About a month ago, when I was sitting in the hall of Tbilisi airport-enjoying a cup of fresh coffee with cognac - waiting for a call to catch my flight to Riga, a young lady in her mid 20s wearing a green, black-spotted tie emphasizing, her belonging Airbaltic employee approached microphone and called for boarding . There would have been nothing worth mentioning in her action if she had not employed a weird way of fullfilling her duty . The young Georgian lady made her first notice in Russian, followed by English and only after in Georgian. It was a moment when I experienced a mixture of despise and hatred to that person, than I looked to those Georgians who without any objection , without any word to defend the primary rights of their language in their country, like sheep, rowed up in a queue to be get their long-waited plane. .. I approached the lady and asked why the reason of her such behavior- hoping that she will at least provide verbal acknowledgement of her mistake. The answer to my delicate manners was rather rude and impolite, with a street lingo she argued that it does not really matter in which language the announcement will be made at first. I tried to explain that in my country I expect to recieve service in my native language .... she was either too stubborn or to arrogant to accept my remark
Since I am in Geo I am trying to understand why after recent events , in Tv they still run Russian language programs, why in the Georgian restaurants people still dance under Russian vibes! Why are we accepting cultural goods from the country which some months ago wanted to capture Tbilisi and intends to swallow our historic regions ? Which killed several hundreds of our compatriots and forced tens of thousands to leave their home. ARE WE REALLY GOING TO FORGET THIS ALL? Yet , someone will stand up and argue back that culture and language should not be ''held responsible '' for the misdeeds of the politicians! and perhaps he will be right, however reason of my concern is more pragmatic and Long-term oriented.
The more we accept Russian language , Russian culture, it is more easier for them to re-conquer us . We have to derive appropriate lessons from the past and note that there will always be people who will betray their nation for warm chairs or simply for ideological purposes or cultural appeals. Society has to produce such people as less as possible. We have to generate generations who will have no cultural appeal to Russia, for whom Russian language will sound like Chinese and their culture as remote as Thai. Speaking practically, when the systems can not be accomodated, people will fight for their independence more fiercely and not surrender as some did1921.
The aim of our generation is to make sure that bitter lessons of the past are not repeated, we have to guarantee sovereignity through the centuries -not only for today and tommorow… For that we need a strong, multinational society unitied on the civic platform with a homogenous citizneship Identity. In past Georgian Identity was constructed on the fundaments of the orthodox church, however today the world is far different than it was during religious wars. If people do not believe in the same way - so what - let them pray for what they want to. Alternativly neither Georgian ethnicity can become a fundament for our new identity - since- it will lead to rise of nationalism and will further diversify our society- and we have experienced cases like that. But i think that georgian language carries a potential to become a Georgian a basis of the new identity... how ? this will be followed shortly
Time for saying a half an hour toasts and speeches on Tv are finished... The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow… but someone must see it already today, and speak heretically today about tomorrow. Heretics are the only (bitter) remedy against the entropy of the our romantistic thoughts
1 comment:
Well, I agree that it is important to respect and preserve our language (on the side - I am not a big fan of the staff at the Tbilisi airport - they rip you off and treat you like you are nobody). However, I don't think it is necessarily bad to dance to the Russian vibes in the restaurant. The sad thing is that Russian people generally don't hate Georgians (obviously, there are some that do, but I think, and I hope, they are a minority). And I think that is especially true of artists, musicians, etc. Therefore, I am OK with people listening to Russian music, or even some TV programs being in Russian, as long as we don't forget what is our own language and how important it is to take care of all of the history and tradition that goes with it.
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