70 years of Soviet Georgia
From Independence to Independence: 1921 - 1991
by George Tarkhan-Mouravi

* The Fall of Menshevik Georgia

* The First Soviet Years and the End of NEP

* First Five-Year Plans and the Great Purges: Terrible Thirties
Formation of Stalin’s State in Georgia

Georgian Culture before and under Beria

The Great Purgatorio

* From World War II to the XX Party Congress

Georgians in the war outside USSR

The Post-War Decade

* From Thaw to Perestroyka

* From Perestroyka to Independence: Another Try

Full Text:

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* EPILOGUE

After long period of blood, repressions and totalitarian hypocrisy Georgia finally re-entered its independence lost with the Soviet invasion 79 years ago, having now the official status recognised internationally, a President elected by a free vote, and the Parliament, strongly supporting the President. Most of the population had strong confidence in their political leaders, the ruling Round Table-Free Georgia coalition. In euphoria, everything seemed to develop in right direction, if not for several minor issues, not considered at that time to serve as harbingers of the tragic events to come shortly.
Along with the economic disaster and civil disorder, among the most sensitive issues were the inter-ethnic relations. Insensitivity to the needs and demands of the ethnic minorities - Abkhazians, Ossetians, Azeris, Armenians - the nationalistic and chauvinistic rhetoric that could only deteriorate these relations was one more demonstration of the suicidal tendencies that led to catastrophe. Intelligentsia although itself the main source of nationalist myths and aspirations, disliked the dangerous extremism of the new leadership, the subsequent breakdown of economic relations and standstill in production, chauvinistic propaganda, especially anti-Ossetian attitudes, and especially the international obstruction.
Georgia, like other FSU and Eastern European states, suddenly lost its traditional political, ideological and economical environment and had to seek its place in the new world, having to deal not only with unfamiliar market or interstate relations, but also with new social realities, responsibilities, standards, demands and even technological ideas. Like other NISs, Georgia appeared to acquire independence quite unexpectedly and hence being completely unprepared to it, its freedom suddenly dropping from above due to complicated and obscure political games going on elsewhere. Thus, there was no widespread preliminary concept of independent existence, no real political parties existed capable of undertaking responsibilities, no political programs or ideologies having any other bases than just rejection of communist past, and some sweet patriotic myths. Overall shock, sudden loss of the reference frames and customary codes of social behaviour created unprecedented chaos in minds, total confusion and hysteric susceptibility to populist rhetoric, patriotic fantasies and simultaneously to greed, crime and corruption. This was an excellent soil for all sorts of manipulations of minds (and bodies), conducted with different skill and effect, but unmistakably by all active participants in ambitious political games. What is observed on the surface is mostly primitive nationalist slogans or para-magic rituals commonly exploited by all successful political leaders in each FSU country, often mixed with legal, economic and political ignorance, and senseless tautologies. At the same time we can sometimes notice other forces and interests hidden behind the scene, powers much more skilled and experienced, episodically revealing themselves in critical situations of civil clashes, in strange and unexpected changes of leaders’ decisions, their uncontrolled remarks, or Herostratic revelations.
A great game with negative non-zero sum and with nobody to win, that is the tragic reality in which Georgia was destined to participate, with dire outcome in forthcoming military action and mass brutality in Ossetia and Abkhazia, military coup and the civil war, bread lines and unprecedented criminality. The independence started with pain and violence, but through these pain and violence the new hope got born.

Bibliography
Lang David M., The modern history of Soviet Georgia, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1962
Rayfield Donald, The Literature of Georgia: A History, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994
Suny, Ronald G., The Making of the Georgian Nation, Indiana University Press, 1988, (Tauris, London, 1991)
Carrère d’Encausse, Hélène, The End of the Soviet Empire, Basic Books, New York, 1993
Avalov (Avalishvili) Zurab, The Independence of Georgia in International Politics, 1918-1921, London, Headley Brothers, 1940; Chalidze Publications, New York, 1982
Birch, Julian, The Georgian/South Ossetian territorial and boundary dispute, in: J. F .R. Wright et al. (eds.), Transcaucasian Boundaries, UCL Press, London, 1996
Hill Fiona & Jewett Pamela, Report on Ethnic Conflict in the Russian Federation and Transcaucasia, Harvard University, J. F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Mass., 1993

This short list includes books in English that were used as major sources, along with a number of others, mostly in Georgian and Russian. However in general there are next to no comprehensive coverages of the Georgian history of the period, with a happy exception of a highly professional but sometimes uneven work of Professor Ronald Suny from the University of Chicago.