Translated material
The legend of the Georgian Dream
How the native village of the former prime minister and the richest man in Georgia lives
The village of Chorville of the Sachheersky district is located in Western Georgia, 166 kilometers from Tbilisi. In terms of the scale of tiny Georgia, this is a deep province, a outback. The region in which it is located is called Imereti - this is the edge of historically poor, with not the most fertile land, with industrial objects stalled in the post -Soviet period, moaning - as, however, and the rest of Georgia - from unemployment. The dust of broken roads, rickety fences, dilapidated buildings are such a familiar rural appearance.
Against this background, the village of Chorville is either an oasis, or a mirage in the desert. Smooth road surface, bright tiles of new houses, solid fences-more like a mountain village somewhere in Switzerland.
The village is still shrouded in myths, their echoes are reached to Tbilisi - sometimes Chorville is called a European village, and sometimes - the oasis of socialism, with an explanation that, they say, a single Georgian billionaire managed to do something that did not work out with the Soviet regime ...
Free cheese - until 2012
“Socialism”, for example, was expressed in the fact that the inhabitants of the Chorville did not pay for gas. At the same time, gas heaters were distributed to everyone for free, as well as other household appliances - for example, televisions and refrigerators. Periodically, the refrigerators of local residents were clogged with food - also free of charge.
A new cool school was built in the village, in the district center nearby (the town is called Sachhere) - they opened a hospital with modern equipment and sensible doctors who served all the inhabitants of the district for free, and they didn’t have a spear with strangers - if the case was emergency, treated, not stingy and not checking with a residence permit.
Doctors and teachers were paid with dignity - they were supposed to be a significant allowance for salary. The described benefits were not elected, but to all residents of the village without exception.
The only sponsor of "socialism" in the Imeretsky village was Bidzina Ivanishvili, a businessman who was born in Chorville 63 years ago. Since the beginning of the 2000s, he deployed large-scale rehabilitation in the village (in fact, having rebuilt all the houses again), then introduced the benefit system. In 2011, he quite unexpectedly announced that he was going into politics, created the Georgian Dream coalition and soon received tremendous support in a society, who was tired of the nine -year -old board of the team Mikhail Saakashvili.
Approximately at the same time, “socialism” in the small homeland of Ivanishvili began to gradually be bugged.
Why is there a generosity
The benefits were canceled gradually, but today in Chorvil the gas bills are already coming to everyone, they no longer pay for salaries and pensions, there are no gifts, no free repairs, nor benefits for medical services.
Why has everything changed so much? Local residents call several reasons, and it seems that they categorically disagree with the fact that having reached the authorities, Ivanishvili simply turned the unnecessary election campaign.
For example, a billionaire neighbor, an elderly man named Guram, believes that the case is at all in the former president (and the main opponent of the oligarch) Mikhail Saakashvili: “Say, he forced Bidzin to stop helping the Chorvillers.”
“Saakashvili asked him, because [in other regions] many were unhappy. He [Ivanishvili] stopped paying here so that no one was offended. "
Another named reason why the villagers have to tighten their belts is corruption. One of our interlocutors said that in the palace of rituals, which for several years served the residents of the village for free, who had the need to celebrate the wedding, or commemoration, will soon accept the first “paid” wedding:
“They didn’t count any money, therefore the directors were fired,” the woman explains. Previously, in addition to a free ritual, all newlyweds were awarded $ 3,000 at a gift.
Guram claims that Ivanishvili continues to take care of fellow villagers, but now he does it pointily: in the village, he said, there are a billionaire “commandants” - some people who “follow everything that is happening” and report to the owner who needs what.
Another respondent, Temur Kapanadze, believes that the Chorvilles themselves are to blame for the exhausted generosity of the billionaire.
“It is necessary - no need, but everyone was burning around the clock. I myself saw more than once how people turned on the heaters, and at the same time open! Well, how much could it continue?! A person who knows how to make money, he knows the price of money, ”Temur Kapanadze says irritably.
He turned out to be the only resident of the village who invited us to the house and even allowed us to shoot. Journalists in the village do not like, all the other residents looked fearfully on our knock from behind the curtained windows and were in no hurry to open (by the way: not to invite a stranger to the house-for any other Georgian village this is nonsense).
Kapanadze carefully takes out a family relic from the photo album - a photograph from the school excursion. In the black and white photo there is a group of fourth-graders, including Temur himself and the future billionaire Bidzin.
To everyone in the illusion
To date, Bidzina Ivanishvili is not only the most wealthy person in Georgia, but also with the greatest political influence.
Ivanishvili first entered the political arena in 2011, then founding the opposition coalition “Georgian Dream”. In 2012, he defeated her in the parliamentary elections and headed the Cabinet of Ministers. In 2013, Ivanishvili resigned, abandoning the presidency in his party. In April last year, he officially returned, again heading the ruling party.
Opponents of the authorities accuse Ivanishvili of remaining an actual ruler in the country and after formal departure in 2013. The opposition claims that today Ivanishvili resolves all important political issues alone, in particular, it is he who chooses who to be the prime minister, and to whom - a presidential candidate. Many Georgian experts believe that Ivanishvili enjoys almost unlimited power and at the same time he is actually not burdened with any responsibility.
The use of Chorville as election campaign was an effective move, according to political scientist Gia Nidia. “Although it is not at all suitable as a model of [development for Georgia], Ivanishvili managed to create different illusions for different social groups,” says Nodia.
In the 2012 election campaign, agitators from the “Georgian Dream” directly promised voters: “Ivanishvili will turn all Georgia into Chorville!”
Shortly before that, a large-scale media campaign unfolded in the country, in which the voter was told in detail about the generous philanthropist Ivanishvili, his native village and his extremely pretty closest environment.
Strokes to the portrait of the oligarch
And since the “socialist” village really existed (anyone could come and personally make sure of his reality), the Gravian Georgian voter was soon imbued with other promises of the Ivanishvili team. She promised, in particular, the following:
There will be no unemployment, because in five years Ivanishvili will build 100 new factories in Georgia;
The villages will cease to starve, because each village at the first stage will allocate 5 million Lari (about $ 3 million at the rate of that time);
It will be much easier for the population - both rural and urban - it will be much easier to make ends, because communal tariffs (this is one of the main items of expense in any Georgian family) will double, and gasoline prices will also fall.
“Not only the electorate received his share of illusions, but also the politicians who decided to join Ivanishvili,” says Gia Nidia, “and those who kept the way west, and those who grieved by torn relations with Russia. Minorities listened to the reasoning of equality, and homophobes supported him for talking about tribute to traditions. ”
The leader of the oldest Republican Party in Georgia David Zurabishvili was one of the first to receive an invitation to enter the coalition of Ivanishvili. Today Zurabishvili says that Ivanishvili managed to “deceive” him.
“When I recognized him better, I realized that he puts a completely different meaning in the correct words.
For example, when he says that “society must control power”, by society it personally means himself, ”says Zurabishvili.
In Chorville, the omnipotent fellow countryman speaks carefully, in a whisper - at least in the presence of journalists. In front of Villa Ivanishvili is a helicopter platform. The fact that the oligarch goes home, the locals usually recognize by the roar of a helicopter engine.
“Tears approach when unworthy conversations are conducted about such people,” says Lali Makasarashvili, the head of the kindergarten in Chorville. Lali cannot stand it when Ivanishvili is criticized. However, in Chorvil no one criticizes him.
According to Jamnews. Adaptation to Russian: Diana Petriashvili, "MediaSet"