When the Soviet Union dissolved on New Year’s Eve, 1991, it was replaced by 15 newly-independent countries with vastly different cultures and levels of development. One of those countries, Georgia, emerged with the determination to shed its Soviet baggage and return to Europe as a modern, functioning nation-state. For this country, Europeanisation became synonymous with “desovietisation.”
Georgia first started moving westward in the early 1990s under the leadership of late President Eduard Shevardnadze. Despite presiding over a corrupt and deeply dysfunctional state, Shevardnadze succeeded in bringing Georgia into NATO’s Partnership for Peace in 1994. By 2001, the country was holding joint …read more
Source: Emerging Europe