THE FLEECE WAS STOLEN A LONG TIME AGO

On November 23, Georgia celebrates the second anniversary of the Rose Revolution. Georgian “velvet” is perceived in Russia very differently: for some it is a dangerous virus, an “orange” breeding ground; for others, it’s a fresh start in the post-Soviet swamp. In Georgia itself, a completely different mood is gaining momentum: two years after the flower revolution, people are starting to say that a virus has entered the fresh stream and the roses are withering

Sergey AGAFONOV

THE FLEECE WAS STOLEN A LONG TIME

A guest in Tbilisi always has a good time. A permanent resident does not fare too well in the same proportion. Life for the vast majority is still very difficult, and difficulties cannot be overcome strictly in the order they come, since the process of difficulties occurring continuously. The feeling that good luck has been taken away from these places forever along with the golden fleece regularly visits Tbilisi residents, but people do not succumb to it, courageously enduring adversity even with a minimum salary of 115 lari (a little more than $50).

Adversity is especially well tolerated in Tbilisi among friends and at the bazaar, where even with a thin wallet you feel like a human being. And the news here is the latest. Of the latter, an interesting story stuck in my memory: Badri Patarkatsishvili, entrenched in the Wedding Palace, together with some friend of his - an Englishman from Ukraine - is going to smuggle Jews out of Israel to Georgia en masse and settle them in great comfort at the entrance to Tbilisi. Where is Misha looking? After all, they do what they want.

When the game was played out, it turned out that the said Badri was actually building a cottage community (300 luxury houses), but the Jews from Israel were not to blame for this at all.

A lot of cool things have appeared in Tbilisi today. For example, George Bush Jr. Avenue (formerly Melaani Street), a fenced-off section of Freedom Square, which is encroached upon by the inexorable Tsereteli with the creepy George, an Irish pub where they make khinkali, and also a peeing girl in bronze recently planted on the pedestrian street Chardin. This is not a copy or even a parody of the Brussels analogue, but an original Georgian fantasy: the sculpture sitting in a complex pose in a marble round bowl with flowing water is famous. All these jokes, however, do not have much impact on the lives of the townspeople. Real life is different.

TWO YEARS IS A LONG TIME

Grandfather Gurgen, who with the help of semi-industrial gear called “screen” catches Khramuli fish and mountain barbel in the stale waters of the Kura right on the bridge near Metekhi Castle, is firmly convinced that troubles for the country began immediately after Georgia changed its mother.

Grandfather is very old, he is a former boxer, as evidenced by his trademark flattened nose, but he does not raving about Mother Georgia - at the end of the “Shevardnadze era”, the large monument “Mother Georgia” was actually replaced late in the evening with a new, more graceful in form. At the same time, for quite a long time both mothers - old and new - were present in the rays of the Tbilisi sunset at the foot of the legendary Narikala fortress at the same time. For the tender-hearted and extremely impressionable residents of Tbilisi, the bifurcation of the Motherland in stone served as a sign: for some, what they saw turned them away from alcohol and other excesses, for others, it threw them into the arms of vice, but for the grandfather with the poacher’s “screen” it signaled the beginning of hard times.

However, he has no complaints about the new “pink power” yet - pensions began to be paid regularly, debts for it were returned in full and the bar was doubled (now the base rate is 28 lari, that is, almost $14). Rising prices are killing this premium, but it clearly hasn’t gotten any noticeably worse. It got even better: Misha “came to his hometown of Avlabar and opened a fountain, there is practically more electricity than not, they provide gas, and now they also provide free food.”

As we found out, they actually feed. This is a new initiative of the president: wealthy citizens (mainly owners of catering establishments), under light pressure from government agencies, set tables for the “socially vulnerable” on weekends. The guest arrives, presents his passport and eats. More than 100 entrepreneurs who are responsive to the president’s call have already joined the movement. The task was set audaciously - to feed everyone who feels ill. After numerous conversations, the feeling was clear: they will feed us.

The fact is that the current president of Georgia is an extremely proactive person. Wealthy citizens speak of him with undisguised love: “Our Misha is a great inventor.” And they don’t risk upsetting him with unresponsiveness or stubbornness. Such a touching mutual understanding between power and capital is expensive, although it can be explained simply: at the dawn of the “flower revolution,” stubborn people parted with their ill-gotten gains, as a result of which the country’s budget increased incredibly quickly (in just a year) almost fourfold. Now, as a rule, the “great inventor” will not be contradicted.

We must pay tribute to the Georgian president. So far, he has not gone too far, and the actions of his team in the economic sphere will largely compensate for the costs of the fast administrative temperament of the new government. What we managed to do can no longer be discounted. The “Rose Revolution” brought the country (perhaps for the first time in its history) a period of completely civilized economic liberalism. The “permitting” function of the state, which lay at the heart of the corruption pyramid, is being consistently reduced in scope: the number of licensed areas of activity has shrunk from two hundred to a dozen, from 27 types of tax collections today only six remain, privatization has become systemic and transparent (it’s interesting that in 11 years After the collapse of the USSR, the revenues of the Georgian treasury from the sale of state property amounted to $50 million, and according to the results of the “pink two-year plan” - about $300 million).

The state has come to grips with the very basics of the book - creating favorable conditions for the development of the free market. Energy, security, roads and uncorrupted bureaucracy - these are the four megaprojects to remake Georgia that Saakashvili has set his sights on. Successes are decreasing, but they undoubtedly exist.

The most obvious thing is stable light and warmth in houses and relative order on the streets. The authorities and the media are persistently making a living legend out of the Georgian patrol police created by Saakashvili from scratch - this is something that really works for people, and works effectively. After the liquidation of the unbridled traffic police and road marauding detachments with striped sticks, farmed out to refugees from Abkhazia (in such an outlandish way, under Shevardnadze, the issue of “socialization” of families expelled by the war from their permanent place of residence was resolved - the authorities actually gave them the right to collect rent from the roadway), life for Georgian drivers and non-residents has become a holiday. They stop you only on business, fine you strictly according to the price list for violations, payment is made exclusively through the bank within a week. A hotline on extortion issues, at the end of which the citizen is always right, changeable squads (there are no permanent partners in patrols to avoid corruption), the staff is young and educated.

Georgians, however, would cease to be Georgians if such a fairy tale about exemplary service lived for a long time. The amount of fines for different violations on the road is different, and although the paper is written by a person, he is not made of iron.

IT'S TIME - SHE WOKE UP

The Georgian way of life, that is, the tradition of nepotism and dependency, which is unusually tenacious on all social levels and even in folds, may well become (if it has not already become) the breakwater that will ultimately turn the “Rose Revolution” into the “Revolution of Dreams.” At first, the hardware breakdown yielded amazing results - a new generation of managers came to power and enthusiastically tried to set up a pure experiment in the country to introduce boundless democracy and an effective market economy. After a vigorous and promising start two years ago, the pace of reform has slowed. No miracle happened. Despite the obvious achievements, investments in Georgia have not yet flowed like a river, and the fountain of entrepreneurship has not flowed with a powerful stream of business activity. It seems that everything is being done correctly, but even such a small economic cart as the compact Georgian economy turned out to be very difficult to move. For any country with a different history, this objective delay in the return on the efforts made would have absolutely no effect on anything - you just need to work and wait for the result. Georgia, however, is a different matter; people here don’t know how to wait and not everyone is used to working at full capacity.

As a politician who was brought to power by the street, the current Georgian president senses the mood of the street very subtly. But it is changing, and not in the best way for him. Hence the natural tilt towards populist steps and measures that give at least a short-term effect and keep positive expectations afloat. The president opens urban and rural schools, he builds fountains and sports grounds in neighborhoods, he ultimately concentrates on the strategy of small things, which temporarily helps his ratings, but does not contribute at all to solving major problems of state building and, in the end, exposes him to reputational blows.

For example, the president announced that officials in the service of the people should not have days off - everyone works, everyone should be accessible at least by mobile phones. Georgia reveled in the new initiative for about 10 days - indeed, all the servants could be found and reached. But then it slowly began to creep up: first, an institute of duty officers arose in institutions, who listened, but no longer connected, then the phones on duty stopped answering during non-working hours, and responsible persons, exhausted by the workload, began to routinely forget their mobile phones at work or leave them in another room. . If this continues, then one day it is inevitable that the Georgian president will not be able to reach his prosecutor general by phone.

Symptoms of movement in this direction are beginning to multiply with frightening consistency, and it is no coincidence that Saakashvili’s opponents and many serious political scientists argue quite convincingly that in Georgia, with a clear lack of serious economic results, a “self-propelled” administrative vertical is beginning to progress, which is fraught with a complete break into “free administration” " A strong parliament and a consolidated opposition could reliably insure against such trouble, but the trouble is that there is neither a strong parliament nor a seriously organized opposition.

On the back of Saakashvili’s stunning popularity, “new people”, random in politics but very tenacious in everyday life, entered parliament and formed a stable majority there, who are referred to both in person and behind the scenes as “Red Guards” and “the faction of eunuchs.” They are able to support and push through any bill the executive structures need, which turns parliament into a simple voting machine, and this machine is capable of running over anything. Currently, for example, there are three innovations on the agenda, which send chills out of even citizens who are very loyal to the authorities: permission for security forces to open fire to kill when resisting, the introduction of the institution of closed trials, and this recognition as sufficient for initiating criminal proceedings and receiving anonymous signals from informants and the public.

All this, however, is presented as a necessary expansion of the arsenal of means of fighting organized crime, while it is emphasized that such methods were used by completely civilized Italians in the fight against the mafia, but who in Georgia, with its glorious Soviet past, would recklessly believe in the purity of not so much intentions? , how much execution?

The danger that the fledgling democratic government, deprived of parliamentary control and already pulverizing the beginnings of local self-government, will not stay within its bounds is acutely felt in Georgia today. Last week, a new opposition movement led by former Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili marched along Rustaveli Avenue in the capital, and one of the central slogans of this march was: “Against the neo-Bolshevism of executive structures.”

BATON, WHERE TO GO?

“The authorities are beginning to turn bronze and bury themselves, and this opens the way for an alternative. The problem is that this alternative itself is still unorganized,” famous political scientist Paata Zakareishvili explains to me the secrets of Georgian political cuisine. The existing political imbalances (hyper-presidential powers with a weak parliament, the curtailment of local self-government, growing administration) are noticeable to everyone, but things somehow do not go beyond talking about how this is clearly not good. More precisely, there is no one to lead - today the Georgian opposition is fragmented, the authority of the leaders of these fragments, to put it mildly, is not very high, and the chances of gaining points through naked criticism of the regime are small. We need a fresh consolidating figure. Salome Zurabishvili could become such a figure. “She has everything for this,” says Paata Zakareishvili, “origin, reputation, novelty. And time—it’s working on her side today.”

We are talking in the very center of Tbilisi. Suddenly the light bulb under the ceiling goes out, we sit in the dark. “The light has gone, but will soon return,” says the owner, “but Saakashvili’s popularity will no longer be sky-high.” Like everything in Georgia, this sounds almost like a toast, especially since the light has indeed soon “returned,” but Paata recalls facts that are in principle known, although forgotten: the “ardent Georgian electorate” has always been inspired by the leaders. At the start of his political career, Gamsakhurdia had support of almost 90%, after him Shevardnadze had more than 80%. Saakashvili, with an indicator of 97% two years ago, is undoubtedly noticeable against such a background, but now, to put it mildly, is no longer Everest.

Georgians regularly choose not a program, but a leader, and this, more than anything else, testifies to the instability of society and the weak level of development of the electorate itself, which is extremely suggestible, greedy for new words and is in constant anticipation of a miracle. When expectations are not fulfilled, cooling towards recent heroes sets in quickly and, as the outrages committed by the heroes themselves and their entourage grow, it even reaches the point of “freezing.”

Saakashvili has passed his peak, and the remaining personal popularity (today at the level of 60%) will inevitably be achieved by his entourage, whom rumor (Tbilisi is a small city) has not valued highly for a long time and is not perceived as pure in their hands and thoughts as “Misha’s comrades-in-arms”. Here, by the way, is a fresh Tbilisi joke on the topic. Misha’s “eunuchs” are like a man with a club at a crossroads who sympathetically advises a passer-by: “Don’t go to the right - they’ll strip you, don’t walk to the left - they’ll strip you, and don’t walk straight - it’ll be bad too.” “So what should we do, buddy, where should we go?” - asks a passerby. “And you take off your clothes here, why go somewhere...”

CLIMATE AND POLITICS

On November 23, Georgia will celebrate the second anniversary of the Rose Revolution. It's a shame that politics and politicians (both our own and others) are driving us further and further apart. It’s a small detail, but it sticks in my mind: a Russian can get a Georgian visa without any problems right at Tbilisi airport by filling out a short form and paying a visa fee. An announcement in English at the window with the inscription “Visa” informs the arrival that a representative of any state is allowed into free Georgia for $10, Turks are allowed entry for $15, and the tax for citizens of the Russian Federation is 20 bucks. To be fair, we note that it is more difficult for Georgians to get into Russia - it takes at least a week to obtain a visa (only through the consulate) and up to $80 for services.

Georgians, it turns out, are not as petty as ours, and are more open. However, they have a better climate...

Bifurcation of the Motherland