Since November 28, a river of people has been flowing ceaselessly down Tbilisi’s central Rustaveli avenue, with diverse streams of protesters marching by day and merging into a powerful rush by night. Since regaining independence in 1991, Georgia has never witnessed such massive mobilization without a political leader helming the movement. Some have attempted to frame the protests as a conflict between the ruling Georgian Dream party and its political opposition, but this is one of those rare moments when people, not the politicians, are leading the protests. As for President Salome Zourabichvili, she is widely regarded as a conduit for amplifying the voice of the Georgian people to the international community, while seeking support for the politics they strive to defend.
The current movement embodies a struggle between a brutal political reality and resilient bodies coming together in protest, united in their determination to forge solidarities and reclaim Georgia’s future. How might these unprecedented protests be understood? Is this a pro-EU outcry of the people against a government perceived as leaning toward Russia? Is it a fight for democratic rights, which are being stripped away by an increasing shift toward authoritarianism? Or is it a part of a “geopolitical contest” between major global powers? How does Georgian Dream leverage sovereignty and decolonization in its efforts to consolidate its political power?
In this article, I am compelled to address my non-Georgian colleagues, friends, and comrades, in order to challenge several existing analyses of the events unfolding in Georgia, while undertaking the nearly impossible task of translating the local context. I will not directly reference the specific voices I am responding to, as they reflect a broad, symptomatic, collective narrative. These voices include perspectives from the left, the Global South, and advocates of neutrality – those who claim to be guided by an anti-imperial paradigm. In the following paragraphs, I will refer to this collective narrative as “campist,” describing those who view the world as divided into competing camps or spheres of influence with major powers seen as the primary agents of history. They tend to side with any power, including authoritarian governments and those with their own histories of imperial aggression, solely for opposing the West.
Protests on Rustaveli Avenue. Tbilisi. November 30, 2024. Photo: Mautskebeli
On November 28, the Georgian Dream, the party that claimed victory in the October 26 elections, announced the suspension of accession negotiations with the EU, until 2028. This decision, first and foremost, shook the geopolitical aspirations of Georgians, signaling a clear departure from the course that the majority of Georgians, 81 percent according to polls, aspire to. This announcement was the final straw, but not the sole reason for the ongoing popular discontent. There is more to the story, which I will discuss in the subsequent paragraphs. The government’s response to the protests was disproportionate and repressive, with widespread use of tear gas, water cannons, extrajudicial arrests, and beatings. More than 460 protesters, including journalists, have been detained, with 300 reporting severe beatings and other forms of mistreatment. Even the Public Defender of Georgia, who is often accused of pro-government bias, described the police custodial violence as torture.
The immediate demands of the protesters, endorsed by the President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, include the holding of new free and fair elections and the release of detained protesters. The long-term demands, building on the immediate call for new elections, include the reversal of legislative initiatives enacted by the government over the past two years that aim to consolidate Georgian Dream’s power and restrict democracy, and a demand to reaffirm Georgia’s commitment to the path of EU integration.
Against the backdrop of the protests, the atmosphere of shrinking democracy has intensified as the Georgian Dream party hastily introduced and passed alarming amendments to several laws in the parliament, which will severely impact the right to protest. Among these, the changes to the Public Service Law simplify the process of terminating public servants, making it easier to dismiss them based on their political views. Activists argue that these changes violate labor rights and heighten the risk of political persecution within the public sector. Moreover, dismissed individuals are now barred from seeking reinstatement to their positions, even if a court rules the dismissal unlawful, leaving them entitled only to three months’ salary as compensation. Before the amendments, Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze publicly threatened Tbilisi City Hall employees who had signed a petition opposing the Georgian Dream’s decision to suspend EU integration. In the past week, even before the new law took effect, several public servants who openly criticized the government were dismissed from Tbilisi City Hall.
As protests continue, the Georgian Dream has hastily introduced another package of amendments to administrative offenses, granting police the authority to detain citizens based solely on suspicion for 48 hours. Under these amendments, individuals can be arrested not for preparing or attempting an administrative offense, but entirely at the discretion of a police officer who suspects they might commit one. The new legislative changes impose stricter norms on gatherings and demonstrations, increase penalties for protesters, including fines for blocking streets, and simplify detainment procedures. At a time when law enforcement forcibly removes individuals from their homes, cars, and streets to detain them, this amendment is particularly alarming. The ongoing protests represent a movement to prevent the country, and every home within it, from becoming a jail.
Protesters were dispersed by the water cannon. Tbilisi. November 29, 2024. Photo: Mautskebeli
Misguided pawns or Subjects of History?
The master framework used by the campists I am responding to portrays local protesters as corrosive elements and Georgia as merely a pawn of major global powers, depicting the country as captive to these forces while ignoring the stranglehold a billionaire oligarch has on it. This paradigm suggests that history is solely made by major powers, framing countries like Georgia as idle bystanders, condemned to the status of passive observers of history. Conversely, a counter perspective overemphasizes the agency of independent countries, often disregarding the global political-economic structures that perpetuate uneven development and limit this national agency. Neither perspective adequately captures the complexity of a reality influenced by both external and internal dynamics. While geopolitics undeniably matters, so does the local historical and political context.
Firstly, the perspective that depicts protesters as misguided pawns naively waiting to be saved, results in a failure to recognize the political potential within the local Georgian context. The protesters are part of a movement deeply rooted in a long tradition of struggle for democracy and independence, seeking solidarity and allies – not saviours. Secondly, within the dominant campist narratives, the relations between the West and the Global South remain as a singular theoretical subject, even within critiques of Western-centrism. The West persists as an implicit referent in all these discussions. Drawing on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s framework, I would argue that commentators on imperialism rely on paradigms presented as universally applicable, yet these are frequently developed with little regard for non-Western histories and empires. The focus on Western imperialism as the central subject of analysis reflects a theoretical bias. However, I do not propose to dismiss universal theories, but to expand and refine them, ensuring they encompass the full heterogeneity of the world. If this letter were addressed to Georgians, I would have problematized the opposite bias of viewing the world, and even internal social issues, through the singular prism of Georgia-Russia relations.
The campist narrative recognizes “agency” within the framework of West-Global South tensions or major power competition over spheres of influence, thereby failing to grasp forms of agency that fall outside this rigid conception. As a result, they continue to label protesters as “subversive elements,” a “brainwashed minority,” or “a mass instigated by opposition parties.” They claim that without “instigators,” Georgians would remain passive, oblivious, and immobile. The real question is: how do we understand agency? Is it merely a synonym for resistance to Western domination, or, as Saba Mahmood suggests, a capacity for action shaped and enabled by historically specific relations of domination and subordination? To understand the nature of protests in Georgia, we must examine the historically specific relations of domination in Georgia.
The campist paradigm significantly limits our ability to fully comprehend the aspirations, struggles and fears of post-Soviet peoples. Scholars responding to similar views on Ukraine have described this dominant framework as „epistemic imperialism“ and “inter-imperialism,” where Ukraine is analyzed simultaneously through both Western-centric perspectives and Russia-centric lenses. Despite their apparent opposition, these two viewpoints often coalesce when it comes to understanding the post-Soviet space, reinforcing a reductive narrative that overlooks local agency while prioritizing external powers. These views, spanning both left and right ideologies, are shaped by different reasonings but, in the end, reiterate mainstream International Relations debates, which assumes that states are rational actors navigating a hostile world and primarily focused on ensuring their own survival. Paradoxically, while this perspective seeks to portray Russia as a rational actor, framing its wars in neighboring countries as logical responses to external threats, it fails to accord the same weight to the interests of peripheral countries. These smaller nations may also have existential reasons to ally with others as a rational response to the historically persistent physicial threat posed by a neighbouring empire. Does a small, peripheral country like Georgia have the right to determine its foreign policy? The question is not whether we agree with the alliances such a country chooses but whether it has the fundamental right to make such choices – or if it must instead surrender to the whims of a regional empire.
It would be ahistoric to view Georgia’s relationship with European institutions as an isolated fact, disconnected from its contextual background. The first post-Soviet Georgian government, along with a few other former Soviet republics, declined to join the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an association of countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. In 1991, a civil war broke out, leading to the overthrow of Georgia’s first president. By 1992, Georgia was under the rule of overlords, and in 1993, the civil war ended following the intervention of the Black Sea Fleet by Russian commander Eduard Baltin, at the request of the second president, Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze was forced to sign a decree on Georgia’s membership in the CIS, after which Russian border guards were deployed at Georgia’s strategic borders with Turkey and its maritime boundaries. This was followed by an agreement, never ratified, to deploy Russian military bases in Georgia, which seriously undermined Georgian sovereignty.
However, starting in 1996, the Georgian government intensified its efforts to build relations with the European institutions to reduce the Russian military presence in the country, to take control of its own borders, and address two unresolved frozen conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Despite these efforts, the withdrawal of Russian forces was a lengthy and challenging process. It began in 1999 with the signing of the Istanbul Convention, which became instrumental in the withdrawal of Russian Military bases. The last Russian bases were withdrawn as late as November 2007. Just a year later, in August 2008, the Russia-Georgia war took place, marking another major escalation. Historical evidence demonstrates that Russia has consistently sought to maintain its influence in the region, posing an ongoing threat to Georgia’s sovereignty, which has made a defensive posture second nature to Georgia. The campists claim that Georgians have been antagonized against Russia by the West, but, as in other cases, this conclusion stems from their disregard for history. Political antagonism has long defined Georgian-Russian relations, with the Georgian modern national project shaped by this deeply rooted antagonism from its very inception.
The imperial subject is condemned to remain perpetually on guard, fearful of stepping out of line. The deliberate decision to step out of the “sphere of influence” is an act of defiance against this imposed subjecthood. It represents a move toward delinking and asserting sovereignty, rejecting the authority of an imperial neighbor that looms like the Sword of Damocles, perpetually threatening intervention. Although commentators advocating neutrality suggest remaining “within the sphere of influence,” history demonstrates that Russia’s constant muscular posturing is far from mere „exhibitionism.“ As a contiguous empire, Tsarist Russia viewed conquered regions as extensions of its own territory and, hence, the dissolution of the empire as a loss of its own lands. This, coupled with Russia’s denial of its colonial past and refusal to relinquish dominance in the region, renders the project of independence and decolonization incomplete, caught up in the spiral of history and positions Georgia on a distinct axis of power.
Neutrality experts overlook this distinct geopolitical position, historical background, and political context, suggesting that Georgia should avoid forming geopolitical alliances that would displease Russia. However, this position itself is far from neutral, as it insists on remaining within Russia’s “sphere of influence.” In contrast, proponents of neutrality during the 1960s Non-Aligned Movement rejected the idea of dividing the world into spheres of influence and advocated for independence and self-determination. Moreover, neutrality has two context- and power-specific preconditions. First, neutrality in the absence of an immediate threat from one of the rivaling major powers fundamentally differs from neutrality under the shadow of such a threat. Second, neutrality between powers of relatively equal strength is not the same as neutrality with a significant power imbalance. The example of India’s managed relationship with China is irrelevant to post-Soviet republics, which lack the leverage or equality with Russia to adopt a similar bargaining stance. The modern world, whether in monopolar, bipolar, or multipolar phases, has never been divided between equally powerful and powerless nations. The so-called “rest of the world” has never experienced uniform vulnerability or oppression but exists within layered hierarchies of nested powers. While the most powerful nations compete for dominance in a multipolar landscape of empires, the “rest” seek alliances to counterbalance the power that poses the most immediate threat to them.
The campist narrative I address is completely ignorant of local experiments with democracy, dismissing the current protests as yet another instance of 'brainwashing' by Western liberal democracy. While the current global power configuration results in the predominance of certain models of democracy, the ongoing protests can be interpreted as an indicator that Georgia’s aspiration for democracy has the capacity to go beyond merely mimicking established models. Our collective memory is shaped by various democratic, though incomplete, experiments from our past. These ongoing protests have the potential to address not only the local but also the broader crisis of democracy by seeking locally grounded, emancipatory, and polyphonic forms of democracy that are rooted in social justice and economic equality.
One of the earliest experiments in democracy in Georgia took place between 1902 and 1906 in the small region of Guria, where peasants initially revolted over land rights, soon demanding progressive taxation, free and compulsory education for all, freedom of speech, press, and assembly. This uprising ultimately culminated in peasant self-governance, but was violently suppressed by the forces of Tsarist Russia. The democratic experiment was revived when the opportunity for independence arose during the First Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921), led by a coalition government of Georgian social democrats. The First Republic, as political law scholars Vakhtang Menabde and Vakhtang Natsvlishvili argue, was founded on the principle of direct democracy. The Social Democrats expanded this idea into the concept of “non-intermediary democracy,” a model centered on popular sovereignty that became the guiding principle of both the constitution and the government’s approach to governance. This framework sought to counterbalance the concentration of power in the hands of the parliament and the dominant classes - an imbalance that leaders of the First Republic, such as Noe Zhordania, criticized for depriving the masses of opportunities to engage with and influence governance. Political power was not solely vested in the legislative body but shared with the people. This structure enabled citizens to participate in governance and exert control over institutions that operated outside the jurisdiction of the parliamentary majority. A recently published volume, edited by Luka Nakhutsrishvili, highlights that the First Republic was a truly polyphonic and democratic experiment. It sought to shift sovereignty away from the dominant classes and toward the principle of popular sovereignty. Thus, democracy in Georgia has a dual genealogy; historically, it was more than just an instrument to be copied. Instead, it evolved as a unique, grassroots-driven experiment, largely shaped by local struggles.
Protest march against police violence. Tbilisi. December 28, 2024. Photo: Mautskebeli
Sacrificial Zones and Weaponized Fear: The Sovereign Hand of Authoritarianism in Georgia
In response to the campists, it is also necessary to examine how concepts like sovereignty are invoked and distorted by the Georgian Dream to camouflage its authoritarian consolidation of power. The campists portray recent legislative changes as serving Georgia’s national interests, equating the ruling political and economic elite with the people. To uncover the underlying purpose behind the Georgian Dream’s appropriation of these ideas, it is necessary to examine the implications of the legislative initiatives adopted in 2024 within the context of grassroots movements. Sovereignty has become a buzzword in contemporary international politics, often invoked and manipulated for divergent purposes. It is crucial to differentiate the ideologically diverse implications of sovereignty, as conflating its use by egalitarian actors with its appropriation by anti-egalitarian authoritarian powers is both misleading and manipulative. From an egalitarian viewpoint, sovereignty revolves around the people’s ability to influence politics and global economic governance, which perpetuates uneven development. In contrast, the Georgian Dream Party and other states pursuing similar trajectories wield the rhetoric of sovereignty to monopolize power against the people. Their approach seeks to curtail the influence of supranational institutions, not in the interest of public welfare or democratic empowerment, but to protect and entrench the dominance of capital controlled by a few.
Soon after independence, in the 1990s, the political regime of disorder allowed a select few to concentrate the nation’s wealth in their hands. The first wave of privatization of national assets occurred during this period. After the Rose Revolution in 2003, the newly formed United National Movement implemented neoliberal economic reforms, which, on the one hand, spurred overall economic growth but, on the other hand, failed to address the basic grievances of Georgian society, such as unemployment and poverty. This period is characterized as “authoritarian neoliberalism” by some. The government’s reliance on privatization continued through the 2000s, and by the time Georgian Dream came to power in 2012, there was little left to sell - except the vast chain of mountains with their rivers, that are reservoirs of energy, offering lucrative potential. Following a similar economic trajectory, Georgian Dream has recently intensified authoritarian measures through legislative changes and violence against opponents, capturing the state and monopolizing government institutions under an oligarchic regime. The regime has shifted its focus to the extraction and privatization of natural resources to generate further wealth. For these resources to be monetized, however, dissent must be silenced, and entire zones sacrificed.
The series of laws threatening democracy and securing the interests of the economic and political elite, adopted over the past year, must be viewed in the context of the absolute consolidation of power by the Oligarch. For this reason, the Georgian Dream passed the “Offshore Law” in 2024, which offers tax incentives to offshore companies that transfer offshore assets into Georgia by exempting them from profit tax, personal income tax, property tax, and import duties. This law increases the risk of Georgia becoming a channel for money laundering activities, including those involving sanctioned Russian oligarchs. The same Georgian Dream, which has opposed any progressive taxation benefiting the poorest members of society, hastily adopted this law, which imposes regressive taxation for the benefit of the wealthiest. Data consistently shows that countries with less progressive taxation experience greater economic inequality. This inequality, in turn, reinforces political inequality, as societies with stark economic divides tend to have political systems shaped by the interests of the wealthy. In Georgia’s case, this dynamic has enabled the main oligarch in power to exert disproportionate influence, resulting in policies focused on self-interest, power consolidation, and the further enrichment of a select few.
Another piece of legislature contributing to the authoritarian consolidation of power is the so-called Foreign Agents’ Law, which requires NGOs, including media outlets, that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents.” However, it is not only sectors such as civil society, research, and life-saving projects that are foreign-funded. Georgia’s economy as a whole is heavily dependent on foreign direct investment, which often involves resource extraction and infrastructure development projects that may require the creation of “sacrificial zones.” As a result, the Foreign Agent’s Law is not merely an abstract threat to Georgia’s democracy; it provides a mechanism to criminalize any dissent, including criticism of harmful economic policies. For instance, one of the largest grassroots social movements in recent history, Save the Rioni Valley, which opposes large Hydropower plants and was funded entirely by regular citizens, including migrants, has already been labeled by the government as “foreign instigated“ due to its support from civil society organizations working on environmental issues. The issue with Foreign Agents’ Law is not merely „semantic,“ as some neutrality studies commentators suggest, but rather a deliberate attempt to delegitimize movements like Rioni Valley. It serves as a tool to demonize them, silence their voices, and exclude them from the legal, political, and moral order.
Another example of a sacrificial zone is the ancient gold mine site of Sakdrisi, where the Russian-owned company RMG was granted a license to conduct mining operations. Despite significant opposition from archeologists, experts, and civil society, the site was removed from the list of protected heritage sites by the Ministry of Culture, allowing the company to conduct blasting at one of the world’s oldest sites. Georgian-German research has shown that artifacts found in Sakdrisi date back to the early third millennium BC, establishing it as one of the world’s oldest known gold mines. RMG proposed a compromise: constructing an archeological museum to house the artifacts found during the excavations while the company continued extracting gold and securing additional licenses for operations in nearby villages. The Georgian government’s willingness to prioritize pit mining has led to entire villages being sacrificed and disappearing. For instance, in Chiatura municipality, manganese mining operations have devastated the village of Shukruti. Most houses in the village have been severely damaged, with the land collapsing due to over-extraction, swallowing homes and leaving villagers as witnesses to the destruction of their homes.
The international promotion of democracy in post-Soviet Georgia has rested on a disassociation between the political and economic spheres, rooted in the assumption that civil liberties and rights can be abstracted from social equality. During the United National Movement government (2003–2012), the disassociation was evident in the focus on deregulation and institutional reforms, with little emphasis on democratization in the social and economic spheres. Paradoxically, the minimal labour rights we currently have were amended not as a result of grassroots pressure - since governments often neglect people’s grievances - but as part of the Europeanization process. The Georgian government had to align its labour code with EU standards, as outlined in the EU-Georgia Association Agreement 2014. As a result, the new Labour Code was passed in 2020 against the backdrop of devastating labour conditions, including workplace discrimination, long working hours, workplace deaths, and work-related injuries. This is yet another example of how international labour standards are used as leverage to gain rights from the local oligarchic regime. Similarly, grassroots activists like Tsotne Tvaradze invoke these international standards to support their argument for the democratic right of the community to participate in decision-making on policies that impact their environment, such as the privatization of Balda Canyon.
The concept of “sovereign democracy,” a master narrative of Kremlin’s ideologues, serves two primary purposes: to consolidate authoritarian-leaning governments and, as Ivan Krastev argues, to appeal ideologically to the Global South through its apparent association with anti-imperial sovereignty. Anti-imperial sovereignty historically challenged international pressures that conflicted with the people’s interests. In contrast, the Georgian Dream deploys the discourse of „sovereignty“ to shield the authority from public scrutiny and evade adherence to democratic principles and responsiveness to the people’s demands. Thus, the Georgian Dream’s authoritarianism is both anti-Western and anti-popular, driven by a profound fear of democratic participation by the people. Within this framing, opposing the Georgian Dream is equated with opposing the Georgian people, mirroring the rhetoric in Russia, where dissent against Putin is equated with dissent against the nation. Furthermore, holding Georgian Dream’s leaders accountable is presented as an attack on the Georgian people themselves. This conflation of the public’s interests with those of the ruling elite offers a domesticated version of democracy, one in which “the poor cannot win.” This diluted version of democracy, which seeks to reconcile irreconcilable economic inequality with democratic ideals, has become a safe and acceptable framework for the ruling elite in contemporary Georgia, as it leaves the core spheres of exploitation and domination untouched. The ongoing protests defending democracy has the capacity to challenge this disassociation between the political and economic spheres, as true political equality and direct participation are essential tools to influence overarching political processes but also to address and transform the entrenched socio-economic inequalities within society.
Georgian society has many legitimate reasons for fear in the current world – fear of being jobless or fear of losing jobs, fear of war, fear of forced displacement, and fear of health insecurity. However, these genuine fears and grievances are overshadowed by the politically manufactured fear of LGBTQI+ rights, which has been instigated by the current government, along with the fear of war. Antigenderism is a global phenomenon that emerges from the ideological nexus of various global forces. However, its local variations often reinforce the narrative of a “gay-friendly” West versus “traditional” Russia, using homophobia as a weapon to serve the primary goal of consolidating power by the Georgian Dream. While the series of legislative initiatives undertaken by the government over the past year threatens citizens’ ability to participate in and influence political processes, the legislative package adopted on September 17, 2024, targeting the rights and freedoms of the LGBTQI+ community, aims to further divide society. This division comes at a time when society might otherwise be united by a shared sense of fear and vulnerability, potentially fostering mutual support and solidarities.
The legislature targeting LGBTQI+ rights can be interpreted as a multipurpose initiative that channels socio-economic fears into social phobias and redirects anger from the ruling elite toward oppressed social groups. Through the culture war, it demonizes the EU in the name of “national sovereignty,” primarily to suppress dissent and resistance to various antisocial policies, while consolidating power. The Georgian Dream party reinforces the manufactured cultural divide between totalizing categories, such as the “gay-friendly” West and the “traditional” Orthodox world, as promoted by Russian World advocates. These sharp binaries serve Russian World advocates to insist on “sameness” with former Soviet republics, while emphasizing cultural differences with the West. The discourse of sameness seeks to equate the interests of the dominant power with those of all “post-Soviet countries,” ignoring the differences and the tense history of relations with Russia. Finally, the insistence on cultural sameness and the creation of a civilizational divide helps Russia shift the focus away from the real threat of intervention it poses, redirecting attention to the fabricated threat of “culturally different” societies. An exchange between the head of special forces and a journalist illustrates how this shift in focus works. Journalist: “Do you want to be governed by Russia?” The head of the special forces:“Do you want to be governed by Pedarasts (author: denigrating term for gay people)?” A similar juxtaposition was used in Ukraine in 2015, when one MP remarked that “It is better to have a gay parade” in Kyiv “than Russian tanks in the center of the capital of Ukraine.”
Although the Georgian Dream party, by weaponizing people’s legitimate fears about the world we live in, appropriates emancipatory concepts such as sovereignty, decolonization, and peace, these concepts are reduced to hollow shells when stripped of their essential ethos. For instance, while decolonization seeks to replace the exploitation of nature with being one with nature and to dismantle hierarchies between humans and non-humans, between nations, and between individuals, the “decolonization” pursued by authoritarian regimes merely seeks to expand their capacity to perpetuate these very hierarchies. The ongoing protests have the potential to restore meaning to these concepts and complete the unfinished project of independence, which could pave the way for a new relationship with justice, freedom, and solidarity. The protest movement in Georgia is rooted in a double temporality: resisting authoritarianism in the present while collectively shaping a socially just, equal and democratic Third Republic grounded in unity.
