Civil Society in the Caucasus

Although touted as a victory of civil society, the success of the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 was not so much the result of a successful mobilization from below, as the outcome of a split within the ruling political elite. This article seeks to debunk the myth that the so called colored revolutions in the former Soviet Union represented a renaissance of civil society. It begins by exploring what we mean by civil society, what civil does and what it is not, before going on to investigate whether the organizations and popular movements that were involved in mass demonstrations in the three South Caucasus republics (Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan) were in fact a part of civil society or whether they were instead something quite different. It concludes that neither the recent street demonstrations nor the emerging NGO sector in the Caucasus region can really be said to constitute civil society in the way that it is normally understood. Instead it proposes the nearest there is to civil society in the Caucasus can be found in the Georgian Orthodox Church. Despite its strongly illiberal agenda and often intolerant opinions, the views of the Church are far more representative of popular opinion than those of the narrow and elitist NGO sector.