From the MT:
“As Crackdown Intensifies,
Russian Emigres Find Refuge in Georgia”
(Ivan Pavlov.)
On a hot autumn day, a sun-baked
Tbilisi square feels a world away from cold and blustery St. Petersburg, where
Ivan Pavlov is used to running between courtrooms defending some of the
Kremlin’s harshest critics. “I have had to readjust my life, which has not been
easy, I have had to start all over. But Georgia has been good to me,” Pavlov
told The Moscow Times as he sat in a cafe serving khachapuri, the country’s
famous cheese bread. Pavlov is one of Russia’s most prominent defense lawyers,
who has worked for high-profile clients including Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny
and journalist Ivan Safronov. Pavlov himself was detained in April on charges
of disclosing details of the treason investigation into Safronov, charges he
denies. Things became even more worrying, Pavlov said, when Team 29, an
independent legal group he used to run, was declared an “undesirable”
organization with foreign links this summer, and he was faced with the prospect
of real prison time. “The warning signs
were building up rapidly and I realized I had to get out,” he said, adding that
a court ruling had restricted him from using the internet. Though police
searched Pavlov’s apartment and confiscated a number of documents, they never
took his passport. “From experience, I knew that wasn’t a slip.
They left it there to say ‘we want you gone’,” he said. In early September,
Pavlov bought a one-way ticket to Tbilisi and drove to the airport in St.
Petersburg. He said the police shadowed him all the way. Pavlov is one of many
who have recently left Russia for Georgia due to the political situation in
their homeland.
(Michael Naki.)
Russians have a long history of
emigration during times of crisis and political crackdown. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution,
hundreds of thousands of Russians emigrated and settled in the European
capitals of London, Paris and Vienna. After the fall of the Soviet Union,
businessmen and oligarchs flocked to London, while artists and creatives
settled in Berlin and New York. This
time round, human-rights activists and opposition politicians have gravitated
toward the Baltic states, with some of Alexei Navalny’s closest allies having
settled there. However, as the coronavirus pandemic complicated travel to the
West for most Russians, the small, ex-Soviet Caucasian nation of Georgia
quickly became the go-to place for political emigres during the late-Putin era.
“You lose count of the many people you know who moved here. You just see them
in the street and think ‘oh, another one,’” said Michael Naki, a popular
Russian blogger and political commentator who arrived in Tbilisi last April. The
list of those who have moved is diverse, and includes journalists who worked
for outlets affiliated with Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian
libertarians and artists. There is a diverse Russian speaking community here
with a common attitude toward the authorities back home,” said Alina
Muzychenko, co-founder of fashion label and political art collective Kultrab. Muzychenko
and the rest of the Kultrab team decided to leave Russia in August after
noticing they were being followed by police. “The fact that even we were
targeted speaks volumes about the repressions seen in Russia,” Muzychenko said.
Russian civil society faced a severe crackdown in the run-up to parliamentary
polls in September. Over the last few
months, the Kremlin has slapped a "foreign agent" label on several
independent media outlets and individual journalists, while Navalny’s
countywide network was branded as “extremist.” Students, activists and artists
have received real prison time for tweets that voiced support for protests
against the government. “As the Duma
elections came closer, I realized I had three options: go abroad, self-censor
or end up arrested and possibly jailed,” said Naki, who runs his own political
program on Youtube.
Nikolai Levshiz — who left Russia
two years ago after his employer The Free Russia Foundation NGO was banned and
now runs a popular Telegram channel for Russians in Georgia — said he has
recently seen a new influx of his fellow citizens to Tbilisi. “The visa-free
regime, language, the climate and the cost of living are some of the reasons
people chose the country.” Russians are allowed to spend up to a year in
Georgia, where you can rent an apartment for as little as $200-300 a month and
the cost of living is cheap. “But most important, of course, is the safety the
country offers. We feel like Georgia will never send us back,” Levshiz said Safety,
however, has become a potential worry for some exiles and Georgians as of late,
as critics of the ruling Georgian Dream party say it is taking Tbilisi into
Moscow’s orbit while damaging democratic institutions. “Georgia has always
positioned itself as a haven for political refugees from the Post-Soviet World,
including Russia, Azerbaijan and Belarus,” said Kornely Kakachia, the director
of the Tbilisi-based think tank Georgian Institute of Politics. “With elections
coming up in October, the country is not as stable as it used to be and is
going through political instability.” Still, Kakachia believes, Georgian Dream
or any other party aiming to court Russia would think twice before sending
people back to Russia. “It would likely provoke a huge wave of anger, and would
just not be worth all the backlash,” he said.
While many of the emigres The Moscow Times spoke to were open about their move to Georgia, others said they have to lie low. In an apartment in a residential area of Tbilisi, several journalists and activists who have recently left Russia sat around a round table playing cards. Their lawyers have advised them not to publicize their move to Georgia yet. “If we start to speak out, we could complicate the situation, which will limit our chances of ever returning,” one activist said under condition of anonymity. Earlier this month, Russian state television channel Ren-TV aired a programme claiming links between Western security services and some of the recent emigres, demonstrating the authorities’ view of exiled Russians. “If they’d seen us playing cards they would have said we had opened an illegal casino here with American money,” the activist joked. Even more cautious are those who have fled Belarus, a country that has seen its own repressions against civil society following the controversial re-election of longtime president Alexander Lukasenko. “I still have family back home. They could be targeted if the authorities find out I’m continuing my work as a journalist here in Georgia,” said Konstantin, a Belarussian journalist who asked for his last name to be withheld. Konstantin, who estimates that at least 300-400 Belarusians have fled to Tbilisi, said he chose Georgia for its cost of living. “With my income in Europe, I would be living in some grim slum. Here I can call myself a respectable expat.”
Not all Russian expats in Georgia
are there because of concern for their safety. For some, like Ivan Mitin, a
38-year-old entrepreneur from Moscow, the political and business climate was
the pull. Mitin founded Ziferblat, a popular pay-per-minute cafe chain, and the
Bolotov Dacha, a boutique retreat in a village southeast of Moscow that offers
guest houses and co-working stations in an eco-farm near a forest. As Mitin saw Russia gradually tightening the
screws on dissent, he decided his next project would be based abroad. “When you
run a successful business in Russia you can become too big, and you realize
that the authorities will be watching you and will want something from you. You
will have to play by their rules, something I didn’t want,” he said. Mitin
instead decided to purchase 27 acres of land in Kakheti, a picturesque region
in the east of Georgia known for its wine, where he founded the Chateau
Chapiteau initiative, a co-living and timeshare project that will include a
hotel, a farm and restaurants. “I wanted to be able to think and say what I
want without having to look over my shoulder, something that Georgia allows me
to do,” Mitin said. He added that many of his friends who don’t consider
themselves “radical oppositionists” have recently decided to leave Russia
because of a “climate of fear.”
Many of the new emigres admitted
that they are already facing some of the issues that have plagued Russians
abroad for decades, including difficulty integrating and a longing to return to
Russia. “We just don’t mix with the
locals,” said Naki, the journalist and blogger. “We live in parallel worlds.
Most days I go online with the hope that I can return rather than try to
integrate.” Emigre memoirs published during the Soviet Union were often filled
with a sense of toska for Russia, a word that writer Vladimir Nabokov
translated as “a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.” Many of this generation’s exiles described the
same feelings. “My standard of living has improved, the weather is good, the
rent is affordable and the food is cheap and delicious,” Naki said. “But the
physical things in life are not enough. My soul longs for Russia.”
^ This new Generation of Russians
is working to end Putin’s 20 year Dictatorship and to see a free and independent
Russia. ^
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