1

sibrjne sicruisa
A reply to Paul Henze’s views on Georgia
by
B.G. Hewitt
(Reader in Caucasian Languages, London University, England)

Scholars locate the start of Modern Georgian literature in the writings of Sulkhan
Saba Orbeliani (1658-1725), whose most famous work is perhaps his çigni sibrjne-
sicruisa c’igni sibrjne-sicruisa ‘The Book of Wisdom and the Lie’. This is usually
referred to in an abbreviated form as Saba’s sibrjne sicruisa, which, now without a
hyphen, means ‘The Wisdom of the Lie’. As one who has closely studied the
Georgian language and Georgian culture since 1975, I regrettably have to suggest
that this would be a convenient slogan to characterise the Republic of Georgia in the
late Soviet and post-communist eras. Lies are, of course, usually revealed sooner or
later, and I hope to play a part in ensuring that in the present instance it is sooner. But
until they are revealed, it may seem to the perpetrator that there is indeed a wisdom
in spreading them, and, tragically for at least two of Georgia’s ethnic minorities
(Ossetians and Abkhazians), failure to recognise the essentially mendacious nature of
current Georgian propaganda has already led into grave error many, though not all,
who for whatever reason (unprofessional journalistic enquiry, furtherance of political
cronyism, participation in either over-hasty fact-finding missions or even poorly
prepared conflict-resolution endeavours) choose to offer the world their supposedly
considered but basically superficial opinions on the present state of this country, even
though in the main they have made no attempt to learn the Georgian language, which
is an absolutely essential pre-requisite for anyone who wishes at least to try to
understand what it is to be a Georgian. This gathering has already been addressed by
former CIA-employee Paul Henze on the theme of Conflict in the Caucasus. Henze
also took part in the London-based International Alert’s mission to Georgia last
November; their report was published in January. I have to say that, if both these
presentations (taken together) reflect the quality of information that finds its way to
the CIA in the form of briefing-documents, then it is little wonder that the world
today is in such a dreadful mess! In what follows I wish to re-address some
particularities of the Abkhazian problem and also to touch upon the question of the
Caucasus in general.
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History: we are told that the collapse of communism has granted a freedom to
peoples to repossess their history and that each ethnic group has its own version of its
origin which may conflict with its neighbour’s/neighbours’ version(s). In certain
cases, of course, all this means is that Soviet lies are being replaced by lies that
bolster local nationalisms. Outsiders are also advised to read local history, literature
& ethnography both to deepen their own understanding and to encourage the
Caucasians to trust them. Henze would indeed be well advised to follow his own
advice, for in the IA report on Georgia he and his colleagues patronisingly dismiss
the discipline of history with the words: ‘We are inclined to believe [why? — BGH]
that both sides have been exaggerating and distorting obscure...historical
evidence...Ancient history has little bearing on the problem of easing the current
fighting...’ (p.4). Without going into the details, about which I have written at length
elsewhere, let me quote from the Pax Christi pamphlet Minorities in the Republic of
Georgia: ‘Lies [please note this word! — BGH] about the origins of the Abkhazians
circulated that said that they were a medieval intrusion on Georgian land from north
Caucasian mountainous clans’ (p.14). These lies did not just circulate, they were
deliberately fabricated by one P’avle Ingoroq’va during the bleak 1940s as a possible
pseudo-scholarly ‘justification’ for the expected expulsion of the Abkhazians from
Abkhazia. They were vigorously argued against at the time and into the 1950s, as a
result of which Ingoroq’va was never granted academician status after the deaths of
Stalin and Beria. Then in the days of perestrojka a number of ‘scholars’ in Tbilisi
quickly jumped onto the growing bandwagon of nationalism and began to prostitute
their disciplines of history and linguistics by resurrecting Ingoroq’va’s fabrications,
arguing either (like Ingoroq’va) that the Abkhazians were relative newcomers to
Abkhazia (e.g. the Svan linguist A. Oniani) or that ancestors of the present-day
Kartvelians (Georgians, Mingrelians, Laz, Svans) had always shared Abkhazia with
the Abkhazians (e.g. Mariam Lortkipanidze) — Honorary Member of the American
Academy, Prof. Tamaz Gamq’relidze, even contributed a shoddy, lamely argued
philological article to the debate in 1991 — [N.B. only after the Russian expulsion of
most of the North West Caucasian Abkhazians, Circassians and Ubykhs to Ottoman
lands in 1864 do non-Abkhazians appear in any numbers in Abkhazia — BGH]. And
so I wish to ask: ‘When a strong neighbour that coverts your territory deliberately
falsifies your history in order to buttress his claim to your land, are you not entitled
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forcefully to defend your sacred history?’ Of course you are so entitled, and what is
more you have the right to expect that foreign observers will pay your arguments due
respect rather than airily dismiss them after the manner of the IA report. But, in a
sense, there is here a more important consideration: more than once Henze describes
certain unwholesome aspects in some of the post-Soviet societies as a sort of natural
outcome of the collapse of 70 years of Soviet rule. I would suggest that it is too facile
by far to make the excuse for the inexcusable that we simply have no reason to expect
anything better. Scholars and writers belong to the class of ‘intelligentsia’. Does the
civilised world not have the right to expect that such intellectuals in ANY society
should be able to distinguish between good and evil? Into which of these categories
does the deliberate falsification of your own or your neighbour’s history belong? If
you consciously set out not only to falsify history but seek, by publishing your
fabrications, to rouse your less educated fellow-citizens to the ethnic hatred of
smaller races in your immediate vicinity, what judgment by outside observers do you
deserve? — condemnation or the Henze-response that it doesn’t count because we
could really expect nothing more civilised from you anyway, given your Soviet
circumstances? I trust the answer is self-evident. The saddest thing about the present
wretchedness of Georgia is that all of its troubles could so easily have been avoided.
It was solely for the personal benefit of leaders like Zviad Gamsakhurdia that the
nationalist card was played as of 1987-88, and once out of his bottle this malign
genie has still not been forced back into it. Most frightening of all is the fact that
hardly anyone has even made an attempt to re-stop the bottle...

Religion: Georgia is well known as one of the first states officially to have adopted
the christian faith (4th century). Its citizens are now free to re-embrace their faith, if
they so desire. What they are not free to do is seek to win the sympathy of the
(essentially christian) West by aiming to tar all of their opponents with the tag of
islam in a cynical attempt to play on the fears that are especially strong in America of
islamic fundamentalism. Even Henze and his IA colleagues could see that islam is of
no relevance to the present conflict with Abkhazia, and yet since 1989 Georgian
politicians and intellectuals have used the charge of adherence to islam as part of
their verbal armoury against the Abkhazians. One notorious example was in the
summer of 1989 when on the evening news-programme moambe ‘Reporter’ one of
the commentators on international affairs tried to link all cases of unrest in Abkhazia
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since 1950 with developments in Iran! The Ossetes (particularly those of South
Ossetia) are just as much christian as the Georgians, and yet the then Soviet
Ambassador to Holland, Aleksandre Chik’vaidze, said on Dutch TV in 1991 that the
Ossetes were an islamic, Turkic-speaking people [their language is, in fact, related to
Persian]. If that was not a deliberate lie, what was it? Chik’vaidze is currently the
Foreign Minister of Georgia...

Culture: Georgians are perceived as an extraordinarily hospitable people (as indeed

they are). But in this they simply share with fellow indigenes of the Caucasus just one
aspect of Caucasian culture — if foreigners associate this habit only with the
Georgians, that is because foreigners have not until quite recently been free to meet
and socialise with other Caucasians, a fact which is all too easily overlooked.
Georgians capitalise quite outrageously on this and in lauding their own generous
nature ask in feigned amazement who can have stoked the fires of ethnic hatred on
their soil. They wish to suggest the answer ‘the Centre in Moscow and those
conservatives and extremists who would re-establish its control’. But we need not
look so far for a more relevant answer: let us take as an example the Georgian
newspaper Young Communist (29th July 1989). This is what the writer Revaz
Mishveladze writes: ‘Georgia stands on the brink of a real catastrophe — of
extirpation. What devil ruled our minds, when we yielded up our land, gained inch by
inch over the centuries, defended and soaked with our blood, to every homeless
beggar that has come down from the fringes of the Caucasus, to tribes that have
neither history nor culture... We must make every effort to raise the percentage of
Kartvelians in the population of Georgia (currently 61%) to 95%. The remaining 5%
must consist of only those who know Georgian, who have a proper respect for
Georgia, who have been brought up under the influence of the Georgian national
phenomenon [stress added — BHG]. We must persuade other nationalities, who are
multiplying suspiciously in the land of David the Builder, that ideal conditions for the
development of their personalities are to be found only in their homelands. Apart
from a peaceful announcement to that effect, it is possible to bring the law to bear
upon those guests who eventually prove obdurate and slow to leave. The law will
state clearly that land will be taken at once from those who have illegally possessed
it, that any buildings erected there will be demolished without compensation... A few
days ago a delegation from Georgia (which included the 1st Secretary of the Qvareli
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Raikom) spent 8 hours in nervous conversation with the leaders of Daghestan, trying
to reach agreement on the return to their fatherland of part of the Lezgians [actually
Avars — BGH]. Finally, after reminding them of their patriotic duty, of the
possibility of actual danger, we succeeded in partially accomplishing our mission.’
Mishveladze is a writer and professor at Tbilisi University. If I had been a non-
Kartvelian resident of Georgia, I would not have been too confident about my future
there, reading this in 1989, and this is only one of numerous examples that could be
cited from the Georgian media since the late 1980s. This disgraceful piece reveals all
too clearly the prevailing attitude to the non-Kartvelian minorities, who according to
the 1989 census make up no less than 30% of Georgia’s population, and it provides
us with our third lie, namely that the minorities need have no cause for alarm in an
independent Georgia. I would suggest to Henze that precisely here is the reason why
‘Georgia became independent with secessionist movements already asserting
themselves’ and that to look for external encouragement of events in South Ossetia
and Abkhazia is merely to give comfort to the Kartvelians in their attempt to absolve
themselves from any responsibility for local reactions to their racist attitudes.

Political Tendencies: It is part of Georgian propaganda to blacken the name of the

Abkhazian political leadership with the calculated slur that they are all a pack of ex-
communists who behave like Bolsheviks are want to preserve Bolshevik structures in
Abkhazia (see, for example, this very charge made by Minister K’avsadze’s assistant
Ramaz K’limiashvili on the BBC World Service programme ‘The World Today’ on
28 August 1992). Even if the target-audience for these ridiculous charges has no
knowledge of the actual identity and politics of the Abkhazian leaders, does this
slander not sound odd coming from a regime headed by not just any old Bolshevik
but one who actually led the Georgian Communist Party from 1972 to 1985? What
excellent democratic credentials!

War: I shall limit myself to one further lie, namely the reasons for the present war in
Abkhazia. At the time it was Shevardnadze’s defence that he had to free his
kidnapped ministers K’avsadze and Gventsadze. These ministers, however, wherever
they were being kept (if indeed they were kidnapped at all — see the Pax Christi
report, page 33, for doubts over Gventsadze), were taken NOT by Abkhazians but by
the Georgians’ fellow-Kartvelian Mingrelians. Subsequently Shevardnadze preferred
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to lay his stress elsewhere, arguing that troops had to go to Abkhazia to defend the
railway-link with Russia. It is true that trains were frequent targets for robbery BUT
NOT BY ABKHAZIANS; RAIL-TRAFFIC WAS INTERFERED WITH AGAIN
BY MINGRELIANS IN MINGRELIA. The true reason for the troops going in was
to try to prevent the Abkhazians succeeding in loosening Tbilisi’s control over their
territory, as Minister of Defence K’it’ovani freely acknowledged some days after the
invasion. It is also false to depict the Abkhazians as rebels and separatists — they
took up arms, as anyone would, only when attacked and did not initiate the fighting.
Their 1925 constitution, re-instated on 23 July 1992, implied the existence of a
confederal relation with Georgia, and talks on the nature of this confederation were
taking place at the time of the invasion — an interview given to Georgian television
by Abkhazian delegate Zurab Achba on 13 August was never shewn, and the troops
went in on 14 August! The text of a draft-treaty for confederation was prepared by
the Abkhazian T. Shamba and published in the paper Abxazija at the end of June
1992. The IA mission to Georgia never mentioned the existence of this document or
even the Abkhazian proposal for confederal status with Georgia and proceeded
dishonestly to advocate a federation as their own part-solution to the problem, stating
that it was the Georgian side which had expressed approval of this idea — sending in
troops to prevent the very thing that IA claims you support is an odd way indeed to
proceed! Secretary General of the Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organisation
in The Hague, Dr. Michael van Walt van Praag, who himself led a mission to
Abkhazia in November and, in contrast to the Henze team, produced an excellent
report (well-researched, knowledgeable, informative and unprejudiced), is himself an
international lawyer. It is his opinion, expressed in conversation to me, that the
Abkhazian draft-treaty is well-framed and fully deserves to be taken as the basis of
serious negotiation. We see, then, that the Abkhazian academic leadership is not
exactly the bunch of incompetents implied by Henze. However, their attempt to
achieve their goals peacefully and by constitutional means has won them no credit —
in response to my query about the British Government’s attitude to the status of the
Abkhazian 1925 constitution Douglas Hogg replied by letter that HMG has no views
on the manoeuvrings of the early Bolsheviks! And so if you seek to play by the only
book available to you, the book itself is ripped up in your face as a worthless product
of Bolshevik rather than Western capitalist writing! Whereas if you send in your
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troops after the manner of Shevardnadze on 14 August, no-one even bothers to raise a
squeak of protest...

Academics: Henze clearly does not think much about academics involving
themselves in politics, even though in London (26 Jan) he stated that under the Soviet
system it was the best minds that went into academia! I find the assumption that only
those who have experience of political power should be trusted with exercising it
unreservedly unacceptable. And in the specific case of states emerging from Soviet
communism whither does it lead? It leads directly to the conclusion that the only
‘worthy’ political leaders are former communist apparachiks (who, as admitted by
Henze, are also possessed of less capable minds), a quite staggering view for a
presumably healthy anti-communist American to espouse! Henze’s antagonism
towards academics in politics (though note that in IA’s report on Chechnia he is by
no means so hostile to the views of Chechen academics) is partly explained by his
belief that the academic leaders of Abkhazia have given no thought to the economics
of the region. This belief, however, is totally erroneous and merely betrays Henze’s
ignorance of developments in Abkhazia over recent years, where there has been a
keen awareness of the importance of building the region’s economy; to this end
contacts with businessmen in Turkey, usually of Abkhazian descent, have been
carefully cultivated, as I have personally witnessed, since it became possible to
pursue such aims during the Gorbachev period. Henze’s opinion, on the other hand,
comfortably allows him to advocate ever more assistance for the present leader in
Tbilisi. This I find a most dangerous stance to adopt, and as it is the one that seems to
attract the unthinking acquiescence of Western politicians in general, it must be
strenuously refuted.
Regardless of what one thinks about Shevardnadze personally, one man does
not a nation make. In his book The Future Belongs to Freedom Shevardnadze talks
much about the ‘new thinking’. I wish to argue that it is high time for some ‘new
thinking’ on the problems attending the states emerging from the communist block.
Indeed, had some ‘new thinking’ and vision been applied in time, many of the
problems that were early pointed out by regional specialists and that have led during
the past few years to death and misery for thousands in Europe’s back-yard might
have been avoided, whereas it was only at the end of January 1993 that the UK’s
Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, made a speech about how advantageous it would
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be for the world-community to take preventative action in potential trouble-spots

rather than wait for hostilities actually to break out! What a pity the Germans applied
no ‘new thinking’ to the likely consequences of their precipitate recognition of
Croatia at the end of 1991; what a pity Hurd could come up with no ‘new thinking’
when, immediately after the return to Georgia of Shevardnadze, the UK recognised
the country, established diplomatic relations and urged the rest of Europe to do
likewise, and this despite the fact that the ruling State Council had come to power in
a bloody coup and wholly lacked legitimacy! What a signal must this incredible
decision have sent to potential military adventurers around the world? As Pax Christi
put it: ‘Thus the arrival of Shevardnadze gave the government the international
recognition that had been denied to the democratically elected government of Zviad
Gamsakhurdia, a remarkable fact considering article 17/1 of the CSCE Final
Document on the Human Dimension, that strongly condemns all infringements on the
outcome of free and democratic elections’ (p.18). Not that I am trying to defend
Gamsakhurdia, who was basically little more than a demagogue with no idea how to
run a country, instigating in the process the bloody war in South Ossetia, but if
incompetence were justification for the launching of coups, how many Western
European leaders would sleep easily in their beds at night?
At IA’s London meeting in January Henze and his colleague, Enders
Wimbush, advocated that the West should help to strengthen Shevardnadze’s regime,
advancing the specific opinion that to help train the Georgian army would lead to the
speedy solution of the country’s internal ethnic disputes, forgetting in the process that
it was this regime which actually began the killings in Abkhazia. Well, there are
solutions and there are final solutions... All this rather sounds to me like a good
example of the ‘old thinking’ — look at the map, decide that you don’t want
instability in some region, select a local ‘good guy’, support him in every way
(including arming him to the teeth), and then... and then... After the repressions, after
the killings, sit back and wring your hands in despair as the region descends into
anarchy. Remember Samosa, remember the Shah, remember Saddam Hussein... Are
the Abkhazians destined to play the role of Iraq’s Kurds? Are the South Ossetians to
play the role of Iraq’s Marsh Arabs? What of Georgia’s 400,000 Armenians? What of
Georgia’s 300,000 Azerbaydzhanis? Is the post-Soviet New World Order to see more
of the Old World chaos? — more, simply because there are more minorities to suffer
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at the hands of more local oppressors who feel they have the right to act as they wish
simply because they have been awarded their own nation-state?
And here we come to the basic problem: the nation-state. From the former
USSR 15 new states have emerged to represent more than 130 separate peoples. Is
this a recipe for peace and harmony, or might not the process of decolonisation have
some way yet to go? My own recommendation for ‘new thinking’ would take a
somewhat different course from Henze’s answer to his own (Lenin-type) question
What is to be done? While one may never achieve one’s goal, I feel that this is no
excuse for not at least seeking to attain the ideal. Of course we must search for
solutions to conflicts rather than just mitigation, and solutions must be predicated
upon a full understanding of the aspirations of all parties to a dispute. I fear that
Henze’s statement: ‘Active external intervention...can be undertaken only with the
consent and some degree of support of the powers that exercise sovereignty...’ may
be little more than code for the starker: ‘Don’t even attempt to do more than satisfy
the demands of those who control local power-centres’. To consider the Caucasus
only in terms of the needs of the Georgians (Kartvelians), Armenians,
Azerbaydzhanis and Russians (or their current individual rulers, as is sadly all too
often the case) will lead to further tragedies in the area; there will assuredly be no
stability. The Abkhazians, as we have seen, have proposed re-establishing the
confederative relations they had with Georgia throughout the 1920s; at the same time
a number of the North Caucasian peoples (including the Abkhazians) came together
in 1989 to create an Assembly of North Caucasian Peoples, which was transformed in
November 1991 into the Confederation of which Henze speaks. If IA could conclude
that the Abkhazians’ idea of a (con)federal association might be a possible way out of
Georgia’s problems, should not those in the West who might be in a position to
influence events in the Caucasus not only start to think about the advantages of
(con)federations in the region but actually start to promote them? Henze, as might
have been anticipated, is rather negative about the North Caucasian Confederation:
‘The situation in the North Caucasus has been additionally exacerbated by the
existence of a Confederation of North Caucasian Peoples (not states)... By sending
volunteers to Abkhazia to fight, the Confederation greatly complicated its situation.’
The sending of volunteers to fight was a direct consequence of the fact that this
Assembly/Confederation was created primarily to defend the Abkhazians against the
threat of attack from chauvinist Georgia, a state of affairs about which Henze seems
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completely ignorant. Henze also evidently approves of Chechen leaders trying ‘to
extricate Chechnia from involvement in Abkhazia and work out a rapprochement
with Georgia’, though I remain to be convinced that this is a correct appraisal of what
Chechen leaders are actually doing. What is abundantly clear is that Henze thinks the
97,000 Abkhazians should be left to fend for themselves against 4 million
Kartvelians — not a pleasant thought when one recalls the threat made in September
1992 by the then-Georgian commander in Abkhazia, Gia Q’arq’arashvili, to sacrifice
100,000 Georgian lives to ensure that the 97,000 Abkhazians were wiped out to leave
them without descendants! This threat was delivered in front of cameras and is now
available in the West. Henze condemns Russian policies of ‘divide & rule’ in the
Caucasus; he seems not to realise that the raison d’etre of the Confederation (in
which Turkic peoples like the Balkars were never involved) is precisely to ensure that
North Caucasians guarantee their future survival by remaining united against imperial
threats from BOTH Russia AND Georgia. Henze’s not entirely wholesome view of
the Confederation is evident elsewhere; in the Introduction to IA’s report on
Chechnia he writes: ‘[Dudaev’s] neglect of attention to urgent economic priorities
while continuing to support military intervention in Abkhazia and, in supporting the
North Caucasian Confederation, to encourage subversion against the other
governments of the region, puts him on a collision course with internal opposition
groups or external elements or both’ (p.vi). I find offensive the suggestion that
somehow the Confederation is striving by subversive means to achieve what I regard
as the entirely progressive aim of uniting the various North Caucasian Peoples. It is a
movement, led (unfortunately for one of Henze’s persuasion) by another academic,
the Kabardian Prof. Yuri Shanibov of Nalchik University, that aspires to bring people
together at a time when it is splits between neighbours that are scarring the map of
Eastern Europe. Simply because this organisation does not want to see a continuation
of the present patchwork of North Caucasian republics run by the communist old
guard, especially by the reactionaries Kokov in Kabardia and Galazov in North
Ossetia, it does not follow that this must be a subversive grouping; indeed, Shanibov
declared quite openly in the autumn of 1992 at a large meeting in Nalchik that it was
the desire of the Confederation to achieve full independence for the North Caucasus
but that only constitutional means were to be employed.
Now that the former Soviet republics have been internationally recognised as
nation-states with their borders, however unacceptable to this or that minority, fixed,
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any suggestion that Westerners involve themselves in trying to bring about a re-
organisation of these nation-states into (con)federations will no doubt be met with the
charge: ‘Don’t interfere in our internal affairs!’ But if the international community
truly has the interests of all its members at heart, I maintain that there is a duty to
intervene, certainly on NGOs and possibly even on governments themselves. This
need not, and indeed could not, take the form of simple heavy-handed instructions to
local heads of state to satisfy without question the demands of all relevant minorities.
It will require patience and much discussion with all parties to disputes, especially
with those being called upon to make sacrifices, so that they will eventually come to
see the advantages of taking decisions that will permit everyone who presently lives
in the relevant region to live peacefully with his neighbour. No solution of any sort at
all will derive from ignoring the rights of one side and naively suggesting that every
step be taken to satisfy the request of the regional majority for financial and military
assistance — quite the reverse; if need be, pressure must be put on unbending local
majorities by actually denying them such aid.
With its intricate mix of peoples, languages and cultures the Caucasus is a
perfect example of the inappropriateness of the nation-state with its artificial and
immutable frontiers. We need from all those of goodwill in the West a ‘hands-on’
policy and quickly. Can we not at least try to persuade all in the area to think of the
region as a whole rather in terms of this or that bit of territory? If this could be done,
the ethno-territorial rights to Nagorno-Karabagh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the
Prigorodnyj Region of North Ossetia, which is the focus of conflict between the the
North Ossetians and the Ingush, would lessen and hopefully disappear, as the region
were carefully developed for the advantage of all. By what exact mechanisms all this
could be done, I am not in a position to say, as I am not an international lawyer —
‘Clearly not!’ you may be thinking — but (con)federations seem to me to offer the
best opportunity, at least for starters. Bring and keep on bringing representatives of
all parties to the West, talk to them, give them ideas, shew them how different forms
of association work here, help them to develop civil (and peaceful) societies, do not
be afraid of discussing new forms of government. If we are really grateful that the
Cold War and super-power rivalry are behind us, do we not owe it to the former
Soviet peoples to make the attempt? It will not be easy, and it will probably not be
cheap, but to fall back as an excuse for doing nothing, so favoured by those of a
rightist tendency, on the rhetorical question: ‘What interests do we have in the
 12

region?’ is a disgrace, insofar as it presupposes that we should act only when this
leads to some financial profit to ourselves. I prefer to go back over 2,000 years to the
Roman poet Terence, who wrote: Homo sum, et nihil humanum a me alienum
puto ‘I am a human being, and I judge nothing human to be foreign to me’. It is
ultimately not in anyone’s interests to sit back and allow people just to go on killing
one another.
It is equally unacceptable ingenuously to believe that parties involved in
armed conflict necessarily both want that fighting to stop. Fact-finders must truly
find their facts, and, where necessary, pressure must be applied. I personally tried in
1989 to encourage men of vision and sense in Georgia to stand up and speak out
against the wild cries of the nationalists, who then held centre-stage. No-one
responded to the call, and I became the immediate object of obloquy from the entire
Georgian media. We are gathered here in Tbilisi’s twin-town of Atlanta. I ask well
disposed citizens to start the process I am advocating of talking openly and frankly to
Kartvelian visitors to this city. Make yourselves aware of the issues and don’t be put
off discussing them because of fears of the likely reaction — lives are being
needlessly lost because too many in the West remain silent, as, I regret to say, most
Georgian specialists have refused to speak out about events in that country over the
last 4-5 years. I urge NGOs and governments also to take up the challenge at once.
Georgia, the Georgians and other Kartvelians will all have a crucial role to
play in whatever the future holds for the Caucasus, but no-one should be allowed to
build their international bona fides on lies or pampered into expecting a divine right
to hegemony by being allowed to get away unchallenged when lauding (in the
manner of Mishveladze above) some notional ‘Georgian national phenomenon’ —
haven’t we had enough of ‘national phenomena’ this century?!
If we are not prepared to stand up for what is right and just, then let us say
now and without prevarication: ‘Do not be a minority without a state of your own; do
not seek to behave with dignity in the face of abuse and threats from your state-
owning neighbours; do not put your trust in the justice of your case hoping that the
Western powers will take an interest in, and support, your moderate requests; do none
of this, just yield all your rights to your state-owning neighbour, for the West has
never heard of you, does not want to hear of you, and is not going to lift one little
finger to help you ensure your physical survival — it is too busy contemplating its
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profit & loss ratio!’ Is this really the message we wish to send out from this
Consultation?!