Self-Ruling Georgia Is Painting the Town

TBILISI, Georgia — City workers are out en masse to repaint the grand old buildings lining Tbilisi’s main street in bright hues of yellow, pink and blue as this capital gears up to celebrate 80 years since Georgia’s first declaration of independence.

Tuesday’s big party, which will include a parade of the former Soviet republic’s military hardware, will also celebrate Georgia’s second attempt at independence this century. That one got off to a shaky start in 1991 but now looks more promising, as Georgians get ready to cash in on the Caspian Sea region’s oil bonanza.

Under the steady hand of President Eduard A. Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister, this mountainous country in the crisis-prone Caucasus region finally appears to be finding its niche. After the early post-Soviet years of hyper-inflation, war and anarchy, Georgia has managed to stabilize its currency, disarm the gunmen who once roamed the streets at will and hold together cease-fires in two separatist regions.

Georgia’s first stab at self-rule, in 1918, was not so long-lived. The state was quickly conquered by the Red Army in 1921 and swallowed up by the Soviet Union along with oil-rich Azerbaijan to the east and Armenia to the south.

By contrast, the new Georgia posted 10% growth last year, winning praise from international lending institutions.

“We started from absolute zero, and now we’ve got to the stage where we can talk not about whether we’re independent, but how to strengthen and reinforce our independence,” said First Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Ukleba.

Ukleba is typical of the new generation of energetic, Western-oriented Georgians who have been working to build and fortify parliament and other democratic institutions. He has also been one of the key negotiators pushing for Georgia’s entry into the Council of Europe and the World Trade Organization--each likely to happen next year.

But high ideals of independence and integration into the international community mean little to the many impoverished refugees who lost everything when fighting broke out in the separatist republic of Abkhazia a year after Georgia declared independence in 1991.

About 250,000 people in this country of 5.5 million remain homeless--temporarily housed in cramped hotels and begging on the streets outside.

But the fiercely patriotic Georgians, many of whom still refuse to speak Russian, do not want to turn the clock back, no matter their deprivations.

“Independence was a good idea, and I wouldn’t want Georgia to lose that,” said Tamila Tsagareishvili, 58, a lecturer in ethnography at Tbilisi State University. “But we just had such high expectations of independence, that things would improve.

“Instead, they got worse,” she said, laughing about her paltry salary of 35 lari ($25) a month.

The government hopes that solutions to many of the problems can be found in a pipeline that will start pumping oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia and on to international markets early next year. Georgia hopes to win an even bigger pipeline to carry about 800,000 barrels a day, but it is competing with Russia.

“The big pipeline and Caspian oil can be a tremendous support for our nation to remain independent,” said Alexander Rondeli, a foreign policy expert here.

“But at the same time, it can also bring disaster,” Rondeli said, referring to a recent attempt on Shevardnadze’s life widely believed to have been organized by reactionary forces in Russia hoping to destabilize the region and thus win the pipeline contract. There are still fears in Tbilisi that another assassination attempt could be in the offing.