Figure 1.--This is another of Russian photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, wonderful color images of The Tsarust empire. We see Greek women and children about 1910 harvesting tea laeaves near Chakva/Chakvi, a resort town on Georgia's the Black Sea coast. It shows clearly that tea could be grown and harvested in Georgia. But look at the plants. They are a fraction of the size of tea plants we see in Sri Lanka and other tea groiwing areas. This means that the tea produced in Georgia was much more costly than the tea produced in lush Sri Lanka plantations. This was the cost of autarkic Tsarist and Soviet policies. Tea could have been imported cheaply and the land and labor in Georgia used for more productive crops. We mention this because in a discuss with a Russian reader at an early stage of HBC/CIH he cited the demise of the Georgian tea industry as an example of how America was under mmining the post-Soviet economy. It was of course no such thing. It was simply that inefficent Soviet industries could not survive competition. The same ws occuring theought Russia and the former post-Soviet stattes.

Agriculture has dominated the economy. Crops include frit, tea, tobacco, silk, and wine produced in the warmer, well-watered areas of the west. Manganese is mined at Chiatura. Mostly during the Soviet era, manufacturing developed for machinery, chemicals, and iron and steel works. These industries operated in the closed Tsarist and then Soviet system. Like other Soviet industries they were highly inefficent. They could only function in a closed system which shielded them from competion. The inefficencies, however, impaired the contribution to the Soviet economy and the wages they could pay workers. The economy imploded with the collapse of the Soviet Uniin and independence (1991). Inefficent Soviet socialist enterprises could not survive once subjected to competition. Since independence, however, the economy and workers have benefitted from free market reforms. The economy gradually recovered as private enterprises began to function. Growth rates reached double digits as a result economic (capitalist market-based) and democratic reforms brought by the peaceful Rose Revolution. In 2007, the World Bank (WB) named Georgia the World's number one economic reformer (2007). The WB has since continuously ranked Georgia at the top of its ease of doing business index. [GT] Georgia has continued its upward economic trajectory 'moving from a near-failed state in 2003 to a relatively well-functioning market economy in 2014.' [U.S. State Department] Georgia's free market reforms are supported by a relatively free and transparent national poliical and social atmosphere. Georgia has been identified as the least corrupt nation in the Black Sea region, not only outperforming all of its neighboring states, but even closeby European Union member states . [TI] Georgia has developed is a mixed news media environment. As a result it is the also the only country in the region where the press is basically free. [Freedom House] Georgia joined the European Union's (EU) Free Trade Area (2014). The EU is Georgia's largest trading partner. More than a quarter of Georgia's overall trade is with the EU. [European Commission] Georgia signed a trade agreement with EU (2015). This has resulted with exoanded trade ith the EU and declining trade with the Russian controlled Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). [Georgia]

Sources

Georgia. Georgia’s 2015 Foreign Trade (2016).

European Commission. "Georgia" (2016).

GT. "Georgia’s reforms please World Bank," Russia Today (June 17, 2007).

Freedom House. "Freedom of the Press" (2016).

Transparency International (TI). "Corruption Perceptions Index 2015," (2016).

United States Department of State. "Georgia: Executive Summary" (2016).

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Created: 11:00 PM 3/21/20199
Last updated: 11:00 PM 3/21/2019