The Georgian political scientist analyzes the resistance movement that is growing in Georgia in response to the rigged parliamentary elections, the election of a new illegitimate president and, above all, the government’s decision to suspend the EU accession process. Georgia is at a crossroads, and no one can predict what might happen there next.
“We are having an unusual Russian winter in Georgia, but we will have a Georgian spring!!!” wrote Georgia’s French-born President Salome Zourabichvili on X (formerly Twitter) late on 15 December.
For 18 days now, tens, hundreds of thousands of Georgians have been braving water cannons, tear gas, police beatings and extrajudicial arrests to defend their republic from a rapidly hardening Quisling regime.
If you think this is an exaggeration, scroll down the Georgian government’s social media account and you will read this: “It is widely known that Estonia and Lithuania are states whose sovereignty is currently the most limited in the EU, and whose governments act on instructions from the administration of a foreign country, not in the interests of their own people.”
President Salome Zourabishvili uttered the word “resistance” early on, in November, to describe what was happening on the streets of Georgia. The word did not initially resonate: it does not have the same ring in the Georgian language as it does in France, nor does it resonate in the political psyche. But in the mouth of the granddaughter of Georgian political emigrants who fled the Russian occupation, the French-born and French-raised civil servant, the word “resistance” is written with a capital R. Now we hear this word more and more often on the streets of Georgia.
After the lightning invasion and occupation by the Nazis in 1940, France succumbed to Vichy – a collaborationist regime based on conservative and family values, laced with anti-Semitic xenophobia. But almost immediately, a resistance movement – against the occupying Reich and against domestic collaboration – was born and gained momentum. It was a heterogeneous affair, bringing together Catholic patriots with communists and anarchists, all united by the idea of defending their homeland and its political identity against the invader.
The second Georgian Republic is collapsing in a different way, through internal subversion, to paraphrase a famous dictum: slowly and then very quickly. Georgian Dream came to power through democratic elections in 2012, as a heterogeneous coalition put together by the country’s richest man, Bidzina Ivanishvili, with vaguely conservative but generally pro-Europe leanings. In the years that followed, this coalition slowly shed its more pro-Europe faces and steadily captured state institutions. From 2020, and especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ivanishvili led the already captured country towards authoritarianism with a particularly bitter Russian flavour.
Campaigning for the 2024 parliamentary elections, Ivanishvili asked voters for a constitutional majority to ban and put on trial the opposition, severely restrict the rights of the LGBTQ community, throttle civil society organisations and the free media. When Georgian Dream did not get what it wanted, it stole the 26 October elections. Then, with the opposition proving slow to mobilise its supporters, Ivanishvili delivered the coup de grace – his government announced on 28 November the decision to halt the EU accession process.
What happened on Georgia’s streets after this announcement, and what is continuing despite freezing temperatures, is in many ways like the French resistance, uniting disparate social and political groups in last-ditch determination to save the republic, and with it the country’s European future.
The resistance is building its own momentum, dictating its own language and cadence to the visibly fumbling ruling party and the political class in general – the opposition political parties have essentially been responding to the demands of the street rather than leading it.
Initially, the youth took a special place in efforts to counter the Georgian Dream’s attempts to change the way of life by introducing laws that restrict freedom of association and the media, and stigmatise whole groups such as civil society organisation activists or queer people as undesirable. In the spring of 2023, they came out of nowhere to challenge the police and ridicule their efforts to clear the streets of protesters.
This time, police brutality reached new levels. Of the 400 people arrested in the largely peaceful demonstrations, more than 80% were beaten, according to the country’s public defender. But their resistance, with fireworks, gas masks, makeshift shields and teams to extinguish gas canisters, became commonplace and attracted international media attention. As street resistance hardened, the exhausted riot police withdrew and masked thugs began chasing protesters through the streets. Knocks on the door and threatening phone calls began.
But by this time, the resistance had grown and become more structured: hundreds of civil servants signed petitions against the change in the country’s constitutional course towards EU integration. Every day, different professional groups gather to march: from actors to mountaineers, from IT specialists to cooks. Even fans of Barcelona and Real Madrid put aside their enmity and marched together, unfurling a banner that told the story of the Georgian Dream: “We hate each other, but we hate you more!”.
The protesters are thumbing their noses at the government, which they call illegitimate, but the rump parliament, which only includes Georgian Dream MPs, is rubber-stamping repressive laws. It is now illegal to cover your face during demonstrations and the sale of gas masks has been banned. If you are caught at a rally the police can arrest you without much evidence. Fines for graffiti, blocking entrances to official buildings, etc. have increased tenfold and can land you in jail for 14 days. Other legal changes have effectively abolished an independent and professional civil service.
But the resistance movement now commands respect and solidarity from a wider spectrum of Georgians. According to a recent poll, more than two-thirds believe the elections were rigged and support the protests. Le Monde journalists are now reporting from provincial towns that last protested in 1989.
Georgian Dream’s propaganda firehose has spent years spewing the message that people “without a homeland and without dignity” are against it. Ironically, they seem to have got their comeuppance: they are now facing people who are prepared to sacrifice themselves for their very homeland and dignity.
The logic of the resistance is the logic of the final battle. Every day that the ruling party hardens its stance and refuses to negotiate and to restart the normal political process by holding new elections, the spirit of resistance will grow, even if its dynamic phase is suppressed by force.
In 2023, protesters actively discouraged the youth’s urge to confront the police and reprimanded them for a few incidents. More tame, symbolic events dominated the protest scene in 2024. But the language of resistance is rarely nuanced, and the bruised faces and broken bones of peaceful citizens who have been subjected to “special police treatment” make it impossible to perceive the police as “forces of constitutional order”. The party that trampled on the Constitution can no longer legitimately claim to defend it. Youth groups with fireworks and hoods attacked the riot police and drove back unmarked thugs. Tags such as ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) and 1312 – the order in which the letters appear the Latin alphabet – are scrawled on the walls.
But signs of camaraderie and solidarity have also appeared. As the protests move from night to day, marching pro-democracy Georgians can see people waving hands and flags in solidarity from nearby buildings. The propaganda machine is no longer able to convince people that it is only a small group of treacherous renegades who are against the ruling party.
It is true that even many Georgians who say they prefer democracy and see themselves as Europeans hold values that do not fully conform to what European human rights treaties say about the treatment of minorities or what labour protection in the welfare state should look like.
But the belief in Georgian nationhood as intrinsically different from that of Russia, the hatred of Russian imperialism and its ways, and the spontaneous resistance to those who would install tyranny at home seem to run much, much deeper. It cuts across social classes, ideological preferences and age groups, and feeds resistance.
Who can predict the future now? Disillusionment may take over, and today’s resisters may return to their gig-economy jobs and classrooms. Or the resistance movement could signal a deepening of civic solidarity and lead to a wholesale reformatting of the Georgian political scene.
The French example teaches us that the forces that resist together may find themselves in bitter conflict once the battle is won. But it also teaches us that solidarity on the battlefield of resistance can help to forge a consensus around the principles of the new republic.
But that is in the unforeseeable future. Before that, the battle must be won, and Georgians look to Europeans for sympathy and support.
Jaba Devdariani is a co-founder (in 2001) and editor-in-chief of Civil.ge, Georgia's information and analysis magazine. He worked as an international civil servant in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia from 2003 to 2011 and consults with governments and international institutions on risk management and conflict resolution. He is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
