Moscow Tbilisoba

By Vestnik Kavkaza

On October 4th 10 thousand people came to the Tbilisoba festival in Moscow. For the fourth year the Union of Georgians of Russia and the Hermitage Garden presented the cultural legacy of Georgia to Muscovites. There were dances, songs, wine, joy, and traditional hospitality. The guests learned how to mould out of clay, to make felt, and to make clothes of it. A wine press was very popular; the most active participants of the festival, wearing high boots, pressed grapes. The juice produced was sold immediately. Muscovites were glad to buy traditional Georgian products. Many of the visitors had had Soviet childhoods and the taste of churchkhelas was familiar to everyone. The way the sweet is produced was shown at the festival as well.

A real festival is a moment when all offences and troubles pass away; and from this point of view the Moscow Tbilisoba succeeded.

“I came to the wonderful festival at the invitation of the Georgian Diaspora,” singer Larisa Sadikoyeva says. “Today I represent the Ossetian people. I would like to congratulate all Georgians on the wonderful festival of Tbilisoba. This is a festival of the harvest. It is great that we continue our centuries-long traditions. We have always been brotherly nations. I wish the traditions were not broken through thick and thin.”

The idea of a Tbilisi festival in Moscow belongs to the head of the Union of the Georgians of Russia, Mikhail Khuburia. “Our task is to restore the friendship of peoples; the rest is up to politicians. They won’t have two ways about it. The Georgians sang Abkhaz songs, an Ossetian sang a Georgian song. We are an integral whole; and we don’t accept foreign overseas traditions,” Khubutia stated.

The Moscow initiators of the festival promised that they would bring a real Russian Maslenitsa to Tbilisi.