Salomé Zourabichvili, Je Vous Attends
"A couple of years ago, Russia boycotted Georgian wine."
This boycott started several years ago, and continues today. The natural market for Georgian wine --Stalin loved his Khvanchkara -- is Russia, but Georgia is forced to export to lands far away. Even at Pirosmani – I have been told -- the famous Georgian restaurant in Moscow, visitors cannot buy, for the restaurant cannot serve, Georgian wines to accompany Georgian dishes. This may seem trivial, but wine is a major export for Georgia and the boycott baseless economic vindictiveness.
Georgia is also a firmly Christian country, with a history of resisting Islam, just as Islam, or Muslim slavers, have a history of kidnapping not only all kinds of "Slavs" to serve as -- hence the word -- slaves, but also of seizing Georgian (and Circassian) girls for their harems. Georgia is firmly, by its historical memory, in the anti-Islam camp.
Would not a sensible Russian regime, forefeeling what is to come, what has already come, to the Caucasus, not want a strong Georgia? No, of course not, because the Putin regime, with its missiles being sent to Iran, and its inability to regard the oil producers of the Middle East both as economic rivals (the more troubles they have, the less oil they produce, the more money Russia gets) and as dangerous bankrollers, with their Money Weapon, of an Islam that represents a threat to the national existence of Russia as Russia -- in the Avvakum-Derzhavin-Pushkin-Tolstoy-Chekhov-Mandelshtam-Nabokov sense, far more, because of the domestic demographic (and not only in the Caucasus), than the United States or an expanded NATO, even in the wildest Russian fantasies, ever would or could.
Posted on 8:18 AM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Comments
9 Aug 2008
Mary Jackson
"A firmly Christian country" is spot on. Georgians are devout, fervent even. In Tbilisi, very Western looking young men and women, chatting into their mobiles just like in London, cross themselves as they pass a cathedral. In churches they kiss icons as if their life depended on it. We had to cover our heads in every church, while in the sterile, empty mosques of Uzbekistan, nobody cared - they were too busy selling souvenirs.
There is nothing priggish about their Christianity. It's warm and kind. And they know how to party - and how to drink. Even their bad wine is good.
A magical country. And their patron saint is St. George, just like ours. In fact they are rather like an old-fashioned version of the English - reserved and seemingly grumpy at first, but warm and friendly when you get to know them.
