VERSANT

February 2017
Volume 15: Georgia
A Creeping occupation, medieval rituals,
toasting culture, and the birthplace of wine

Contributors
Front cover photo
A local merchant at the Dry Bridge open
air antique market. See page 68 for the
Last Look from around Tbilisi’s old town.
Back cover photo
Sunset in the Caucasian Mountains,
upper Svaneti. See page 38 for our main
feature: Medieval Mountain Hideaway.
versant
EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarah Ramsson
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Tara Harris
SENIOR EDITOR Laura Linderman
MANAGING EDITOR Jamie Weed
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sandy Smiertka
ART DIRECTOR Hannah Mintek
PHOTO DIRECTOR Corinne Thrash
Corinne Thrash
Artist, commercial photographer,
and videographer
based in Seattle, Corinne
Thrash specializes in travel
and marine photography. This
month for Versant, Thrash
has gone above and beyond
in exploring the terrain of
the Caucasus and the lives of
Georgians. Spending nearly
three weeks tirelessly shooting
everything from the caves of
Orthodox Christian monks to
the incredible wine history of
Georgia, her work executes an
incredible range of diversity.
Be sure to explore her main
photo essay, Youth of Tbilisi,
page 61, capturing a modernizing
era of young adults; an
intimate chance to reflect on
the changing tides in Georgia’s
development. Discover
more of Thrash’s work:
corinnethrash.com
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Annetta Black
Haley Sweetland Edwards
Jonathan Hirshon
Brook Larmer
Stosh Mintek
Simon Ostrovsky
Paul Salopek
Corinne Thrash
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Hannah Mintek
Corinne Thrash
DESIGN DIRECTOR Hannah Mintek
INK, 68 JAY ST., STE. 315,
SEATTLE, WA 98103
TEL: +1 206 802 8495
FAX: +1 206 555 1882
EDITORIAL@VERSANT.COM
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VP, SPECIAL PROJECTS
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DIRECTOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS
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STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS DIRECTOR
Carole Mouawad
U.S. TERRITORY MANAGER
Houssam Nassif
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Casey Milone
PRODUCTION CONTROLLER
Faye Ziegeweid
Haley Edwards
A correspondent at TIME,
Edwards previously was an editor
at the Washington Monthly
where she wrote about policy
and regulation. As a freelance
reporter Edwards has covered
stories around the Middle
East and the Caucasus. Her
installment of Getting Your
Bearings this month comes
from her personal experience
of having lived and traveled
throughout Georgia for
two years. She has a passion
for baby goats, world travel,
and Georgian cheese bread.
Paul Salopek
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
and National Geographic
Fellow Paul Salopek is
retracing on foot our ancestors’
migration out of Africa
and across the globe. His
21,000-mile odyssey began in
Ethiopia and will end seven
years later at the tip of South
America. Now three years
into his sojourn Salopek has
passed through the cradle of
culture in the Caucasus. His
article Ghost of the Vine will
leave you wanting to toast to
peace and your ancestors.
Simon Ostrovsky
Soviet-born American
documentary filmmaker
and journalist best known
for his coverage of the 2014
crisis in Ukraine for VICE
News and Selfie Soldiers, a
2015 documentary. Ostrovsky
won an Emmy Award in 2013
for his work with VICE.
In this issue, Ostrovsky’s
article “The Russians are
Coming: Georgia’s Creeping
Occupation” explores Russia’s
need for control in the
Caucasus and its strain along
separatist borders of Georgia.
Versant is produced monthly by INK. All material is
strictly copyrighted and all rights are reserved. No
part of this publication may be reproduced in whole
or part without the prior written permission of the
copyright holder. This is a graphic design project of
Hannah Mintek and is not a publication in circulation.
No money was exchanged for this magazine.
Contact: hannahmintek@gmail.com
2 • versant

06 Getting Your Bearings
08 Talk the Talk
09 Experience: Vardzia
14 Tradition: The Georgian Supra
22 Politics: Russia is Coming
30 Culture: Ghost of the Vine
38 History: Medieval Mountain Hideaway
56 Make: Salt of the Earth
Photo © Corinne Thrash
58 From the Road: Jack and Bebu
61 Perspective: Youth of Tbilisi
68 Last Look

gamarjobaT
Gamarjobat and Welcome!
Photo © Corinne Thrash
As we seek to discover meaning and universal truths throughout our
travels we may wonder if some places will touch our hearts more greatly
than others. Georgia did that for me. In all of my journeys I have never
been met with such depth of culture, passion, love, and intensity for
life than in my time here.
To say that Georgia is like no other country perhaps is to sound ignorant,
but what you are likely to experience here is truly like no other.
From its green valleys spread with vineyards to its ancient cathedrals
and watchtowers perched on fantastic mountain overlooks, Georgia
(Saqartvelo) is one of the most beautiful countries on earth and a marvelous
canvas for walkers, horse riders, cyclists, skiers, rafters and
travelers of every kind. Equally special are its proud, high-spirited, cultured
people: Georgia claims to be the birthplace of wine, where guests
are considered blessings, and hospitality is the very essence of life.
A deeply complicated history has given Georgia a fascinating backdrop
of architecture and arts, from cave cities to the history of silk
road trading to the inimitable canvases of Pirosmani. Tbilisi, the
capital, is still redolent of an age-old Eurasian crossroads. But this is
also a country moving forward in the 21st century, with spectacular
contemporary buildings, an impressive road renewal project
under way, and ever-improving facilities for the visitors who
are a growing part of its future.
We welcome you to discover the incredible mark
that Georgia could leave on your heart
and memory.
— Hannah Mintek

Getting Your Bearings
GEORGIA: Getting Your Bearings
The Basics
Gotta Have Faith
The Lay of the Land
Georgia is a strip of land in the Caucasus
region of Eurasia, just south of Russia between
the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, north of
Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It’s a little
bigger than West Virginia and home to about
4.6 million people.
The Georgian Orthodox Church, which has
its own patriarch, Ilia Meore, was the national
religion for more than 1,500 years prior to the
Communist era, when it was all but eliminated.
But since the fall of the Soviet Union, the
church has enjoyed a huge resurgence. Today,
84 percent of the population is Orthodox.
Georgia is hemmed in by mountains: the
Greater Caucasus to the north, the Lesser
Caucasus to the south, and the Likhi Range
right down the middle. These mountain ranges
make Georgia a patchwork of different climates.
Western Georgia is mostly subtropical,
covered in lush, green rainforests. On average,
it rains there twice as much as it does
in Seattle. But Eastern Georgia is drier, like
California’s Central Valley.
6 • versant

By Haley Sweetland Edwards
White People
Not the Peach State
Gift of Gab
The term “Caucasian” can be traced back to a
19th-century German anthropologist named
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Upon visiting
Georgia, Blumenbach claimed to have discovered
the origins of mankind. He labeled
the race of white men “Caucasian,” after the
nearby Caucasian Mountain range. Nowadays,
Georgians have embraced the idea that they
lent their genes to the whole of Europe. A
popular tourism slogan around Georgia claims,
“Europe started here.”
Georgia the country is often confused with
Georgia the US state, although the names
are completely unrelated. The US state got
its name from King George II, while the
country’s name is derived from the Persian
word Gurjistan, meaning “the land of the
foreigners.” The people of Georgia are barely
aware of the confusion, though; they call their
country Sakartvelo.
Most Georgians speak Georgian, or one of the
three languages closely related to it — Svan,
Megrelian, or Laz. All four belong to a family
of “linguistic isolates,” meaning they have
virtually no relationship to any other language.
Georgian is also one of the oldest living languages
in the world.
versant.com • 7

Language
Talk the Talk: Georgian Language
Georgian (Kartuli) is the official language
of Georgia and the country’s most widely
spoken language, used on street signs and in
all aspects of everyday life. There are about
4.1 million people who speak Georgian on a
daily basis: approximately 3.9 million living
in Georgia and the rest living abroad, notably
in Russia. Georgian (Kartuli) is related
to three other languages, all spoken within
Georgia and Northeastern Turkey: Megreli,
Svan, and Laz. There are 15 common dialects
of Georgian reaching as far as Turkey,
Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran.
Important notes:
There are no capital letters in Georgian.
It is phonetically regular.
It is an unstressed language — each syllable
receives equal weight.
Georgian distinguishes between aspirated
and non-aspirated (ejective) consonants for
t, p, k, ch, and ts.
Diphthongs do not exist in Georgian.
Alphabet: Georgian uses one of the world’s
12 unique alphabets, Mkhedruli — “that of
the warrior.”
ა a
ბ b
გ g
დ d
ე e
ვ v
ზ z
თ t
ი i
კ k’
ლ l
მ m
ნ n
ო o
პ p’
ჟ zj
რ r
ს s
ტ t’
უ u
ფ p
ქ k
ღ gh
ყ q’
შ sh
ჩ ch
ც ts
ძ dz
წ ts’
ჭ ch’
ხ kh
ჯ j
ჰ h
1 ერთი ehr-tee
2 ორი oh-ree
3 სამი sah-mee
4 ოთხი oht-khee
5 ხუთი khoo-tee
6 ექვსი ehk-vsee
7 შვიდი shvee-dee
8 რვა rvah
9 ცხრა tskhrah
10 ათი ah-tee
Yes (formal) დიახ dee-akh
Ok კარგი k’ahr-gee
No არა ah-rah
Maybe ალბათ ahl-baht
Where? სად? sahd?
Hello გამარჯობა gah-mahr-joh-bah
How are you? როგორა ხართ? roh-goh-rah khahrt?
Fine, thank you. კარგად, გმადლობთ. k’ahr-gahd, gmahd-lohbt.
Nice to meet you. სასიამოვნოა. sah-see-ah-mohv-noh-ah.
Please თუ შეიძლება too sheh-eedz-leh-bah
Thank you. გმადლობთ. gmahd-lohbt.
Excuse me. უკაცრავად. oo-k’ahts-rah-vahd.
I’m sorry. ბოდიში. boh-dee-shee
Goodbye. ნახვამდის. nakh-vahm-dees.
Help! დამეხმარეთ! dah-meh-khmah-reht!
Good morning. დილა მშვიდობისა. dee-lah mshvee-doh-bee-sah.
Good night. ღამე მშვიდობისა. ghah-meh mshvee-doh-bee-sah.
Now ახლა ahkh-lah
Later მერე meh-reh
I don’t understand. ვერ გავიგე. vehr gah-vee-geh.
Where is the toilet? სად არის ტუალეტი? sahd ah-rees t’oo-ah-leh-t’ee?
I want… მე მინდა… meh meen-dah…
What is your name? რა გქვიათ? rah gkvee-aht?
My name is… მე მქვია… meh mkvee-ah…
Do you speak English? ინგლისური იცით? eeng-lee-soo-ree ee-tseet?
How much/many…? რამდენი…? rahm-deh-nee…?
Stop to let me off. გამიჩერეთ. gah-mee-cheh-reht.
It is delicious. გემრიელია. gehm-ree-eh-lee-ah.
I don’t want anymore. მეთი არ მინდა. meti ar meen-dah.
Cheers. გაუმარჯოს. gau-mar-jos.
Here’s to you. გაგიმარჯოს. ga-gi-mar-jos.
wine ღვინო ghvee-no
water წყალი ts’q’ah-lee
8 • versant

visit
vardzia
by Annetta Black
Photo © Corinne Thrash

Experience
In desperate circumstances people are often driven to perform feats
of mythical proportions. In the late 1100s the medieval kingdom of
Georgia was resisting the onslaught of the Mongol hordes, the most
devastating force Europe had ever seen. Queen Tamar ordered the
construction of this underground sanctuary in 1185, and the digging
began, carving into the side of the Erusheli mountain, located in the
south of the country near the town of Aspindza.
When completed this underground fortress extended 13 levels and
contained 6000 apartments, a throne room and a large church with an
external bell tower. It is assumed that the only access to this stronghold
was via a hidden tunnel whose entrance was near the banks of
the Mtkvari river. The outside slope of the mountain was covered with
fertile terraces, suitable for cultivation, for which an intricate system of
irrigation was designed. With such defenses, natural and man made,
the place must have been all but impregnable to human forces. Alas,
the glorious days of Vardzia didn’t last for very long. Though safe from
the Mongols, mother nature was a different story altogether. In 1283,
only a century after its construction, a devastating earthquake literally
ripped the place apart. The quake shattered the mountain slope
and destroyed more than two-thirds of the city, exposing the hidden
innards of the remainder.
However despite this, a monastery community persisted until 1551
when it was raided and destroyed by Persian Sash Tahmasp.
Since the end of Soviet rule Vardzia has again become a working
monastery, with some caves inhabited by monks (and cordoned off
to protect their privacy). About three hundred apartments and halls
remain visitable and in some tunnels the old irrigation pipes still bring
drinkable water.
10 • versant

Photo © Corinne Thrash
versant.com • 11

THE GEORGIAN
SUPRA
Learning the delicate art of eating and toasting
by Jonathan Hirshon
In the deeply traditional culture of Georgia, a Supra (Georgian: სუფრა) is an age-old Georgian
feast and an important part of Georgian social culture. Georgian wine flows freely and several to
several dozens of courses of food come out throughout the night, often followed by dancing and
signing. A supra can commonly go until 2 or 3 in the morning. Broadly, it is a traditionalized feast
ideally characterized by an extremely abundant display of traditional foodstuffs.
The supra is also an occasion for ritualized imbibing. Drinking wine or liquor at a supra is
accompanied by ceremonial toasts, which are directed by the toastmaster, who combines the
consumption of alcohol with specialized, emotional and articulate spoken word. Knowing the
history and etiquette of a supra will ensure survival of the fittest when visiting Georgia.
Photo © Corinne Thrash

“A successful tamada must possess great rhetorical
skill and be able to consume a large amount of
alcohol without showing signs of drunkenness.”

A tamada giving the opening toast at a supra.
Dishes begin to stack as guests arrive.
Every supra follows the same set of rules,
but the level of formality depends on
the occasion. Supras can be held almost
anywhere, including restaurants, gardens,
schools, graveyards and, perhaps
most commonly, at homes. Most often,
guests sit at a table, which is covered
with small plates of food that continue
to be brought out and refreshed
throughout the course of the supra.
There are two types of supra: a festive
supra (ლხინის სუფრა), called a keipi,
and a sombre supra (ჭირის სუფრა),
called a kelekhi, that is always held after
burials.
In Georgian, “supra” means “tablecloth”.
It’s likely related to the Arabic
sofra ‏(ةرفس)‏ and Turkish sofra, which
are both words for traditional eating
surfaces. Large public meals are never
held in Georgia without a supra; when there are no tables, the supra
is laid on the ground, typically seen during excursions to churches.
At a supra, toasting is a high art and Georgians have elevated it
to a degree not seen many other places in the world. What follows
is how that toasting process, contest and history are all showcased
during a supra.
Regardless of size and type, a supra is always led by a tamada, or
toastmaster, who introduces each toast during the feast. The tamada
is elected by the banqueting guests or chosen by the host. A successful
tamada must possess great rhetorical skill and be able to consume
a large amount of alcohol without showing signs of drunkenness.
During the meal, the tamada will propose a toast, and then speak
at some length about the topic. The guests raise their glasses, but do
not drink. After the tamada has spoken, the toast continues, usually
in a counter-clockwise direction (to the right).
The next guest who wishes to speak raises their glass, holds forth,
and then drains their glass. If a guest does not wish to speak, they may
drink from their glass after some words that particularly resonate for
him or her. Eating is entirely appropriate during toasts, but talking is
frowned upon. Once everyone who wishes to speak on the theme has
done so, the tamada proposes a new toast, and the cycle begins again.
While some of the more important toasts require drinking your
glass to the bottom as a sign of respect (bolomde in Georgian), the traditions
of the Georgian table space the drinking out over the course
of the meal.
Here are the rules. You cannot drink until the tamada (toastmaster)
has made his toast and drinks. Only then, and usually in order
around the table, can other revelers repeat the toast and drink. Never
propose a different toast unless you are
given permission: that is an offense to
the tamada.
If the toast is made to you as a visitor,
to America or England, to the President
or the Queen, or in any way bears
directly upon your presence, you must
wait to drink until everyone else has
gone before you. Your toast in response
should be one of thanks.
Occasionally you will hear the
tamada say “Alaverdi” to someone. This
means that one guest has been chosen to
elaborate the tamada’s toast. All other
present their drink to this same theme.
Georgians take traditional toasting
very seriously. There is a structure and
balance to a Georgian toast.
Toasts are made with either wine
(usually) or brandy (occasionally, either
local or imported), and nothing else — toasting with beer can be considered
an insult, though the patriarch recently deemed it to be ok.
If you are being toasted, you are supposed to wait until the tamada
has finished, then stand up and thank the toaster. Then, you should
wait until everyone else is done before drinking your wine in one go. If
the tamada says Alaverdi to you, you should elaborate on his toast. If a
large ram or goat’s horn (called the khantsi) is brought out during the
meal and filled with wine, then an honored guest — perhaps you — is
supposed to drink it to the bottom.
If someone else is being toasted, the easiest advice is to wait until
everyone else is drinking to drink your wine. Other than that, it’s
good advice to be quiet while the tamada is talking, and remember
the various other rules of etiquette in Georgia, some of which are not
putting feet on the furniture and not chewing gum in public.
The proper response to Georgian toasts is “gaumarzos”, meaning
literally ‘to your victory’; pragmatically it is equivalent to ‘cheers.’
Immediately after the toast, people clink glasses with the tamada.
Normally, when a foreigner is present, the tamada starts with a toast
to long-lasting friendship with him or her.
Traditions and national values are frequently mentioned. Every foreigner
is paid the compliment of being a good representative of his
or her country, and is assumed to be proud of this. The second toast
could be to the guests’ home countries, to their families or family in
general. Toasting mothers is mandatory, as is friendship, deceased
relatives, existing and future children, peace, love, and the hostess.
The tamada can combine topics into one toast, or split topics into
several toasts. The more people present, the more formal the toasts.
At evenings with close friends, the toasts are often quite witty and
versant.com • 17

Tradition
short. The course of toasting follows a variable thematic canon, which
is accommodated to the specific occasion.
The toast to the hostess, (normally the one who has prepared the
meal) is usually the penultimate or last toast, and has certain implications
for ‘opening up the closing’ of the evening.
When such a toast is about to be offered, frequent attempts to delay
its delivery can be observed, since this toast would end the evening.
The time-order of the entire evening is thus reflected in the pattern
of toasting. To a certain extent, every evening is prestructured by the
pattern of toasting.
Important toasts are marked by a shift of position. Whereas the
tamada and all the other men rise to their feet, the women remain
seated. Additionally, the relevance of a specific toast is indicated by
the appropriate quantity of wine that is to be drunk in one gulp after
its deliverance, and by the drinking-vessel used (glass vs. horn).
Drinking a lot of alcohol is considered a necessary component of
displaying masculinity. Since the tamada is required to empty his
drinking-vessel completely after every toast, he must possess a high
tolerance to alcohol — particularly on special occasions, when drinking-vessels
are commonly made out of bull horns.
Joyous Supra — ლხინის სუფრა
Funeral Supra — ხელეჰი
The pattern of marriage toasting is different from the pattern
appropriate for toasting the birth of a child. Education, rhetorics,
and a good sense of humor can all be demonstrated while
delivering a toast. On a typical lxinis supra (happy banquet)
with guests, the thematic sequence of toasting progresses
approximately in the following fashion:
• to our acquaintance and friendship
• to the well-being of the guests, relatives and friends
• to the family of the guests
• to the parents and the older generation,
• to the dead and the saints, (wine is poured
onto a piece of bread for this toast)
• to existing and yet unborn children,
• to the women present at the table,
• to love,
• to the guests’ mothers,
• to peace on earth,
• to the hostess,
• to the tamada himself.
The following order for toasts is typical for a funeral supra:
to the tamada:
• to the person who has died
• to his or her spouse (if dead)
• to the person’s parents (if dead)
• to the person’s grandparents (if dead)
• to the person’s other dead relatives
• to people from Georgia who died in the war
• to Georgians who died abroad
• to families who have no descendants
• to the spouse of the deceased (if living)
• to the children of the deceased (if living)
• to the surviving parents
• to the surviving siblings
• to the surviving relatives
• to the surviving friends and neighbors
• to the other members of the supra
• to people who have been good to
the family of the deceased.
18 • versant

“To be a good tamada demands close
observation of the surrounding social world.”
Talking stops when the tamada begins to give a toast. To continue
talking is considered impolite. At a supra, informal talking is hardly
possible, because the themes to be talked about are prestructured to a
certain degree in accordance with the canonic order of toasting.
Discussions keep getting interrupted by a toast. The tamada manages
to start the toasting by suddenly raising his glass and calling a
formula, or xalxo (folks), or some personal form of address. Anyone
speaking is then expected to stop in order to listen to the tamada.
The toast normally stands out distinctly from other talking activity by
gestures, intonation, position shifting, and addressing.
Although the toasts are well-known over generations, there is never
one toast like the other. The tamada produces performances that are
similar rather than identical, as is typical for oral genres. Changes
from one concrete performance to the next are determined by the
preferences of the individual speaker, his perception of the audience’s
taste, and sometimes by the audience’s open reaction. The audience is
constantly taken into consideration.
There is no formal teaching in how to give a toast; one trains to
become a good toast giver by listening to the toasts given at the table.
People talk about the toasts delivered during an evening later on. The
evaluation of special toasts is also a common theme. Criteria of judgment
include the manner of delivery, the balance of traditional and
creative performance features, the fluency of speaking, and the sensitive
finding of social qualities to praise.
When a marriage is discussed, one necessarily also talks about the
excellence and originality of the toasts presented on that occasion.
Excellence is judged by the perfect fulfillment of the generic norms,
while originality is judged by the creativity used within the given
procedure. Both should be optimally matched.
Praise to the people present and to those absent is a central function
of the toasts. Since praise is a social endeavor, the tamada has to
be a good social observer. The person who is the subject of the toast
is honored by the whole group; thus, the genre helps to establish and
re-establish social bonds and norms. To be a good tamada demands
close observation of the surrounding social world.
By praising known and unknown qualities of living and deceased
people, a good tamada shows that he is more than simply a man of
words. He is the one who makes people see new dimensions of the
subject, and who keeps the memory of the deceased alive.
The tamada has to guarantee that the dinner ends with good feelings
among all the participants, a goal which is highly valued and
respected by Georgians.
Formulae are used in every toast, and there is a fixed set that provides
a stock for every tamada, for example, “me minda shemogtavazot,
sadghegrzelo” (I want to offer you a toast), “kargad qopna” (to their
well-being), “ janmrteloba vusurvot” (I wish them health), “bedniereba
vusurvot” (I wish them good luck), “mshoblebs dagilocavt sul qvelas”
(I bless all your parents/best wishes for all your parents), “ghmertma
gaumarjos sul qvelas” (God shall give all of them his favor).
However, a toast that consists only of formulaic phrases is considered
to be a poor one. A good tamada combines traditional and creative
phrases. He can give voice to his own individuality, and at the same
time be sensitive to the audience’s pleasure.
Men gather for a funeral supra to honor the
passing of a member of their community.
versant.com • 19

Photo © Corinne Thrash

A ritualized toast-competition, called alaverdi, is often established
between the men at the table. The tamada talks about a specific topic,
and the other men must modify this topic in the subsequent toasts.
When one alaverdi round is completed the tamada must decide who
will open the next round. His decision should be based on the criteria
of the toast’s originality, its formulation, and the approval it received
from the table. Table rhetoric is an important sign of Georgian masculinity.
Men who cannot take part are considered insufficient, weak,
or unmanly.
In the special form of alaverdi toasting competition, the tamada
symbolically grants other men his power of speech. Whomever he
hands the drink-horn or the glass to becomes temporarily the tamada,
and as such, the center of attraction of the dinner-party. He is then
expected to vary and elaborate on the topic already determined by
the head-tamada.
In formal contexts, the competition is about ‘who is the best.’ The
head-tamada, taking into consideration the approval of the people
present, judges who was best. In the next round, the winner is given
the right to speak as the second tamada. It is frequently very obvious
that the head-tamada himself was the best, and he laboriously tries to
remain in that position.
The audience at the table can express their appreciation of specific
toasts by paying compliments, clapping, or making non-verbal gestures
(however, this does not occur in the following example). In alaverdidrinking,
it becomes especially apparent that the power of words is a
sign of masculinity in Georgian culture.
Two women ‘vakhtanguri’ at a wedding, symbolically
drinking wine from a pair of high heels.
versant.com • 21

Politics
In July 2015, Russian backed forces moved the boundary fence between
Russian-occupied South Ossetia and Georgia — placing more Georgian
territory under Russian control. Georgians refer to this as the creeping
occupation, and several people who unfortunately live in the area now
have a different citizenship.
Simon Ostrovsky traveled to Georgia to see how the country is
handling Russia’s quiet invasion, and meet those getting caught in
the crossfire.
“I am 82 years old. For over 80 years I’ve been a citizen of Georgia.
And now they’ve made me a Russian citizen. I don’t know who’s to
blame. The Russians say it’s their territory. I will never leave Georgia.
They can kill me, they can hang me if they like.”
We’re outside the village of Bershueti, which is on Georgian territory
right next to the demarcation line between Georgia and South
Ossetia, and just yesterday two shepherds were actually captured by
troops from the other side.
South Ossetia is one of two regions of Georgia that Russia took
over in a war in 2008. This summer Russia took things a step further.
It posted fresh border markers and made claim to a mile-long section
of a major U.S.-backed BP operated oil pipeline. Now Russia has the
capability to sabotage its operation any time it wants to. Moscow now
controls about a quarter of Georgia’s total territory. They arrest anyone
who strays across this new de facto border. Georgians are calling it
the Creeping Occupation.
The entire world considers the land on both sides of this fence to
belong to Georgia. Only Russia considers the land on one side to be
part of an independent country, known as South Ossetia. But the
fence ends, which is why it is not entirely clear for the local villages
herding their sheep where they are allowed to go and where they’re
not supposed to be.
A young shepherd from the area agreed to take us around.
Could you tell us what happened to Murazi yesterday?
“Yes, Murazi [was taken] over there to Tskhinvali [the capital of
the de facto state].”
Two Georgians, Ivane Sekhniashvili and Murazi Javakhishvili,
were out shepherding a herd in late October when armed men seized
The Russians
Are Coming:
Georgia’s Creeping Occupation
by Simon Ostrovsky

them in this area on November 3rd. Nobody has heard from them
since, but everyone assumed they had been taken to jail in the rebel
capital Tskhinvali.
We were being watched. In South Ossetia alone, Russia has built 19
border bases, and one of them is a mere 40 miles from Georgia’s capital,
Tbilisi. Our guide was getting nervous about being interviewed
so close to the territory separation fence and one of the Russian border
bases, so we headed down into the nearby village to meet the detained
shepherd’s family.
“He was on his way to the pasture. He was on our side of the border,
still far from it,” Meri Javakhishvili said (the wife of one of the detained
shepherds). “They took him to the other side and photographed him
there. I don’t know exactly who took him, but there are Russians over
there, and I believe they got him. I don’t know what to do. I can’t
imagine what steps to take, what’s necessary. If you ask around the
village there is no harder working person than my husband,” Meri says
as she wipes the tears from her cheeks. “He didn’t have bad relations
with the Russians when there was peace between us. On the contrary,
they always treated each other with respect.”
These detentions are a huge issue for people living along the new
de facto borderline. According to rebel South Ossetia’s own statistics
more than 320 people have been detained so far for what they call
“In South Ossetia alone, Russia
has built 19 border bases.”
“illegal crossings”. But Russia’s border creation policy is causing other
problems as well.
One of the consequences of the so-called “borderization policy” is
that it doesn’t always follow the boundaries even of villages. This barbed
wire fence was put right in the middle of the village of Khurvaleti, and
it in fact even goes through the yard of a Georgian resident who has
ended up on the other side.
Russian forces on break as they deploy troops
to build the next installment of fencing.

Signs against the newly constructed fence warn
residents and other wanderers to keep clear.
“I’ve lived here for 80 years,” says Dato Vanishvili. “I am 82 years
old. For over 80 years I’ve been a citizen of Georgia. And now they’ve
made me a Russian citizen [with this fence]. What kind of life is this
to live? Why am I being hassled like this? They put this fence up in
one month’s time. Where am I to go? I barely managed to build this
house in my lifetime. If I leave they will take the roof off and destroy
the whole house. If I try to cross the borderline they will arrest me,
take me to Tskhinvali and fine me, and how am I supposed to pay
them? If they don’t fine me they would throw me in jail. Bless the
[Georgian] police officers, they have helped me a lot, otherwise I’d be
dead. The other day they brought me a loaf of bread. They passed it to
“The war really put people in a
difficult situation. It’s not only
this village, all of Georgia is
going backwards.”
me like this [demonstrating reaching through the barbed wire fence].
I don’t know who’s to blame. The Russians say it’s their territory. But
for 80 years it wasn’t theirs, so how can it be theirs now? How am I
to leave my house now? Who would I leave this house to? I finally
finished building it [after all these years]. I will never leave Georgia.
They can kill me, they can hang me if they like.”
“We know that the Russian Federation of South Ossetians erected
the fences; Georgians call it the Creeping Occupation,” says Kestutis
Jankauskas (Ambassador of the European Union Monitoring Mission).
“The other side calls it building the state border infrastructure. These
things impede people’s daily lives. Can’t they visit their graveyards?
They sometimes cannot do that because the graveyard is across [the
border]. Then people cannot have irrigation [for their farms] which
they used to have in previous years. They cannot visit relatives, so it
has a direct impact on their daily lives. In some parts it’s hundreds of
families effected. [With regard to the recent incident of two shepherds
being detained] usually people spend one or two nights in detention
and they pay a fine of about 2,000 rubles and they are released within
about 48 hours; [in about 90% of the cases].”
But by now the shepherds had been missing for three days. We went
to check with the family to see if they had heard any news. “Everybody
is hoping for the best,” said David Javakhishvili (a son of one of the
detained shepherds). “[A fine of 2,000 rubles] may not be much for
some people, but for people who are struggling it’s definitely a lot. The
war really put people in a difficult situation. It’s not only this village,
all of Georgia is going backwards.”
We are now on a patrol with the European Union Monitoring
Mission. They are a delegation from the European Union which goes
around and checks up on all of the activities around the South Ossetian
border, and they are going to show us around today to tell us what’s
been happening recently.
“In front of us you can see the IDP camp, Nadarbazevi,” says Gino
Colazio (an EU Monitor). “And to the left of the Nadarbazevi camp
we have a newly installed green sign. And on the right side of the IDP
camp you can see another new green sign, which is just 500 meters
(1,640 feet) from the [main] highway. We are very close to the Baku-
Supsa pipeline.” This is the southernmost point that the Russians and
24 • versant

Putin’s face was graffitied on the side of dumpsters
throughout Tbilisi after the war in 2008.
South Ossetians have claimed. It’s just a couple hundred yards from
the main highway that goes through Georgia, and it’s also south of
the Baku-Supsa pipeline, which was a major U.S.-backed project.
Back in 1999 when the 560 million dollar Baku-Supsa pipeline was
inaugurated the U.S. hailed it as a major breakthrough for the independence
of Georgia and the oil-producing Azerbaijan. “President
Clinton, on behalf of the entire administration, played an especially
important role so that this large-scale project could develop,” stated
then-President of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze.
For now, Russia has simply marked the area as its own, but if it were
to disrupt the pipeline or the main highway it would be a catastrophe
for Georgia. Georgia used to be a staunch U.S. ally. They even named
one of the major streets of the capital after George W. Bush. But after
the war with Russia in 2008 it seems like their pro-western resolve
may be wavering. [The Georgian government] still goes through the
motions of being in the western camp, placing EU flags on everything,
sending Georgian troops out on NATO missions around the
world, but their response to Russia’s expanding territorial claims inside
Georgia have been so weak that some people think Georgia’s current
leadership may have actually sold out to Russia.
Speaking of NATO, the alliance was about to open a facility in
Georgia, so we went there to meet top officials and ask them what
they were going to do about Russia’s expanding border along Georgia’s
South Ossetian state. All of the country’s top political leadership
including the Prime Minister, the President, as well as the Defense
Minister are here, and they have invited NATO’s top commander, the
Secretary General, to attend as well. So with this gathering NATO is
trying to show that it is still committed to a relationship with Georgia
even though the Russian troops are just about 100 kilometers away
from here installing more fencing.
With Russian troops so close Georgia’s leader felt that it was important
to say the training center wasn’t a threat to them. “I would like to
point out that the activities of the training center are not in any way
directed against any of the neighboring countries,” states Georgia’s
Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. “Moreover, it will serve for regional
security, stability and peace-building.”
“This [new NATO facility] is something that was planned and decided
upon well before the events [of new borderlines being drawn along
South Ossetia by Russian troops],” stated Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary
“Some people think Georgia’s
current leadership may have
actually sold out to Russia.”
General of NATO. “This is part of what we call the Comprehensive
Package, the increased cooperation between NATO and Georgia.”
Even NATO’s leader doesn’t want to anger Russia.
Our correspondent asked Tinatin Khidasheli, the Defense Minister
of Georgia, why Georgian forces have taken no action against the
recent territorial claims that the Russian and South Ossetian forces
have been making near major Georgian infrastructure. “Georgia is
taking every responsible action for the security of its country, and
responsible for not allowing war on its own territory. These are diplomatic
actions that we are taking and it is the actuation of the world
versant.com • 25

Politics
community for the Georgian cause, and we are not going to allow
Russia to provoke us into another war.” Upon being pressed to respond
to critics who claim she (and others in the administration) have a pro-
Russian policy, Khidasheli countered by saying “I’m not responsible for
every craziness that I hear. There is no human being in this country
you will find (and you can go out in the street and ask my name) who
will say [that our policy is pro-Russian].”
All of the Georgian officials that we spoke to seemed to be pushing
the line that it was dangerous to provoke Russia by reacting to its latest
moves, but not everybody in Georgia sees things that way. We’ve
come to the National Movement headquarters. They are the avowedly
anti-Russian party, which is now in opposition. “The Georgian Defense
Minister represents the fraction of their coalition who is rhetorically
the most pro-western, so they play a fig leaf role in that,” says Giga
Bokeria, Foreign Secretary of the United National Movement. “We
welcome the NATO training facility. After the Russian invasion in
Ukraine and after there is [now] finally an awakening to Putin’s challenge
there were certain steps made by the European Alliance and
generally the west, and one of its steps with respect to Georgia was
this [NATO] center, which is good but not sufficient. But you cannot
have a concept in which your goal is to say “we are just doing nothing
and we are good guys, and our western friends will tell us ‘well
good, you are not creating another headache for us’”. Repeating every
day, day in and day out “Russia will crush you, Russia will crush you”
makes no point, we all know that this is a danger and that Georgia will
Khurvaleti IDP camp, stuck between Russian-occupied Ossetia
and Georgia’s main highway. Above: two of the camp’s residents.

“Repeating every day, day in and day out “Russia will crush you, Russia
will crush you” makes no point, we all know that this is a danger and
that Georgia will never be able on its own to win a war against Russia.”
never be able on its own to win a war against Russia. We don’t want
the war. What we should do is [put] this issue high on the international
agenda, and this is completely not right now. Secondly, on the
ground there should be much more reserved but resistance by law
enforcement towards kidnappings, towards movement of the occupation
[border] line.”
So what has Georgia’s ‘go softly’ approach towards Russia actually
achieved? I invited the Minister of Reconciliation, Paata Zakareishvili,
to the borderlands to ask him. His job is to make the ethnic minorities
living under Russian control want to return to Georgia. “The Russian
occupation forces behave, from time to time, in a provocative way in
order to increase tensions in Georgian society and to direct the world’s
attention to the idea that there are a lot of problems in Georgia. Thank
God, we have been able to refrain from reacting to these provocations.
We’ve been in power for three years now. During this time, Russia has
not been able to draw us into a situation that would lead to escalation.”
Recently Zakareishvili said that Vladimir Putin, the Commanderin-Chief
of the Russian forces, is not an enemy of Georgia. When
questioned about this considering that Russia currently occupies about
a quarter of Georgian territory he stated, “I said that a man cannot
be the enemy of a state. That’s totally different. A man cannot be the
enemy of a state. Only a state can be the enemy of a state.” In response
to questions of Georgian civilians having their land divided by a border
fence Zakareishvili said, “What you saw is more of a positive than a
negative. Under [the last president of Georgia], Saakashvili, that person
might not be living there. He might not even be alive.”
Finally we got some good news. The rebels were releasing the
Georgian shepherds to the Georgian authorities. They were brought to
A solitary refugee’s grave sits in an abandoned
farm near the border fence Russia has installed.
Photo © Corinne Thrash

Dato Vanishvili, a Georgian citizen whose land
is now divided between the two governments.
“So the question is, did Russia build the new fences to keep Georgians
out or Russians and their ethnic Ossetian allies in?”
a police station to give a statement about their four-day ordeal. “Their
border was over on that side. I was close to their side,” says Murazi
Javakhishvili. “[The soldiers] came and told us, ‘Come quickly, come
with us!’ ‘What did we do?’ I asked. We hadn’t done anything. We
weren’t on their territory. We were right next to it. And they came
with dogs and automatic guns. Not follow them? Of course we had
to follow them. On that road they drove like they were hauling sand
instead of people. I told them to go slowly. ‘Don’t throw me out,’ I
said. What can we do? It was what it was. We suffered. In old age
they put me through this. I have a good grandchild. He gives me
hope and inspires me to keep living. We were close, we had to follow
the herd when they suddenly swarmed us like bandits. And they
told us, ‘Come quickly, come quickly!’ How could I not have gone?
What could I do?”
Hundreds of people like Murazi Javakhishvili are rounded up by
Russian border guards every year. But according to separatist South
Ossetia’s own KGB most of these arrests are of South Ossetians and
Russians picked up by the Russian border guards for trying to come
into Georgia. So the question is, did Russia build the new fences to
keep Georgians out or Russians and their ethnic Ossetian allies in?

Photo © Corinne Thrash

Ghost
of the
Vine
In Georgia, science probes the
roots of winemaking
by Paul Salopek
Meet Maka Kozhara: a wine expert. Young, intelligent, friendly.
Kozhara sits in an immense cellar in a muddy green valley in the
Republic of Georgia. The cellar lies beneath an imitation French
château. The vineyards outside, planted in gnarled rows, stretch away for
miles. Once, in the late 19th century, the château’s owner, a Francophile,
a vintner and eccentric Georgian aristocrat, pumped barrels of homebrewed
champagne through a large outdoor fountain: a golden spray
of drinkable bubbles shot into the air.
“It was for a party,” Kozhara says. “He loved wine.”

Culture
Traditional winemaking vessels are still in use
at Pheasant’s Tears Winery in Sighnaghi.
Kozhara twirls a glass of wine in her hand. She holds the glass up
to the ceiling light. She is interrogating a local red — observing what
physicists call the Gibbs-Maranoni Effect: How the surface tension of
a liquid varies depending on its chemical make-up. It is a diagnostic
tool. If small droplets of wine cling to the inside of a glass: the wine
is dry, a high-alcohol vintage. If the wine drips sluggishly down the
glass surface: a sweeter, less alcoholic nectar. Such faint dribbles are
described, among connoisseurs, as the “legs” of a wine. But here in
Georgia wines also possess legs of a different kind. Legs that travel.
That conquer. That walk out of the Caucasus in the Bronze Age.
The taproots of Georgia’s wine are muscular and very old. They
drill down to the bedrock of time, into the deepest vaults of human
memory. The earliest settled societies in the world — the empires of
the Fertile Crescent, of Mesopotamia, of Egypt, and later of Greece
and Rome — probably imported the secrets of viticulture from these
remote valleys, these fields, these misty crags of Eurasia. Ancient
Georgians famously brewed their wines in clay vats called kvevri.
Today, these bulbous amphoras are still manufactured. Vintners still
fill them with wine. The pots dot Georgia like gigantic dinosaur eggs.
They are under farmers’ homes, in restaurants, in parks, in museums,
outside gas stations. Kvevri are a symbol of Georgia: a source of pride,
unity, strength. They deserve to appear on the national flag. It has
been said that one reason why Georgians never converted en masse to
Islam (Arabs invaded the region in the seventh century) was because
of their attachment to wine. Georgians refused to give up drinking.
Kozhara pours me a glass. It is her winery’s finest vintage, ink-dark,
dense. The liquid shines in my hand. It exhales an aroma of earthy
tannins. It is a scent that is deeply familiar, as old as civilization, that
goes immediately to the head.
“Wine” — Kozhara declares flatly — “is our religion.”
To which the only possible response is: Amen.
“We aren’t interested in proving that winemaking was born in
Georgia,” insists David Lordkipanidze, the director of the Georgia
National Museum, in Tbilisi. “That isn’t our goal. There are much
better questions to ask. Why did it start? How did it spread across
the ancient world? How do you connect today’s grape varieties to the
wild grape? These are the important questions.”
Lordkipanidze oversees a sprawling, multinational, scientific effort
to unearth the origins of wine. The Americans have NASA. Iceland has
BjÖrk. But Georgia has the “Research and Popularization of Georgian
Grape and Wine Culture” project. Archaeologists and botanists from
Georgia, geneticists from Denmark, Carbon-14 dating experts from
Israel, and other specialists from the United States, Italy, France and
Photographs © Corinne Thrash

A family’s home in western Georgia is decorated
with generations of wine making tools.
Canada have been collaborating since early 2014 to explore the primordial
human entanglements with the grapevine.
Patrick McGovern, a molecular archaeologist from the University
of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a member of this intellectual
posse, calls wine perhaps the most “consequential beverage” in the
story of our species.
“Imagine groups of hunter-gatherers meeting for the first time,”
McGovern says. “Wine helps to bring people together. It’s social lubrication.
Alcohol does this.”
Human beings have been consuming alcohol for so long that 10
percent of the enzymes in our livers have evolved to metabolize it into
energy: a sure sign of tippling’s antiquity. The oldest hard evidence of
intentional fermentation comes from northern China, where chemical
residues in pottery suggest that 9,000 years ago our ancestors quaffed
a dawn cocktail of rice, honey and wild fruit.
Grape wines came a bit later. McGovern surmises that their innovation
was accidental: wild grapes crushed at the bottom of a container,
their juices gone bad, partly digested by airborne yeasts. For thousands
of years, the fermentation process remained a mystery. This gave
wine its otherworldly power. “You have a mind-altering substance that
comes out of nowhere,” McGovern says, “and so this drink starts to
feature at the center of our religions. It became embedded in life, in
family, in faith. Even the dead started to be buried with their wine.”
From the beginning, wine was more than a mere intoxicant. It was
an elixir. Its alcohol content and tree resins, added in ancient times as
wine preservatives, had anti-bacterial qualities. In ages when sanitation
was abysmal, drinking wine — or mixing it with water — reduced
disease. Wine saved lives.
“Cultures that made the first wines were productive, rich,” says
Mindia Jalabadze, a Georgian archaeologist. “They were growing
wheat and barley. They had sheep, pigs, and cattle — they bred them.
Life was good. They also hunted and fished.”
Jalabadze is talking about a Neolithic culture called Shulaveri-
Shomu whose mound sites in Georgia arose during a wet cycle in the
southern Caucasus and date back to first inklings of agriculture, before
the time of metal. The villagers used stone tools, tools of bone. They
crafted gigantic pots the size of refrigerators. Such vessels — precursors
to the fabled kvevri — held grains and honey, but also wine. How
can we know? One such pot is decorated with bunches of grapes.
Biochemical analyses of the pottery, carried out by McGovern, shows
evidence of tartaric acid, a telltale clue of grape brewing. These artifacts
are 8,000 years old. Georgia’s winemaking heritage predates
other ancient wine-related finds in Armenia and Iran by centuries.

Photo © Corinne Thrash

This year, researchers are combing the sites of Shulaveri-Shomu for
prehistoric grape pips.
One day, I visit the remains of a 2,200-year-old Roman town in
central Georgia: Dzalisa. The beautiful mosaic floors of a palace are
holed, bizarrely pocked, by clay cavities large enough to hold a man.
They are kvevri. Medieval Georgians used the archaeological ruins
to brew wine. South of Tbilisi, on a rocky mesa above a deep river
gorge, lies the oldest hominid find outside Africa: a 1.8-million-yearold
repository of hyena dens that contain the skulls of Homo erectus.
In the ninth or tenth centuries, workers dug a gigantic kvevri into the
site, destroying priceless pre-human bones.
Georgia’s past is punctured by wine. It marinates in tannins.
For more than two years, I have trekked north out of Africa. More
than 5,000 years ago, wine marched in the opposite direction, south
and west, out of its Caucasus cradle.
“Typical human migrations involved mass slaughter,” says Stephen
Batiuk, an archaeologist at the University of Toronto. “You know,
migration by the sword. Population replacement. But not the people
“Wine” — Kozhara declares flatly — “is our religion.”
Kvevri buried beneath the bricks are filled with
grape juice and ferment for months to years.

Giorgi checks the modernized kvevri system
he and his partner designed for preparing wine.
who brought wine culture with them. They spread out and then lived
side-by-side with host cultures. They established symbiotic relationships.”
Batiuk is talking about an iconic diaspora of the classical world: the
expansion of Early Trans-Caucasian Culture (ETC), which radiated
from the Caucasus into eastern Turkey, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the
Levantine world in the third millennium B.C.
Batiuk was struck by a pattern: Distinctive ETC pottery pops up
wherever grape cultivation occurs.
“These migrants seemed to be using wine technology as their contribution
to society,” he says. “They weren’t ‘taking my job.’ They were
showing up with seeds or grape cuttings and bringing a new job—viticulture,
or at least refinements to viticulture. They were an additive
element. They sort of democratized wine. Wherever they go, you see
an explosion of wine goblets.”
ETC pottery endured as a distinctive archaeological signature for
700 to 1,000 years after leaving the Caucasus. This boggles experts
such as Batiuk. Most immigrant cultures become integrated, absorbed,
and vanish after just three generations. But there is no mystery here.
On a pine-stubbled mountain above Tbilisi, a man named Beka
Gotsadze home-brews wine in a shed outside his house.
Photo © Corinne Thrash

“ It became embedded
in life, in family, in faith.
Even the dead started
to be buried with wine.”
Gotsadze: big, affable, red-faced. His is one of tens of thousands of
ordinary Georgian families who still squeeze magic from Vitis vinifera
for their own enjoyment. He uses clay kvevri buried in the earth;
the hill under his house is his incubator. He pipes coils of household
tap water around the jars to control the fermentation. He employs
no chemicals, no additives. His wines steep in the darkness the way
Georgian wine always has: the grapes mashed together with their
skins, their stems.
Gotsadze says, “You put it in the ground and ask God: ‘Will this
batch be good?’” He says: “Every wine producer is giving you his heart.
My kids help me. They are giving you their hearts. The bacteria that
ferment? They came on the wind! The clouds? They are in there. The
sun is in there. The wine holds everything!”
Gotsadze took his family’s wines to a competition in Italy once, to
be judged. “The judge was amazed. He said, ‘Where have you been
hiding all this time?’ I said, ‘Sorry, you know, but we’ve been a little
busy over here, fighting the Russians!’”
And at his raucous dinner table, a forest of stemmed glasses holds
the dregs of tavkveri rosé, chinuri whites, saperavi reds. The eternal ETC
thumbprint is there.

Photo © Corinne Thrash

Medieval
Mountain
Hideaway
In the Svaneti region of Georgia’s Caucasus
Mountains, the ways of the Middle Ages live on.
By Brook Larmer

Roads wind by sharp cliffs to Mestia in Upper
Svaneti. Previous page: the village of Cholashi.
The men gather at dawn near the stone tower, cradling knives in callused hands. After
a night of snowfall — the first of the season in Svaneti, a region high in Georgia’s
Caucasus Mountains — the day has broken with icy clarity. Suddenly visible above
the village of Cholashi, beyond the 70-foot-high towers that form its ancient skyline,
is the ring of 15,000-foot peaks that for centuries has kept one of the last living
medieval cultures barricaded from the outside world.
Silence falls as Zviad Jachvliani, a burly former boxer with a salt-and-pepper beard,
leads the men — and one recalcitrant bull — into a yard overlooking the snowdusted
valley. No words are needed. Today is a Svan feast day, ormotsi, marking the
40th day after the death of a loved one, in this case Jachvliani’s grandmother. The
men know what to do, for Svan traditions — animal sacrifices, ritual beard cutting,
blood feuds — have been carried out in this wild corner of Georgia for more than a
thousand years. “Things are changing in Svaneti,” Jachvliani, a 31-year-old father of
three, says. “But our traditions will continue. They’re part of our DNA.”
In the yard he maneuvers the bull to face east, where the sun has crept above the
jagged crown of Mount Tetnuldi, near the Russian border. Long before the arrival of
The men gather at dawn near the stone tower, cradling knives in callused hands. After
a night of snowfall — the first of the season in Svaneti, a region high in Georgia’s
“Things are changing in
Svaneti,” Jachvliani says. “But
our traditions will continue.
They’re part of our DNA.”
Photo © Corinne Thrash
Caucasus Mountains — the day has broken with icy clarity. Suddenly visible above
the village of Cholashi, beyond the 70-foot-high towers that form its ancient skyline,
is the ring of 15,000-foot peaks that for centuries has kept one of the last living
medieval cultures barricaded from the outside world.
Silence falls as Zviad Jachvliani, a burly former boxer with a salt-and-pepper beard,
leads the men — and one recalcitrant bull — into a yard overlooking the snow-dusted
valley. No words are needed. Today is a Svan feast day, ormotsi, marking the 40th
day after the death of a loved one, in this case Jachvliani’s grandmother. The men
know what to do, for Svan traditions — animal sacrifices, ritual beard cutting, blood
feuds — have been carried out in this wild corner of Georgia for more than a thousand
years. “Things are changing in Svaneti,” Jachvliani, a 31-year-old father of three, says.
“But our traditions will continue. They’re part of our DNA.”
In the yard he maneuvers the bull to face east, where the sun has crept above the
jagged crown of Mount Tetnuldi, near the Russian border. Long before the arrival
of Christianity in the first millennium, Svans worshipped the sun, and this spiritual
force — along with its derivative, fire — still figures in local rituals. As the men with
knives gather in front of him, Jachvliani pours a shot of moonshine on the ground, an
offering to his grandmother. His elderly uncle chants a blessing. And then his cousin,
cupping a candle against the wind, lights the hair on the bull’s forehead, lower back,
and shoulders. It is the sign of the cross, rendered in fire.
versant.com • 41

History
After the blessing, the men lasso one of the bull’s legs with a rope and, heaving in
unison, truss the bellowing beast over the branch of an apple tree. Jachvliani grabs
its horns, while another villager, unsheathing a sharpened dagger, kneels down next
to the bull and, almost tenderly, feels for the artery in its neck.
Over the course of history many powerful empires — Arab, Mongol, Persian,
Ottoman — sent armies rampaging through Georgia, the frontier between Europe
and Asia. But the home of the Svans, a sliver of land hidden among the gorges of
the Caucasus, remained unconquered until the Russians exerted control in the mid-
19th century. Svaneti’s isolation has shaped its identity — and its historical value.
In times of danger, lowland Georgians sent icons, jewels, and manuscripts to the
mountain churches and towers for safekeeping, turning Svaneti into a repository of
early Georgian culture. The Svans took their protective role seriously; an icon thief
could be banished from a village or, worse, cursed by a deity.
In their mountain fastness the people of Svaneti have managed to preserve an even
older culture: their own. By the first century B.C. the Svans, thought by some to be
descendants of Sumerian slaves, had a reputation as fierce warriors, documented in
the writings of the Greek geographer Strabo. (Noting that the Svans used sheepskins
to sift for gold in the rivers, Strabo also fueled speculation that Svaneti might have
“Nowhere else can you find
a place that carries on the
customs and rituals of the
European Middle Ages.”
been the source of the golden fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts.) By the time
Christianity arrived, around the sixth century, Svan culture ran deep — with its own
language, its own densely textured music, and complex codes of chivalry, revenge,
and communal justice.
If the only remnants of this ancient society were the couple of hundred stone towers
that rise over Svan villages, that would be impressive enough. But these fortresses,
built mostly from the 9th century into the 13th, are not emblems of a lost civilization;
they’re the most visible signs of a culture that has endured almost miraculously
through the ages. The Svans who still live in Upper Svaneti — home to some of the
highest and most isolated villages in the Caucasus — hold fast to their traditions of
singing, mourning, celebrating, and fiercely defending family honor. “Svaneti is a
living ethnographic museum,” says Richard Bærug, a Norwegian academic and lodge
owner who’s trying to help save Svan, a largely unwritten language many scholars
believe predates Georgian, its more widely spoken cousin. “Nowhere else can you
find a place that carries on the customs and rituals of the European Middle Ages.”
What happens, though, when the Middle Ages meet the modern world? Since
the last years of Soviet rule a quarter century ago, thousands of Svans have migrated
to lowland Georgia, fleeing poverty, conflict, natural disasters — and criminal
gangs. In 1996, when UNESCO bestowed World Heritage status on the highest
cluster of Svan villages, Ushguli, the lone road that snakes into Svaneti was so terrorized
by bandits that few dared to visit. Security forces busted the gangs in 2004.
Photo © Corinne Thrash
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Photo © Corinne Thrash

And now the government is implementing a plan to turn this medieval mountain
zone into a tourist magnet.
Svaneti arguably has seen more change in the past few years than in the past
thousand. It’s not just the vans full of foreign backpackers discovering the region’s
pristine trekking routes. In 2012 the government installed power lines to light up even
the remotest villages. The road that links most villages of Upper Svaneti will soon
be paved all the way to Ushguli. Frenzied construction has transformed the sleepy
regional hub of Mestia into a faux Swiss resort town lined with clapboard chalets
and bookended by hyper modern government buildings and an airport terminal
out of The Jetsons. Meanwhile on the flanks of Mount Tetnuldi, directly across
the river from Jachvliani’s home in Cholashi, one of Georgia’s largest ski resorts is
beginning to take shape.
Perhaps it makes some kind of karmic sense that the mountains and stone towers
that kept outsiders at bay for all these centuries should now be enlisted to lure them
in. But will all this change save the isolated region — or doom it?
Bavchi Kaldani, the old family patriarch in Adishi, speaks in a hoarse whisper,
but his words — in the abrupt cadences of Svan — land with force: “If I stop, I’ll die.”
Even at age 86, with gnarled hands and a stooped back, Kaldani insists on carrying
on the hard labor of Svan village life: chopping wood with a heavy ax, scything grass
for his animals’ winter rations, and repairing his family’s stone tower.
“My family has lived here for
more than 1,200 years,” he
says. “How could I let my
village disappear?”
Photo © Corinne Thrash
It’s a measure of the precariousness of mountain life that Kaldani too was once
tempted to leave Svaneti. Raised in a machubi — a traditional stone dwelling for
extended families, livestock included — he remembers when Adishi bustled with 60
families, seven churches, and dozens of sacred artifacts. Clan leaders from across
Svaneti rode days on horseback to pray before the village’s leather bound Adishi
Gospels, dating from 897. Disaster always loomed, however, and Kaldani struggled to
stockpile enough for the bitter winters, which even today cut off Adishi from the rest
of Svaneti. Yet nothing prepared him for the deadly avalanches of 1987. He kept his
family safe in the base of their stone tower, but dozens of others died across Svaneti
that winter — and the exodus began.
As more Svan families emigrated to lowland Georgia, Adishi became a ghost town.
At one point only four families remained — Kaldani and his wife, the village librarian,
among them. Kaldani’s sons, who had also abandoned Adishi, persuaded their
parents to join them one winter on the arid plains. They lasted four months before
rushing back to Adishi. “My family has lived here for more than 1,200 years,” he says.
“How could I let my village disappear?”
Going about his chores in his traditional woolen cap, Kaldani embodies the
persistence of Svan culture — and the peril it faces. He is one of the few remaining
fully fluent speakers of Svan. He is also one of the last village mediators, who have
versant.com • 47

Photo © Corinne Thrash

History
long been called upon to adjudicate disputes ranging from petty theft to long-running
blood feuds. The obligation to defend family honor, though slightly tempered
today, led to so many vendettas in early Svan society that scholars believe the stone
towers were built to protect families not just from invaders and avalanches but
also from one another.
In the chaos after the fall of the Soviet Union, blood feuds returned with a vengeance.
“I never rested,” Kaldani says. In some cases, after negotiating a blood price
(usually 20 cows for a murder), he brought feuding families to a church and made
them swear oaths on icons and baptize one another. The ritual, he says, ensures that
the families “will not feud for 12 generations.”
Blood feuds have virtually disappeared in Svaneti over the past decade, but the
ancient justice codes, carried out by mediators like Kaldani, persist. Other village
traditions endure too. Every August one local family hosts Adishi’s annual feast day,
Lichaanishoba, drawing former villagers from the lowlands and couples praying for
a son or giving thanks for the birth of one. Each couple brings a sheep as an offering,
along with a jug of home-brewed spirits. In the summer of 2013, 500 people
showed up. On a knoll next to the tiny 12th-century Church of St. George, 32 sheep
were blessed and sacrificed.
Blood feuds have virtually
disappeared in Svaneti over the
past decade, but the ancient
justice codes persist.
From atop the Kaldanis’ 50-foot stone tower, Adishi looks beautiful and forsaken.
Rusted shutters swing in the breeze. Pine trees sprout from half-collapsed towers.
The river below has washed out the dirt road leading to the village, making it accessible
only on foot or horseback. Yet Adishi is coming back to life, thanks to Kaldani’s
stubbornness and to the village’s location along a popular trekking route. In the past
two years seven families have moved back to rebuild their homes and open small
guesthouses, bringing the full-time population up to nearly 30. As two of Kaldani’s
neighbors sharpen their scythes for the final days of grass cutting before winter,
Adishi no longer feels abandoned. It feels reborn.
The song of love and vengeance begins softly, with a lone voice tracing the line of
an ancient melody. Other voices in the unheated room off Mestia’s main square soon
join in, building a dense progression of harmonies and countermelodies that grows
in urgency until it resolves in a single note of resounding clarity.
This is some of the world’s oldest polyphonic music, a complex form that features
two or more simultaneous lines of melody. It predates the arrival of Christianity in
Svaneti by centuries. Yet none of the musicians in the room this autumn afternoon is
over 25. When the session ends, the young men and women spill out into the square,
chatting and laughing and air kissing — and thumbing their mobile phones. “We’re
all on Facebook,” says Mariam Arghvliani, a 14-year-old girl who plays three ancient
stringed instruments (including an L-shaped Svan wooden harp) for her youth folk
ensemble, Lagusheda. “But that doesn’t mean we forget our heritage.”
Photo © Corinne Thrash
50 • versant

It’s one of Svaneti’s bittersweet ironies that even as its language dies out, its traditional
music is experiencing a revival. The resurgence is driven not by elders in the villages, the
longtime keepers of Svan culture, but by young people in Mestia, a town whose modern
aspirations are reflected in the undulating, futuristic police station that faces the stone
towers on the slopes above.
Like most in her generation, Arghvliani speaks only a smattering of Svan — “mostly just
the lyrics to our songs,” she says. But her musical immersion began almost from birth; by age
four she was singing in her aunt’s choir. Still, her talent might have withered, along with Svan
musical tradition, were it not for a youth program launched 13 years ago by Svaneti’s charismatic
cultural crusader, Father Giorgi Chartolani.
Sitting in his church’s graveyard, Chartolani recalls the post-Soviet tumult that endangered
a culture already weakened by nearly seven decades of Communist suppression. “Life was
brutal then,” he says, stroking his long beard. The priest nods at the tombstones, some etched
with the images of young men killed in feuds. “Villages were emptying out, our culture was
disappearing,” he says, noting that 80 out of 120 known Svan songs have disappeared in the
past two generations. “Something had to be done.” His program, which has taught traditional
music and dance to hundreds of students like Arghvliani, was, he says, “a light in the darkness.”
Now it illuminates an alternative future. That evening the young musicians return to Mestia’s
square in full festival regalia: boys in burgundy cassocks, silver daggers hanging from their
She sees her culture moving in two
directions: “The Svan language will
disappear with my generation,” she
says. “But the music will live on.”
Photo © Corinne Thrash
belts; girls in long black peasant dresses. Their audience consists of 50 foreign tourists in colorful
parkas, paying six dollars each for the show. The revival of Svan music was under way before
tourists began arriving in Svaneti, but it wasn’t until 2012 that the all-male ensemble, Kviria,
first performed for visitors. The outside world’s growing interest in the intricate musical form
has had a rebound effect: More Svan children are flocking to Chartolani’s classes.
Arghvliani doesn’t know yet if she’ll pursue a career in traditional music — she loves Beyoncé
and dubstep too — or even if she’ll stay in Svaneti. She sees her culture moving in two directions:
“The Svan language will disappear with my generation,” she says. “But the music will live on.”
In Svaneti even old feuds can have lasting repercussions. A century ago in Cholashi, Jachvliani’s
great-grandfather killed a neighbor to avenge the slaughtering of his prize bull. The feud ended
when the Jachvlianis paid the neighbors two and a half acres of farmland and 20 head of cattle,
a blood price whose effects can still be felt.
The family now has just one bull. The severed head of the other, sacrificed in honor of
Jachvliani’s dead grandmother, sits on a wooden table, eyes still open, thick gray tongue lolling
sideways. Under the beast’s implacable gaze, Jachvliani and the other men of Cholashi devour
the ormotsi’s ceremonial first dish: a spicy heart-and-liver stew. Later in the day, before the
raucous evening feast, Jachvliani and several men who haven’t shaved in the 40 days since his
grandmother’s death gather outside her room. A prayer, a toast. Then snippets of their scraggly
beards are clipped off and placed on an offering table next to her wooden cane.
versant.com • 53

The dead, like history itself, are kept close in Svaneti. Every month for a year the Jachvlianis
will hold smaller feasts in the grandmother’s honor. Then, 70 days before Easter, the family
will gather for Lamproba, a ceremony for “mentioning souls” that mixes pre-Christian
and Christian elements. Jachvliani and his male relatives will carry flaming birch branches
through the snow and lay them next to her grave. Toasts and prayers will be shared until
the torches burn out.
How long will the embers of tradition keep smoldering in Svaneti? On the morning after
the ormotsi, a clean-shaven Jachvliani heads across the valley to his new job — on a construction
crew paving the dirt road to the top of the pass. The road will eventually go all the way
to Ushguli, but work on this section is enabling heavy machinery to access the emerging ski
resort on Mount Tetnuldi. Next to the river below Cholashi, a chain-link fence encircles evidence
of what’s to come: row after row of chairlifts and gondolas.
The looming changes in this valley, along with a proposed hydroelectric dam farther south,
unsettle many Svans. What will happen to their villages, their land, their traditions? Jachvliani
tries to be optimistic. The ski resort, he says, could inject badly needed resources into their
isolated region — and bring back some of the 20 families that left the village. “We need more
jobs, more opportunities,” he says.
Sitting with his widowed mother near the kitchen hearth, Jachvliani peers out at the mountains
silhouetted against the sky. He stayed in Svaneti when his sisters left for lowland Georgia
because he was the only son, the last man in the family. Now, at 31, he can’t imagine leaving.
“Come back in ten years,” he says, laughing as his two young daughters climb on his back, “and
see if our village has survived.” His confidence comes from Svaneti’s long history of survival,
yes, but also from the simple fact that he is now one of the keepers of the flame.
Photographs © Corinne Thrash
54 • versant

Make
Salt of the Earth
In the mountains of Svaneti you will come across entirely different
worlds of cuisine. The village of Soli is one such place. Tucked
away amid the ancient Svan towers of centuries-old family lineage
one can experience both the hospitality and deep traditions that the
Khaptani family offers to visitors. From the detached kitchen hut to
the nearby chicken coop you feel like you’ve entered another world
from long ago.
The food in turn also tastes otherworldly; herbs picked from heirloom
gardens that have been used by their extended family for more
generations than most any westerner can begin to imagine. It is here
that we came to experience a truly incredible mix of spices ground
together with garlic to make “Svan Salt”, known locally as ‘grandmother’s
salt’. Traditionally used to compliment their boiled meat
dumplings and oven baked cheese bread (pictured below), this spiced
salt mix will be an incredible compliment to many western dishes.
Try this salt on a simple salad of fresh sliced cucumber, tomatoes,
and thinly sliced onions. Delicious as well on fried potatoes, broths
and soups, breakfast omelets or fried eggs, or barbecued meat. The
spiced salt is best kept tightly sealed to retain its full bodied flavor.
Photographs © Corinne Thrash
56 • versant

SVAN SALT
200 – 300 grams garlic (peeled and rinsed)
1 kilo salt
2 cups ground fenugreek (approximately)
1 cup ground coriander (approximately)
1 tablespoon ground medium chili pepper
1 tablespoon ground dill
1 tablespoon ground marigold
Begin by combining the salt with all spices in a large bowl. Using a
hand grinder, electric meat grinder, or Cuisinart start to grind the
garlic cloves in batches while adding the spice mix in equal amounts.
Once all ingredients have been ground together repeat the process
until your salt has an even consistency, rubbing between your hands
every couple minutes to help in the process.
The resulting svan salt will be almost wet to the touch when well
combined. Add chili pepper to taste. Store in a mason jar or similarly
well sealed container. Avoid storing in an unsealed container as this
spiced salt is strong in scent. Finished svan salt can preserve for many
years if well covered.
versant.com • 57

From the Road
Jack and Bebu
By Stosh Mintek
Jack was bleeding out of his ass. There was a lot of blood on the concrete step just
outside the house, spattered in fat droplets in the mud of the front yard. No one was
sure how long he’d been bleeding. Maybe a week, Dali thought. It was also hard to
say what was causing it, whether it was issuing from an external wound on his hindquarters
or genitals, or whether he was suffering some kind of internal complication,
a digestive ailment of some advanced nature. Dali said it was from a wolf attack,
though this seemed pretty unlikely. Jack wasn’t saying anything on the subject, of
course. In the farmhouse, Uncle Nukri was loading a .22.
We gathered around him, shivering in the cold morning light. Great angelic bodies
of mist were passing through the village, filling the air with chilled moisture. Hannah
58 • versant

crouched low, examining him, but Jack remained seated directly on
the injury, his face noble and solemn despite the indignities being
suffered. Austin scratched his head and stroked his graying muzzle,
then recoiled from the smell of his own hand. “Fishy,” he said, and
ducked inside to wash. Dali went about her chores, shuffling from barn
to farmhouse to kitchen-house, bearing sacks of potatoes, shoveling
manure patties out of the courtyard in the wake of the cows’ breakfast
march to pasture. Harried with the tasks of the day, and the constant
delightful burden of her big-stomached American guests, she had
little time to attend to Jack’s condition, and showed little concern as
she scooted by, all shawl and rubber boot.
And Nino, who’d guided us safely to the village along a perilous sixhour
drive into the heart of the Western Caucus Range, over collapsing
roads and between sheer canyon drop-offs, was similarly demure on
the subject of Jack. Treatment of any serious kind wasn’t an option,
she shrugged, as no veterinarians resided in the village. Whatever the
cause, there was no specialist to diagnose it — and traveling across
Svaneti in search of one was too expensive and time-consuming for
the taxed family.
But this wasn’t the reason that Jack continued to suffer untreated,
or that Nino’s uncle Nukri was preparing to kill him today. No, the
root cause sat inside the kitchen-house, nursing a cup of warm fresh
milk and regarding us keenly through smudged window panes. Bebu
was ninety and the senior member of the household, and while her
feelings and opinions remained unspoken on most matters these days,
there was one subject about which she was both fiercely expressive and
decidedly uncompromising, and that was Jack.
When he came close to the kitchen house, she rasped a sharp rebuke
and rose, trembling, to her feet. When he persisted, lingering by the
doorstep, she produced from a darkened corner a naked broomstick,
and, raising it high over her squat frame, brought the weapon down
full-strength on his thick skull. He took the hint, withdrawing into
the courtyard, where it had begun to drizzle. There, he seated himself
oh-so-gradually in the mud, while Bebu returned to her stove-side
bench and eased onto her haunches.
Jack, very simply, was Bebu’s nemesis, and vice versa. It was in certain
ways a fitting pairing. They were of similar size and length, Jack
having perhaps 10 pounds on her, Bebu maybe 6 inches in length.
Their dispositions were also markedly similar: in states of repose, both
Jack and Bebu possessed a great ruminative capacity, and one might
happen on either of them staring off into the middle distance, body
still, expression engaged and vacant somehow at once. But they shared
a fierce and instant temper, too — one which, once triggered, could
send Bebu railing against offending chickens or cows (or, on many
occasions, her sad-eyed squatting rival) with a naked broomstick, and
which sent limping Jack roaring off against transgressing cars on the
dirt street just up the hill from home, snarling and biting at the rattling
metal hulls of Ladas and Marshrutkas with furious abandon.
And there was the matter of their respective maladies. Jack’s wound
was the more glaring, to be sure, and responded badly to his automotive
assaults, issuing unrestrained spurts of bright red blood from his
rump as he trotted back to the courtyard. But Bebu’s left hand was
nothing to dismiss: sheathed in a cracked, oversize ski glove at most
hours of the day, it would emerge at rare moments to be soothed by
her right hand’s firm grip, revealed in the pale light to be nearly double
its natural size, inflated from within by some malignant force, arthritis
or cancer or Godknowswhat, plump and near bursting beneath
taught frail skin.
With no proper diagnosis or medicine on hand for Bebu’s condition,
it stood to reason that she begrudged the loathed Jack any better. And
surely his sanguineous leakage posed a sanitary issue that demanded
a certain amount of domestic diligence. But even as simple a thing as
an affectionate stroke of his forehead’s dirty scruff triggered a look of
sour disdain on her face. What might have once transpired between
them, months or years ago, in a state of youthful misbehavior, it was
impossible to imagine. But it needn’t have been much. For here, in the
wilds of northern Georgia, was a place of grudges everlasting. Blood
feuds that divided households for centuries, that racked up bodies as
steadily as families could conjure them forth. Too far removed to be
troubled even by the most ambitious of feudal lords, the peoples of
Svaneti engaged in their own domestic warfare, waged among handfuls
of wind-hardened souls over offenses long forgotten and never
forgiven. (Until the 20th century, a proposal was made when a young
man threw a bullet into the front yard of the family of his desired girl
— a promise that if such a wedding was not accepted, there would be
much blood shed.)
In this place, dogs were not bred for affection but for utility. They
lived among the livestock, fending off ravenous mountain creatures
and silhouetted thieves alike, trading their lives for scraps and the
shelter of a damp barn. The only recreational function of Svan dogs
was their engagement in organized fights, which were both legal and
exceedingly popular in the high-country villages near the Abkhazian
border. In this setting, too, affection for a dog was an inconvenience
at best, a dangerous limitation at worst.
And so Bebu marveled at the kindness her nemesis received at our
hands, gloved hand flexing absently in her lap, while Dali and Nino
maintained the comfortable indifference appropriate for such an occasion
as Jack’s execution dictated. It was, in the end, Uncle Nukri who
caved. Emerging from the farmhouse empty-handed, he looked us
over, the expectant foreigners, and muttered in Svan. Nino’s translation
was similarly pointed. “Jack looks better. Not killing him today.”
Uncertain whether celebration was warranted, we looked down to
see how he took the news. A single tail-thump sounded on the hard
slate path. Inside, Bebu’s eyes twinkled. We patted his gnarled furry
head goodbye, and set out to climb a mountain.
versant.com • 59

YOUTH of TBILISI
versant.com • 61

In her ongoing photo series ‘Youth’ artist and photographer Corinne Thrash examines the
spirit and energy of the development of youth around the world. Her latest photo installment
examines optimism of Georgia’s largest and quickest modernizing generation, youth of Tbilisi.
versant.com • 63

66 • versant

Last Look
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in
between are the doors of perception.”
— Aldous Huxley
Thank you for joining us in exploring the Georgian experience. We
hope that your future travels take you to the Caucasus soon. Join us
next month as we discover the lives and wonder of Bhutan. If you have
spent time in Bhutan please share with us an image of windows or
doors that have taken you to a world unknown: @versant
Photographs © Corinne Thrash
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