It is a great honour to once
again represent my beloved nation at this rostrum.
During the past decade, when I have had the privilege
to address the Hall, Georgia has moved from a failed
State to a market democracy. We have experienced
both advances and setbacks, both breakthroughs
and mistakes. But the world has been able to witness
my nation’s constant commitment to freedom. I ask
members today once again to hear the voice of a
nation that transcends political, social and religious
differences in a common love for freedom — a voice
that, despite all the problems we have encountered and
the challenges we still have to overcome, is full of hope.
Looking at our world today, I think that this voice of
hope is needed.
The optimism of the early 1990s, when the spread
of liberal and democratic values seemed natural, when
the end of history had been proclaimed, and when the
United Nations was set to become the heart and the
soul of a world finally at peace, the optimism of that
era — noticeable when I was a student in New York
and visited the United Nations as an intern — was then
crushed by a wave of pessimism and cynicism.
The world is not at peace. Humankind has not
reconciled with itself, and the United Nations did not
become the heart and soul of a united globe. Western
civilization, once triumphant, is now trying to tackle a
deep economic, social, and spiritual crisis. In Eastern
Europe the colour revolutions are challenged by the
very forces they defeated a few years ago. In the Middle
East the glorious images of cheering crowds in Cairo
and Tunis have been replaced by the horrendous videos
of the gassed children of Damascus.
There are many good reasons to be disillusioned.
But should the untrammelled optimism of the 1990s be
replaced by an equally untrammelled pessimism, by a
sense of resignation that stifles hope? Should the fact
that the expansion of democracy and freedom turns out
to require profound struggle cause us to renounce our
beliefs and our principles?
I have come here today to share the hopes on behalf
of my nation and to speak out on behalf of my Georgian
people against such pervasive fatalism. I came here to
address those who doubt, those who hesitate and those
who are tempted to give in.
If the West is an anachronism, why do millions
of Poles, Czechs, Estonians, Romanians and others
cherish so much the day they entered NATO? Why
are millions of Ukrainians, Georgians, Moldovans
and others desperately knocking on the doors of the
European Union?
If freedom is no longer fashionable, how do we
explain that the suicide of a previously unknown citizen
in a remote Tunisian town has changed the map of the
world? No, history did not come to an end in 1989 or
1991, as was proclaimed, and it never will. Freedom is
still its driving force and its goal. Everywhere, men and
women who want to live in freedom are confronted by
the forces of tyranny. The question is: are we going to
be actors or spectators in that confrontation?
As I speak, the Eastern European countries aspiring
to join the European family of free and democratic
nations are facing constant pressures and threats.
Armenia has been cornered and forced to sign a customs
union that is not in that nation’s interest or in those of
our region. Moldova is being blockaded. Ukraine is
under constant attack. Azerbaijan faces extraordinary
pressure. And Georgia is occupied. Why? Because
an old empire is trying to reclaim its bygone borders.
“Borders” is actually not the right word, since that
empire — be it the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union,
the Russian Federation, or the Eurasian Union — never
had borders. It had only margins.
I came today to speak in the name of those margins.
Unlike most nations, the Russian Federation has no
interest in having stable States around it. Neighbouring
countries in constant turmoil is what the Kremlin is
seeking. It rejects the very idea of strong Governments
in Georgia, Ukraine or Moldova, even ones that try to
be friendly to its interests. I was never a great fan of
what the French call “la langue de bois”. But, as my
second term nears its end, I feel the urge more than
heretofore to speak my mind. Let us be very concrete.
Do members think that Vladimir Putin wants
Armenia to decisively triumph over Azerbaijan, for
instance? No. That would make Armenia too strong and
potentially too independent. Do members think then
that the contrary is true, that Moscow wants Baku to
prevail over Yerevan? Obviously not. The current rise
of a modernized, dynamic Azerbaijan is a nightmare for
Russian leaders. No, they do not want anyone to prevail.
The conflict itself is their objective, since it keeps both
nations dependent and blocks their integration into the
European common space.
Do members think that the electoral defeat of
the forces that led the Orange Revolution in Ukraine
has led the Kremlin to take a softer approach to that
country? On the contrary. I spoke yesterday to my
colleague Viktor Yanukovych. His Government is
under constant attack and pressure from Russia. That
is what is happening on a daily basis, again ahead of
the European summit in Vilnius. Russian officials now
speak openly about dismembering that nation. I just
heard the speech two days ago.
Do members think that the Kremlin would agree to
discuss the de-occupation of our regions of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia, now that the Government has
changed in Tbilisi? Far from it. The annexation of
Georgian lands by Russian troops continues. Yesterday,
the occupants again expelled Georgian citizens from
their houses and are destroying their villages, homes
and the houses of their parents and grandparents. In
daylight, they are taking over their cemeteries and
water systems with total impunity.
Despite the friendly statements made by the
new Georgian Government in recent weeks and
months, the Russian military continues to advance its
position, dividing communities with new barbed wire,
threatening our economy, moving towards the vital
Baku-Supsa pipeline, approaching closer and closer
to the main highway of Georgia, and thus putting into
question the very sustainability of our country.
We are one of very few nations in history — of which
I am very proud — that has, unfortunately, sustained a
full-blown attack by Russia. We are the only one, in
many centuries, whose statehood and independence
have survived, despite a full-blown attack by the more
than 100,000-strong Russian army, despite being
bombed by 200 planes and attacked by the full Russian
Black Sea fleet and tens of thousands of mercenaries.
Our statehood and independence have survived despite
all of those things. But let us not now risk losing any
of that in a time of peace. We have survived because
were united; we survived because the world was with
us. I hope that the world will remain with us when that
pressure is on us.
I have come here, in the name of the Georgian
people, to ask the international community to react
strongly to the aggression and to help us to put an end
to the Russian annexation of our lands. The hostility of
Vladimir Putin and his team towards the Government
that I have had the privilege to lead for almost a decade
has not been based on personal hatred or cultural
misunderstanding. Any such interpretation was just a
smokescreen.
My predecessor, President Shevardnadze, came
from the highest-level Soviet nomenklatura. He was
returned to power in Georgia with direct Russian help
in the 1990s, through a military coup. He was well
known for his Soviet diplomatic skills — unlike me.
And yet, Russia constantly undermined his authority
and even tried to assassinate him several times.
It is not about Gamsakhurdia — the first President
of Georgia — Shevardnadze, Saakashvili, or the present
Prime Minister Ivanishvili. Those names actually do
not matter when the stakes are so high. This is about the
possibility — or lack — of true statehood in Georgia and
beyond. Why? Because the current Russian authorities
know perfectly well that as soon as strong institutions
are built in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova or in any other
place — as soon as functioning States emerge — such
institutions, such States will reflect and enforce the will
of their people, which is to become fully independent
and move towards Europe.
The Georgian experience of successful reforms
and the creation of a functioning State was therefore
considered to be a virus — one that could and would
contaminate the whole post-Soviet region. We became
the least corrupt country in Europe, the world’s number-
one reformer — according to the World Bank — one
of the top places for business and the least criminal
country in Europe, after having been one of the most
criminal. That was the virus that should be eliminated
by every means possible.
That is why the Georgian nation has suffered an
embargo, a war, an invasion and an occupation — all
since 2006. But it is also why the resistance of the
Georgian people and the resilience of the Georgian
democracy are of the utmost importance for the whole
region.
The efforts to roll back the advances of the
European Union and of NATO in our region — progress
based on the will of our people — are becoming ever
more intense. Those efforts have a name: the Eurasian
Union. It makes me sick when KGB officer Vladimir
Putin lectures the world about freedom, values and
democracy. That is the least of the things he can do
for the world, as the dictatorial leader of one of the
last empires left. But that new project is much more
dangerous than his lectures. The Eurasian Union has
been shaped as an alternative to the European Union,
and unveiled by Vladimir Putin as the main project of
his new presidency — a new Russian empire.
Because European and Euro-Atlantic integration
take a lot of time and require tremendous effort;
because there are moments when one might think
one is pursuing a mirage; and because the threats are
becoming so strong, the pressure so direct, while the
promises seem so far away — some people in our
region might fall victim to fatigue and ask themselves,
“Why not?”. Today, I want precisely to explore that
“why not?”.
Much more than with a choice of foreign policy or
of international alliances, our nations are confronted
with a choice of society, a choice of life. Our people
have to decide whether they accept to live in a world
of fear and crime: a world in which differences are
perceived as threats and minorities as punching bags;
a world in which opponents are faced with selective
justice or beatings; a world that we in our region all
know very well, as do those in some other regions of the
world, since this is the world from which we originate.
The Eurasian Union is both our recent past and
the future shaped for us by some ex-KGB officers in
Moscow. On the opposite side, our revived traditions
and our centuries-old aspirations have led us towards
another world called Europe.
European societies are far from perfect — we
all know that. There too, one can have fears, doubts,
angers, hatreds and social inequality. But there, at
the same time, meritocracy prevails over nepotism,
tolerance is a fundamental of public life and current
opponents are the future ministers, and not prisoners to
be or enemies to beat.
The choice, when it is expressed in that way, is
so obvious for the people of our region that some
Kremlin strategists — they call themselves “polito-
technologists” — have decided to cancel the
truth and have shaped lies that they are spreading
throughout Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and many
other places. Their mouthpieces in our respective
countries — that conscious or unconscious so-called
fifth column — identify the European Union with the
destruction of family values, the erosion of national
traditions and the promotion of gays and lesbians,
undermining our traditional religions.
Strangely, in recent years, and even more so in
recent months, we hear in Tbilisi, Kiev and Chisinau
the same ugly music that was first orchestrated in
Moscow. We hear that our traditions are collapsing
under the influence of the West, that Christian holidays
will be replaced by gay pride events and churches by a
multicultural Disneyland. We hear that our Orthodox
identity is under threat. And after all of that, we hear
that we share with our former masters a common
respect for decency and traditions.
Are we so naive as to believe the lies of Putin and
the others, as other generations have done, allowing
our sovereignty to be kidnapped? Are we so unfair
to our ancestors to think that their memory would be
honoured by attacks on mosques or by pogroms? Are
we so unaware of our own history that we allow it to
repeat itself endlessly?
When we hear the fake music of the orthodox
brotherhood sung by Russian imperialists, can we
not hear the true voice of Patriarch Kirion, who was
assassinated, or the eternal voice of the Patriarch
Ambrosi Khelaya, who was tortured for days and weeks
only because he appealed to the Geneva Conference
against the invasion of his country? He told his Russian
interrogators, “You can have my body, my flesh, but
you will never have my soul.” Are we so deaf as not to
hear the voices of the bishops and priests tortured and
killed by Russian imperialists and Russian communists?
Are we so uneducated that we do not recall who has
repainted our churches and erased our sacred frescos?
Are we so blind today not to see the destruction of our
churches by the same people who erased our churches
in the nineteenth century — Russians who are now in
the occupied territory?
We need to know our history. Our history teaches us
that tolerance is the basis for sovereignty in our region.
It is not only a moral duty; it is an issue of national
security. We need to know our history to understand
that the same old imperialistic principle — divide and
rule — is being applied today as it was two centuries
ago.
Looking at our region today, those who have some
knowledge of Caucasian history might remember the
Armenian-Azerbaijani bloodshed of 1905, directly
created by the tsarist Administration; compare it to the
beginning of the conflict in Karabakh in the late 1980s.
The Russian army was present there, in large numbers.
In front of its eyes, the war started and they pretended
to help both sides, but in fact stirred up the conflict.
They might recall — as I do too well — the
beginning of the war in the Georgia region of Abkhazia
in the early 1990s, when Georgian paramilitary groups
were getting their weapons from the same Russian
troops who were actually leading, directing and
assisting the Abkhaz militia and bombing Georgian
territory and bringing in Chechen mercenaries in order
to kill any form of solidarity between nations of the
North and the South Caucasus. They did so just as they
sent — for the same reason, more than one century
before — Georgian officers to the front line of their
wars against the Chechens, Ingush and Dagestanis.
We could also look at other margins throughout
the times. We could look at Poland or Ukraine, and we
would see the same pictures. Everywhere it reached,
the Empire inflamed the relations between subjugated
peoples and separated them by a wall of fanatic
antagonism. Unfortunately, it used to work. But what is
even more unfortunate is that it is still working today.
The European Union, the greatest political success
of recent decades, has been built on three pillars,
which could be characterized as three rejections — the
rejection of the extreme nationalists who had led Europe
to the collective suicide of two world wars and the
horrors of nazism; the rejection of communism, which
was threatening to be spread throughout the continent
and the world; and, finally, the rejection of colonialism
and imperialism. It took time — and many participants
today, as victims of French imperialism or British
imperialism, remember it well and painfully — for
the French and British Empires to accept that third
rejection. But giving up their colonies was the price they
had to pay for the modernization of their economies and
the development of their democracies. It was also the
price to pay for European unification to become fully
realized.
The Eurasian Union is based on the exact opposite
premise. It is fuelled by intolerance, it is lead by old
structures of the KGB, and it is designed to revive an old
empire. That is what the Eurasian Union is all about. Of
course, joining the Eurasian Union is very easy. There
are no social, economic or political criteria to be met;
becoming a colony, in fact, requires no effort at all.
Passivity, mediocrity, the absence of national pride and
a willingness to be enslaved are the only requirements.
On the other hand, to form a real union there is
no alternative but to make a herculean effort and meet
exact criteria, because principles are precisely what
create a union. To those who doubt, therefore, I say that
it is precisely because the European Union demands
effort and imposes criteria for joining — because the
European Union does not seek to absorb us while the
Eurasian Union dreams of absorption — that the choice
should be obvious.
But there is an even better reason for saying that
the choice is obvious. The choice is obvious because
the Russian project is doomed to fail. No empire is
sustainable today; we are living in the twenty-first
century. It is certainly not the Russian century, and
the Russian Empire is the last, anachronistic empire in
the world. If we look back at history, France and the
United Kingdom lost their colonies not only because
the colonies fought for their independence, but also
because people in Paris and London ultimately did not
believe in their empire anymore.
Exactly the same thing is happening in Russia
nowadays. The imperial dream is being rejected first,
as we have seen, at its margins. But, most crucially,
perhaps, the idea of the Empire is rejected at its very
centre. Such a rejection does not manifest itself in public
protests alone or in the rising polls of the opposition
in the main cities of Russia. It expresses itself in the
universal cynicism of Russian elites towards Putin’s
Eurasian vision. The very people who are supposed to
serve it do not believe in the viability of the project.
Rejected at its margins, rejected at its centre, the
imperialistic path will come to a dead end, the Eurasian
Union will fail, and Russia will in the end become a
nation State with borders, instead of margins — a real
country with real borders. Then it will start to seek stable
relations with stable neighbours. Then cooperation will
replace confrontation.
It will happen, and much sooner than people think,
to the benefit of the margins, but most of all to the
benefit of the Russian people themselves.
It will happen because the imperial project has
become absurd for a generation of Russian citizens who
are among the world’s most enthusiastic users of the
Internet.
It will happen because ethnic discrimination in
Russia is being used in its territories, but it will not
make Russia a stronger and more united State.
It will happen because the endless resources
provided by the revenues of oil and gas are challenged
by the perspectives offered by the exploitation of shale
gas and shale oil. The shale gas revolution is really
undermining the last authoritarian empire in the world.
It will happen because gas alone does not replace
economic modernization.
It will happen because of corruption and the
absence of justice.
It will happen because entire regions have been
alienated by discrimination and violence — because the
people of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Tatarstan,
Bashkortostan and many other places have been so
persecuted that they do not feel part of any common
project with the central authorities in Moscow.
It will happen because the frustrations, angers and
hatreds are too strong to bear and the unifying ideal is
too absent.
It will happen, not in the coming decades but in
the coming years. A few years from now, the Assembly
will recall my words. Vladimir Putin will have left the
Kremlin and vanished from Russian politics, even if
he says that he will be there for another 20 years or
more. Russian citizens will remember him as a ghost
from the old times — from the times of corruption and
oppression.
Nobody knows whether the process will be calm or
violent, whether his successor will be nationalistic or
liberal, or both together, but what matters is something
else — Russia will no longer be an empire. It will
become, finally, a normal nation State. That is the
horizon we should all prepare for together.
Meanwhile, as our region remains an area of
confrontation, the formerly captive nations should
unite their strengths instead of cultivating their
divisions. Some leaders and some countries in the past
understood that the freedom of one was dependent on
the freedom of all the other subjugated nations, like
Poland, which for many centuries dreamed of uniting
all persecuted people, or like the Poland of Marshal
Pilsudski, which invited all the oppressed people
or their officers to unite under the flag of Polish
independence and Polish military forces. But never did
our ancestors benefitefrom a force that was vast and
powerful enough, that understood its strategic interest
was to preserve the sovereignty of each of our nations.
Today that force exists; it is, with all its deficiencies,
the European Union.
As we come closer to the Vilnius Eastern
Partnership Summit, I would like to reiterate a call
that I have made several times in the recent years. By
launching the Eastern Partnership as a response to the
2008 invasion of Georgia, the European Union has
offered to our nations a platform for us to cooperate
under its benevolent umbrella. We should invest much
more in it. We should develop common projects, first
and foremost focusing on the necessary reforms that we
should carry out together, because reforms mean for all
of us statehood and independence.
Russian Empress Catherine II knew it well. When
Poland started to successfully implement an ambitious
programme of reforms based on precepts from the
French and British Enlightenments despite Russian
attempts to counter those reforms, she wrote a long
and secret letter to the German Emperor, Frederick the
Great of Prussia. The letter was and remains one of the
most impressive expressions of the nature and strategy
of the imperialistic project. It states that the ongoing
reforms were dangerous for both Russia and Prussia
because they would turn Poland into a true State,
that the reforms needed to be stopped and that Poland
should be attacked and dismembered before reforms
were fully implemented so that it never needed to be
occupied again.
The letter will not sound unfamiliar to those who
know how much Vladimir Putin loathed the Georgian
experience during the past decade. Many Russians
were asking, if the once-corrupt Georgia, a criminal
country, a mafia-ridden country, considered to be a
failed country, could succeed, why is it that Russia
cannot succeed? It was an ideologically dangerous
project. For the first time, an efficient nation State was
being built in the Caucasus, and the reforms had to be
crushed before they could bear all their fruits.
Unity should be our rule in Eastern Europe,
including in the divided Caucasus. I have spoken about
the beginnings of the war in Abkhazia. I could have
recalled an older scene that symbolically characterizes
the history of the Caucasus. It was at the end of the
rebellion led by Shamil, the great imam of the Northern
Caucasus, against the Russian Empire, after Shamil
had surrendered and after the last Chechen leader still
fighting, Baysongour, had been wounded and captured.
As Baysongour was going to be hanged, the Russian
officers brought together a crowd of Dagestani men
to witness the execution. They ordered one of them to
remove the chair on which Baysongour was standing
in order to execute him. The Russians knew what they
were doing — they hoped to fuel the local vendettas
and oppose the people, which is an old tradition in
the Caucasus. Seeing that, the valiant commander
Baysongour moved the chair himself, committing a
suicide forbidden under all religions, including Islam,
and preserving the relations between neighbours.
Despite that one failure, how many times has the
strategy of dividing neighbours encountered success
among the nations of the Caucasus? It needs to come
to an end. That is why I have launched several projects
during my presidency to reinforce the people-to-
people contacts between North and South Caucasus,
projects focusing mostly on education and on university
exchange. That is why the Georgian Parliament has
recognized the genocide of the Cherkezian people — one
of the least known and tragic pages of the history of the
world, when an entire nation was wiped because their
land was needed by the Russian Empire.
We need to build on those efforts. We need to
prepare for the time when the Empire collapses, so
that its legacy of hatred is swiftly overcome. And we,
as citizens of Georgia, need to prepare for the time
when Russian troops will leave our occupied regions,
when Moscow will withdraw from Tskhinvali and
Sukhumi, Abkhazia. We need to prepare ourselves to
welcome back our Ossetian and Abkhaz fellow citizens
as brothers and sisters and not as enemies. We need
to prepare for the time when hundreds of thousands,
in fact, more than half a million, internally displaced
Georgians and members of other ethnic groups return
to their deserted homes, because that time will come
much sooner than we think.
As my second term nears its end, I take pride in
Georgia’s many accomplishments during my tenure. We
ushered Georgia out of a state of darkness, introduced
unprecedented transparency into our public service, put
our children back in school and got rid of the gangs.
We have brought our nation closer than ever before to
its European dream and worked tirelessly to renew the
spirit of tolerance that guided Georgia in our glorious
past.
We did many good things, but like any leader — and
when I became President, I was then the youngest
president in the world — I realize that some things were
done at a very high cost because of lack of experience. In
our rush to impose a new reality against the background
of internal and external threats, we cut corners and
certainly made mistakes. At times we went too far and
at other times not far enough. I fully acknowledge my
responsibility in that regard, and I sincerely feel for all
those who believe that they did not benefit enough from
our work, or even that they were victims of our radical
methods.
I want to tell all Georgian citizens — those who
supported our project, our policies and our party and
those who rejected them — how proud I am of their
maturity. We promised them this project, but we did not
promise them that it would be smooth going. We were
very ambitious, and that was because our people were
so mature and so brave. I want to tell them from this
rostrum how humble I feel in the light of the sacrifices
and the efforts they made.
We are and should remain a nation united in a
common love for freedom and dignity. We are and
should remain a nation united in the deepest respect
for the sacrifices made by our soldiers, a nation
sharing the same sorrow when they lose their lives - in
Afghanistan, for instance - and taking the same pride
in their bravery. We are a nation that is proud of our
soldiers, who stood up to a force of Russian invaders
one hundred times the size of our contingent, and gave
us and the world time to mobilize and to protect and
save our independence — something that, with all
due respect, many much bigger and more powerful
nations could not do in the twentieth century. We are
and we should remain a nation united in our historical
identity and our desire to join the European family of
democratic nations, the family we should never have
been separated from in the first place, our family. The
path of the Georgian people towards freedom, regional
unity and European integration is far from over, and
I will continue to dedicate every day of my life to its
success, as a proud citizen of a proud nation.