On November 22, 2003, a group of young Georgian politicians and activists led by former justice minister Mikheil Saakashvili stormed into the first session of the newly—and fraudulently—elected Georgian parliament. Holding aloft a single red rose—the symbol of thousands who had taken to the streets in the days before—Saakashvili marched forward, shouting “Resign!” as President Eduard Shevardnadze stood at the rostrum, addressing the parliament’s members. Moments later, a very old and disoriented looking Shevardnadze, known to most people in the West as Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev’s courageous Soviet foreign minister during the waning days of the...

During the last two decades of the Soviet Union, Georgia was one of the most affluent of the country’s fifteen republics. An economy buoyed by the sale of wine, tea, fruit, and mineral water as well as its position as one of the major tourist destinations of the Soviet Union meant that Georgians enjoyed a higher standard of living than most of their compatriots in other parts of the USSR. In these years, Georgia was also viewed as an important cultural center where artists, film makers, and others worked and had an impact on the entire USSR. Distance from Moscow...

As the parliamentary elections of 2003 approached, Shevardnadze’s regime was rife with corruption, unable to deliver basic services or economic growth of any kind and relying increasingly on Shevardnadze’s reputation, continuing mastery of politics and ability to keep the Georgian opposition disunified. The local elections had shown how unpopular Shevardnadze had become in the two years since his reelection: the biggest winner in that election, Saakashvili’s NM, had campaigned under the unambiguous slogan “Tbilisi Without Shevardnadze.”

As soon as the 2002 local elections ended, parties began to prepare for the November 2003 parliamentary elections, which were broadly viewed as the...

When Shevarnadze resigned, it was not Mikheil Saakashvili, the most prominent leader of the Rose Revolution, who assumed the leadership of Georgia. Instead, in accordance with the constitutional procedure for replacing a president after death or resignation, parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze, who had also played a key visible role in the demonstrations, became president of Georgia late in the day of November 23.

Immediately after Shevardnadze’s resignation, Burjanadze spoke to the international media. A young, confident, strong-looking woman, Burjanadze, speaking calmly and convincingly in English, pledged her country’s commitment to democracy and the West. She was unlike any post-Soviet leader...

Mikheil Saakashvili’s election raised hopes both in Georgia and internationally that a new political era would begin in Georgia, one in which democracy, transparency, and the rule of law would replace the old regime of corruption, stolen elections, and kleptocracy. Saakashvili himself encouraged these expectations through his speeches and comments about the new direction in which Georgia was moving.¹

Georgians were exhausted and angry that the first twelve years of post-Soviet independence had brought little besides declining economic conditions, chaos, crumbling infrastructure, and a dishonest and uncaring government. For many of them the Rose Revolution and Saakashvili’s election represented nothing...

Democratic consolidation in Georgia has proved difficult, and substantial challenges remain. Additionally, the government of Georgia, while making strong advances in fighting corruption and reforming governance, has not made democracy a priority or seen it as a central part of its electoral mandate. Nonetheless, the Rose Revolution is still understood by many, not altogether inaccurately, as an important breakthrough for democracy. Additionally, because it has been highlighted as one of the Bush administration’s most significant success stories in foreign policy generally and in democracy promotion in particular, the Rose Revolution has also become an important chapter in the story of...

U.S. efforts to build and strengthen democracy in Georgia during the years between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Rose Revolution yielded significant, but not entirely anticipated, results. Moreover, while the Rose Revolution and subsequent election of the pro-Western, explicitly reform oriented government of Mikheil Saakashvili set Georgian democracy on a new and reinvigorated course, it also raised a largely new and very different set of challenges for both democratization and democracy assistance in Georgia.

For years, as international confidence in Shevardnadze waned, hopes for democracy in Georgia were pinned on the post-Shevardnadze period. This, of course, came...

The United States has presented the Rose Revolution, only somewhat accurately and in very general terms, as a success story for democracy assistance policy. The transition in Georgia occurred at a time when it appeared as if the steam was running out of the third wave of democratization, and as conditions in postwar Iraq were beginning to go sour. At the time, the Rose Revolution followed by the Orange Revolution in Ukraine seemed like the beginning of another set of advances for democracy globally. Thus the Rose Revolution has occupied an important place in both American foreign policy and the...

On August 7, 2008, Georgia found itself in the international news once again. This time it was in the spotlight not for domestic political events, but because the Georgian government had decided that it could no longer countenance the presence of and ongoing provocations by Russian forces in South Ossetia. The government decided to address this problem by launching a military effort to reassert Georgian control over South Ossetia. This was met by a swift, severe, and predictable military response by Russia. Moscow’s response included not only pushing Georgian troops out of South Ossetia and expanding the Russian presence in...