#3
Izvestia
March 19, 2002
RUSSIANS LIKE GEORGIA BUT NOT THE POLICY OF ITS LEADERSHIP
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

Official visit of President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze to NATO headquarters in Brussels begins today. Shevardnadze will meet with NATO General Secretary George Robertson to discuss closer contacts between Georgia and the Alliance. Most Russians dislike the idea.

According to the latest opinion poll conducted by sociologists of the Public Opinion Foundation, 52% of Russians assume that Russian- Georgian relations deteriorated within the last twelve months. Even more respondents - 58% - refer to Russian-Georgian relations as 'bad' when asked to give their evaluation.

On the other hand, only 15% of respondents say they relate towards Georgia in general negatively as against 41% who are of the opposite opinion. Moreover, the number of Russians who admit having negative feelings with regard to the southern neighbor has gone down by half since October 2001.

Sociologists ascribe these fluctuations in public opinion first and foremost to the fact that the major guilty party that is responsible for the deterioration of Russian-Georgian relations, Shevardnadze himself, was recently "revealed" and verbally "destroyed".

According to the Public Opinion Foundation, Russians associate Shevardnadze almost exclusively with every negative feeling they can identify. 63% of respondents do not sympathize with the president of Georgia (elders amount to 69% in this category and individuals with higher education to 73%).

This is undoubtedly a peculiarity of the Russian mentality, but even though sociologists asked their questions about Shevardnadze the politician, respondents meant in their evaluation Shevardnadze the personality. Every fourth respondent dislikes the nature of the president of Georgia. "He does not have an opinion of his on", "A political puppet", "He will never miss a chance to do something nasty, given a slight opportunity" were the most frequent comments. Even the 7% of respondents who commented on the flaws of Shevardnadze the politician did not mince their words: "He pursues an anti-Russian policy", "He does not care about his own people", "When Georgia was a part of the Soviet Union, he was a bona fide politician, not anymore". Every sixth respondent more or less emphatically advised Shevardnadze to step down.

Georgia's drift from Russia hurts Russians so much because it is taking place firstly under a former politburo member ("We elevated him in the first place, and this is what we get in return", they tend to think). Secondly, under a former foreign minister, a politician and diplomat who undeniably played his part in the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Just one five respondents is prepared to accept the conjecture that the Georgian-American cooperation aims first and foremost at the war on terrorism and local army training. 15% of all respondents suspect official Tbilisi of trying to solve its financial and foreign political problems in this manner.

20% of Russians are confident of the anti-Russian motives of the Americans' appearance in the Caucasus ("They are here to attack Russian eventually", "The Americans are out to weaken Russia").

Generally speaking, sociologists split Russians' attitude towards Georgia into several categories. The first category is factual, military-political, and negatively painted. The second is cultural- geographic, portrayed mostly positively. The third and the last is historical-nostalgic in manner. It is without a definite emotional undertone.