Nini Gabritchidze

Georgia

Co-Author, The Dispatch at Civil.ge

Author at @CivilGe / formerly - Georgia correspondent at @eurasianet

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Articles

Georgian Dream’s FARA Takes Effect - Civil Georgia

1 week ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

The Georgian interpretation of the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) took effect on May 31, amid widespread fears that the vague legislation would be used to further crack down on freedom of expression and association in the country. The law is an exact translation of the U.S. FARA document enacted in 1938. It mandates that those considered “agents of a foreign principal” register within ten days in a special FARA registry administered by the Anti-Corruption Bureau.
Dispatch – May 19: May Saints - Civil Georgia

2 weeks ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

“May the Saints of this day be with you,” a middle-aged man said into his phone as he sent his best wishes on May 17. About fifty meters from him, large crowds were marching toward Tbilisi’s Holy Trinity Cathedral to celebrate the “Family Purity Day.” The phrase the man was using is a greeting that Georgian Orthodox Christians exchange on religious holidays, and religious holidays have their saints. But who are the saints of May 17? Are they those who were martyred on this day?
Dispatch – May 7: The Lake - Civil Georgia

1 month ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

I first wrote about this large “lake” near my Tbilisi suburban apartment on May 7, 2023, in this Dispatch. A nearby construction had damaged the only road through the neighborhood, and created a tectonic depression that flooded with every rain, for days on end.
Dispatch – April 29: Where are the kids - Civil Georgia

1 month ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

“Where are the children?” – the question repeats in the famous poem by Besik Kharanauli. “They’re not here, there’s only wind,” the answer echoes. The poem, unusually rhythmic for the author who is considered a key figure in Georgian free verse, paints a chilling picture of a void and wasteland. Children who are nowhere to be found. The poem was written in Georgia’s dark 90s.
Dispatch – April 15 – To kill a swallow - Civil Georgia

1 month ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

Sometimes it feels like the only thing different about Georgian Dream supporters is that they just got tired of it all a lot sooner than the rest of us did. It is remarkable how much energy a lack of energy can have. Exhaustion, or the state of being drained of power, is still powerful enough to create discourses, build ideologies, poison with propaganda, transform worldviews, confront, destroy, hate, alienate, accuse, excuse, name and shame, or gaslight your former comrades into giving up.
Dispatch – April 7: Moveable Feast - Civil Georgia

2 months ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

History does repeat itself – first as tragedy, then as FARA. The introduction of foreign agent laws has become a kind of a moveable feast in Georgia, taking place every year in the same season but in different weeks. And just like with Easter, probably the most popular of the moveable feasts, this year’s foreign agents’ celebration seems to be special as it coincides with the Western version. Or so Georgian Dream claims.
Dispatch – March 31: Last Days of Tea - Civil Georgia

2 months ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

…of Revolutionary Tea, Reactionary Tea, and SolidariTeaFrom Boston to Tbilisi, tea has always been about revolution. It would be hard to find a better visual representation of the 2003 Rose Revolution than the cold images of Mikheil Saakashvili sipping tea from a cup reserved for then-president Eduard Shevardnadze on the parliamentary rostrum.
Dispatch – March 24: Magic Words - Civil Georgia

2 months ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

Has the leading demand of the Georgian resistance outlived its purpose?
Dispatch – March 16: Dog Days - Civil Georgia

2 months ago | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

On March 12, the 105th day of nonstop Georgian protests, Skelo left the Rustaveli Avenue rally early. Evidence from friends’ messages suggests that the chubby, fluffy, grayish, short-legged, sad-faced stray dog was still at the parliament when protesters again blocked Tbilisi’s main street. But minutes later he was sitting alone around the Liberty Square metro station, about 300 meters down the road, listening with watery eyes to a street musician’s lonely guitar wail.
Dispatch – March 8: Broken Seatbelt - Civil Georgia

Mar 8, 2025 | civil.ge | Nini Gabritchidze

It was a rainy and gloomy morning on October 26, 2024. I needed to catch a minibus back to Tbilisi after voting in a crucial “Russia vs. Europe” parliamentary election in my hometown in western Georgia, where I was registered. I was lucky to find a minibus quickly, unlike a trip from Tbilisi two days earlier, when an unprecedented transportation collapse nearly prevented western-Georgia-registered voters from exercising their constitutional rights.