You’re right that irredentist sentiments are weak these days. As for the Georgian government’s posture towards S-J, I think you’re too harsh. Under Shevardnadze, the region was ignored. Full stop. It was physically and culturally isolated, with much closer ties to Armenia than to the rest of Georgia. The Saakashvili government has sought to end that isolation and to promote national integration. Roads, media, Georgian-language instruction, and such.

The approach has been hamfisted and tone deaf, but it is improving. Faster than most Georgians’ attitudes about Armenians, I’d venture.

Maybe you can tell something more on Adjaria? According to Wikipedia (ok, I know…) many people are converting from Islam to Christianity. And I read something about Saakashvili winning 28 out 30 seats in elections - what might a bit too much to be honest. It makes me wonder what is really going on there.

Wim

OT, but I’ve just been reading about our own government’s “Community Cohesion” programme (short version: “why do all these British Asians hate us? must be because they’re too Asian and not British enough!”). This line

They’re not very assimilated, but they are very well integrated

sums up what’s wrong with the whole thing very neatly. I liked the summing-up of Milosevic, too.

As for the role of Gamsakhurdia in the debacle of Abkhasia, I believe that your interpretation is much debatable. Looks like the causality runs the opposite way: first, Georgia had been severely beaten in Abkhasia, particularly since July 1993, and only after the defeat was almost complete and the fall of Sukhumi inevitable, Gamsakhurdia decided to seek his final chance to oust the plotters from Tbilisi.

The cops do this because they can, and also because they’re operating under a Soviet system of patronage: each cop kicks a certain amount of money back each month to his boss, who in turn kicks some back to his boss, and so on up to the Minister. Failure to make your quota is worse than bad… it’s a sign of disloyalty.

I lived in Armenia for two years and got stopped any number of times. I didn’t get zapped if I was driving — Westerners are too much trouble — but if the driver was Armenian, he would have to pay.

It’s hard to overstate how much this pissed people off. They accepted it fatalistically, but they hated it. A lot.

So, Saakashvili’s first move in office: he fired *all the traffic cops*, right up to the highest and most senior. Then he hired back about a third of them, doubled their pay, told them there was a new regime, and made that stick. The whole obnoxious traffic cop shakedown thing, common across the former USSR and universal in the Caucasus… no longer exists in Georgia. At all.

It was awesome. “Brilliant” is not too strong a word.

Doug M.

I disagree that Gamsakhurdia was no worse than other post-Soviet leaders in the region. For one thing, he managed to alienate pretty much all the country’s elites with quite startling speed. Ex-communists, anti-communists, pro-western liberals, nationalist mystics, bureaucrats, intellectuals, regional bosses — by late 1991 there was astonishing unanimity among them all.

Also, Gamsakhurdia enjoys the unique distinction of invading his own country while it was desperately trying to fight a war… thereby ensuring, with full knowledge and malice, that the war would be lost. This goes well beyond “difficult” or “eccentric” and into the realm of “treason” IMO. You have to be pretty freaking egocentric — like, insanely so — to pull something like that. In retrospect, it looks like the coup plotters knew their man.

Doug M.

Boris: “warlordism and clientelism, total lack of cynical political realism”. Now that´s an oxymoron a mile high and a kilometer wide.