What lessons can other former Soviet republics take from Georgias experience?
There are some lessons here that other states might not want to learn. I am sure that the authoritarian leaders in Belarus and Azerbaijan, for example, are looking at Georgian events with great concern. At best, the Georgian “revolution” could lead to similar popular “revolutions” in other authoritarian post-Soviet states. However, I am skeptical because most other leaders in former Soviet states do not have Shevardnadze’s tolerance. If I was to be a bit more sentimental–and somewhere at the back of my mind I believe this–the lesson is that democracy still has a chance in some of the Soviet Union’s more repressive states. No authoritarian leader, as events over the last decades have shown us, should feel that his or her power is invulnerable to popular protest.
