I was in Georgia in the late 1980s: I observed how tradition survived harsh Sovietisation and rapid transformation

Begos' Friends by Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani, painted in the 1910s. At a keipi or festive supra, the tamada holds a kantsi (horn) and introduces a toast. Wikiuka/Wikimedia

When Soviet president and Communist party secretary Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the policies of perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (openness) in the mid-1980s, it marked the beginning of cautious reforms of the Soviet Union. Georgia, or the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, to give it its full name at the time, was on the periphery of the union.

Far from Moscow, it lay hidden on the other side of the Caucasus mountain range on the edge of the Black Sea. As a doctoral candidate in linguistics on a research grant to Tbilisi University, I spent one year living there, between 1987 and 1988. I was conducting research on the Georgian language.