Civil.ge

1 week 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.

2 weeks 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.

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.

1 month 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.

1 month 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.