Gorbachev Through Georgian Eyes

...Since Georgian culture has always survived its conquerors, there is no need to fret too much about the Soviets...

...The table they laid was covered with dozens of delicacies: breads, cheeses, smoked sausage, relishes both tart and sweet, salads, red and black caviar, fresh mushrooms, eggplant stuffed with garlic, crushed walnuts wrapped in a flour-and-honey paste, spiced mutton on skewers and fried chicken...

...Georgians felt such empathy toward Staun that they regarded Khrushchev's criticism of him as a direct affront...

...The explanation struck me as plausible to a degree...

...I would have preferred the National Democrats or the Federalists...

...Fear, docility, demagogy, life with eyes shut in a cat-and-mouse game —people have started to discard all this...

...Police surrounded the demonstration and many feared it would end in bloodshed...

...press, a similar call has come from Georgia: Tbilisi's newly formed Rustaveli Society, a cultural and increasingly political organization named after the 12th-century Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli, has endorsed a proposal urging Moscow to relinquish all control over Georgian industry and agriculture...

...It was the one time anyone asked me not to attribute their words to them in print...

...On the one hand, Georgians are clever businessmen and stand to benefit from the easing of restrictions on private initiative...

...My first experience of this traditional display of the region's bounty came at the dacha of a respected couple who are doctors...

...Sergo Ordzhonikidze served on the Politburo as the people's commissar for heavy industry...

...Man is changing his skin...

...If you ask me my personal preference," she said, "it would not have been for either the Mensheviks or the Bolsheviks...

...Virtually every visitor to Georgia, at one point or another, is invited to sit at the Georgian table...

...A half-dozen buildings continue to display his profile in their stone friezes...

...On the kitchen shelves there were bottles of Western whiskeys and liqueurs, though neither of the doctors had traveled abroad...

...It was the bald and barrel-chested vice president of the Rustaveli Society, Iosif Tsiskarishvili, who most clearly exposed the doubts some Georgians harbor over the ideological content of Gorbachev's reforms...

...Among ordinary people that conviction is not so strong...

...wandering about, literally for months at a time, in the markets of Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, and Kiev, selling fruit from the soil of Georgia, fruit they never raised...

...She said it without resentment...

...David's Church on Holy Mountain...

...People waxedpoetic about "the reconstruction of society," "a return to sanity," and "the new ways of thinking and acting...

...Unlike most of his countrymen, he seemed to take great pleasure in being politically provocative...

...Among the intelligentsia there is almost a unanimous feeling that if the system requires any deaths at all to function properly, then the system is bad...

...The youngest daughter confided that her parents were trying to decide which of two makes of cars to buy, Jaguar or Mercedes...

...Abel Yenukidze became secretary-general of the Central Executive Committee...

...In the backyard a filtered swimming pool reflected the late-afternoon sun...

...With the exception of Shevardnadze, no Georgian has attained a position of influence since Stalin's death...

...Like many of those I spoke with during a visit to Tbilisi and several smaller cities, she possessed a national pride so abundant that resentment found no place in her opinions...

...There, comparatively magnanimous authorities have permitted the creation of the first largescale political group outside the Communist Party, only to find that it is calling for complete economic autonomy from Moscow...

...Gorbachev's encouragement of widespread family farming could improve agricultural output, and thus create competition, in republics where the practice has not been going on for decades without government sanction...

...Their literacy rate and per capita secondary school and university education are among the highest in the Soviet Union...

...At the same time, this sense of history explains the fervent nationalism inherent in their desire for economic autonomy and their lingering affection for Stalin...

...A television in one corner was equipped with a video cassette recorder...

...The excitement it had engendered was almost palpable...

...More than anything else they wanted Georgia to be independent...

...As far back as 1972, he was quoted as saying, "One is literally consumed with shame upon seeing [Georgians...

...At the very least, this frees them from buying food at state-run groceries...

...Yet, in no other republic have such persistent efforts been made to preserve the cult of Stalin...

...For answers, I was forced to rely more on observation than conversation, and on the Georgians' frequent jokes and offhand remarks, like the one made by a middle-aged man at a dinner I attended...

...The pride that Georgians have long directed toward Stalin and now direct, to a lesser extent, toward Shevardnadze suggests that they feel more dependent on Moscow than they admit...

...But for Tsiskarishvili the controversy over the screening was not enough...

...Many are fiercely opposed to letting it be made the subject of public discussion...

...As punishment, he lost his job teaching political geography at Tbilisi's university...

...She was too young to have experienced the event firsthand, yet what she said was revealing...

...The Stalin museum is still maintained at his birthplace in Gori, though recent changes reportedly have been made that treat his role more critically than before...

...Despite their reputation for candor and volubility, they became vague or reticent when I asked them why they were so excited about Gorbachev's reforms if things had always been so reasonable and effective, or conversely, when I asked what problems would be addressed by the reforms...

...In reality, Tsar Alexander I annexed most of Georgia in 1801, and the rest of the region came under Russian control as a result of the Russo-Turkish wars later in the century...

...But in Tbilisi, a park, a mountain railway and an embankment along the Kura River continue to bear his name...

...One night when we were together at a hotel in Borzhomi, the mountain resort famous for the supposed curative powers of its mineral waters, Tsiskarishvili arranged for a screening of Repentance...

...The example of Estonia, where per capita income is the highest in the Soviet Union, comes to mind...

...You see, we are Georgians, not Soviets...

...When the republic's Constitution was rewritten in 1978, a phrase that had previously legalized Georgian as the official language was at first omitted...

...She spoke of the Soviet Union as though it were merely a passing quirk, one more foreign presence among the dozens that have come and gone during the 3,000 years of Georgian history...

...First the Tsars and subsequently the Bolsheviks were "invited," they maintain, to assume jurisdiction over Georgian lands...

...Hence, reforms that other republics may welcome are often viewed here as meddlesome attempts to exert new controls, or as concessions that do not go far enough...

...Common rural workers generally have private gardens with more space than most Muscovites ever dream of...

...A TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK Gorbachev Through Georgian Eyes By Hal Langfur Tbilisi Georgians like to assert that they once were part of the Russian Empire and now are part of the Soviet Union by choice...

...Many others, particularly the intelligentsia, run private practices: teachers tutor, artists take commissions from private patrons, doctors treat patients on their own after a day at the public clinic or hospital...

...As long as there are citizens willing to tolerate repression to maintain order, there will be strong resistance to a liberalization that is perceived as having encouraged disorder...

...Georgians, according to their own accounts of the republic's history, are not in this category—or at least not to a degree that would make them unequivocally eager to abandon their former ways...

...I was treated enough times to similar feasts and invited into enough privileged homes to confirm what I had read about wealth being far easier to come by in Georgia than elsewhere in the Soviet Union...

...Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, formerly first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, made his name on a national level by cracking down on such corruption...

...The objection is not so much to Stalin as a man," he said, "but to the repressive system which resulted in so many deaths...

...Yearsago, Tsiskarishvili became a committed opponent of Soviet authority by assisting his friend, the Georgian director Tengiz Abuladze, in the production of the antiStalinist film Repentance...

...I had arrived in Tbilisi just one week after the conclusion of the 19th Communist Party Conference in Moscow...

...I did not see the prominently displayed portraits of Stalin that travelers to Georgia used to notice prior to Gorbachev's ascension...

...They advance this thesis with a certainty that suggests Moscow could just as easily be invited to leave when its policies no longer serve Georgia's purpose...

...Lavrenti P. Beria took control of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD...

...He was reputed to wield great influence over leading members of the Georgian Communist Party...

...Despite invasions by the Romans, Persians, Turks, Mongols, Iranians, and Russians, the culture has flourished...

...The resulting sense of tradition and national history has given Georgians their reputation for what the historian David M. Lang calls a "proud, often flamboyant bearing, which is based on a conviction of the superiority of their own culture and achievements...

...He managed to do so only by ignoring repeated objections by the hotel staff, who said it would anger local Party officials...

...yet considering the historical moment, it also seemed incomplete...

...Tired of a prolonged argument over who would be the evening's Tamada, or toast master, he stood up, raised his wine glass and said: "At the Georgian table, there is no need for perestroïka" Such comments betrayed a deep ambivalence toward the reforms and a strain of fierce nationalism that the Georgians were keeping to themselves...

...Every conversation veered to the north and the subject of Party General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev's reforms...

...They wonder if denying Stalin's contribution to Soviet history might also entail denying something fundamental in the Soviet system, something without which the system might totter...

...What Georgians seem to want most of all is to be left alone...

...Though unreported in the U.S...

...but this ended in 1921, when the republic's Menshevik government took flight as the Red Army invaded from Azerbaijan...

...The very strength of the Georgian character lies in its perseverance through centuries of unpleasant details...

...A year ago in these pages, the Sovietologist Kurt M. Campbell wrote that " the Stalin era, distorted by official legend and heretofore shrouded in Statesanctioned silence, is recalled in the Soviet Union with equal parts of horror and nostalgia...

...During Stalin's rule, Georgian nationals enjoyed a period of unprecedented prominence within the Soviet system...

...In Georgia," said a philosophy professor I questioned, "we have always had a very reasonable and effective social policy...

...Nowhere is that statement more true than in Stalin's native land...

...Over the years, there have been reports in the Soviet press of official vehicles and ostensibly empty railway cars being used for the illegal transport of produce to northern markets...

...preferring that the dictator's role in their society be exalted rather than exhumed...

...On the other, many presumably wish to avoid losing control of the black markets they have found so lucrative...

...Stalin's mother remains peacefully buried with other Georgian heroes in St...

...Those who saw the allegorical film when it played in the United States early this year will recall that, without mentioning the most famous of all Georgians by name, it traces the career of a powermad provincial politician and his effect on the two generations that come after him...

...The house itself was no less lavishly appointed than the table...

...they can spend their money on consumer goods considered luxuries in the rest of the Soviet Union...

...They were not Socialist...

...The following night he tried to stage a disco inside a magnificent mansion built by Nicholas II on what is now the hotel grounds...

...Some keep private agricultural plots which they work or have tended to supplement their salaries...

...But after the government promised that the old clause would be part of the new Constitution the crowd agreed to disperse...

...During the mass repression of 1937-38, Georgia probably suffered more than any Soviet republic, with the possible exception of Azerbaijan...

...Although Tsiskarishvili succeeded in getting the sound equipment delivered, he could not convince the staff to move it inside...

...Glasnost and perestroïka appeal above all to those who suffered the frustrations and debilities of the era Gorbachev looks upon as one of stagnation...

...I had to press, but finally I did get one woman to discuss the Red Army's invasion in 1921...

...That is how one young scholar explained her people's palliative view of relations with Russia...

...A moral revolution has been accomplished in the country," wrote Yegor Takovlev, one of the enraptured delegates...

...They consented to open the mansion just long enough to allow guests to view such treasures as the bed Stalin slept in and a table from which he issued state orders...

...The reaction of the Georgians I met was equally florid...

...See "The Ghost of Stalin," NL, November 2, 1987...

...It is precisely this kind of "socialistically unprincipled" behavior, this thriving second economy, that has been one of the points of greatest friction between Georgia and Moscow...

...Decanters of red and white wine poured freely until the feast's very end...

...No end of work still lies ahead, we are merely at the first stages of perestroika, but the moral revolution has occurred...

...In Tbilisi, I met several of the thousands of Georgians who staged an unsanctioned rally outside the Parliament building to protest the omission...

...What seemed incongruous was the juxtaposition of this professed enthusiasm for reform with the contention that Moscow, all along, had served Georgia's purposes...

...Those who managed to purchase the paper were stunned by what they read...

...While no one would admit to it, the Georgians seemed no less offended by Gorbachev's campaign to vanquish Stalin and his present-day supporters...

...Above us on the dining room's high stained-wood walls hung skillfully rendered portraits of the husband, wife and their two daughters...

...My queries about how the privileged acquire their wealth got one of two answers...

...Georgia has faced repeated threats to its culture throughout history...

...Georgians have been chastised by Party officials for widespread speculation, illicit trade and bribery...

...The continued existence of private enterprise in Georgia explains some of the ambivalence toward Gorbachev's new economic policies...

...Soon after being appointed first secretary, Shevardnadze had Lazishvili arrested and forced his political allies into retirement...

...Hal Langfur, a previous NEW Leader contributor, recently returned from an extended visit to Soviet Georgia...

...Copies of the Moscow News vanished from newsstands soon after they appeared...

...One guest at the hotel in Borzhomi put the dilemma rather bluntly...

...As a people, Georgians are better fed, better dressed and better educated than Russians...

...The protesters were incensed by Moscow's increasingly determined efforts to promote the use of Russian in Georgia, including requiring graduate students to submit their dissertations in Russian...

...One of the many messages of Repen tance is that So viet society has yet to address the legacy of Stalin's rule...

...Following the Bolshevik coup, Georgia enjoyed a brief three-year period of renewed independence...

...In 1956, more than 100 people were killed, twice that many were wounded, and several hundred were sent to Siberia when riots broke out in Tbilisi in response to Nikita S. Khrushchev's attempts at de-Stalinization...

...I left Borzhomi wondering how strong the conviction would have to be to fully support Gorbachev's reforms...

...With ethnic disturbances just across the border in Armenia and Azerbaijan, this concern is very real in Georgia...

...Staun is no longer admired by people here, but he is respected," was the refrain I heard from a number of those offended by Tsiskarishvili's actions...

...Combined with the affinity Georgians historically have felt for Russians as a Christian ally against Islam, that conviction explains how so many Georgians remain sanguine about their republic's relationship with Moscow, past and present...

...Tsiskarishvili appears as an extra in one of the scenes, and he illegally circulated prints of the film while it was still proscribed in the period before glasnost...

...During the height of his power, Stalin had used the mansion as one of his numerous dachas...

...If in the process of retaining such equanimity one has to gloss over a few unpleasant details, then so be it...

...The Georgians were of surprisingly little help in sorting out this apparent paradox...

...Shevardnadze's most famous success as Party chief involved the Georgian entrepreneur Otari Lazishvili, who amassed a fortune by establishing a network of illicit factories to manufacture consumer goods in short supply...

...Georgia's attachment to Stalin gives its people a particularly acute sense of what dethroning him may mean...

...They wonder, for instance, what would become of the Soviet Union without the order and discipline that Stalin represents...

...Reports by delegates who had attended the conference described a level of public debate unparalleled since the early days of Communist rule...

...But the mixed response to the present de-Stalinization goes beyond a mere longing to be at the center of Soviet power...

...We suffer from the complex of a small country...

...By condescending to Moscow, Georgians can take its repressions lightly while welcoming its reforms with cheerful cynicism...

...for dessert, raspberries, peaches, pastry, cakes, ice cream and Turkish coffee...