Sergei was the only one who seemed interested in watching Gorby and the passing of the empire, to be announced live on TV. Then the clock struck seven p.m., and Gorbachev’s familiar image filled the screen. He began to speak.
Gorby expressed deep regret that it had proven impossible to save the Soviet Union. He opposed its dissolution. Upon assuming the mantle of power in 1985, he had had no alternative but to try to radically reform the system. “It was clear not all was well with our country.… I understood that to begin reforms of such a scale in a society like ours was extremely difficult and even dangerous. But even today, I’m convinced of the historic correctness of the democratic reforms that were begun in the spring of 1985.”
Gorbachev spoke for all of ten minutes—a historically short address. He concluded with the words “I wish you all the best.” Then he was off the air, and the Soviet Empire, which had endured for sixty-eight years, eleven months, and twenty-five days, was no more—and few seemed to immediately understand the significance of it all. Later, I learned a few more details about the aftermath: Immediately after his last address, Gorbachev turned to his final task: turning over the Soviet nuclear briefcase. Yet even this moment was tinged with absurdity. Boris Yeltsin, known for his tirades and unpredictability, had for unclear reasons taken offense at Gorbachev’s resignation speech. According to Gorbachev, Yeltsin refused to show up in the Kremlin to take over control of the “nuclear button,” as it is called in Russian. Gorbachev writes of the incident with bitterness. Yeltsin offered to meet “on neutral ground.” In the end, Gorbachev handed over the means to destroy the world many times over to Marshal Yevgeny Shaposhnikov and several senior military officers.
Gorbachev went into a room with several aides who had stayed to the end.
They poured themselves a round of whiskey, bitter solace for the USSR and its last leader’s having already become an afterthought. Gorbachev recalls:
There were no other procedures for seeing off the president of the USSR, as is the accepted norm in civilized countries. Although many years of close, comradely relations connected me with most of them, not one of the presidents of the sovereign states—the former Soviet republics of the USSR—considered it necessary to come to Moscow in those [final] days, or even to call me.
Within forty-five minutes of his resignation speech, sentries lowered the proud red hammer and sickle from the Kremlin and replaced it with the Russian red, white, and blue tricolor.
My friend Sergei Lazaruk, in despair, suggested we go into the center of Moscow for some drinks. In the streets around Red Square, life went on as usual, oblivious to the empire’s passing. People were strolling around, what few cafés that were open were packed, and one would not have known that 300 million people had just become citizens of different countries.
But the quiet bordering on indifference about the demise of the “Common House” that had been the USSR masked a churning fury beneath the surface. The genie of independence was out of the bottle, and the roller-coaster ride of “parading sovereignties” and extreme nationalism had just begun.
One of the first places to blow was at first glance one of the least likely—the wine- and song-filled and (now former-Soviet) Republic of Georgia, which just happened to be Stalin’s homeland.
Last Georgian volunteer units head to front lines, days before Sukhumi is taken over by Abkhaz, September 1993.
My boss from Reuters TV says: “Pack your bags and get to Georgia.” It is August 1992, and I’ve been working in Moscow in the eight months since the USSR’s disintegration. There’s another war on there, this time in Abkhazia [Georgia]. I’d been to Georgia twice, most recently earlier that year after a two-week civil war reduced the heart of the capital to a smoking ruin. I’d only covered one war, a few months earlier (and even then for only a few days) in the former Soviet republic of Moldova. For some reason this made me a kind of war specialist to my boss, or at least foolhardy enough to embark on this latest Georgian “adventure.”
The two-hour flight from Moscow south to the Caucasus Mountains reflects the now-dead empire’s geographical complexity. Flat fields of wheat punctuated by birch forests give way to bursting rivers and rolling hills. Just an hour or so out of Moscow, our plane starts to pass over lands conquered by the Cossacks in the eighteenth century, the traditional homelands of dozens of indigenous peoples—Ossetians, Ingush, Kabardins, and Chechens, to name a few.… Then rise the Caucasus Mountains, snowcapped, knife-sharp granite fingers sticking up out of the blue. Georgia comes into view.
Georgia seemed an unlikely backdrop for failed-state status. The Soviet Union’s richest corner—Black Sea beaches, snow-covered mountain peaks, subtropical sunshine nurturing mandarin and tea groves and vineyards—it had a reputation for producing painters, ballerinas, and poets, bacchanalia and boundless hospitality. “Get rid of the Russians and we’ll live off our wine and cognac!” was a typical common refrain.
Yet in another way it was indeed a very likely place for trouble. It was a mix of the majority Georgians, “autonomous” republics, and corners dominated by ethnic minorities. And, given its bountiful attributes, Georgia was naturally coveted—home to resorts owned by the Soviet military, political, and cultural elite. What’s more, Georgia had been part of the Russian Empire far longer than the effective birth of the Soviet Empire in 1917. Georgia had entered Russia as a protectorate in the late 1700s, as its rulers of the time saw it as a chance to avert another threat from Persians, Turks, or Muslim raiders from the North Caucasus—it even shared Orthodox Christianity with the Russians. Georgia and Abkhazia, the most valued jewels in the empire’s battered crown.
The Abkhaz were, in fact, by the time of the empire’s breakup, just 17 percent or so of the population of that region—fewer than 100,000 souls. They blamed a deliberate policy of assimilation led by Stalin and his henchman Lavrenty Beria on their decline. Beria was also a Georgian—or, to be more precise, a Megrelian—a Georgian subethnos. The Georgians became 45 percent, the rest Abkhaz, Russians, Armenians, and a smattering of others. Tensions smoldered for years, the Abkhaz local parliament declared independence, and through a series of deadly miscues, the war was on.
And so it was with beautiful Sakartvelo—“the land of the Georgians”—in their own, very non-Russian language. Independence had arrived, and I was suddenly sent there to record the pathology of upheaval that would ensue.
NOBODY STARTED THIS WAR
Nobody started this war,” stammered the woman manning the one phone in the Parliamentary Press Department of the Republic of Georgia. It was disingenuous, of course; somebody started it. Maybe she was just in denial. But she’s partially correct—the war’s commencement is anarchic, absurd, seemingly starting on a whim.
A paramilitary gang, the “National Guard,” gets permission to enter a few miles into autonomous Abkhazia and guard passenger trains, which are being raided and robbed at will. Georgia has agreed with the local Abkhaz authorities on guarding the trains. How will the National Guard accomplish this act of ensuring safety? With tanks, among other toys. Tanks to guard passenger trains? Tanks were not part of the deal. It is absurd, of course, the sight of the tanks evoking deep fears in Abkhazia, helping ignite the war. Not to mention the fact that they are worthless for guarding passenger trains.
Tengiz Kitovani is the potbellied leader of the National Guard. His mission supposedly has nothing to do with Abkhaz separatism; it’s to prevent a wave of recent kidnappings. No one told Kitovani to crack down on Abkhazia, they say. No one gave the National Guard permission to enter any which towns, just guard the railway. But someone took some potshots at Kitovani’s guys, and they fired back. Looting and excesses began. Alcohol and testosterone were also involved. Need I add that Tengiz Kitovani is a large-canvas painter by trade? Did I mention that some Georgians accuse him of being a KGB agent sent in by the Russians to do a fifth-column job?
Kitovani’s men ditch their railroad-guarding mission and angrily march into the regional capita
l, Sukhumi. The predictable wave of looting and revenge against some ethnic Abkhaz, and other local non-Georgians, ensues. The Abkhaz flee north for the coastal town of Gudauta, where they set up their own administration.
It’s a mere few days after the war’s start. I wander the halls of the parliament and strike up a conversation with Eduard Shevardnadze, the effective “head of state” of the new Georgia. (At the time, he is officially known as chairman of the State Council; later, he’d opt for the title of president. At this stage in Georgia’s statehood, “Shevy” has but one bodyguard, and security is almost nonexistent.) To many in the West, he’s the Man Who Ended the Cold War as Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet foreign minister. He’s on his way to a raucous parliamentary session. Shevardnadze smiles and rattles off a few platitudes to me about how there is still “hope.” In other words, it’s not too late to stop the conflict in Abkhazia.
Shevardnadze has problems: The “head of state” is clearly not calling the shots. He is not even formally commander in chief of the National Guard. The dim-witted loudmouth Kitovani is.
Kitovani is one of the warlords who brought Shevardnadze back to Georgia as a fig leaf for their questionable legitimacy. Because they have the men and the guns, they are in control, at least for now. The Abkhaz don’t buy it: They are convinced Shevardnadze’s behind the war. Shevardnadze tries to reach Kitovani by phone or military radio. The rabble-rousing artisan Kitovani, once inside Abkhazia, even refuses several times to take phone calls from the “head of state” as he helps lead Georgia into its latest disaster.
I wander down the street from the parliament.
It’s a molten August sky, as if dripping hot lead. Armed men are milling around in a downtown park, near Tbilisi’s Central House of Chess. The air is a simmering pot boiled over. These fighters belong to yet another parliamentary group, the Mkhedrioni (“Knights”), and the Chief Knight is about to speak. His name is Jaba Ioseliani, and he is a smiling man with a dramatic aura. In the sixty-seventh year of his life (born 1926), Jaba (Georgian men, even presidents, are referred to by their first names, preceded by “Batono,” a term of respect roughly meaning “Sir”) is well preserved, dapperly dressed (he prefers bow ties), and armed with a deceptively warm smile. By age sixty-six, most paramilitary leaders have well-established military careers. Jaba’s, by contrast, is about two years old. He helped topple the erratic elected president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, over the winter. Now he, together with the big-canvas painter Kitovani, is the other main protagonist in Georgia’s newest war, against the Abkhaz. Life imitates art. Jaba’s current “official” job description? Dramatist, playwright.
An earlier job of Jaba’s came as a student in Leningrad. In this case, a woman’s finger was allegedly chopped off in order to make it easier to steal a ring she wore. Toss in a second jail stint for manslaughter, and all in all Jaba earned more than fifteen years in a Soviet (Russian) prison before reclaiming his status as a dramaturge in Georgia, just when the place was falling apart. And now as a warlord.
Hundreds of armed men have shown up to hear the Great Man, who is pontificating from a stage inside the House of Chess. The gathered are an eclectic lot, and they and the Great Man seem props in a grand show. Uniforms? The favored dress code is a T-shirt and jeans, preferably baggy ones. Dark sunglasses, worn night and day, sun or clouds, also seem obligatory. Oh, and make sure you bring your own Kalashnikov, or share one with a friend.
Jaba’s speech is a colorful rant about pride and honor, or at least his interpretation of such values. Loud chatting among the crowd of fighters drowns him out. Many are sprawled out between theater chairs. The rabble is nonstop, extemporaneous; Georgians have a habit of talking all at the same time, and this is no exception, especially since many of the “Knights” are inebriated.
The Knights are accountable only to themselves and, occasionally, Jaba, who is accountable to no one. They make sure everyone understands that. The license plates on their automobiles are uniquely personalized: Often they have none.
Jaba jumps into a waiting car, followed by me and the makeshift army of men in cars with no license plates. The several hundred fighters head for the airport.
The Knights have no planes, and the government has no real air force, even troop transports. Odd aircraft on the tarmac (usually Tupolev-154s, the standard Soviet passenger planes) are commandeered on the spot and converted for use in minutes.
The lucky get seats, if they haven’t been torn out. No seat, no problem. Stand in the aisles, in the cockpit, in the toilet. Some men pile into the cargo hold along with a new supply of artillery shells. Everyone poses for pictures, partaking in this moment of history.
“Gamarjos Sakartvelos!” “Long Live Georgia!”
The empire is dead and the pent-up emotions of hundreds of years under foreign tutelage boil over in a paroxysm of nationalist fervor. The result is a ruinous, pointless, internecine bloodletting pitting Georgians against Ossetians and now Georgians against Abkhazians and finally Georgians against Georgians, during which most of the original objectives (such as independence) get lost in the mayhem.
The Knights have vague notions about their upcoming mission in Abkhazia. “We are going to fight for the Motherland” is a typical refrain. Blank stares greet me when I ask what that means in practice.
Well, it’s only been going on for a week. So, is it really a war? Well, people have been killed, so let us call it a “conflict,” but not a “war” yet. We can reserve that designation for another year, by which time there will be ten thousand dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.
I’M READY TO make my way to the “front,” if there is one. Groups of Georgian fighters are still clamoring to get there too. Miraculously, some commercial flights are still flying! I buy a twelve-dollar ticket on a twenty-six-seat Yakovlev-40 plane. I seem to be the only paying passenger, however. The rest are either Batono Jaba the dramatist’s “Knights,” or Kitovani’s National Guardsmen. Why is it that paramilitary gurus around these parts all seem to be led by artists of one ilk or another?
It is hot on the asphalt. Burning hot. Shoes sink in the half-melted tar. The flight was supposed to leave at three p.m., but now it is four and then five, then six. “We’re waiting for a VIP,” blurts out an airport official. Who? No one will say. We take refuge from the heat by sitting on our bags underneath the wings of the little plane. Three fighters are next to me, along with a lamb on a tether. They do their best to show me the legendary Georgian hospitality, pouring shot after shot of chacha, or hard-core Georgian moonshine made from grapes, into a common glass and down shot after shot. Sweaty with gregariousness, they act like they’re going to a party. Or a funeral pyre for the empire. They drink to my health, even as they slowly ruin theirs, and insist I join them in the festivities. But I’m in no mood for this and turn down their entreaties until someone reminds me that snubbing a toast is an offense to Georgian honor, an issue that is treated with infinitely more gravity than the newly ignited war.
Finally, the pilot appears. After some two dozen men with their sundry weapons board, I climb up the stairs followed by my three fighter friends and the lamb. It bleats and baahs the entire way to Abkhazia. So does one of the liquored-up fighters, chattering away in Georgian in my ear the whole flight, which I don’t understand a lick of yet. That fact does not trouble him.
It’s dark by the time we land in Sukhumi, and I can’t see a thing from the air. My fighter friends disappear with their bleating future dinner into the chaos on the tarmac. As the reinforcements have arrived, other armed men fight for seats for the flight back to Tbilisi. Across the runway, a much larger passenger jet is getting ready to fly a scheduled route to Moscow. Most of the would-be passengers are Georgian men, dragging enormous bags filled with produce to sell in Russia. They make their way toward the plane but are stopped by furious fighters who charge the merchants with desertion of the Motherland. “Stay and fight!” they scream at the perceived turncoats, firing their weapons in the air. The war that n
obody started does not seem to be going well.
I make my way through the throng to the road outside the terminal and try to find a lift into the city, some twelve miles away. There are no cars on the road. Another fighter approaches and introduces himself as “Commander Dato,” the Georgian short form of the name David. He is tall and his head droops toward me, like an overripened sunflower. With him is a local woman, Irina. “I’m a Jew,” she says, out of the blue. For the next two hours, Dato talks up a storm. He’s already called HQ, he says. Every so often he promises a car is on the way. “Ten minutes,” he says for the thirteenth time.
Later, instead of a fourteenth broken promise, he admits, “No more cars tonight,” and points in the direction of a forlorn barrackslike shack. I stumble in the dark and enter. The floor is a mixture of concrete and dirt. A bunch of grunts snore away on cots. I find a free one and pretend to sleep. At dawn, I leave the slumbering paramilitaries and wander onto the long airport access road, which leads to the main highway.
There are still no cars in sight, but the morning sun reveals a lush cover of palm trees, mandarin groves, and tea plantations along the main road. Cows wander through tea bushes. The Black Sea coast arcs on the left. On the right—the snowcapped peaks of the Caucasus. I’d heard of Abkhazia’s beauty but wasn’t prepared for the Malibu-at-war I’d entered.
A car stops along the road, another rattling, ubiquitous old Soviet Lada. The man behind the wheel is Aleksandr Berulava. He’s wiry, edgy, with ruddy cheeks. Although he claims to be a local journalist, he’s wearing military fatigues and is now doing PR for the Georgian war effort.
“They had all the best houses, all of the best jobs,” Berulava complains, insisting the Abkhaz and the Russians started the war through a carefully calculated set of “provocations.” He pulls up to the Georgian HQ, hastily set up in a palatial coastal mansion in a lush botanical garden that once served as summer digs for Uncle Joe Stalin. Peacocks strut about the yard, barking. Placards identify rare plants and flowers, visual and olfactory sedatives for Stalin and other strongmen who’ve inhabited this piece of paradise.
Eight Pieces of Empire Page 7
