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Levan Vasadze’s Quest to Consolidate Georgia’s Extreme Right

Ultra-conservative businessman Levan Vasadze holds a rally on May 16, 2021. Photo: Davit Shalikashvili for Civil.ge

The post-election political crisis in Georgia propelled Levan Vasadze, a businessman well-known for his illiberal leanings, as the lynchpin of Georgia’s radical right. Vasadze made the bid to consolidate the Georgian ultra-conservative movements and to establish a united, powerful party. But the internal dynamics of the Georgian ultra-right movements may prevent Vasadze from attaining his goal.

Analysis

Vasadze announced on May 6 about entering into politics and founding a public movement “Unity, Essence, Hope”, known with its Georgian abbreviation ERI, meaning “the nation.” Vasadze said he seeks the way out from “a permanent crisis” in which he sees the EU-brokered April 19 Agreement as “the last straw” – “a gross violation and reduction of the country’s sovereignty.”

Good timing

While Vasadze never shied away from controversial statements, his entrance on the scene with his own political movement comes at a crucial time. Various polls show that a considerable part of the Georgian population expresses socially conservative sentiments, with approving the special status for the Orthodox Church, opposing LGBT rights, against their daughter/son marrying a person with a different religious background.

Interestingly, however, most of the ultra-conservative parties fail to pass the election barrier, let alone form a government. True, the governing party, the Georgian Dream, stands on firmly conservative positions in internal politics (that, despite being a member of the family of the European Socialists). It should be capturing some of these votes. But radical right still performs badly – on the 2020 Parliamentary Elections, only the nativist Alliance of Patriots managed to garner more than 1% (3.14%) of votes, while others fell well behind the threshold. In this context, Levan Vasadze hopes to capture the voters that feel under-represented.

Korneli Kakachia, who leads the Georgian Institute of Politics (GIP), a think tank, considers that Vasadze’s potential success would hurt the ruling Georgian Dream party, taking away some of their radical supporters.

Man for the job?

Levan Vasadze’s biography resembles, in part, that of Viktor Orbán, perhaps Central/Eastern Europe’s most outspoken illiberal leader. Vasadze was benefited from the U.S. government scholarship and has spent the mid-1990s in the United States, where he graduated with MBA at the Emory University in 1995. His political views seem to have taken a radical turn after his graduation, in Moscow, Russia. Here, he is mainly reported to have worked as “a businessman,” but also studied the life of the apostles and theology in 2006-2007 at Moscow St. Tikhon Humanitarian University.

In Georgia, he ran two companies – “Bagrationi 1882” known for its sparkling wines, and “Samoseli Pirveli” – a clothes brand trying to revive and upgrade Georgia’s traditional clothing.

Back in Georgia since 2009, he has been publishing regularly, mixing nativist, Christian mystical, and messianic messages. He has been called “one of the chief ideologues of Georgian nativism.“ Vasadze is married and raises eight children.

Hard quest for consolidation

Seeking the unifying core

Georgian right-wing is eclectic and scattered. With dozens of political parties identifying themselves with the ultra-conservative and traditionalist ideas never managed to create a homogenous movement. As is often the case in Georgia, this type of unification may come under a charismatic and authoritative leader. Vasadze has to yet prove to the multi-striped radical right – some nativist, others illiberal conservatives, yet others with neo-Nazi paraphernalia, some pro-Russian Putino-Stalinist factions, and other ardently anti-Russian nationalist-militarists – that he is the right candidate for propelling the radical right to power. So far, Vasadze articulates several key unifying messages:

Allies: a cool reception

Statements from some key figures of the Georgian right-wing seem to suggest Vasadze’s consolidating quest will be a complicated one:

Key ingredients for success:

What next?

Georgian pundits seem to agree, that consolidating the Georgian far-right actors is a difficult mission. They seem homogenous from the outside, but the internal dynamics clearly indicate the opposite. Many perceive Vasadze’s ideological expansiveness and his financial assets as a threat to their career and thus are unlikely to welcome him as an uncontested leader in the holy war for Georgia’s liberation from “liberalism.”

In the coming months, Vasadze’s ability to mobilize resources, get into the media, and convert his ideological stance into tangible – and popular – actions will become more obvious. So far, Vasadze’s attempt to piggyback on the popular success of the Rioni Valley Defenders has been a failure – he managed to discredit the Rioni Valley movement in the eyes of some Georgians, but was neither welcome nor accepted by the movement itself.

We apologize that the previous version erroneously stated the sociological research data. The error has been corrected.