EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Georgia Diary Captures Craziness of the Early 1990s

EURASIA INSIGHT

GEORGIA DIARY CAPTURES CRAZINESS OF THE EARLY 1990S
Alex van Oss 3/24/06
A EurasiaNet Book Review

Georgia Diary, by Thomas Goltz (M.E. Sharpe, May 2006, ISBN: 0-7656-1710-2, Hardcover $39.95).

The Caucasus is rife with legendary figures, from Prometheus, to Jason and Medea, to�the one-and-only, high-octane, shaven-headed, exuberantly-mustachioed American writer and journalist Thomas Goltz, author of Azerbaijan Diary (1998) and Chechnya Diary (2003). This volume, on Georgia, completes what the author waggishly calls his career as a Caucasus "diarist."

In recent years Georgia has enjoyed a measure of relative stability (and even a peaceful change of leadership), though hardly calm or prosperity. Georgia Diary is about a much darker and more chaotic period in its history: the war-torn early 1990s, a subject Thomas Goltz approaches with his usual compelling style. We find ourselves instantly transported to bombardments (mortars, vacuum bombs) and evacuations (by ship and helicopter), and to scenes of bucolic nature (Black Sea to the left, Caucasus Mountains to the right�and a minefield immediately underfoot). With Goltz at our side, we are buffeted by events and yanked from one lunatic situation to another. And then�comes a lull, and we retreat to Tbilisi as our bon vivant guide roams the streets and marketplaces, peers into crumbling yet picturesque apartments and courtyards; and encounters its fascinating inhabitants. And then, all too soon, trouble (massacres, ethnic cleansings, attacks and counter-attacks) breaks out anew, and back into the fray we go �.

Along with action, Goltz presents unforgettable glimpses of notable Georgians, such as the movie playwright-cum-hood Jaba Ioseliani sitting in the dock; and the "Silver Fox" himself, Eduard Shevardnaze, under bombardment in Sukhumi. (Goltz includes a photograph of the venerable leader as a young man with sly eyes and dark hair that alone is worth the price of the book.)

Now in his fifties, Thomas Goltz is a familiar figure in the Caucasus, both north and south of the great mountain range, and indeed has become a character in other people’s books, articles, and films about this part of the world. As he explains in Georgia Diary, Goltz is a member of the Caucasus "hack-pack" (reporters, freelance or affiliated with networks) who flocked to the region in order to cover the mess, just as they showed up at hell-holes in the Balkans, Africa, and elsewhere. For most it was an adventure, a job, or a career path (albeit a risky one) to better employment. Goltz makes no bones about the crasser aspects of his chosen profession, and takes many a poke at broadcasters’ gluttony for "more-news-of-fresh-disasters." Goltz has choice words about certain distant, clueless editors, and the New York Times�who lost his photographs�words that will bring a knowing smile to many a news-professional’s lip. This is not just the author’s sour-grapes: Goltz’s candor is refreshing and serves to make his stories all the more vivid�as does the author’s practice of constantly juggling the three most demanding (and humbling) questions a war reporter can ask: What is going on here? What is really going on here? And: What the heck am I doing here?!

One does not envy Goltz’s experiences. Many war reporters have been killed in action, no small number of them in the Caucasus. (There is a rather forlorn memorial to fallen journalists above a highway in singularly unlovely Rosslyn, Virginia�the memorial may shift to Washington, D.C. when the Newseum moves to its new building near the National Mall.) Goltz confesses to suffering from constant "survivor’s guilt." Now a visiting scholar at the University of Montana, Goltz teaches Caucasus studies and returns to the region annually.

Particularly useful in Georgia Diary is the author’s ability to summarize centuries of complex Caucasus history. Goltz also has the gift of using humor to highlight the poignancy�or madness�of a situation: as when, for example, he gives instructions for boarding an overloaded refugee helicopter. (All you do, says Goltz, is clamber up the back wheel, kick out a window and then plunge headfirst into the cabin). His adventures can be surreal�yet they ring true, for Johnny-on-the-spot, hells-a-popping war reporting is not a matter of sipping sherry over a scholarly tome: one learns in fragments and on the run:

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[Permission to use the following excerpt is granted by the author and M.E. Sharpe publishers.]
"�I was�racing toward Zugdidi in the gathering night, skidding on ice-slicks formed on bridges over darkened rivers with checkpoints at both ends.

The new driver kept up a nonstop conversation in pidgin Russian. At first I thought the driver was distorting consonants, vowels, and grammar for my benefit, but eventually it became clear that his Russian really was not that much better than mine. He is probably the reason why people to this day say I speak Russian with a thick Caucasus accent, and why I still have problems understanding intellectuals in such cities as Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was also my first introduction to the social and demographic complexities of Georgia.

"You like Sukhumi?" the driver asked.
"I didn’t see much of it," I replied.
"It is a fine town, especially in the summer�Russian girls, Ukrainian girls, Belorussian girls."

"Sounds dandy."
"Why are you going to Zugdidi when you could stay in Sukhumi?" the driver reasonably asked.
"I want to find [Former Georgian leader Zviad] Gamsakhurdia."
"Serz Shevardnadze!" crowed the driver in Georgian, apparently praising the former Georgian leader.
"Well I’d like to meet him, too."
"What?"
"I just thought that�"
"The dog should die!"
"Who?"
"Shevaradnazde! Long live Zviad!"
"Why do you want to kill him and not Shevardnadze?"
"Because the dog is a Georgian and Zviad is Mingrelian."
"What is a Mingrelian?"
"It is a Georgian, too."
"And we are now in Mingrelia?"
"No, we are in Abkhazia."
"What’s that?"
"Abkhazia is the part of Georgia where they live, and every one of us is Georgian except for the Abkhaz and the Adjars and the Ossetians and the Meskhits, but we got rid of them a long time ago."

"All of them?"
"No, just the Meskhits, and they want to come back but we won’t let them."
"Why?"
"Because they aren’t Georgians."
"But you said that Georgians were the same as Mingrelians."
"I was talking about the Meskhetians, not the Mingrelians."
"So who is the civil war between?"
"Civil war?"
"Yes."
"There is no civil war. At least not yet. That was last year. The problem today is between the Position and the Opposition."

"You mean Gamsakhurdia?"
"No! The Opposition are traitors who love Shevardnadze and Moscow and who want to destroy the nation. We are the Position!"

It was going to be a challenge trying to define who was who around here. And by the time I got to Tbilisi several weeks later, the Opposition had embraced the concept of Position and had begun to call the Gamsakhurdia loyalists "opposition."

***

Georgia is an evolving nation, both ancient as a people (or rather, a collection of peoples) and new in its current association with a Western power (the United States) and the European Union (which Georgia dreams of joining). Many of the sorrows described in Georgia Diary endure, and yet, after a decade and a half, there are hopeful signs. American diplomats have come to respect the intricacy and powder-keg sensitivity of Caucasus politics. Moreover, in an important shift, the Georgian leadership now recognizes the failure of the 13-year economic blockade of Abkhazia and speaks of implementing "confidence building" measures. Recent polls of displaced persons from Abkhazia, and of Georgians as a whole, apparently indicate a widespread desire for peaceful resolution of this and other "frozen conflicts." [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Other small but important steps have been taken, such as the setting up of a joint camp for Abkhazian and Georgian youth; and the recent visit to Washington, DC, by a delegation of Georgian and Abkhazian university students, government officials, and professionals, all in their teens, twenties and thirties (among them potentially the future leaders of the region). The goal is basically to give young people a chance to get to know one another directly and to learn about conflict resolution�without the filter of inflammatory news reports, and without having to don flak jackets and helmets in order to pass through "peacekeeping" border zones. It is a "soft" approach, but one worth cultivating, for the misery resulting from harder measures has been demonstrated time and again in the Caucasus, as amply chronicled in Georgia Diary.

Perhaps the magic ingredient is time, along with a measure of restraint�and also friendship. Georgia Diary is written by a true friend of the region, a brave soul, and a heck of a good story-teller.

Editor�s Note: Alex van Oss is the Chair of Caucasus Advanced Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, DC.

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

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