Georgian projects in Russia

By Vestnik Kavkaza


Broken diplomatic relations between Russia and Georgia after the five-day war of 2008 didn’t cause massive outflows of Georgians from Russia, despite the strict and often unfair behavior of the law-enforcement agencies in that period.

Today the anti-migrant policy which is provided in Russia at various levels touches on the Georgians, as well as other natives from the South Caucasus; and they develop their own strategies of inter-ethnic consent. Vladimir Khomeriki, chairman of the Coordination Council of Migrant Communities and Organizations of Russia and president of the Congress of Ethnic Unions of Russia, thinks that “the real thing which can unite all nations and give them an opportunity to understand each other is culture and the spiritual values which every nation has. Russia differs from all the other states of the world by the fact that we are a multinational state with various cultures which have mingled and complemented each other for centuries. We understand clearly that any culture can fade away, if it is not cultivated and doesn’t communicate with other cultures. We can see it in many countries which used to have their renascence, for instance, France and England. Today they are ordinary countries in the cultural sphere, and from time to time it fades away; while Russia has a great future because 220 nations and ethnic groups live here; the variety of cultures.”

According to Khomeriki, “we speak about migration policy and understand that the migrant inflow comes from the CIS countries to Russia – Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine, Moldova. And we understand this. But today few of us know modern writers and poets from Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. This is the main problem. We lost contacts. We try to build the Eurasian space, but in fact we have lost everything which connected us and let people get to know each other. Our young people don’t know that representatives of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are representatives of ancient cultural nations with great potential and a rich culture. They have to leave their homes today and come here to work, to earn and to bring help to us, Russian citizens; we shouldn’t forget that migrants give about $60 billion to Russian GDP annually.”

Khomeriki is sure that “when we shift to the practical implementation of teaching culture foundations in school, people will start to understand each other. We should focus on practice. Conflicts shouldn’t cause such a police outrage and hit-and-run raids. We should cooperate with the FMS, take representatives of ethnic Diasporas and together come to places to prevent incidents, to talk, watch, inspect the situation.”

Khomeriki proposed establishing a university of inter-ethnic cultures. “It could be one of the elements of educating ethnic elites here. When ethnic elites are educated in the university, when representatives of these nations study Azerbaijani culture, Uzbek, Tajik, Georgian culture, we will have absolutely new different migration in our country. Civilized people will come to us. We will have contacts, influence on the processes, including migration, in their native country and in our own country, we will have an opportunity to change the quality of migration. Educated migrants will come to us and be useful to Russia; and the skilled migration force will become a common thing.”

A month ago the president of the Union of Georgians of Russia, Mikhail Khubutia, proposed launching light labour visas for neighboring countries. “If we hadn’t launched visas with Georgia, I think about 500,000 people would have stayed in Georgia, and others would have moved to Russia,” Khubutia thinks.

He told a fantastic story that when Mikhail Saakashvili was the president, “Saakashvili’s portrait was hung up in the Georgian church in Russia, and the head of the church spread proclamations against Russia and the Russian people. The opposition was forbidden to enter the church. They tried to force me out. However, due to numerous letter, our Patriarch, the law-enforcement agencies, our Catholicos, we have eliminated this, and now not only Georgians, but also Abkhazians, Ossetians, Russians attend the church.”

Khubutia addressed Putin to appoint somebody from the presidential administration to supervise construction of a school for socially deprived talented children. The aim of Khubutia’s children program is encouragement of raising a Russian citizen with ethnic-cultural consciousness, preserving ethnic culture, individuality, but understanding multidimensionality of Russia. “We want to see such people as Rasul Gamzatov, Mahmud Esambayev in the North Caucasus. They do live there, but we are lazy to find them,” Khubutis thinks.