The Evolution of Democracy in Georgia Essay -- European Europe History

The Georgian people made its choice on 26 May 1918, when it voted for democracy and pluralism in the conditions of a free Georgia. 26 May was destroyed by Bolshevik bayonets, but the idea of freedom and democracy remain undefeated in the Georgian - Statement of the National Democratic Party, 1988.1 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Caucasian country of Georgia (map below) was among the vanguard of forces seeking the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was the only republic to join the Baltic in flatly refusing to even consider signing Gorbachev's new Union treaty in 1990.2 Agitation for Georgian independence led to a series of bloody clashes with the authorities that only served to further radicalize the nationalists. When discussing the prospects for independence, many Georgians mentioned the short-lived Georgian Democratic Republic, which managed to survive for "three halcyon years... 1918-1921, the period lovingly referred to by Georgians as 'independent Georgia'."3 This brief period was critically important for the development of a Georgian nationalism. In effect, the existence of Georgia as an independent nation led to the birth and initial growth of nationalism in Georgia. The history of Georgia from 1917 to 1921 shows a steadily increasing national feeling, which wa s not crushed by the Soviet invasion and later formed the basis of the strong separatist tendencies of the Georgians in the final decades of the Soviet Union. Before the Russian Revolution, Georgian national feeling was so subdued as to be effectively negligible. The absorption of feudal Georgia into the Russian Empire in 1801 and the subsequent Russian administration of the country were widely accepted as necessary for the protection of the country a... ... 192. 27. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle, 118. 28. Zourab Avalishvili, The Independence of Georgia in International Politics, 1918-1921 (Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, Inc., 1990), 64 - 65. 29. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle, 126. 30. Ibid., 148. There was also talk in Berlin of installing some German prince as King of Georgia, but this was abandoned once the strength of the Socialists in Georgia was understood. 31. Suny, Georgian Nation, 195. 32. Ibid., 201. 33. Nasmyth, Georgia, 301. 34. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle, 196. 35. Suny, Georgian Nation, 199. 36. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle, 182 - 183. 37. Nasmyth, Georgia, 52. 38. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle, 197 39. Ibid., 197. 40. Ibid., 199. 41. Suny, Georgian Nation, 207. 42. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle, 203. 43. Ibid., 328. 44. V. I. Lenin, quoted in Kazemzadeh, The Struggle, 324. 45. Suny, Georgian Nation, 208.