Georgia's Political Crossroads: West or East?

Tens of thousands of Georgians protested a bill that would have required organizations to register as “foreign agents” if they received more than 20 percent of their funding from foreign sources. The protesters said it was a step toward authoritarian curbs on speech and independent activism, an imitation of Russian laws that Putin has used to cripple and muzzle the opposition—and, in a broader symbolic sense, a move away from Europe and toward Russia. The protests were successful in getting the parliament to vote down the law. The events illustrated a key difference between Russia and Georgia: “In Russia, civil society has been successfully crushed. In Georgia, it didn’t work,” said a Russian-Ukrainian journalist.