GEORGIA IN THE MOUNTAINS

OF POETRY

GEORGIA IN THE MOUNTAINS

OF POETRY

Peter Nasmyth

Palgrave Macmillan

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS

GEORGIA

Copyright © 1998 by Peter Nasmyth

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 978-0-312-21524-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address:

St. Martin's Press, Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

First published in the United States of America in 1998

Typeset and designed by Nicholas Awde/Desert¥Hearts Scans by Emanuel a Losi

Covers & maps by Nick Awde & Kieran Meeke Photos by Peter N asmyth unless otherwise credited

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nasmyth, Peter. Georgia : in the mountains of poetry I Peter Nasmyth.

p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Georgia (Republic)-Description and travel. (Republic)-History-1991- I. Title. DK672.9.N38 1998 947.58-dc21

Transferred to Digital Printing 2011

2. Georgia

98-17593 CIP

ISBN 978-1-349-61941-2 ISBN 978-1-137-11284-2 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-11284-2

Acknowledgements Preface

Contents

PART 1: PRE-INDEPENDENT GEORGIA

1. Why Georgia? 2. Before the Caucasus 3. The mountains of poetry 4. Kazbegi 5. The mountain 6. Kazbegi to Tbilisi 7. Tbilisi 8. Mtskheta 9. Gori 10. Vardzia 11. Kakheti 12. Svaneti 13. Sukhumi

PART II: INDEPENDENT GEORGIA

14. The eve of independence 15. The young shoots of war 16. Batumi 1 7. Khevsureti 18. Georgia's war: a return to Sukhumi 19. A religious revival 20. Kutaisi 21. New Georgia

Further Reading: Appendix - Oil, water & Mensheviks Select Bibliography Political chronology of Georgia since 1900

Index

X

XI

IO

19

33

39 45 j j

113

122

275 285

To Emily

Georgia: in the mountains of poetry

1 0 0 k m

VIII

Map of Georgia

1alkalaki

IX

Acknowledgements

T his section might better be called an 'apology' to all those who over the years assisted in this book's creation - while receiving far too little in return. It is thus addressed, with heartfelt gratitude, to the

following: Marika Didebulidze, Irakli Topuria, Ilya Topuria, Gela Charkviani, Keti Dolidze, Gaioz Kandelaki and all at the GIFT office, Deda Mariam, Gia Tarkhan-Mouravi, Tamila Mgaloblishvili, Maka and Irina at GACC, Ellen Kiladze and the Caucasus Travel staff, Tamriko at the Metechi Palace Hotel, David and Keti Rowson, Madonna in Kutaisi, Maya Kiasashvili, Maia Naveriani, Teimuraz and Irina Mamatsashvili, Gia Sulkanishvili,

Jonathan Aves, Stephen Nash, Michael Hancock, the British Embassy Tbilisi staff, the Wardrop Foundation, the management of British Mediterranean Airways, John Wright, Victoria Field, Jonathan Wheatley, Harry Norris, Donald Rayfield, Nino Wardrop, the late and much missed David Barrett, Adrian Roberts, Doris Nicholson, Martin Schumer, Antony Mahony, Mako Power, Kate Hughes, Rachel Clagg, Anthony Eastmond, Jonathan Cohen, Jacqui Christi, David Wilson, Bob Close, Claire Gammon, Lara Olsen, Tony Andrews, Camilla Jerrard, William Burdett-Coutts, Anthea Norman Taylor, Nick Awde and Malcolm Campbell (patient editor and publisher respectively). Additional thanks are given to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for permission to publish pictures from the Wardrop Collection, and the National Library of Georgia and the Institute of Manuscripts in Tbilisi.

X

Preface

T his book is the product of eleven years of ever-greater personal involvement with a surprisingly cultured nation in the heart of the Caucasus mountains. The process was launched in 1987 after a brief

encounter with Georgia's drama-infected landscape and people, clearly only superficially Sovietised. It left a strong sense of the undiscovered lurking under the surface - which was then provoked back in Britain by tales of a remarkable Georgian production of Shakespeare's Richard III at London's Roundhouse. My informant told me the actors "had seemed to stand in both the 12th and 21st centuries," that they "offered an important lost link for Western Europe." My work as a journalist would lead to several more visits, then a book on this other land of Shakespeare (Georgia: A Rebel in the Caucasus) published in 1992 as a kind of psychological geography.

Now six years later, this second, more comprehensive volume brings those first impressions up to date. Certainly time has changed Georgia enormously - so much so it seemed essential to include a good section of the original book (if updated) to serve as the ground from which to discover the modern nation. The first book's period, just prior to independence, is without doubt the best psychological route map to the terrible drama that followed. At that time the whole nation shimmered on the edge of delirious 'freedom' - a volatile cocktail that, as we now know, led to a moment of dangerous and tragic intoxication.

The transformation that subsequently took place in Georgia is far greater than those in the other former Soviet republics. Some indeed claim that few countries this century have transformed so drastically, and in such a short period, as modern Georgia. Within the two years after 1991 the Soviet Union's richest republic, famous for feting visitors with champagne, caviar and gifts, became one of the poorer nations on earth, its hotels metamorphosised into refugee camps, its streets dotted with Western aid agencies in Nissan Patrols delivering aid. Politically, a fully-fledged Soviet Communist state converted into a frontier-town democracy, an All-Union, centrally planned economy flipped over into a free-for-all free market as the nation tumbled back down the ladder of wealth. The moment this drastic political coin flew into the air was late 1990 - with Georgia's declaration of independence from its overlords in Moscow.

I remember very clearly, about a year after this date, watching a television report in London on the civil war then erupting across Tbilisi. The camera panned to show the Hotel Tbilisi in flames - where just a few months earlier

XI

Georgia: in the mountains of poetry

I had stayed - eaten dinner under the chandeliers, admired the faded Tsarist elegance of the dining room. Now it was a gun position, the classical pillars pitted by bullets. It seemed hard to believe this burnt-out bunker had so recently played host to discussions on the modem production techniques of Shakespeare.

Suddenly one felt just how delicate a thing stability is in any modem society - as indeed Shakespeare repeatedly indicates. The alarming speed with which it vanished in Georgia is a stark illustration of how the social self­image, with one slight weapons-assisted nudge, can bring a whole culture to its knees. I began to wonder about this 12th century part of the human being. What was its shape? How could it live on so irrepressibly under a cultured surface- and in our own society, as much as Georgia's?

Here was the country I had grown so much to like, with its wild mountain dances, devil-may-care dramas, prising open the fist of stone fixed around itself for 70 years- only to find it shattering. In its place out burst a thousand small fists and dances, waving and shouting louder than any before.

What were the cultural groundings of this terrible freedom? Certainly one looked for the roots of Georgia's civil war in its recent Soviet past, which showed a nationality told for 70 years they were somebody else. Georgia, the then homogenised part of the grand, Socialist, Russian-speaking Union of Peoples, had been suddenly released to be 'Georgian' again. But the wild celebrations of self and independence quickly lost focus, to be replaced by the question; what was Georgia? These happy-go-lucky, authority-disrespecting Georgians, rebelling so cheerfully against their Soviet overlord in the Kremlin, now had to reconstruct in a non-rebellious fashion. Where would their urge toward real-life Shakespearean drama go?

After the civil war came a period of mafia structured power. Then Eduard Shevardnadze, with some Western financial aid, slowly started reconstructing more reliable, democratic structures -in spite of two mafia-assisted attempts to remove him. As a result, today Georgia holds up a bruised but proud face to the world - Tbilisi is seeing a boom of new businesses, restaurants and investment.

From the cultural/psychological perspective, the country's slow re­construction, its inching discovery of a sense of responsibility, indicates a deeper change than just the political. The country now has a free press, a new stable currency, full embassies from most major countries, and a greater international presence than at any time in its history. It is also starting to be noticed. In October 1997, Georgia hosted its first ever International Festival of Arts (GIFT) in Tbilisi - in which I played a small part as an organiser. It was a pleasure to see the same effect Georgia first had on me, repeating itself in most of the visiting Western artists, actors, musicians, poets. Several even told me they felt an important 'lost link' here. Curiously the same optimism also found itself matched by the IMF, who in 1998 predicted Georgia would produce the world's third fastest GDP growth.

XII

Preface

As I write, outside my window Tbilisi's main market buzzes with Armenians, Azeris, Kurds, Turks, Russians, Jews, refugees -just as it has down through the centuries. One feels again that Georgian part of Georgia, with its ability to absorb other cultures, even the latest, invading forest of tobacco ads.

On a personal level, these years of visiting and many projects (now including a bookshop), have made the story of this country a part of my own. Indeed I often shake my head remembering those first photographs of the Caucasus in the late 1980s. I would never have dreamt they would develop into a Caucasian photo-library, nor that those first tentative meetings in the Soviet House of Friendship would launch so many lifelong friendships.

As one longstanding Georgian friend recently said, holding up a glass of his country's wine now bottled in Holland: "Since your first visit we have shown you all our faces. Our childhood in Soviet times, our moment of ecstasy at independence, our political foolishness afterwards, our shame in war, now our attempts to be a free market like you. You have seen everything, now you must tell it!"

So I try again - to place this rich cultural wine into a newer, slightly more seasoned Western bottle.

Young GeiJrginn opening of the 1997 GIFT intemationn/ festival of arts, Tbilisi,

with the Metecbi Clmrch in the backgro1~nd

XIII

The Caucasus

RUSSIA

TURKEY

• GREAT CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS

100 km

Georgia by historical region

KHEVI PSHAVI

KHEVSUR.Ell