Georgia

Country in the Caucasus of southeastern Europe, bounded north by Russia, east by Azerbaijan, south by Armenia and Turkey, and west by the Black Sea.

Government
Under the 1995 constitution, as amended in 2003, Georgia has a limited presidential political system. The executive state president is directly elected for a five‐year term. The president governs with a cabinet of ministers, which includes a prime minister. The Parliament, also known as the Supreme Council, comprises 150 members, elected by proportional representation and serving four‐year terms.

History
Georgia was converted to Christianity in the 4th century AD. Western Georgia came under the Persian and Byzantine empires and Arabs conquered Georgia in the 7th century, but rebellious regions united to form an independent Georgian kingdom in the 11th century. The kingdom's control extended over the southern Caucasus and northern parts of Turkey and was most powerful in the 12th and early 13th centuries in what became known as Georgia's golden age. Its armies were defeated by the Mongols in 1236 and the kingdom fell apart in the 15th century and came under the control of Persian and Ottoman Turk imperial powers, before being annexed by tsarist Russia in 1801. Tbilisi (Tiflis) developed into an important commercial centre under the tsars; however, the Georgian language and church were gradually suppressed.

Under Soviet control
In May 1918, amid turmoil in the Russian Empire, Georgia declared its independence and Social Democrats won power at parliamentary elections. But, denied economic help from the West, this rebellion was crushed by the Red Army, which entered the capital Tbilisi in February 1921 and installed a puppet Georgian Bolshevik government. In 1922 Georgia was incorporated into the Soviet Union (USSR) as part of the Transcaucasian Federation, along with Armenia and Azerbaijan, before becoming a full republic in 1936. There was rapid industrialization between the 1920s and 1950s, but considerable resistance to rural collectivization, and political purges were instituted by police chief Lavrenti Beriya during the 1930s. During World War II, the Georgian‐born Soviet dictator Stalin ordered the deportation of 200,000 Meskhetians to Central Asia.

Growth of nationalism
During the 1950s and 1960s, Georgia's administration became notorious for its laxity and corruption. A drive against crime and corruption was launched 1972–85 by Edvard Shevardnadze, leader of the Georgian Communist Party (GCP), and there was accelerated Russification. This provoked a nationalist backlash, witnessed in the form of mass demonstrations and the founding in 1974 of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in Georgia by the university lecturer Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Glasnost produced an intensification of the nationalist campaign in the later 1980s, with a Georgian Popular Front and separatist group, the National Democratic Party of Georgia, established in 1988. This fuelled anti‐Georgian feeling among the republic's Abkhazian and Ossetian minorities. The massacre in Tbilisi of at least 20 peaceful Georgian pro‐independence demonstrators by Soviet troops in April 1989 added momentum to the nationalist movement and during 1989–90, with its old‐guard leadership purged, the GCP joined the secessionist camp.

After the seven‐party Round Table–Free Georgia nationalist coalition triumphed in Georgia's 1990 supreme soviet (assembly) elections, Zviad Gamsakhurdia was elected state president. The new parliament voted in January 1991 to establish a republican National Guard and end conscription to the Soviet Army.

Independence declared
In March 1991 Georgia boycotted the USSR constitutional referendum on preserving the Union. Instead, the republic held a plebiscite on independence, which secured 99% approval. Independence was declared in April 1991 and a campaign of civil disobedience against Soviet interests was launched. In May 1991 Gamsakhurdia became the first republic president in the USSR to be directly elected, winning 87% of the vote and defeating five other candidates. Gamsakhurdia failed to strongly denounce the attempted anti‐Gorbachev coup in Moscow in August 1991, prompting the resignation in protest of prime minister Tengiz Sigua. However, the GCP was banned in the wake of the failed Moscow coup.

Civil unrest
From September 1991 the increasingly dictatorial president, who arrested political opponents and ordered the closure of pro‐opposition newspapers, faced a growing popular protest movement, fuelled further by government troops firing on the crowds. With disorder mounting, Gamsakhurdia declared a state of emergency in September 1991. By late October 1991 most of the leadership of the nationalist National Democratic Party (NDP), headed by Giorgi Chanturia, had been arrested. The power struggle intensified and Gamsakhurdia was forced to flee to Armenia in January 1992. Distracted by these events, Georgia failed to join the new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), established in December 1991.

International recognition
In July 1992 Georgia became a member of the United Nations.

Multiparty elections
A military council with Tengiz Sigua as prime minister, having crushed a rebellion by Gamsakhurdia supporters, gave way to a new parliament elected in October 1992, with Shevardnadze as its chair. The multiparty system was exceptionally fragmented, with more than 100 parties competing for power.

Mounting civil strife
The new government had to deal with violent unrest in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the northwest, both of which were seeking autonomy. From August 1992 fighting intensified between Georgian troops and Abkhazi separatists and in an October 1993 offensive, the separatists secured much of Abkhazia, including the capital, Sukhumi. In desperation, President Shevardnadze turned to Russia for military assistance, and, reneging on earlier promises to the contrary, agreed to Georgia becoming a member of the CIS. During 2002–03, over 250,000 Georgians were ethnically cleansed from Abkhazia by separatists.

Russian troops were largely responsible for putting down a second rebellion by Gamsakhurdia supporters in the west of the country in November 1993. The former president, who had returned from exile to lead the rebellion, was later found dead. There was also a surge in crime and political terrorism, with Mafia gangs and paramilitary groups increasing their influence.

Peace accord
Several paramilitary groups were disbanded at the start of 1994 and in February a military cooperation pact was signed with Russia, allowing it to retain military bases within Georgia in return for training and equipping the Georgian army. A ceasefire agreed with the Abkhazi separatists in June 1994 ceded considerable autonomy to the republic and provided for the deployment of 2,500 Russian peacekeepers in the region. President Shevardnadze narrowly survived an assassination attempt in August 1995. In the same month a new constitution was adopted, and in November 1995 Shevardnadze convincingly won the presidential election. His supporters won the largest number of seats in the concurrent legislative elections.

Improved economy
Civil war and political instability led to a 60% fall in national output 1991–92, inflation in excess of 5,000% in 1994, and severe fuel and food shortages. However, by 1996 Georgia's economy was in recovery, with strong GDP growth, inflation under control, a new currency, and privatization and land reform underway.

In April 1996, as part of an effort to edge Georgia out of Russia's shadow, Shevardnadze signed a symbolic cooperation agreement with the European Union.

Elections, condemned by the Georgian government as illegal, were held in November 1996 to the secessionist Abkhaz parliament, the People's Assembly, and for the presidency of the separatist region of South Ossetia. In May 1998 around 20,000 Georgians fled secessionist Abkhazia, after the worst fighting for five years between Georgian forces and separatists. A ceasefire, however, was soon established. In October 1999, Vladislav Ardzinba was re‐elected president of Abkhazia. He declared it a sovereign state after overwhelming approval of a referendum on independence, but Georgian President Shevardnadze and the international community condemned the election and referendum as unlawful. In July 2000, the Georgian government signed a pact with Prime Minister Vyacheslav Tsugba of Abkhazia, agreeing not to seek to settle the conflict by force.

In February 1998 Shevardnadze survived an assassination attempt on his motorcade in Tbilisi, which killed three bodyguards. Soldiers who had served in the private army of former president Gamsakhurdia were suspected.

In November 1999, relations between Georgia and Russia deteriorated as a result of Russian claims that Georgia was sheltering Chechen soldiers injured in the Chechen–Russian war. Nevertheless, Russia agreed to reduce its military presence in Georgia by the end of 2000, and to close two of its four military bases in Georgia by July 2001.

Leadership changes and crisis in Ajaria
Shevardnadze won the April 2000 presidential elections and his party won the November 2003 parliamentary elections. But international observers alleged voting irregularities, and Shevardnadze eventually resigned after widespread non‐violent protests known as the Rose Revolution. Mikhail Saakashvili, leader of the National Movement‐Democrats (NMD), the only candidate put up by the opposition parties, was victorious in the presidential elections of January 2004. The NMD also won a clear victory in the March 2004 parliamentary elections, which were viewed as the most free in the country's history.

In spring 2004 there was a political crisis in the southwestern autonomous republic of Ajaria, whose leader, Aslan Abashidze, responded to Georgian army military manoeuvres by blowing up three bridges connecting Ajaria with Georgia. In May 2004, after mass demonstrations against him in Batumi, Abashidze fled Georgia.

In February 2005, Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania was found dead in a friend's flat, from gas poisoning, and was succeeded by the former finance minister Zurab Nogaideli. The new government boosted military spending and the army was modernized and supported US forces in peacekeeping in Iraq from 2005.