Georgians - Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Most Georgian families have gardens or private plots in which they grow beans, maize, fruits, vegetables, and spices for their own consumption. Men make wine and sometimes keep bees; women make condiments, pickles, and preserves and may raise chickens and pigs. In mountainous regions, people are mostly engaged in raising sheep and cattle. Only potatoes, barley, rye, and oats can be grown in the highest villages, so vodka and beer take the place of wine. The staple food of eastern Georgia is fresh, flattish white bread, now usually bought from stores; in the west the staple is cornmeal, either in cakes or as porridge. A meal also commonly includes various bean dishes ( lobio ) , cheese or yogurt, and fruits and vegetables in season. Among the most popular Georgian dishes are shish kebab ( mts'vadi ) with sour plum sauce ( t'q'emali ) , chicken with spicy walnut sauce ( satsivi, bazhe ), lamb-stuffed dumplings, and cheese bread ( khach'ap'uri ) .

In previous centuries Georgian cities had highly disciplined guilds of merchants and craftsmen, including armorers, tailors, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, and wine merchants. Tbilisi was known for its sharp-tongued street hawkers, roaming musicians, and cellar restaurants. Today professional craftsmen are few, but private cooperative stores and restaurants are once again allowed. State stores offer staples, including bread; open markets and specialty stores have a wide variety of produce, nuts, and preserved meats, but at much higher prices. Clothing, toys, and household items appear in stores randomly or not at all, and may cost weeks, months, or years of the average person's wages. Georgians, while participating in the cash economy, thus rely heavily on the assistance of relatives, friends, and co-workers to obtain inside access to goods and services.

In this century the Soviet policies of collectivization and industrialization have commercialized Georgia's economy and increased the standard of living. Large state farms in the lowlands now grow warm-weather, labor-intensive crops for export: tobacco, tea, and citrus in the west; wine, fruit, and vegetables in the east. In other areas collective farms produce more varied crops, mostly for local consumption. Georgia has one of the world's largest manganese mines (at Ch'iatura) and significant reserves of coal, timber, and various minerals. Other industries across the country include food processing, clothing production, steel works, and oil refineries. Tourism is also a major industry; Georgia has many natural mineral water spas in addition to its coast and mountains. Russian workers in Georgia are concentrated in tourist services and in industry.

Trade. Georgia produced over 90 percent of the tea and citrus consumed in the Soviet Union and much highly prized wine. Owing to its increasingly specialized agriculture, the country is now dependent on imports of grain. Batumi in Ajaria is a major port, especially for oil that comes by pipeline from Baku. Overland routes to Russia are limited: the only railway runs along the Abkhazian coast, and the main road—the Georgian Military Highway—is through the difficult Darial Pass into North Ossetia. (Plans to blast a tunnel through the Caucasus to allow a more direct rail link between Russia and Tbilisi were abandoned after a popular outcry over the environmental and cultural consequences.) In Russia, Georgians have earned a reputation as entrepreneurs and speculators.

Division of Labor. Georgian family members cooperate economically, even though some may have official jobs and residences in the city and others in the country. Traditionally, all wage workers put their earnings into a common fund kept by the senior woman of the household. When major purchases were to be made, the whole family conferred, with the oldest man having final say. In Tbilisi nowadays, family members simply give each other money as needed. In rural areas men do most of the fieldwork, cut hay, and take animals to high pasture in summer. Women do the cooking, washing, and cleaning and have the primary responsibility for taking care of children. Only men slaughter animals and serve as priests (in the Georgian Orthodox church or in pre-Christian ceremonies still observed in many remote parts of the country). Women are expected to teach their children to read and to ensure that they do well in school. Both men and women usually have nonagricultural jobs, sometimes in a neighboring larger village or town. One typical pattern is for grandparents to remain in the village, registered in the collective farm, while some of their grown children work or get training in town.

Land Tenure. Collectivization in the 1930s eliminated differences in family landholdings and competition for scarce arable land. Most fields and pastures now belong to collective farms, with individuals drawing wages and portions of the harvest in proportion to hours worked. About 30 percent of the agricultural land belongs to the state, which pays workers a fixed wage. Under Soviet law, people have the right only to use their houses and individual plots, with inheritance based on coresidence. In practice, however, Georgians ensure that sons or other appropriate heirs are official residents, thus keeping property within the family. In pre-Soviet times, fields belonged to families, pastures to villages, and forests to nobles, churches, or to all for free use.