A poster in Tbilisi, Georgia, showed a graphic picture of a Georgian bombing victim from the war with Russia.
By DAN BILEFSKY and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Published: September 7, 2008
Published: September 7, 2008
TBILISI, Georgia — When a Russian-language theater troupe from Georgia went to St. Petersburg a few years ago to stage a darkly satirical play about modern Russia — featuring a mentally impaired child named Vladimir who brings the country to ruin and a Stalinist plot to create a master race through artificial insemination — much of the Russian audience hissed and booed before leaving early.
Avto Varsimashvili, the Georgian director of the play, “Russian Blues,” said he expected it to inspire the opposite reaction when it opened in Georgia next year. But he insisted it was the caustic Georgian sense of humor, rather than an anti-Russian mania spurred by the recent war between Georgia and Russia, that would help make the play a success.
“Georgians have always had a deep affection for Russian people and Russian culture going back centuries,” said Mr. Varsimashvili, speaking in fluent Russian at his theater in a multiethnic neighborhood of Tbilisi plastered with posters showing graphic pictures of Georgians bombed in the recent war.
“We perceive a modern Russia that is big and sometimes monstrous,” he said. “But the difference between Georgians and Russians is that we have never mistaken the Russian people for the Russian government.”
The war and its aftermath have nevertheless been greeted with an anti-Russian backlash that is spilling over into politics and culture. A popular rap video, which has been run repeatedly on state television, shows an image of the head of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, attached to the body of a rat stomping on a map of Georgia, under the words the “evil vampire.”
Also, the government of Georgia has cut off Georgians’ access to Russian television and Web sites, while both countries have officially cut off diplomatic relations.
Yet the reality here is more complex. Although the Georgian government has spent the years since the Soviet Union fell promoting Georgian identity, Georgian society remains infused with an appreciation for Russian culture that Georgian sociologists and historians say will outlive this latest round of tensions.
A monument to Alexander Pushkin, a Russian poet and icon who once visited Tbilisi for inspiration, stands in a park just off Freedom Square in the city. Georgian television channels routinely broadcast old Russian films, kiosks sell Russian-language fashion magazines and Russian pop music blares from taxi radios. While Georgians proudly cling to their distinct centuries-old language, Russian is the second language here.
Even some of those victimized by the Russian bombings said they perceived the conflict as a proxy battle between two global powers — Russia and the United States — rather than a vendetta between Georgians and Russians.
“We hate the policies of the Russian government, but we do not hate the Russian people,” said Zura Pushauvi, looking over the rubble of his bombed-out casino in Gori, a central Georgian city. A statue of Stalin, Georgia’s best-known son, peered from outside a shattered window. “This war was a spat between two global powers. It was not an ethnic war between Georgians and Russians.”
Georgia has long had an ambivalent relationship with its former colonial ruler. Georgian princes benefited from Russian protection against the Persian and Ottoman armies in the 19th century, although Russia abolished the Georgian monarchy and squashed the separate identity of its Orthodox church. In the early 20th century, a nascent independent Georgian state was quashed by the Soviet Red Army.
Some ethnic Russians living in Georgia, of which there are around 70,000, said the war had forced them to choose sides. Nadejna Diakonova-Giuashvili, an ethnic Russian whose late husband was a Georgian officer in the Russian Army, recently escaped to a refugee center in Gori after fleeing from her bombed-out Georgian village near South Ossetia. She said she was now ashamed to be Russian.
“I’m so ashamed to look in the eyes of my neighbors after what Russia has done,” she said, speaking in both Russian and Georgian. “I only learned my husband was Georgian when he signed his name on the marriage registry the day we were married,” she said. “He spoke fluent Russian, and he tricked me. But I didn’t care. We have the same blood.”
Some ethnic Russians here said bubbling anti-Russian sentiment had forced them to conceal their Russian identity, even as they insisted they had no intention of leaving Georgia, where they had lived for decades.
Vera Tsereteli, who moved from Moscow to Tbilisi more than 30 years ago, said her Georgian friends still greeted her with a kiss even as they teased her by calling her an “occupier.” She is unable to speak Georgian, and she said she was now wary of speaking Russian in public.
“During Soviet times, it was prestigious to speak Russian and a sign of being educated and refined,” she said. “Now, Russia is associated with occupation, annexation and refugees.”
Irina Minasyan, a Russian-speaking Georgian of Armenian descent, said she feared her 13-year-old son, Edgar, could face limited career prospects because he attended a Russian school in Tbilisi. “A lot of people have switched their children from Russian to Georgian schools since the war began,” she said. “The young generation is anti-Russian, and I worry about Edgar’s future.”
Sozar Subari, Georgia’s human rights ombudsman, whose job is to monitor human rights abuses in Georgia, said he had received no complaints of violence against ethnic Russians since the war began. He emphasized that the country’s Russian-language schools were an integral part of a multiethnic Georgia and would not be closed.
A generational divide in Georgian attitudes toward Russia was apparent on a recent day at Teremok, a popular Russian restaurant in Tbilisi. Dimitry Dotiashvili, 34, a hotel security guard, said the younger generation preferred speaking English to Russian and wanted to link Georgia inextricably to NATO and the European Union. He said he loved Tolstoy and pelmeni, Russian dumplings, even as he feared Russian nuclear bombs.
A survey of Georgian attitudes toward Russia in June by the Tbilisi-based Institute for Polling and Marketing showed that 76 percent of Georgians were against war with Russia.
“We want to hold on to the illusion of a Russia that loves us because Russia has for so long been part of our lives,” said Gocha Tskitishvili, the director of the institute.
Russians, meanwhile, have traditionally vacationed in Georgia, whether to soak in Tbilisi’s sulfur baths or to relax on Batumi’s Black Sea beaches. Georgian cuisine, with its spicy plum and pepper sauces and khachapuri, a cheese-filled flat bread, is among the most popular in Russia, and there is barely a major Russian city from Moscow to Vladivostok without a Georgian restaurant.
Yet the backlash against Georgians living in Russia appears to be far more pronounced than the sentiment against Russians being stirred in Georgia. “Once again they have begun to endlessly show us programs about Georgian thieves,” Grigory Chkhartishvili, a Georgian native and one of Russia’s most popular authors, who writes under the pseudonym Boris Akunin, recently told Echo of Moscow, an independent Russian radio station. “The entire country is beginning to hate Georgians.”
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment