OK, I read the paper and watch the news and I’m familiar with what happened (Sheverdnadze out, Burdzhanadze in) and that were claims of corruption in the former administration. But what are the details and is this a true reform movement or just a power grab?
And if someone like Tamerlane checks in, what’s with the “nadze” ending in many Gorgian names? Is that some sort of “son of” suffix in the Georgain language?
Where the hell is Gerogia?
It’s a former republic of the Sovite Unino.
geez… i’m not sure if it is really part of the soviet union or if the OP was actually meaning georgia and neither of you can spell.
Well, this looks to be Straight Dope on Georgia. Too bad it’s in cyrillic, and I can’t make heads or tails of it. Some nice pictures though.
Thakns for the supprot.
I don’t know much about what’s been going on there the past few months, but my Georgian grad school professor always used to bitch about the hardon that Westerners had for Shevardnadze, saying he was a “vicious KGB general.” Heck, the guy was a Soviet Politburo member, which is a post one tends not to attain if one’s hands are entirely clean. But there are probably at least as many opinions about the guy as there are Georgians, and the few Georgians I’ve met have been highly opinionated people to say the least.
When I’m not quite so brain-fried, I’ll try to dig up some more info, and read the link above (where’d you find it, BTW?). But in the meantime, check out ww.rferl.org for an English-language synopsis.
As for the -adze ending (-vili is another common one), I’m not sure, but I’ll check with a co-worker tomorrow (she has a Georgian brother-in-law).
Read today’s Wall Street Journal. I only skimmed it today but basically.
This Shevardnadze fellow helped with the peace dissolution of the Soviet Union and was generally pro-western. Well at least the West thought so. Turns out he fixed the last election a couple months back and the people turned out recently to protest it. The US State department also condemed the election.
He is stepping down and a new popular election will take place in 45 days.
Georgia is North of Iran-Iraq and Turkey. It is South of Russia and can provide a vital area for oil pipelines.
I noticed there was a piece on the Leher report tonight about the situation in Georgia, but of course I tuned in just as the discussion was wrapping up.
There exists considerable evidence that the fix was in in the last election.
The clincher came when units of troops defected to the protesters’ side this past weekend. It became obvious that this problem wasn’t going to go away, short of civil war. Rather than do this, the Prez stepped down.
The San Francisco Chronicle today said pretty much as per the above. They also said/implied that representatives of the US and Russia talked to Shevardnadze in private and may have persuaded him not to fight it.
They mentioned a (future) strategic oil pipeline and the nearness of Chechnya. And they said Russia would have more influence on Georgia now.
Darn. That’s the second time in a couple of days I’ve been invoked and not had a good answer. I think there is a good chance your guess is right - I know the “-ian” ending in Armenian names does mean “son of”, just like the “-ic” does in south-slavic names. But those are Indo-European languages and Georgian is not ( though I imagine it must have some borrowings just based on proximity alone ), so I’m not certain you can safely draw a parallel there.
Maybe we’ll get a linguist like Jomo Mojo in here that has a definitive answer, if Eva’s co-worker doesn’t know.
Yep, when the army sided with the opposition parties, Shevardnadze finally resigned.
Yessir, Georgia is south of Russia, east of Turkey, north of Iran & Iraq & Armenia & Azerbaijan. Several pipelines already exist there. As I have mentioned in several threads before, I work on the BTC Pipeline Project. I am training maintenance and operations personnel for that new pipeline by conducting OJT on the existing WREP (Western Route Export Pipeline).
Another fact about Georgia is that Stalin was a native of that country. He is supposed to have had a very strong Georgian accent that was considered funny by most Russians. In fact many Russian comedians would use this accent when they were portraying a country bumbkin character. Of course nobody would laugh at Stalin’s accent and live to tell the tale.
Rayne Man, I’ve been to Gori and seen the memorial; I’ve got pictures of it around here somewhere… Russian comedians? That poked fun at Stalin? I didn’t know that.
No, they did not poke fun at Stalin but it so happens that the Georgian accent sounds amusing to Russians . I suppose that Russian comedians had to tread very carefully in poking fun at that accent while Stalin was in power.
Well, my co-worker has no idea about the -adze or -vili suffixes. Sorry, guys!
In addition to the question about the “-nadze” ending on names, I’m also wondering about the “-ashvili” ending.
From this site: http://webdisk.berkeley.edu/~shorena/noun.html
I don’t know how it is that dze and shvili both mean “son,” but what really freaks me is that personal names are fully declined like other nouns. Whoa!