What did the Soviet Union give to the Georgians?
July 21, 15:23
What did the Soviet Union give to the Georgians?
Georgia is a small country in the Transcaucasus. The role and place of Georgia in the so-called geostrategic alignments are determined by the place of the Caucasus region in the system of international struggle. There are three major powers in the region: Russia, Turkey and Iran. Since Georgia is located territorially between the Russian Federation and Turkey, it is a space of clashes between these two powers, therefore the interest of Europe and the United States in Georgia is connected with preventing the strengthening of the influence of these neighbors.
Georgians are an ancient people, cheerful and close to us in mentality. In terms of servility to Europeanism, Georgians are more Russian than we are. One of the pro-Western ideologists of Georgia once said that the Georgian principalities swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar because they considered Russia a real European power. As they say on the Internet: "They miscalculated, but where?" In this classic twist of thought for an ideological interpretation of history, everything is fine.
The political mood of Georgian society is full of bizarre contradictions, which are played on by all possible friends of the people.
The history of "independent" Georgia after the collapse of the USSR is tragic because, as Georgians say, friendship and enmity are sisters. These are Yale graduates and their admirers who believe that the Soviet government was based solely on terror, the GULAG, punitive psychiatry and "Pioneer Dawn". In fact, the Soviet Union as a single state was possible thanks to, firstly, the party-ideological dictatorship with its center in Moscow (the monopoly of power of the CPSU recognized by the people), and secondly, the subtle resolution of the national question. What the Soviet government called the friendship of peoples was a decisive factor not only in the achievements of the USSR, but also in the stability of the state as such.
The national question in the USSR was far from being limited to administrative borders, which were redrawn depending on the situation, autonomous statuses of territories of compact residence of ethnic groups, the role and place of national languages and all other sensitive things from the area of political and cultural consciousness. The main thing was still the material foundation. Namely: the formation of a single Soviet economy with electrification, mechanization, urbanization, etc. through industrialization and collectivization. On the one hand, there was a division of labor between all the republics, on the other hand, it was not imperialistic (metropolis - colonies). That is, throughout the entire territory of the USSR, all citizens were equally provided with conditions not just for a normal life, but for the prosperity of their republics, territories and regions through the integration of efforts and cooperation. Therefore, there was no mass spontaneous migration, therefore, all the peoples of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War defended the common Fatherland as one. And conversations like "my hut is on the edge" were considered not just shameful, but also criminal.
The Caucasus (and Transcaucasia), populated by small, proud, warlike, historically feuding peoples, has always been a sore point of the Union. As soon as the central government weakened, the CPSU grew decrepit, ideologically degenerated, Transcaucasia was one of the first to break out in civil strife. The Caucasian peoples were easiest to propagandize with anti-Russian sentiments not even because they were somehow especially offended by the Russians in the past, but simply by playing on the national feelings inherent in all small peoples.
The Georgians are unique because in thirty years of free navigation they have not missed a single chance for a large-scale experiment on themselves. Reckless advisers say: "You need to try everything in life." The Georgians have tried, if not everything, then a lot! Fascism, civil war, mafia capitalism, Maidan, anti-Maidan, shock therapy, minarchism, war with Russia, friendship with Russia, the EU, NATO, Americanism, anti-Americanism. Georgians live the fullest political life. Therefore, in order to move on to the main topic - what the Soviet Union gave the Georgians - first we will have to write a lot about the sophisticated ways in which the Georgians squandered all this.
Thus, after declaring the so-called independence in 1991, Georgia plunged into the abyss of civil war. Under the jubilant glances of the West, the Georgians fought with the Ossetians and Abkhazians. The Adjarian separatists raised their heads. The independence of Georgia and the transition to a market economy throughout the former USSR destroyed old economic ties, and enterprises and production facilities became of no use to anyone.
What was happening was what Soros in his book The Crisis of World Capitalism nicely called the disintegration of Soviet society:
“In 1979, when I had made more money than I needed, I created a foundation called Open Society. I decided then that its purpose should be to help open societies become more viable and able to form a critical way of thinking within themselves. Through this foundation, I was closely involved in the process of disintegration of Soviet society.”
Soros and his associates helped the Soviet people destroy their country in order to build an open society for the Sorosites in its place.
The Georgian nationalist frenzy was embodied in the specific person of Gamsakhurdia. A dissident, human rights activist, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, translator of Wilde, Shakespeare, Shelley. A true intellectual and a clever man, a sufferer from Soviet totalitarianism, he became the first president of independent Georgia with absolute support of the electorate (87 percent). An evil romantic, as the perestroika press wrote. What could go wrong?
In the 1990s, Georgia experienced not only a civil war, but also an economic and social collapse on a much larger scale than Russia and many other republics of the former USSR, because Georgia had no oil or gas. And the world market, into which we all plunged headlong, was only ready to absorb hydrocarbons. Until 1995, the Georgian economy lost almost a third of its GDP every year! Having opened up the economy, the Georgians lost almost all of their industry and quickly ruined small farms due to the flood of Turkish goods. Turkey, in conditions of free competition, economically suppressed its small neighbor. The main currency in the 1990s was the US dollar, capital investments almost completely ceased, the shadow economy, according to some estimates, equaled the legal economy in size. Georgia turned into a territory of organized crime, which merged with the state. The liberal communist with five Orders of Lenin, Shevardnadze, who was called upon to lead Georgia after Gamsakhurdia's removal, failed to cope with the Georgian mafia, or with the devastation, or with the formation of a stable state power. All of this was done for him by another dissident, a descendant of the allegedly repressed and a certified agent of Western intelligence - Saakashvili.
Georgia became the first country in the former USSR where Maidan technologies were fully tested. In 2003, according to manuals in the spirit of Sharp's book, which no one believed in at the time, the party apparatchik Shevardnadze was overthrown, and power passed into the hands of a truly reactive Westerner, Saakashvili. He organized not only a war with Russia, but also the "Georgian miracle" - the most outstanding reforms in the post-Soviet space, as our liberals sang about them all day long on Ekho Moskvy.
Jokes aside, Saakashvili had a serious team of American political scientists, consultants, experts and American money behind him. Saakashvili's team destroyed the old state, created a new one, and unleashed large-scale repression. It was real shock therapy. They privatized everything, even rivers and lakes, essentially repealed the Labor Code, abolished oversight services, shook up the security agencies, reduced taxes to a minimum, and completely opened the country to foreign capital. In short, Saakashvili embodied the dreams of Novodvorskaya and the most radical Gaidarovites.
For the war with Russia, Saakashvili received solid loans and grants, amounting to 20 percent of the country's GDP. Thus, Georgia defeated the mafia, suppressed corruption and improved its cities. Indeed, it looks impressive... especially for tourists. The Georgian people received the very liberal freedom that they were promised, with poverty and a state in the hands of international adventurers. But how professionally Saakashvili licked his master’s boot.
Due to the aggressiveness of the reforms, adventurism and even greater growth of inequality in the country, Saakashvili lost popularity by 2012, and the Georgian Dream came to power - initially exactly the same or even more pro-Western political force. But gradually its sponsor, the oligarch Ivanishvili, changed course to a more pro-Russian one. This was due to two factors. The first: the personal rise of Ivanishvili, who became a political figure capable of maneuvering between the interests of the West and Russia due to his capital and connections. The second: the demand of the Western curators of the Georgian government to take the same pro-Ukrainian position on the NWO as the Baltic countries. Ivanishvili himself even says that Georgia was required to open a second front. The Georgian Dream did not agree to this, including because Georgia earns money on the so-called re-export to Russia.
Thus, the political history of modern Georgia can be conditionally divided into the following stages. The period of destruction of the Soviet system by nationalists through civil war (Gamsakhurdia). The period of bandit capitalism, crisis and devastation (Shevardnadze). The period of neoliberalism, the omnipotence of foreign capital (Saakashvili). The period of power of national capital (Ivanishvili). The last one is just beginning.
They say that the Georgian government should follow the national interests of the Georgian people. What national interests can there be for the Georgian people if they are small, locked between major powers? Multi-vector? Sell out at a high price here and there? In any case, the small country will have to choose which of the major countries to join and on what terms.
Despite the roller coaster in politics, two key contradictory ideas dominate the public consciousness of Georgian society, which determine the appearance of national self-consciousness.
The first is Stalin. Stalin is Georgia's main brand. Without Stalin, Georgia is nowhere, no one can be indifferent to Stalin. Or he is a terrible tyrant and a Russian politician who betrayed his people. As an option, a Jew, Mingrelian, Ossetian. Or Stalin - the Georgian king of the red empire, the pride of the nation.
Naturally, a positive attitude towards Stalin is associated with nostalgia for the USSR as a whole, especially since in the Georgian SSR the debunking of the personality cult was not so rabid, and at the everyday level, according to the recollections of the older generation, Georgians revered Stalin in the 1980s and 1990s. In independent and free Georgia, ordinary people have a much harder time living than in the Soviet period.
The second is a monstrous, subconscious servility to Europe, the EU, European values, democratic freedoms and all the most dismal things in liberal propaganda. Just like we had somewhere in the early 1990s. But in this case, it is such a complex of a small country: Georgians want to be accepted into Europe, to be known, talked about, admired by European liberals. This is absolutely the same disease as the concept of “Ukraine is Europe”.
Many people remember the protests in Georgia over the law on foreign agents. It is very interesting how the opposition criticized it. They did not simply repeat, for example, our liberals. The Georgian opposition said something like this: Georgia became democratic because it opened up to the West. Western funds finance democracy in Georgia, freedom of speech, liberalism and fair elections. This is very important, we cannot stop this, otherwise Georgia will go back to Russia, to the Soviet Union, etc. In one of the liberal interviews, I even heard the idea that if the Americans from NED and USAID stop financing Georgian NGOs, the Americans will simply forget about the existence of Georgia, because for Americans, Georgia is the state of Georgia.
In short, in Georgia, many people's admiration for Western liberalism and democracy goes beyond the boundaries of national dignity. But at the same time, the legacy of Saakashvili's reforms continues to exist, the "Georgian Dream" does not fundamentally change anything in this regard: Georgia has a market economy with a minimal role for the state. About fifteen percent of Georgia's GDP are remittances from labor migrants from abroad.
The servility to the West is strikingly combined with Stalinism precisely in the fact that Georgia is famous for Stalin. That is why Georgia has both a disgusting museum of totalitarianism and Soviet occupation and a wonderful Stalin house-museum, which neither Khrushchev, nor Saakashvili with Soros and Bush Jr. could close. In Georgia, the Soviet period is officially considered a Russian occupation and the memory of the suppression of the Stalinist uprising in 1956 is officially preserved.
Georgians were the first to go through the entire spiral from anti-Sovietism, ultra-liberalism, Russophobia, war with Russia to accepting the objective fact that it is necessary to be friends with a large neighbor. Then they will have to accept that we all have one future - in cooperation. All other peoples of the former USSR will go the same way at different speeds and with different catastrophic results. Even Ukrainians and the Balts.
Before the revolution, Georgia was a backward agrarian province. The USSR created a powerful economic base here. You might think that the Georgian SSR was a resort town, a supplier of wine, mineral water, tangerines and other subtropical crops. But this is not quite true. Back in 1957, Georgia had more than four thousand state-owned industrial enterprises, including ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, manganese ore, coal, oil, and mechanical engineering. Georgia produced cast iron, steel, rolled metal, oil, machine tools, trucks, building materials, paper, and not just products of the light and food industries. Mechanical engineering and metalworking accounted for a solid 13 percent of total industrial production. This shows that the Soviet government, developing obvious directions, strove to achieve uniform industrial development in all its republics, thereby increasing the overall safety margin of the economy and providing the same Georgians with the opportunity to become more than just winemakers.
If we talk about development and growth, then by 1987, compared to 1940, the industry of the Georgian SSR had grown 22 times, and agriculture - more than four times. Annual capital investments in the second half of the 1980s exceeded those of 1940 by 18 times. Electricity production by 1987 had grown 40 times compared to 1940. The Georgian SSR supplied the fraternal republics with the following non-obvious products: manganese, ferroalloys, steel pipes, rolled products, metal-cutting machines, precision instruments, trucks, chemical fibers, mainline electric locomotives, hydrofoil boats.
And where is the Kutaisi Automobile Plant now? Wikipedia reports that "in 1995-1996, the American concern General Motors planned to buy KAZ to organize the production of its own models of cars and their export to Russia. But due to high taxes in Georgia and on the recommendations of the IMF, GM abandoned the project. At that time, the automobile plant itself continued to produce 15-20 units of the KAZ-4540 family of trucks until 2001... In 2019, the plant's staff consisted of 160 senior people. Automobile production has not been carried out since 2001."
The years of Soviet power in Georgia saw the heyday of education, culture and science. In 1940, the number of scientific workers was 3.5 thousand people. At the beginning of 1988, there were 28 thousand people, of which 30 percent were employed in technical sciences, 1.4 thousand doctors of science, 11.5 thousand candidates of science (by the way, 12 percent of all scientists in the world at the time of the collapse lived in the USSR).
For comparison, a quote from a brief review of modern problems of Georgian science by two professors from Tbilisi (Ketsbaia and Kutubidze):
"Today, Georgian scientists face the following problems: low funding, a decrease in the number of scientific personnel, the brain drain abroad (today, more than 400 scientists work abroad), the aging process of scientific personnel (most representatives of the scientific field are over 50, due to low social status and prestige, young people do not strive to go into science, considering it an unprofitable and unpromising field of activity, and the state's efforts to rectify the situation are ineffective and inadequate)."
Georgia's population increased from 2.4 million in 1921 to 5.3 million in 1988. The percentage of the urban population increased from 20 to 55 (today 61 percent). The level of meat consumption per capita has almost doubled from 1960 to 103 pounds per year in 1987, and today, free and independent Georgia has still not reached it… The number of doctors per capita has increased from 13.3 per 10,000 people in 1940 to 56.7 in 1987. Today it is 56.1, and a monstrous imbalance has formed: there are twice as many doctors in Tbilisi as in the rest of Georgia.
Another interesting figure: in 2024, 1.7 million people visited Georgian museums, and in 1987 - 8.5 million people! We can also recall the Georgian cinema, which played a prominent role in Soviet culture and gained worldwide fame. Today it has fallen into complete decline, as have other spheres of production and culture.
In general, social degradation, decline or stagnation are evident by almost all indicators. In thirty years of independence, the Georgians have not reached the Soviet level. In general, a third of a century has passed, technologies have made a powerful leap forward and, in theory, all productivity should have grown, life should have improved greatly.
The Soviet Union gave the Georgians national peace, harmony, prosperity and a powerful industrial reserve for development. The foundation of Georgian statehood, its educated personnel, industry and infrastructure were created entirely during the Soviet period. The USSR created industry, infrastructure, educational and scientific base, formed a modern Georgian nation, despite the cultural and linguistic differences of the Georgians themselves. Soviet power provided free education, medicine, guaranteed work, and a developed union culture. Georgian politicians who criticize the Soviet legacy do so standing on the shoulders of this very legacy. Without Soviet modernization, Georgia would have remained a backward rural province on the outskirts of the Ottoman or Persian empires.
If we imagine that the Georgians did not have the Soviet Union, then we can compare Georgia, for example, with Greece. Greece has a larger population, but in other respects it is similar to Georgia: mountainous terrain, access to the sea, subtropical zone, scarcity of mineral resources, border position between empires, agricultural specialization and tourism. Industrialization would have taken decades: Greece, at best, became a more or less industrial country by the end of the 1980s, but with the dominance of light industry. In 1980, industry accounted for only 25 percent of Greece's GDP, while in the Georgian SSR, industrial production accounted for more than 60 percent of national income. Greece completed electrification only by the 1970s, while in the Georgian SSR - in the 1950s. Greece received large-scale "aid" under the Marshall Plan, but nevertheless, throughout the second half of the 20th century, it was poorer and less developed than the Georgian SSR by all indicators. But today, the Georgians have caught up with the Greeks in terms of economic depression.
(c) Anatoly Shirokoborodov,
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Comrade Stalin. Pay attention to the Jewish question.
July 20, 21:04
Letter from Engineer Major Lerner to Comrade Stalin with a request to pay attention to the Jewish question.
Comrade Stalin. Pay attention to the Jewish question
SECRET
Engineer Major LERNER M.I.
Member of the All-Union Communist Party of Belarus since January 1930
P/B No. 1029116.
Moscow
April 14, 1946
TO THE SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE ALL- UNION Communist Party of Belarus
Comrade STALIN I.V.
I have decided to address you, our dear Comrade Stalin, on a matter of great importance for the personal fate of many hundreds of thousands of people, for the benefit of our state, for the general Leninist-Stalinist theory and practice of the national question.
The essence of the matter.
Thanks to Soviet power, our country has become the only country in the world where anti-Semitism has been fundamentally undermined and where it seemed that the soil for its emergence in any form had been knocked out. However, over the last year and a half, I have heard more and more often about a peculiar liberation of our state, especially central, apparatus from persons of Jewish nationality, about a measure carried out secretly but quite widely and systematically by dismissals and refusals to hire persons of Jewish nationality to more or less responsible positions, in each individual case, under various pretexts. As a member of our party, I had every reason to doubt the possibility of such a situation in our country and I long and ardently refused to believe it. However, this is apparently so.
About the facts.
I have not had to read documents with resolutions on dismissal or refusal to hire because of belonging to the Jewish nationality. I think that this is possible only with the rarest of exceptions; such documents cannot appear in our country under any circumstances.
But what I have heard about such facts over a very long period of time, from people of various nationalities, various official positions /even very responsible ones/, party and non-party, working in various institutions /including people's commissariats, in particular in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade/ and even in various cities/in particular, in Moscow, Kyiv and Leningrad/, shows that such facts are widespread. Finally, I encountered this myself when in March of this year I was seconded from the Engineering Department of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, where I had worked for the last 4 years.
If we take into account that I have not stained myself in any way either in the NKVT or before, have not had any offenses and have no vices /although of course I have shortcomings/, and my experience of working in the NKVT, my desire to work and the need for employees allowed me to continue to be used in work in the system of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, if we also take into account a number of circumstances and details, which I am not giving in order not to clutter up the letter, showing that my secondment was not made for business reasons, then it will become clear that the main reason for my secondment was the above-mentioned circumstance.
I tried to draw the attention of Comrade KRUTIKOV A.D. to this by submitting a report to him, but the policy of the personnel department turned out to be effective and Comrade KRUTIKOV passed it by. I made an attempt to contact Comrade MIKOYAN A.I., but unfortunately I was unable to do so. I will only add that I have been out of work for the second month, despite the fact that the heads of several institutions have expressed a desire and readiness to hire me /in particular, a special letter signed by the Deputy Minister of the Aviation Industry Comrade was sent to the Personnel Department of the Air Force of the Red Army. KUZNETSOVA, No. K-18/1738 dated 14. 3. 46 with a request to second me to work in my specialty, at the Scientific Research Institute of Aircraft Special Equipment, Ministry of Aviation Industry /however, as soon as it comes to the personnel departments of institutions or the Personnel Directorate of the Air Force of the Red Army, apparently the aforementioned unfortunate reason continues to operate.
Some considerations.
a/ About true nationality.
I am a Jew, but I can say that I am a Jew only because I was recorded as such in documents at birth. In reality, I do not profess any religion at all, neither Jewish nor any other, I do not use the Jewish language, I do not know it at all, I do not observe any national or religious rituals, my personal qualities as a member of society were formed under the influence of an environment consisting of people of different nationalities /Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, etc., and the influence of the former significantly prevailed/, I have never been associated with any national communities or associations. What is important and significant for me is not my, I could say assigned, nationality, but my citizenship, the fact that I am a citizen of my homeland - the Soviet Union. And I do not know whether this agrees with theory or legal science, but when asked about my nationality, I always want to answer - I am OF SOVIET NATIONALITY.
Perhaps it would also be correct to consider myself as belonging to the nationality in which I developed as a person and where my main work activity took place.
I am sure that the given concepts of nationality would correspond to the truth and spirit for the majority of Jews in our country.
b/ About Jews in our country.
It seems that in our country, people of Jewish nationality, in their majority, have worthily appreciated the trust of the Soviet Power and our party, have gratefully accepted the fraternal attitude and fellowship between the peoples of our country, have selflessly and selflessly given themselves to serving the common goals of our country on any sections of the peace and war fronts and have shown themselves from the best side both in peacetime and in wartime. Therefore, it is unclear for what hidden reasons, after such a general and decisive victory - the victory of our Soviet Power, the Soviet-socialist system and our Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist worldview, a peculiar rule of anti-Semitism could appear in our country on a large scale, about which the Central Committee probably has more complete information.
Is this fair? And does it correspond to our interests?
in / On the Jewish Question.
As is well known, the Jewish question is an age-old question that has been deliberately elevated to the status of an "eternal" problem and zealously maintained as such, and which those in power have never seriously attempted to resolve, especially in the era of capitalism, so as not to lose the most convenient and most familiar object of distraction for the masses during clashes of economic and social contradictions and impending revolutionary explosions. And as is well known, there is no people or nationality that has suffered and made greater sacrifices in its entire history than the long-suffering Jewish nationality suffered during the period of fascist rule abroad and its tyranny in the temporarily occupied areas of our country. A nationality that, due to its dispersal and unique historical development, has absorbed world culture and whose representatives fruitfully work for the benefit of all mankind, in all areas of culture, art and science, and from which come such thinkers and figures as Spinoza, Marx, Einstein and others.
From individual reports in our press it is known that abroad some governments are fussing over the Jewish question, over the question of creating somewhere in the region of Palestine, a Jewish national state, and it is quite obvious that these undertakings are being discussed without the participation of broad sections of the Jewish population and regardless of their wishes. It is also known that outstanding representatives of both the Jewish and other nationalities have resolutely spoken out against this and quite rightly.
Although I am not familiar with the history of the emergence, activities and life of the Jewish National Region in the USSR, I am deeply convinced that the broad masses of Jews in our country have never sought any kind of national isolation, and that such a national republic is also necessary both for the Jews of our country and for our country itself.
Purpose of the note.
The purpose of this report is to ask YOU for the following.
It would be a real blessing for people of Jewish nationality and a decisive contribution to this specific and exciting issue if you, our Leader and Teacher, the brilliant creator and conductor of Stalin's national policy, the pinnacle of truth and human thought, would devote your attention to this issue and say what you consider necessary to say.
With all my heart and thoughts devoted to you,
p/p /Lerner/
/Moscow. Oruzheiny per. house No. 25/a/ apt. 3./ tel. D-1-39-53
RGASPI Archive. F. 558. Op. 11. D. 867 L. 72-76
https://istmat.org/node/69049 - zinc
In 1948, Comrade Stalin supported the creation of the state of Israel.
At the same time, even under Stalin, the fight against political Zionism intensified after Israel took the side of the West in the Cold War.
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