For someone who treated Georgia as one of the “bucket-list” destinations, this Fellowship was important both professionally and personally.
I remember my conversation with Dr.Yakovlyev in November 2021, whom I met during our 4th CABAR School of Analytics, about my former canceled holidays in Georgia due to pandemics and other circumstances. He then wished that the best way to explore Georgia now is to get to work or study there, rather than just to travel. It was remarkable and even prophetic, that after finally visiting this country as a tourist in January 2022, I came back after in few months and got to learn what the political and civic “DNA” of Georgia is composed of from the inside.
Prior to the Fellowship I have studied a bunch of theory on Georgian nationalism and its experience as a former Soviet Republic to revive and modernize. I was also reading a few academic articles on police reforms and the OECD reports on anti-corruption reforms earlier. Having got to Tbilisi, I was extremely lucky to witness how my theoretical knowledge meets real-life examples and how I can now apply them in practice.
It seems I had been preparing for this trip long ago. Reading the books of my favorite author Nodar Dumbadze, watching Tengiz Abuladze’s movies and even learning about 1983 plane hijacking in Georgia – all this has enriched my knowledge as an emerging political scientist and raised me as a big enthusiast eager to explore every single detail about its citizens, political system, culture and state-society relations. Asking as many questions as possible was both exciting and frightening, I tried to be respectful and very cautious about sensitive topics. I have always been curious about how a state can manage being Western-oriented, whilst preserving its national, religious and cultural identity and remain authentic for so many.
One of the biggest answers to this question was given to me by Irakli Porchkhidze, Dean of School of Law from Ilia State University. Georgian women, among one of the first in the world back then, got their voting rights on November 22, 1918. Back then Georgia was Democratic Republic, which I believe is the core explanation that served as an important building block for further constitutional, police and anti-corruption reforms decades later during the Saakashvili government.
Since my research interests are related to nation building, it was very absorbing to learn about identity and different state policies related to this. I have learnt about linguistic and educational programs for integrating national minorities in Georgia, most of which are ethnic Azeris or Armenians. These reforms might be the case for Kazakhstan, even if there is a higher diversity in terms of different ethnic groups. Yet, I clearly remember from our meeting with Eka Merteveli, Executive Director of GFSIS, that there are also ethnic Georgians who are considered religious minorities and regions like Samtskhe Javakheti, with a high Armenian population, had a Russian military base until 2007. All these cases illustrate how challenging it is for a state to run its minority integration policies, even if its ethnic diversity might seem lower in percentage than some Central Asian states.
Besides that, I tried to question and re-assess the concept of “post-soviet” during this fellowship. I believe Georgia is one of those cases where “decolonization/desovietization” is the case. In comparison to many former soviet states and Central Asian countries in particular, Georgia may seem an outlier. For sure, it cannot be linearly compared to Kazakhstan or any other country in the region. Yet, I have learnt during our trip to Georgia’s Reforms Associates that “the notion “post-soviet” might irritate us emotionally, until it is our reality. Once it is just a page in our history, it will be assessed in a more critical and less emotional way”. At the same time, I figured out that “post-soviet”-ness of our states should not be the last binding factor from our common history that will unite us today and in the future. The whole idea of cooperation and experience exchange is to find points that may connect us beyond the earlier decades under Soviet Rule.
I am very grateful for IWPR team who have selected me for this Fellowship and to all Georgian professionals from Rondeli Foundation, GRASS, Georgian Parliament, Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Economic Policy Research Center and Publika for kindly hosting us and sharing their experience. The knowledge and experience I have gained is very valuable. It helped me grow professionally and personally. It was so exciting to meet other fellows from the US or the UK, with whom we have also built a network and I hope we can see them as our guests in Central Asian countries soon.