Russians get comfortable, Georgians don’t want them

The sex party began at twenty-two on Saturday. The hostess, Masha, shows me around her apartment in Tbilisi’s prestigious Wake district. The rooms on the first floor have been set up as “trachodromes,” freely translated as “moving rooms,” which can only be entered naked. Decorated in Scandinavian style, the living room with a kitchen serves as a familiarization room where you can enjoy a drink, sushi or something from a snack board prepared by a friendly Russian store. Food is in short supply, as Glovo Indian couriers are delivering today with considerable delays.

From Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, Podmoskovia and St. Petersburg, I learn from small talkies. Participants in the event are Russians who settled in Georgia after the outbreak of a full-scale war in Ukraine. Heterosexual couples predominate, almost all in sweatpants, because the dress code of the textile part of the event is comfy chic. They are in their 30s and 40s, but many women’s faces already show signs of plastic surgeon intervention.

They left because they don’t want to live in Putin’s Russia. It wasn’t even about mobilization – the metropolitan upper middle class is not particularly vulnerable to it. Before the war, they were rather uninterested in politics and wanted to keep it that way. Only Masha talks about her social involvement: in the afternoons she takes care of the children of other Russian moms. She herself has no children and does not work. Her husband is a programmer.

They didn’t have many countries to choose from: in addition to Georgia, they still had Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Thailand, for example. They do not have access to the Union. They can stay in Georgia for a year without a visa, and then leave for a few hours and return. Tbilisi is a European city, you can get along in Russian, it has a favorable climate, as autumns are long and warm.

On the part of the Georgians,” assures Masha, “they have not faced any unpleasantness so far. However, with “sextuplets” it is better to be careful, because they are very conservative people. Invitations are sent out through trusted channels, and windows throughout the apartment remain closed all night. “It’s better for no one to hear anything.”

I laugh in spirit, because this sentence sounds ambiguous to me. If one were to open the window, the noise of the demonstration – vuvuzelas, whistles, toasts to Georgia – would reach Masha’s apartment from afar. That evening, up to 300,000 people took to the streets of Tbilisi, descended on Europe Square from the four corners of the world, blocked half the city. The protests have dragged on for weeks, sparked by the so-called ” Foreign Agents Act” targeting civil society and the media. It is constructed on the Russian model, which does not please the demonstrators. They demand that Georgia follow the European path.

Russian map of Tbilisi

Of the more than one million Russians who entered Georgia between March and November 2022, tens of thousands remain today. Those who fled blindly from mobilization have mostly already returned to Russia. Those who can afford it remain. The statistical Russian in Georgia is a millenialist and works remotely in the IT industry. In all likelihood, he has experience working remotely from Cyprus or Bali.

Russians have created their map of Tbilisi: Russian-speaking bars, coworking spaces, schools. They gave the city a Scandinavian twist, which is in vogue in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They hunch over laptops in sterile, minimalist cafes. And after work, with the help of Telegram, they crisscross for Russian-language yoga, pub quizzes or stand-ups.

– Russians and Georgians live in two separate worlds in Tbilisi,” Elene Khachapuridze, a Georgian journalist, explained to me. – It is difficult to talk about any integration. It seemed to them that they were going here as if we were going to visit them, that we were going to dance, sing to them and treat them to chachapuri. They were wrong.

The attitude of Georgians toward their former colonizers is quite complicated. Older generations remember the USSR with nostalgia, Russian tourists have always been rather welcome. However, the 2008 war left a lasting mark on the collective memory. This wound was exacerbated by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Today, only 19 percent. Russians surveyed by the Exodus22 research team consider Georgians to be friendly. In another survey, only 4 percent. Georgians admit that they are glad to see the Russians coming.

War emotions are one thing – and they are probably stronger than in Poland. Tbilisi is drowning in Ukrainian flags and anti-Russian style graffiti: “Ruzzians go home.” As Russians moved into the Georgian capital, Georgian Facebook was buzzing with boasts about who rented an apartment to Russians more expensively and who rented not at all. Georgians also troll Russians on groups for expats. – Where can you eat fresh oysters? – In Mariupol!

An online televised altercation between Russian celebrity Kseniya Sobchak and the owner of the Deda Ena bar has made history. She spoke Russian, he answered in English. After the outbreak of a full-scale war, the bar began to issue visas to Russians, the condition for receiving which was signing a form: “Crimea is Ukraine,” “Putin is a dictator,” “Fame to Ukraine,” etc. “If you introduced such visas for Jews in Germany, they would lock you up the next day. This would be considered Nazism,” Sobczak argued.

– At first, the Russians didn’t even ask if we knew Russian, they simply addressed us in their language,” Elene Khachapuridze recalls. – This annoyed young people in particular, because already Georgian millenials have a poor command of Russian, and the Zetas don’t speak it at all. However, I get the impression that the Russians have calmed down somewhat after the protest against the Russian ship in Batumi.

In the summer of 2023, the Russian cruise ship Astoria Grande arrived at the Black Sea port of Batumi. Among those aboard it were. Celebrities and journalists who support the so-called “social media”. spec operation in Ukraine. Georgians welcomed him with Union flags and the now-classic slogan about the Russkie war korabl. The protests were so violent that the cruise ship left port two days ahead of schedule.

The arrival of Russians has also caused a wild increase in prices, especially in the housing market. – Before the war, a two-room apartment in Tbilisi cost 50,000. USD, today one has to put up 100 thousand. – explains Khachapuridze. – Rental prices have jumped up to three times. The students returned to the city after the pandemic and discovered they could not afford housing. More and more people are moving to Rustavi [a town near Tbilisi – author’s note] and commuting to the capital by marshrutka.

Russians have moved their businesses to Georgia, but the country does not benefit very much from this through its liberal regulations – taxes are very low, especially for one-person businesses typical of the IT sphere. The country’s GDP is proudly growing, but its residents don’t feel it, if you don’t count landlords or some traders. Georgia, which is dependent on Russia and tourism, is doing quite poorly because of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Salaries are stagnant, inflation is rampant, Warsaw prices in pubs.

What do you call the process of settling Russians in Tbilisi? Elene says it’s primarily gentrification. Giorgi Badridze, an analyst with the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, calls it neo-colonization. “Such an unusual one, because I don’t recall any other case in which citizens of a country that occupies another country go to it as refugees.” From the Russians you most often hear about “relocation.” A term of corporate newspeak, it means the relocation of an employee to another country. There’s no denying it – “relocatee” sounds better than “migrant.”

It is enough to be Russian

Of course, it’s not that all Russians give a damn about the Georgian protests. For the sex party organized during their time, I screwed myself for rhetorical purposes. OutRush research shows that the vast majority of “relocators” left Russia because of “political and moral disagreement with the actions of the Russian government.” They are usually well-educated people from big cities. In addition to “ajtishniks,” quite a few of them are activists, artists, academics (which, by the way, explains why this is such a thoroughly researched diaspora). Many have progressive views, and some go to Georgian protests.

For example, Sasha Sofyev, in former Russian life a photographer and Pussy Riot activist. They first arrested him in 2020 for hanging a rainbow flag on Lubianka, the FSB headquarters. Then three more times, he finally had enough. He decided on Georgia because, he says, he knew that Georgians did not support Putin, so he thought he would be comfortable here. This was even before the war.

On February 24, he was happy to be in Tbilisi, as he didn’t want to see anything but Ukrainian flags. He and his friends began raising money to help evacuate Ukrainians. And then he ran a center for Ukrainian refugees for a year. He currently works at Frame, an organization of Russian activists in Georgia. In his view, every Russian who has the money, strength and time should get involved to help countries that are suffering from the Russian regime.

– I can’t hold back the tears when I see how Georgians value their freedom and are ready to fight for it,” says Sasha. – They could teach the whole world how to protest. In Russia, on the other hand, I felt only fear and constant anxiety about the fact that society does not agree with me.

Stasia Bielenko, a 20-year-old designer and activist from Moscow, also goes to the protests. When her city was filled with ominous “Z” letters and billboards calling for the defense of the homeland, she considered herself half-Ukrainian – after all, she grew up with her grandmother in Crimea. She became active in the Feminist Anti-War Movement and spread “no war” stickers around Moscow. The anti-war protests were a painful experience for her.

– One thousand, two thousand people at most took to the streets,” explains Stasia. – They easily scraped everyone into the sukkah.

In September 2022, she was arrested for seven days. It was a protest against mobilization. In total, they claimed fifteen girls, most of them intellectuals. The policemen treated them quite nicely, did not turn off their hot water, although theoretically they were supposed to have access to it once a week. They kept asking who was paying them. They could not believe that they were protesting against the authorities of their own free will.

In detention, she fell in love with a girl and followed her to Georgia. That one returned to Moscow after a week because she met a boyfriend, but Stasia decided to stay in Tbilisi. She loves this city because she can look how she wants here – wear piercings, tattoos, torn pants – no one pays attention. She remotely works on initiatives left in Russia – making merch for the lesbian group Cheersqueers and co-creating an app to help women avoid dangerous situations on the streets.

At Georgian protests she sometimes shows up – but only as an ally, she does not present any demands. As she explains to me, unlike Ukrainians and Belarusians, Russians are not allowed to appear at Georgian protests with their flag, even the alternative white-blue-white one. At one protest, she was saddened to hear Georgians shouting the slogan “fuck Russian mothers!”.

– The prevailing opinion among Russians is that we shouldn’t get involved in Georgian politics, because we only irritate Georgians with this,” Katya Chigaleichik, a social anthropologist with the Exodus22 team, explained to me. – We organized anti-war protests in 2022, but many considered them pointless. What’s the point of shouting that Putin is a huckster? To whom are we actually shouting that we are against the war? Especially since Georgians looked at all this critically.

– Let them go to Russia and shout it all there,” I hear from Georgians. – It would benefit all of us.

I ask my interlocutors how it is that in Russia violence by the apparatus of power inspires fear, while in Georgia it inspires mobilization. Protests against the so-called The Foreign Agents Act continues despite arrests, pepper spray, rubber bullets and cannons.

Sasha believes that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, some countries – such as Georgia and Ukraine – developed their national identity in opposition to the former colonizer. In Russia, a new identity did not emerge; instead, the ghosts of the Soviet and imperial past were resurrected. – Moscow did not try to get away from itself.

Stasia thinks the size of the country matters: – Even if a lot of people came out in Moscow, it wouldn’t change anything on a national scale.

He notes that family and friendship ties are much stronger in Georgia than in Russia. – Russia is an atomized country whose citizens feel they are nobodies, he says.

Katya believes that Russians, unlike Georgians or Ukrainians, do not know a fight that can end in success. Instead, the belief developed in the Soviet Union that it is better to keep quiet is still alive.

Georgia toward democracy, Russia in the grip of Putinism

Having just returned from Georgia, I ask the same question to Sergei Medvedev, author of the book War “made in Russia,” which has just been published by Krytyka Polityczna. He responds that modern Russia is a totalitarian country, and Russians cannot rebel against Putin, just as they could not under Stalin or the Third Reich. It’s a strong argument, but it doesn’t fully convince me. Political prisoners numbering in the thousands pale in the face of the millions of victims of the Great Terror.

Nevertheless, it is true that Georgia, after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, became a democratic country compared to Russia. It’s never been perfect – the peaceful transfer of power has succeeded only once since, and every election you hear about irregularities in the style of vote-buying or “encouraging” budget workers to circle the right candidate. But as Russia slid into successive stages of Putinism, Georgia was building a strong civil society and independent media, implementing more or less successful democratic reforms, and new generations with pro-Western views were growing up. Today, this entire legacy hangs in the balance.

The Georgian government has persisted – the so-called “Georgian government”. The law on foreign agents will go into effect and it’s done. It is reportedly needed to defend Georgia from a “global war party” that wants to drag the country into a conflict with Russia. Financed from the rotten West, the nation’s enemies will be punished. For now, they are being silenced with methods familiar to Russia – beaten by unknown perpetrators, intimidated and publicly vilified.

This has not been seen in Georgia before. The government has been floundering between the EU and Russia for years, but has not gone to such lengths. He also listened to civil society. Protests against Russian influence have been dragging on since 2019, demonstrators have always managed to win something. There are many indications that the decision to return Georgia to the bosom of the “Russky mira” was made by the Kremlin. And the West, preoccupied with its own problems, won’t lift a finger on the issue.

There is still a chance that the protesters will turn their unprecedented energy (300,000 people at the protest is almost 10 percent of Georgia’s population) into political power and win over the pro-Russian government in October’s parliamentary elections. However, it may be too late for that, and Georgia will face many years as a gagged Russian vassal.

Familiar Georgian media and NGOs have no intention of complying with the new law. They will not enroll in the register of “foreign agents”, they will come to close their business or move it abroad. For now, they plan to continue fighting on the streets.

And how do the Russians approach it?

Sasha is trying to obtain a humanitarian visa that will allow him to move to Poland. His friends have already received threatening phone calls, and one Russian was arrested and beaten after the protest. It grieves him to see “how they take away the future of such wonderful people.”

Stasia is also thinking of leaving, but rather for formal reasons – the unclear migration status in Georgia does not allow her to plan for the future. She would like to live in a country where the police will not arrest her for having an opinion. It would be great to live in France, as an artist she has a chance to get a “visa for international talents.”

Katya will continue her work with the stigma of “foreign agent.” This is nothing new for her – the organization she worked with in Russia had this status since 2015. More restrictions appeared over time, until finally its operations were paralyzed. – We will keep working. What else could we do? – he asks rhetorically.

I also asked about the protests and the “russification” of Georgia at the sex party. I was answered with evasive smiles, and someone bitched that it was better not to get involved in local affairs. The position was taken by only one girl with her head in dreadlocks. – I would prefer that Georgia not enter the Union. If that happens, we’ll all be kicked out of here.

**

The name of one of the characters has been changed.