Dispatch – October 12: Mist

“Limbo” is perhaps the word that the media loves more than Dante Alighieri ever did. But on October 4, for journalists who found themselves near the Orbeliani Presidential Palace in Tbilisi, the metaphorical word turned very physical. After only a few dramatic moments, the place fell silent and empty, drowned in drifting smoke from tear gas capsules. Riot police had encircled the area, and fire, smoke, and flags were visible only beyond their cordons.

Yet inside the cordoned zone, it was strangely peaceful. If that distant fire meant unrest, it was hard to tell – the sense of turbulence barely reached inside. Police officers, too, stood there rather unenthusiastically, as if unhappy to be disturbed on a Saturday evening to fight some nonexistent enemy, occasionally splashing streams from water cannons toward the other side. Only a handful of journalists wandered around in protective gear like ghosts, occasionally exchanging confused glances from behind their gas masks. It would not be easy to explain to the audience what had actually gone down.

Here is Nini, and the Dispatch newsletter, back to report from the shocks and aftershocks of Georgia’s one of the strangest days in decades.

The protest day, which was also municipal election day, had a vibrant start on October 4.

There was a heated political argument on the bus I took to the student-led march. Passengers restlessly tapped on the doors, pushing the driver to let them out once it reached the demonstration site. The energetic “youth revolutionary march” started at the Tbilisi State University campus around half past three and grew bigger and noisier as it progressed toward Rustaveli Avenue, with other groups of protesters joining along the way. It arrived at the parliament after four p.m., the designated time when a mass rally, where organizers promised to “peacefully overthrow” the Georgian Dream government, was scheduled to start. By five p.m., the area around the parliament was crowded. It was perhaps the largest demonstration since December, the initial turbulent weeks of non-stop anti-government protests, before the turnout slowly dwindled.

Georgian Dream officials, still in power after October 4, would later argue that all those people had gathered for a not-so-peaceful coup, merely pretending they had nothing to do with the chaotic events that unfolded later in the day. But that’s what they’ve been saying about every protest for a while.

Weeks before disaster

October 4 was meant to be one of the strangest days in Georgia’s recent history, even before it actually happened. We’ve had elections before, with campaigns exhausting, polling days tense, and months of unrest afterward. We even had an ex-president smuggle himself into the country on the eve of the previous municipal vote. But a “peaceful revolution” scheduled in parallel with a half-boycotted election was something entirely new. In the weeks leading up to the day, as organizers thrilled the public with cryptic messages promising to “start on the 4th and end on the 4th” – “peacefully” – the anticipation peaked, and expectation was as chaotic as nighttime dreams. 

Facts blended with rumors, propaganda exploited known truths, and collective imagination fed on a mixture of epic literary tropes and whatever the country had gone through over the past 35 years. All those mixtures, in turn, produced surreal speculations of overlapping plots. These included, for example, an unlikely alliance between thieves-in-law – Georgian crime bosses – and their sworn enemy, the United National Movement party, supposedly uniting to fight the ruling party, which, according to common knowledge, had until then maintained warm or even working relations with the criminal underworld. It was as if someone had instructed an author who had been drafting decades of Georgian history, volume by volume, to finish the entire series in a single chapter.

All those theories must have raised alarms among parts of the opposition, who openly distanced themselves from the revolutionary talk but still called on supporters to attend the rally to express their discontent and challenge the legitimacy of the municipal vote. Many said they were certain nothing particular would happen. Others feared that if something did happen – or even if nothing did – it would still damage the ongoing protests that had required immense effort and dedication to sustain. At least the organizers appeared to know what they were doing, projecting that familiar false sense of male confidence humanity has been falling for through centuries.

Moments before disaster

Ultimately, in the tens of thousands who showed up for the October 4 rally, everyone must have had their own theory of what was about to happen. What united them all was the reason anyone goes to a protest: the hope that something might change, and the desire to express resentment in numbers.

The rally, predictably, didn’t start at 4 p.m. It took time for the crowds to gather and move to Liberty Square. Excuses were voiced that organizers were waiting for streams of supporters from the regions who were stuck in traffic jams. Eventually, the place was packed to the point where the internet connection was really bad – the most accurate measure of a remarkable turnout, not so common these days. The demographics looked quite mixed.

Then, finally, the familiar and easily recognizable voice of a renowned operatic bass was heard. Paata Burchuladze, an opera singer who had announced the October 4 rally – or “national assembly” – as early as July 31, took the stage and quickly read out the “declaration,” in which he announced that power had reverted to the people and ordered the police to arrest key Georgian Dream officials. That was expected. What was more unexpected was when Murtaz Zodelava, an ex-prosecutor under UNM, quickly called on the “male force” – whatever that meant – to mobilize and move some 200 meters from the protest to “take over the keys of the Presidential Palace as the first step.”

Moments of disaster

It didn’t take me long to find an internet connection, upload videos, and double-check with colleagues if they, too, had heard what I had heard. It took another couple of minutes to reach the palace, passing the crowds who remained around Liberty Square and then crossing a touristic street at Orbeliani Square, where visitors chilled in outdoor seating, unaware that 30–50 meters away, events were unfolding that the ruling party would later describe as a foreign-orchestrated coup attempt. Crowds were still dense at the palace when I arrived, but not for long. Police had already repelled groups that attempted to break in, having torn down the palace railings (which, some would later argue, were deliberately left loosely attached).

By the time I put on my helmet and gas mask, the water cannons had been deployed, and police were firing teargas capsules. Soon, the crowded area became desolate. There was too much gas, and most people were unprepared to face it. Only ambulances remained, treating those intoxicated, including unmasked police officers. Then riot police made a noisy re-entrance, encircled the area, and hours of limbo followed.

Things were not very different outside the cordoned “limbo” zone either: smaller groups of protesters who continued to face police fled the scene and returned, built barricades, and waved flags, but it all looked more like muscle memory from earlier times of turbulent resistance than actual clashes. Then, again, the place would fill with thick white smoke, and so endlessly. The densest fog, however, was on the faces of those who remained at the parliament throughout the unrest down the road.

After disaster

You don’t usually find this many people this silent and this lonely together. I left the Orbeliani area after 10 p.m., once the gas mask could no longer withstand the toxic air, and expected the usual protest scene on Rustaveli Avenue, some 300 meters from the palace, to be largely empty. But the turnout, once again, resembled the December rallies, when large crowds would scatter across a wider stretch of Tbilisi’s main street, and protests felt almost like a celebration.

Except that no one was celebrating on October 4. The chatter was silent, and faces betrayed a mix of exhaustion, confusion, and frustration. It was clear the “peaceful revolution” was neither quite peaceful nor a revolution, and the crowds at the parliament had shown remarkable caution, avoiding what critics would later describe as a reckless plan or a perfect “trap” set by the authorities. The main concern, once again, was that the day’s events might strike a blow to the ongoing protests.

But not everyone was as cautious. Probably inexperienced in sensing the threats more familiar to daily protesters, one group found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time, first at the gates of the palace, and later behind bars on heavy criminal charges. The group of around 40 detainees is mixed, with varying geographical and social backgrounds, including older, struggling citizens, many with little more than their discontent. Officials have warned their numbers might grow.

Mist

As the dust settles, Georgia finds itself in a different, spookier kind of anticipation. It feels as if the smoke from that night never fully dissipated, and Tbilisi’s streets remain veiled in a thick, lingering mist, a mist of uncertainty and terror. Trapped in that mist, some look for a way out, others – whether from the ruling party or the opposition – search for answers, or agents, or double agents, traitors, and traces of foreign secret services. Some find anger, others – compassion. And many simply dread being snatched by unknown creatures, to disappear into oblivion and be remembered by nothing but statistical records.