Author : Ana Natsvlishvili
These are difficult times for Georgia. I don’t know what is more painful: realizing where the country could be today—with new opportunities, resources, and pathways opening up before us, finally bringing peace, ensuring that no child goes to bed hungry, no elderly person is forced to search for warm clothes or leftover food in the garbage, no high-ranking official evades punishment for committing illegal acts, and no activist fears imprisonment for speaking the truth….
Is it more painful to see the future Georgia could have had—but does not—due to deliberate actions? Or is it even more painful to witness a significant part of the population either unaware of, indifferent to, or resigned to the abyss the country may soon face? Have years of neglect, poverty, humiliation and deception so eroded their spirit that, in the struggle to survive, they have lost faith in themselves and in the people?
When did we become so distant from one another? When and who the hell built this wall between us? Who conceived and carried out this great evil, so that a father no longer understands his child, a sister her brother, a friend his friend, a godparent his godchild?
How did we fail to see this insidious plot against Georgia, a scheme that must have been in the making for years? And for those of us who did see it—why were we unable to stop it?
After the elections, my life has changed radically, as has the whole country: from a march to a march, from night to morning, from cases of torture to the cases of the unjustly imprisoned, from hopes to hopelessness and back to new hopes... Incredible strength, unity, wisdom and sacrifice have poured out directly into the streets and we go out there every night to regain the strength of life, to see each other and to feel what the words once read on the pages of a book and never fully understood by inexperienced minds mean: “The motherland, like the Lord, is one over the earth”.
Of the many marches I’ve taken part in, one in particular haunts me: on 12 January there was a procession in Tbilisi for the families of victims of Soviet repression. I walked around and told the participants: We should be called the March of Survivors. Yes, we should say loudly that our ancestors were shot, exiled, banished, even erased from photographs—and thus from history—but they “survived” and “carried on”. We are living examples of that survival and today we stand here, ready to fight again.
As I stand in the midst of this hurricane of history, I am certain that I do not stand here by my strength alone. I stand as a representative of many generations, carrying their struggles, resilience, and hopes within me. In that moment, as I spoke these words, I saw light and courage reflected in the eyes of those around me. Yes, we have endured. We have survived. And now, we must proclaim it to the world.
But is this enough? Why is there not a single place—a memorial, a stone, a wall, a street, or even a tree—anywhere in Georgia where I can go to honor the memory and contributions to this country of the hundreds who were repressed? To pay tribute to the memory of my ancestor who was sentenced without trial and died in Soviet captivity, who incurred wrath for collecting Georgia’s spiritual and material treasures and establishing a museum, for saving the relics of saints that were desecrated and scattered on streets by the League of the Godless, and for maintaining connections with church hierarchs. He was rehabilitated 20 years after his death because, according to the court’s decision, “no elements of crime were found in his actions”, but he was long dead by then, and his family was completely devastated, evicted, expelled from universities, branded as lepers and ruined... He died in the regime’s captivity, his descendants lived in constant fear, which they gradually “domesticated” and made into a habit—we don’t discuss family matters with anyone, and within the family, we speak two tones lower. I also inherited this habit by succession—even four generations later, I feel that breaking this rule will bring misfortune.
What does this story reveal about our society, our state, and our future? Perhaps if our schoolbooks, streets, and squares—our cities and villages—had been filled with these facts, if the stories of repression had been told with unflinching clarity, if our laws had been written with this truth at their core, if memorials had stood in crowded places as constant reminders, then maybe—just maybe—they wouldn’t have dared to label the descendants and spiritual heirs of the repressed as “Western agents”, and with the force of law, no less. Perhaps, if we had reckoned with our past, this new conspiracy against Georgia wouldn’t have taken root a hundred years later.
These days, many people say—and I feel it too—that a new Georgia is being born. It must be born. This gives me hope, but it also scares me a little. The birth process doesn’t always end with the same result...
I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that as long as you fight, you are alive. As long as you resist injustice, you are alive. As long as they cannot deceive you, cannot buy you, cannot frighten you, cannot tempt you, cannot silence you—you are alive. You may be beaten, poisoned with gas, imprisoned, or forced into temporary exile, but you are still alive. And as long as you are alive, victory remains possible.
