Saakashvili: Soviet Era is Over in Georgia

The Soviet Union has not been "completely buried" and is now showing signs of life, trying to regain control over those parts that once was the Soviet empire, President Saakashvili said.

"Soviet Union, which is now in control of the Tskhinvali region and Abkhazia will never be able to keep them [Abkhazia and S.Ossetia] and will not be able to seize rest of Georgia, because in rest of Georgia our society, our army and our police, which are united like a fist, will respond to these attempts," Saakashvili said while addressing policemen outside the Interior Ministry on May 6.

"I want those itching to restore the Soviet empire to know, that era of the Soviet Union is over in Georgia," he said.

"But the Soviet empire is of course now attacking. This empire – something we thought was a corpse – has started to revitalize, because it was not completely buried and it is now trying to seize through ugly forms those parts that used to be the Soviet Union previously."

"A symbolic end of the Soviet Union in Georgia was marked when a Soviet police uniform was replaced by new Georgian police uniform, decorated proudly by [Georgia’s national] five-cross flag and what is the most important, when it has been replaced by a new thinking, new human, new generation, which will never allow to return back," Saakashvili said.

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