Georgia, 2013

It is a great honour to once

again represent my beloved nation at this rostrum.

During the past decade, when I have had the privilege

to address the Hall, Georgia has moved from a failed

State to a market democracy. We have experienced

both advances and setbacks, both breakthroughs

and mistakes. But the world has been able to witness

my nation’s constant commitment to freedom. I ask

members today once again to hear the voice of a

nation that transcends political, social and religious

differences in a common love for freedom — a voice

that, despite all the problems we have encountered and

the challenges we still have to overcome, is full of hope.

Looking at our world today, I think that this voice of

hope is needed.

The optimism of the early 1990s, when the spread

of liberal and democratic values seemed natural, when

the end of history had been proclaimed, and when the

United Nations was set to become the heart and the

soul of a world finally at peace, the optimism of that

era — noticeable when I was a student in New York

and visited the United Nations as an intern — was then

crushed by a wave of pessimism and cynicism.

The world is not at peace. Humankind has not

reconciled with itself, and the United Nations did not

become the heart and soul of a united globe. Western

civilization, once triumphant, is now trying to tackle a

deep economic, social, and spiritual crisis. In Eastern

Europe the colour revolutions are challenged by the

very forces they defeated a few years ago. In the Middle

East the glorious images of cheering crowds in Cairo

and Tunis have been replaced by the horrendous videos

of the gassed children of Damascus.

There are many good reasons to be disillusioned.

But should the untrammelled optimism of the 1990s be

replaced by an equally untrammelled pessimism, by a

sense of resignation that stifles hope? Should the fact

that the expansion of democracy and freedom turns out

to require profound struggle cause us to renounce our

beliefs and our principles?

I have come here today to share the hopes on behalf

of my nation and to speak out on behalf of my Georgian

people against such pervasive fatalism. I came here to

address those who doubt, those who hesitate and those

who are tempted to give in.

If the West is an anachronism, why do millions

of Poles, Czechs, Estonians, Romanians and others

cherish so much the day they entered NATO? Why

are millions of Ukrainians, Georgians, Moldovans

and others desperately knocking on the doors of the

European Union?

If freedom is no longer fashionable, how do we

explain that the suicide of a previously unknown citizen

in a remote Tunisian town has changed the map of the

world? No, history did not come to an end in 1989 or

1991, as was proclaimed, and it never will. Freedom is

still its driving force and its goal. Everywhere, men and

women who want to live in freedom are confronted by

the forces of tyranny. The question is: are we going to

be actors or spectators in that confrontation?

As I speak, the Eastern European countries aspiring

to join the European family of free and democratic

nations are facing constant pressures and threats.

Armenia has been cornered and forced to sign a customs

union that is not in that nation’s interest or in those of

our region. Moldova is being blockaded. Ukraine is

under constant attack. Azerbaijan faces extraordinary

pressure. And Georgia is occupied. Why? Because

an old empire is trying to reclaim its bygone borders.

“Borders” is actually not the right word, since that

empire — be it the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union,

the Russian Federation, or the Eurasian Union — never

had borders. It had only margins.

I came today to speak in the name of those margins.

Unlike most nations, the Russian Federation has no

interest in having stable States around it. Neighbouring

countries in constant turmoil is what the Kremlin is

seeking. It rejects the very idea of strong Governments

in Georgia, Ukraine or Moldova, even ones that try to

be friendly to its interests. I was never a great fan of

what the French call “la langue de bois”. But, as my

second term nears its end, I feel the urge more than

heretofore to speak my mind. Let us be very concrete.

Do members think that Vladimir Putin wants

Armenia to decisively triumph over Azerbaijan, for

instance? No. That would make Armenia too strong and

potentially too independent. Do members think then

that the contrary is true, that Moscow wants Baku to

prevail over Yerevan? Obviously not. The current rise

of a modernized, dynamic Azerbaijan is a nightmare for

Russian leaders. No, they do not want anyone to prevail.

The conflict itself is their objective, since it keeps both

nations dependent and blocks their integration into the

European common space.

Do members think that the electoral defeat of

the forces that led the Orange Revolution in Ukraine

has led the Kremlin to take a softer approach to that

country? On the contrary. I spoke yesterday to my

colleague Viktor Yanukovych. His Government is

under constant attack and pressure from Russia. That

is what is happening on a daily basis, again ahead of

the European summit in Vilnius. Russian officials now

speak openly about dismembering that nation. I just

heard the speech two days ago.

Do members think that the Kremlin would agree to

discuss the de-occupation of our regions of Abkhazia

and South Ossetia, now that the Government has

changed in Tbilisi? Far from it. The annexation of

Georgian lands by Russian troops continues. Yesterday,

the occupants again expelled Georgian citizens from

their houses and are destroying their villages, homes

and the houses of their parents and grandparents. In

daylight, they are taking over their cemeteries and

water systems with total impunity.

Despite the friendly statements made by the

new Georgian Government in recent weeks and

months, the Russian military continues to advance its

position, dividing communities with new barbed wire,

threatening our economy, moving towards the vital

Baku-Supsa pipeline, approaching closer and closer

to the main highway of Georgia, and thus putting into

question the very sustainability of our country.

We are one of very few nations in history — of which

I am very proud — that has, unfortunately, sustained a

full-blown attack by Russia. We are the only one, in

many centuries, whose statehood and independence

have survived, despite a full-blown attack by the more

than 100,000-strong Russian army, despite being

bombed by 200 planes and attacked by the full Russian

Black Sea fleet and tens of thousands of mercenaries.

Our statehood and independence have survived despite

all of those things. But let us not now risk losing any

of that in a time of peace. We have survived because

were united; we survived because the world was with

us. I hope that the world will remain with us when that

pressure is on us.

I have come here, in the name of the Georgian

people, to ask the international community to react

strongly to the aggression and to help us to put an end

to the Russian annexation of our lands. The hostility of

Vladimir Putin and his team towards the Government

that I have had the privilege to lead for almost a decade

has not been based on personal hatred or cultural

misunderstanding. Any such interpretation was just a

smokescreen.

My predecessor, President Shevardnadze, came

from the highest-level Soviet nomenklatura. He was

returned to power in Georgia with direct Russian help

in the 1990s, through a military coup. He was well

known for his Soviet diplomatic skills — unlike me.

And yet, Russia constantly undermined his authority

and even tried to assassinate him several times.

It is not about Gamsakhurdia — the first President

of Georgia — Shevardnadze, Saakashvili, or the present

Prime Minister Ivanishvili. Those names actually do

not matter when the stakes are so high. This is about the

possibility — or lack — of true statehood in Georgia and

beyond. Why? Because the current Russian authorities

know perfectly well that as soon as strong institutions

are built in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova or in any other

place — as soon as functioning States emerge — such

institutions, such States will reflect and enforce the will

of their people, which is to become fully independent

and move towards Europe.

The Georgian experience of successful reforms

and the creation of a functioning State was therefore

considered to be a virus — one that could and would

contaminate the whole post-Soviet region. We became

the least corrupt country in Europe, the world’s number-

one reformer — according to the World Bank — one

of the top places for business and the least criminal

country in Europe, after having been one of the most

criminal. That was the virus that should be eliminated

by every means possible.

That is why the Georgian nation has suffered an

embargo, a war, an invasion and an occupation — all

since 2006. But it is also why the resistance of the

Georgian people and the resilience of the Georgian

democracy are of the utmost importance for the whole

region.

The efforts to roll back the advances of the

European Union and of NATO in our region — progress

based on the will of our people — are becoming ever

more intense. Those efforts have a name: the Eurasian

Union. It makes me sick when KGB officer Vladimir

Putin lectures the world about freedom, values and

democracy. That is the least of the things he can do

for the world, as the dictatorial leader of one of the

last empires left. But that new project is much more

dangerous than his lectures. The Eurasian Union has

been shaped as an alternative to the European Union,

and unveiled by Vladimir Putin as the main project of

his new presidency — a new Russian empire.

Because European and Euro-Atlantic integration

take a lot of time and require tremendous effort;

because there are moments when one might think

one is pursuing a mirage; and because the threats are

becoming so strong, the pressure so direct, while the

promises seem so far away — some people in our

region might fall victim to fatigue and ask themselves,

“Why not?”. Today, I want precisely to explore that

“why not?”.

Much more than with a choice of foreign policy or

of international alliances, our nations are confronted

with a choice of society, a choice of life. Our people

have to decide whether they accept to live in a world

of fear and crime: a world in which differences are

perceived as threats and minorities as punching bags;

a world in which opponents are faced with selective

justice or beatings; a world that we in our region all

know very well, as do those in some other regions of the

world, since this is the world from which we originate.

The Eurasian Union is both our recent past and

the future shaped for us by some ex-KGB officers in

Moscow. On the opposite side, our revived traditions

and our centuries-old aspirations have led us towards

another world called Europe.

European societies are far from perfect — we

all know that. There too, one can have fears, doubts,

angers, hatreds and social inequality. But there, at

the same time, meritocracy prevails over nepotism,

tolerance is a fundamental of public life and current

opponents are the future ministers, and not prisoners to

be or enemies to beat.

The choice, when it is expressed in that way, is

so obvious for the people of our region that some

Kremlin strategists — they call themselves “polito-

technologists” — have decided to cancel the

truth and have shaped lies that they are spreading

throughout Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and many

other places. Their mouthpieces in our respective

countries — that conscious or unconscious so-called

fifth column — identify the European Union with the

destruction of family values, the erosion of national

traditions and the promotion of gays and lesbians,

undermining our traditional religions.

Strangely, in recent years, and even more so in

recent months, we hear in Tbilisi, Kiev and Chisinau

the same ugly music that was first orchestrated in

Moscow. We hear that our traditions are collapsing

under the influence of the West, that Christian holidays

will be replaced by gay pride events and churches by a

multicultural Disneyland. We hear that our Orthodox

identity is under threat. And after all of that, we hear

that we share with our former masters a common

respect for decency and traditions.

Are we so naive as to believe the lies of Putin and

the others, as other generations have done, allowing

our sovereignty to be kidnapped? Are we so unfair

to our ancestors to think that their memory would be

honoured by attacks on mosques or by pogroms? Are

we so unaware of our own history that we allow it to

repeat itself endlessly?

When we hear the fake music of the orthodox

brotherhood sung by Russian imperialists, can we

not hear the true voice of Patriarch Kirion, who was

assassinated, or the eternal voice of the Patriarch

Ambrosi Khelaya, who was tortured for days and weeks

only because he appealed to the Geneva Conference

against the invasion of his country? He told his Russian

interrogators, “You can have my body, my flesh, but

you will never have my soul.” Are we so deaf as not to

hear the voices of the bishops and priests tortured and

killed by Russian imperialists and Russian communists?

Are we so uneducated that we do not recall who has

repainted our churches and erased our sacred frescos?

Are we so blind today not to see the destruction of our

churches by the same people who erased our churches

in the nineteenth century — Russians who are now in

the occupied territory?

We need to know our history. Our history teaches us

that tolerance is the basis for sovereignty in our region.

It is not only a moral duty; it is an issue of national

security. We need to know our history to understand

that the same old imperialistic principle — divide and

rule — is being applied today as it was two centuries

ago.

Looking at our region today, those who have some

knowledge of Caucasian history might remember the

Armenian-Azerbaijani bloodshed of 1905, directly

created by the tsarist Administration; compare it to the

beginning of the conflict in Karabakh in the late 1980s.

The Russian army was present there, in large numbers.

In front of its eyes, the war started and they pretended

to help both sides, but in fact stirred up the conflict.

They might recall — as I do too well — the

beginning of the war in the Georgia region of Abkhazia

in the early 1990s, when Georgian paramilitary groups

were getting their weapons from the same Russian

troops who were actually leading, directing and

assisting the Abkhaz militia and bombing Georgian

territory and bringing in Chechen mercenaries in order

to kill any form of solidarity between nations of the

North and the South Caucasus. They did so just as they

sent — for the same reason, more than one century

before — Georgian officers to the front line of their

wars against the Chechens, Ingush and Dagestanis.

We could also look at other margins throughout

the times. We could look at Poland or Ukraine, and we

would see the same pictures. Everywhere it reached,

the Empire inflamed the relations between subjugated

peoples and separated them by a wall of fanatic

antagonism. Unfortunately, it used to work. But what is

even more unfortunate is that it is still working today.

The European Union, the greatest political success

of recent decades, has been built on three pillars,

which could be characterized as three rejections — the

rejection of the extreme nationalists who had led Europe

to the collective suicide of two world wars and the

horrors of nazism; the rejection of communism, which

was threatening to be spread throughout the continent

and the world; and, finally, the rejection of colonialism

and imperialism. It took time — and many participants

today, as victims of French imperialism or British

imperialism, remember it well and painfully — for

the French and British Empires to accept that third

rejection. But giving up their colonies was the price they

had to pay for the modernization of their economies and

the development of their democracies. It was also the

price to pay for European unification to become fully

realized.

The Eurasian Union is based on the exact opposite

premise. It is fuelled by intolerance, it is lead by old

structures of the KGB, and it is designed to revive an old

empire. That is what the Eurasian Union is all about. Of

course, joining the Eurasian Union is very easy. There

are no social, economic or political criteria to be met;

becoming a colony, in fact, requires no effort at all.

Passivity, mediocrity, the absence of national pride and

a willingness to be enslaved are the only requirements.

On the other hand, to form a real union there is

no alternative but to make a herculean effort and meet

exact criteria, because principles are precisely what

create a union. To those who doubt, therefore, I say that

it is precisely because the European Union demands

effort and imposes criteria for joining — because the

European Union does not seek to absorb us while the

Eurasian Union dreams of absorption — that the choice

should be obvious.

But there is an even better reason for saying that

the choice is obvious. The choice is obvious because

the Russian project is doomed to fail. No empire is

sustainable today; we are living in the twenty-first

century. It is certainly not the Russian century, and

the Russian Empire is the last, anachronistic empire in

the world. If we look back at history, France and the

United Kingdom lost their colonies not only because

the colonies fought for their independence, but also

because people in Paris and London ultimately did not

believe in their empire anymore.

Exactly the same thing is happening in Russia

nowadays. The imperial dream is being rejected first,

as we have seen, at its margins. But, most crucially,

perhaps, the idea of the Empire is rejected at its very

centre. Such a rejection does not manifest itself in public

protests alone or in the rising polls of the opposition

in the main cities of Russia. It expresses itself in the

universal cynicism of Russian elites towards Putin’s

Eurasian vision. The very people who are supposed to

serve it do not believe in the viability of the project.

Rejected at its margins, rejected at its centre, the

imperialistic path will come to a dead end, the Eurasian

Union will fail, and Russia will in the end become a

nation State with borders, instead of margins — a real

country with real borders. Then it will start to seek stable

relations with stable neighbours. Then cooperation will

replace confrontation.

It will happen, and much sooner than people think,

to the benefit of the margins, but most of all to the

benefit of the Russian people themselves.

It will happen because the imperial project has

become absurd for a generation of Russian citizens who

are among the world’s most enthusiastic users of the

Internet.

It will happen because ethnic discrimination in

Russia is being used in its territories, but it will not

make Russia a stronger and more united State.

It will happen because the endless resources

provided by the revenues of oil and gas are challenged

by the perspectives offered by the exploitation of shale

gas and shale oil. The shale gas revolution is really

undermining the last authoritarian empire in the world.

It will happen because gas alone does not replace

economic modernization.

It will happen because of corruption and the

absence of justice.

It will happen because entire regions have been

alienated by discrimination and violence — because the

people of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Tatarstan,

Bashkortostan and many other places have been so

persecuted that they do not feel part of any common

project with the central authorities in Moscow.

It will happen because the frustrations, angers and

hatreds are too strong to bear and the unifying ideal is

too absent.

It will happen, not in the coming decades but in

the coming years. A few years from now, the Assembly

will recall my words. Vladimir Putin will have left the

Kremlin and vanished from Russian politics, even if

he says that he will be there for another 20 years or

more. Russian citizens will remember him as a ghost

from the old times — from the times of corruption and

oppression.

Nobody knows whether the process will be calm or

violent, whether his successor will be nationalistic or

liberal, or both together, but what matters is something

else — Russia will no longer be an empire. It will

become, finally, a normal nation State. That is the

horizon we should all prepare for together.

Meanwhile, as our region remains an area of

confrontation, the formerly captive nations should

unite their strengths instead of cultivating their

divisions. Some leaders and some countries in the past

understood that the freedom of one was dependent on

the freedom of all the other subjugated nations, like

Poland, which for many centuries dreamed of uniting

all persecuted people, or like the Poland of Marshal

Pilsudski, which invited all the oppressed people

or their officers to unite under the flag of Polish

independence and Polish military forces. But never did

our ancestors benefitefrom a force that was vast and

powerful enough, that understood its strategic interest

was to preserve the sovereignty of each of our nations.

Today that force exists; it is, with all its deficiencies,

the European Union.

As we come closer to the Vilnius Eastern

Partnership Summit, I would like to reiterate a call

that I have made several times in the recent years. By

launching the Eastern Partnership as a response to the

2008 invasion of Georgia, the European Union has

offered to our nations a platform for us to cooperate

under its benevolent umbrella. We should invest much

more in it. We should develop common projects, first

and foremost focusing on the necessary reforms that we

should carry out together, because reforms mean for all

of us statehood and independence.

Russian Empress Catherine II knew it well. When

Poland started to successfully implement an ambitious

programme of reforms based on precepts from the

French and British Enlightenments despite Russian

attempts to counter those reforms, she wrote a long

and secret letter to the German Emperor, Frederick the

Great of Prussia. The letter was and remains one of the

most impressive expressions of the nature and strategy

of the imperialistic project. It states that the ongoing

reforms were dangerous for both Russia and Prussia

because they would turn Poland into a true State,

that the reforms needed to be stopped and that Poland

should be attacked and dismembered before reforms

were fully implemented so that it never needed to be

occupied again.

The letter will not sound unfamiliar to those who

know how much Vladimir Putin loathed the Georgian

experience during the past decade. Many Russians

were asking, if the once-corrupt Georgia, a criminal

country, a mafia-ridden country, considered to be a

failed country, could succeed, why is it that Russia

cannot succeed? It was an ideologically dangerous

project. For the first time, an efficient nation State was

being built in the Caucasus, and the reforms had to be

crushed before they could bear all their fruits.

Unity should be our rule in Eastern Europe,

including in the divided Caucasus. I have spoken about

the beginnings of the war in Abkhazia. I could have

recalled an older scene that symbolically characterizes

the history of the Caucasus. It was at the end of the

rebellion led by Shamil, the great imam of the Northern

Caucasus, against the Russian Empire, after Shamil

had surrendered and after the last Chechen leader still

fighting, Baysongour, had been wounded and captured.

As Baysongour was going to be hanged, the Russian

officers brought together a crowd of Dagestani men

to witness the execution. They ordered one of them to

remove the chair on which Baysongour was standing

in order to execute him. The Russians knew what they

were doing — they hoped to fuel the local vendettas

and oppose the people, which is an old tradition in

the Caucasus. Seeing that, the valiant commander

Baysongour moved the chair himself, committing a

suicide forbidden under all religions, including Islam,

and preserving the relations between neighbours.

Despite that one failure, how many times has the

strategy of dividing neighbours encountered success

among the nations of the Caucasus? It needs to come

to an end. That is why I have launched several projects

during my presidency to reinforce the people-to-

people contacts between North and South Caucasus,

projects focusing mostly on education and on university

exchange. That is why the Georgian Parliament has

recognized the genocide of the Cherkezian people — one

of the least known and tragic pages of the history of the

world, when an entire nation was wiped because their

land was needed by the Russian Empire.

We need to build on those efforts. We need to

prepare for the time when the Empire collapses, so

that its legacy of hatred is swiftly overcome. And we,

as citizens of Georgia, need to prepare for the time

when Russian troops will leave our occupied regions,

when Moscow will withdraw from Tskhinvali and

Sukhumi, Abkhazia. We need to prepare ourselves to

welcome back our Ossetian and Abkhaz fellow citizens

as brothers and sisters and not as enemies. We need

to prepare for the time when hundreds of thousands,

in fact, more than half a million, internally displaced

Georgians and members of other ethnic groups return

to their deserted homes, because that time will come

much sooner than we think.

As my second term nears its end, I take pride in

Georgia’s many accomplishments during my tenure. We

ushered Georgia out of a state of darkness, introduced

unprecedented transparency into our public service, put

our children back in school and got rid of the gangs.

We have brought our nation closer than ever before to

its European dream and worked tirelessly to renew the

spirit of tolerance that guided Georgia in our glorious

past.

We did many good things, but like any leader — and

when I became President, I was then the youngest

president in the world — I realize that some things were

done at a very high cost because of lack of experience. In

our rush to impose a new reality against the background

of internal and external threats, we cut corners and

certainly made mistakes. At times we went too far and

at other times not far enough. I fully acknowledge my

responsibility in that regard, and I sincerely feel for all

those who believe that they did not benefit enough from

our work, or even that they were victims of our radical

methods.

I want to tell all Georgian citizens — those who

supported our project, our policies and our party and

those who rejected them — how proud I am of their

maturity. We promised them this project, but we did not

promise them that it would be smooth going. We were

very ambitious, and that was because our people were

so mature and so brave. I want to tell them from this

rostrum how humble I feel in the light of the sacrifices

and the efforts they made.

We are and should remain a nation united in a

common love for freedom and dignity. We are and

should remain a nation united in the deepest respect

for the sacrifices made by our soldiers, a nation

sharing the same sorrow when they lose their lives - in

Afghanistan, for instance - and taking the same pride

in their bravery. We are a nation that is proud of our

soldiers, who stood up to a force of Russian invaders

one hundred times the size of our contingent, and gave

us and the world time to mobilize and to protect and

save our independence — something that, with all

due respect, many much bigger and more powerful

nations could not do in the twentieth century. We are

and we should remain a nation united in our historical

identity and our desire to join the European family of

democratic nations, the family we should never have

been separated from in the first place, our family. The

path of the Georgian people towards freedom, regional

unity and European integration is far from over, and

I will continue to dedicate every day of my life to its

success, as a proud citizen of a proud nation.