Georgia’s cultural clashes have exacerbated the country s political polarization. These divisions challenge the country’s democratic processes and relations with Western partners.
Georgia’s cultural clashes have exacerbated the country s political polarization. These divisions challenge the country’s democratic processes and relations with Western partners.
This article is the third of five in a series for the Future of Georgia project run by Carnegie Europe and the Levan Mikeladze Foundation analyzing contentious issues in Georgian society.
The protracted conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, dating back to the early 1990s, have isolated these two societies from Georgia proper for almost three decades. Both regions have been out of Tbilisi’s control for thirty years and run by de facto authorities that are heavily influenced by Russia. Lack of daily interaction, limited opportunity for people-to-people communication, and near total absence of political dialogue have caused Georgians, Abkhazians, and South Ossetians to drift apart. Consequently, the memory of peaceful coexistence predating the 1990s has slowly faded away, while opposing and radicalized narratives about the nature of their conflicts and the other side feed the public discourse in all three societies.