Yuri Vachnadze: “Pseudo-liberalism completely failed in the entire world”

Interview by Oleg Kusov. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza

- Our guest is a scholar and a doctor, writer, poet, a connoisseur of the Caucasian culture, a journalist in the full meaning of the word, Yuri Vachnadze. Did you come to Moscow with a visa?

- Yes, I have a one-year visa that I had because 10 years ago in the Tretyakov Gallery there was a presentation of the journal “Russian Art”. This journal, published by the Tretyakov Gallery, writes about Russian art and painting. One of the issues of this journal was devoted to the art of Georgia. My colleagues published an article. My article was titled “George Balanchin and Andrey Balanchivadze – a Georgian counterpoint”. It dealt with brothers, George Balanchin, a famous balletmeister whose real name was Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze, he was a son of the founder of the Georgian opera Meliton Balanchivadze. His brother Andrey Balanchivadze was a famous Georgian composer. One of them lived in the US and founded New York City Ballet, a ballet enterprise that is still considered one of the most important ones. He was a wonderful choreographer, I can speak for hours about him. In particular, he did a fantastic thing. If we think that Georgian polyphony is part of the Georgian soul – although we can't speak about it for long unfortunately - it was George Balanchin who introduced counterpoint and polyphony to ballet. In my article I was writing about the relations between those two brothers –the famous choreographer and the Georgian composer. I was invited to do a presentation in Moscow and of course I received a visa so that I could come there and do so. And I will brag a little – at my age it is allowed – they liked it so much that they made me a one-year visa through the Foreign Ministry. I used it to come now, this is the answer to your question.

- Yuri, introducing you, I forgot to mention that you are real Tbilisian. You are a real 'kalakeli” of which we were told. It appears than true Tbilisians are subdivided.

- For this “kalakeli” which meants “city-dweller” I was frequently beaten. And even now many people in Tbilisi and in Georgia do not like it. I will tell you why. Once in my blog I wrote that Tbilisi in the time of my youth – and I was born in 1933, so I am quite old... So in the 1950-60s all the residents of Tbilisi were divided into two categories – into “city-dwelelrs” and “Tbilisians”. It sounds odd – what does it mean? Are those not the same things? But they were not. In Georgian, the “city-dweller” was “kalakeli”, and Tbilisian was a Tbilisian. So what is the difference? Why it is not the same? It was not because we were proud to be - maybe without a reason – to be city dwellers for generations. After all, there is nothing bad about it. It is allowed to be proud of being a Muscovite or a Petersburger for generations. It became particularly noticeable in the times of Eduard Shevardnadze. He brought to the capital many people from the province, from Guria, with a different culture. With a different mentality, I would say – their behavior and customs was different from what we, city-dwellers, were used to.

- It is the everyday life culture!

- Daily culture. There is nothing bad about it. There is a good proverb. In Georgian it sounds like – wear a hat of the crowd you are in. I am translating approximately. Instead of adapting to the city customs, behavior, culture...

- …and grow up!

- Of course! We are all from the village, and it does not mean anything bad…

Those people, instead of adopting to our culture, imposed their own customs. Of course, it provoked a counter-reaction. To be short, I can say that when I dared to mention it in a blog, many people attacked me and they accused me of xenophobia.... All this of course would have been very funny if it was not so sad. This new tendency was imposed by the people… It was pseudo-liberalism or neo-liberalism that completely failed – I don't mean Georgia but the entire world.

The full interview of Yuri Vachadze watch in “Video.”