Thread by @HansGutbrod

Here is a terrible, truly terrible, piece on #Georgia in @jacobin magazine. I won’t link to it, it's not worth your time, other than to show just how truly deluded many socialists in the US are, in making excuses for the #SovietUnion & #Russia. 1/n

That part really deserves attention and key takeaway: don’t trust a *single* paragraph of what you read in #Jacobinmag, if you do not know the issue yourself. (hello @DemSocialists) CC @ichbinilya @GilbreathDustin 2/

"Since the end of the Soviet Union, Western-oriented development has not only failed to address Georgia’s problems but reinforced them." With all these falsehoods, one doesn't even know where to begin. 3/n

The Soviet Union is described as an idyllic background from which Georgia, to its misfortune, lapsed. A reader who did know much about Georgia would entirely miss:
- what utter cruelty was central to Soviet experience, as well described by Nino Kharatishvili's Eighth Life 4/n

...or Dato Turashvili's Flight from the USSR re the 1984 hijacking ("Despite lack of evidence, the priest Chikhladze was declared a "ringleader" and also sentenced to death. On 3 October 1984, all four men were shot.") 5/n

- that living standards crumbled, of course, as a result of Soviet collapse not because Georgia oriented twds the West. Places that held on on to some kind of Soviet model have living standards a lot worse than those in Georgia today (unless propped up by oil and gas). 6/n

- that before #Saakashvili (for all his present flaws) here described merely as a pro-US goon, drivers or people owning businesses would be shaken down by corrupt police every week, electricity that seems so easy now was intermittent at best. @V_Caucasologist 7/n

- that under UNM & its technocrats, too, the rich started paying taxes, and the supposed increased inequality is almost certainly based on the fact that before the rich simply were not captured by data. 8/n

- rather than "hollowing out" social system under the National Movement, targeted social assistance (TSA) started from 2006. It today helps more than 10% of the population (previously any supposed benefits before were nominal, since pensions often were not paid for months). 9/n

- that the Gharibashvili clique, described in @jacobin as wise stewards of Georgia's "sober approach towards Russia", sicced a homophobic mob on Tbilisi Pride marchers and journalists, with terrible scenes, less than a year ago. @Tabagari 7/n

-- that @SovLab & @IDFIGeorgia are doing excellent work on thousands that were murdered in the Soviet Union -- but sure, if you want to glorify the Soviet Union, you will go out of your way to villify any @EnMemorial organization. 8/n

- that Georgians, thx to @EUinGeorgia, can travel visa free & drink a beer in a Munich tomorrow morning, if they so decide -- but would need weeks and months to get a visa to visit cities in Russia that their grandfathers helped defend from the Nazi murder machine,
9/n

Are some of the problems described in article real? Sure, but to address them you have to look at facts, and @jacobin seems to struggle with that at the most basic level. Yes, this wld not pass as an undergrad paper. 10/n

The piece is riddled with the oddest claims. This is the first time I hear that Kakha Bendukidze had "upwards of a billion dollars" but I guess the claim is meant to make a point. I could go on. 11/n

As far as I could see, practically no critical word of #Russia. The US & West? Bad faith, exploiting, manipulating, immiserating ordinary people. Vladimir Putin, kleptocrat-in-chief & poisoner of @navalny's underpants -- in this @jacobin piece, VVP gets single mention only. 12/n

In short: this is a mendacious piece of a person so obsessed with making his socialist case that truth, facts, and the inconvenient terror and murders of the Soviet system can just be disposed with. 13/n

The real US #imperialism that most Georgians, and for that matter, most of the world can do without? Affluent @jacobin_av kids conscripting a twisted version of other people's #history into their little jihad. (Hello, @DemSocialists)
14/n

This might just be a petty academic dispute in normal times -- yet these are days when the Kremlin is yet again at it, killing ordinary people by the thousands for some vicious dream. God, how I despise that author and @jacobin. END