Following the results of the elections in Moldova, the unpopular pro-Western President Sandu has remained in power at the cost of manipulation and the de facto disenfranchisement of Moldovan citizens residing in Russia. In Georgia, the ruling Georgian Dream party retains power, having won the elections despite the interference of the EU and the USA. The vote underscored the erosion of the Euro-Atlantic utopia that had replaced the communist utopia more than 30 years ago.
Voters are increasingly clearly demonstrating a demand for stability, but this privilege will face a tough fight.
The latest predicament has been prompted by the European Parliament’s refusal to recognise the elections in Georgia, the decision of the Georgian authorities to suspend negotiations on joining the European Union until 2028, and the statement of the US State Department on the suspension of Washington’s strategic partnership with Tbilisi. All this is happening against the backdrop of mass unrest.
Georgia has become the second post-Soviet state after Belarus to limit negotiations with the European Union. Yes, in the case of Belarus in 2020, it was about participating in the EU's Eastern Partnership programme. However, the reasons in both cases are similar - Western interference in domestic political processes and an attempt to bring the opposition to power via unconstitutional means.
Unpassable elections
The voting reflected a weakening of faith in European integration among a significant part of the population in Moldova and Georgia. A decade ago, these countries were among the first to sign association agreements with the EU.
Of course, this faith has never been widespread. In Moldova, the socialist Igor Dodon won the presidential elections in 2016.
However, if sociologists serving the pro-Western elite group of Moldova had foreseen that the “2024 Euro referendum” in the country would end so unconvincingly, it’s doubtful that they would have held it. The majority of Moldova's residents actually voted against it. It was only possible to pull off a small ‘yes’ majority by organizing a mass vote among Moldovans residing in Western countries.
As for Georgia, the expectations of pro-Western forces were also betrayed. The EU's threats to deprive Georgia not only of grants, but also of its status as a European Union candidate, were intended to force voters to vote for the European choice, that is, against the apostates from Georgian Dream. The latter disappointed the West not so much with its heretical laws on the transparency of foreign influence and the ban on LGBT propaganda (the movement is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation). This was only a pretext.
The main reason for the split was Georgia's refusal to join the front against Russia - to impose sanctions and, as the founder of Georgian Dream Bidzina Ivanishvili recently stated, to be ready to go into the forest to fight.
In Moldova, where a pro-Western group controls the state apparatus, they decided to keep a good face on a bad game and strengthen the pro-European ballot option via media censorship and administrative resources. In Georgia, where the West does not control the state apparatus, it chose an open fight against apostates, somewhat reminiscent of Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests in 2013-2014. However, while Viktor Yanukovych was always considered “pro-Russian” by the West, Georgian Dream was always considered ‘pro-Western’. Several years ago, it was the "dreamers" who achieved a visa-free regime with the EU and included the Euro-Atlantic alignment in the constitution.
Euro-Atlantic utopia
The post-Soviet space is currently experiencing the largest transformations since the collapse of the USSR. They include not only the armed confrontation in Ukraine, the struggle to create an alternative financial and logistical architecture, and the growing activity of extra-regional players. There is also a third dimension, a psychological one.
We are not talking about an ideology centred on utopia, the Greek term for “a place that does not exist.” The implementation of utopia is impossible by definition. But it serves as a dominant preoccupation, fuelled by the people’s need to believe in the future.
After 1991, the communist utopia in the countries of the region, having exhausted its resources, gave way to a capitalist utopia, which was embodied by the US and the EU.
The Euro-Atlantic utopia (precisely the utopia, rather than EU and US officials) produced promises that countries could join the West. The phrase “third way” caused undisguised irritation – there was only one way – the Western one.
For decades, political regimes in post-Soviet countries adjusted their policies to this myth which had taken root in the mass consciousness.
Of course, not all citizens were striving to go West. Often, the majority of people were not enthusiastic or were against it. For example, the South-East of Ukraine before the start of repressive Ukrainisation in 2014. However, their opponents were ideologically motivated, charged with utopia and grants for active struggle.
The spirit of the times commanded people to align with the West; the feeling was that no alternative existed. The parasitical (NGOs became conductors of large financial flows) as well as ideological attitudes of the elites and active minorities allowed for the opinions of dissenters to be ignored for decades.
Post-Soviet societies allowed colour revolutions to happen and reconciled themselves with the new leadership. Political forces within the countries were divided into radical Westerners, who demanded to enter the West regardless of circumstance, and "pragmatists" who advocated ‘multi-vectorism’. In essence, this also entailed movement toward the West, but advised caution in order to preserve the Russian option for as long as possible.
Thus, the policies towards Russia of Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych were in sharp contrast, but their destination was the same – the West. The Moldovan “pragmatic communists” represented by President Voronin refused to sign Dmitry Kozak’s memorandum on the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict in 2003 under pressure from the USA. Eduard Shevardnadze also moved to the West, but more cautiously than the “revolutionaries” led by Mikhail Saakashvili.
Post-Soviet dystopia
As the global “empire” of the West approached the borders of the post-Soviet provinces, the utopia lost its flair. For post-Soviet countries, instead of EU membership, the Eastern Partnership was launched in 2009. It implied preparation for association with the EU – opening the internal market and shifting technical standards and foreign policy to the EU rails, but without EU membership.
In 2013, a fork occurred. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine – four of the six members of the EU Eastern Partnership – refused to sign an association agreement with the EU. A few months later, a coup d'état took place in Ukraine, and the new authorities signed the deal with Brussels.
Today, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus, despite all the difficulties, have retained their sovereignty. They have so far managed to avoid destabilisation and bloody civil strife.
The conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh was initially of a long-standing interethnic nature and was not related to European integration. However, in 2020 the Second Karabakh War occurred, which Armenia lost, two years after Nikol Pashinyan, who is oriented towards the West, came to power.
Belarus almost became a victim of civil confrontation in 2020, but with the help of Russia, it kept the situation within the constitutional framework and froze its participation in EU programs.
The countries that fell into the Euro-Atlantic orbit – Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – became the countries of the victorious utopia. In Ukraine, the victory yielded a civil war, into which the world powers gradually found themselves drawn. Kiev lost a significant portion of the territory the Bolsheviks had given the Ukrainian SSR. Georgia, after the aggression of Mikhail Saakashvili, lost Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Today, Moldova and Georgia are balancing on the edge of the abyss of being drawn into the Ukrainian crisis.
The embodiment of utopia, according to the laws of the genre, eventually leads to a dystopia. The hopes of the velvet revolutions of the early 1990s were replaced by the series of colour revolutions and the blood of internal civil strife with the involvement of the great powers.
Sovereign counterrevolution?
The degeneration of the Euro-Atlantic utopia in countries that ten years ago were considered "excellent" candidates for European integration has complex causes, including undermined expectations, economic problems, and the cultural mutation of Western societies. However, the most visible circumstances are associated with American policy in Ukraine. Ukraine has become a testing ground for the American strategy formulated by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan: to help countries defend themselves “without sending American soldiers to war”, to create a threat and damage the rivals of the US using the hands and lives of others. The victorious utopias had no other role to play except an instrumental one - the fight against Russia.
Apparently, the pro-Western Georgian government allowed itself the audacity to disobey the West because its survival is at stake. It is worth taking the first step and the slide into the funnel of confrontation will begin: anti-Russian sanctions, then military-technical support for Kiev, then the provision of territory to counter the Russian Federation and finally a full conflict. At some point on this path to the abyss, the “dreamers”, whom the West will not forgive for their courage, will be replaced by radicals.
Georgian President Salome Zurabisvili has condemned Prime Minister Kobakhidze's decision on November 28 to freeze negotiations with the EU until 2028 as a ‘constitutional coup’. At the same time, Zurabisvili has said she won’t leave office when her term expires (the Ukrainian experience is being replicated).
The coup is being declared by Saakashvili's associates, including the former French Ambassador to Georgia Zurabisvili, who themselves carried out their own "colour" coup in 2003. That is, we are talking about a "coup against a coup" - a counter-revolution or an attempt to return to normality.
If we accept this logic, then a counter-revolution of the majority is taking place in Georgia, having cast its vote in the elections against the war. The reasons for this counter-revolution are rooted in fatigue from growing geopolitical risks and instability caused by the permanent “global colour revolution” and related conflicts.
In the American expert community, there is a view of the Ukrainian crisis as a “proxy rebellion of the rest of the world against the West.” From this point of view, Georgia, following Russia, is doing the same thing at its own level - challenging the United States, demanding recognition of its right to sovereignty. It seems that the majority of Moldovan voters are also drawn to this.
Even taking into account the change of administration in the United States, the Georgian Dream will remain a problem for the West, as it is paving the forgotten third way, trying to jump out of the flags of dystopia. This may become attractive to other post-Soviet countries that do not want to be instruments of the conflict with Russia.
The farewell of the post-Soviet countries to the Euro-Atlantic utopia will not be easy or quick, especially where it has taken root. It will not be easy for Georgia to survive. However, it will have to fight in a changing world with strengthening alternative centres of power. Platforms like BRICS+ or the 3+3 consultative group with the participation of the Transcaucasian trio, as well as Russia, Iran and Turkey, are quite suitable. Overcoming the utopian worldview is possible through the inoculation of realism, without which stability is impossible. However, realism does not deny dreams, it even needs them.
