use violence against the Bolsheviks. I think a lot of people think of the Bolsheviks as sort of the violent ones.

But it is the Mensheviks, actually, who draw the first blood. And so Stalin being forced in these very, like, He's like a militant, right? He's not like Lenin or others who are abroad reading and writing, like a lot of Bolshevik revolutions were. He's not a Menshevik, and he's a militant who is able to read, theorize, and then do practical work at the same time. So he's different in that sense.

He's not like a regular rank-and-file worker either. but he's not the intellectual part he's somewhere in between sort of the one who's processing one and the other right some intermediary sort of so in some ways like that's uh he doesn't really leave georgia until he has it looks like to me at least that's my sort of understanding maybe brian can speak more than from from reading that he after the manships take over everything then he does expropriations, right, the banks. And then he is forced to leave. And he really leaves Georgia,

because Georgia is still a small-time sort of place that you are, even though it's an incredibly important, as I said, the caucus revolutionary period, and it's just also happening in Baku as well, Azerbaijan, which was actually even more violent than Tbilisi. He leaves. And then he becomes through Len, I mean, I think Lenin recognize his talents and actually being a sort of practicant, right?

Somebody who's working with the workers or working on the ground. He's able to execute jobs, let's say. And he's very dedicated, resourceful. So he's kind of becomes, especially I can see, like, you know, the way the left works in general. I can see Lenin, who's a little bit more theoretically heavy in a sense and he's like sort of gone, really taking a liking to Stalin. right because he's like the man on the ground right and so this is this is and then stalin i think brian addressed this but stalin really doesn't think that george is viable by itself you know being independent so he's the one really pushing for to end the bilateral agreements with all these

republics and incorporate them into a larger social democratic uh project because in smaller countries he also knows that will you know will succumb to capital and be used by the imperial, so-called imperial powers, you know, the West, Western powers, as places to try to undermine what becomes the Soviet Union. So Stalin, especially when he, like, later on as well, it's like he creates those entire Soviet Union, I feel like, especially, you know, once he takes power after the 1920 sort of over, most most of it is his vision you know it's his understanding of how it should be he's the architect of collectivization he's he actually executes it but not the architect he didn't actually design it of course but still like he implements this and most of the soviet unions like Stalin's creation so Stalin and especially because there were all these Georgians also in power during Stalin the Soviet Union is is a very, if you want to talk about like identities,

like it's a Georgian, Georgian person's vision. Yeah, fascinating. Brian, would you like to add anything to that? Yeah, I just want to add a couple of things. Soapov said most of it. I just want to add one or two things. First and foremost, again, to reference this great book by Ron Sunni, which we did an interview with him on, you know,

So the book is really about Georgian bullshivism and this tension that happens between the Georgian Mensheviks and the Georgian Bolsheviks and how that split comes to be. But one of the important things and to place Stalin within all of this is that in 1905 in Georgia, there's something called the Gurian peasant uprising. And Guria is a territory, a region, I should say, in western Georgia, which, unlike other parts of the country, is not big, huge, massive mountains, more smaller rolling hills, but it's home to this massive uprising in 1905. But what's interesting is that when the peasants revolt there, the social Democrats have a presence. You know, they're the sort of militants who are able to get in there and, you know, intervene and be sort of seen as, you know, the closest allies to the demands of the peasants and sort of facilitate the declaration of in 1905 during, you know, the 1905 revolution throughout the Russian Empire, this independent republic. But what's important to understand about that moment is that that was a turning point when the Menshevik was. wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in Georgia is able to sort of assert themselves as the dominant iteration or the dominant wing that had already been emerging, but really that's

the moment when the peasants are saying things like, you know, they're holding signs in the streets with Marx's face and they're also, you know, praising the, you know, sort of one of the godfathers of Georgian social democracy, Noéjordania, who will lead the First Republic. And so because of this, the Menshevex, and especially Noi Jordania, is able to gain a lot of legitimacy, in part because they're also from this region of Guria. They're from sort of elite aristocratic background there. Stalin is, Zhugevili, is actually from a much poorer background. He doesn't have this sort of elite background that the leaders of the kind of Menshevik wing of the Social Democratic Labor Party had in Georgia at the time. And so over the next couple of years, they are able to exclude this

Bolshevik wing. And in 1907, as Sopo mentioned, there's a massive bank robbery, the Tifilus bank robbery, where that Stalin had helped organize. And then after that, he leaves and he goes to Baku. because in the caucus, Georgia, Armenian-Azerbaijan, there's sort of this tension, and I think Stalin is an interesting person to look at to explore this tension between a cosmopolitan vision of socialism and maybe something that we could say is like more of a provincial or peasant-oriented type of socialism, right? The Mensheviks are trying to speak to a form of, you know, peasant-centric Georgia national identity, whereas Stalin at the time, when he's still a militant, revolutionary, is more

interested in this empire-wide, cosmopolitan, you know, proletariat-centric vision of what socialism could be, who the revolutionary subject is. And so after this kind of vision loses out in Georgia to the Menshevex, and at that point, Lenin, I think of the advice of Lenin, he said, you know, Stalin goes to Baku and is joined by some other Georgian Bolsheviks. He's not alone to continue agitation because Baku is the cosmopolitan industrial center of the Caucasus, right? If you think about the Caucasus as sort of a unified area, this is a city of the Russian Empire that's a oil-producing region where there's, you know, Georgians, there's Russians, there's Iranians, there's all Armenians, right? There's a Turkish-speaking.

Azerbaijani's, all these different kinds of people who are able to form, you know, a more legible and coherent social basis for these Bolshevik ideas that Stalin is attracted to and represents and fights for. So I think you can understand, you know, Stalin as this kind of man of the periphery, but one who has a cosmopolitan proletarian view of what socialism could be. And there's a great quote that when later in life, a Georgian actor, when Stalin was in power, sometime in the 30s or 40s, asks him, you know, why did you leave Georgia? Why did you leave, you know, our homeland in 1907? And he said, you know, those with full bellies don't understand those who are hungry.

And this is a kind of a famous quote of his, but really what it was about was the fact that so many Georgian workers at the time of the 1905 revolution up before 1917 still had very deep connections to their villages. So they didn't have sort of a traditional proletarian position that we sort of imagine of the landless peasant who comes to the city, you know, looking for wage labor. No, no, no. In the Georgian context, so many workers, not all of them, of course, but so many workers still had this village connection that the way they viewed what socialism could be, how it should be, and what spoke to them was something that didn't always align with a sort of more globally reaching socialist project. And this was, I think, something that Stalin, because he didn't have that connection, right? He was not a man with a village he could go back to inland, right? He was, he was more had this, I would say, rough proletarian upbringing, right, of a father who was an alcoholic and a failed, you know, a failed shoemaker and a mother who wanted him to, you know, go into the, become a priest. And so, you know, he's actually somebody's got a much ruffled background. And he's thinking, and as Sopo already said, you know, he becomes a militant and he's not sort of, it doesn't have this, what I would say is like a sort of. gentry peasant socialism that his political opponents who would become the Menshevex

romanticized. Yeah, well, that's so compelling and so interesting. And as both of you mentioned, that episode three you have on reimagining Soviet Georgia with Ronald Grigor Sunni, who was the author of Stalin, Passage to Revolution, is a really, really great episode for anybody that wants to dive a little deeper. But even here, we're not quite ready to leave Stalin because this history, specifically around Stalin as a figure and the way it's weaponized by both liberals and fascists alike leads to kind of this question, which is we know how Stalin's remembered in the Western world. How is he

remembered in Georgia today? And how do you as communists based in Georgia think about Stalin and his impact? This is, you know, not only a very important question that you're asking, but also I would say the question that is, I would say, you know, the most focused upon, on. Let me just start with saying that, you know, it has become almost a journalistic cliche to sort of define Georgia based on the fact that Stalin was from Georgia. And as there's been this project of demonizing the Soviet past, Stalin has become, you know, this figure to say this is the, he, Stalin represents the quote unquote totalitarian roots. of the Georgian Soviet past and, you know, the backwardness of the pro-Soviet part of the

population and is sort of used to try and split, you know, the Georgian population between those who are advanced and pro-Western and, you know, embrace democracy and those who are a, you know, nostalgic for the Soviet period and embrace the totalitarianism of Joseph Stalin. So I think the first thing that we have to understand is that this specter of Stalin is used by those both inside and outside of the country to say that, you know, that Stalin is the reason that Georgia can't join the West or Stalin is the reason that there's backwardness or Stalin is there, this love of Stalin represents why George is poor, you know, why people can't modernize or, you know, any number of these kinds of, you know, horrifyingly, uh, classic. and otherwise ridiculous ways to try to split the population. That's the first thing I want to say about Stalin. And then the second thing I want to say is that, you know,

Stalin, I would say that you have to properly understand how Stalin is understood in Georgia. We have to start with an event in 1956. And as you and your listeners probably know that after Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev took over, there was the secret speech at the 20th Party Congress when Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech about the cult of personality and criticized Stalin and Stalinism as a form of governance.

And there was, this was kept under Iraq. as you know. It wasn't actually made public initially. And the news started leaking to Georgia because there were some Georgian people who were at the speech. And then the word started getting out in Georgia. And what you have to understand is that during Stalin's time and power, he was revered as like, you know, not only was he from Gorey, a city, a small city outside of Tbilisi. But he was like, one of the most powerful people in human history, right? The defeat of the, of fascism in Germany was led by a Georgian, you know,

that Stalin had basically overseen the industrialization of the Soviet Union. So there was a certain sense of like local, not only local pride, but a way in which like Stalin and Stalin's associates were seen as, you know, this representation. of kind of like the the importance of Georgia within the Soviet project you know what I mean that Georgia's as a territory as a Soviet Georgia has this you know outsized importance in the Soviet project so there was a lot of reverence for him and so when he died and when this speech was given by Krushchev there was a sense that you know there was a threat to the gains right, that the sovietization up to that point had made in sort of the consolidation of a Soviet

Georgia. And so people came out in mass numbers to protest around this statue of Stalin and started giving speeches. And, you know, there's been a lot of really interesting history that has been written about these events. But protests lasted for days. People came from all over the country. Speaches were given about, you know, how destalinization is an attack on Georgia, about, you know, on the Georgian Soviet project. It wasn't an anti-Soviet protests. These were protests saying defending what the Soviet Union had built and seeing that destalinization was going to threaten that locally in Georgia, more or less. But what's interesting is that there was also a sort of proto-nationalism that was bold.

born in these protests. So the figures who would go on during the collapse of the Soviet Union, people like Merob Castava and Zviad Gamsokurdia, who would end up leading what is called the national movement when the Soviet Union was starting to collapse in Georgia. This would be the first protest they would participate in, right? And the reason is, is again, I'm trying to reiterate, is not so much of these were nationalist anti-Soviet protests. was that it was because through Stalin and through this like Soviet Georgian project, a new national consciousness was born in Georgia that was that was only possible because of Sovietization. And so there's a way in which they view this attack on Stalin as an attack on Georgia as well. And the speeches that people are giving are very interesting because of course, Khrushchev in the secret speech refers to he makes some comment about how, you know,

that Stalin was a Georgian, and people took, you know, that took offense to this. And so those pro-Stalin demonstrations that lasted for three or four days, people were killed. And then the local, a new, the new leader of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic Mjvonadzeh comes in and tries to placate people and sort of, you know, tries to get people to calm down and eventually people do. But what you have to understand is that after this moment, despite de-Stalinization happening around the Soviet Union, in Georgia, Stalin is still revered. You know, he's seen as, you know, this, you know, as Sopo mentioned in an earlier comment, right? The Soviet Union is so as a whole influenced by Georgians and the role of Georgia that, you know, Stalin is revered as such a powerful figure locally that he represents George's

place within this Soviet, what somebody else is called domestic internationalist project of multinational Soviet construction, socialist construction, and, you know, there's a lot of pride locally for that. So even through the destalinization, through the 60s, 70s, 80s, you know, Stalin is still seen as somebody who is, you know, very important. Yeah, and really quick before we move on to Sopo, I just wanted to clarify something. You said, Brian, in Khrushchev's secret speech, Stalin was actually labeled Georgian in this overtly dismissive way as a way to sort of put Stalin down by calling him Georgian,

which also added to the sort of protest against it. Is that, was that correct? That is how it was interpreted, yes. Yeah, yeah, interesting. It said that exactly as a Georgian, but that was interpreted. it though. I see, I see. So my uncle was actually, and my grandfather, my family members were present in 1956 in these sort of pro-Stalin rally, and my uncle was part of this revolutionary group. He was like 14 with Kamsa Hordia and Kostala. So he was very much, my family was very

much involved in these politics. So what's interesting is my uncle and who was part of this defending Georgia. And then that movement, he did not. I mean, he was sort of indirectly still involved in national movement in the late 80s and 90s. But they became anti-Salinist, right? anti-Soviet. So what started off as a pro-Stalin became the biggest sort of critics of Soviet Union, the same people then changed. And what was interesting in some of the documentaries I've seen, because my uncle has passed away, and he's in this one documentary with others. And one of them says, we didn't know Stalin was such a murderer. We found out later through one of the Western radios.

So this idea of most of the dissidents, so-called dissidents, right, were completely reliant on Western press to understand what was happening or have them interpret events that they were living in, which is important to know. It was actually shocking how much a lot of this came from the West, like them sort of, you know, interpreting it and rehashing back to them as propaganda way to sort of either support their dissidents or undermine the Soviet Union. So this, one of the things as well during the 1956, like, protests was people were shocked

by the use of violence against them. Like that was shocking because there's a, I mean, this is what my family members say. It's hard to know exact truth, but my aunt says that my grandfather saying, no, no, they would never shoot us. They would never harm us because he is in the XRKGB. He's, you know, very much believes in communism. He's like a huge communist and Stalinist and so on. And he was like, no, they would never shoot at protesters. And so when they shot protesters, that was really shocking for the people.

so what happens afterwards is the same people that were defending Stalin then become anti-soviet dissidents their most cool thing you could be was a dissident and listened to radio free Europe and so on and so Stalinism the way it's seen now is by the same dissidents continue their plight, you know, hating communism, hating the Soviet Union. I think that has been their schick for a really long time. And I think that that's where they feel the most alive. So there's always going to be this part of the Georgian elites and most of them who were very much anti-Soviet. They're in some positions of power or media and so on, the older ones.

There's a newer generation of anti-Soviet. That's more about the recent, I mean recent 2000s criminalization of communism that started in Eastern Europe, and Sakashuri was a part of that when they criminalized communism. in 2010 they've actually outlawed communism and so there's always going to be at least until these people are alive anti-Stalin line that has the skills as well that's the most sought after because a lot of the dissidents were learning english or connected to english media or so on and so they are doing better I would say, than others, because they have the skill sets and the politics in the post-Soviet world to have a platform. And so a lot of people, I would say from all stripes, like communists, conservatives, I think liberals are the only ones that hate Stalin, really. they like Stalin for different reasons. So the conservatives have brought him back because, you know, they love strong men, right?

Why would you not love your own strong men? But then they love all Georgian like kings and queen and, you know, us fighting against the Muslims and fighting against them, the masons, fighting against whatever, right? And then there's the old, old communists believe in communism and it can actually explain communism to you. They might also have regressive cultural ideas as well because there is still this line of some will, some, I mean, not everyone, of course, will say like, you know, homosexuality is like a bourgeois deviation, right? sure yeah and so they think like gay rights and so on it's like something that's some kind of a imposed liberalism like people like bourgeois decadence or something yeah yes exactly yeah yeah they so like some of the comments will explain their homophobia in this way which actually was quite common in a lot of the left in the u.s too like um with you know like Harry Haywood for

example here i had on Harry Haywood he's a big communist here in the US um obviously last century. And I had his daughter on. He's passed, obviously, and she's actually a lesbian. And so she talked about growing up, having this famous Marxist, you know, black liberationist father who also framed homosexuality in terms of, you know, degeneracy or whatever, and the sort of difficulties that that presented in their relationship. But yeah, it was certainly not just Eastern Europeans who were, you know, susceptible to that sort of talk. And this is, of course, a different time. And people across the world are much less accepted. at that time of LGBTQ identities at all, much less their movements. So it's not necessarily surprising that that would be the case. But sorry to interrupt. Yeah. And if you also take into account, and this is really key here, is that the Communist Party, which is actually illegal, but even the way it exists and the other splits from it,

here and everywhere around post-Soviet world has been ossified for 30 years at least. So imagine how there has been no open debates, new ideas, sort of reformulations, because it's been so marginalized. And that's, you take that into account that often it becomes like a weird sect or, you know, a sect that's unable because of their, because of how marginalized they are, unable to actually have fresh ideas, debate, openness. you know, infusion of new people, like, that doesn't really happen. And so that's why I think a lot of times their ideas can sound stagnant, old-fashioned. And you can tell that if you just, like, intervened more, had more conversations, and if they were exposed to more things, they would change their mind, right? So I look at as the sort of more party-like Stalinists who are willing,

who are actually about ideas, if they had more engagement, I think they would have, they would develop more in that line. Then there are people who are just sort of culturally Stalinist, right? Like they like the idea of Stalin in the sense that he's a great man. You know, they had, like, great childhood. They remember their lives well. They had better living conditions. They remember their youth really wonderfully.

They took an oath, a military oath to defend the Soviet Union, you know. And so they remember all these things fondly, and they were, and now they're very exploited and very poor, like maybe. insanely poor, like really did not do well in the post-Soviet world. So their idea of Stalin grows. You know, one of our office cleaners, she said, I hope this year is so great that I won't miss Stalin anymore. Wow. I thought that was really brilliant, you know?

Like a lot of first Stalin. He is a symbol of hope. He is, you know, I say this like all the time with, he is a utopia. He serves a utopian function for people to imagine a better life and not some kind of a horrible historical figure. He's not even like the conservative position of just a great man, but he literally is for most people. who are not in the party or just like regular. He is the utopian symbol of a good life. Yeah, that is incredibly interesting to hear that perspective.

And so just to kind of summarize what you just said, Sopo, there's like the conservative sort of approach to Stalin, which sees him as a strong man and through the lens of nationalism, not necessarily communism, but just like all great Georgian figures. He's somebody that like the nationalist conservative right could rally around as a strong man. man figure. There's a communist love for Stalin, which is of course rooted in the historical

experience of communism as well as sometimes an overly orthodox Marxist view of things in general. And then you said there's like this cultural or the cultural lists maybe who have a certain nostalgia often from their youth of better times. And so they're not necessarily committed to the communism or socialism part, but they are they are committed to like their memories of that time being much better than the often hellish conditions that are forced to live under under the reign of capitalism and do liberals fit in there anywhere are they kind of under that cultural thing or do are liberals a separate group and as far as their view of Stalin um i think the liberals in georgia are very anti-soviet so anti-stalin um but they will always have a grandpa or grandma

who loves Stalin and they love their grandma and grandpa except the fact that he's the Stalinist like kind of thing yeah okay that's interesting yeah very interesting All right, well, let's go ahead and move away from Stalin, although, of course, we could talk about Stalin all day. I just, a fascinating figure, fascinating history revolves around him and obviously a very important figure in, you know, Georgian history and the Georgian mind, wherever in the individual Georgian falls with regards to their views on him. But can we kind of want to zoom out and kind of talk about socialism in Georgia itself? So can you both talk about the socialist construction in Georgia during, you know, the high points of the Soviet Union and kind of just talk about. but like it's greatest achievements, you know, what, what, uh, it was able to accomplish for, for working people in Georgia, etc. Yeah, this is, um, the, the question of socialist construction

in Georgia, um, you know, also has to be understood in a couple of different ways. And the first thing I want to say is that, you know, one of the thing, the, the, the, the important things to understand about sovietization of Georgia is that Georgia as a nation with coherent borders, an economic base,

and a Georgianized government really takes place for the first time. It starts, some of these things start in the short-lived independence, but it actually really takes place and is seen all the way through after sovietization.

The first thing I want to say is that in the free war era, before World War II, you can think about Sovietization in two ways in Georgia, the Soviet construction, I should say, socialist construction in Georgia in two ways. The first part is that this is a period of Georgianization. Prior to the to 1921, prior to 1917, the Georgia is actually has this, you know, complex demographic power imbalance where Russian imperial administrators are sort of in control of the politics. The capital in what is now Georgia is largely controlled by Armenians and Georgians sort of are more or less a rural, rural dwellers, right? They don't really reside

in the cities. They don't control capital. And they're not really in positions of political power. Some of them are in cities and more, you could say, these sort of like holdovers of the aristocratic era. They have a kind of like aristocratic presence. But they're not really with the real power lies. And so the Soviet, Sovietization of Georgia pushed the process of undoing that power imbalance by urbanizing more Georgians,

dismantling the Russian imperial control and Georgianizing the political administration, right? And then, of course, alongside that sort of in general going after capital and large business owners and as much as not only the Armenian business capitalists in the cities, but also sort of some of the larger Georgian landowners, or as I mentioned earlier in some of the ethnic minority regions, Georgian what we call Kulaks like landowners,

also being sort of undermined. So Georgianization is like a really important, is really important thing to understand that in this anti-imperial Bolshevik national building of nations, Georgianization takes place. And alongside with that is not just people in place of administration, but also cultural production, right? You start to get, there's this process called coronizatia, which means indigenization. So the idea was up through the 30s that Georgians should be in the positions of political power in the union. public. But alongside that, there should also be more educational opportunities. And most importantly,

language and culture were being supported by the new Bolshevik state. So that meant that in an area where the Georgian language had been under constant attack by the Russian imperial authorities, in new young Soviet Georgia, you start to get the formalization, institutionalization of the Georgian language, which was, of course, a sort of radically, you know, a radical proposition at the time. Also, you get industrialization in Georgia, of course. I think that it's the most, the peak of this, of course, starts in the post-war era, I mean, up to World War II, but then in the post-war era, you know, this is the best time in Soviet history economically, right, the 50s, 60s, 70s, into the early 80s.

Tbilisi, Kutaisi, and Batumi, you know, the major cities in Georgia expand. There's building of factories. You get in Tbilisi especially sort of an emergent middle class. Urbanization starts to Georgia, actually make Tbilisi, which is historically this cosmopolitan city, more Georgian because rural dwellers start getting more opportunities in the cities. And of course, you also start to start to see. see Georgians with lots of opportunities throughout the entire Soviet Union. This is an interesting piece of the story, which is that, you know, Georgians were in some ways the privileged republic,

so there was a disproportionate number of Georgians in federal positions in Moscow in all union positions. So Georgia started to see not only industrial developments, you know, the highest number of white-collar workers in the entire USSR, the highest savings accounts, and also this access to luxury goods with relative ease and cheaper than elsewhere in the USSR. So Georgia ended up developing into this very wealthy republic that not only had, you know, car factories and other, you know, tea plantations and was growing, you know, mandarin's and had this, you know, bustling sort of like Sovietized industrial economy.

But then also, but one of the benefits of that was that, you know, there was a relative to elsewhere in the USSR, very high standard of living. Of course, into the 70s, you also started getting this versioning black market, which we could talk about more because it's a sort of complicated topic. But that aside, you still had this relative level of prosperity in Georgia. So urbanization and on one of our recent podcasts, maybe the last thing I'll say, you know, we discussed architecture. And Georgia, you know, had a very sort of like excellent school of architecture where, you know, there were really beautiful and interesting buildings that were being built. And one of the interesting things was that architects had to deal with this sort of, you know,

particularities of the Georgian climate. You know, architecture was a place where, you know, there was some relative creative freedom where, you know, you could sort of, you know, display a kind of like your artistic vision through architecture. And so Georgia was sort of a beneficiary of that architectural creativity. Also, you know, part of the late Soviet stories, there was very famous athletes, very famous, as we've also discussed a little bit on the podcast before, and Sopo is written about chess players, you know, famous women's chess players coming from Georgia. So this, consolidation and creation of Georgia as a coherent nation, I think, comes into being in the Soviet period.

And I think that, like, it's a mixture of national anti-imperial Bolshevik policy as well as economic construction and industrialization at the time. Yeah, so a really rapid and, you know, wild advancement period for the people of Georgia, literally the, you know, instantiation of Georgia as a nation as well as Soviet industrialization, which, you know, transformed the lives of people quite incredibly, yeah. And just one thing I'm sorry, excuse me, I'm up to add, was that, you know, there was also this sort of, you know, that you have to understand, one thing I think is very important for people to understand. stand that I think is not always well understood in the West, is that, you know, the Georgian Soviet administration, you know, had a relative freedom to manage their affairs. I mean, obviously there was limits to what any Union Republic administration could do or, right? Or, you know, there were, of course, limits. But, you know, this was not like every single decision that was being made locally in Georgia was, you know, just being directed from Moscow, right? There was relative

freedom in the sense that, you know, whether, whether, whether that's in how the industry was functioning, whether that's in, you know, certain economic reforms that were taken place in Georgia before anywhere else, you know, the first Soviet polling agency happened in Soviet Georgia, you know, where they were going to export some of their goods to, you know, there's all kinds of factors we can look at, but there was a sort of relative, um, understanding, you know, relative amount of freedom and underwritten by this Soviet post-war prosperity that Georgia disproportionately benefited from. Important point, yeah.

A sopa, would you like to add anything to that? Yeah, actually, but I want to go to what life was like before the Soviet Union. I think that's really important. Often, you know, we judge history or we look back from 2020 to 23. And it's important to realize what was happening in the Russian Empire and what was happening in Georgia and around the world because the Georgian, Russian-wide empire, social democrats are very much part of the European social democratic tradition. They all sort of came about the same time when it was the revving up of capitalism and industrialization. So in Georgia, like I have my grandfather's, he has like a few letters that he's written. And so I can speak from him writing what life was like and him describing his father.

So my great-grandfather's life. And it's funny because my great-grandfather's life and my life are much similar than my grandfather's or my mother's life. We've come back to the same precarious conditions that we had in the 1890s and the 1900s until really 1917, right? So he was a skill, like a tradesman. He was forced out of his village because the nobles held all the land or most of the land. And a small percentage was kept to the peasants after they were sort of the abolition of serfdom started. And my great-grandfather was forced out of his village and, you know, condemned to look for work, which is considered a lower position than a peasant.

Somebody has to sell their skills because I don't even have land. My grandfather, my great-grandfather, works his whole life and goes to cities all over where there is work. He's a chef. He is a chef in rich people's homes. He's unemployed a lot. He gets fired in one of the places because his relatives are revolution. And when they find out that they're related, he gets fired. It's a very precarious life.

He doesn't even have a child. Like, my grandfather was born when his father was like over 50, I think. So because he didn't even have a chance to settle down, right? It seems very like 2020s now. And he gets unemployed. And my grandfather's like, thank God my mom is working. she's taking in everything she can and washing clothing and doing all this like odds and ends that women do to survive. They are very precarious. My grandfather is not allowed in any of the schools

because he's just a tradesman's child. He gets into one school in the Armenian district where he has to walk now four kilometers on foot to get there. And he's And he said that Georgian language was the last subject and didn't even need a grade. Like every other subject they learn has a grade. And they didn't even consider Georgian the language important enough to me to have a grade. So, and he's like, he wants to learn Georgian, you know? And they're like, oh, you don't really need to learn it. So who cares?

So it's a terrible degradation of the Georgian language. Georgian sort of standing within Trilisi is not really something that is respected. And my grandfather didn't even know Georgia in the first five years because he grew up in what's now Marneoli close to the Armenian border because his father had a job there. And so they had all moved there before they moved to Trilisi. And he was like, I didn't even speak Georgian very well. Like he knew Armenian better than Georgian. So his life is very unstable, precarious. Because his father's life is very unstable, precarious.

He never even gets to home. His father gets swindled. He said he saved his money and he was going to buy this like one room or something. And he gets like swindled from it. He doesn't get that. So he is, he's just. condemned to travel all the time, find work, his wife to work when he can't, very hard life. And also disrespect life.

Like his position as a tradesman is also, as I said, not looked upon as something desirable. If you compare that to Soviet Georgia, you have a home. You get a home, right? you get then we had we had apartment in the city we had apartment in the country or house in the country workers have resorts they have time off if have free health care provision food at least at least some some level you know food subsistence level if need be minimum guaranteed is taught to everyone, tons of books written about it, Georgian history is taught, tons of books are published about it. So this idea of like, what it does really is secure life for people

who live in Georgia, Soviet Georgia, and like in the culture and the language and everything else like that's also important to people. And it creates, and there's this like, The constant thing that Tbilisians will say is that where is the Tbilisian relationships of yesterday, which means like there was this sweetness between people, you know, that you acted in the highest, most honorable way, and you treat each other with dignity. So there's a sense that this security that life has brought, this economic and culture, security that you could also have much more respectful relationships with people, which is opposed to now, and I say where I'm like my great-grandfather is I don't have a home.

You know, I didn't get anything. I don't have free health care. I don't have anything. I'm moving from city to city or from this house to house, you know, making a living from selling my my ability to work and so my aunt and I argue all the time I'm like you are 85 years old you have never paid rent like you have no idea what it's like to live my life I have always had to pay rent and every month if I don't pay rent I'm afraid of being homeless I'm like you have never had that fear yeah yeah I mean I think that absolutely speaks volumes and to be able to

understand the history of the Soviet Union and the history of Georgia through the lens of generations in your family is really interesting because as you're saying, you know, your great grandparents live this life of precarity, hounded by poverty, utter instability, moving around constantly. And in the Soviet period, there's stability, there's dignified working lives. Nobody, it's not perfect. You know, nobody's living immaculately rich, but people have housing. They have their basic needs meant. They have jobs. They have the dignified life. And then the social relations benefit from the stability within people's lives and then of course the collapse in the in the 90s and then the brutal re-entrenchment of the dictatorship of capital and now you're

back to a life of precarity hounded by poverty the real threat of homelessness not having access to health care and other basic needs etc i mean it's it's really jarring to to have it put in the framework of generations of your own family you know it's wild kind of in the same vein can you kind of talk a little bit more maybe about what daily life was like at the peak of the Soviet period just for regular working people we talked about some of the things that that people had like your parents and your aunt and your grandparents during this period but can you talk a little bit more about some of this stuff housing health care etc yeah um so they say like the 60s and the 70s were the best times um the 80s also the problem start um and the national

rise of nationalism. So the 60s and 70s is like really the golden age. And even the poorest people is in poorest is in like regular working class. We don't say porous. There's no such thing as abject property. But a working class person and of course everyone works. And this is actually another thing that's fascinating is they found a job. If you want to talk about inclusive, right? It's, It's so hard for me to imagine because, you know, I grew up as an adult in U.S. and then post-S. in Soviet Georgia, which is both, you know, terrible places. So I can't even imagine. But if someone was had like disability, they would find work for them.

So if you're blind, I'm not sure if that's politically correct. I don't even know how to say. So if you cannot see, they will find work for you. you. They have special resorts for people who are blind. If you cannot hear, they have special jobs for you to sort of self-realize, right? Special unions for you, like you're part of with other people in a union. And then you have your own special trips to the sea. to rest we even went uh brian and i in in batumu at a place like that where it was still owned by um like i think like the blind association or something and that's like from the soviet union

and so everyone has a job they find work for everyone um work is regulated there's no um there's no like insane hours, like right now over time, right? Most people work at least 50 hours, but usually like around 60 to 80, not regulated. Example of even more dangerous, like minds. They have entire institutes dedicated to researching working conditions, labor medicine, occupational diseases. So they know that if you're in underneath, you know, in a mine, mine shaft, you can't be there for more than seven hours. Otherwise, it has adverse effects for your health. So they'll regulate it that no one can be working in a mine for over seven hours.

Now they work them 12 hours. And they got rid of the Occupational Diseases Institute. So no one even knows how many people are getting sick from occupational diseases, right? So there is a lot of care. Like people say it's bureaucracy, but it's interesting because what it really means is that they try to make every part regulated and regulated in the sense they, to think things through. Buildings, how to build things are, you know, they have codes. they should have, be facing the sun or have at least a somewhat exposure to sunlight because if you don't have any sunlight, you will, it's bad for your health.

So the way you build things is considering not too high because that's not good for you, you know, have enough sun exposure, have a park downstairs, you know, and be not too far from all these other public transportation and all these other things, parks and recreation. so everything is done in a way that to me when I was first learning about it speaks like speaks volume about care like how could this entire Soviet experiment be terrible if or it be based on some kind of murderous intention if they spent so much time energy money on making sure you got enough sunlight right in your in your free apartment um so it's like it contradicts all these ways that

we thought or at least i was taught soviet life was like that it was like at work it was to humanizing right i was imagining the worst conditions but it's actually better conditions if you work in a mine or in a factory or some kind of a place where you are um that you labor intensely they gave you extra food to make sure, free food, you know, milk, whatever, whatever, extra protein, extra fat, extra calories. Because you need to replenish yourself. If you were in heavy industries, there's like a whole list, you got extra time off. You were sent into really great resorts to rest. You got free or very cheap room numbers.

You know, Crimea, we have Alcovo, this incredible city in Georgia, where it's like all sanatoriums. Please come, if you, whoever's listening, it's one of the most amazing place on earth. You could fly really cheaply to anywhere else in the Soviet Union. Like my mom would like drop of a hat, just like fly to Ashkenk, fly to Moscow, St. Petersburg, you know, because she felt like it. that's not that's not something people can do now as far as like if you were in the cultural sphere

you got money to produce a film to make a film to write you had resorts like writers resorts where you can go and relax and write like it was

a very generous welfare state let's say where everyone could find a way to self-realized. Even the people will say, oh, you need money and corruption, you know, need to bribe somebody to get into a certain school or get a certain profession that will say that.

That could also be true. But at the end of the day, everyone found a place. So maybe the top spots were, you know, for corruption, you know, for bribing and so on and so on. achieve through that but there was still every other field that you could self-realized that you could get a job go get an education be somebody there were prizes there was my friends were looking through some kind of like tbilisi order they were getting all these like prizes and and medals every year and they were giving them out to the the hardest worker

the kindest person, you know, a hardworking mother. Now they give them out to businessmen. Yeah. So like, it's radically different now. Like every, in every inch of life, you can see

the changes. The, you know, we, I talked about this on Twitter, but like, Vake-a-Pool, those incredible pools built, Vak-a-Pools is a really beautiful pool. That used to be open for everyone.

Now only well, wealthy people or foreigners can afford to go. So places that were open and accessible, like Pioneer Palace, which is where chess champions have come from many worldwide chess champions. And also great filmmakers, cartoonists, and so on, are just like a children's place. It's a huge palace that used to house the viceroy of Russia that ruled over countries, Beria gave it to the children.

They're like, go playing it. And so there was these incredible science room. There's the young alpine club, and they went, what's called, hiking in the mountains for fun, you know, to some even became like professionals, you know. There was every kind of thing you can think of, you know, the drawing. you could become you could become an artist of any kind like you sculptures you know you make films

you paint and so on and so on and so there was a lot of possibilities and so I look at it as like not that there was so much lost because the argument is always like oh look this person was you know he was a writer and he

was put in like in a gulat or something like that right there's always this kinds of these charges which are of course many of them are true many of them are not um but i would say look at all the writers of the filmmakers the scientists that were created that otherwise have never been created if it wasn't for socialism yeah yeah so i think people have to think that way as well it's incredibly profound and honestly it's it's downright moving to to kind of hear of the accomplishments And of course, you know, there's corruption, there's problems, nothing is perfect. But what you see in these socialist experiments, whether in the Soviet Union or elsewhere around the world, is this fundamental orientation to human needs above anything else.

And you're talking about, you know, disability justice. You're talking about guaranteed jobs and unionization, vacation time for regular working people, solid regulations of capital and workplaces to protect workers, state support for the arts, sports, and science. you know this is a quality of life achievement for average people that wasn't present before socialist experimentation and has been fully retracted after its collapse and this is in a lot of ways what we collectively either as socialist or literally just human beings have lost and you know everything that that anti-communist today will say about communism you know like it's just you know terrible you have you have no freedom in the workplace you know authorities dictate your day to day to day. livelihood and what you do moment to moment. You have a huge police state. These are things that are true under capitalism. I live in America that has more people in prison per capita than any other country on earth and still says it's the beacon of freedom around the world. This is a place

where in every major city, in the richest country that's ever existed, there are blocks and blocks and blocks of homeless people, many of whom have addiction issues that there's no support for or mental health issues that there's no support for. And lots of people are just regular people who caught a bad break and now we're living in a tent on the, you know, on the side of the street, again, in the richest country that has ever existed in all of human history. And so you see places like poor, embargoed, choked off Cuba providing its people with world-class health care and education while the, you know, over 50% of American adults read at or below a sixth grade level. The number one cause of bankruptcy is medical debt, et cetera. And this is just what I know

hear my experiences in the U.S., and so you're talking about these experiences in Europe during the Soviet and after the Soviet period. It's just really astonishing. And this is something that I like to focus on because all you hear all day long, all around the world, is how terrible communism was, how brutal it was, you know, how everybody's life was worse. And it's just objectively untrue. And it ideologically provides cover for the brutalities of capitalism. And that it frames the brutalities of capitalism as synonymous with democracy and freedom and those of socialism and communism as synonymous with authoritarianism and a drab dreadful life for those people trapped in those authoritarian regimes. So to hear this, especially from the perspective

of your family living through it, I think is really crucial. Now, I do want to be thoughtful of your time here. So let's kind of move more robustly into this last period of the outline that I want to talk about, and that's kind of more on this post-Soviet period of time. So the 1990s were, as we've said throughout this conversation, a brutal time in the former Soviet Union as capitalism was introduced with extreme violence and precarity for many people. Even outside the Soviet Union, its collapse had dire impacts on other socialist and anti-imperialist movements like Cuba, for example. In the Imperial Corps, of course, this time was marked by the institutionalization of what we now call neoliberalism. The

dismantling of welfare states, worker protections, and the globalization of the domination of private capital. But for Georgians in particular, can you talk about what this period of time, the 1990s, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was like for regular people? Yeah, I'll start with this. The first thing I want to say, I think that's important for everybody to understand is that, as I mentioned before, the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic had some of the, you know, most wealth was one of the best off territories in the entire USSR. And then when the Soviet Union collapsed, it saw the steepest decline in terms of wealth, GDP, and living standards. So, for example, there were some regions of the USSR that were poorer than Georgia.

And when the Soviet Union collapsed, they saw some of their, you know, living standards declined, but not the same degree of sharpness that Georgia saw. So that's the first thing. The second thing was is that because of how good and positive this Soviet experience was, that sharp decline was the most traumatic in terms of just how bad people's living standards got. I mean, anybody who spends any amount of time in Georgia, you know, If you talk to somebody who lived through the 1990s, you know, they can tell you about how it was like to live through the, you know, the emergence of gang violence on the streets of Tbilisi, the civil war that took place in the country, the ethnic conflict and, you know, ethnic cleansings that took place on, on, you know, Soviet Georgian, what was becoming independent territory in Ossetia and Abkhazia. And so this whole period was very traumatic.

I mean, just for, you know, to understand, Georgia to this day still has not returned to its 1989 GDP. You can imagine that. It still has not returned to its 1989 GDP. And this is according to the World Bank statistics. You can look it up. And so that loss, now on top of that, you know, there was been, there was a quick and massive deindustrialization, right? Factories closing down and then nowhere for those people to go and work.

You had, you know, so many, as I mentioned before, such high rates of people in working in a white collar professions who, you know, would never regain back their Soviet. era positions. So Georgia had this very, very harsh transition to capitalism. And the 1990s were so destabilized. And basically, the former chair of the Georgian Communist Party, Edward Shevard Nodze, who was the last foreign minister of the USSR, after the, short-lived tenure of the first post-Soviette president of Georgia's Viad Gamsikordia, who was a far-right nationalist, could call him a fascist, like, you know, ultra, ultra-right-wing. After he was overthrown in a military, in a coup, I shouldn't say military, in a coup, by 1995, Edward Shevard Nadezai came back to power, but the interesting thing to understand

is that Edward Shepard Nadezai was a, you know, beloved by the West for his role as the last foreign Soviet, foreign minister of the Soviet Union. But the 1990s, the period that he oversaw, as I was trying to outline, were so difficult, you know, people in Tbilisi without heating, there's no gas, there's no water, right? Because you have to understand that the Soviet period is what built up all of this infrastructure. Georgia was particularly vulnerable, given the amount of, you know, imports and inputs that it had versus is, you know, in the Soviet period's dependency on the Soviet economy. So when that was so rapidly destroyed, you know, people immediately went into terrible conditions. You know,

you can see footage. Again, like I said, in Tbilisi, people, you know, warming themselves on the street or, you know, not having heating, not having water, you know, inflation going crazy, not having a stable currency at first. But in terms of this neoliberalism, Marketization, privatization was underway in the 1990s. But it was such a period of chaos, territorial dismemberment, ethnic conflict, civil war, right? People losing work, deindustrialization, that just similar to how it was in Russia and elsewhere in the USSR, in the former Soviet, former USSR. But then in 2003, you had the color revolution, was so-called color revolution. in Georgia that was that we now call the Rose Revolution, which was actually a name, CNN came up with,

ironically enough. And this was the coming to power of a American-trained former ally of the then-president Edward Shevard Nadze Mikhail Saakashvili, who came into power with this idea of, you know, more radical westernization and state building. But on, On top of that, because he was positioning themselves as being sort of more pro-modern and, you know, this bringing this idea of stability to Georgia, he had a policy that was, you know, orthodox pro-globalization, orthodox neoliberal, and brought with him a businessman who made millions in the 90s in Russia, who was originally from Tbilisi, Kaka bin Dukidzei, who was originally from, who would be as architect of economic reforms. And that would be the period after 2003 when this sort of more chaotic privatization and deindustrialization of the 1990s

became the formal state ideology in the structuring of the Georgian state and the Georgian post-Soviet economy. Because you can, of course, capitalism and marketization was already happening in the 90s, but it was after this Rose Revolution and the sort of ascension to power of Mikhail Saakashvili in his party, the United National Movement, and the reforms of Kakabindu Kizzi, that you had, Georgia became

the most, and I mean this, in the market sense, liberal countries in the world, right? The least no laws, the total gutting of worker protections, of social safety net, had almost no labor laws and this reliance on foreign direct investment to get the economy going, right? You had a, you know, this religious adherence to neoliberalism. But at the same time, while this period is often, you know, touted for how, you know, certain benefits, because there were some, you know, some things were good, some positive things happened, And, you know, like the state was congealed into something that was actually functional. You know, there was certain reforms that were taking place in banking and policing and other things that were positive.

But alongside it, there was this ideological project to rebrand Georgia, reconfigure what Georgia means. And a very important part of that was demonization of the Soviet period, right? This basic process of saying that, you know, the Soviet period was a period of Russian occupation. Georgians were not agents in the construction of the Soviet Union. We were victims. And this narrative was used in order to justify free market reforms, to justify westernization. to justify, you know, Georgia's place in a Western-led period of U.S. dominance, you know. So it's basically to say that, you know, we are the most anti-Soviet of peoples.

We are the natural anti-communists. When in actuality, it's the inverse, right? Georgia was this beacon shining light of the Soviet Union. And so it's really insidious, the more that you study and you look into this, you realize that there was this, you know, sort of ideological project to, justify how bad the 90s were, not because of marketization, but because of the Soviet period, right? The justification is that, well, the Soviet period is what was bad, and that's why we had the 90s, not the actual story, which is, you know, we had this great sort of, you know, total increase

of GDP living standards and welfare in the country, and then in our, you know, country. And then when the Soviet collapsed, we actually lost everything because of a market. marketization. So I guess I just want to break up this period, post-Soviet period, and maybe Sopo can add some more, but that you had the chaotic privatization of the 1990s and just dismemberment and chaos of war. And then you had the more methodical institutionalized neoliberalism of the 2003 to 2012 period. And then you had this sort of stabilization and continuation with small changes after 2012. Yeah, and so right there you once again see that there's the blaming of the failures of capitalism onto socialism itself.

The 90s were a brutal period in this telling because of the Soviet Union and its dysfunction, not because of its collapse and the brutal introduction of capitalism itself. So that's ideological spin for sure. Sopo, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I think Brian has hit a lot of points. I can say more of a personal thing in my family, since we've discussed this now, is that it led to complete demise of my family. Three parts of my family had to leave Georgia to find, to immigrate elsewhere. We went to the U.S. part of my family went to Athens.

Another part went to Poland. Let's say most of them came back at some point. And so through this process of immigration to every man for himself, wild, wild west that emerged in the 90s, what you couldn't really tell before, the class differences, because there was more or less about the same level. Now you could start to see who was really poor and who wasn't. And so the fabric of big, you know, social fabric of families of big get-togethers, seeing each other frequently became less and less because there was no money to do it.

There was also less incentive because people felt uncomfortable being around people. Some people had money, some who didn't have money, and so on, all the things that people go through. or social statuses. And I didn't see my family for 20 years when I left. My brother has not been back to Georgia in 30 years. He's stuck in the U.S. A lot of family members, a lot of people's family members in Georgia. You may not have seen for 10, 20, 30 years

because they have migrated and didn't have papers, so they couldn't come back, or it was hard and difficult for people to go there and visit them. So it's a broken family's alienation is very common now. It's one of the ways I can say how it affected people's lives. Yeah, absolutely. And you see this throughout the post-Soviet states of, you know, the vast majority of people being emiserated, while a small percentage of people, you know, become incredibly rich in this transition away from the Soviet states. style socialism into capitalism and those people that are disproportionately rich become

disproportionately powerful and positions of governance and media, et cetera, and thus can articulate this capitalist ideology that trickles down and can infect the minds of people who have been emiserated by this process. And I know I mentioned Kristen Godsey earlier and you've had her on your podcast as well. And of course her book, Red Hangover, is precisely on this topic exploring not just of course Georgia but the entire former Soviet Union and the impact from republic to republic of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reintroduction of capitalism and it's a very similar story across the board but another consequence is politics and in many post-Soviet states the brutal reintroduction of capitalism and the dismantling of socialism

along with the ideological anti-communism that went with it that we've talked about really warps politics toward the right in a lot of interesting ways. The economic rightism of liberal and libertarian capitalist, of course, as well as often the hypernationalist and rabidly anti-left rightism of various forms of reaction and fascism. So can you talk about this in the context of post-Soviet Georgia and its politics? What happened to the political ideological landscape in the wake of this? Yeah, it's been, it's really horrible to have thorough years. of just right-wing parties, really complete decimation of the left, at least in Georgia.

Now, it's argued almost everywhere else. I think the left, the so-called central left are just like neoliberal parties everywhere. Kind of like what Democrats are. Sure. But even worse. And so because of nationalism being the dominant call to dismantle the Soviet Union,

nationalism and religious institutions were the main dissidents and anti-Soviet crusaders. So of course, the post-Soviet Georgia is filled with nationalists and religious people. The church is becoming incredibly important. I cannot even find any politics. anywhere that's beyond nationalism. And I mean this nationalism, there's only like Europe, EU, Europeanization or desire to be part of Europe.

And even that's like put in nationalist terms, except most of those people like don't like Georgians. They like the idea of Georgia in Europe to be reunited with their families apparently, which is Europe. And so everything's become from the 90s to the ethnic separatists and the warfares that happened that has shaped a lot of the politics, so nationalism and in a sense of like national unity, the national unity of Georgia has become really important in every politics. so you cannot discuss any kind of Georgian politics if you don't consider Abkhazia and Ossetia as part of it. And it's mostly different approaches to it.

So like a softer or a harder approach, right? Everyone's anti-Russian. Everyone wants territorial integrity of Georgia to be brought back. It doesn't matter what would happen to all the people living in these areas. So what you can argue about in Georgia is really nothing outside of geopolitics or territorial disputes. They leave you no room. So it's just personalities that you hate or like

and all the discussions only about do we hate Russia? Do we like Russia? Do we like the government? Do we hate the government? Because they're pro-Russia, no they're against Russians. That's it. It is completely decapitated and any kind of social politics, any discussing economics, social issues is left out. I think another thing I just want to add is that if you want to talk about

sort of like the political landscape and the ideological landscape in Georgia, I think another thing you have to consider are NGOs, the non-governmental sector and the role of, you know, full. foreign embassies, but I think in particular, the nonprofit sector is very important. When Sakashvili in 2003 came to power and there was a move to try to create a functional civil society, Georgia already had a sort of like boisterous, you know, people going to protest, boisterous civil society in that sense. But when Saka Shrily came to power, he really brought with him as almost a wing of the state, this nonprofit sector.

And the nonprofit sector in Georgia is really interesting because on the one hand, there is a class dynamic where those who are living off of foreign grants, you know, were able to live with an income that was far greater than, you know, the majority of Georgians. So you had this kind of correlation between nonprofits as, you know, a major sector of the economy, plus those working for them becoming this new intelligentsia, right? Because, and by intelligentsia, you know, we're talking about this, you know, very Soviet and post-Soviet class that exists, which is like thinkers, but thinkers that have a sort of political influence, right? And it's like a coherent part of the society. In post-Soviet Georgia, and especially after. 2003, the nonprofit sector ends up creating this kind of new intelligentsia. And the purpose of that intelligentsia is to try and help facilitate Georgia's Western integration. And that becomes a wing of the state. So there are some nonprofits that would do some nice, you know, good, useful social projects, you know, helping with various reforms or, you know, trying to empower certain segments of the society. I'm not trying to say every single one was, you know, nefarious. But in general, the project was to create the conditions politically for Georgia's integration into the West.

But the thing is, is that this political, this civil society was not sort of some representation of the entire country, but was itself, you know, based on a sort of elite class internally. And not only that, but it was ideologically a component of the vision for Georgia that was brought to the nation-building project of the Sakashvili regime. So that was, you know, joining NATO. That was the eventual ascension into the European Union. And that was to be the closest ally possible of the United States of America, right? This is why, you know, George Bush, the second, you know, visited Georgia in 2004. He, you know, Saakashvili.

promised gave more Georgian soldiers to the Iraq war than any other country per capita and per capita is important because of Georgia's size. And they really tried to sort of suture together or frame Georgia's rightful place in the West both through this idea of, you know, we are really European and we are going to have the reforms that are going to show that we're pro-European, but also to say that we are, you know, the front-line fighters for this American world, you know, for this American-led globalization. And so this is like, I think a, and the nonprofits played and continue to play in some respect, a very central role in the facilitation of that narrative and national identity for Georgia.

And this is one of the reasons why the current government that came into power in 2012 after massive protests in 2007 and 2012 against the Sakashvili government because of some police scandals, right, some police torture scandals. He also used very authoritarian tactics to sort of build this neoliberal economy, right, and made a lot of enemies. and a lot of people, you know, had hard times during his reign. Inequality increased. And so when he was overthrown, you know, this other government came to power. And so a lot of people that were sort of close with Sakashirili regime maintained presence in the ideological nonprofit sector. And so now there's been this kind of tension between the current government and the

those in the nonprofit sector, not so much because the current government is against the West. I don't think that's true. It's because of their affiliation with the very particular ideology of the previous government. And so I think that I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can see how, I would say, unfortunately, sometimes any kind of like nuance in some of these tensions get lost like Sopo is saying and everything is made to be about pro-Russia anti-Russia are we going to join the West or not right in some of the ways that these like tensions between various actors Georgia's place in the world the economy all get kind of lost and I think like thinking about the nonprofit sector for example

as a sector with an ideology, that it's, you know, dependency on foreign funding, you know, not to say every single thing that comes from it is negative, but to say that that power dynamic materially exists in the country and sort of structures how possibilities can or should be navigated, I think it's lost in some of these, some more reductive geopolitical framies. Crucial insight. Sopo? I think Brian also discussed a lot of it.

Really, it's like how there has been complete loss of whole industries. And so like Georgia economy, what it really demands, right, the market demands like lowest field workers, hospitality sector, and some lawyers. and NGO workers like that's the that's the marketplace um so the politics also there's no need for any other kind of politics besides how to integrate within the EU how to have more open you know free market to write bilateral um trade free trade agreements so it's a very simplified and simplified in the wrong way, state that doesn't demand complex thinking,

that doesn't demand complex jobs or complex ways of living. Everything's sort of taken away, you know, the state is also very small because of, again, neoliberalism. So the politics really suffers and people are not allowed not given the opportunity to cohere and have and have like mass movements or social movements.

Mostly it is completely dominated by some kind of single issue that has to do with donors, you know, priorities. like almost every women's day has been either about domestic violence or transgender getting like ID and so on, you know, which of course very important topics. But the level of poverty and women's rights being set back in hundreds of years really in the last 30 years, how much work women have to do, most of it, pink sector. employs women who have the most unregulated workplace. They have immigration, mostly of women being care workers in Italy and other places. Women supporting this country through remittances for people to like have food on the table. And you can't come up with more universal themes on women's day, right?

Like every March 8th. so this is really the problem like it's it is not like everything in george i feel like is like a a quilt of like random you know fabrics random politics of different donors and different um countries priorities sort of put together this patchwork that makes no coherent sense You have three different organizations working on the same project and redoing and undoing and the same thing over and over again. So it's like it doesn't make any sense. And it's not centralized in any possible way. The post-Soviet governments have differed as I don't want to repeat myself what Brian already said.

but the government now, which has changed, I think they've grown some because now they have become like the pariah, so they've learned like a lot of lessons very quickly. But it was really like they entrusted all the social stuff to NGOs that they would be invited to all these parliamentary meetings and committees and they would have the different NGOs, you know, put their two words in and they would have these mostly bullshit laws.

they didn't help anybody but the NGOs felt good the government vote felt good and they did like a check mark of EU directives and that was going on for like many years until recently when all the NGOs sort of lined up with

the former or different opposition and former president and that working together no longer works so the NGOs are now firmly in the opposition people themselves, what they call the civil society, does not represent the people at all. There is no civil society in Georgia on its own unless it is from the outside funded and completely supported by outside forces.

Our union is one of the only things that we're also dependent on the circumstances of the NGO world. but like it tries to be what people actually need and it's very much so as far as like money wise very marginalized yeah so it seems to me what's what's being said here is there's a real reduction in political possibility there's little to no actual democratic input from the people themselves you know outside interest or broader interests of capital of europe of the U.S. dominate often through functionaries like NGOs and non-profits as well as others. There's a facade of perhaps robust debate, often around certain hot topical cultural issues, for example, but that sort of belies a deeper impoverishment of real political engagement in the society. And

I think, you know, I bring it back to stuff here in the U.S. because that's where I'm from. I live my entire life here. And I know this country more than any other one firsthand, but that's similar here as well there's a real reduction in what we think of as even politically possible everything is reduced to the two parties and of course those two parties are dominated by their donor bases and the interest of those donor bases there's a facade of incredibly robust debate the democrats hate the republicans and you know you even have left wingers and right wingers fighting in the streets over the last several years but um there's no actual real difference when it comes to core issues of capital or imperialism and a recent

study on U.S. quote-unquote democracy, and this is important because the U.S. always frames itself as the purveyor of democracy against authoritarianism. It objectively showed that the opinions of American people have literally zero impact on policy, showing in robust, you know, ways, the complete, you know, facade of democracy that we have here, and it seems like it's similar there, because I think it's similar in many capitalist states. This is kind of how capitalists. This is kind of how capitalism functions and it's not going to ever allow the people to really challenge the interests of those with money and power at the top of capitalist societies. So, you know, it's over two hours here. I know it's late where you are because of the time difference here. I was going to get into a

whole conversation about the Russia invasion of Ukraine and your take on it. But maybe we can save that for another time because I think that's opening a really big box of topics that might, you know, extend this too far, and I don't want to be disrespectful to either of you. So let me ask this last question. This is kind of looking forward. Where do both of you see Georgia going in the coming years? And maybe you can, you know, contrast that with where you would perhaps like to see it go. But yeah, what are your kind of thoughts on Georgia today and where it's going in the next decade or so? Actually, I started to say this and I forgot to finish it when I was discussing the

with Stalin and the invasion of Georgia and how Stalin left Georgia and then used the power he had gotten through being part of the Russian Revolution and then be able to have the power to go back and win against the Mensheviks

violently but win anyway, right? Because he was, because the Bolsheviks were outvoted. And it's interesting because what's happening now is similar, except the politics are, of course, horrible. It's that the former president lost the elections and he loses elections all the time, the last couple of times there were elections.

He went to Ukraine. When he first lost the elections, he went to Ukraine. He gave up his Georgian citizenship and said, I don't want me Georgian citizens anymore. He went to Ukraine to do the reforms, the miraculous reforms that he did in Georgia to continue it there. Because we have to think of neoliberalism. They have actually a lot of regional solidarity and actually international solidarity. But it's a regional affair.

This just shows you how the idea of independence as far as just like borders is actually not as important as how much cooperation there is politically to destroy any kind of. social welfare in the region. So Misha, Saka Shulim, former president, leaves to go to Ukraine. And in this strange set of events, he becomes like governor of Odessa, then he gets kicked out, and then he's brought back by Zelensky. All of a sudden, the guy sneaks back into Georgia, and he is captured. but he seems like high spirits like he was like one and Jews all the whole time he loses the elections like his party loses the elections again and now he's been continuing but more now

because he's in prison attempting to use Ukraine and by the way the Ukrainian government has been going after the Georgian government nonstop this time since the Russian invasion before that as well but now it's become even more pronounced and to the point where Ristovich even called for an international day of action to free Saakashvri from prison all over the world on January 4th, I think, which not that many people went to just, by the way. So Misha is trying to use the West Ukraine, like other powers, other countries, to destabilize and take out the government here.

which democratically won the elections. So it's a really precarious situation. I think this government has thwarted multiple attempts to get it overthrown or taken out. They have been able to sustain themselves, which is, I think, almost a miracle. It's crazy to see a right-wing government being harassed. and, you know, try to be taken out the way, like, a leftist government usually gets taken out. Yeah. Because they're not leftists, but they're treated like their leftists, which is crazy, right?

Yeah. With crazy charges and saying that they're pro-Russian and their Putin's party and all these things. And they're doing this. And they keep calling them like leftists and, like, central left party, which is also not true. And so everyone's looking at Ukraine. war, I think the opposition has dreams that if the Ukrainians win, the Georgian Legion, which are very, very far right Georgian leaders, but because of the war and normalization of everything around the war, around the war is pro-Ukraine, he's become on the outside a

hero, the leader of the Georgian Legion, who was also one of the bodyguards. of the former president and there's this their dream I think is that Ukraine wins the war these people will come back as heroes and join this like with their Misha Sakashri

and like takeover Georgia that's our nightmare because if these very far right military ready people come back and join with already Sak Ashwili who has a terrible record of

of rapes in prison, you know, extrajudicial killings, repression, police state. That's not something that people should be not afraid of, you know? That's something that's scary. So we're in a precarious situation. We don't really know. I think people don't know what's going to happen that way. Now, behind the scenes of that, everyday life is very difficult because of inflation um because of of neoliberalism you know no social

welfare the the government now has taken actually steps a little by little to do things but it's just so not enough it's like people are like they need like you know an operation right surgery and they're going to give in a band-aid so this leads to even more heavy emigration, which further and further destabilizes everything in Georgia, not enough people, not enough skilled workers, people's families are torn apart and more and more people leave than more and more people want to leave because they're like, oh, I don't want to keep suffering here. If I could just go and my friend or my cousins over in Germany so I could just join her or someone's in Italy and I could just join them. So it becomes even easier for people

to leave. It's a really bad situation for most Georgians. And even if you are a wealthy Georgian, I don't see how this constant instability, fear, the poverty, inequality doesn't affect them because they don't have like the U.S. suburbs where you could just go away and lock yourself away. They have some of that, but still a really small country. Yeah. And so you can't hide away from the misery that is coming at you. So even if you're wealthy, it's still not a, is a really toxic place, you know? Yeah. Horrifying.

And it's something that, you know, we're definitely going to keep an eye on. And as these events continue to unfold and as the war itself continues to unfold and its impacts on Georgia become more clear, I would love to continue to touch base with both of you and obviously use this platform for what it's worth. if there's anything that ever needs to be put out to more people, especially here in the West, anything we can do to help, absolutely. So something that, you know, definitely keeping an eye on. And Brian, would you like to add anything about Georgia going in the next coming years or where you would like to see it go, et cetera, before we wrap up?

Maybe just I want to add one thing about the future, but also sort of touch on, I don't want to open up the whole thing about the war in Ukraine. But one thing that's important to mention is that in the future. In 2008, Georgia and Russia fought a war with each other that was when this former president who Sopo was talking about, who I mentioned as well, Saakashvili was in power. You know, the European Union report came to the formal conclusion that Georgia initiated the war. but despite that the sort of national narrative is that this was a war of aggression started by Russia and of course at the center of the story are the two regions south Ossetia and Abkhazia which were sort of in conflict but I mentioned this because you know after this war

one of the things that brought the new party to power was an idea of, you know, we're going to try and lower the tensions with Russia in the aftermath of this war. And so the party that's in power now, the Georgian Dream Coalition, which was started by a billionaire Bidzina Ivanovna Shvili, they came into power with this idea of maybe the eventual normalization of ties with Russia through a sort of pragmatic paper. And one of the reasons that, and this is, I would say, if we're going to talk about Georgia's future, one of the contradictions, is that this, you know, domestic politics that really center Russia as being this, you know, longstanding enemy of Georgia, the Georgian people, Soviet occupation, you know, at the same time Georgia has seen for all of this, again, this ruling party's faults, has seen some benefits. from this policy of strategic patience and a move towards normalization of relations with Russia. The opposition, of course, blames the ruling party as being a Russian stooge.

We know that the guy who started the party has economic ties to Russia, but so do many big figures in the opposition. So that's nothing new. But they use this as a way to say, you know, George is becoming closer to Russia. We're coming into the Russian orbit. But when in fact, actually what's going on is that the party in power realized that having some sort of normal economic and political relations with Russia helps stabilize the country. And coming from the left, the benefit of that is that not every single problem domestically in Georgia is made to be about Russia by the government.

You see what I'm saying? The previous government was very intent on saying that every single problem domestically in the country was from Russia. And what's going on now is that this process of strategic patience and, you know, a sort of orientation towards normalization for the sake of trying to make things more stable not to, you know, bother or, you know, increase tensions with Russia actually has this kind of positive effect of making it so not everything has to be a geopolitical. question about what what you know about russia and instead some of these social and political questions can be more focused on and so i think that that's actually a benefit and one of the again strange dynamics going on is that um Georgia in its react the government's reaction to the war in ukraine has also had some positive benefits um whether that's through the import you know economic benefits through the importation of Russian gas or this is through, you know, the

increase of, you know, Russians with high incomes coming and spending money in the country. Georgia's, you know, not declaring bilateral sanctions on Russia. You know, people, of course, thought that in some ways Georgia should have had a more hostile or stance towards Russia because of the war, but in reality, the state's sort of, you know, somewhat neutral position has not, I wouldn't say neutral, because they're definitely pro-Ukraine. I would say that this, you know,

not taking that pro-Ukrainian position to such an extreme, but instead trying to sort of maintain stability domestically, I think has done a world of good, but for the economy and for, despite these very hard conditions that SOPA already talked about with inflation, and working people, of course, having a really hard time, but they've done their best to sort of try and manage it so it doesn't get out of control.

I would say, though, that the thing that's concerning is that this sets up a situation where, you know, not only the return of the Georgian Legion of Sopo mentioned, but also just the opposition and Western governments, you know, sort of putting pressure on the Georgian government to reconsider its orientation towards, towards Russia. For example, as you may know, is that Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia submitted their applications to the European Union at the same time because of the war. Georgia was the only one

of the three that didn't get candidate status. And so this has been, has fed into this argument that, well, the Georgian government is actually trying to sabotage Georgia's Western ascension process when in reality what's going on is the their orientation towards Russia is actually trying to, you know, placate any, you know, potential explosion of tensions at such a delicate time and instead sort of focusing on how to like maintain economic, social, and geopolitical stability when there was just a war fought in 2008. And so this contradiction, you know, Georgia's Western ascension as being the, you know, national desire of many people in the country versus what it will take for socio-economic and geopolitical stability are in tension. And it's unclear

where that tension between these two dynamics will go in the coming years. Yeah, I mean, that's all incredibly fascinating, well said. And, you know, Sopo and Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show for having this discussion. I threw here. huge questions at you because I myself, you know, am very interested in learning a lot of this history and the complex political situation of modern Georgia. And I've learned so much from both of you on this episode, as well as on your podcast, reimagining Soviet Georgia, which I cannot give enough kudos to, and I cannot express how much I would urge anybody listening to this and anybody who's enjoyed this conversation to go check that podcast out.

It really is wonderful work. Both of you, of course, are welcome back anytime on this show. I would love to keep in touch with both of you and work with you both again, collaborate on something. And if you ever need a platform to come back on and talk about developing situations, open invite for sure. But before I let you go, can each of you let us know where our listeners can find you and, importantly, your podcast online. Yeah, thank you so much for having us. And anybody who is interested in our podcast can find it at anchor.fm slash Soviet Georgia. We're also on Twitter, reimagining Soviet Georgia. You can also find us on Google, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts.

We also have a Patreon, patreon.com slash reimagining Soviet Georgia. So please check us out. And also just want to say thank you for having us on your show. I'm actually a huge fan of Rev Left Radio. I listen to it all the time. So this is a pleasure for me to come on and talk about this. So it was an honor to be. be to be included. So thank you for having me on having soap on. Yeah. Again, we are really excited

to be here today. And for, you know, I think like what we can say our podcast is like we're learning as well. So our audience is like learning with us. And I think that that helps people realize that this is not something that everyone just knows. There's just so much to explore and so much to unpack is a continuous process and I'm always having these like oh my god I had no idea moments all the time so I hope you join us on our journey and thank you so much for having us on you're a really wonderful wonderful host thank you both so much and you know when I reached out I had no idea that either of you were even familiar with Rev Lef so that's really really cool to hear so thank you so much open invite anytime you want to come back on and I'll make sure to link

in the show notes to the to the podcast and highly encourage my listeners to go check it out. Thank you so much. Oh, Nathelah, my name, Nathelah, Lazzhri, Zichis, Zahodera. Omey. Amari,

Chavarvichan, Chalabin'alli, over there. Oh, till the soul is the city, the soul is star whatever. Aalazan inspiratmosula. Apaliz, we are the same of Osulahol. Ikei, he said a lot of Tury-o'i-lawed-hury-o-de-dha.

Ville d'Aquhar, Watt Helle d'Aquhar, of your head. We will do you. We will da quay Mechon, Mechon,

meh mehomahu' mehomau You can't be the world. I'm sorry to myrotho. Myrudevichabomberto. Oh.

Oh, I believe Dishau Ome, no Omeantalo, Ome, no

there are of her own, the world of these are the other oh there. Thank you.