Driving Through Georgian History

 

Good Georgia roads. Good for pigs anyway

Americans can understand that cars carry great cultural weight and that the bond between an owner and their car can even cross over into fanaticism. The car also has had great symbolic value in more than just American culture. In the country of Georgia, the car was an import and it shows in their language about cars. There are practically no native words about cars in the Georgian — everything they say about cars use loan words from other languages. Many Georgians think most of the words have a Russian origin but the vast majority of the words come from French and English, as you would expect.

One of the earliest treatments of cars I have seen in Georgian literature was in the book called Ali and Nino.  The book setting is mostly in Azerbaijan but it the title character of Nino is from Georgia and the book makes some very insightful comments about Georgia and Tbilisi of the era. The key part, for us, comes when Nino has been seduced away from her true love, Ali, by the Armenian Melik Nachararyan. Melik is modern and European in outlook and seduces Nino at the Opera promising her all the wealth the West has to offer. In a moment of weakness Nino agrees and they flee Baku in a car. Ali discovers this and steals a stallion, a true war horse, bred from generations of war horses in the mountainous valley of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The entire chase and fight can be interpreted in highly symbolic terms. As much as Ali loves the horse that runs like a dream and seems tireless, he knows the car is faster and better. However the land itself, the sweet Asian land of Azerbaijan, betrays the car as the road is rough and pock-marked, slowing the car. The horse, true to its nature, works with the land and catches up with car. Brought to bay, Ali and Melik fight and while Ali’s righteous fury carries him to an early advantage, Melik’s Western training as a boxer takes a toll on him. It looks like Melik might win the fight.

A classic Volga car

Ali then throws away all pretense at civilization and gives in to his Asian, nearly animalistic fury, Ali bites Melik which makes Melik drop his defenses and Ali plunges a dagger into him, killing him. Ali’s friend on scene is in ecstasy at the purity and beauty of the murder and fully expects to see Ali kill Nino right there but instead, at the sight of Nino, Ali remembers his love. His fury fades and he has mercy on her, much to the disappointment of his friend. The Western car is abandoned on the broken road — a powerful tool used in a place it was not meant to be. The horse is reclaimed by his Russian owner who can’t get past the murderous act the horse took part in. Sadly the Russian can no longer ride this horse to battle in World War I, and he shoots it.

The car has always been something foreign to Georgia and it remained that way after the Soviet Union conquered the country in 1921. After World War II, the Soviets had a lot of rebuilding to do and they planned larger boulevards, highways, and streets to handle a lot of cars and trucks, but there were few cars to use them. In early Georgian movies, the cars were very few but the streets were very big and there were many shots of people walking those huge streets in big cities that had no cars on them. An entire generation of Georgians fell in love with these streets, treating them something like public parks, where they had parties, dried laundry, and hung out with friends. In my time there, I could still see a few of the older generation stare down cars with resentment, as if the car was an intruder on streets built for people.

A car invading pedestrian space again!

As the Soviet Union got going, as all central planners, their initial urge was to brag and strut their stuff. As the cars rolled off the production line they had to be better than the Western ones. They were sturdy, well made, and completely reliable. They were also expensive.

Making the Volga and the Lada in vast numbers and making their reliability high was expensive. No matter how much you try and do away with price, price won’t go away. Unable to figure out how to organize themselves to meet the demand for cars, the Soviets decided to start issuing cars through a lottery system to limit the number of cars the public owned and they started two different lines of production. The cars that were to go to Europe or be exposed to outside powers would still be high quality, or at least as high as the Soviets could manage; the cars for internal consumption would be very low quality. If someone got a car in Soviet times they quickly figured out they had to carry tools because the very vibration of driving the car would start to shake it apart. On any long journey a driver would have to stop two or three times and tighten bolts, add screws and reconnect hoses or they would have to be willing to allow parts of their car to just drop off on the road side.

It should not be said that the Soviets never responded to public demand. When people complained about having to constantly repair the cars en route, the Soviets built cement car ramps alongside the roadways. These ramps allowed people to drive the car up on the ramp, making it easy for the drivers to get underneath them and add the screws and bolts as needed to hold it together.

The lottery systems, the different lines of production, and the relentless conformity of the models had an interesting effect. Instead of having a love affair with cars, Georgians saw them as signs of corruption, something they wanted and needed, but also a symbol of their repression. The Georgians loved their cars but hated them too.

Corruption in the Soviet system was a lot like money in Capitalism. The more corruption you were able to swing, the greater was your wealth. The amount of rubles didn’t matter as much as your connection and what someone could shake out of the government. Join the Communist Party and your name moved up the lottery; have a relative in charge of a factory or farm, your name moved up the list; close relative in the higher Soviet government, your name moved up the list.

You could also win a place higher on the list by doing something really remarkable at work (if your boss was honest) and you could move up the list over time. So if you worked in one place on average for 12 years, you had shot at winning a car. All kinds of bureaucratic nightmares, however, could derail your rating and many people waited 20 years to own a car. If you were a young person and you had a car, it was a sure sign of corruption. Imagine what it was like for good workers to wait 20 years only to find that their car was already starting to fall apart. The despair of the Communist life starts to come home for you.

With independence, the car pretty much vanished from Georgia as the country was racked with civil war and economic crisis. The demand for cars remained robust but it was impossible to import them. Also, as the Soviet Union started its collapse, the quality of the cars dropped dramatically. The wagon made a comeback, as did the use of horses. People went to great lengths to keep older Ladas and Volgas on the road and get a visa to go to Germany where a used car could be purchased cheaply and resold in Georgia for a handsome profit.

A Kamaz Truck under repair, in a fine auto shop

With desire, cars became a status symbol in Georgia with people pouring enormous amounts of their wealth into them. The type of car you had quickly marked your social status and even showed where you lived in Georgia. If you drove a new European-made car, you were one of the elite ruling class. If you drove a used European car, you were most likely a upper-middle-income person working in Tbilisi. If you drove a Soviet era car or a very old European one, you were one of the great mass of peasants that lived in Tbilisi or other regions of Georgia.

In 2005 George Bush took an interest in Georgia, and American cars started coming in large numbers for the first time. It was hard to find parts for them and few people knew how to work on them, but they were suddenly cheap and plentiful. The car started to be associated with the West and freedom.

Finally though, as the market began to supply the demand for cars in Georgia, everyone could get a car but the roads in Georgia could not handle the traffic. The road went from being empty and clear to being overcrowded and dangerous. Georgia loses nearly as many people in auto accidents every year as does all of the United States of America. People began to curse the car with as much fervor as they once desired one, and reckless driving became a major theme on television news, which ran very graphic footage of car accidents caught on tape. So the car as an import is still highly desired and is a status symbol, but it is nearly as hated as it is loved and viewed by many with resentment.

The car is something that has never really been organic to Georgia and seems to be imposed by the outside world. It does not quite fit in with the people or with the land but it seems to be very necessary for life and is desired by many. The love-hate relationship that Georgians have with cars will continue until they can make peace with the modern age and can build the roads that allow their people to drive as freely and comfortably as they have always desired.

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  1. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    I thought this was going to be about our Georgia, but it was a good ride anyway.

    • #1
  2. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Arahant (View Comment):
    I thought this was going to be about our Georgia, but it was a good ride anyway.

    Confusion in this regard is easily understood and forgiven.  Driving through the State of Georgian history with cars would be fun too.  By my experience is with the older territory of Georgia.

    • #2
  3. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Brian Wolf (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):
    I thought this was going to be about our Georgia, but it was a good ride anyway.

    Confusion in this regard is easily understood and forgiven. Driving through the State of Georgian history with cars would be fun too. By my experience is with the older territory of Georgia.

    I do a lot of my work in the Eighteenth Century, so tend to think of the old kingdoms of Imereti, Kartli, and Kakheti, rather than “Georgia.” There’s also the fact they call it Sakartvelo.

    • #3
  4. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    By the late Seventies and early Eighties, that 20 year wait had, in practice, been reduced to about 12 years–about the economic lifespan of a car. By that era, American cars, long expected to be traded in every two years, were now expected to last at least as long as a 50,ooo mile/3 year warranty. In  other words, by the Seventies eastern Europeans waited about twice as long as the average American to buy  car. That’s not great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not nightmarish.

    • #4
  5. Little My Member
    Little My
    @LittleMy

    From George Papashvily, Anything Can Happen, pp. 9-10:

    “I was tired from America and I slept some hours. It must have been almost midnight when the light flashed in my face. I sat up. It was from the head lamp of a touring car choking along on the road below me. While I watched, the engine coughed and died. A man got out. For more than an hour he knocked with tools and opened the hood and closed it again.

    Then I slid down the bank. In the war there were airplanes, and of course cars are much the same except, naturally, for the wings. I showed him with my hands and feet and head…: “Give me the tools and let me try.” He handed them over and sat down on the bench.

    I checked the spark plugs and the distributor, the timer and the coils. I looked at the feed line, at the ignition, at the gas. In between I cranked. I cranked until I cranked my heart out onto the ground. Still the car wouldn’t move.

    I got mad. I cursed it. I cursed it for a son of a mountain devi. I cursed it for the carriage of the diavels in the cave. I cursed it by the black-horned goat, and when I finished all I knew in Georgian I said it again in Russian to pick up the loose ends. Then I kicked the radiator as hard as I could. The car was the old Model T, and it started with a snort that shook the chassis like as aspen.”

    This is from the story of the first day of his arrival in the United States in 1925. His book, which I think is still in print, is one I have read over and over, and even read to my children, who were not amused for some reason. I think it had to do with the fact that they were the only non-Georgians in their class in Lod.

     

    • #5
  6. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Brian Wolf (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):
    I thought this was going to be about our Georgia, but it was a good ride anyway.

    Confusion in this regard is easily understood and forgiven. Driving through the State of Georgian history with cars would be fun too. By my experience is with the older territory of Georgia.

    I do a lot of my work in the Eighteenth Century, so tend to think of the old kingdoms of Imereti, Kartli, and Kakheti, rather than “Georgia.” There’s also the fact they call it Sakartvelo.

    Yes the 18th century was the last heroic stage Kakheti and Kartli and Imereti.  Exciting time in Georgia.  But they have been called Gruj or Georgians by outsides for a few thousand years.  Though I would not mind if Sakartvelo caught on outside of Georgia.

    • #6
  7. Matty Van Inactive
    Matty Van
    @MattyVan

    “Why Are Georgia and Georgia Both Named Georgia?”

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/08/why_are_georgia_and_georgia_both_named_georgia.html

    • #7
  8. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Matty Van (View Comment):
    “Why Are Georgia and Georgia Both Named Georgia?”

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/08/why_are_georgia_and_georgia_both_named_georgia.html

     

    It  is a not a bad explainer exactly but the Russian name derives from the Persian one the meaning of wish is hotly contested.  Some think that the Persian named the Georgians using a word mean “wolf” because the wore animal heads and skins into battle.  Some think it is a Persia word for the “Bandit” that base of it no I read seems to know for sure.  When the Russians came into contact with Georgia in the 18th century they based their name on the Persian word for the country.

    To the Greeks of Athens Georgia was a bread basket and so they thought of the Georgians as “people” of the Earth like the natives of Attica.  So the name Georgia was born in the West.  The English only added to all this by pronouncing the name in a way easy for English speakers much like the Russians pronounced the Persian name for Georgia in way easy for Russian speakers.

    Sakhartvelo is good too but it means Place of the Kharts or place the Kharts live and that is just one, but the biggest, ethnic group that makes up the Georgians.

    • #8
  9. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    We could just call it Igor.

    • #9
  10. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Arahant (View Comment):
    I thought this was going to be about our Georgia, but it was a good ride anyway.

    I read through the first paragraph thinking the same thing, and in my mind could hear the voice and accent of an old classmate from Macon saying “boy, how long were you out in that sun anyway?”

    • #10
  11. Little My Member
    Little My
    @LittleMy

    I once had an icon of Our Lady of Iviron (which was supposedly another name for Georgia). Is it?

    • #11
  12. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Percival (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):
    I thought this was going to be about our Georgia, but it was a good ride anyway.

    I read through the first paragraph thinking the same thing, and in my mind could hear the voice and accent of an old classmate from Macon saying “boy, how long were you out in that sun anyway?”

    I had some cousins from Macon. That’s one of those slow Southern dialects. My mother comes from Columbus. They talk faster than New York City types.

    • #12
  13. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Little My (View Comment):
    Our Lady of Iviron

    Iviron is a Georgian monastery in Greece. More here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panagia_Portaitissa

    And here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iviron

    • #13
  14. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Georgia shows up a lot.  During the Trojan war and through the time of Julius Cesar Eastern Georgia was known as Iberia.  The Spanish peninsula took that name long after the Georgians had it.  Also ancient Azerbaijan was first known as Albania.

    Anyway Western Georgia was Lazika or better known as Colchis where Jason and his Argonauts sailed Jason’s wife Medea being a Georgian woman.  The West Georgian town of Vani is where Colchis was located and they have a pretty amazing museum their of recording how rich the kingdom was when the Greeks were writing about it.   The story of Jason being from the first century and a work of historical fiction, of course.  But the author seemed to know his history and got details of Colchis right along with his fantasy elements.

    The Georgians originally called the the two halves of the country Immerti and Ammeriti or “That side” for the West and “This Side” for the East.

    So the Georgians pop up quite a bit in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean but many don’t realize it is the Georgians.

    • #14
  15. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    C’mon people, this should be on the main feed.

    I didn’t know about the roadside ramps.  I don’t remember seeing them in any of the Soviet era movies. Or if I did, I didn’t recognize them.

    • #15
  16. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    C’mon people, this should be on the main feed.

    I didn’t know about the roadside ramps. I don’t remember seeing them in any of the Soviet era movies. Or if I did, I didn’t recognize them.

    Really agree.  I took a picture of at least one I am sure but I could not find it.  I would have loved to post it.

    • #16
  17. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    I didn’t know about the roadside ramps. I don’t remember seeing them in any of the Soviet era movies. Or if I did, I didn’t recognize them.

    Not like it would be the sort of thing that one would want to highlight in one’s propaganda films.

    • #17
  18. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Arahant (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    I didn’t know about the roadside ramps. I don’t remember seeing them in any of the Soviet era movies. Or if I did, I didn’t recognize them.

    Not like it would be the sort of thing that one would want to highlight in one’s propaganda films.

    You might be surprised at what got highlighted in some Russian movies, especially in the late 70s and 80s, even in some of those that were sponsored and supervised by the KGB.  You wouldn’t see political criticism of the socialist system, but the material results were another matter. But sometimes they gave just as unrealistic ideas of what life was like for ordinary people as we would get from American films that featured southern California lifestyles.

    • #18
  19. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Arahant (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    I didn’t know about the roadside ramps. I don’t remember seeing them in any of the Soviet era movies. Or if I did, I didn’t recognize them.

    Not like it would be the sort of thing that one would want to highlight in one’s propaganda films.

    No joke.  Complaining about the cars too much got you in trouble.  Movies that I have seen went way out of their way to show and durable and amazing Soviet cars really were.  It was watching those movies with Georgians that got them laughing and talking about how bad things really were.  One man got a new Lada one day and on the way home from were he picked the car up the gear shift stick and whole assembly just fell out of the car onto the road.  Just dropped straight down.  Amazing.

    • #19
  20. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Brian Wolf (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    I didn’t know about the roadside ramps. I don’t remember seeing them in any of the Soviet era movies. Or if I did, I didn’t recognize them.

    Not like it would be the sort of thing that one would want to highlight in one’s propaganda films.

    No joke. Complaining about the cars too much got you in trouble. Movies that I have seen went way out of their way to show and durable and amazing Soviet cars really were. It was watching those movies with Georgians that got them laughing and talking about how bad things really were. One man got a new Lada one day and on the way home from were he picked the car up the gear shift stick and whole assembly just fell out of the car onto the road. Just dropped straight down. Amazing.

    Socialist realism might mean making a movie in an automobile factory setting, showing the workers mostly behaving like good socialist realist characters, though not without their problems, yet the manual assembly methods could be astonishing for their lack of automation and for their potential for problems.

    • #20
  21. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Brian Wolf (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    I didn’t know about the roadside ramps. I don’t remember seeing them in any of the Soviet era movies. Or if I did, I didn’t recognize them.

    Not like it would be the sort of thing that one would want to highlight in one’s propaganda films.

    No joke. Complaining about the cars too much got you in trouble. Movies that I have seen went way out of their way to show and durable and amazing Soviet cars really were. It was watching those movies with Georgians that got them laughing and talking about how bad things really were. One man got a new Lada one day and on the way home from were he picked the car up the gear shift stick and whole assembly just fell out of the car onto the road. Just dropped straight down. Amazing.

    Socialist realism might mean making a movie in an automobile factory setting, showing the workers mostly behaving like good socialist realist characters, though not without their problems, yet the manual assembly methods could be astonishing for their lack of automation and for their potential for problems.

    I found this to more true of books then movies but the Censures didn’t really know when the Communists were the bad guys in some of these shows.  So some surprisingly anti-communist stuff made it through because the censures were to ideological to see what was really going on.  Which is always fascinating to see.

    • #21
  22. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    Fantastic detail on life under communism.  Thank you.

    • #22
  23. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    Brian Wolf: The love hate relationship that Georgians have with cars will continue I think until they can make peace with the modern age they are in and they can build the roads that allow their people to drive as freely and comfortably as they have always desired.

    Roads are a double edged sword. They’re great for invaders. Georgia has had more than enough of those.

    • #23
  24. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Hang On (View Comment):

    Brian Wolf: The love hate relationship that Georgians have with cars will continue I think until they can make peace with the modern age they are in and they can build the roads that allow their people to drive as freely and comfortably as they have always desired.

    Roads are a double edged sword. They’re great for invaders. Georgia has had more than enough of those.

    Very true and so they may not love cars until they can have peace.

    • #24
  25. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    My friends of Ricochet surely you can find it in your hearts to give this post one more like?  Just one….or more as the mood strikes you.

    Edit: Sweet satisfaction.  Thank you all.

    • #25
  26. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    I lived in a country in Africa during my 20s. The picture of the pigs and the washout is highly reminiscent of what would happen in the rainy season there.

    The President of the country would not allow a road to be built to from the main port to the capital because it would make coups too easy. They had a civil war in the late 1950s-early 1960s, so it wasn’t paranoia. Just remembering.

    The French (it had been a French colony) finally pressured him to build the road. There was a coup two years after it was completed.

    • #26
  27. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Brian Wolf (View Comment):
    found this to more true of books then movies but the Censures didn’t really know when the Communists were the bad guys in some of these shows. So some surprisingly anti-communist stuff made it through because the censures were to ideological to see what was really going on. Which is always fascinating to see.

    I wondered about this when I first started watching Russian movies. One of the Netflix offerings was Two Comrades Were Serving, starring a young Oleg Yankovsky and a relatively young Rolan Bukov, both of whose work I later got to know in much better films. I’ve only watched it the one time, but remember that at the end I was wondering if the censors or whoever approved this film really understood which side of the issue was being portrayed how. I wondered if it’s difficult for someone who takes his ideology too seriously to notice when it is being subtly mocked.

    Then there are made-for-TV series like Seventeen Moments of Spring.  In my blog on it, I suggested that surely the viewers realized that the words spoken about concentration camps by the Göring character would apply to the Soviet Gulag system as well. I later learned from elsewhere that the director claimed to have intentionally meant it that way. Mind you, this is a series that was sponsored and supervised by Yuri Andropov’s KGB.

    • #27
  28. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    In my blog on it, I suggested that surely the viewers realized that the words spoken about concentration camps by the Göring character would apply to the Soviet Gulag system as well. I later learned from elsewhere that the director claimed to have intentionally meant it that way. Mind you, this is a series that was sponsored and supervised by Yuri Andropov’s KGB.

    One of the problems the censors had were the villains of the piece.  So you make a King, a capitalist, a pagan, a Priest, what have you a villain and then give them dialog that came right out of a Communist mouth the Censors would not stop it because when they went too their superiors claiming the Villain was really a Communist their bosses would ask, “Now why do think this “villain” sounds like a Communist.”

    No censor would want to answer that question.  This is what a retired Censor told me in conversation.  So sometimes even the Censors knew the double meaning in some these works but they had to pretend they could not imagine a Communist being a villain.

    Science Fiction really suffered in the Soviet Union too because in the future the Communists won and there was peace on Earth and perfect justice so what conflict could their be?  What injustice could be left, the Communist won you see?

    That is why most authors had to turn to historical fiction where the villains could be the “right” people.

    • #28
  29. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Hang On (View Comment):
    I lived in a country in Africa during my 20s. The picture of the pigs and the washout is highly reminiscent of what would happen in the rainy season there.

    The President of the country would not allow a road to be built to from the main port to the capital because it would make coups too easy. They had a civil war in the late 1950s-early 1960s, so it wasn’t paranoia. Just remembering.

    The French (it had been a French colony) finally pressured him to build the road. There was a coup two years after it was completed.

    Yes, that is no joke.  However the Georgians have been building roads to build trade but none of the roads they are building run from the north to the south.  They just go east to the west but even that helped the Russian invasion in 2008.

    • #29
  30. barbara lydick Inactive
    barbara lydick
    @barbaralydick

    Wonderfully written post.  Thank you for the history lesson this morning.

    Had to laugh – but it’s so sad and surely so infuriating to the drivers – at the description of the ramps as a solution to less-than-poorly-made cars.

    “When people complained about having to constantly repair the cars en route, the Soviets built cement car ramps alongside the roadways. These ramps allowed people to drive the car up on the ramp, making it easy for the drivers to get underneath them and add the screws and bolts as needed to hold it together.”

    Truly a communist-inspired ‘efficiency fix.’  Reminds me of PJ O’Rourk’s summary of how bosses gamed the soviet manufacturing system:

    “If a shoe factory was told to produce 1,000 shoes, it produced 1,000 baby shoes, because these were the cheapest and easiest to make. If it was told to produce 1,000 men’s shoes, it made them all one size. If it was told to produce 1,000 shoes in a variety for men, women, and children, it produced 998 baby shoes, one pump, and one wing tip. If it was told to produce 3,000 pounds of shoes, it produced one enormous pair of concrete sneakers.”

     

    • #30
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