Marriages by abduction in Georgia

The Criminal Code of the Georgian SSR used to include an article on bride kidnapping. I remember how my friend told me about a visit by a French lawyer back in Soviet times: he couldn’t understand the necessity of such an absurd article, from his point of view. But the truth is that even at the end of the 20th century, in a state that claimed to have created the most developed social system, this medieval barbarism was still a "good" old tradition. Leonid Gaidai’s comedy film, "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" made its audience not only laugh, but see a real problem.
According to tradition, a girl has to marry anyone who kidnaps her by force, as no-one else would propose marriage to her, as it would be considered dishonourable. This practice was common not only in the countryside, but also in big cities like Tbilisi. Needless to say, such ‘traditional’ marriages were rarely happy ones and they often led to family tragedies, even suicides.

As you see, it is ridiculous to pretend being civilized and "European" while such abuse of human rights is commonplace, while women’s rights and persons are not respected at all. It is not the existence of ‘corrupt practices’ in governmental bodies or something else of this sort that makes a country civilized, it is respect for principled values, gender equality included. And it is much harder to make people understand these values than to weed out corruption.

 

Today, things are slowly changing for the best, with the Internet, mass culture and individualism having their effect. No, there’s no article on bride kidnapping in the Georgian Criminal Code, only the usual article on illegal deprivation of freedom. It’s hard to say whether this progress is due to Saakashvili’s "westernisation", but it certainly gives us a chance to make our and European values more compatible.

Georgy Kalatozishvili. Exclusively to VK