At 2:30 a.m. on September 8, 1993, a passenger train left the station in the western Georgian town of Sachkhere and rolled downhill. It was night, it was dark, but the train was not a night train: it was making regular day trips to carry commuters between Sachkhere and Kutaisi along a mostly hilly and winding railway line, passing along the way a traditional “manganese section” linking the mining town of Chiatura to Zestaphoni, where the ores are processed into ferroalloys. But on that night, the train was supposed to be staying at the station. A few passengers were also resting in the carriages, either waiting for daylight to return to their villages after arriving from Kutaisi or arriving early so as not to miss their trip later in the morning.
The passengers were there, but not the drivers. Both the engineer and his assistant had left the train for a more civilized night’s sleep in the nearby apartment. But the train didn’t seem to care. It was headed for the ride of its life and clearly didn’t want anyone to give it instructions.
Here is Nini and the Dispatch newsletter to follow Georgia’s first fully automated train and check whether it’s still rolling (into the abyss).
Final Destination
And so, the driverless train rolled down the track, picking up speed on its way to Chiatura and leaving one village after another in its wake. A night attendant at Darkveti station (a village near Chiatura) “could not believe his eyes as a driverless train raced by at high speed and disappeared into the darkness,” according to a news report in the Georgian Republic, the official daily. In Chiatura they tried to stop the train by putting brakes on the rails, but in vain – the “unleashed” train wasn’t having it. It quickly freed itself from the brakes and raced down to Zestaphoni, a railway junction where other passenger trains were actively running at the time. “A disaster could strike at any moment,” the dramatic media report said.
According to the news article, the situation was further complicated by the fact that cable thieves, who were preying on copper to sell it for scrap, had long since cut off telephone communications between the Chiatura and Zestaphoni stations. Fortunately, as in the old days, one village notified another, then another. And so, village by village, the information about the impending disaster arrived in Zestaphoni faster than the reckless and driverless train. Railway workers in Zestaphoni managed to clear a safe path for the train before it reached the busy section, and disaster was averted. No passengers were injured.
Country Roads, Take Me… Away from Home
What caused the unusual event remained a mystery. But it’s hard not to sympathize with the train’s sudden desire to break free.
Leafing through the same September 9, 1993 issue of The Georgian Republic, the articles painted a grim picture: a story with the headline “Armed and Too Dangerous Times” described the criminal chaos the country had plunged into; “Bread Guarantee” delved into the problem of bread lines, one of the bleak memories of Georgia’s poverty-stricken 1990s; “Have we learned nothing from history?” – was a letter lamenting the divided country; the columns (“Peace First!”) – published shortly before the Fall of Sokhumi – dealt with disturbing reports from Abkhazia and unrest in neighboring Samegrelo. Then came the Op-Eds, where one lawmaker suggested that psychologists be employed in parliament to analyze the speeches and actions of deputies, claiming that the idea had come to him from the Orthodox Church Patriarch Ilia II. Another lawmaker gleefully shared his impressions from the U.S. trip, where he quoted “high-ranking sociologist John Kane” as saying that “Georgia’s sponsor is the Lord Savior himself.”
Mr. Kane, whoever he was, apparently had a point. “God saved us from the worst,” the train incident reporter concluded at the end of his story, citing experts who marveled at the train’s “fantastic” performance with its possibly record-breaking speed. But that breakneck performance was not something those poor passengers needed in already hard times… one would think. It would be easy to imagine Hollywood scenes of what went on inside the train during the 50-minute rollercoaster ride, with some Keanu Reevsy passenger taking matters into his own hands and using all his skills (and, no less importantly, his beauty) to save the day. But the reality couldn’t be more different.
Smooth Operator
“The passengers didn’t know what was going on and were even happy that they had arrived so quickly,” I was told when I first heard the story at the train station in Zestaphoni, my hometown. That was last year. A train to Tbilisi was delayed, and the passengers distracted themselves by chatting. A separate group of honest local men gathered nearby and, after humbly confessing to each other that they had “never read a page” in their lives, went on to discuss world politics. And after reviewing Azerbaijan’s recapture of Karabakh, then a hot topic, and saying a kind word or two about Ilham Aliyev, it took them little time to agree that autocracy was the smartest way to run the country.
Why not? Under autocratic rule, you don’t have to deal with all divisions, criminal chaos, and existential threats, and nobody cuts in while you rightfully stand in that bread line. Everything is taken care of, everything is under control, and everything runs smoothly. Or does it? What if the smooth running is just an illusion? What if we are the passengers on THAT TRAIN?
The story fascinated me less because of my hometown, where that eventful train ride ended three decades ago, and more because of Sachkhere, the hometown of Georgia’s most powerful man, where the disaster began. Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, is a native of Sachkhere’s Chorvila village, and many believe this is where he built his stronghold at the height of his ever-growing paranoia.
Over the past few months, this is where he’s been coming up with ideas to outlaw one group after another – CSOs, media, now opposition parties – and doing it at a pace that he may end up banning everything that isn’t him. In recent months, it has seemed that he has again cut loose a train full of passengers while he himself, the driver, has decided to stay safe tucked in his mansion.
Running Up That Hill
Those who willingly boarded Ivanishvili’s reckless train of thought are indeed enjoying a smooth ride, believing that the final destination is peace and tranquility. Others have long known that something in that train was broken but still thought it was the only one on the right rails.
But in the darkness of night, more are realizing that the only reason it remains on the tracks is the train’s determination to crush everything it encounters along the way, with the inevitable prospect of derailing and killing its own passengers as well. Those who are aware of the scary reality are now facing a difficult mission. To save the day, they must warn other doomed stations, but even though many wires have been strung across the country, reaching out has never been harder.
Should we, like on that night in 1993, return to the ancient, more personal means of human communication to avert disaster? While some of us are figuring it out, locals in the area seem to have learned that they would rather walk barefoot than get back on that train. And so, at 3 p.m. on August 24, residents of Shukruti, a Chiatura village where mining has destroyed homes and orchards, will walk to Ivanishvili’s Chorvilla village to seek justice for their long struggle – after a local court stripped them of their right to protest near the mine.
