Grozny – Tbilisi: informal relations instead of politics

Timur Utzayev, Grozny, exclusively to VK

The new measures of the Georgian authorities in the politics of the Northern Caucasus are broadly discussed amongst experts. Many of them considered Tbilisi’s new national strategy of developing relations with the peoples of the Northern Caucasus to be an attempt at expanding its influence in the region, exporting democracy and its PR campaign. Meanwhile, work interaction at the level of “People’s Diplomacy” has been having its effect.

The Caucasus Foundation once again brought a delegation from Chechnya to Georgia. Formally, the Georgian-Chechen journalist forum was held in Tbilisi; however, the delegation included historians and human rights activists. The organizers of the forum declared that their aim was to contribute towards establishing direct communications between Georgian and Chechen journalists, exchanging positive information and searching for methods and forms of developing Georgian-Chechen relations.

After their arrival in Grozny, the representatives of the Chechen delegation confessed that they weren’t completely aware of the situation in Georgia; at the same time, Georgia is interested in dialogue with Chechnya, in developing relations with it and in joint cultural projects. The forum itself was not as attractive for Chechens as informal communication. “We were eager for informal communication without regulations and ceremonies. One impression succeeded another: theatres, outdoor recreation, Georgian tables, the culture of various regions of Georgia and feeling like being an integral part of those people,” Zelimkhan Musayev, historian and publicist, says.

According to him, the deepest impressions for the Chechen guests were the mosque under restoration in old Tbilisi and the stories about the different people who participated in the formation of the Georgian nation, but nowadays Georgian citizens are sure that they are of Georgian origin. Here is one of the examples of the friendly atmosphere in Georgia: “When we arrived at a restaurant in order to have supper, there was a group from Yerevan celebrating somebody’s birthday, young Georgian girls and guests from Azerbaijan amongst our neighbours in the hall. When they found out that we were from Grozny, they presented us a cake and a song with a lezghinka and raised their glasses to our health.

The Chechen delegation was also taken to the Pankisi Gorge in the Akhmeta district of Georgia in order to visit the Kists, the people of Vainakh origin. They noted that the situation in their region wasn’t tense and there wasn’t any terrorist threat there. The biggest village of the district, Duisi, is located near the border with Chechnya. According to the journalists, the Kists expressed their interest at least in frontier trade with the Russian republic of Chechnya. “The residents of Duisi showed us what is needed in order to do this. They showed us a mountain situated in the direction of Chechnya which wasn’t very large; they said that it was possible to construct a tube through it like in Verkhni Lars and Nizhni Lars in Ossetia and in the Darial Gorge in Abkhazia. If Georgian-Russian relations are normalized, it will be possible to develop economic relations by means of this. The border is actually open and there are many guarantees that no gangs will infiltrate Russia through the Pankisi Gorge.

The host country assured its guests that “nowadays many Abkhazians visit Tbilisi in order to receive treatment, and our country hosts them, serves them and lets them leave.” The journalists also noticed that there was a lot of transport crossing the border between Georgia and Ossetia every day. The latter example is given in order to compare the situation with the Chechen one, when people left Chechnya, crossed the administrative border (not the state one) and were stopped by the police, who found fault with them and actually robbed them. This took place with the participation of citizens of the same country, not of different ones.

The friendliness of the Ossetian and Georgian border officers and their politeness also impressed the delegation that crossed the border with Georgia. The Chechen journalists remember the permission not to go out of their cars during document verification.

Givi Gambashidze, President of the Caucasus Foundation, noted to VK the fact that it was quite important that the Chechen journalists “presented new information about Chechnya and saw the current situation in Georgia and particularly in Tbilisi with their own eyes.” According to him, there can’t be any obstacles to such events; “even if somebody doesn’t like it, people visit us quite often. There are several states and lots of people in the Caucasus. To my mind, only co-existence in peace and communications in the field of culture and science will benefit every one of us and influence all the peoples and all the states positively. At the forum the Chechen delegation expressed their wish to invite Georgian journalists to their republic. That would be very interesting. In my opinion, the information we get from the Internet isn’t enough, it is necessary to see Grozny, for instance, with one's own eyes."

The Caucasus Foundation headed by Givi Gambashidze was created in Georgia in 2006. Amongst its aims there are “reconstruction and popularization of the national traditions of the Caucasus, contribution to the development of well-balanced and peaceful relations between the peoples of the Caucasus, intensification of people’s diplomacy, realization of educational projects and promotion of national sports events.” Gambashidze, who is an archaeologist, has been keeping on terms with his colleagues in the Northern Caucasus for decades. Many years ago he often visited the republics of the Northern Caucasus, studied the histories and cultures of the peoples of this region, visited the mountainous regions of Ingushetiya and organized excavations there.

Every year the foundation holds the international seminar “Archaeology, ethnology and folklore studies of the Caucasus”. The participants of the 14th seminar which will be held this summer will come not only from the Caucasus but also from Moscow, St.-Petersburg, Ukraine, Poland, and France.

A new etymological dictionary of the Chechen language has been published recently in Tbilisi with the financial support of the foundation; the Chechens were the only people of Russia who didn’t have their own etymological dictionary. The foundation has also published a dictionary of mathematical terms in Chechen in Georgia. According to Givi Gambashidze, the Caucasus is an organism which emerged in the course of nature, and it is necessary to establish the most well-balanced relations between its parts for the sake of its peaceful and successful development. Gambashidze has already sent a letter to Ramzan Kadyrov, President of Chechnya; in this letter he proposes giving people a chance to develop their relations and supporting these relations both morally and financially. “If relations between Moscow and Tbilisi are not so good, it doesn’t mean that we should sit on our hands. Scholars, artists and media should intercommunicate. When doors are locked, society cannot develop. I think the authorities will act wisely and leave their mark in the history of the development of this society and of Caucasian culture,” the archaeologist says.