Ex-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cruised into the Georgian port of Batumi on September 6, but, contrary to Russian media predictions, her arrival proved a non-event. In contrast to her deus-ex-machina appearance in Tbilisi during Georgia's 2008 war with Russia, this time Rice disembarked in Georgia only to hop on a plane bound for Ireland. No welcome speeches, no music, no Georgian dancers and no children in national costumes with flowers.
Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, another expected cruise celebrity, was a complete no-show. World Leaders Travel, the American travel company which organized the tour that featured Rice, reported that both Rice and Gorbachev were traveling in the Black Sea on a luxury cruise ship -- along with ex-Defense Secretary William Perry and veteran TV journalist Marvin Kalb, among others -- to explore whatever came of perestroika.
But, if Gorbachev was aboard, he did not come out of his $24,000-to-$46,000-per-pop cabin to be seen in Georgia. On September 5, a handful of veteran fighters for Georgia’s independence from the Soviet Union staged a rally in Tbilisi against the arrival of Gorbachev, whom they hold accountable for a bloody 1989 crackdown in the Georgian capital. Assistants to the first and last president of the Soviet Union told the Rossiya-24 TV channel that Gorbachev had never intended to make the trip in the first place.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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