EP65: Zviad Gamsakhurdia

Zviad Gamsakhurdia was a Georgian nationalist leader who served as his country's first independent President from 1991 until 1992. Under him, Georgia became a hellish place, ripped apart by civil war, organised crime and militia violence.

Sadly, Gamsakhurdia cannot be acquitted in all of this as a placeholder- his commitment to an ethnically homogenous Georgia, in a part of the world anything but, was always going to lead to problems. Gamsakhurdia’s own life ended in a Tblisi bunker in 1993, probably by suicide, and is a rather sordid reflection of how Georgia’s own utopian dream for its future died on its feet in the early 1990s.

Listening to my guest today, Gamsakhurdia reminded me of two former subjects on this podcast, the Welsh nationalist leader Saunders Lewis, and the Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic, both of whom also had a no-holds-barred and blunt approach to nationalism. Thankfully, the country has taken a different and cannier path to self-government since, and is a relative success story among the post-Soviet states.

My guest for this conversation today is Tom de Waal. Tom is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, and is one of the leading authorities on the Caucasus region. I would highly recommend is book The Caucasus: An Introduction, to anyone looking to read up on this amazing and enigmatic part of our continent. As well as Gamsakhurdia’s life, Tom and I discussed the bizarre interplay between Stalinism and Georgian nationalism, Georgia’s place in Europe, and how a country and a region so far away from the capitals of diplomacy has forged relations with the great World powers.