PERSPEKTIVEN: Der Tourismus erhält und bedroht Georgiens Leben im Hochgebirge. Ein visueller Kommentar von Stefan Applis. via @EurasiaNet

[in english: eurasianet.org] Erzählungen einer authentischen Gesellschaft, die am Rande der Zeit lebt, können den höheren Lebensstandard in der sowjetischen Blütezeit nicht erklären.

Fotogallerie von Stefan Applies: Klick auf das Bild

Seit Ende der achtziger Jahre hat die georgische Region Svaneti mit Schwierigkeiten zu kämpfen. Weit entfernt von den politischen Machtzentren haben die Menschen in der rauen Bergregion mit einer weit verbreiteten Armut zu kämpfen. Mit dem Ende der sowjetischen Subventionen verließen viele Einheimische dieses Gebiet.

Aber eine zweite Chance hat sich in den letzten zehn Jahren mit der Einnahme von Touristendollars gezeigt. Dieser Tourismus bringt eine Reihe moderner Herausforderungen mit sich, die die Zukunft der Region bestimmen werden.

In der Sowjetzeit ermutigten die Moskauer Kulturbeamten die Svanen, sich von den benachbarten Gruppen im Sowjetischen Georgien zu unterscheiden und ihr ethnisches Bewusstsein zu stärken. Gleichzeitig haben die Behörden die lokalen Traditionen, die von Moskau als illegal eingestuft wurden, nicht aufhalten können: die Rolle der Ältestenräte bei der Verteilung von Land, der Vermittlung von Vendetten und der Entscheidung über Brautentführungen.

Heutzutage dominieren Geschichten über eine authentische Gesellschaft, die am Rande der Zeit lebt, in der sich im Laufe der Jahrhunderte wenig verändert hat - in der Tat kann man in alten Steintürmen ein märchenhaftes Leben finden - Orte wie Wikitravel, TripAdvisor, Facebook und Booking.com. Dies sind jedoch begrenzte Erzählungen mit wenig Verständnis für die Lebenswirklichkeit in Dörfern wie Ushguli, die oft wochenlang im Winter von der Außenwelt abgeschnitten und ohne Strom sind.

Diese Geschichten erklären auch nicht den höheren Lebensstandard der sowjetischen Blütezeit, als Ushguli - eine Ansammlung von vier Weilern mit 150 ständigen Einwohnern auf 2200 Metern Höhe im Schatten des höchsten Gipfels Georgiens - täglich durch Hubschrauberflüge mit Tbilisi verbunden. Als die lokale Sekundarschule eine große Anzahl von Kindern befähigte, einen Hochschulabschluss zu erlangen.

Nach verheerenden Lawinen im Winter 1986-1987 wurden Dutzende getötet, und die sowjetischen Behörden begannen, die Bewohner von Ushguli ins Tiefland umzusiedeln.

Einige kehrten in den 1990er Jahren zurück, als das unabhängige Georgien durch Krieg und Wirtschaftskrise zerrüttet wurde. Eine andere Welle kehrte vor einem Jahrzehnt, zumindest für eine gewisse Zeit zurück, als Georgien sich auf der internationalen Szene des Abenteuertourismus etablierte. Heute, neben den von der UNESCO anerkannten Wehrturmhäusern, gibt es zahlreiche Gästehäuser, die oft miteinander konkurrieren und in der Hochsaison von Juli bis September die Preise drücken.

Die Bergbewohner haben Erfahrung mit Tourismus. In den 70er Jahren kamen Besucher aus der gesamten Sowjetunion, um einige der höchsten Gipfel des Imperiums zu erklimmen.

Damals "beherbergten wir Touristen kostenlos, weil die Gastfreundschaft Teil unserer Kultur ist. Das Tal war voller Zelte mit Bergsteigern, Historikern, Geologen und Archäologen. Heute können wir uns das nicht mehr leisten", sagte Aysir Nizharadze, der im Sommer Kartoffeln anbaut.

Heute ist Tourismus der einzige Weg, um eine Familie zu ernähren, und es zieht die Bewohner Ushgulis an, zumindest für einen Teil des Jahres zurückzukehren. Während frühere Härten dazu beigetragen haben, das Gemeinschaftsgefühl, die gemeinsame Identität und die gegenseitige Verantwortung zu festigen, zerreißt die Konkurrenz heute die Gemeinschaft.

Aufgrund der hohen Subsistenzwirtschaft in der Landwirtschaft in Georgien sind die Preise für Fleisch, Milchprodukte und Produkte niedrig. Um eine Farm in einer Region mit einem so kurzen Sommer am Laufen zu halten, muss eine Familie Touristen als zahlende Gäste anziehen.

Trotzdem führt die Verzweiflung zu Spannungen. Die Familien in Ushguli, die sich früher auf harte Zeiten verlassen mussten, konkurrieren nun darum, die Erwartungen der Touristen zu erfüllen - niedrige Preise, eine "authentische" Atmosphäre, entsprechenden Komfort und Essen. Auf diese Weise gefährdet der Tourismus bestehende Bindungen der Gemeinschaft.

"Ushguli ist nichts ohne die Menschen in Ushguli", sagte Roland Dzelidze, ein Einwohner, der sein ganzes Leben lang in Ushguli verbracht hat, ohne seinen Dienst beim sowjetischen Militär zu leisten. "Nur einige von uns sind noch übrig - es gibt also nicht genug, um einander zu helfen, wenn etwas Schwieriges getan werden muss, wie etwa die Reparatur eines Daches. Und wenn Sie Ihrem Nachbarn nicht helfen, wird er Ihnen nicht helfen. Am Ende wohnen wir wie Konkurrenten nebeneinander.“

Stefan Applis ist Professor für Geographie an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen in Deutschland.

GEORGIA: Tinkering with the Country’s Dance DNA. By Monica Ellena and Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

VIDEO >>>

(eurasianet.org) Three long-limbed, statuesque women swirl across the stage in red dresses. Their drooping sleeves slash the air. Their bleached, buzz-cut heads glow in the dim light.

Always seeking a balance between tradition and innovation, the tiny South Caucasus country of Georgia is experimenting again -- this time by seeking to meld modern dance with folk dance.

Unlike in the West, dance in Georgia is not the domain of the artistic few. Intricate, gravity-defying folk dances are a national obsession, a genre believed to show the country at its best.

The focal point of this obsession is the state-funded Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili, a 70-year-old company now pushing the boundaries of Georgia’s national dance identity with a privately financed modern-dance project. Called the Ramishvilebi, in honor of the Georgian National Ballet’s legendary co-founder, Nino Ramishvili, the group gives women more dynamic roles, uses a mix of jazz, electronic and Georgian traditional music, and creates more room for improvisation.

It is contemporary – female dancers initially dance in flesh-colored leotards that make them appear topless – but “[i]ts accent and soul is [sic] very Georgian,” underlined Nino Sukhishvili, the company’s 50-year-old general director, who oversees the modern-dance project’s costumes and sets.

The Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili’s core choreography reflects the desire of Ramishvili and her husband, fellow ballet dancer Ilia Sukhishvili, to blend dance traditions from Georgia’s regions with classical ballet.

Men perform dizzying jumps and high-speed spins to a raging drumbeat or dance on their toes – the “repertory of twists, twirls and tumbles could put any modern break-dancer to the test,” The New York Times wrote in 1988, when the company first toured the US.

Women’s roles are far more demure, with much graceful gliding across the stage, but have evolved in recent years to include a military dance.

Nino Sukhishvili and her 42-year-old brother, the ensemble’s chief choreographer and artistic director, Iliko Sukhishvili (grandchildren of the ensemble’s co-founders) maintain that they want the troupe to recognize the past while keeping in step with the times.

The modern-dance performance’s symbolic trio of dancers in red evolves from a folk dance for three women (Samaia) modeled on frescoes of Georgia’s medieval Queen Tamar, they note. Its finale, which features women in strapless black dresses with red targets on their chests, draws from the traditional military dance, Khorumi.

Nonetheless, “to be true to the folk roots of our dance and create something new” is “very difficult,” conceded Iliko Sukhishvili.

One American professional dancer agrees. Overall, modern dance’s “fluid movement is at odds with the strict pattern of most Georgian dance,” noted Mira Cooks, a dancer with the New-York-City-based Battery Dance Company. In 2013, the New York troupe staged master-classes for Georgian dancers that emphasized improvisation and “breaking the rigid gender-conscious code that is typical of the Georgian dances.”

Breaking norms is a routine with which the Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili is familiar. In the late 1920s, Nino Ramishvili danced with her later husband, Iliko Sukhishvili, in male national costume, whipping off her hat at the end to show the audience that she was a woman. The dance (Ilouri) has since become a standard performance.

Other innovations have included Latin dances, and a “folkotheque” experiment the company brought on stage in 2004 to combine Georgian and dance-club music. The experiment sparked Georgian youngsters to try out the moves themselves in Georgian discos, Nino Sukshishvili claimed.

How far most Georgian viewers are willing to go with this latest transformation of the company remains an open question, according to David Bukhrikidze, a theater critic at the news-monthly Liberali.

By “mixing traditional and electronic music as well as Georgian dance elements with modern ones,” the project “is bound to divide,” Bukhridze said.

The project is not the first modern-dance venture for Georgia, but traditionalists indeed frown upon it as non-Georgian, or simply bewildering. “A confused jumble of movements, without a clear direction,” scoffed one 42-year-old woman. “I don’t see the point, really.”

Forty-three-year-old former Sukhishvili soloist Tea Darchia, whose daughter, Mariam Matiashvili, dances in the Ramishvilebi, thinks that the group is “too early for the Georgian audience,” just like the Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili itself “was too early for the audience in the 1940s.”

The troupe’s “productions take a few years to get to people’s heart[s], but then they are there to stay,” said Darchia, who danced with the company for 28 years.

Otar Kantaria, a 30-year-old international-development professional, already calls the modern-dance shows “pure energy,” with music that “takes Georgian sound to another level.”

Such enthusiasm also can be seen among younger dance students in this ever-dancing country.

The modern-dance group’s creators, as well as participants, stress that they only welcome the debate. Said 20-year-old Tatia Ukleba, part of the Ramishvilebi’s symbolic trio of dancers in red, “healthy criticism makes you stronger.” 

Editor's Note: 

Dance and journalism often go together. Tbilisi-based journalist Monica Ellena previously danced with an amateur contemporary dance ensemble, and graduated from university with a dissertation about American modern dance in the 1940s-1970s. Caucasus news editor Elizabeth Owen studies Georgian dance with the Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili and dances with an amateur ensemble. Photographer Justyna Mielnikiewicz also has studied Georgian dance.

PHOTOREPORTAGE: Post-Crimea, Phantom of Armenian Separatism Haunts Georgia. By Paul Rimple and Photography by Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

Amarcum Arakyan, an ethnic Armenian, cuts the hair of Josif Petriashvili, a Georgian, in the city of Akhaltsikhe.

Slideshow with Photos are here >>>

(eurasianet.org) For many in Georgia, Russia’s annexation Crimea is reigniting fears about separatism rooted in ethnic conflict and Kremlin meddling. But now Georgians aren’t just worrying about the breakaway entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they also are concerned about the loyalty of the predominantly ethnic-Armenian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti.

  While locals dismiss separatism concerns as nonsense, some say the speculation on the issue is indicative of a failure on the Georgian central government’s part to address complaints of the country’s Armenian-speaking minority in Samtskhe-Javakheti, which is roughly a three-hour drive south of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Officials contend progress has been made, but concede more can be done on the inclusivity issue.

A mountainous, ragtag region bordering both Turkey and Armenia, Samtskhe‐Javakheti contains roughly 250,000 ethnic Armenians; 55 percent of the region’s total population, according to Georgia’s latest census, compiled in 2002. Knowledge of the Georgian language here can run thin. At the same time, in the view of some outsiders, sympathy for Russia, which, until 2007, operated a 15,000-man base in the regional town of Akhalkalaki, can run strong.

Over the past few weeks, suspicions among Georgians about the country’s Armenian minority have risen, fueled by memories of Tbilisi’s 2008 conflict with Russia, as well as the Kremlin’s recent land-grab in Crimea. Underscoring those suspicions was the appearance of unconfirmed media reports about ethnic Armenians from Samtskhe-Javakheti allegedly applying, en masse, to receive Russian passports.

Senior Georgian government officials have denied categorically these reports, but, as Russia-Ukraine tension threatens to boil over, such media coverage, condemned as sensationalism by three local watchdog groups, could well continue. “Somebody is interested in stirring up the water,” commented Seda Melkumian, the Samtskhe‐Javakheti representative for the Ombudsman’s Office. “So far, I haven’t met one person with a Russian passport.”

Interethnic suspicion stems from a long-time tug-of-war over greater language rights for the region’s Armenian speakers; for some Georgians, it’s a campaign reminiscent of ethnic Russians’ complaints in Crimea.

But residents adamantly deny that such a struggle could encourage them to break with Tbilisi. “We aren’t separatists,” asserted Melik Raisian, a former member of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition from Akhalkalaki. “We are Georgian citizens. Why do we always have to prove we’re not separatists for wanting our rights?”

The separatist perception is generally connected to the United Javakh Democratic Alliance (“Javakh”), a nationalist movement that has called for political autonomy in the past. Many of the movements’ key members, including leader Vahag Chakhalian, were arrested in 2008 following a fatal bombing near the home of a police chief in the town of Akhalkalaki. Chakhalian was released in 2013 as part of Georgia’s mass amnesty of prisoners.

Javakh has little influence today, although many can identify with its grievances. The 2007 closure of Akhalkalaki’s Russian army base left many locals unemployed; as of 2012, the official unemployment rate stood at 7.5 percent. Many had hoped to find work on the Kars–Tbilisi–Baku railway, which goes through Javakheti, yet few have been employed.

The lack of economic opportunities drives many residents to Russia for work. Melkumian estimates that about half of Javakheti’s families have some family member in Russia. “In the villages, every family has somebody there,” she said.

That situation, though, is no different from elsewhere in Georgia, noted Ewa Chylinski, director of the European Center for Minority Issues in Tbilisi. As of this January, the Russian Federation ranked as the largest source of Georgia’s remittances, roughly $46.6 million in 2013, according to the National Bank of Georgia.

Nonetheless, the money trail does not mean a desire for independence. Chylinski rejected the notion of a separatist threat in Javakheti as “groundless.” The main problem is not autonomy, but language, she said. People cannot participate in Georgian society if they do not speak Georgian.

But for many in Samtskhe-Javakheti, that does not affect their identification with Georgia. “I’m Armenian, but I was born in Georgia. My father was born in Georgia. His father was born in Georgia and I will live in Georgia,” declared octogenarian Artush Artkopian, speaking via a teenage translator in Armenian since his knowledge of Georgian and Russian is limited.

Last year, Akhalkalaki's local council announced plans to petition the Georgian parliament to ratify the European Charter for Regional of Minority Languages, a Council of Europe convention that would make Armenian an official local language for Samtskhe-Javakheti. Getting no support in Tbilisi, where opposition from the Georgian Orthodox Church and politicians runs strong, the matter was soon dropped.

The central government, though, has taken some concrete steps to increase knowledge of Georgian. In 2010, the Ministry of Education established a program, called the “4 + 1” system,” which established a 5-percent quota for ethnic minorities in Georgian universities. Minority applicants to four-year higher educational facilities take an entrance exam in their own language, as well as an intensive one-year Georgian-language course.

Shorena Tetvadze, director of the Akhalkalaki branch of the Zurab Zhvania School of Public Administration, deems the program a success. After six years of 4 + 1, 130 ethnic Armenians graduated from Georgian universities in 2013, compared with only two in 2006, she said.

Akhalkalaki’s five grammar schools all teach Georgian, a policy the State Ministry for Reconciliation and Civic Equality calls a relative success. Three are Armenian-language schools, one is Russian and the other a Georgian school, with an enrollment of 120. Tetvadze, who is half ethnic Armenian, thinks more parents would enroll their children in the Georgian school if they did not fear assimilation. But 45 kilometers north of Akhalkalaki, in the ethnically mixed regional seat of Akhaltsikhe, 68-year-old barber Ambarcum Arakian dismissed that concern.

“Here, we’re all natives. The Georgians know Armenian and the Armenians know Georgian,” Arakian emphasized. He added that his grandson is attending university via the 4+1 program, and his granddaughter is going to a Georgian-language kindergarten “so she will know Georgian better.”

“I’m not afraid of assimilation,” he said. “We won’t lose our culture.” 

Editor's Note: Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.

SCANDAL: Georgia Opts for Gold Mining at Protected Historical Site. By Paul Rimple (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) It turns out the choice between gold and historical preservation is an easy one to make for officials in Georgia: the government is going for gold.

EurasiaNet.org has learned the Georgian Ministry of Culture and Heritage Protection has given Russian-owned mining company RMG Gold the green light to excavate gold from Sakdrisi-Kachagiani, a nine-hectare site in southeastern Georgia that many archeologists claim contains the remnants of one of the world's oldest gold mines. In 2004, archeologists from the National Museum of Georgia and the German Mining Museum unearthed caves and mining tools at the site that are believed to date to the third millennium, BC.

It is uncertain when the company will begin mining the site. Approximately half of its workforce has been on strike since January 24, seeking higher wages. Some critics hint the company is using the archeological controversy as cover for questionable labor practices.

Opponents are also upset with the government’s evident willingness to allow the destruction of what may be a unique site. Officials have additionally brushed off a call by civil-society activists for an independent study into Sakdrisi the site’s archeological significance.

During a March 17 trip by a EurasiaNet.org correspondent to the area, accompanied by government representatives, two manned security vehicles sat outside the entrance to Sakdrisi-Kachagiani. The company continues to block entrance to the site, even to Ministry of Environment officials.  It cites the potential for damage by outsiders and lingering issues about the site’s status as the cause.

Caves and mining tools discovered at the site during a 2004 excavation by the National Museum of Georgia and the German Mining Museum are believed to date to the third millennium, BC.

But in its March 14 decision, the Culture Ministry cited a supposed lack of proof that Sakdrisi had ever functioned as a gold mine as a reason for lifting the site's protected status as a a "cultural monument." For the past eight years, Sakdrisi had enjoyed protection, a designation that prevented mining at the site, located near the village of Kazreti, where a vast copper mine owned by RMG Gold's sibling, RMG Copper, is located.

In a March 13 discussion with university students, Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili indicated that another factor played into the government’s decision to lift the site’s protected status. Noting the supposed lack of evidence for Sakdrisi's past, the prime minister stressed that RMG Gold has invested $300 million into the Georgian economy and employs 3,000 people. For a country with an official unemployment rate of 16 percent, an economic growth rate of under 2 percent such earnings and employment figures are not exactly trivial. In addition, the government experienced a drastic shortfall in tax revenues for 2013.

RMG Gold, an entity that evolved from Georgia’s former mega-mining company Madneuli, is believed to rank as one of the country's largest taxpayers. RMG Gold executives claim that to find fresh gold and maintain their operations, they need access to Sakdrisi-Kachagiani. With gold prices now at $43.67 per gram, it appears it wasn’t difficult for officials to buy into RMG Gold’s argument. In 2013, gold accounted for 2.9 percent ($35.52 million) of the country’s export earnings.

Gocha Aleksandria, vice-president of the Georgian Trade Union Confederation, is among RMG Gold’s critics who note that the company started complaining about the Sakdrisi ban’s adverse impact on earnings only after it was hit with a strike.  RMG Gold representatives have claimed that as long as they can’t mine the area, they cannot pay higher wages or keep on idle workers. On January 31, one week after the strike began, the company dismissed 184 workers allegedly for these reasons.

"We see it as retaliation for the strike,” Aleksandria said, speaking for the confederation's membership.

The government has appointed mediators to settle the strike, but Aleksandria says the process is moving slowly. Even with a full work force, Mikheil Kvaratskhelia, head of RMG Gold's Health, Safety and Environment Department, reckons it will be "a couple of years" before the Sakdrisi-Kachagiani site is blasted for mining.

Skirting Sakdrisi-Kachagiani, the last in a series of five ore pits, is not an option, the company says. Geologists claim that ore from the site, believed to be the richest in gold, must be blended with that from the four other pits to get a consistent grade of gold.  Preliminary exploration work has only just begun on the first pit, about two kilometers away.

Civil-society activists are bracing for a long fight. "The government has a responsibility to explain, to argue its position, not just ignore [opponents]," commented Kakha Bakhtadze, a representativer of the Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN), one of the signers of a petition to Prime Minister Gharibashvili to preserve Sakdrisi's protected status.

The disregard that officials have exhibited toward those Georgians who want to protect Sakdrisi, "means that tomorrow the government can decide to destroy another cultural monument and do what it wants," Bakhtadze alleged.

The message the Culture Ministry is sending is mixed. In a March 14 statement, it called the claims about Sakdrisi's archeological value a "myth," yet it also announced intentions to invite independent international experts to monitor RMG Gold's mining at the site in case of "some scientific" discovery.

For Irakli Matcharashvili, program coordinator at Green Alternative, another of the Georgian NGOs opposing the ministry's decision, the plan makes no sense. "If this is a myth, why do they need a commission of experts? It's just words."

RMG Gold spokesperson Ekatarina Jojua has no information about a potential monitoring. "It's beyond our scope," Jojua said. "It's not clear who or how this will be done. It's up to the ministry."

Bakhtadze, the CENN representative,believes the government is suffering from short-sightedness. "The mine might be around for five or ten years. That's all. They will have destroyed the environment and [our] cultural heritage."

Editor's note: Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.

PHOTOGRAPHY: EurasiaNet's 2013 Photos of the Year (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) Istanbul's city center exploded in protest during the summer, Syria's civil war continued through the year, the targeting of undocumented workers in Russia intensified, and America's use of the Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan soon comes to an end. These, and hundreds of other stories, were covered by our contributing photojournalists and documentary photographers in 2013. It is through their eyes and by capturing with their cameras that EurasiaNet.org can present unique stories of people, events, and humanity in the South Caucasus, throughout Central Asia, across the Anatolian Plain, and over the rolling steppe of Mongolia.

These images are a look back at EurasiaNet's best photo coverage of news and stories from 2013. Although all of the excellent photos and hard work from our photographers cannot be featured on this select gallery of images, you can review all of our posted Photo Essays hereand our posted Audio Slideshows here.

A fence erected along the border of Georgia and breakaway South Ossetia is disrupting daily life in area villages. (Molly Corso)

Nakhshun Gasparova shows one of the few things she took with her when she fled the Nagorno Karabakh war. (Anahit Hayrapetyan)

The Firuza sanatorium in Borjomi is the only operational spa left almost untouched from the Soviet era. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Women comfort each other during a Tbilisi ceremony memorializing the conflict over Abkhazia. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Georgian soldiers disembark at the Manas Transit Center, in Kyrgyzstan, after a charter flight from Tbilisi. (David Trilling)

A Rustavi steel factory in Georgia is among the major buyers of scrap metal, which is melted and re-used. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

Students with the Tbilisi public school for visually impaired children rehearse for an upcoming concert. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

A history of Borjomi bottles is displayed in the entrance hall of Borjomi Bottling Factory # 2. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

War vet Mnats Sarkisian fought for Armenia 25 years ago during the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh. (Anahit Hayrapetyan)

Anton Pilossian pauses behind the curtain before the start of a show of Tbilisi’s 125-year-old circus. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Georgia’s famous Borjomi mineral water winds it way through the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Scrap metal workers strip rebar from an abandoned factory in Rustavi, Georgia. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

BLOG: Tamada Travels: The Color of Parajanov. By Giorgi Lomsadze (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) Iconic filmmaker Sergo (Sergei) Parajanov – a man who in his lifetime gained a reputation as the Soviet Union’s Fellini – would have turned 90 today. This EurasiaNet video pays tribute to Parajanov’s legacy, which extends well beyond his native region, the South Caucasus. 

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An ethnic Armenian born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Parajanov is still widely considered to be the greatest visual poet that the Caucasus has ever produced. Relying on a cinematic style that emphasized a rich, baroque tapestry of images and the expressive silence of his film characters, Parajanov transgressed the cultural and artistic borders of his time and place. While defying Soviet censors, he managed to rise above the parochial nationalist sentiments that prevailed in the Caucasus in his time -- much like another famous cosmopolitan Tbilisi Armenian before him, the 17th century troubadour Sayat Nova, a figure who became an inspiration for Parajanov’s internationally acclaimed movie, the Color of Pomegranates.

Ultimately, Communist authorities couldn’t tolerate Parajanov’s individualist streak, and he spent several years in prison starting in the late 1970s, convicted on what were widely seen as politically motivated charges. The experience broke his health, and he succumbed to cancer in 1990 at the age of 66. One can only wonder what might have been, if he could have lived long enough to enjoy full artistic freedom during the post-Soviet era.

Editor's Note: Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi. He is a frequent contributor to EurasiaNet.org's Tamada Tales blog. 

See also: 

Episode 1: Fortunetelling in Georgia

Episode 2: The Georgian Baths

Episode 3: The Return of Stalin

DRINKING: A Modern Makeover for Georgian Chacha. By Molly Corso (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) After centuries of being looked down on as wine’s poor moonshine cousin, Georgian chacha is finally getting the chance to unveil its smoother, more urbane self.

Created by distilling the waste left over from making wine, chacha is better known for its powerful punch and “medicinal” value than its taste – making it an odd choice to showcase at the rebirth of the Mtatsminda restaurant, a former icon of Tbilisi culinary life that reopened this summer for the first time in nearly two decades. 

But its legacy as a purely Georgian beverage tempted a team of consulting drinkmasters from the United Kingdom, brought in by the GMT Group to create a tableau of Georgian cocktails for Mtatsminda’s new Funicular Lounge.

A grappa-like drink made from the grape skins and pulp left over from wine production, chacha normally clocks in at around 60 proof and is consumed neat, in 100 ml shots to fight off colds and/or catch a fast buzz by Georgians of nearly every age, sex, and economic class. Those who are too young to drink it are, in western Georgia at least, forced to rub it on their arms and legs to fight off the sting of mosquitos in the summer.

The clear, sweet smelling liquor is so popular the Saakashvili administration decided to build a tower in its honor in a bid to attract tourists to Batumi. That, and use its waste material to feed cows in hopes of producing more milk.

The GMT Group spent $20 million and six years to renovate the crumbling Mtatsminda restaurant and funicular station, originally commissioned by Lavrentiy Beria in the 1930s, when he was the head of the Communist Party in the Caucasus before he moved on to lead the NKVD, the Soviet secret police.
The restaurant soon became Tbilisi’s calling card. Mtatsminda (Holy Mountain in Georgian) is perched in the hills that tower over the city; the airy balconies that define the restaurant’s façade provide a bird eye’s view of the capital. But the restaurant fell into disrepair in the post-Soviet period.

After six years of renovation, it is easy to imagine how the Soviet elite spent their free time here, enjoying a coffee and watching city life buzz far below them. The developers took care with the details: 1930s-era craftsmanship has been dutifully replicated on the ornate carvings that adorn the arched balconies. 

A wall-size mural of the city that was vandalized was carefully retouched and restored. Expensive chandeliers add a touch of class, and Georgian marble (a quarry was reopened just to provide the materials for the renovation) keep the restaurant anchored to its roots.

There are snazzy new additions, too, including a fresh cocktail menu that pledges to use local ingredients in a new line of drinks. In addition to the Chacha Punch, there is also a Georgian brandy drink, the Tbilisi Funicular, and a mojito-inspired Georgia Julip.

After years of downing chacha shots in village houses and along the sidelines of marathon supras, however, the idea of a cocktail made from the liquor induced visions of something as appetizing as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe’s Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Actually, however, the Chacha Punch – a mixture of chacha and dry vermouth shaken with fresh peach and apricot brandy and served in a sugar rimmed glass – is more margarita than moonshine. While it was a pleasant touch to the nostalgia-meets modern atmosphere at the Funicular Lounge, Beria might have appreciated a neat, 100 ml shot. Just for old time’s sake.

GEOPOLITIC: Georgia: Is Moscow Building Another Berlin Wall? By Molly Corso (isnblog.ethz.ch)

Russian soldiers pullout of Gori city 18 Aug 2008. Image by Bohan Shen/Flickr.

(isnblog.ethz.ch) Whenever Ilya Beruashvili hears his dog bark, he knows the Russians are at the gate.

For the past five years, Beruashvili, 53, who lives on the outskirts of the Georgian village of Ditsi, has watched from his windows as Russian soldiers stationed in the neighboring separatist territory of South Ossetia have patrolled the fields he used to farm.

They are coming ever closer. A few months ago, soldiers started building a fence just a stone’s throw from his shed, a structure that will leave Beruashvili’s house and fields outside of Georgian jurisdiction and inside Russian-guarded, breakaway South Ossetia.

Under the terms of the 2008 cease-fire agreement between Georgia and Russia, the area, just a few kilometers east of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, lies in territory where Russian troops should not be. But that hasn’t stopped the Russians from building a barrier there.

Zigzagging through 15 Georgian villages, the 27-kilometer-long fence has divided families and cut people off from their livelihoods, separating farmers from their fields and orchards. It cuts off access to cemeteries and water supplies for ethnic Georgians, as well as health services and pensions for some ethnic Ossetian families.

In Ditsi, the fence is made of green plastic material. In other villages, like Khurvaleti, a tiny farming hamlet about 69 kilometers west from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, it is barbed wire.

Wherever it stretches, it stands as a reminder of Russia’s failure to abide by the terms of the 2008 cease-fire – and of the inability of Tbilisi and the international community to hold Moscow to account.

The structure, though, is nothing new. In 2010, Beruashvili recounted, Russian troops tried to set up markers to extend South Ossetia’s frontier into his front yard. He was able to keep them out then – allegedly, by yelling at them that they were frightening his mother.

Russian soldiers first started putting up fences in this area, in the Georgian region of Shida Kartli, after the August 8-12, 2008 war, according to Ann Vaessen, a spokesperson for the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM), the lone international body observing the cease-fire line.

But despite protests by Tbilisi, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States that the fences constituted a violation of international law, construction is continuing.

The process has even “intensified” over the past several months, Vaessen said.
“Villages are divided, people can’t talk to each other anymore, can’t go and visit their relatives. They can’t go to the funeral of one of their close relatives,” she said.

For Hans Schneider, the German chief of the EUMM’s field office in Gori, the closest Georgian-controlled town to the conflict zone, the structure brings to mind the Berlin Wall, which divided the German city from 1961-1989.

“I saw my mother crying when she received a letter from my sister living on the other side of the barbed wire,” Schneider said, speaking in a personal capacity not intended to reflect the EUMM’s official position. “I know that we cannot completely compare the situation with Georgia. But I have seen so many mixed ethnic Ossetians and Georgian families where the mother is crying for their daughter too.”

Locals like Beruashvili see the wall as a clear restriction on freedom of movement. “They have already gated the high road. … Now they have turned back and moved in this direction and it seems they want these houses as well,” he said of houses on the outskirts of Ditsi.

Kakhaber Kemoklidze, the head of the Analytical Department at the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Tbilisi, told EurasiaNet.org that the Georgian government has repeatedly raised the topic of Russia’s fence during peace talks in Geneva and monthly meetings with Russian and South-Ossetian envoys. So far, the Kremlin has been impervious to Georgian efforts to bring about a halt in construction.
“We have to keep updating our partners and every country that has relations with Russia,” Kemoklidze said. “Russia right now does not care about the borders [between separatist South Ossetia and Tbilisi-controlled territory], but next week, next month, next year there might be an issue that they need [a] compromise on.”

In the end, he said, Georgia has to have “strategic patience.” Yet, to date, “strategic patience” has not produced any tangible benefits.

Insisting that the fence runs inside South-Ossetian territory, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin has refused to address the issue at Geneva. Georgian State Minister of Reintegration Paata Zakareishvili, the head of Tbilisi’s efforts to normalize relations with the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians, admits that the Geneva process has hit a snag.

Zakareishvili claimed that while Tbilisi has demonstrated its readiness for constructive dialogue with Moscow, the fences show that Russia is not ready to respond in kind. “But we will step over those fences,” he said, without elaboration. “The Berlin Wall was destroyed, so, fences … that is just comical.”
Georgia, he added, is betting on patience and “pragmatically looking at the situation.”

Locals living near the conflict line, however, have little reason for patience. Since the war, security concerns have prompted Beruashvili to move his three children out of his house. Alone with his mother, he tends to the few acres of orchards he can reach without risking arrest by the Russians. He waits for Georgian police to patrol the area before venturing to see his father’s grave, or to gather greens, close to land now patrolled regularly by Russian soldiers.
“The women are afraid, the elderly are afraid, we cannot bring the children here,” Beruashvili said. Russian soldiers have become more verbally aggressive of late, he claimed. “They want to take this territory,” he added.

Beruashvili, like scores of other locals, remains determined to make a stand and do everything he can to prevent his house and land from becoming, de facto, part of Russian-guarded, separatist South Ossetia. “I have set my mind to not allowing them in,” he said.

Whether such determination can succeed where international measures have failed remains to be seen.

This article was originally published by EurasiaNet.org.  Molly Corso is a freelance journalist who also works as editor of Investor.ge, a monthly publication by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia.

PHOTOREPORTAGE: Georgian Monk Builds Stairway to Heaven. By Temo Bardzimashvili (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) Come summertime, getting away from it all is the dream that haunts everyone. One Georgian Orthodox monk, though, has come up with a plan for a lifetime of escape atop a 40-meter-high rock column in central Georgia’s Imereti region.

In pagan times, the towering Katskhi Pillar, located about 10 kilometers from the mining town of Chiatura, was thought to represent a local god of fertility. With the arrival of Christianity in Georgia in the 4th century, it came to represent seclusion from the hurly-burly of ordinary life.

A church was first built atop the rock between the 6th and 8th centuries -- no one knows exactly how or why. Stylites, early Christian ascetics who prayed and fasted on top of pillars, used Katskhi for their devotions until some time in the 15th century, when Georgia was struck by domestic upheaval and invasions by Ottoman Turkey. The remains of one unknown practitioner today lay buried beneath the church.

Father Maxim, a 55-year-old native of Chiatura, says that he has dreamed of living atop the Pillar, like the Stylites, since he was young. “When my friends and I used to come up here to drink outdoors, I always envied that monk who used to live there when I looked at the pillar,” he recalled.

In 1993, Father Maxim took monastic vows, and two years later decided to move to Katskhi. After spending one winter in a grotto beneath the rock column, he received money from a “friend from Tbilisi” to build a new church on its top. The Georgian Orthodox Church’s local eparchy, or regional administration, allegedly granted Father Maxim permission to erect the structure on the site.

Amidst an ongoing religious revival in Georgia, Father Maxim’s mission easily found supporters. More and more people now come to Katskhi to donate money or building materials for the church’s construction -- a generosity that makes the overall cost of the project difficult to estimate, he claims. Many local villagers also volunteer to work on the site for free.

The labor involved, though, can require a head for heights, as well as for matters spiritual. Scaffolding runs halfway up the column; an iron ladder reaches to the top. Builders use ropes to lift heavy construction materials from the ground.

Following the example of the first Stylite, Simeon, Father Maxim does not allow women on the site -- a ban also practiced at pagan shrines in Georgia’s mountain regions of Tusheti and Khevsureti.

Work on the project should be largely finished by the summer of 2011.

Before that date, Father Maxim hopes to secure a blessing from Georgian Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II that would allow the monk to live on top of Katskhi alongside his newly built church. “They told me they allowed me to come here, but not to live up there,” he recounted, laughing. “They told me I was too young then. Now they’ll probably tell me I’m too old.”

The Patriarch’s office could not be reached for comment.

But if the blessing ever comes, Father Maxim knows what he will do -- climb up Katskhi, pull the ladder up after him and live apart from the world’s tumult, once and for all. Editor's Note: Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi. 

Photos are here >>>

PHOTOGRAPHY: Georgia: Officials See Trade as Way to Promote Ossetian Peace. By Paul Rimple and Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) In the Georgian village of Ergneti, many still look at the South Ossetian peace process down the barrel of a gun. But villagers and the Georgian government hope that, one day, progress will be measured by growing trade at the local market.

Located between South Ossetian and Georgian checkpoints on the road between the Georgian regional center of Gori and the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, Ergneti today is one of the coldest spots in the frozen conflicts involving Georgia and the breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. That wasn’t always the case: the town was once the site of one of the largest wholesale markets in the Caucasus.

A decade ago, thousands of ethnic Ossetians, Georgians and others used to mingle and trade freely each day, despite the territorial conflicts among them. Then, in 2004, the government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili closed the market down on the grounds that it was a smuggling den that was costing the Georgian state $120 million per year in lost tax revenue.

For Ergneti residents, the market’s closure meant a loss of jobs and income. Still trying to rebuild homes that were looted and razed by South Ossetian militia during the 2008 Georgian-Russian war, their options for employment are now few. The village’s perilous location discourages pretty much any economic activity other than subsistence farming. Georgian police manning the sandbagged border crossing point to a burned-out hotel 100 meters away and say there are no longer snipers there. Villagers point out where Russian tanks stand with their turrets aimed at them.

In a campaign speech last summer, calling the Ergneti market’s closure a huge mistake, Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili promised to reopen the bazaar in a bid to normalize ties with South Ossetia.

But, in his efforts to make that pledge a reality, Prime Minister Ivanishvili needs South Ossetia’s cooperation and, so far, the separatists are in no hurry to re-establish links with Tbilisi. On January 28, Boris Chochiyev, the region’s de-facto prime minister, warned that resuming cross-border trade with Georgian-controlled territory would bring “great harm to the republic of South Ossetia." He added that the issue should be “removed from the agenda,” the South Ossetian news agency Res reported.

Many people in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, however, like the idea of reopening the Ergneti market, according to Zarina Sanakoeva, a Tskhinvali-based journalist for RFE/RL’s Ekho Kavkaza radio service. Yet, political reality is another matter. “If you talk about opening the market, first you need to deal with the crossing of the border,” Sanakoeva said. “Everyone understands this.”

Nearly five years after the war, nobody from Ergneti crosses the border, locals say. Visits from the South Ossetian side also no longer occur.

Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Paata Zakareishvili supports reopening the Ergneti market to revive ties with South Ossetia residents. Both South Ossetia and breakaway twin Abkhazia, he maintains, should be engaged, not isolated, and commerce is the most neutral tool for accomplishing that.

But he cautioned that it’s too early to talk about reopening the Ergneti market. “The project should exist, but the foundation is not ready yet,” Zakareishvili said.

Tskhinvali reportedly refuses to talk to Tbilisi until Georgian leaders recognize “the genocide” that South Ossetia’s de-facto government claims was committed against ethnic Ossetians during the 2008 war. Tbilisi’s policy “is not to respond to their [Ossetians’] rhetoric.” Instead, Zakareishvili said, the Georgian government aims to drop the aggressive language that he claims marked President Saakashvili’s territorial reintegration policies, and try to get Tskhinvali talking by clearing the air.

In South Ossetia’s case, this means providing gas, drinking water and irrigation to both sides of the administrative border, including to previously Georgian-held villages within South Ossetia. For Abkhazia, the focus is on restoring a railway from Tbilisi -- a proposal not universally embraced.

In January, President Saakashvili, who had also touted the railway idea in 2005, argued that addressing the issue outside of the context of the removal of Russian troops from Abkhazia would be “criminal and anti-Georgian.” Otherwise, the railway will “only serve Russia,” he charged.

Some independent Georgian analysts, including Giorgi Tarkan-Mouravi, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies, agree. “Georgia and Abkahzia will just be a corridor for Russia and Armenia,” Tarkan-Mouravi predicted, in reference to the Russian military base near the Armenian town of Gyumri.

To Zakareishvili, that argument is weak. The railroad would bring benefits of economic development and reduced tensions to everyone, he insisted.

But before any progress can be made, he acknowledged, Russia will have to distance itself from its recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s independence – an unlikely move. “Russia has been a hostage of its own stance,” Zakareishvili said.

In Ergneti, residents maintain that, for both sides, it was ordinary people who ended up being the war’s biggest losers. The process of forgiveness needs more time and contact must be made, they say. Right now, the phone is the only option for contact between families and friends separated by just a few kilometers.

“We have to start talking and it’s possible,” said one Ergneti veteran of the 2008 war. “We need the market.”

Editor's Note: Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.

PHOTOESSAY: Georgia: The Tbilisi Circus Comes with Conflict Resolution, Plus Clowns. By Paul Rimple and Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) Hundreds of spectators drop their jaws and look up to watch a man suspended from the ceiling by his arms. His wife, suspended above him, steps on his head, then his back, and twirls him like a pinwheel as they slowly float down to the center of the ring.

Tbilisi’s 125-year-old circus is back in action, and its shows, playing to sell-out crowds, are proving that, for all the ethnic and geopolitical differences that split apart the Soviet Union, under the big top, circus performers remain part of one big family.

“Circus artists are not political,” commented 76-year old circus caretaker Arkady “Shekir” Parsadanishvili, who, in Soviet times, performed with a team of ethnic Uzbek, Georgian and North Caucasian “djigits” or stunt-horsemen. “They have no nationality.”

Instead, they have talent. Past armed conflicts over breakaway South Ossetia notwithstanding, a seven-man troupe of ethnic Ossetian trick-equestrians, the Ensemble Alania, was a Tbilisi-crowd favorite at a show this January.

"We worried how the Georgian public will meet us, an Ossetian team,” the group, whose members hail from throughout the Russian Federation, conceded on Facebook. A posted video indicates that all went well.

Their arrival even supposedly improved the health of retired rider Shekir. In a New Year’s Eve toast, he told the Ossetian riders that his blood pressure had normalized with their arrival in Tbilisi, and that his traumatized legs even seemed to hurt less.

Being a djigit is not about being “an acrobat on a horse,” commented ensemble member Arsen Batiyev, a 53-year circus veteran from North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation. It is about “character, temperament, style . . . the Caucasus.”

As elsewhere in the region, the civil unrest and economic crisis that followed the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse dealt a blow to Georgia’s state-financed collective of circus artists, many of whom ended up retiring or moving abroad to work.

But although economic times, including in Georgia, may have improved, some aspects of the Soviet circus culture have now vanished.

Russian tiger tamer, Olga Denisova, whose father was a first-generation acrobatics instructor at the prestigious Moscow State Circus School, said the old-time family dynasties of circus virtuosos are starting to disappear as more athletes join the circus ranks. “They’re sport people and don’t know anything about the circus,” Denisova said.

The history of the Georgian circus goes back to 1888, when the big top went up as the first in a network of circuses set up throughout the then Russian Empire. After its original building burned down in 1911, the circus moved on to a wine factory, before setting up shop in 1939 inside its present neo-classical, Stalin-era home in central Tbilisi. The building’s 2,000-seat capacity ranked it among the largest circuses in the Soviet Union, alongside Moscow, Kyiv and Baku.

After the circus fell into disrepair during the 1990s, the late Georgian tycoon Badri Patarkatsiashvili bought the circus in 2003 and began extensive renovations, in what he claimed was a labor of love.

The circus closed in 2007 after Patarkatsiashvili backed protests against President Mikheil Saakashvili and was accused of conspiring to overthrow the government. It took Patarkatsiashvili’s sister, Mzia Tortladze, until New Year’s Eve 2011 to reopen the circus.

Political dynamics aside, the most difficult hurdle was gaining the respect of the circus world, commented General Director Levan Gagvishvili. “We, the management, have no circus background and weren’t trusted. But we established our reputation after the second show, which was with an international collective . . . ” Gagvishvili recounted.

That reputation is critical. The circus world is an underground society. Unlike professional athletes who become household names and gain corporate sponsorships, the glory for circus artists comes from recognition by their peers.

With that in mind, the circus’s new directors have a vision to put Tbilisi on the world circus map, and to invite more stars, including the acclaimed Cirque du Soleil.

The circus, though, remains an uphill struggle. Georgia’s moribund economic situation means that “tickets need to be cheap;” between 10 to 25 laris (about $6 to $15), Gagvishvili said. To make ends meet, the circus rents out its building for birthday parties and is looking into setting up a kindergarten, too.

But for celebrated clown Anton Pilossian, a native Tbilisian whose face adorns a series of Grenadine postage stamps of world-famous clowns, the circus is not a business, but an art.

“A clown can exist without a circus, but a circus can barely exist without a clown,” noted Pilossian, who last performed in Tbilisi in 1986.

The proof – not surprisingly, some observers might add with a wink – can be found in the Caucasus itself, where the art of performance, in all aspects of life, can run deep and strong.

“I was in Yerevan once and met a very big minister, [an] important man,” Pilossian recollected. “He said to me, ‘You know, deep down inside, I am a clown. Just don’t you tell anybody.’”

Editor's Note: Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.

REVIEW: Georgia: Remembering Stalin (eurasianet.org)

eurasianet.org) A small crowd of frail, elderly Georgians bearing red banners and wreaths gathered on Tuesday in front of Joseph Stalin’s childhood home in the town of Gori to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Soviet leader’s death.  

“Comrades, we have gathered here to remember the great leader,” said Alexandre Lursmanashvili, the chairperson of Gori’s tiny Community Party, as he stood in front of the Stalin museum. With their hair blowing in the wind, elderly men and women swaddled in winter coats listened and applauded solemnly.

“Don’t film just the old people. Film the young as well,” some instructed reporters, pointing at a younger woman with a red flag. After some photo-opp'ing, the crowd walked to a nearby church to attend a memorial service for the city’s most famous son.

A recent study commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has shown that Stalin is still very popular in his native Georgia, though diehard admirers like members of the small Communist Party are few in number. The study, which includes surveys of respondents in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, showed that a startling 45 percent of an unspecified number of Georgian respondents still view the Great Terror's architect positively. Unlike for other ex-Soviet spots, though, in Georgia Stalin is more of a national brand than just a USSR leader and a victor of World War II.

“He made us famous,” commented one elderly woman in Gori to EurasiaNet.org. “He was born here, in our town, he built a great, beautiful country and then he saved the world from Nazi Germany. Did any other Georgian do anything that even comes near to that?”

Young people strolling in the park, watched the gathering from a distance and with a smile. “He was a great man, they say,” one youth said timidly. “Our grandparents are so in love with him that he must have done something good.”  

The millions who perished in labor camps?  Collateral damage, say the commemorators, adding that achieving national prosperity comes at a price.  

Proud as many Georgians may be of the dictator they produced, the majority of them say that today they wouldn’t want to live a in country ruled by someone like Stalin.