This is not about politics. This is about our socio-political culture, which we have either cultivated in the last 35 years or have relinquished due to our inability to digest the post-soviet vicissitudes of life. National freedom and independence are of course two sweet marvels to taste, but they are also extremely hard to live by. The finally achieved independence was preceded by the infamous 70 years of dubious socialist moral inertia and economic sluggishness, packed with those weird dreams about communism. Most of us see it as 70 years of lost time, buried talent, depressed wits, oversized lies and universal premeditated personal or public denunciation.
Let’s call it good luck that the soviet power waned, together with its morbid social, political, moral, cultural, philosophical and economic attributes and ingredients, eventually to be declared defunct. As a substitute for the erstwhile anomalous social order, there came good old capitalism, but it came in its wildest form; with a misrepresented market economy and distorted industrial relations. The collapse of the Soviet system, including in Sakartvelo, caught many off guard. And that’s where it all rapidly started: privatization of land and means of production, private property taking precedence over public, emergence of new “haves” and “have-nots,” interminable fights in-earnest for political power, lost jobs, annihilated scientific and administrative titles, a shattered educational system, the metamorphosis of interpersonal relations, an alteration of values, modification of traditions, painstaking handling of various types of maladjustments, and the ubiquitous street manifestations and never-ending demonstrations petitioning the frequently-changing authorities for something unlikely.
In Georgia, the main venue for turning up the vox populi to full blast is Rustaveli Avenue, the main thoroughfare of the capital city. Rustaveli Avenue has weathered a myriad of political outbursts and social explosions. This street, beloved by Tbilisians of many generations, has gone through hundreds of marches up and down the avenue by millions (aggregately) of protesters of every possible ilk that our civilization knows. The protestors’ march started 35 years ago and has not stopped since. Some of those marches have ended in ad-hoc attempts at a coup d’état or even revolution, changing the governments to good or bad.
The famous Rustaveli Avenue has seen thousands of motley political slogans of various content, and has heard the sounds of innumerable megaphones of tens of different makes. The protesting measures staged on Rustaveli have consumed hundreds of millions of Laris, which could have easily gone to the development of national industries or been used for the educational purposes of many generations, not to mention the lost chances to feed the hungry and to clad the naked. Our Rustaveli Avenue has seen armed men and women with bombs and bullets, their armored cars and their machine guns; it has witnessed the clatter of the Russian tank caterpillars, ready to crash into peaceful demonstrations of Georgians. Bestsellers could be written on the scary days and nights suffered by this nation right here on the beautiful Rustaveli Avenue, built in an eclectic architectural style for the people to enjoy and spend life on.
The saga of Rustaveli Avenue started in 1989. Everything happens and has happened here, from soviet-type public and military parades to angry people in the street shouting ‘Sakartvelo’ for reasons that be, tearing their throats and killing their nervous systems. And, behold, we are still there, day and night, certainly each time with a new reason to revolt and to demand the world hear our desperate battle cries.
Yes, we are still there, and goodness knows how long we are going to be the fixture of our good old avenue. The political decision-making process has moved from the parliament building onto the street, which may look good at first sight, but if deliberated on, may well leave the impression of incongruity, especially considering the process has continued on and off for 35 years already. I feel like crying ‘Help, help’ but who will answer? God? God will help only those who are ready to help themselves.
Blog by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
