High above Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, next to an ancient fortress, stands a colossal figure. Kartlis Deda (or Mother of Georgia) is a twenty-metre statue of a woman holding a cup of wine in one hand and a sword in the other. She warns that while Georgians treat good-faith guests as “a gift from God,” as the mantra goes, enemies will be dealt with ruthlessly.
Kartlis Deda embodies the legacy of Georgia’s location at the crossroads of empires. She is testament to the centuries of invasion and occupation that have shaped a national psychology of cultural resilience under siege. On a clear day, I can see her standing vigil on the mountainous horizon from the roof of my home in central Tbilisi.
Georgia has been in turmoil since late November when its ruling party, Georgian Dream, suspended the country’s bid for European Union membership less than a year after it gained full candidate status. Every night since then, hundreds of thousands of protesters have braved freezing temperatures, water cannons, tear gas and other forms of violence to demonstrate against what they see as the theft of their European future by a pro-Russian regime. Once a beacon of democracy in the South Caucasus, Georgia is staring down the barrel of an authoritarian future.
The November announcement was just the latest in a series of actions taken by Georgian Dream (which has governed since 2012, most recently under prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze) that seem to be leading the country away from its liberal democratic path into Kremlin-style authoritarianism. Behind the scenes is Georgian Dream’s founder and de facto leader, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and has long been accused of loyalty to the Kremlin.
Over the past year alone, Georgian Dream has introduced a wave of Russian-style legislation designed to encroach on civil liberties, undermine the independence of Georgia’s democratic and legal institutions, and centralise power. Yet it continues to insist that its dealings with Moscow are pragmatic rather than fraternal.
Almost a year ago, I observed the protests outside parliament after Georgian Dream passed a controversial law opposed by many in Georgia as well as by the country’s Western allies. Dubbed the “foreign agents’ law,” the legislation requires any Georgian group that receives more than a fifth of its funding from abroad to register as an “agent of foreign influence.” It closely mirrors laws introduced in Russia in 2012 since used to justify extreme suppression of independent media and civil society.
Although the ruling party claims the law will protect Georgian statehood — a jingoistic appeal finely attuned to Georgia’s collective imperative of national survival — critics say it goes against its promise to the Georgian people to pursue full integration into the European Union and NATO, a pathway enshrined in Georgia’s constitution.
With thousands of protesters adorned in colourful Georgian and EU flags facing off against a dark horde of riot police in Tbilisi’s ironically named Freedom Square, the city’s streets are presenting a powerful image of a nation at a crossroads.
The unrest intensified after Georgian Dream secured a fourth term at October’s parliamentary elections amid widespread reports of electoral manipulation and voter intimidation. Salome Zourabichvili, Georgia’s last president elected by popular vote, spearheaded the public revolt against the result by labelling the government as illegitimate and its actions as “evidence of Russia’s presence.” (Georgian Dream replaced popular presidential elections with electoral college appointment last year.)
At seventy-two, Zourabichvili has emerged as a surprisingly formidable opponent of Georgian Dream. She attracts support not with populist sloganeering or demagoguery, as is common practice among leaders in post-communist contexts, but by positioning herself as the guardian of Georgia’s constitution and custodian of the county’s last remaining democratic institution.
Despite being replaced in late December by Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former professional footballer handpicked by Ivanishvili, Zourabichvili has vowed that her mandate will end only when Georgian Dream holds new elections under international supervision and reinstates Georgia’s constitutional framework.
When I watched Zourabichvili leave Tbilisi’s presidential palace for the final time on a chilly Sunday morning a few days after Christmas, I glimpsed something of the Kartlis Deda in her presence, transcending her petite stature. “This building was a symbol only as long as a legitimate president was sitting here,” she said. As the year ticked over into 2025, Georgian Dream had successfully consolidated control of all the institutions of government.
Many observers have drawn parallels between Georgia’s current protests and Ukraine’s 2013–14 Euromaidan revolution, which was prompted by then-president Viktor Yanukovych’s reneging on Ukraine’s association agreement with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Russia. Images of state security forces using water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse demonstrators in Tbilisi do indeed bear a striking resemblance to the civil unrest in Ukraine that prompted Russia to annex Crimea and incite the insurgency in Ukraine’s Donbas region that laid the groundwork for full-scale war.
Yet Georgia provides its own parallels, for it has already experienced both revolution and war with Russia since achieving independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Its people have very little taste for more of the same, especially with Russia already effectively occupying around a fifth of their territory.
While Georgia’s sociopolitical crisis is often framed as a battle between pro-Russian and pro-European forces, this only tells part of the story. Understanding Georgia’s current political moment means taking stock not only of the challenges of statecraft and nation-building in Russia’s shadow, but also of Georgia’s history, its deep-rooted identity formation and the paradoxes of its European aspirations.
The impulse to preserve and protect Georgian identity is the oldest and strongest component of the country’s national consciousness. For centuries, Georgia’s mountainous geography has served as a natural vault for its sacred treasures. Ancient monasteries became fortresses where manuscripts, icons, and religious items were hidden from invading armies; surrounded by difficult terrain and protected by tower houses, they remain not just physical repositories of Georgian culture but also symbols of national continuity, survival and resistance.
Concealing cultural artefacts paralleled a more profound struggle to maintain Georgian identity in the face of repeated attempts at erasure and assimilation. After Tsar Paul 1 annexed the country in 1801, abolishing the Georgian monarchy and instituting direct Russian Imperial rule, a systematic policy of Russification persisted in various forms through the imperial and Soviet periods until Georgia’s independence in 1991.
Particularly damaging were Soviet attempts to reshape Georgian society with forced collectivisation, purges and the cultivation of a local communist elite loyal to Moscow rather than Georgian national interests. Stalin himself — born Ioseb Jughashvili in the Georgian town of Gori — embodied this colonial dynamic, rising through Soviet ranks to become the architect of unprecedented repression of his native country and its people.
That trauma was exacerbated by Georgia’s brief but significant period of independence between 1918 and 1921. While imperfect, and often invoked in the present day in ways that reveal the competing visions and romanticisms of the country’s uneven development, the Democratic Republic of Georgia, with its progressive institutions, enlightened constitution and ambitious sociopolitical and economic reforms, was one of the world’s first social democracies.
The Red Army’s forcible incorporation of Georgia into the Soviet Union in 1921 thus represented more than an occupation. It was the destruction of a promising democratic experiment and the source of national trauma that continues to influence modern Georgian nation-building and self-understanding.
Since Georgia gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 its sovereignty has been tied to two interconnected struggles: (re)establishing democratic institutions and behaviours and resisting the Russian threat. Both goals are inextricable from Georgia’s European aspirations and have taken on deeply existential dimensions that has not always proved conducive to civic resilience and democratic consolidation.
First, a mythology of Georgia’s innate “Europeanness” is often invoked to play down Russian influence. It emphasises three foundational elements of the country’s European heritage: its early adoption of Christianity; its mythological ties to ancient Greece (and thus the Western canon) through the figure of Medea and the Golden Fleece legend; and its democratic traditions, presented as a lineage from medieval participatory governance through to the early twentieth-century republic. That lineage is used to suggest a natural and continuous democratic disposition in Georgian political culture impeded primarily by Russia.
The “returning to Europe” story has often substituted for more difficult discussions about what a transition to democracy actually means for Georgia. When Georgians speak of freedom, rights, sovereignty and other values that have become intwined with the country’s European aspirations, those values are traditionally associated less with Western understandings of personal liberties than with the desire for national autonomy, survival and self-determination.
The focus on EU candidate status and other formal markers of Western integration has served as an alibi not just for substantive democratic reform but also for a public reckoning with the unresolved legacies of Georgia’s early post-Soviet nation-building, which have contributed to uneven socioeconomic development, resentment, separatism, civil war, Russian occupation and the failure to integrate ethnic minorities.
Georgia’s democratic transformation has been strengthened by grassroots aspirations and key moments of national mobilisation, such as the 2003 Rose Revolution, which have oriented it away from the Kremlin and towards Euro-Atlantic integration. But the lack of critical engagement with Eurocentric national narratives and the upheavals of Georgia’s independence have allowed Soviet-era practices and power structures to adapt and endure rather than be systematically reformed.
Second — and this is a controversial claim in the present climate — Russia functions as both a genuine threat and a pernicious rhetorical framework in Georgia. Without question, Russia poses a persistent and significant risk to Georgia’s stability, sovereignty and security. But the tendency to use Russian threat as a pretext for delegitimising contentious viewpoints or uncomfortable truths about domestic issues has impeded the frank public discussion and collective historical self-reflection necessary for genuine reform and reconciliation.
Georgian Dream has skilfully capitalised on this dynamic. The party’s initial electoral success in 2012 came largely in response to then-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s increasingly unpopular neoliberal reforms and confrontational approach to Russia, which many believed had led to the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. After twenty years of upheaval, Georgian Dream’s victory appeared to represent a new epoch of consolidated democracy, peace and stability in Georgia. It was the first time in the country’s independent history that a government had voluntarily relinquished power.
Georgian Dream’s capture of state institutions was gradual rather than immediate. Under Ivanishvili’s influence, the party has cynically invoked Russian hostility to justify Kremlin-style authoritarian policies and practices in the name of safeguarding Georgia’s security and sovereignty. It’s an approach designed to deflect attention from democratic backsliding and efforts to compromise Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration.
Georgian Dream’s fearmongering increased significantly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ostensibly to buffer Georgia from a similar fate. Yet its weaponisation of public fears of Russian aggression has also functioned as a means of self-preservation. Ivanishvili calculated that maintaining economic ties with Russia while using the threat of war to suppress domestic opposition offered the most stable path for retaining his personal power, wealth and control.
In the lead-up to the recent election, the party launched an Orwellian propaganda campaign featuring images of destroyed Ukrainian cities juxtaposed with vivid photos of intact Georgian cities. “No to war!” read the captions on the black-and-white photos, which listed the ballot numbers of the opposition parties. “Choose peace!” read the caption of the colour photos featuring the ballot number of Georgian Dream.
As part of this posturing, Georgian Dream has also claimed that a “Global War Party” has brought together Western powers, the Ukrainian leadership and Georgian opposition groups allegedly seeking to open a second front in Georgia against Russia. Outsiders might be baffled by such conspiracy-peddling in a country that has pinned its future security on Western integration. But the claim aligns with Georgian Dream’s broader campaign to undermine trust in Europeanisation without alienating the majority of voters who support EU membership.
Over its twelve years in power, the party has transformed its rhetoric on the EU, recently claiming that Georgia will only join the bloc on its own terms, “with dignity.” By decoupling the idea of Europe from democracy and liberal rights, it has dangled the carrot of Georgia’s European future with one hand while undermining the accession process with the other. It’s a riff on Hannah Arendt’s classic definition of self-perpetuating authoritarianism, and one that resonates with the EU’s own swelling illiberal ranks.
In this way, Georgian Dream has weaponised not just the Russian threat but also Europe itself. The tactic resonates strongly among the mainstay of its voter base: the older, religious, non-urban people who have been hit hardest by the upheavals and conflicts of the past three decades and remain deeply sceptical of change. Electoral fraud aside, this constituency alone would have ensured Georgian Dream returned a strong parliamentary majority.
By framing liberal and LGBTQ+ rights as threats to Georgia’s deep-rooted Christian Orthodox identity, Georgian Dream has created a powerful electoral strategy which — combined with vote-buying and intimidation — has consolidated its political dominance while still paying lip service to Georgia’s European “Christian values” trajectory.
This positioning creates a paradox for Georgia’s European aspirations. While Georgian Dream’s stance against social reforms and Church-backed fearmongering about liberal rights resembles Russia’s ideological anti-Westernism, it aligns even more closely with growing conservative movements in EU member states such as Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and even Italy that advocate for a “Christian values” Europe.
Significantly, the first foreign leader to publicly endorse Georgian Dream’s victory was Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who arrived in Tbilisi shortly after the disputed ballot to congratulate the party for not letting Georgia become “a second Ukraine.”
On the one hand, thus, Georgian Dream cannot simply be characterised as “pro-Russian.” Its rhetoric mirrors current EU debates about alternative models of European integration that don’t require the wholesale adoption of liberal social policies. On the other hand, a country like Hungary has the luxury of promoting traditional values from inside the EU–NATO club. Georgia’s geopolitical vulnerability to Russia means it can’t afford to alienate Western partners whose strategic interest in Georgia rests almost solely on its ability to keep to its democratic path.
In the hands of Georgian Dream, the European “traditional values” card is thus fundamentally ironic: it risks undermining the very independence from Russia that Georgia’s Orthodox Church has historically fought to protect.
As pundits love to claim, the small Caucasian country is at a crossroads. But rather than framing the road ahead as forked between Russia and the West, it is more apt to see it as a choice between unconstructive historical patterns and the civic maturation that could transform European ambitions into genuine democratic resilience.
With Georgian Dream’s authoritarian grip on power and willingness to deploy violence against citizens, this will not be an easy fight. International partners have a crucial role to play, not through mere platitudinal statements of concern but with targeted pressure that raises the costs of democratic backsliding and demonstrates solidarity with Georgian citizens.
But external support can’t substitute for domestic will. The current crisis demonstrates how legitimate concerns about Russian interference can coexist with the need to critically examine domestic vulnerabilities. If Georgians truly want to parlay their European aspirations into a more stable democratic future they must back up their anti-Russian rhetoric and grassroots consciousness with a deeper sociocultural and historical reckoning.
Georgia’s opposition and civil society organisations must find ways to transcend historical patterns of fragmentation and personality-driven politics, building broader coalitions to challenge state capture while demonstrating the values of open society they advocate. This means moving beyond reactive protest cycles and simplistic rhetoric towards initiatives that connect diverse groups to conversations about how to collectively build a shared future.
This process is likely to be painful, particularly when it comes to rebuilding trust in the wake of the current protests. Georgians, not Russians, must be held to account for beating, detaining and brutalising their fellow citizens under orders from Georgian political leaders. It is a terrible truth to bear, but the assault on civic freedoms has come not from foreign adversaries but from within.
As Georgia’s protests enter their seventh week in Tbilisi, there are no signs the movement is abating. The streets have become a stage for multiple sectors of Georgian society — from grandmothers to DJs to veterinarians to ethnic mountain communities — to demonstrate the breadth and depth of their opposition to Georgian Dream’s authority.
The calls of these citizens are clear and simple. They don’t want a Maidan-style revolution, they want the government to return to a constitutional framework and to hold new free and fair elections. This is an important milestone in Georgia’s democratic development, demonstrating civil society’s capacity to mobilise peacefully for institutional reform rather than regime change.
During these weeks I’ve witnessed Georgians continuing the traditions underpinning their national solidarity and survival. Small businesses stay open into the wee hours to offer protesters warm drinks, phone-charging stations and sometimes even hot showers. Farmers travel from the regions to distribute produce to their exhausted compatriots demonstrating daily in the city. People light orthodox prayer candles in the street. Groups break into impromptu polyphonic song. On New Year’s Eve, a communal festive table stretching hundreds of metres down Tbilisi’s central avenue, named after a national poet, was set for strangers and friends to toast the coming year together.
Georgian Dream has grossly miscalculated this moment and overplayed its hand. It is now the government — not Russia, nor Europe — that faces the pointy end of Kartlis Deda’s sword. But the party has also managed a feat that most of its Western counterparts today find near impossible. It has galvanised a whole society to come together to fight for its constitutional legacy and democratic future.
For Georgians, this is a battle for national survival they have fought continuously for hundreds of years. It’s impossible to imagine them backing down. •
