How to Challenge the Oligarch
Tamta Melashvili is an award winning writer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She has authored three novels, numerous short stories, and several pieces of nonfiction. Her latest novel, “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” was adapted into a feature film premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. Her works have been translated into multiple languages including German, Polish, Italian, Macedonian, Russian and French.
I am not quite sure how to start this story. The world is changing so radically and rapidly that almost every tale’s beginning turns out to be outdated until you finish it. I don’t know where this story leads either – its beginnings are unsettling; the end is completely uncertain. It is really tough to see what is coming ahead and feels like experiencing the huge shifting of the landscape – rearranging the world order. This is somehow similar to what Georgia, my country, has already gone through after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. By that time, I was 11. Life felt so much easier then, almost like a play. Now, I am a tired adult, loaded with responsibilities, equipped with all the heritage of shakings and breakings my country has endured in the last 35 years, since gaining its independence. Sometimes I long to see the world through a child’s eyes. But it has been a long time since I found it impossible.
Today is 10 February 2025, the 74th day of the ongoing protests when people gather and block central Rustaveli Avenue of Tbilisi, the capital. Protests also take place in other major cities, like Batumi, Zugdidi and Kutaisi. There are a couple of smaller towns, where determined solo protesters stubbornly stand in front of their city halls, opposing the regime.
I would say that it all started on 28 November 2024 when the prime minister Kobakhidze officially announced that the ruling party, Georgian Dream, halted negotiations with the EU on the accession at least till 2028. And he did so, in spite of the fact that almost every survey showed that as much as 80% of Georgians had European aspirations. Or I would say that it began earlier, in October, when Georgian Dream rigged the elections while claiming the victory. Or even earlier, when, despite massive protests and demonstrations, the puppet parliament passed all the oppressive laws, including foreign agents’ law to suppress free speech and silence dissent, especially from civil society and independent media; the LGBT propaganda law to impose censorship; the offshore law to enable money laundering for sanctioned Russian or local oligarchs.
And here comes the main figure, the oligarch, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose party, Georgian Dream took over in 2012, gradually consolidating all the power in his hands. Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia, during the dark 1990s and nobody knows how, from the very beginning raising the doubts that he had been a Russian project.
To cut it short, it is a story about how the Georgian Dream became a Georgian Nightmare. It is the story about how oligarchs turn fragile democracies (but still democracies) into autocracies. Almost all the signs of autocracy are already present in our daily lives. Institutions have been captured a long time ago, a single-party government that lacks international legitimacy and recognition rules the country. As protests continue, the government’s response becomes increasingly harsh, sometimes so harsh that even pro-government public defender cannot deny that police violence towards the detained often accounts as torture.
For today, hundreds of political prisoners are being held, three of them are on severe hunger strike. One of them is Mzia Amaghlobeli, a journalist, founder of one of the leading independent media, who has been on strike for a month now. A few days ago, she was hospitalised as her health continues to worsen. During protests in Batumi, she slapped the face of the local police chief. For that she was found guilty and faces four to seven years jail. What seemed unimaginable and even comical yesterday, becomes the norm today. Nobody would have thought that slapping could lead to imprisonment, but things really do change under the autocracy and free media and free speech become the main targets.
People still suffer from coughing and nose bleeding, after the heavy clashes with police in December. Then severe beatings, arrests, and the heavy use of tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets became the new normal to punish the resisting bodies. These resisting bodies challenge the oligarch and his squad the most. These are the generations born and raised in free Georgia, never experiencing handcuffs of autocracy. These are the people backed up with the most precious values they trust in – freedom, justice, equality. This is the battle where the fight for Europe turns out to be the fight against the autocracy in the same beath.
Protests have no leaders, the people themselves are leading it – another headache for the oligarch. It would have been easier for him to punish the particular individuals to scare the people. He does so, but random demonstrators are arrested, either detained or punished with the highest imaginable fines. This is something “our” oligarch copied from Russia along with many other things. Copying from Russia is his favorite occupation.
We know that fear is something that the oligarch wants to have in his hands as the instrument against us. Repressive regimes do sustain on imposing anxiety and fear to control. They eat fear, they dwell on it. And life becomes really scary, we are well aware of it. The oligarchs are capable of lots of damage; they have already done lots of damage but we try to remain grounded. In reality he is a scared man himself. He does not appear in public that much; he does not travel. Last summer he spent all the election campaign behind the bullet protecting glass cabin when addressing Georgian Dreams voters. He does not trust his own surroundings either. It is the law of the genre that autocrats do not trust. There is not much left for us to trust too, none of the institutions, for example but we trust in ourselves, in our values and in each other. Values outlive oligarchs, they outlive autocracies, they outlive humans. Oligarchs are also humans with limited lifespan, are not they? They cannot become the eternal owners of our lives, our future.
And this is where the future and the hope for the future steps in. Oligarchs don’t talk about the future; they hate the future. This is us, believing in it, believing that in our resistance something new can be born, fresh and healthy tissues of grassroots democracy can be reproduced and flourished leading us to justice, unity and equality.
This is why courage, trust and hope remain our best friends, fellows and allies.
This is how we challenge the oligarch.
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