Three months into the nonstop protests, one starts to recognize patterns. When cops show up with their faces covered, expect trouble. When protesters start walking around with disposable paper bowls, trace the scent for free hot soup. And if you see a moving bright circle surrounded by swirling dark dots—somewhat similar to NASA’s depiction of the Milky Way—it usually means one thing: Salome Zurabishvili has arrived on the scene. Not many others get that much attention these days.
After a long absence, on the night of February 25, that “Milky Way circle” reappeared on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue. Having arrived at the parliament with a long march, I tried to follow it, but it’s never easy to break through a dense circle of flashing cameras and reporters hovering around Zurabishvili. Then suddenly, near a stage set in front of Tbilisi’s Classical Gymnasium, the reporters dispersed, and I was left with a strange cinematic image of a woman in red standing sternly against a dark background, surrounded by men and women in black. As surreal as it seemed, the scene was a logical culmination of a busy day of protest that felt like one chaotic, everything-everywhere-all-at-once dream you see during a long morning nap. Was it a precognitive dream signaling a grand comeback?
Here is Nini and the Dispatch newsletter, with updates from snowy Georgia on the first (calendar) spring day after a long, turbulent winter of terror and resistance.
Georgians must be taking those long morning naps more often than they used to. Some have lost their sleep to protests, others lost their jobs to repression or global shifts, and many lost their sleep to lost jobs. The early hours of February 25 were also sleepless – because of the snow. Hardly a surprise: in the best or worst Georgian traditions, February has always been about snow and repression, and February 25 has been about both: on this day in 1921, the Soviet Red Army took over Tbilisi, a painful day remembered in historical and literary sources as cold, dark, and snowy. The date was an important milestone in the untimely death of the three-year-old Georgian republic, an abyss opening onto seven decades of Soviet rule.
Georgian Dream observed the tradition, but only partially. While the party in power didn’t forget about repression, it did forget to prepare for snow. Just as the one-party parliament’s zealous lawmakers were busy drafting the Foreign Agents Law Vol. 3, imposing further restrictions on the broadcast media, and removing the word “gender” one by one from already enacted laws, reports began to pour in from West Georgia of families – including infants and the elderly – buried in their homes for days in meters-high snow, many without electricity, food, or drinking water. Many had lost contact with the outside world, and those who were able to reach emergency services on the phone heard nothing comforting, left alone to freeze in the cold as they watched their roofs cave in. One man died while helping a neighbor clean the roof from snow, and more lives were at risk.
Reports caught up with Georgian activists late on February 24 as they marched in solidarity with Ukrainians on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Later that night, those with experience in handling extreme conditions began organizing into volunteer groups to travel to the epicenter of the crisis. Others took charge of crowdfunding, and many sounded the alarm about yet another case of the authorities’ inability or unwillingness to deal with the crisis. As volunteers rushed to the scene, risking their lives to save others, they were met with predictable information wars from pro-GD media. While authorities stepped up their rescue efforts in response to the backlash, the delay in response appeared to increase the damage from the disaster.
Bérets Noirs
The horrors wrought by the storms in the western part of the country initially distracted Georgian demonstrators from activities they had planned to commemorate the Soviet occupation. But those who stayed in Tbilisi still showed up for the evening marches.
The marches, which set off from various locations, were named after national heroes or prominent figures associated with Georgia’s First Republic. Perhaps the largest one was in honor of Maro Makashvili, a nurse who fell to Soviet troops in 1921 at the age of 18. The march was led by mostly young women wearing black berets to match the First Republic’s crimson, black, and white flag aesthetic and to echo a famous image of young gymnasts parading in Tbilisi during Georgia’s first Independence Day celebrations in 1919.
The marches converged on Heroes’ Square, Tbilisi’s busiest intersection, and headed noisily toward the parliament. Amid the unfolding catastrophe in western Georgia, the protest would probably have been silent if not for the protesters’ determination to reverse the tragic, deafening silence for which that fateful morning of February 25, 1921, has entered the collective memory from the poetic account.
And there would be no February 25 without Salome Zurabishvili, who was never humble in stressing her special connection to the 1918-1921 national project.
Succession
Born in Paris to Georgian emigrants, Zurabishvili’s personal history combines French republicanism with Georgia’s anti-Tsarist cause, and still, she sometimes comes across as a kind of royal heiress fighting for her right to the throne. If you put your finger on any high-ranking official from Georgia’s First Republic, there’s a good chance it’s one of her grandfathers. As the emerging resistance movement in Georgia increasingly sought to reconnect with the 1918-21 republican project, the president went to bring up her rich ancestry more often.
“It is no coincidence that at this crucial time for Georgia, the country’s president is a child of the emigrants who fought for and prepared Georgia’s independence,” she said in her last Independence Day address last May. “In some ways, we feel we are back in 1921,” she told the European Parliament in December, days before her official term ended. She has repeatedly hinted that another emigration route was not an option she was considering. But after she left the Orbeliani Palace on December 29, she increasingly disappeared into the shadows, leaving the protesters largely on their own to lead a crucial resistance.
During this time, she focused mainly on overseas battles – first posing and shaking hands at Trump’s inauguration in the U.S., then pleading Georgia’s case at the Munich Security Conference. On both occasions, Georgian Dream officials were absent. Thugs were sent to insult Zurabishvili and pelt her with eggs at the airport as she returned from Munich. Domestically, she repeatedly met with media representatives, NGOs, and political parties, but it didn’t stop the general excitement with her figure and role from waning. She needed a big comeback, and February 25th seemed the perfect occasion.
When Zurabishvili reappeared on Rustaveli Avenue on February 25, the crowd was happy to welcome her back. When her microphone again malfunctioned, protesters tried to cheer her up. She spoke about the Soviet occupation and warned against repeating the past. A large part of her speech was to present a kind of road map for how to get to free and fair elections. Yet what she didn’t offer was a clear strategy on how to get the ever-uncompromising Georgian Dream to agree to those elections. But perhaps that’s not her job?
Red Coat Diplomacy
Over the past three months, enough activists and groups have shown the determination and courage to take matters into their own hands, whether by leading nonstop resistance in major cities in the freezing cold or by carrying the burden of the collapsing state through snow-buried remote Georgian villages. New—long overdue—political groups have emerged, and more seem to be on their way.
So what is Zurabishvili’s task then? Is it to use her superpowers as an experienced career diplomat?
Times are indeed desperate. The power is concentrated among angry men who chase “snowflakes” because they can’t handle real snow, and international news is so bad that Georgians, otherwise hungry for global attention, would now prefer to be left out. And yet, if the constant disappointments leave some room for some magical thinking, Zurabishvili must believe that this Mission Impossible is something gods might have prepared her for: in a world run by powerful men, to be a woman, stripped of her remaining official powers, and still be the only hope for a small nation to make the best of the worst situation – but to do so without sacrificing what one has stood for.
Because at this point, sticking to what you believe in and staying pragmatic starts to look like a binary choice, which pro-Western Georgians seem to be increasingly making. Many of them openly registered their disappointment when – on February 25 – the U.S. Embassy, once a loyal ally, issued a statement defending Trump’s watered-down U.N. resolution on Ukraine. And when distressing images of President Zelenskyy being bullied in the Oval Office went viral late on February 28, Zurabishvili didn’t think twice before posting tweets – three of them – denouncing American behavior and backing the Ukrainian leader.
It turns out that red-coat diplomacy involves making tough choices. Because in times of growing darkness, the bright color stands out too much to lie low, buried in snow.
