Demonstrators have filled the streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi every night since the ruling Georgian Dream party — fresh from its ‘victory’ in an election whose results were not recognised by the European Parliament — announced on November 28 that it would cease Georgia’s European Union accession talks. The nightly street battles with riot police have led to US and UK sanctions on top Georgian Dream security officials.

Yet for all the drama taking place in the capital, it is perhaps outside of it that the most remarkable story is taking place.

Politics in Georgia, like many countries with a dominant capital city, is centred almost exclusively on Tbilisi. The city, which contains at least one-third of Georgia’s population, is the epicentre of every political crisis and public demonstration. Street protests rarely venture beyond the limits of Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilisi’s main thoroughfare.

But not this time. Georgian Dream’s November 26 announcement sparked demonstrations not only in Tbilisi, but in cities and towns — even in villages — across the country. One map showing their geographic reach demonstrates the spread succinctly, with at least 36 different settlements represented, stretching all the way from Georgia’s eastern border with Azerbaijan to its Black Sea coast. Towns as varied as Jvari and Kareli, places with a population of barely a few thousand rural Georgians each, have nevertheless seen demonstrations against what locals view as the government stealing their European future.

“The protests here started with just a small group of guys at first,” says Dmitri Tsulaia, an activist from Poti, a small port city on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. “But very quickly, it grew to 1,000 people in those first days. For Poti, this number is crazy — it’s something that has never been seen before,” he says.

Poti’s official population stands at an estimated 41,700, a number that is large enough to make it the seventh-most populous settlement in Georgia. The real number, however, is likely much lower — Georgia has not conducted a proper national census since 2012, while many people who are officially registered as residents of towns or villages in reality live and work (or study) in Tbilisi.

The outpouring of anti-government sentiment in Poti was both unprecedented and significant. It was also met quickly by Georgian authorities, using a tactic they have deployed often across the country — threats to fire public sector employees attending the protests.

“As soon as the local government saw how many people were against them here, they began to feel fear about it,” says Tsulaia. “They soon began to pressure people, making threats about losing their jobs or having other such problems. It happened in schools in particular — not just towards teachers, but towards students, who were told that they would receive bad grades if they kept attending the protests.”

While this approach did result in a major reduction in the size of Poti’s protests, it could not stop them completely. Most days in the city still see “20, 30, 50 people coming out to protest, which is a lot for a small and pretty dead city like Poti,” Tsulaia says.

The phenomenon of these unprecedented protests is due to a fundamental shift in the ruling party’s priorities, experts say.

“Since the restoration of independence in 1991, Georgia’s Western orientation was never questioned,” says Iago Kachkachashvili, chairman of the Tbilisi-based Institute of Social Studies and Analysis. “Only in the last few years of Georgian Dream’s rule, particularly following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has this fundamental principle shifted,” he says, with the announcement of halting EU accession talks as the final straw for most of the public.

It is this last step that has led to popular discontent with Georgian Dream spreading across the country, Kachkachashvili says.

“I was very surprised to see protests even in small towns like Ozurgeti and Chkhorotsku,” he says. “It shows that the protests have penetrated all levels of society,” well beyond Tbilisi’s middle class, he adds.

While demonstrations in Tbilisi have historically met with fairly consistent success, contributing to the toppling of previous governments in 2003 (when the Rose Revolution brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power) and 2012 (when Saakashvili was ousted in favour of Georgian Dream), they have also had failures. Revolutions have a much greater chance of success when they can reach other population centres — a dynamic that was crucial to the success of Ukraine’s 2013-14 Euromaidan Revolution, which also featured a civic uprising against a government’s sudden anti-Western turn. 

The fact that this same trend is now playing out in Georgia is highly encouraging for the movement’s eventual success, Kachkachashvili says.

“The universalisation of the protest is extremely important,” he says. “In the regions, the only news media available is usually the government’s propaganda channels — Imedi, Rustavi 2, First Channel, all of which are commanded by Georgian Dream. However, it seems that messaging about the government’s anti-Western course has also penetrated rural areas,” Kachkachashvili says.

For all its propaganda efforts, Georgian Dream appears to have lost the fundamental trust of rural Georgians to guide them towards a better future. Protesters in western Georgia, where small towns such as Chkhorotsku and Tsalenjikha have seen the first protests anyone can remember, have said as much in interviews. One protester in the latter town described the government as having broken Georgia’s basic social contract: move towards the EU, and don’t use violence.

The extension of the protest movement to Georgia’s provinces and rural areas further indicate that the government’s efforts to control the narrative have failed, Kachachashvili says.

“The Georgian Dream authorities have failed to make the adoption of anti-Western rhetoric mainstream in Georgia,” he explains. “Anti-Westernism [in Georgia] automatically means pro-Russian, and Russia has been declared Georgia’s number one enemy by the vast majority of society,” Kachkachashvili says.

That anti-Western messaging rings true for Tsulaia as well. Georgia’s visa-free regime with the EU — accomplished, ironically, by the Georgian Dream government in 2017 — is now at risk of being suspended, a proposal that is increasingly being discussed in Brussels. The potential loss of this achievement, and the clear backsliding it represents, has been a key motivator for provincial protesters.

“During these last few years, since the visa liberalisation [with the EU], a lot of people in Georgia have had the opportunity to visit Europe, for study, work or just travel,” Tsulaia says. “It was like a dream for us, to be able to do this. I personally have been to Europe, and I want my children to have the same opportunity one day, too. So people are getting so mad that the government is literally taking this away from us, destroying our European future,” he says.

The loss of opportunities in Europe, replaced by ones in Russia — Moscow lifted its visa requirement for Georgians in May 2023, and expanded permissions for them just two weeks ahead of the October election — has only served to remind Georgians of their dark past. 

“We all remember what Russian influence means, what the Soviet period was like,” Tsulaia says. “I remember as a kid when we had no electricity, when we had to live by candles because there was no power. And now they want to take us back in this direction, and to do it by force — police beating people in the streets. This might work in some countries, but it won’t work in Georgia,” he says.