Georgia

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The authors are indebted to numerous individuals and organizations who gave their time, research materials, and expertise on affairs in the nations of the Transcaucasus to provide data, perspective, and material support for this volume. The collection of accurate and current information was assisted greatly by the contributions of Professor Stephen Jones of Mount Holyoke College, Dee Ann Holisky and Betty Blair of Azerbaijan International, and Joseph Masih of the Armenian Assembly of America. The authors acknowledge the generosity of individuals and public and private agencies including Azerbaijan International, the Embassy of Azerbaijan, and the White House Photo Office, who allowed their photographs to be used in this study.

Thanks also go to Ralph K. Benesch, who oversees the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program for the Department of the Army. In addition, the authors appreciate the advice and guidance of Sandra W. Meditz, Federal Research Division coordinator of the handbook series. Special thanks go to Marilyn L. Majeska, who supervised editing; Andrea T. Merrill, who managed production; David P. Cabitto, who designed the book cover and the illustrations on the title page of each chapter, provided graphics support, and, together with Thomas D. Hall, prepared the maps; and Helen Fedor, who obtained and organized the photographs. The following individuals are gratefully acknowledged as well: Vincent Ercolano, who edited the chapters; Barbara Edgerton and Izella Watson, who did the word processing; Catherine Schwartzstein, who performed the final prepublication editorial review; Joan C. Cook, who compiled the index; and Stephen C. Cranton and David P. Cabitto, who prepared the cameraready copy.

GEORGIA'S LOCATION AT a major commercial crossroads and among several powerful neighbors has provided both advantages and disadvantages through some twenty-five centuries of history. Georgia is comprised of regions having distinctive traits. The ethnic, religious, and linguistic characteristics of the country as a unit coalesced to a greater degree than before under Russian rule in the nineteenth century. Then, beneath a veneer of centralized economic and political control imposed during seventy years of Soviet rule, Georgian cultural and social institutions survived, thanks in part to Georgia's relative distance from Moscow. As the republic entered the post-Soviet period in the 1990s, however, the prospects of establishing true national autonomy based on a common heritage remained unclear.

Although Saint George is the country's patron saint, the name Georgia derives from the Arabic and Persian words, Kurj and Gurj, for the country. In 1991 Georgia-- called Sakartvelo in Georgian and Gruziia in Russian--had been part of a Russian or Soviet empire almost continuously since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when most of the regions that constitute modern Georgia accepted Russian annexation in order to gain protection from Persia. Prior to that time, some combination of the territories that comprise modern Georgia had been ruled by the Bagratid Dynasty for about 1,000 years, including periods of foreign domination and fragmentation.

Georgia - Early History

Archeological evidence indicates a neolithic culture in the area of modern Georgia as early as the fifth millennium B.C. Between that time and the modern era, a number of ethnic groups invaded or migrated into the region, merging with numerous indigenous tribes to form the ethnic base of the modern Georgian people. Throughout history the territory comprising the Georgian state varied considerably in size as foreign forces occupied some regions and as centrally ruled federations controlled others.

In the last centuries of the pre-Christian era, Georgia, in the form of the kingdom of Kartli-Iberia, was strongly influenced by Greece to the west and Persia to the east. After the Roman Empire completed its conquest of the Caucasus region in 66 B.C., the kingdom was a Roman client state and ally for some 400 years. In A.D. 330, King Marian III's acceptance of Christianity ultimately tied Georgia to the neighboring Byzantine Empire, which exerted a strong cultural influence for several centuries. Although Arabs captured the capital city of Tbilisi in A.D. 645, Kartli-Iberia retained considerable independence under local Arab rulers. In A.D. 813, the Armenian prince Ashot I became the first of the Bagrationi family to rule Georgia. Ashot's reign began a period of nearly 1,000 years during which the Bagratids, as the house was known, ruled at least part of what is now Georgia.

Western and eastern Georgia were united under Bagrat V (r. 1027-72). In the next century, David IV (called the Builder, r. 1099-1125) initiated the Georgian golden age by driving the Turks from the country and expanding Georgian cultural and political influence southward into Armenia and eastward to the Caspian Sea. That era of unparalleled power and prestige for the Georgian monarchy concluded with the great literary flowering of Queen Tamar's reign (1184-1212). At the end of that period, Georgia was well known in the Christian West (and relied upon as an ally by the Crusaders). Outside the national boundaries, several provinces were dependent to some degree on Georgian power: the Trabzon Empire on the southern shore of the Black Sea, regions in the Caucasus to the north and east, and southern Azerbaijan.

Georgia - Occupation and Inclusion in the Russian Empire

The Mongol invasion in 1236 marked the beginning of a century of fragmentation and decline. A brief resurgence of Georgian power in the fourteenth century ended when the Turkic conquerer Timur (Tamerlane) destroyed Tbilisi in 1386. The capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 began three centuries of domination by the militant Ottoman and Persian empires, which divided Georgia into spheres of influence in 1553 and subsequently redistributed Georgian territory between them. By the eighteenth century, however, the Bagratid line again had achieved substantial independence under nominal Persian rule. In this period, Georgia was threatened more by rebellious Georgian and Persian nobles within than by the major powers surrounding the country. In 1762 Herekle II was able to unite the east Georgian regions of Kartli and Kakhetia under his independent but tenuous rule. In this period of renewed unity, trade increased and feudal institutions lost influence in Georgia.

In 1773 Herekle began efforts to gain Russian protection from the Turks, who were threatening to retake his kingdom. In this period, Russian troops intermittently occupied parts of Georgia, making the country a pawn in the explosive Russian-Turkish rivalry of the last three decades of the eighteenth century. After the Persians sacked Tbilisi in 1795, Herekle again sought the protection of Orthodox Russia.

Georgia - Within the Russian Empire

Annexation by the Russian Empire began a new stage of Georgian history, in which security was achieved by linking Georgia more closely than ever with Russia. This subordinate relationship would last nearly two centuries.

Russian Influence in the Nineteenth Century

Because of its weak position, Georgia could not name the terms of protection by the Russian Empire. In 1801 Tsar Alexander I summarily abolished the kingdom of Kartli-Kakhetia, and the heir to the Bagratid throne was forced to abdicate. In the next decade, the Russian Empire gradually annexed Georgia's entire territory. Eastern Georgia (the regions of Kartli and Kakhetia) became part of the Russian Empire in 1801, and western Georgia (Imeretia) was incorporated in 1804. After annexation Russian governors tried to rearrange Georgian feudal society and government according to the Russian model. Russian education and ranks of nobility were introduced, and the Georgian Orthodox Church lost its autocephalous status in 1811. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Russification intensified, as did Georgian rebellions against the process.

Georgia - Social and Intellectual Developments

By 1850 the social and political position of the Georgian nobility, for centuries the foundation of Georgian society, had deteriorated. A new worker class began to exert social pressure in Georgian population centers. Because the nobility still represented Georgian national interests, its decline meant that the Armenian merchant class, which had been a constructive part of urban life since the Middle Ages, gained greater economic power within Georgia. At the same time, Russian political hegemony over the Caucasus now went unopposed by Georgians. In response to these conditions, Georgian intellectuals borrowed the thinking of Russian and West European political philosophers, forging a variety of theoretical salvations for Georgian nationalism that had little relation to the changing economic conditions of the Georgian people.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Russia, fearing increased Armenian power in Georgia, asserted direct control over Armenian religious and political institutions. In the first decade of the twentieth century, a full-fledged Georgian national liberation movement was led by Marxist followers of the Russian Social Democrat Party. Marxist precepts fell on fertile soil in Georgia; by 1900 migration from rural areas and the growth of manufacturing had generated a fairly cohesive working class led by a new generation of Georgian intellectuals who called for elimination of both the Armenian bourgeoisie and the Russian government bureaucracy. The main foe, however, was tsarist autocracy.

Georgia - The Spirit of Revolution

In 1905 a large-scale peasant revolt in western Georgia and general strikes in industrial centers throughout the Caucasus caused Russia to declare martial law. As elsewhere in the Russian Empire, the political reforms of 1905 temporarily eased tensions between the Georgian population and the Russian government. For the next decade, the Georgian revolutionaries of the Moscow-based Social Democratic Party were split between the gradualist Menshevik and the radical Bolshevik factions, and the incidence of strikes and mass demonstrations declined sharply between 1906 and 1917. Mensheviks, however, occupied all the Georgian seats in the first two seatings of the Duma, the Russian parliamentary institution established in 1905. In this period, Joseph V. Stalin (a Georgian who changed his name from Ioseb Jugashvili around 1910) became a leader of Bolshevik conspiracies against the Russian government in Georgia and the chief foe of Menshevik leader Noe Zhordania.

Georgia - World War I and Independence

Because Turkey was a member of the Central Powers in World War I, the Caucasus region became a major battleground in that conflict. In 1915 and 1916, Russian forces pushed southwest into eastern Turkey from bases in the Caucasus, with limited success. As part of the Russian Empire, Georgia officially backed the Allies, although it stood to gain little from victory by either side. By 1916 economic conditions and mass immigration of war refugees had raised social discontent throughout the Caucasus, and the Russian Empire's decade-old experiment with constitutional monarchy was judged a failure.

The revolution of 1917 in Russia intensified the struggle between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in Georgia. In May 1918, Georgia declared its independence under the protection of Germany. Georgia turned toward Germany to prevent opportunistic invasion by the Turks; the move also resulted from Georgians' perception of Germany as the center of European culture. The major European powers recognized Georgia's independence, and in May 1920, Russian leader Vladimir I. Lenin officially followed suit.

To gain peasant support, Zhordania's moderate new Menshevikdominated government redistributed much of Georgia's remaining aristocratic landholdings to the peasants, eliminating the longtime privileged status of the nobility. The few years of postwar independence were economically disastrous, however, because Georgia did not establish commercial relations with the West, Russia, or its smaller neighbors.

Georgia - Within the Soviet Union

In seven decades as part of the Soviet Union, Georgia maintained some cultural independence, and Georgian nationalism remained a significant--though at times muted--issue in relations with the Russians. In economic and political terms, however, Georgia was thoroughly integrated into the Soviet system.

The Interwar Years

After independence was declared in 1918, the Georgian Bolsheviks campaigned to undermine the Menshevik leader Zhordania, and in 1921 the Red Army invaded Georgia and forced him to flee. From 1922 until 1936, Georgia was part of a united Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (TSFSR) within the Soviet Union. In 1936 the federated republic was split up as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, which remained separate Soviet socialist republics of the Soviet Union until the end of 1991.

Although Stalin and Lavrenti Beria, his chief of secret police from 1938 to 1953, were both Georgians, Stalin's regime oppressed Georgians as severely as it oppressed citizens of other Soviet republics. The most notable manifestations of this policy were the execution of 5,000 nobles in 1924 as punishment for a Menshevik revolt and the purge of Georgian intellectuals and artists in 1936-37. Another Georgian Bolshevik, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, played an important role in the early 1920s in bringing Georgia and other Soviet republics into a centralized, Moscow-directed state. Ordzhonikidze later became Stalin's top economic official.

Georgia - World War II and the Late Stalin Period

Georgia was not invaded in World War II. It contributed more than 500,000 fighters to the Red Army, however, and was a vital source of textiles and munitions. Stalin's successful appeal for patriotic unity eclipsed Georgian nationalism during the war and diffused it in the years following. Restoration of autonomy to the Georgian Orthodox Church in 1943 facilitated this process.

The last two decades of Stalin's rule saw rapid, forced urbanization and industrialization, as well as drastic reductions in illiteracy and the preferential treatment of Georgians at the expense of ethnic minorities in the republic. The full Soviet centralized economic planning structure was in place in Georgia by 1934. Between 1940 and 1958, the republic's industrial output grew by 240 percent. In that time, the influence of traditional village life decreased significantly for a large part of the Georgian population.

Georgia - Post-Stalin Politics

Upon Stalin's death in 1953, Georgian nationalism revived and resumed its struggle against dictates from the central government in Moscow. In the 1950s, reforms under Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev included the shifting of economic authority from Moscow to republic-level officials, but the Russian Khrushchev's repudiation of Stalin set off a backlash in Georgia. In 1956 hundreds of Georgians were killed when they demonstrated against Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization. Long afterward many Stalin monuments and place-names--as well as the museum constructed at Stalin's birthplace in the town of Gori, northwest of Tbilisi--were maintained. Only with Mikhail S. Gorbachev's policy of glasnost in the late 1980s did criticism of Stalin become acceptable and a full account of Stalin's crimes against his fellow Georgians become known in Georgia.

Between 1955 and 1972, Georgian communists used decentralization to become entrenched in political posts and to reduce further the influence of other ethnic groups in Georgia. In addition, enterprising Georgians created factories whose entire output was "off the books". In 1972 the long-standing corruption and economic inefficiency of Georgia's leaders led Moscow to sponsor Eduard Shevardnadze as first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party. Shevardnadze had risen through the ranks of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) to become a party first secretary at the district level in 1961. From 1964 until 1972, Shevardnadze oversaw the Georgian police from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he made a reputation as a competent and incorruptible official.

Georgia - The First Shevardnadze Period

As party first secretary, Shevardnadze used purges to attack the corruption and chauvinism for which Georgia's elite had become infamous even among the corrupt and chauvinistic republics of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, a small group of dissident nationalists coalesced around academician Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who stressed the threat that Russification presented to the Georgian national identity. This theme would remain at the center of Georgian-Russian relations into the new era of Georgian independence in the 1990s. Soviet power and Georgian nationalism clashed in 1978 when Moscow ordered revision of the constitutional status of the Georgian language as Georgia's official state language. Bowing to pressure from street demonstrations, Moscow approved Shevardnadze's reinstatement of the constitutional guarantee the same year.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Shevardnadze successfully walked a narrow line between the demands of Moscow and the Georgians' growing desire for national autonomy. He maintained political and economic control while listening carefully to popular demands and making strategic concessions. Shevardnadze dealt with nationalism and dissent by explaining his policies to hostile audiences and seeking compromise solutions. The most serious ethnic dispute of Shevardnadze's tenure arose in 1978, when leaders of the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic threatened to secede from Georgia, alleging unfair cultural, linguistic, political, and economic restrictions imposed by Tbilisi. Shevardnadze took a series of steps to diffuse the crisis, including an affirmative action program that increased the role of Abkhazian elites in running "their" region, despite the minority status of their group in Abkhazia.

Shevardnadze initiated experiments that foreshadowed the economic and political reforms that Gorbachev later introduced into the central Soviet system. The Abasha economic experiment in agriculture created new incentives for farmers similar to those used in the Hungarian agricultural reform of the time. A reorganization in the seaport of Poti expanded the role of local authorities at the expense of republic and all-union ministries. By 1980 Shevardnadze had raised Georgia's industrial and agricultural production significantly and dismissed about 300 members of the party's corrupt hierarchy. When Shevardnadze left office in 1985, considerable government corruption remained, however, and Georgia's official economy was still weakened by an extensive illegal "second economy." But his reputation for honesty and political courage earned Shevardnadze great popularity among Georgians, the awarding of the Order of Lenin by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1978, and appointment as minister of foreign affairs of the Soviet Union in 1985.

Georgia - Patiashvili

Jumber Patiashvili, a nondescript party loyalist, succeeded Shevardnadze as head of the Georgian Communist Party. Under Patiashvili, most of Shevardnadze's initiatives atrophied, and no new policy innovations were undertaken. Patiashvili removed some of Shevardnadze's key appointees, although he could not dismiss his predecessor's many middle-echelon appointees without seriously damaging the party apparatus.

In dealing with dissent, Patiashvili, who distrusted radical and unofficial groups, returned to the usual confrontational strategy of Soviet regional party officials. The party head met major resistance when he backed a plan for a new Transcaucasian railroad that would cut a swath parallel to the Georgian Military Highway in a historic, scenic, and environmentally significant region. In a televised speech, Patiashvili called opponents of the project "enemies of the people"--a phrase used in the 1930s to justify liquidation of Stalin's real and imagined opponents. By isolating opposition groups, Patiashvili forced reformist leaders into underground organizations and confrontational behavior.

Georgia - After Communist Rule

In Georgia Gorbachev's simultaneous policies of glasnost and continued control energized the forces of nationalism, which pushed the republic out of the central state before the Soviet Union fell apart. The first years of independence were marked by struggle among Georgians for control of the government and by conflict with ethnic minorities seeking to escape the control of Tbilisi.

Georgia - Nationalism Rises

In April 1989, Soviet troops broke up a peaceful demonstration at the government building in Tbilisi. Under unclear circumstances, twenty Georgians, mostly women and children, were killed. The military authorities and the official media blamed the demonstrators, and opposition leaders were arrested. The Georgian public was outraged. What was afterwards referred to as the April Tragedy fundamentally radicalized political life in the republic. Shevardnadze was sent to Georgia to restore calm. He arranged for the replacement of Patiashvili by Givi Gumbaridze, head of the Georgian branch of the Committee for State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti--KGB).

In an atmosphere of renewed nationalist fervor, public opinion surveys indicated that the vast majority of the population was committed to immediate independence from Moscow. Although the communist party was discredited, it continued to control the formal instruments of power. In the months following the April Tragedy, the opposition used strikes and other forms of pressure to undermine communist power and set the stage for de facto separation from the Soviet Union.

Georgia - The Rise of Gamsakhurdia

Partly as a result of the conspiratorial nature of antigovernment activity prior to 1989, opposition groups tended to be small, tightly knit units organized around prominent individuals. The personal ambitions of opposition leaders prevented the emergence of a united front, but Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the most widely honored and recognized of the nationalist dissidents, moved naturally to a position of leadership. The son of Georgia's foremost contemporary novelist, Gamsakhurdia had gained many enemies during the communist years in acrimonious disputes and irreconcilable factional splits.

Opposition pressure resulted in an open, multiparty election in October 1990. Despite guarantees written into the new law on elections, many prominent opposition parties boycotted the vote, arguing that their groups could not compete fairly and that their participation under existing conditions would only legitimize continuation of Georgia's "colonial status" within the Soviet system.

As an alternative, the opposition parties had held their own election, without government approval, in September 1990. Although the minimum turnout for a valid election was not achieved, the new "legislative" body, called the Georgian National Congress, met and became a center of opposition to the government chosen in the official October election. In the officially sanctioned voting, Gamsakhurdia's Round Table/Free Georgia coalition won a solid majority in the Supreme Soviet, Georgia's official parliamentary body.

Arguably the most virulently anticommunist politician ever elected in a Soviet republic, Gamsakhurdia was intolerant of all political opposition. He often accused his opposition of treason or involvement with the KGB. The quality of political debate in Georgia was lowered by the exchange of such charges between Gamsakhurdia and opposition leaders such as Gia Chanturia of the National Democratic Party.

After his election, Gamsakhurdia's greatest concern was the armed opposition. Both Gamsakhurdia's Round Table/Free Georgia coalition and some opposition factions in the Georgian National Congress had informal military units, which the previous, communist Supreme Soviet had legalized under pressure from informal groups. The most formidable of these groups were the Mkhedrioni (horsemen), said to number 5,000 men, and the socalled National Guard. The new parliament, dominated by Gamsakhurdia, outlawed such groups and ordered them to surrender their weapons, but the order had no effect. After the elections, independent military groups raided local police stations and Soviet military installations, sometimes adding formidable weaponry to their arsenals. In February 1991, a Soviet army counterattack against Mkhedrioni headquarters had led to the imprisonment of the Mkhedrioni leader.

Gamsakhurdia moved quickly to assert Georgia's independence from Moscow. He took steps to bring the Georgian KGB and Ministry of Internal Affairs (both overseen until then from Moscow) under his control. Gamsakhurdia refused to attend meetings called by Gorbachev to preserve a working union among the rapidly separating Soviet republics. Gamsakhurdia's communications with the Soviet leader usually took the form of angry telegrams and telephone calls. In May 1991, Gamsakhurdia ended the collection in Georgia of Gorbachev's national sales tax on the grounds that it damaged the Georgian economy. Soon Georgia ceased all payments to Moscow, and the central government took steps to isolate the republic economically.

Rather than consent to participate in Gorbachev's March 1991 referendum on preserving a federation of Soviet republics, Gamsakhurdia organized a separate referendum on Georgian independence. The measure was approved by 98.9 percent of Georgian voters. Shortly thereafter, on the second anniversary of the April Tragedy (April 9, 1991), the Georgian parliament passed a declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. Once the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, Georgia refused to participate in the formation or subsequent activities of the Commonwealth of Independent States ( CIS), the loose confederation of independent republics that succeeded the Soviet Union.

Georgia - The Struggle for Control

In May 1991, Gamsakhurdia was elected president of Georgia (receiving over 86 percent of the vote) in the first popular presidential election in a Soviet republic. Apparently perceiving the election as a mandate to run Georgia personally, Gamsakhurdia made increasingly erratic policy and personnel decisions in the months that followed, while his attitude toward the opposition became more strident. After intense conflict with Gamsakhurdia, Prime Minister Tengiz Sigua resigned in August 1991.

The August 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev in Moscow marked a turning point in Georgian as well as in Soviet politics. Gamsakhurdia made it clear that he believed the coup, headed by the Soviet minister of defense and the head of the KGB, was both inevitable and likely to succeed. Accordingly, he ordered Russian president Boris N. Yeltsin's proclamations against the coup removed from the streets of Tbilisi. Gamsakhurdia also ordered the National Guard to turn in its weapons, disband, and integrate itself into the forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Opposition leaders immediately denounced this action as capitulation to the coup. In defiance of Gamskhurdia, National Guard commander Tengiz Kitovani led most of his troops out of Tbilisi.

The opposition to Gamsakhurdia, now joined in an uneasy coalition behind Sigua and Kitovani, demanded that Gamsakhurdia resign and call new parliamentary elections. Gamsakhurdia refused to compromise, and his troops forcibly dispersed a large opposition rally in Tbilisi in September 1991. Chanturia, whose National Democratic Party was one of the most active opposition groups at that time, was arrested and imprisoned on charges of seeking help from Moscow to overthrow the government.

In the ensuing period, both the government and extraparliamentary opposition intensified the purchase and "liberation" of large quantities of weapons--mostly from Soviet military units stationed in Georgia--including heavy artillery, tanks, helicopter gunships, and armored personnel carriers. On December 22, intense fighting broke out in central Tbilisi after government troops again used force to disperse demonstrators. At this point, the National Guard and the Mkhedrioni besieged Gamsakhurdia and his supporters in the heavily fortified parliament building. Gunfire and bombs severely damaged central Tbilisi, and Gamsakhurdia fled the city in early January 1992 to seek refuge outside Georgia.

Georgia - The Military Council

A Military Council made up of Sigua, Kitovani, and Mkhedrioni leader Jaba Ioseliani took control after Gamsakhurdia's departure. Shortly thereafter, a Political Consultative Council and a larger State Council were formed to provide more decisive leadership. In March 1992, Eduard Shevardnadze returned to Georgia at the invitation of the Military Council. Shortly thereafter Shevardnadze joined Ioseliani, Sigua, and Kitovani to form the State Council Presidium. All four were given the right of veto over State Council decisions.

Gamsakhurdia, despite his absence, continued to enjoy substantial support within Georgia, especially in rural areas and in his home region of Mingrelia in western Georgia. Gamsakhurdia supporters now constituted another extraparliamentary opposition, viewing themselves as victims of an illegal and unconstitutional putsch and refusing to participate in future elections. Based in the neighboring Chechen Autonomous Republic of Russia, Gamsakhurdia continued to play a direct role in Georgian politics, characterizing Shevardnadze as an agent of Moscow in a neocommunist conspiracy against Georgia. In March 1992, Gamsakhurdia convened a parliament in exile in the Chechen city of Groznyi. In 1992 and 1993, his armed supporters prevented the Georgian government from gaining control of parts of western Georgia.

Georgia - Threats of Fragmentation - South Ossetia

The autonomous areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia added to the problems of Georgia's post-Soviet governments. By 1993 separatist movements in those regions threatened to tear the republic into several sections. Intimations of Russian interference in the ethnic crises also complicated Georgia's relations with its giant neighbor.

South Ossetia

The first major crisis faced by the Gamsakhurdia regime was in the South Ossetian Autonomous Region, which was largely populated by Ossetians, a separate ethnic group speaking a language based on Persian. In December 1990, Gamsakhurdia summarily abolished the region's autonomous status within Georgia in response to its longtime efforts to gain independence. When the South Ossetian regional legislature took its first steps toward secession and union with the North Ossetian Autonomous Republic of Russia, Georgian forces invaded. The resulting conflict lasted throughout 1991, causing thousands of casualties and creating tens of thousands of refugees on both sides of the Georgian-Russian border. Yeltsin mediated a cease-fire in July 1992. A year later, the cease-fire was still in place, enforced by Ossetian and Georgian troops together with six Russian battalions. Representatives of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe ( CSCE) attempted mediation, but the two sides remained intractable. In July 1993, the South Ossetian government declared negotiations over and threatened to renew large-scale combat, but the cease-fire held through early 1994.

Georgia - Abkhazia

In the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic of Georgia, the Abkhazian population, like the Ossetians a distinct ethnic group, feared that the Georgians would eliminate their political autonomy and destroy the Abkhaz as a cultural entity. On one hand, a long history of ill will between the Abkhaz and the Georgians was complicated by the minority status of the Abkhaz within the autonomous republic and by periodic Georgianization campaigns, first by the Soviet and later by the Georgian government. On the other hand, the Georgian majority in Abkhazia resented disproportionate distribution of political and administrative positions to the Abkhaz. Beginning in 1978, Moscow had sought to head off Abkhazian demands for independence by allocating as much as 67 percent of party and government positions to the Abkhaz, although, according to the 1989 census, 2.5 times as many Georgians as Abkhaz lived in Abkhazia.

Tensions in Abkhazia led to open warfare on a much larger scale than in South Ossetia. In July 1992, the Abkhazian Supreme Soviet voted to return to the 1925 constitution under which Abkhazia was separate from Georgia. In August 1992, a force of the Georgian National Guard was sent to the Abkhazian capital of Sukhumi with orders to protect Georgian rail and road supply lines, and to secure the border with Russia. When Abkhazian authorities reacted to this transgression of their selfproclaimed sovereignty, hundreds were killed in fighting between Abkhazian and Georgian forces, and large numbers of refugees fled across the border into Russia or into other parts of Georgia. The Abkhazian government was forced to flee Sukhumi.

For two centuries, the Abkhaz had viewed Russia as a protector of their interests against the Georgians; accordingly, the Georgian incursion of 1992 brought an Abkhazian plea for Russia to intervene and settle the issue. An unknown number of Russian military personnel and volunteers also fought on the side of the Abkhaz, and Shevardnadze accused Yeltsin of intentionally weakening Georgia's national security by supporting separatists. After the failure of three cease-fires, in September 1993 Abkhazian forces besieged and captured Sukhumi and drove the remaining Georgian forces out of Abkhazia. In the fall of 1993, mediation efforts by the United Nations (UN) and Russia were slowed by Georgia's struggle against Gamsakhurdia's forces in Mingrelia, south of Abkhazia. In early 1994, a de facto ceasefire remained in place, with the Inguri River in northwest Georgia serving as the dividing line. Separatist forces made occasional forays into Georgian territory, however.

In September 1993, Gamsakhurdia took advantage of the struggle in Abkhazia to return to Georgia and rally enthusiastic but disorganized Mingrelians against the demoralized Georgian army. Although Gamsakhurdia initially represented his return as a rescue of Georgian forces, he actually included Abkhazian troops in his new advance. Gamsakhurdia's forces took several towns in western Georgia, adding urgency to an appeal by Shevardnadze for Russian military assistance. In mid-October the addition of Russian weapons, supply-line security, and technical assistance turned the tide against Gamsakhurdia and brought a quick end to hostilities on the Mingrelian front. His cause apparently lost, Gamsakhurdia committed suicide in January 1994.

Georgia - Geography

Located in the region known as the Caucasus or Caucasia, Georgia is a small country of approximately 69,875 square kilometers--about the size of West Virginia. To the north and northeast, Georgia borders the Russian republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia (all of which began to seek autonomy from Russia in 1992). Neighbors to the south are Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. The shoreline of the Black Sea constitutes Georgia's entire western border.

Topography

Despite its small area, Georgia has one of the most varied topographies of the former Soviet republics. Georgia lies mostly in the Caucasus Mountains, and its northern boundary is partly defined by the Greater Caucasus range. The Lesser Caucasus range, which runs parallel to the Turkish and Armenian borders, and the Surami and Imereti ranges, which connect the Greater Caucasus and the Lesser Caucasus, create natural barriers that are partly responsible for cultural and linguistic differences among regions. Because of their elevation and a poorly developed transportation infrastructure, many mountain villages are virtually isolated from the outside world during the winter. Earthquakes and landslides in mountainous areas present a significant threat to life and property. Among the most recent natural disasters were massive rock- and mudslides in Ajaria in 1989 that displaced thousands in southwestern Georgia, and two earthquakes in 1991 that destroyed several villages in northcentral Georgia and South Ossetia.

Georgia has about 25,000 rivers, many of which power small hydroelectric stations. Drainage is into the Black Sea to the west and through Azerbaijan to the Caspian Sea to the east. The largest river is the Mtkvari (formerly known by its Azerbaijani name, Kura, which is still used in Azerbaijan), which flows 1,364 kilometers from northeast Turkey across the plains of eastern Georgia, through the capital, Tbilisi, and into the Caspian Sea. The Rioni River, the largest river in western Georgia, rises in the Greater Caucasus and empties into the Black Sea at the port of Poti. Soviet engineers turned the river lowlands along the Black Sea coast into prime subtropical agricultural land, embanked and straightened many stretches of river, and built an extensive system of canals. Deep mountain gorges form topographical belts within the Greater Caucasus.

Georgia's climate is affected by subtropical influences from the west and mediterranean influences from the east. The Greater Caucasus range moderates local climate by serving as a barrier against cold air from the north. Warm, moist air from the Black Sea moves easily into the coastal lowlands from the west. Climatic zones are determined by distance from the Black Sea and by altitude. Along the Black Sea coast, from Abkhazia to the Turkish border, and in the region known as the Kolkhida Lowlands inland from the coast, the dominant subtropical climate features high humidity and heavy precipitation (1,000 to 2,000 millimeters per year; the Black Sea port of Batumi receives 2,500 millimeters per year). Several varieties of palm trees grow in these regions, where the midwinter average temperature is 5° C and the midsummer average is 22° C.

The plains of eastern Georgia are shielded from the influence of the Black Sea by mountains that provide a more continental climate. Summer temperatures average 20° C to 24° C, winter temperatures 2° C to 4° C. Humidity is lower, and rainfall averages 500 to 800 millimeters per year. Alpine and highland regions in the east and west, as well as a semiarid region on the Iori Plateau to the southeast, have distinct microclimates.

At higher elevations, precipitation is sometimes twice as heavy as in the eastern plains. In the west, the climate is subtropical to about 650 meters; above that altitude (and to the north and east) is a band of moist and moderately warm weather, then a band of cool and wet conditions. Alpine conditions begin at about 2,100 meters, and above 3,600 meters snow and ice are present year-round.

Beginning in the 1980s, Black Sea pollution has greatly harmed Georgia's tourist industry. Inadequate sewage treatment is the main cause of that condition. In Batumi, for example, only 18 percent of wastewater is treated before release into the sea. An estimated 70 percent of surface water contains health-endangering bacteria to which Georgia's high rate of intestinal disease is attributed.

The war in Abkhazia did substantial damage to the ecological habitats unique to that region. In other respects, experts considered Georgia's environmental problems less serious than those of more industrialized former Soviet republics. Solving Georgia's environmental problems was not a high priority of the national government in the post-Soviet years, however; in 1993 the minister for protection of the environment resigned to protest this inactivity. In January 1994, the Cabinet of Ministers announced a new, interdepartmental environmental monitoring system to centralize separate programs under the direction of the Ministry of Protection of the Environment. The system would include a central environmental and information and research agency. The Green Party used its small contingent in the parliament to press environmental issues in 1993.

Over many centuries, Georgia gained a reputation for tolerance of minority religions and ethnic groups from elsewhere, but the postcommunist era was a time of sharp conflict among groups long considered part of the national fabric. Modern Georgia is populated by several ethnic groups, but by far the most numerous of them is the Georgians. In the early 1990s, the population was increasing slowly, and armed hostilities were causing large-scale emigration from certain regions. The ethnic background of some groups, such as the Abkhaz, was a matter of sharp dispute. Population Characteristics

According to the Soviet Union's 1989 census, the total population of Georgia was 5.3 million. The estimated population in 1993 was 5.6 million. Between 1979 and 1989, the population grew by 8.5 percent, with growth rates of 16.7 percent among the urban population and 0.3 percent in rural areas. In 1993 the overall growth rate was 0.8 percent. About 55.8 percent of the population was classified as urban; Tbilisi, the capital and largest city, had more than 1.2 million inhabitants, or approximately 23 percent of the national total. The capital's population grew by 18.1 percent between 1979 and 1989, mainly because of migration from rural areas. Kutaisi, the second largest city, had a population of about 235,000.

In 1991 Georgia's birth rate was seventeen per 1,000 population, its death rate nine per 1,000. Life expectancy was seventy-five years for females and sixty-seven years for males. In 1990 the infant mortality rate was 196 per 10,000 live births. Average family size in 1989 was 4.1, with larger families predominantly located in rural areas. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Georgian population was aging slowly; the cohort under age nineteen shrank slightly and the cohort over sixty increased slightly as percentages of the entire population during that period. The Georgian and Abkhazian populations were the subjects of substantial international study by anthropologists and gerontologists because of the relatively high number of centenarians among them.

Regional ethnic distribution is a major cause of the problems Georgia faces along its borders and within its territory. Russians, who make up the third largest ethnic group in the country (6.7 percent of the total population in 1989), do not constitute a majority in any district. The highest concentration of Russians is in Abkhazia, but the overall dispersion of the Russian population restricts political representation of the Russians' interests.

Azerbaijanis are a majority of the population in the districts of Marneuli and Bolnisi, south of Tbilisi on the Azerbaijan border, while Armenians are a majority in the Akhalkalaki, Ninotsminda, and Dmanisi districts immediately to the west of the Azerbaijani-dominated regions and just north of the Armenian border. Despite the proximity and intermingling of Armenian and Azerbaijani populations in Georgia, in the early 1990s few conflicts in Georgia reflected the hostility of the Armenian and Azerbaijani nations over the territory of NagornoKarabakh. Organizations in Georgia representing the interests of the Armenian and Azerbaijani populations had relatively few conflicts with authorities in Tbilisi in the first postcommunist years.

Under Soviet rule, a large part of Georgian territory was divided into autonomous regions that included concentrations of non-Georgian peoples. The largest such region was the Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Abkhazian ASSR; after Georgian independence, the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic). The distribution of territory and the past policies of tsarist and Soviet rule meant that in 1989 the Abkhaz made up only 17.8 percent of the population of the autonomous republic named for them (compared with 44 percent Georgians and 16 percent Russians). The Abkhaz constituted less than 2 percent of the total population of Georgia. Although Georgian was the prevailing language of the region as early as the eighth century A.D., Abkhazia was a separate Soviet republic from 1921 until 1930, when it was incorporated into Georgia as an autonomous republic.

In the thirteenth century, Ossetians arrived on the south side of the Caucasus Mountains, in Georgian territory, when the Mongols drove them from what is now the North Ossetian Autonomous Republic of Russia. In 1922 the South Ossetian Autonomous Region was formed within the new Transcaucasian republic of the Soviet Union. The autonomous region was abolished officially by the Georgian government in 1990, then reinstated in 1992. South Ossetia includes many all-Georgian villages, and the Ossetian population is concentrated in the cities of Tskhinvali and Java. Overall, in the 1980s the population in South Ossetia was 66 percent Ossetian and 29 percent Georgian. In 1989 more than 60 percent of the Ossetian population of Georgia lived outside South Ossetia.

The Ajarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Ajarian ASSR) in southwest Georgia was redesignated the Ajarian Autonomous Republic in 1992. The existence of that republic reflects the religious and cultural differences that developed when the Ottoman Empire occupied part of Georgia in the sixteenth century and converted the local population to Islam. The Ajarian region was not included in Georgia until the Treaty of Berlin separated it from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. An autonomous republic within Georgia was declared in 1921. Because the Ajarian population is indistinguishable from Georgians in language and belongs to the same ethnic group, it generally considers itself Georgian. Eventually "Ajarian" was dropped from the ethnic categories in the Soviet national census. Thus, in the 1979 census the ethnic breakdown of the region showed about 80 percent Georgians (including Ajars) and 10 percent Russians. Nevertheless, the autonomous republic remains an administrative subdivision of the Republic of Georgia, local elites having fought hard to preserve the special status that this distinction affords them.

The so-called Meskhetian Turks are another potential source of ethnic discord. Forcibly exiled from southern Georgia to Uzbekistan by Stalin during World War II, many of the estimated 200,000 Meskhetian Turks outside Georgia sought to return to their homes in Georgia after 1990. Many Georgians argued that the Meskhetian Turks had lost their links to Georgia and hence had no rights that would justify the large-scale upheaval resettlement would cause. However, Shevardnadze argued that Georgians had a moral obligation to allow this group to return.

Among the leading ethnic groups, the fastest growth between 1979 and 1989 occurred in the Azerbaijani population and the Kurds, whose numbers increased by 20 percent and 30 percent, respectively. This trend worried Georgians, even though both groups combined made up less than 7 percent of the republic's population. Over the same period, the dominant Georgians' share of the population increased from 68.8 percent to 70.1 percent. Ethnic shifts after 1989--particularly the emigration of Russians, Ukrainians, and Ossetians--were largely responsible for the Georgians' increased share of the population.

For centuries, Georgia's geographic position has opened it to religious and cultural influences from the West, Persia, Turkey, and Russia. The resultant diversity continues to characterize the cultural and religious life of modern Georgia. However, the Georgian language displays unique qualities that cannot be attributed to any outside influence. Language

Even more than religion, the issue of language was deeply entwined with political struggles in Georgia under communist rule. As elsewhere, language became a key factor in ethnic selfidentification under the uniformity of the communist system. Written in a unique alphabet that began to exhibit distinctions from the Greek alphabet in the fifth century A.D., Georgian is linguistically distant from Turkic and Indo-European languages. In the Soviet period, Georgians fought relentlessly to prevent what they perceived as the encroachment of Russian on their native language. Even the republic's Soviet-era constitutions specified Georgian as the state language. In 1978 Moscow failed to impose a constitutional change giving Russian equal status with Georgian as an official language when Shevardnadze yielded to mass demonstrations against the amendment. Nevertheless, the Russian language predominated in official documents and communications from the central government. In 1991 the Gamsakhurdia government reestablished the primacy of Georgian, to the dismay of minorities that did not use the language. In 1993 some 71 percent of the population used Georgian as their first language. Russian was the first languages of 9 percent, Armenian of 7 percent, and Azerbaijani of 6 percent.

Georgia - Religion

The wide variety of peoples inhabiting Georgia has meant a correspondingly rich array of active religions. The dominant religion is Christianity, and the Georgian Orthodox Church is by far the largest church. The conversion of the Georgians in A.D. 330 placed them among the first peoples to accept Christianity. According to tradition, a holy slave woman, who became known as Saint Nino, cured Queen Nana of Iberia of an unknown illness, and King Marian III accepted Christianity when a second miracle occurred during a royal hunting trip. The Georgians' new faith, which replaced Greek pagan and Zoroastrian beliefs, was to place them permanently on the front line of conflict between the Islamic and Christian worlds. As was true elsewhere, the Christian church in Georgia was crucial to the development of a written language, and most of the earliest written works were religious texts. After Georgia was annexed by the Russian Empire, the Russian Orthodox Church took over the Georgian church in 1811. The colorful frescoes and wall paintings typical of Georgian cathedrals were whitewashed by the Russian occupiers.

The Georgian church regained its autonomy only when Russian rule ended in 1918. Neither the Georgian Menshevik government nor the Bolshevik regime that followed considered revitalization of the Georgian church an important goal, however. Soviet rule brought severe purges of the Georgian church hierarchy and constant repression of Orthodox worship. As elsewhere in the Soviet Union, many churches were destroyed or converted into secular buildings. This history of repression encouraged the incorporation of religious identity into the strong nationalist movement in twentieth-century Georgia and the quest of Georgians for religious expression outside the official, governmentcontrolled church. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, opposition leaders, especially Zviad Gamsakhurdia, criticized corruption in the church hierarchy. When Ilia II became the patriarch (catholicos) of the Georgian Orthodox Church in the late 1970s, he brought order and a new morality to church affairs, and Georgian Orthodoxy experienced a revival. In 1988 Moscow permitted the patriarch to begin consecrating and reopening closed churches, and a large-scale restoration process began. In 1993 some 65 percent of Georgians were Georgian Orthodox, 11 percent were Muslim, 10 percent Russian Orthodox, and 8 percent Armenian Apostolic.

Non-Orthodox religions traditionally have received tolerant treatment in Georgia. Jewish communities exist throughout the country, with major concentrations in the two largest cities, Tbilisi and Kutaisi. Azerbaijani groups have practiced Islam in Georgia for centuries, as have the Abkhazian and Ajarian groups concentrated in their respective autonomous republics. The Armenian Apostolic Church, whose doctrine differs in some ways from that of Georgian Orthodoxy, has autocephalous status.

Georgia - The Arts

In many art forms, Georgia has a tradition spanning millennia. The golden age of the Georgian Empire (early twelfth century to early thirteenth century) was the time of greatest development in many forms, and subsequent centuries of occupation and political domination brought decline or dilution. Folk music and dance, however, remain an important part of Georgia's unique culture, and Georgians have made significant contributions to theater and film in the late twentieth century.

Literature

Among literary works written in Georgian, Shota Rustaveli's long poem The Knight in the Panther Skin occupies a unique position as the Georgian national epic. Supposedly Rustaveli was a government official during the reign of Queen Tamar (1184- 1212), late in the golden age. In describing the questing adventures of three hero-knights, the poem includes rich philosophical musings that have become proverbs in Georgian. Even during communist rule, the main street of the Georgian capital was named after Rustaveli.

Georgia - Architecture

Starting in its earliest days, Georgia developed a unique architectural style that is most visible in religious structures dating as far back as the sixth century A.D. The cupola structure typical of Georgian churches probably was based on circular domestic dwellings that existed as early as 3000 B.C. Roman, Greek, and Syrian architecture also influenced this style. Persian occupation added a new element, and in the nineteenth century Russian domination created a hybrid architectural style visible in many buildings in Tbilisi. The so-called Stalinist architecture of the mid-twentieth century also left its mark on the capital.

Painting, Sculpture, and Metalworking

Like literature, Georgian mural painting reached a zenith during the golden age of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Featuring both religious and secular themes, many monuments of this and the later Byzantine- and Persian-influenced periods were destroyed by the Russians in the nineteenth century. Examples of Georgian religious painting remain in some of the old churches. Stone carving and metalworking traditions had developed in antiquity, when Roman and Greek techniques were incorporated. In the golden age, sculpture was applied most often to the outside of buildings. In the twentieth century, several Georgian sculptors have gained international recognition. Among them is Elguja Amasukheli, whose monuments are landmarks in Tbilisi. Metalworking was well established in the Caucasus among the ancestors of the Georgians as early as the Bronze Age (second millennium B.C.). This art form, applied to both religious and secular subjects, declined in the Middle Ages.

Georgia - Music and Dance

Georgia is known for its rich and unique folk dance and music. The Georgian State Dance Company, founded in the 1940s, has traveled around the world performing spectacular renditions of traditional Georgian dances. Unique in folk-dancing tradition, Georgian male performers dance on their toes without the help of special blocked shoes. Georgian folk music, featuring complex, three-part, polyphonic harmonies, has long been a subject of special interest among musicologists. Men and women sing in separate ensembles with entirely different repertoires. Most Georgian folk songs are peculiar to individual regions of Georgia. The inspiration is most often the church, work in the fields, or special occasions. The Rustavi Choir, formed in 1968, is the best known Georgian group performing a traditional repertoire.

In modern Georgia, folk songs are most frequently sung around the table. The ceremonial dinner (supra), a frequent occurrence in Georgian homes, is a highly ritualized event that itself forms a direct link to Georgia's past. On such occasions, rounds of standardized and improvised toasts typically extend long into the night. Georgian cuisine, which includes a variety of delicate sauces and sharp spices, is also an important part of the culture that links the generations. In the Soviet period, the best restaurants in the large cities of other republics were often Georgian.

Georgia - Film and Theater

In the postwar era, Georgian filmmaking and theater developed an outstanding reputation in the Soviet Union. Several Georgian filmmakers achieved international recognition in this period. Perhaps the single most important film of the perestroika  period was Tengiz Abuladze's Repentance. This powerful work, which won international acclaim when released in 1987, showed the consequences of Stalin's Great Terror of the 1930s through a depiction of the reign of a fictional local dictator. In 1993, despite chaotic political conditions, Tbilisi hosted the Golden Eagle Film Festival of the Black Sea Basin Countries, Georgia's first international film festival. Georgians also excel in theater. The Tbilisi-based Rustaveli Theater has been acclaimed internationally for its stagings (in Georgian) of the works of William Shakespeare and German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. )

Georgia - Education, Health, and Welfare

In 1992 Georgia retained the basic structure of education, health, and social welfare programs established in the Soviet era, although major reforms were being discussed. Georgia's requests for aid from the West have included technical assistance in streamlining its social welfare system, which heavily burdens the economy and generally fails to help those in greatest need. Education

In the Soviet era, the Georgian population achieved one of the highest education levels in the Soviet Union. In 1989 some 15.1 percent of adults in Georgia had graduated from a university or completed some other form of higher education. About 57.4 percent had completed secondary school or obtained a specialized secondary education. Georgia also had an extensive network of 230 scientific and research institutes employing more than 70,000 people in 1990. The Soviet system of free and compulsory schooling had eradicated illiteracy by the 1980s, and Georgia had the Soviet Union's highest ratio of residents with a higher or specialized secondary education.

During Soviet rule, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( CPSU) controlled the operation of the Georgian education system. Theoretically, education was inseparable from politics, and the schools were deemed an important tool in remaking society along Marxist-Leninist lines. Central ministries for primary and secondary education and for higher and specialized education transmitted policy decisions to the ministries in the republics for implementation in local and regional systems. Even at the local level, most administrators were party members. The combination of party organs and government agencies overseeing education at all levels formed a huge bureaucracy that made significant reform impossible. By the mid-1980s, an education crisis was openly recognized everywhere in the Soviet Union.

In the early 1990s, Soviet education institutions were still in place in Georgia, although Soviet-style political propaganda and authoritarian teaching methods gradually disappeared. Most Georgian children attended general school (grades one to eleven), beginning at age seven. In 1988 some 86,400 students were enrolled in Georgia's nineteen institutions of higher learning. Universities are located in Batumi, Kutaisi, Sukhumi, and Tbilisi. In the early 1990s, private education institutes began to appear. Higher education was provided almost exclusively in Georgian, although 25 percent of general classes were taught in a minority language. Abkhazian and Ossetian children were taught in their native language until fifth grade, when they began instruction in Georgian or Russian.

Georgia - Health

The Soviet system of health care, which embraced all the republics, included extensive networks of state-run hospitals, clinics, and emergency first aid stations. The huge government health bureaucracy in Moscow set basic policies for the entire country, then transmitted them to the health ministries of the republics. In the republics, programs were set up by regional and local health authorities. The emphasis was on meeting national standards and quotas for patient visits, treatments provided, and hospital beds occupied, with little consideration of regional differences or requirements.

Under this system, the average Georgian would go first to one of the polyclinics serving all the residents of a particular area. In the mid-1980s, polyclinics provided about 90 percent of medical care, offering very basic diagnostic services. In addition, most workplaces had their own clinics, which minimized time lost from work for medical reasons. The hospital system provided more complex diagnosis and treatment, although overcrowding often resulted from the admission of patients with minor complaints. Crowding was exacerbated by official standards requiring hospital treatment of a certain duration for every type of complaint.

The Soviet system placed special emphasis on treatment of women and children; many specialized treatment, diagnostic, and advanced-study centers offered pediatric, obstetric, and gynecological care. Maternity services and prenatal care were readily accessible. Emergency first aid was provided by specialized ambulance teams, most of which had only very basic equipment. Severe cases went to special emergency hospitals because regular hospitals lacked emergency rooms. Although this system worked efficiently in urban centers such as Tbilisi, it did not reach remote areas. Most Georgians cared for elderly family members at home, and nursing care was generally mediocre. Georgian health spas were a vital part of the Soviet Union's well-known sanatorium system, access to which was a privilege of employment in most state enterprises.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, it left a legacy of health problems to the respective republics, which faced the necessity of organizating separate health systems under conditions of scarce resources. By 1990 the Soviet health system had become drastically underfunded, and the incidence of disease and accidents was increased by poor living standards and environmental hazards. Nominally equal availability of medical treatment and materials was undermined by the privileged status of elite groups that had access to the country's best medical facilities. In 1990 the former republics also differed substantially in health conditions and availability of care. Subsequent membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States, to which Georgia committed itself in late 1993, did not affect this inequality.

According to most standard indicators, in 1991 the health and medical care of the Georgian population were among the best in the Soviet Union. The rate at which tuberculosis was diagnosed, 28.9 cases per 100,000 population in 1990, was third lowest, and Georgia's 140.9 cancer diagnoses per 100,000 population in 1990 was the lowest rate among the Soviet republics. Georgia also led in physicians per capita, with 59.2 per 10,000 population, and in dentists per capita. However, hospital bed availability, 110.7 per 10,000 population in 1990, placed Georgia in the bottom half among Soviet republics, and infant mortality, 15.9 per 1,000 live births in 1990, was at the average for republics outside Central Asia.

Although illegal drugs were available and Georgia increasingly found itself on the international drug-trading route in the early 1990s, the drug culture was confined to a small percentage of the population. The relatively high rate of delinquency among Georgian youth, however, was frequently associated with alcohol abuse.

In 1993 the Republic AIDS and Immunodeficiency Center in Tbilisi reported that sixteen cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) had been detected; five victims were nonGeorgians and were deported. Of the remaining eleven, two had contracted AIDS through drug use and one through a medical procedure. Despite the small number of cases, the AIDS epidemic has caused considerable alarm in the Georgian medical community, which formed a physicians' anti-AIDS association in 1993. The AIDS center, located in a makeshift facility in Tbilisi, conducts AIDS research and oversees testing in twenty-nine laboratories throughout Georgia, stressing efforts among high-risk groups.

Like other former Soviet republics, Georgia began devising health care reform strategies in 1992. Budget expenditures for health increased drastically once the Soviet welfare system collapsed. Theoretical elements of Georgian health reform were compulsory medical insurance, privatization and foreign investment in institutions providing health care, and stronger emphasis on preventive medicine. Little progress was made in the first two years of the reform process, however. In Georgia political instability and civil war have destroyed medical facilities while increasing the need for emergency care and creating a large-scale refugee problem.

Georgia - Social Security

In 1985 some 47 percent of Georgia's budget went to support the food, health, and education needs of the population. Social services included partial payment for maternity leave for up to eighteen months and unpaid maternity leave for up to three years. State pensions were automatic after twenty years of work for women and twenty-five years for men. As inflation rose in the postcommunist era, however, a large percentage of older Georgians continued working because their pensions could not support them. In 1991 the social security fund--supported mainly by a payroll tax--provided pensions for 1.3 million persons. The fund also paid benefits for sick leave and rest homes, as well as allowances for families with young children.

In 1992 subsidies were in place for basic commodities, pensions, unemployment benefits, and allowances for single mothers and children. At that time, a payroll tax of 3 percent was designated to support the national unemployment fund. Deficits in the social security fund were nominally covered by the state budget, but budget shortfalls elsewhere shifted that responsibility to the banking system. In 1992 increased benefit payments and the decision not to increase the payroll tax eroded the financial base of the fund.

Georgia - The Economy

In the Soviet period, Georgia played an important role in supplying food products and minerals and as a center of tourism for the centralized state economy. However, the republic was also heavily dependent on imports to provide products vital to industrial support. In the post-Soviet years, the Georgian economy suffered a major decline because sources of those products were no longer reliable and because political instability limited the economic reorganization and foreign investment that might support an internationalized, free-market economy. The net material product ( NMP) already had declined by 5 percent in 1989 and by 12 percent in 1990, after growing at an annual rate of 6 percent between 1971 and 1985. In late 1993, Shevardnadze reported that industrial production had declined by 60.5 percent in 1993 and that the annual inflation rate had reached 2,000 percent, largely as a result of the economic disruption caused by military conflict within Georgia's borders.

Georgia - The Economy - Conditions in the Soviet System

Georgian nationalists contended that Georgia's role in the "division of labor" among Soviet republics was unfairly assigned and that other republics, especially Russia, benefited from the terms of trade set by Moscow. Georgian manganese, for example, went to Soviet steel plants at an extremely low price, and Georgian agricultural goods also sold at very low prices in other republics. At the same time, Georgia paid high prices for machinery and equipment purchased elsewhere in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. Despite Georgia's popularity as a tourist destination, the republic reaped few benefits because most hardcurrency earnings from tourism went to Moscow and because Soviet tourists paid little for their state-sponsored "vacation packages." Georgia, however, benefited from energy prices that were far below world market levels.

Despite the ambiguities of official statistics, all evidence indicates that after 1989 Georgia experienced a disastrous drop in industrial output, real income, consumption, capital investment, and virtually every other economic indicator. For example, official statistics showed a decline in national income of 34 percent in 1992 from 1985 levels.

Georgia - The Economy - Obstacles to Development

Several noneconomic factors influenced the broad decline of the Georgian economy that began before independence was declared in 1991. National liberation leaders used strikes in 1989 and 1990 to gain political concessions from the communist leadership, and a 1990 railroad strike, for instance, paralyzed most of the Georgian economy. In 1991 the Gamsakhurdia government ordered strikes at enterprises subordinated to ministries in Moscow as a protest against Soviet interference in South Ossetia.

Although combat in Georgia in the period after 1991 left most of the republic unscathed, the economy suffered greatly from military action. Railroad transport between Georgia and Russia was disrupted severely in 1992 and 1993 because most lines from Russia passed through regions of severe political unrest. Georgia's natural gas pipeline to the north entered Russia through South Ossetia and thus was subject to attack during the ethnic war that began in that region in late 1990. In western Georgia, Gamsakhurdia's forces and Abkhazian separatists often stopped trains or blew up bridges in 1992. As a result, supplies could only enter Georgia through the Black Sea ports of Poti and Batumi or over a circuitous route from Russia through Azerbaijan.

In both the Soviet and the post-Soviet periods, conflicts between Georgia and Moscow broke many vital links in the republic's economy. Official 1988 data showed imports to Georgia from other republics of more than 5.2 billion rubles and exports of over 5.5 billion rubles. As a result of Gamsakhurdia's policies, goods destined for Russia were withheld by Georgian officials. The Soviet leadership, encouraged by conservative provincial leaders in the Russian regions bordering Georgia, responded with their own partial economic blockade of Georgia in late 1990 and 1991. All-union enterprises in Georgia stopped receiving most of their supplies from outside the republic. The strangling of energy resources forced much of Georgian industry to shut down in 1991.

Georgia - The Underground Economy

Economic statistics for Georgia are difficult to evaluate for both the Soviet era and the post-Soviet period, primarily because of the country's large underground economy. Traditional Georgian familial and clan relations have intensified the economic corruption that infused the entire communist system. Local elites in the communist party joined with underground speculators and entrepreneurs to form an economic mafia. Repeated efforts to eradicate this phenomenon, including an aggressive effort by Shevardnadze in the early 1970s, apparently had little impact. In the postcommunist period, struggles for economic control among competing mafias have been an important part of the political conflict plaguing Georgia.

Georgia - Wages and Prices

Until 1991 Georgia's price system and inflation rate generally coincided with those of the other Soviet republics. Under central planning, prices of state enterprise products were fixed by direct regulation, fixed markup rates, or negotiation at the wholesale level with subsequent sanction by state authority. The prices of agricultural products from the private sector fluctuated freely in the Soviet system.

Once it forsook the artificial conditions of the Soviet system, Georgia faced the necessity for major changes in its pricing policy. Following the political upheaval of late 1991, which delayed price adjustments, the Georgian government raised the prices of basic commodities substantially in early 1992, to match adjustments made in most of the other former Soviet republics. The price of bread, for example, rose from 0.4 ruble to 4.8 rubles per kilogram. By the end of 1992, all prices except those for bread, fuel, and transportation had been liberalized in order to avoid distortions and shortages. This policy brought steep inflation rates throughout 1993.

Beginning in 1991, a severe shortage of ruble notes restricted enterprises from acquiring enough currency to prevent a significant drop in real wages. In early 1992, public-sector wages were doubled, and every Georgian received an additional 40 rubles per month to compensate for the rising cost of living. Such compensatory increases were far below those in other former Soviet republics, however. In 1992 the Shevardnadze government considered wage indexing or regular adjustment of benefits to the lowest wage groups as ways of improving the public's buying power.

In mid-1993 the majority of Georgians still depended on state enterprises for their salaries, but in most cases some form of private income was necessary to live above the poverty level. Private jobs paid substantially more than state jobs, and the discrepancy grew larger in 1993. For example, in 1993 a secretary in a private company earned the equivalent of US$30 per month while a state university professor made the equivalent of US$4 per month.

Georgia - Banking, the Budget, and the Currency

In the spring of 1991, Georgian banks ended their relationship with parent banks in Moscow. The National Bank of Georgia was created in mid-1991 as an independent central national bank; its main function was to ensure the stability of the national currency, and it was not responsible for obligations incurred by the government. The National Bank also assumed all debts of Georgian banks to the state banks in Moscow.

In 1992 the national system also included five specialized government commercial banks and sixty private commercial banks. The five government-owned commercial banks provided 95 percent of bank credit going to the economy. They included the Agricultural and Industrial Bank of Georgia, the Housing Bank of Georgia, and the Bank for Industry and Construction, which were the main sources of financing for state enterprises during this period. Private commercial banks, which began operation in 1989, grew rapidly in 1991-92 because of favorable interest rates; new banking laws were passed in 1991 to cover their activity.

Under communist rule, transfers from the Soviet national budget had enabled Georgia to show a budget surplus in most years. When the Soviet contribution of 751 million rubles--over 5 percent of Georgia's gross domestic product ( GDP) became unavailable in 1991, the Georgian government ran a budget deficit estimated at around 2 billion rubles. The destruction of government records during the Tbilisi hostilities of late 1991 left the new government lacking reliable information on which to base financial policy for 1992 and beyond.

In 1992 the government assumed an additional 2 billion to 3 billion rubles of unpaid debts from state enterprises, raising the deficit to between 17 and 21 percent of GDP. By May 1992, when the State Council approved a new tax system, the budget deficit was estimated at 6 billion to 7 billion rubles. The deficit was exacerbated by military expenditures associated with the conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and by the cost of dealing with natural disasters.

The 1992 budget was restricted by a delay in the broadening of the country's tax base, the cost of assuming defense and security expenses formerly paid by the Soviet Union, the doubling of state wages, and the cost of earthquake relief in the north. When the 1993 budget was proposed, only 11 billion of the prescribed 43.6 billion rubles of expenditures were covered by revenues.

Tax reform in early 1992 added an excise tax on selected luxury items and a flat-rate value-added tax ( VAT) on most goods and services, while abolishing the turnover and sales taxes of the communist system. In 1992 tax revenues fell below the expected level, however, because of noncompliance with new tax requirements; a government study showed that 80 percent of businesses underpaid their taxes in 1992.

In early 1993, Georgia remained in the "ruble zone," still using the Russian ruble as the official national currency. Efforts begun in 1991 to establish a separate currency convertible on world markets were frustrated by political and economic instability. Beginning in August 1993, the Central Bank of Russia began withdrawing ruble banknotes; a new unit, designated the coupon, became the official national currency after several months of provisional status. Rubles and United States dollars continued to circulate widely, however, especially in large transactions. After the National Bank of Georgia had been establishing weekly exchange rates for two months, the coupon's exchange rate against the United States dollar inflated from 5,569 to 12,629. In September all salaries were doubled, setting off a new round of inflation. By October the rate had reached 42,000 coupons to the dollar.

Georgia - Industry

In 1990 about 20 percent of Georgia's 1,029 industrial enterprises, including the largest, were directly administered by the central ministries of the Soviet Union. Until 1991 Georgian industry was integrated with the rest of the Soviet economy. About 90 percent of the raw materials used by Georgian light industry came from outside the republic. The Transcaucasian Metallurgical Plant at Rustavi and the Kutaisi Automotive Works, as well as other centers of heavy industry, depended heavily on commercial agreements with the other Soviet republics. The Rustavi plant, for example, could not operate without importing iron ore, most of which it received (and continues to receive) from Azerbaijan. The Kutaisi works depended on other republics for raw materials, machinery, and spare parts. Georgia contributed significantly to Soviet mineral output, particularly of manganese (a component of steel alloy found in the Chiatura and Kutaisi regions in west-central Georgia) and copper.

In the late 1980s, Georgia's main industrial products were machine tools, prefabricated building structures, cast iron, steel pipe, synthetic ammonia, and silk thread. Georgian refineries also processed gasoline and diesel fuel from imported crude oil. Georgian industry made its largest contributions to the Soviet Union's total industrial production in wool fabric, chemical fibers, rolled ferrous metals, and metal-cutting machine tools.

Georgia - Energy

The lack of significant domestic fuel reserves made the Georgian economy extremely dependent on neighboring republics, especially Russia, to meet its energy needs. Under the fuel supply conditions of 1994, only further exploitation of hydroelectric power could enhance energy self-sufficiency. In 1990 over 95 percent of Georgia's fuel was imported. For that reason, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 caused an energy crisis and stimulated a search for alternative suppliers.

The harsh winter of 1991-92 increased fuel demand at a time when supply was especially limited. Oil imports were reduced by the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, cold weather curtailed domestic hydroelectric production, and the price of fuel and energy imports from other former Soviet republics rose drastically because of Georgia's independent political stance and the new economic realities throughout the former union. Beginning in December 1991, industries received only about one-third of the energy needed for full-scale operation, and most operated far below capacity throughout 1992.

Small amounts of oil were discovered in the Samgori region (southern Georgia) in the 1930s and in eastern Georgia in the 1970s, but no oil exploration has occurred in most of the republic. In 1993 some 96 percent of Georgia's oil came from Azerbaijan and Russia, although new supply agreements had been reached with Iran and Turkey. Oil and gas pipelines connect Georgia with Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, and Turkmenistan. Refinery and storage facilities in Batumi receive oil through a long pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan.

Coal is mined in Abkhazia and near Kutaisi, but between 1976 and 1991 output fell nearly 50 percent, to about 1 million tons. The largest deposits, both in Abkhazia, are estimated to contain 250 million tons and 80 million tons, respectively. Domestic coal provides half the Rustavi plant's needs and fuels some electrical power generation. In 1993 natural gas, nearly all of which was imported, accounted for 44 percent of fuel consumption.

Georgia has substantial hydroelectric potential, only 14 percent of which was in use in 1993 in a network of small hydroelectric stations. In 1993 all but eight of Georgia's seventy-two power stations were hydroelectric, but together they provided only half the republic's energy needs. In the early 1990s, Georgia's total consumption of electrical energy exceeded domestic generation by as much as 30 percent. Georgian planners see further hydroelectric development as the best domestic solution to the country's power shortage.

Georgia - Agriculture

Georgia's climate and soil have made agriculture one of its most productive economic sectors; the 18 percent of Georgian land that is arable provided 32 percent of the republic's NMP in 1990. In the Soviet period, swampy areas in the west were drained and arid regions in the east were salvaged by a complex irrigation system, allowing Georgian agriculture to expand production tenfold between 1918 and 1980. Production was hindered in the Soviet period, however, by the misallocation of agricultural land (for example, the assignment of prime grain fields to tea cultivation) and excessive specialization. Georgia's emphasis on labor-intensive crops such as tea and grapes kept the rural work force at an unsatisfactory level of productivity. Some 25 percent of the Georgian work force was engaged in agriculture in 1990; 37 percent had been so engaged in 1970. In the spring of 1993, sowing of spring crops was reduced by onethird on state land and by a substantial amount on private land as well because of fuel and equipment shortages. For the first half of 1993, overall agricultural production was 35 percent less than for the same period of 1992.

Georgia - Land Redistribution

Until the land-privatization program that began in 1992, most Georgian farms were state-run collectives averaging 428 hectares in size. Even under Soviet rule, however, Georgia had a vigorous private agricultural sector. In 1990, according to official statistics, the private sector contributed 46 percent of gross agricultural output, and private productivity averaged about twice that of the state farms. Under the state system, designated plots were leased to farmers and town dwellers for private crop and livestock raising. As during the Soviet era, more than half of Georgia's meat and milk and nearly half of its eggs come from private producers.

As was the case with enterprise privatization, Gamsakhurdia postponed systematic land reform because he feared that local mafias would dominate the redistribution process. But within weeks of his ouster in early 1992, the new government issued a land reform resolution providing land grants of one-half hectare to individuals with the stipulation that the land be farmed. Commissions were established in each village to inventory land parcels and identify those to be privatized. Limitations were placed on what the new "owners" could do with their land, and would-be private farmers faced serious problems in obtaining seeds, fertilizer, and equipment. By the end of 1993, over half the cultivated land was in private hands. Small plots were given free to city dwellers to relieve the acute food shortage that year.

Georgia - Crops

In 1993 about 85 percent of cultivated land, excluding orchards, vineyards, and tea plantations, was dedicated to grains. Within that category, corn grew on 40 percent of the land, and winter wheat on 37 percent. The second most important agricultural product is wine. Georgia has one of the world's oldest and finest winemaking traditions; archeological findings indicate that wine was being made in Georgia as early as 300 B.C. Some forty major wineries were operating in 1990, and about 500 types of local wines are made. The center of the wine industry is Kakhetia in eastern Georgia. Georgia is also known for the high quality of its mineral waters.

Other important crops are tea, citrus fruits, and noncitrus fruits, which account for 18.3 percent, 7.7 percent, and 8.4 percent of Georgia's agricultural output, respectively. Cultivation of tea and citrus fruit is confined to the western coastal area. Tea accounts for 36 percent of the output of the large food-processing industry, although the quality of Georgian tea dropped perceptibly under Soviet management in the 1970s and 1980s. Animal husbandry, mainly the keeping of cattle, pigs, and sheep, accounts for about 25 percent of Georgia's agricultural output, although high density and low mechanization have hindered efficiency.

Until 1991 other Soviet republics bought 95 percent of Georgia's processed tea, 62 percent of its wine, and 70 percent of its canned goods. In turn, Georgia depended on Russia for 75 percent of its grain. One-third of Georgia's meat and 60 percent of its dairy products were supplied from outside the republic. Failure to adjust these relationships contributed to Georgia's food crises in the early 1990s.

Georgia - Transportation and Telecommunications

Georgia's location makes it an important commercial transit route, and the country inherited a well-developed transportation system when it became independent in 1991. However, lack of money and political unrest have cut into the system's maintenance and allowed it to deteriorate somewhat since independence. Fighting in and around the secessionist Abkhazian Autonomous Republic in the northwest has isolated that area and also has cut some of the principal rail and highway links between Georgia and Russia.

In 1990 Georgia had 35,100 kilometers of roads, 31,200 kilometers of which were paved. Since the nineteenth century, Tbilisi has been the center of the Caucasus region's highway system, a position reinforced during the Soviet era. The country's four principal highways radiate from Tbilisi roughly in the four cardinal directions. Route M27 extends west from the capital through the broad valley between the country's two main mountain ranges and reaches the Black Sea south of Sukhumi. The highway then turns northwest along the Black Sea to the Russian border. A secondary road, Route A305, branches off Route M27 and carries traffic to the port of Poti. Another secondary road runs south along the Black Sea coast from Poti to the port of Batumi. From Batumi a short spur of about ten kilometers is Georgia's only paved connection with Turkey.

Route A301, more commonly known as the Georgian Military Highway, runs north for almost 200 kilometers from Tbilisi across the Greater Caucasus range to Russia. The route was first described by Greek geographers in the first century B.C. and was the only land route north into Russia until the late 1800s. The route contains many hairpin turns and winds through several passes higher than 2,000 meters in elevation before reaching the Russian border. Heavy snows in winter often close the road for short periods. The country's other two main highways connect Tbilisi with the neighboring Transcaucasian countries. Route A310 runs south to Erevan, and Route A302 extends east across a lower portion of the Greater Caucasus range to Azerbaijan. All major routes have regular and frequent bus transport.

Georgia had 1,421 kilometers of rail lines in 1993, excluding several small industrial lines. In the early 1990s, most lines were 1.520-meter broad gauge, and the principal routes were electrified. The tsarist government built the first rail links in the region from Baku on the Caspian Sea through Tbilisi to Poti on the Black Sea in 1883; this route remains the principal rail route of Transcaucasia. Along the Black Sea, a rail route extends from the main east-west line into Russia, and two lines run south from Tbilisi--one to Armenia and the other to Azerbaijan. Spurs link these main routes with smaller towns in Georgia's broad central valley. Principal classification yards and rail repair services are in Batumi and Tbilisi. Most rail lines provide passenger service, but in 1994 international passenger service was limited to the Tbilisi-to-Baku train. Because of fighting in Abkhazia, freight and passenger service to Russia has been suspended, with only the section from Tbilisi to the port of Poti still operative. Service on the Tbilisi-to-Erevan line has also been disrupted because the tracks pass through the area of armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Tbilisi was one of the first cities of the Soviet Union to have a subway system. The system consists of twenty-three kilometers of heavy rail lines, most of which are underground. Three lines with twenty stations radiate from downtown, with extensions either planned or under construction in 1994. The system is heavily used, and trains run at least every four minutes throughout the day. In 1985, the last year of available statistics, 145 million passengers were carried, about the same number of passengers that used Washington's Metrorail system in 1992.

Georgia's principal airport, Novoalekseyevka, is about eighteen kilometers northeast of downtown Tbilisi. With a runway approximately 2,500 meters long, the airport can accommodate airplanes as large as the Russian Tu-154, the Boeing 727, and the McDonnell Douglas DC-9. In 1993 the airport handled about 26,000 tons of freight. Orbis, the new state-run airline, provides service to neighboring countries, flights to several destinations throughout Russia, and direct service to some European capitals. Between 1991 and 1993, fuel shortages severely curtailed air passenger and cargo service, however. Eighteen other airports throughout the country have paved runways, but most are used for minor freight transport.

Georgia's Black Sea ports provide access to the Mediterranean Sea via the Bosporus. Georgia has two principal ports, at Poti and Batumi, and a minor port at Sukhumi. Although Batumi has a natural harbor, Poti's man-made harbor carries more cargo because of that city's rail links to Tbilisi. The port at Poti can handle ships having up to ten meters draught and 30,000 tons in weight. Altogether, nine berths can process as much as 100,000 tons of general cargo, 4 million tons of bulk cargo, and 1 million tons of grain per year. Facilities include tugboats, equipment for unloading tankers, a grain elevator, 22,000 square meters of covered storage area, and 57,000 square meters of open storage area. Direct onloading of containers to rail cars is available. The port primarily handles exports of grain, coal, and ores and imports of general cargo. Poti is ice-free, but in winter strong west winds can make entry into the port hazardous.

Batumi's natural port is located on a bay just northeast of the city. Eight alongside berths have a total capacity of 100,000 tons of general cargo, 800,000 tons of bulk cargo, and 6 million tons of petroleum products. Facilities include portal cranes, loaders for moving containers onto rail cars, 5,400 square meters of covered storage, and 13,700 square meters of open storage. The port lies at the end of the Transcaucasian pipeline from Baku and is used primarily for the export of petroleum and petroleum products. The port's location provides some protection from the winds that buffet Poti. However, strong winds can cause dangerous currents in the port area, forcing ships to remain offshore until conditions improve.

Sukhumi, capital of the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic, is a small port that handles limited amounts of cargo, passenger ferries, and cruise ships. Imports consist mostly of building materials, and the port handles exports of local agricultural products, mostly fruit. Strong westerly and southwesterly winds make the port virtually unusable for long periods in the autumn and winter. Sukhumi has been unavailable to Georgia since Georgian forces abandoned the city during the conflict of the autumn of 1993.

In 1992 Georgia had 370 kilometers of crude oil pipeline, 300 kilometers of pipeline for refined petroleum products, and 440 kilometers of natural gas pipeline. Batumi is the terminus of a major oil pipeline that transports petroleum from Baku across the Caucasus for export. Two natural gas pipelines roughly parallel the route of the oil pipeline from Baku to Tbilisi before veering north along the Georgian Military Highway to Russia. Pipelines are generally high-capacity lines and have a diameter of either 1,020 or 1,220 millimeters.

Historically, Georgia was an important point on the Silk Road linking China with Europe. Since independence Georgians have discussed resuming this role by turning the republic into a modern transportation and communications hub. Such a plan might also make the republic a "dry Suez" for the transshipment of Iranian oil west across the Caucasus.

In 1991 about 672,000 telephone lines were in use, providing twelve lines per 100 persons. The waiting list for telephone installation was quite long in the early 1990s. Georgia is linked to the CIS countries and Turkey by overland lines, and one lowcapacity satellite earth station is in operation. Three television stations, including the independent Iberia Television, and numerous radio stations broadcast in Georgian and Russian.

Georgia - Economic Reform

Like all the former Soviet republics, Georgia recognized the need to restructure its economic system in the early 1990s, using national economic strengths to accommodate its own needs rather than the needs of central planners in Moscow. The road to reform has been full of obstacles, however: poor political leadership, the economic decline that began in the 1980s, civil war, and a well-established underground economy that is difficult to control.

Price Policy

Gamsakhurdia understood little about economics, and he postponed major economic reforms to avoid weakening his political position. In an effort to maintain popular support, he stabilized fares for public transportation and prices for basic consumer goods in state retail outlets. In March 1991, a new rationing system bound local residents to neighborhood shops. In April 1991, price controls were imposed in state stores. Price liberalization began only after Gamsakhurdia's departure as president, and it did not cover several basic consumer goods and services. Continued food subsidies were an additional factor contributing to the national budget deficit. In the interest of stimulating competition, a government decree removed restrictions on trade in May 1992, and at the same time taxes were eliminated on goods brought into Georgia. Persistent shortages of bread led the government to introduce ration cards for bread in December 1992. Under these conditions, inflation soared in private markets in 1991-92, although prices remained substantially lower than in Moscow for similar items.

In 1993 wholesale prices increased especially quickly under the influence of falling productivity. In the second half of 1993, the construction industry was hit hard by increases in the cost of materials of up to thirty times, although gasoline prices rose only gradually. The prices of heavy engineering and ferrousmetallurgy products rose by three to five times in the second half of 1993.

Georgia - Enterprise Privatization

Another key element of economic reform, privatization of state enterprises, was stifled under Gamsakhurdia. He feared that the "economic mafia," which already owned a significant share of the nation's wealth, would use that wealth to accumulate state assets. Rapid growth had already occurred in the private retail sector, however, once cooperative enterprises began expanding in 1988. In 1990-91 privately run "commercial shops" began proliferating, often in place of state stores. Typically, these shops offered consumer goods brought from Turkey and resold at very high prices. The Law on Privatization of State Enterprises was adopted in August 1991 to outline general principles, and the Committee on Privatization was established in 1992. Under Shevardnadze, privatization began cautiously in August 1992 when the State Council adopted the State Program on the Privatization of State Enterprises. The law copied Russia's approach to privatization by providing for several methods, including "popular privatization," consisting of a combination of vouchers distributed to the public and auctions of state enterprises. The country's political crises delayed meaningful measures, however. By 1993 few Georgian industries had been privatized, although large numbers of small enterprises were scheduled for privatization in 1993 and 1994.

Georgia - Foreign Trade

In the Soviet period, Georgian trade with the world outside the Soviet Union was severely restricted by Moscow's foreign economic policy. Almost all of Georgian foreign economic activity was conducted by fourteen central enterprises, most of which operated under the direct management of Moscow. Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Japan, and Poland were among the most important of Georgia's trading partners. Gamsakhurdia, suspicious of businessmen who sought to export Georgian goods, banned all export activity. The Shevardnadze government, however, created conditions for significant improvement of international investment and trade. In May 1992, licensing requirements for import or export activities were dropped except for the import of goods in the military and medical categories. This change represented a significant expansion of the rights of enterprises to engage in foreign economic activity. Export of twelve commodities, mostly foodstuffs, was still prohibited at the end of 1992. Fees and other restrictions on the registration of joint ventures were removed, and the state tax on all imports was canceled. Import duties ranged from 5 to 55 percent, and export duties from 5 to 90 percent, with an exemption for former Soviet republics; the VAT on exports dropped to 14 percent in late 1992. The National Bank of Georgia imposed a tax of 12 percent of exporters' hardcurrency earnings. In early 1993, new trade policies had not led to major increases in foreign trade and investment. Continued political instability, ethnic warfare, and extremely poor transportation and telecommunications facilities continued to discourage foreign investors in 1993.

In the second half of 1993, continued military upheaval did not entirely deter progress in foreign investment. The Renault automobile company of France, the German Tee Kanes tea company, and British and Dutch liquor companies signed contracts in August, and officials of Mitsubishi and an American shipbuilder visited Georgia to assess investment conditions.

Georgia - Government and Politics

In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the tone of Georgian political life changed significantly. National elections held in 1989, 1990, and 1992 reflected that change. The nature of governance in newly independent Georgia was most influenced by the personalities of two men, Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Eduard Shevardnadze. But democratic institutions evolved slowly and sporadically in the first half of the 1990s.

Prior to the 1989 elections, the Georgian Communist Party maintained tight control over the nomination process. Even in 1989, candidates ran unopposed in forty-three of seventy-five races, and elsewhere pairings with opposition candidates were manipulated to guarantee results favoring the party. In Tbilisi grassroots movements succeeded in nominating three candidates to the Georgian Supreme Soviet in 1989. The leaders of these movements were mostly young intellectuals who had not been active dissidents. Many of those figures later joined to form a new political party, Democratic Choice for Georgia, abbreviated as DASi in Georgian. Because of expertise in local political organization, DASi played a leading role in drafting legislation for local and national elections between 1990 and 1992.

The death of the Tbilisi demonstrators in April 1989 led to a major change in the Georgian political atmosphere. Radical nationalists such as Gamsakhurdia were the primary beneficiaries of the national outrage following the April Tragedy. In his role as opposition leader, Gamsakhurdia formed a new political bloc in 1990, the Round Table/Free Georgia coalition.

In 1990 Georgia was the last Soviet republic to hold elections for the republic parliament. Protests and strikes against the election law and the nominating process had led to a six-month postponement of the elections until October 1990. Opposition forces feared that the political realities favored entrenched communist party functionaries and the enterprise and collective farm officials they had put in place. According to reports, about one