Guest: Bryan Gigantino, co-host of the podcast Reimagining Soviet Georgia, on the context and causes for the current political crisis in Georgia. The post Georgia in Crisis appeared first on The Eurasian Knot.
Georgia recently held parliamentary elections. The ruling party Georgian Dream eked out a majority, adding to its over decade long rule. The elections, however, were not without controversy. The opposition has claimed vote rigging, its supporters hit the streets, and some Western governments have cried foul. Georgia now is in crisis. What is the context for this political crisis? How does it relate to Georgia’s post-Soviet transformation, economic liberalism, and the current geopolitical conjecture? Is Georgia gravitating toward the EU or Russia? Or is trying to avoid Ukraine’s fate by maintaining a balance between both? To get some insight, the Eurasian Knot turned to Bryan Gigantino, the host of the podcast Reimagining Soviet Georgia. He recently published an article, “In Georgia, a National Election Is a Geopolitical Struggle” in Jacobin that put these complex issues that are shaping Georgia’s social, political, and economic fate.
Guest:
Bryan Gigantino is a historian and researcher focused on Georgia, the South Caucasus, and Eurasia in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. He is the co-creator of the podcast Reimagining Soviet Georgia and his writing has appeared in Jacobin, LeftEast, and Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. He is a lecturer at Georgian-American University in Tbilisi, Georgia and is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. He recently published “In Georgia, a National Election Is a Geopolitical Struggle” in Jacobin.