Russians in Georgia
Thousands flee repression or sanctions but find - and pose - problems in Tbilisi
The influx of Russian travelers to Georgia since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine presents an interesting case study on the topic of immigration. According to the Washington Post about 35,000 Russians have come to Georgia since the invasion. Informally, the word on the street is that Russian is now being spoken in every public square in Tbilisi; anecdotally I can confirm that I did hear what sounded like Russian a few times while puttering around downtown on a recent visit.
I usually count myself as a supporter of immigration, immigrants’ rights, visa liberalization, and even open borders, but this particular situation poses several specific problems - economic, social, military, and moral - which do not have easy solutions. I want to make it clear from the outset that I do not advocate or condone any mistreatment of individuals based on their nationality - even if they are Russian - nor do I advocate or condone the denial of human rights, including the right to freedom of movement or the right to seek asylum. That said, this does appear to be a case where different groups have conflicting rights or conflicting interests, and I intend to analyze those conflicts in this post as fairly and impartially as I am able.
The situation is complicated by the fact that some of the migrants are more like political refugees who theoretically have common cause with the people of Ukraine and Georgia, while others are more like economic migrants who have the privilege to decamp to Tbilisi and reap the privileges of wealth while avoiding the consequences of their government’s aggression and malfeasance. The WaPo article highlights Russian activists who are fleeing repression by their own government, but that is far from the full story. Many of these people are fleeing sanctions - that is, they want to live in a place where they can conduct normal business operations, and Georgia is a convenient such place. It’s close, it’s modern, it’s affordable, and many Georgians speak Russian. It’s also a country that specifically markets itself as business-friendly and freelance-friendly, attracting a vibrant community of digital nomads through a combination of a very liberal visa policy and a simple tax system which boasts low taxes and ease of filing and payment. The Japan Times reports that some multinational companies are actually requiring their Russian staff to move to Georgia. There is a sort of spectrum between political refugees and economic migrants of convenience and where someone falls on this spectrum might have ethical implications in terms of how they ought to act and what rights and privileges we may think they are entitled to.
Russian Gentrification
Having lived in Brooklyn I am familiar enough with gentrification to see it coming in a situation like this. For those unfamiliar, the basic process is that an influx of people moving into an area causes rents to rise which pushes existing renters out. This may occur because an area suddenly gains a reputation as “cool”, which is how it usually went in Brooklyn. In any case, new businesses open to cater to the new population which reinforces the cycle by attracting yet more new people, driving rents yet higher and pushing out yet more traditional residents. In the US this often has a racial component - it’s relatively privileged, mostly white people moving into relatively underprivileged, mostly black/minority neighborhoods. And of course the name “gentrification” strongly suggests the class element - the “gentrifiers” often have wealthy/middle class backgrounds and elite education, while the locals are often working class or poor. Of course, there are perks to having an attractive neighborhood with new businesses setting up shop and more money flowing into the community, but the challenge is to find ways to gain these perks without displacing people who have lived in a community for their whole lives.
You can see how the influx of Russians maps to this model. The Japan Times article notes that rents in Tbilisi have doubled “due to a spike in demand from the newcomers”. Word on the street is that they’ve more than doubled - I have friends who told me they’re being priced out of their rental contract by renters who will pay triple what they’re paying. This isn’t just about demand - it’s also about Russians’ willingness and ability to pay, and Georgian landlords’ willingness to price gouge them. I’m told that the Russian renters are so wealthy that they don’t even haggle the price down - they’ll just agree to pay whatever number you quote to them, with no sense of or apparent concern about what the fair market price might be.
So I might predict that, if this trend continues for some time, the Tbilisi rental market might become difficult for locals - pushing them out of certain areas, perhaps, or out of the city entirely. I might predict that businesses might open up to cater to Russians, or hire Russian-speaking staff, to capture income from the wealthy Russians. This in turn could reinforce the idea of Tbilisi as a good place for Russians to come and live and work. The Japan Times talks about Russians having trouble finding schools for their children. Georgia is very business-friendly and so it wouldn’t surprise me if private schools started popping up specifically to cater to the Russian expat community. I’ve already been hearing about how noticeable the Russian presence is here, and that’s just from the people. I expect we’ll start seeing an increase in signs printed in Russian, in businesses hiring Russian speakers or marketing themselves to Russians, and other more tangible or concrete changes. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say this could change the face of Tbilisi, or at least whatever part of Tbilisi Russians end up concentrated in.
This isn’t necessarily bad. All cities change, and over the last decade I’ve seen Tbilisi businesses go from majority Georgian/Russian to majority Georgian/English. I’ve seen Wendy’s and Dunkin Donuts and KFC pop up all over the place. And the city has often had ethnic enclaves - an Armenian quarter here, a Turkish neighborhood there, etc. - and while there have been a few issues with nationalists protesting, e.g., signs in Farsi or Arabic, generally I’d say Georgians are pretty proud of having a somewhat multicultural capital city.
That said, because Georgia’s relationship with Russia is so fraught, it’s likely that Russians pricing Georgians out of their own neighborhoods and becoming more of an overt presence in other ways will feed into already existing social and political tensions, which is a good segue for my next section.
Social Conflict and Anti-Russian Discrimination
I was recently dismayed to see a video being passed around of a Russian woman having a bit of a public meltdown at a supermarket in Tbilisi. The video is being circulated with no context so people are filling in the blanks with stereotypes about Russians, which is itself instructive.
The main stereotype is that Russians are disrespectful and arrogant, which is expressed first and foremost by refusing to speak a word of Georgian. Almost every time I have a conversation with a Georgian stranger, they express some kind of positive sentiment about the fact that I speak to them in Georgian. Georgians see speaking Georgian as a sign of respect to Georgia. This is a bit different from how Americans view speaking English - for most Americans I know, speaking English in the US is just a basic expectation. It’s less about respect and more about obligation - if you’re in the US, you are obligated to learn and use English. I’ve never heard an American - even my very progressive friends - thank a foreigner for speaking English, or express appreciation for it, or treat it as anything other than the bare minimum price of admission into the conversation. Whereas in Georgia, speaking Georgian is paying Georgians a compliment which they will often acknowledge gracefully.
Aside from this being just an interesting point of distinction, it shows that attitudes towards speaking the local language are culturally mediated, and so it would be reasonable to assume that Russians might have a different idea about what it means to speak the local language than Americans or Georgians. In other words, while Georgians perceive failing to speak Georgian as an insult, Russians might not intend it as an insult.
I would also note that when Americans travel, we don’t always try to speak the local language. We are more likely to expect people to speak English to us even in foreign countries. We don’t mean this as a sign of disrespect - it’s more just a pragmatic issue. In every country I’ve been to, I’ve been able to receive service in English for the most part. The exception might be Ukraine, where we got further in some cases with my wife speaking Russian than with English - but if she hadn’t been there, I’d still expect that I would have been able to get by just with English.
Speaking as an outsider, this seems like an interesting contrast - the fact that Georgians and Ukrainians will happily use Russian as a lingua franca to speak with each other, but Georgians will get offended when Russians try to do the same. This is not entirely inconsistent - the context matters, and a Georgian/American tourist family in Kyiv is clearly in a different situation than Russian migrants in Tbilisi - but it does highlight that there may be at least a bit of a political dimension to Georgians’ complaints about Russians failing to use the Georgian language.
This is a predictable phenomenon, though - cultural differences that were once perceived as basically minor annoyances or misunderstandings become magnified and take on increased significance as we look for evidence to support or rationalize our hatred. We ascribe sinister motives and bad intent to our enemies, even in cases where we’d excuse identical behaviors from ourselves or our friends. Georgians condemn Russians for speaking Russian, but address me in Russian when I try to speak to them in Georgian.
Even aside from the complaints about language, the war in Ukraine has stirred up considerable anti-Russian sentiment both on behalf of Ukrainians and because of Russia’s ongoing occupation of Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions. This has prompted some Georgian businesses to demand that Russians denounce Putin and his crimes before receiving service. The WaPo article even reports that a member of Pussy Riot was kicked out of a taxi, despite being a world-famous anti-Putin activist.
Anti-Russian sentiment is certainly understandable, human nature being what it is. But - and call me an old liberal for this - it sets off alarm bells when people are asked to sign political loyalty statements before accessing public accommodations. Unless I specifically sign up for a 1984-themed hotel stay I wouldn’t expect to have to sign a written condemnation of the Enemy at check-in. Liberal principals hold that discriminating against people based on nationality is wrong, and allowing them to opt out of this discrimination by signing a paper pledging support for your political ideology does not make it any less wrong.
Aside: is discrimination actually wrong?
There are, of course, strains of illiberal thought which claim that discrimination is actually justified when it is in service of social justice or equity. Race-based affirmative action could be considered discrimination against members of the majority race, but if the impact is to correct underrepresentation of minorities, some would call that justified. A gender quota for political parties might work the same way. A “safe space” in which members of some social group are allowed to discuss issues related to their identity without interference from the dominant social group would be enforced by acceptable discrimination. The concept of “punching up” in comedy says you can use satire or parody to attack some groups, but not others, based on an analysis of the relative power of these groups in the society at the time. A recent episode of Star Trek - a franchise which was formerly renowned for presenting a vision of racial inclusion and opposing race-based discrimination - attempted to teach viewers that it would be okay to bully and physically assault someone, based only on his race, if his race had oppressed your race.
This vision of ethics views politics as a conflict between groups with different levels of power, privilege, status, etc. Members of less-privileged groups are allowed to unilaterally decide when they have been treated unfairly and what the proper redress is, and are given leeway to violate the rights of members of more-privileged groups until the imbalance has been corrected. You might call this the Robin Hood view of ethics: stealing is wrong, but stealing from the rich is justified. Punching strangers is wrong, but punching Nazis is justified. Denying accommodation to a person based on their nationality is wrong, but denying accommodation to a Russian based on their nationality is justified. The appeal of this view is simple: when there is an imbalance that places one party at an advantage over another party, it intuitively feels unfair, and any actions to correct that imbalance therefore intuitively feel fair.
However, there are two obvious problems with this approach. One, holding individuals accountable for things they personally haven’t done violates our innate sense of fairness, and you can’t correct one unfair situation by creating a different unfair situation. Two, deciding which groups are “advantaged” and which groups are “disadvantaged” cannot be accomplished impartially due to various human cognitive biases, and so you are left having lots of arguments that incentivize partisanship and polarization. We saw this with the Dave Chappelle controversy, when Dave Chappelle felt he was a disadvantaged black artist “punching up” at the powerful LGBTQ lobby that cancelled Kevin Hart and Da Baby, while trans activists felt they were an oppressed minority “punching up” at Dave Chappelle, a millionaire whose status and prestige makes him essentially un-cancellable. I think we have to admit there isn’t really a good objective standard by which we can adjudicate these two competing claims, and indeed most people have just settled into camps based on pre-existing sympathies and political inclinations.
A less obvious problem with the Robin Hood style of ethics is that it undermines the significance of personal responsibility and the role of punishment as a deterrent against misbehavior. What I mean is, if you are judged by your group affiliation, you have less reason to try to distinguish yourself through individual good behavior. If you are punished based on your group affiliation whether or not you personally do anything wrong, you might as well do some wrong things since you’re going to be punished anyway. I don’t want to overstate the strength of this effect - it’s probably minor, and people have other motivations for good behavior besides bolstering their reputation avoiding punishment. But I think in general, all else being equal, we should be at least somewhat concerned with creating social systems that encourage people to take responsibility for their own actions, which means we should avoid holding people responsible for the actions of others.
Finally, Robin Hood is a sort of vigilante, and vigilante justice has well-known problems: it is arbitrary, capricious, disproportionate, and imprecise. There is a tendency for self-righteous people to judge others very harshly and cast too wide a net when meting out mob justice. Vigilantism often arises when most criminals get away with their crimes, causing a few criminals to bear the brunt of society’s pent-up anger at being unable to deter crime, enduring overly-harsh punishments as a result.
So: do Russians deserve to be discriminated against in Georgia? Do we punish Russians who are here out of anger that we can’t punish Putin or his soldiers who are committing war crimes? Are Russians members of a powerful oppressor class and thus fair game for abuse by underprivileged, oppressed Georgians? Is there a historical imbalance of power which can be corrected by excluding Russians from full participation in Georgian society? Is Putin Hitler, which makes Russians Nazis, which makes it not just acceptable, but laudable, for us to punch them?
I think there are multiple valid perspectives on this, and I’m not going to answer on behalf of Georgians, but for myself, as an outsider, I’m sticking to the liberal perspective on this: I would prefer to treat individual Russians as individuals deserving of rights, including the presumption of innocence, rather than as members of a collectively guilty group deserving of abuse and exclusion.
Regardless of your ethical viewpoint, I think it’s undeniable that the existence of a minority which is readily identifiable by language and nationality and which is discriminated against openly by individuals and businesses creates the potential for dangerous social conflict. This feels like a situation where hate crimes against Russians could become a problem. Conflicts like the one in the video could become more common, or could escalate to physical violence. Russians living in Georgia could radicalize and develop anti-Georgian sentiment, which could lead to retaliatory violence. And then, of course, there’s the threat that Russia, seeing this, could decide to intervene.
Entryism
As we’ve seen in Ukraine, Putin has a history of using minority rights - especially the rights of Russians or Russian-speakers - as a justification for war. Russia’s occupation of Georgia’s “breakaway regions” follows this pattern: Russia claimed it sent “peacekeeping troops” to protect Abkhazian and Ossetian ethnic minorities from oppression and violence by the Georgian state. I don’t think this is a credible claim - my view has been the Realist view, which is that Putin’s actions are meant to keep Georgia too destabilized to join NATO, the EU, or other Western organizations that Putin views as Russia’s chief rivals. It bears mentioning that this was not a controversial view before the year 2022 - it was pretty conventional wisdom that Russia could have annexed Georgia in 2008 if it had wanted to, and didn’t because the current occupation accomplished Putin’s goals - but now, as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, the Realist view has been (incorrectly, in my view) tarred as “Russian propaganda”. It seems clear that the “peacekeeping” story is the propaganda, and the Realist explanation - that Russia wants to keep Georgia unstable to prevent its Westward orientation - is the only one that actually explains the occupation.
Russia has taken other soft power steps to push Georgia away from the West - through disinformation, through funding nationalist, far-right groups, and through exploiting religious ties to cast Orthodoxy as a link between Russia and Georgia, standing against the decadent, blasphemous, perverted, LGBTQ-influenced West. A few years ago there was a massive anti-Russian protest in Tbilisi because a Russian MP sat in the seat of the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, and what’s notable in this context is that this occurred during a meeting of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy. So it is, again, well-established that Russia is trying to exert influence on Georgia, using both hard power (partial military occupation) and soft power (propaganda, religious affinity).
In that context, the entry of a large number of Russians to Georgian territory takes on a new dimension. 35,000 Russians moving to Tbilisi may forge ties with Georgians that enable them to emphasize Russian-Georgian affinity and transmit Russian propaganda. They may also end up serving as a pretext for later Russian military action - although given the beating the Russians are taking in Ukraine, their appetite (not to mention capacity) for military adventurism may be tamped down a bit for the foreseeable future.
I am reminded of the US annexation of Texas. Texas used to be a Mexican territory, but in the early 1800s about 30,000 Americans migrated to Texas. They decided they didn’t like the Mexican government doing things like outlawing slavery and raising taxes, and decided to take up arms to defend their “rights”. Eventually their differences with Mexico led to them participating in a series of armed rebellions - with significant “unofficial” help from US citizens and soldiers - and Texas became “free”, which is to say, a quasi-recognized breakaway region of Mexico which was de facto occupied by Americans. In 1845 the US completed the annexation process officially, prompting Mexico to attempt to defend its territory in the 1846-1848 Mexican-American war. The outcome of that war was that Mexico lost more than half of its former territory to the US.
There are some parallels between the Mexican-American war and the Russian invasion of Ukraine: some US troops committed war crimes, including mass rape and mass murder; thousands of others deserted. Perhaps this says something about the inherent problems with fielding an invading army? In any case, this is the concern with Russians coming to Georgia: if enough of them show up, they might decide to “declare independence” with support from the Russian government or Russian irregular forces - leading to a full-scale invasion, and what many would see as the culmination of the project Russia started in 2008.
How likely is any of this? The soft power thing is definitely going to happen. Young people might be more Western-oriented but many in the older generation remember the USSR with some fondness and view Russians as close comrades, and of course every society has its far-right contingent - the US included - and for some reason the far right in every country seems to love Vladimir Putin. Some of the Russian migrants will of course dissent - they aren’t a monolith - and some may in fact be anti-Putin themselves. But it seems inevitable that the result of having a lot of Russians in Tbilisi will be that some Georgians will develop closer ties to Russians - even as others develop further resentment at seeing their capital “occupied” by Russian visitors. Again, we’re seeing the potential for more polarization and more social conflict.
The threat of Russian invasion is real but, again, I think that practically Russia’s capacity to invade another country is so depleted that this would not be my concern on a time horizon of at least five to ten years. It takes time to build a professional army and Russia’s capacity to do so is low due to the structure of Putin’s government (that is, yes-men who are afraid to deliver bad news and who hype and exaggerate their own capacity while downplaying the ability of enemies). On the other hand, a limited or incompetent invasion is possible and would be horribly destructive, and of course Russia has the ability to launch missile strikes or even take punitive non-military action if it feels its citizens are not receiving proper treatment from Tbilisi.
All in all, the entry of thousands of Russians into Georgian territory for an unknown length of time will allow and encourage Russia to exert influence over Georgia and its politics, in ways that do not serve the best interests of Georgia or Georgians.
Accountability and Moral Hazard
While I oppose holding individuals accountable for the actions of the worst members of a group, the situation becomes more complicated when you are talking about questions of group decision-making, or situations where interdependence means that an individual is providing de facto support for the group and its bad actions. A Russian is not automatically guilty of war crimes just for being Russian - but if someone voted for Putin, they do bear some moral responsibility for what Putin has (predictably) done with his electoral mandate.
I’m not sure if this moral responsibility is actionable, though. Approaching random Russians in the street and demanding to know who they voted for is obviously problematic in itself, and because Russia is not exactly a free competitive democracy, votes for Putin cannot be viewed as fully-informed and free of coercion. We can say that someone who voted for Putin is wrong and bad, but I think that type of condemnation is about as far as we can go in terms of punishment.
The interdependence gives us a stronger case. If you come to Georgia, rely on the local economy (which is favorable due to the actions of the Georgian people via its government) to make money, and then send that money back to your relatives in Russia - or keep it on hand while awaiting your own return - then there’s an argument that you are materially supporting war crimes. There’s an argument that Georgia should not let people do that. In a sense that’s what sanctions are about, and specifically the sanctions targeting financial transfers to Russia. If Russians are coming to Georgia to circumvent sanctions in any way, I think there’s a good case for trying to stop them.
That wouldn’t involve things like individual street harassment or making people sign political manifestos to enter a bar, though. That would mean the Georgian government would need to take steps to systematically ensure that Tbilisi wasn’t becoming a satellite branch of the Russian economy. I’m not really an expert on international finance or forensic accounting or anything, but given Georgia’s reluctance to join already existing international sanctions, and accusations that Georgia has served as a base for smuggling goods into Russia, I doubt the Georgian government has any plans like this in the works. This, justifiably, has made Georgian citizens angry, and of course that risks feeding into the other sources of potential conflict in this situation.
Solutions?
I’ve presented four problems: the economic problem of rising prices and “gentrification”, the social problem of inter-group conflict and individual discrimination, the political problem of entryism coupled with the threat of military invasion, and the moral problem of Georgian citizens outraged that Russians are acting with impunity after inflicting terror on Ukraine.
I hope you will not be too disappointed in me when I say that I do not have a concrete solution to any of these problems. The US hasn’t exactly solved its own immigration dilemmas and in many ways this one is actually harder. There may just not be a good thing to do in this situation.
That said, I believe that we can act ethically as individuals, and that will be a good start. Meduza has a story about a woman who brought her eight-year-old son to Tbilisi as an act of conscience - not wanting to live in an “aggressor country” - only to be ripped off immediately by a landlord and forced to scramble for a place to stay with her son at the last minute. I think we can all agree that whatever Putin and the Russians have done, we shouldn’t take it out on an eight-year-old.
American media in the Cold War used to emphasize that it was important for Americans to take the moral high ground, because if we didn’t, we were no better than the enemy we were fighting. I’m not going to comment on the extent to which any particular Americans followed this advice, but the advice itself is good. We should strive not to let Putin corrupt us. We should look to our principles and hesitate to throw them away in a fit of righteous fury.
Collectively, while I am usually 100% for open borders, this is an extraordinary circumstance during a global emergency, and so it might be worth considering measures to ensure that, for example, Russians don’t overstay their visas or visa-free entry periods. Currently there is essentially no enforcement of visa rules unless you leave the country with an expired entry permit, at which point you get a fine and maybe a ban on returning. Making sure Russians understand that their temporary stays are temporary might limit some of the consequences I’ve detailed above. It might also be worth revisiting the rules for residency permits to make sure there are no loopholes that Russians (or others) might want to abuse. Some countries have suspended visas for Russians, and while I wouldn’t personally go that far, I think it’s at least arguably a reasonable step, under the circumstances.
At the same time, I think businesses should be banned from requiring political statements as a condition for service or accommodation, and individuals should be discouraged from discriminating based on nationality in personal and in business dealings. The Georgian rental market is highly unregulated so there may be no way to enforce this, but even sending a signal that this is not considered socially acceptable could tamp down some of the worst abuses.
In general I support solutions to problems like these at the institutional level rather than the individual level - again, due to the dangers inherent to vigilantism. The government of Georgia should attempt to satisfy the will of the people and address the drawbacks of a large influx of Russian migrants but in a way that respects human rights and de-escalates actual and potential conflict.
Finally, we should all work to promote cooperation and understanding. That sounds trite, but it’s the bedrock of liberal society. It feels like in the US that bedrock has eroded to the extent that liberal politics are completely broken - I’d hate to see the same happen elsewhere. This is a time of heightened emotion, and polarizing rhetoric only adds fuel to the fire.
While the circumstances here are unique, the tensions surrounding Russian immigration to Georgia are similar to those in other immigration debates. Hopefully this article has shed some light on some of those tensions, both locally and globally, and put them into a helpful or instructive context - and hopefully I’ve given you some ideas on how best to move forward.
Ultimately, in general, we have to acknowledge that immigration poses problems, and mass immigration especially so - but ultimately, my hope is that we can work to solve those problems in accordance with our principles, and coming from a place of mutual respect for each others’ humanity.