A Return to Tradition –The Traditionalist and Nationalist Shift in The Republic Of Georgia

Ah, Georgia. A land of rugged mountains, ancient vineyards, and the occasional whiff of politics that leaves one feeling rather unsettled. To an Englishman such as myself the country is an afterthought. This is perhaps why the intensely traditionalist social ‘revolution’ taking place in the country has passed unobserved by so many in the rest of the West.

Just this month, the Populist Georgian Dream Party has won the Presidential election, and the not-so-populist current President Salome Zourabichvili is refusing to leave.

That is something that if Trump had done it, everyone would be calling an insurrection, but of course, the Biden Administration is condemning the democratically elected Georgian Dream for what they call “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia,“ by which they presumably mean not wanting to have a war with Russia.

But while it may not want a “Euro-Atlantic future,“ Georgia is part of the West. The country is deeply Christian, their art could have come from Italy, and their propensity for a range of blonde, red, dark, and light hair and eye colors make them as diverse a European people as the Germans, Italians, or English.

While much of Eastern Europe has been caught up in the march of liberal reforms, Georgia is swinging decidedly to the right, embracing a new wave of social and cultural conservatism. This rightward social movement is also accompanied by an increasing rejection of liberal institutions and a rejection of diversity-like policies that currently undermine so much of the rest of the Western world.

In recent years the ruling Georgian Dream party, which operates under the slogan “fatherland, language, faith” has made a series of socially conservative changes to an otherwise technologically modern and institutionally progressive country. Changes that would astound many in the ‘core’ countries of Western civilization.

Let us begin with the security of the family and the unique role of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

The Church has long been the bastion of moral authority in Georgia, and in recent years, it has taken up arms – metaphorically speaking, of course – against what it perceives as the creeping encroachment of liberal ideologies. LGBT rights, gender equality, and a certain European-style progressivism have come under fire as potential threats to Georgia’s cultural fabric.

In 2007, after more than 15 years of post-Soviet demographic decline Ilia II, the Patriarch of the Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Georgia, an institution that commands the respect of 95% of Georgians, announced he would personally baptize and become the godfather to any child who is the third-born or higher to a Georgian couple. After this announcement the fertility rate in Georgia rose from a historic low of 1.53 (2002) to a healthy 2.00 by 2010. By 2014 the fertility rate in Georgia had risen to 2.31 and remained above 1.95 until 2022 when it began to modestly decline again. Georgia is also in the top 30 countries worldwide for the rate of marriages, an institution with the Institute of Family Studies has shown beyond doubt leads to higher fertility.

This boom in marriage and fertility during the early and mid-2000s was followed by state action to protect the institution. In 2017 the Georgian government amended the constitution to define marriage as “a union between a woman and a man for the purpose of creating a family.” Previous to this marriage had been defined in a similar matter in the nation’s civil code, but leaders worried that (like in the United States, for example) liberal courts would move to redefine marriage against public wishes.

Now, or rather in June of 2024, the Georgian government is once again moving to protect traditionally Western definitions of the marriage and family. On October 3^rd the Georgian parliament ratified a bill that enshrined several new conservative social provisions into law. The country banned any and all forms of gender ‘transition’ surgeries or medical interventions. The legislation prohibits transexual individuals from adopting children, and prevents people from identifying as the opposite gender and sex on their government and other public documentation.

I feel compelled to mention that Georgia has also maintained legislation against labor discrimination against LGBT persons. The country is striking a balance between individual protection and the necessary protection and promotion of the nuclear family and sex-rational gender roles.

In another shift away from pro-liberal policies and toward the restoration of meritocratic traditions the Georgian government began working to repeal a 2020 reform that required quotas for female representation among political party candidates. This blatantly anti-democratic law is now moving towards repeal.

Of course, one mustn’t overlook the impact of Georgia’s geopolitical situation. Nestled between the bear that is Russia and the incredibly overbearing European Union (which insisted upon the gender quotas), Georgia has always walked a delicate tightrope. Its government was once eager to integrate into post-war Western institutions, aspiring for membership in both NATO and the European Union. This goal has become untenable, though. The ruling Georgian Dream party abandoned its aspirations to join NATO in the wake of the Ukraine war and has suspended its attempt to join the European Union which the Georgian government now views as a cultural threat.

To quote the Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze:

“We rest on values such as democracy, rule of law, human rights protection, justice, equality and tolerance, but at the same time, pseudo-liberalism and the forces, which are challenging our national identity, traditions and the Georgian churches, as well as the forces, which are challenging the very same values in the U.S., are unacceptable for us.

Parliament Speaker Slams Freedom House Report, ‘Pseudo-Liberal’ NGOs, Civil Georgia, Tbilisi, April 13, 2018

As a result of this continued cultural interference the Georgian government enacted a law requiring that any NGO which receives more than 20% of its funding from abroad must declare itself a foreign agent. Hysterical commentators are blaming the Russians for a sensible law that, at least in my view, seeks to increase transparency about the foreign actors operating in Georgia. Regardless, the liberal regimes of the core of the West are furious and the decidedly non-British foreign secretary of the UK, David Lammy, below, has declared the British government will limit its engagement with Georgia.

Finally, and most crucially to the White Papers audience, Georgia has undergone a radical demographic transformation that has seen the native Georgians go from near-minority status in their own homeland to a robust majority.

Between 1801 and 1810 the vast bulk of Georgian inhabited territory was annexed by the Russian Empire. Native Georgians went from constituting roughly 80% of the population of their homeland in 1800 to a declining share of 73.8% by 1865 and 69.4% by 1897. Over the course of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries hundreds of thousands of Russians, Armenians, and Azeris would flood into the country so that by 1939 Georgians were just 61% of the population in their homeland. A steady demographic recovery would begin in the 1960s, with Georgians increasing to a 69% share of the population by 1979.

After declaring being led to independence by the deeply religious nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia began a series of reforms that rooted out foreign (namely Russian) influence. The country established its own institutions, banks, universities, and cultural institutions which explicitly promoted the native Georgians in their homeland.

After an extremely brief civil war and the adoption of a new constitution, as well as the independence of Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia being fully established, the demographic recovery of the country continued. As of 2014 Georgians are 87% of the population in their homeland, the largest share they’ve had in over 200 years.

It was after the collapse of the Soviet Regime that everything changed, though.

Georgia has been able to demographically, culturally, and socially transform itself from a multiethnic communist and then multiethnic liberal country into a nationalist and traditionalist nation-state dominated by the Georgian people and for the Georgian people. The example of Georgia should serve as a light to other Western nationalists. We can reverse demographic, cultural, and social decline.