Georgia (country)

V

Government of Georgia

Georgia is a democratic republic with a strong executive presidency. In August 1995 a new constitution replaced the 1992 decree on state power, which had been instituted as an interim constitution after Georgia declared its independence. The new constitution reestablished the presidency, which had been created in 1991 but was abolished after the country’s first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was ousted in 1992. According to the 1995 constitution, the president, who is head of state, is directly elected to a maximum of two five-year terms. The new constitution abolished the post of prime minister, but a constitutional amendment adopted in February 2004 reintroduced the position. The prime minister heads the government, whose ministers oversee the day-to-day functions of government in their jurisdictions. They are ultimately accountable to the president. All citizens aged 18 and older may vote in Georgia.

The 1995 constitution also established a new unicameral (single-chamber) legislature called Parliament. All 235 members of Parliament are elected to four-year terms, with 150 elected on a proportional basis (with the number of delegates from each party corresponding to the proportion of the total vote that party receives) and 85 elected by majority vote in single-member constituencies (one elected delegate per territorial unit). The new legislature replaced the State Council, which had been created in October 1992; between 1992 and 1995 the chairperson of the State Council had held executive powers in place of a president.

Each of Georgia’s autonomous political entities—the republics of Ajaria and Abkhazia and the region of South Ossetia—has its own locally elected government, consisting of a legislature and a local leader. The local governments of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are not recognized by the central government, however, because of the long-standing secessionist conflicts in these regions. Abkhazia is essentially independent, and South Ossetia is almost independent. Ajaria does not seek secession from Georgia; its local government cooperates with the central government and recognizes the constitution of Georgia as the guiding force for local legislation. For purposes of local administration, the remainder of Georgia is divided into prefectures headed by prefects appointed by the Georgian president, who report to the central government.

Georgia’s judiciary is based on a civil-law system. The Supreme Court is the highest court. Its judges are elected by the legislature, on the recommendation of the president, for a term of ten years. Georgia also has a Constitutional Court, which rules on the constitutionality of new legislation. The president, the legislature, and the Supreme Court each appoint three of the nine judges of the Constitutional Court, who serve for ten years.

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During the Soviet period, Georgia had no armed forces separate from the centrally controlled Soviet security system. After the republic declared its independence in 1991, the Georgian government set a high priority on developing a unified national military. Georgia’s defense forces now include an army of 7,042 troops (with plans to increase the army to 20,000), a navy of 1,350, and an air force of 1,350. All males must begin a two-year period of military service when they reach the age of 18.

Georgia was admitted to the United Nations (UN) in July 1992. In 1993 Georgia became a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose political alliance of most of the former Soviet republics. In 1994 the republic joined the Partnership for Peace program, which provides for limited military cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Georgia is also a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

VI

History of Georgia

A

Origins

In about the 500s bc, western Georgia was colonized by Ionian Greeks; its western part was known as Colchis and the eastern region as Iberia. Christianity was introduced in the early 4th century ad. The Persian and Byzantine empires then fought for control over Georgia until the 7th century, when the region was conquered by the Arabs.

In the 11th century King Bagrat III united the Georgian principalities into one kingdom, with the exception of Tbilisi, which was an emirate (territory ruled by an emir, or Turkish prince) under the control of Seljuk Turks. In 1122 King David II, one of Bagrat’s descendants, expelled the Turks and recovered Tbilisi. Under Queen Tamar, whose rule straddled the 12th and 13th centuries, the Georgian kingdom reached its zenith and grew to include most of the Caucasus. Georgian culture also experienced a golden age during this period. Then in the 13th century, Mongol armies invaded the Georgian lands. By the end of the 15th century the Georgian kingdom had disintegrated entirely as a result of the Mongol invasions.

B

Iranian and Ottoman Empires

In the early 1500s the Iranian and Ottoman empires invaded Georgia. In 1553 the two Muslim powers partitioned Georgia’s territory, with Iran taking the east and the Ottomans taking the west. The Iranians and the Ottomans fought against one another for complete control of Georgia until the late 1500s, when the Ottomans were driven out. In the 1720s the Ottomans attempted another conquest, but the Iranians expelled them again. Iran then placed the Georgian kingdom of Kartli under the rule of local Bagratid royals. The Bagratids had originated in the borderlands between Georgia and Armenia. Originally an Armenian dynasty, one branch of the Bagratids eventually became Georgianized.

C

Kingdom of Georgia

In 1762 Erekle II of the Bagratids reunited the eastern Georgian regions of Kartli and Kakheti, forming a new Georgian kingdom that covered much of present-day Georgia. In the late 1700s King Erekle turned to Russia for protection against foreign conquest, primarily by Iran, and in 1783 he accepted Russian suzerainty in return for Russia’s guarantee to maintain his kingdom’s borders. Nevertheless, Iranian forces sacked Tbilisi in 1795. In 1801 Russia deposed the Bagratid king and annexed the eastern Georgian kingdom to the Russian Empire. Russia annexed the western Georgian region of Imereti in 1810 and the remainder of western Georgia between 1829 and 1878.

D

The Soviet Period

The Russian Empire collapsed in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and an independent Georgian state was established in May 1918. The Mensheviks, or moderate socialists, initially controlled the Georgian government. However, in 1921 during the Russian Civil War, Red Army troops invaded the country under the orders of Bolshevik (militant socialist) officials Joseph Stalin and Grigory Ordzhonikidze, both native Georgians. In ordering the invasion, Stalin and Ordzhonikidze were acting against the wishes of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. See also Bolshevism.

Georgia was now under the control of the Bolsheviks (later known as the Communists). Stalin was, at the time, directing nationality affairs from the central government in Moscow. From this position, he hatched a scheme to join Georgia with Armenia and Azerbaijan. This union was to form a new political entity, the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (SFSR). In December 1922, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was founded with four constituent republics, one of them was the Transcaucasian SFSR. However, in 1936 the Transcaucasian republic was dissolved, and Georgia became its own constituent Soviet republic, as did Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Georgian republic was called the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR).

Meanwhile, in July 1921 the Ajarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) was formed within Georgia. Abkhazia was initially a separate Soviet republic, but in 1921 it was merged with Georgia, and in 1931 it was downgraded to the status of an autonomous republic. In April 1922 the Soviet government created the political entity of South Ossetia and designated it an autonomous region within Georgia, while its northern counterpart on the other side of the Greater Caucasus, North Ossetia (now Alania), became part of Russia.

Georgians vigorously resisted Soviet rule, but by 1924, many Georgian dissidents had been executed and others imprisoned on the orders of the central government in Moscow. Even active nationalists who were members of the Communist Party of Georgia, the only political party allowed to function, were punished in an attempt to wipe out all nationalist tendencies in the republic. In the late 1920s Stalin established himself as the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union, ushering in a despotic regime that lasted until his death in 1953. Stalin’s close associate Lavrenty Beria served as first secretary of the Communist Party of Transcaucasia, and then of the Communist Party of Georgia, throughout the 1930s. During the Great Purge (1936-1938)—a campaign of terror that served to solidify Stalin’s dictatorship—Beria collaborated with Stalin to carry out massive arrests and executions of Georgian party officials, intellectuals, and rank-and-file citizens.

During World War II (1939-1945), Stalin ordered the deportation of entire minority groups, mainly Turkic, from Georgia and the rest of the Caucasus on the assumption that they would support the invading Axis powers. After Stalin’s death, a liberalizing process known as de-Stalinization was implemented throughout the Soviet Union under Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

In 1972 Eduard Shevardnadze was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia, a post he held until his promotion to head of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1985. In the 1980s Shevardnadze became an outspoken supporter of the reformist policies of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

However, Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (Russian for “openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”), introduced in the mid-1980s, led many Abkhazians and Ossetians in Georgia to begin agitating for increased autonomy. Friction between the Georgian government and these ethnic minorities increased after the Georgian Supreme Soviet (legislature) passed a law establishing the Georgian language as the official state language in 1989. On April 9 of that year, demonstrators in Tbilisi, who were demanding that Abkhazia remain a part of Georgia and advocating Georgian independence from the USSR, were attacked by Soviet security forces. Nineteen people were killed and many others injured, resulting in increased anti-Soviet sentiment.

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