So here we are! Georgia is celebrating stepping closer to the EU for the second time in two months, on a second attempt in two years. In this historical moment, the divided country seeks a rare unity to share the joy, even if mentally heading toward two different versions of Europe. And thanks God we also have two Christmases and two New Years coming up to keep us entertained for the next few weeks: who knows, maybe this protracted period of happiness will force us to finally embrace the better, the more optimistic of our two selves.
Here is Nini and Dispatch, sending the sounds of joy from Georgia and hoping words won’t go missing on the way.
Fairytale gone bad
The two days leading up to the EU’s final decision to grant Georgia candidacy were not easy. Georgians had to fight on two separate battlefields. One battle was the ‘unusual usual,’ where small rains and Christmas hustle left Tbilisi roads paralyzed and effectively robbed the city residents of the remaining doses of the annual dopamine. But one would have coped with that familiar sense of stuckness if not for the Disney team that sent Georgians into wider-scale claustrophobia.
The culprit was a no-harm-meant clip advertising “The Wish,” a newly released Disney animation. As one of many diversity-embracing Western corporations, Disney put together a three-and-a-half-minute video featuring the film’s main soundtrack in 29 languages. And somewhere after a minute and a half, here it was – Georgian! Or, at least, that’s what the subtitles claimed we were hearing. Well, Georgians love nothing more than being globally noticed and seen. But in this particular and peculiar case, we would have accepted much easier had the authors simply skipped that part. The lazy clip makers apparently chose not to get their hands too dirty ahead of the holidays and covered the Georgian part with some indiscernible “hey-hey-hey” refrain chant, hoping to get away with crime.
For the crime, it was. Those he-he-heys, surely, sounded nothing like the painfully complex words from the ancient and unique language – let alone polyphonic chants – Georgians so love showing off. And little did the Disney team know that this he-he-hey country also prides itself in one of the best-trained armies of keyboard warriors worldwide. “They messed with the wrong country” – was the collective battle cry before the army would flood the clip’s comment section with complaints, jokes, and the chosen lines from the best of national poetry.
Hard to say whether the Disney staffers learned those poems in the end. But they for sure learned their lesson. Yet Georgians, too, were reminded of a painful truth: scream as much as you want, but even if the sound of a collective scream reaches our distant friends, words may not. That truth came at us at the time when that was exactly what the country’s most committed citizens were trying to do: working hard to make their voice heard, collect signatures, reach out to the West, and produce record-large EU flags – in the desperate hope that it would boost our chances ahead of the EU’s landmark decision. Were all these efforts futile? Did we send all those words and gestures only to see them dissected and distorted by cold winds as they tried to cross the stormy Black Sea? That seemed likely at first: the reports that kept coming from European capitals until the last moment were not so promising.
Light at the end of the tunnel
But all’s well that ends well. It turns out that the voices of Georgians were heard, even if it was our dear friend Viktor Orban who kept interrupting our cries with his tantrums. The work the country did outweighed the work it failed to do. On December 14, the EU announced that it would be giving Georgia candidate status. Fellow applicants from Ukraine and Moldova were also allowed to move one step closer to membership. Who knows, maybe the Hungarian leader truly meant it in a friendly way when he gave us small panic attacks ahead of the big decision, granting Georgians a chance to relive the initial joy of the Commission’s positive recommendation with full force.
The joy across the country has indeed been overwhelming. Photos of big and small Georgian towns decorated in EU flags make rounds on social media. Many have reached into the past to bring up the legacy of the “nation’s founding fathers” from the 19th and 20th centuries, widely viewed as pathblazers for Georgia’s Western journey. Others recalled early and, at the time, hopeless-looking struggles of the reborn Georgian republic. “What a tormented country we are,” one Facebook user said after dusting off an age-old picture of late Georgian leaders – ex-President Shevardnadze and ex-PM Zurab Zhvania, the author of the famous “I am Georgian, therefore European” phrase. The two – God knows how many years ago – are seen posing in front of a giant blue EU banner reading, “Georgia is a member of the European Family”.
And some opted to go to a more recent past. Tributes were paid to those braving the water cannons with EU flags back in March, helping defeat the disastrous “foreign agent bill” and producing epic imagery that would melt many hearts in the West.
It’s hope that counts
But what did the status actually change? Many realize that the hardest work lies ahead, and merely a change of status would not transform the country into a better-functioning liberal democracy overnight. The celebrations even made the transport collapse worse, leaving many struggling to go back to their own families, to say nothing about their return to “European family.”
Political squabbles also did not go anywhere and were on full display during the main celebratory event later on December 15. Thundering at the crowd from the main stage, government, and ruling party leaders did not spare their usual divisive rhetoric as they were taking the credit for the achievement. President Salome Zurabishvili, who became a sort of torchbearer for pro-EU citizens, was also in attendance but – naturally – not allowed to take the stage to address the public.
Still, the persisting negativity will hardly beat the rediscovered hope, at least for the weeks to come. One can see even usual skeptics who’d otherwise complain about West’s ignorance and betrayal, now joining others in their sincere celebration. That hope, or rather a belief that a better system is possible, will stay in eternal conflict with the pessimism that has become the grand strategy of more authoritarian forces. And hope is more than a feeling. Hope has been a driving force for each small step forward in Georgia’s recent history, and it was the hope that helped reverse the illiberal legislation earlier this year.
So, with reforms pending and struggles unending, let’s hope for more hope.
