What shapes attitudes toward the Soviet Union’s collapse in Georgia and Armenia?

Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Sasha Slobodov, an International Fellow at CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in the article are of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC Georgia, or any related entity.

The 2021 Caucasus Barometer surveys in Georgia and Armenia suggest that attitudes toward the collapse of the Soviet Union are correlated with perceptions about satisfaction with life.

Overall, Georgians look back on the USSR much less fondly than Armenians do. Two-thirds (67%) of Armenians view the dissolution of the Soviet Union as ‘a bad thing’. In contrast, just 38% report the same in Georgia. About half (47%) of respondents in Georgia said that the end of the USSR was ‘a good thing’, while only 23% said the same in Armenia.

Though Georgians look back less favourably on the Soviet past, in both countries, those who see the dissolution of the USSR negatively are also more likely to have negative perceptions of life now. 

Georgian respondents who reported being less satisfied with their life were more likely to see the collapse of the Soviet Union negatively. Controlling for social and demographic variables, Georgian respondents who reported being very satisfied with their lives were 34 percentage points more likely to consider the collapse of the Soviet Union to be a good thing, compared to those who reported a very low level of satisfaction with their lives. A regression model suggests that the higher the respondent’s satisfaction with their life, the more likely they are to consider the dissolution of the Soviet Union to be a good thing.

However, this trend was not as pronounced in Armenia, where those who were more satisfied with their lives were only 10 percentage points more likely to consider the dissolution of the Soviet Union to be a good thing, compared to those who reported a lower level of satisfaction with their lives.

When asked the reasons for holding positive or negative perceptions of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Georgians and Armenians gave the same primary explanations.

The deterioration in people’s economic situation was mentioned by 69% of Armenian respondents and 65% of Georgian respondents who saw the end of the USSR negatively.

Among those who saw the dissolution positively, 79% of Georgians and 88% of Armenians said this was due to their countries gaining independence. 

There were no meaningful differences between those who were satisfied and dissatisfied with their jobs or who considered themselves to have relatively “poor” or “good” economic conditions in terms of whether or not they perceived the collapse of the Soviet Union to be a good thing.

Overall, the data suggests that the happier respondents are with their lives now, 30 years following the end of the Soviet Union, the more likely they are to see the collapse positively. This correlation is substantially stronger in Georgia than in Armenia. 

Note: The data in this article is available here. Analyses that do not link directly to CRRC Georgia’s online data analysis tool were conducted using logistic regression. The logistic regression included age group (18-34, 35-54, 55+), sex (male or female), education (completed secondary/lower, technical or incomplete higher education/higher), wealth (an additive index of ownership of 10 durable goods, a proxy variable), settlement type (Tbilisi, other urban areas, or rural areas), employment type (employed or not working), and level of satisfaction with life as controls. Whether or not the respondent thought the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a good or bad thing was the outcome.

Who is pro-Russian in Georgia

Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Givi Silagadze, a Researcher at CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in the article are of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC Georgia, or any related entity.

While this group is rarely examined, data from a March 2022 NDI/CRRC survey suggests that pro-Russian people in Georgia make up a fifth to a fourth of the public. 

The data suggests they tend to be more satisfied with the country’s direction, and assess the performance of the government more positively than people who do not sit in the pro-Russian camp.

What portion of the public can be considered pro-Russian?

Four different questions were used to identify Georgia’s pro-Russian public. People who responded in the following manner were considered pro-Russian for the purpose of this article:

• People who report favourable or very favourable views of the Russian Government.
• People who think that Russia’s influence on Georgia has increased in the last five years and that this is a good thing.
• People who think that Georgia should have its closest economic cooperation with Russia, and at the same time, believe that Georgia should not have close economic cooperation with the EU or US.
• People who think that Georgia should have its closest political cooperation with Russia.

People who responded in the above manner to at least one of the questions made up 23% of the electorate. 

Regression analysis was used to examine which social and demographic groups were more likely to sit in the pro-Russian camp. The data suggested that men and ethnic minorities were more likely to harbour pro-Russia attitudes than women and ethnic Georgians. 

Otherwise, no statistically significant differences were found in terms of age, education, settlement type, or party affiliation.

What does the pro-Russian camp think of where Georgia is headed?

With regard to the general direction of the country, pro-Russian Georgians tended to think the country was headed in the right direction more often than others. All else equal, people in the pro-Russian camp were 10 percentage points more likely to report that Georgia is developing in the right direction than people who were not in the pro-Russian camp.

Pro-Russians reported similar attitudes to the rest of the public regarding parliament’s performance as well as the work of President Salome Zurabishvili

However, pro-Russian Georgians were more likely to assess the Prime Minister’s work positively as well as that of the government. They were also substantially more likely — by 22 percentage points — to view the overall performance of the government positively.

The above data suggests that more analysis should be done about the roughly one-quarter to one-fifth of the public that holds pro-Russian views — views more often held by men and ethnic minorities.

Georgia’s pro-Russian camp were more satisfied with the performance of the executive branch of the government as well as the country’s general direction than people who are not pro-Russian.

Amid increasing concerns regarding recent steps by Georgia’s political leadership, the deteriorating media environment, and the country’s European path more generally, the pro-Russian segment of society being satisfied with the current direction of the country is telling, and a warning sign for those who advocate for Georgia’s democratisation and integration with Euro-Atlantic structures.

Note: The above data analysis is based on logistic regression models which included the following variables: age group (18-34, 35-54, 55+), sex (male or female), education (completed secondary/lower or incomplete higher education/higher), settlement type (capital, urban, rural), wealth (an additive index of ownership of 10 different items, a proxy variable), ethnicity (ethnic Georgian or ethnic minority), partisanship (Georgia Dream, opposition, no party/DK), and holding pro-Russia attitudes (pro-Russian, not pro-Russian). The data used in this analysis is available here.

The importance of remittances for Georgian households

Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Anano Kipiani, a Policy Analyst at CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in the article are of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC Georgia, or any related entity.

Immigration from Georgia is common, with a prime motivator being the difficult economic situation in the country. Indeed, about three-quarters of Georgians have a close relative living abroad, and most send remittances to their relatives in Georgia. In turn, remittances made up 12.9%  of the country’s GDP in 2019. By comparison, agriculture’s contribution to GDP was about half of this number, at 6.5%. 

The study compared households that receive remittances to: similar households without remittances; similar households with migrants but who do not receive remittances; and similar households without migrants. 

Additionally, households that have migrants, but do not receive remittances were compared to the other three groups of households. This was done using a process called matching, which identifies similar groups of individuals.

Who gets remittances?

Overall, 19% of households reported receiving remittances from abroad in 2019. While looking at the types of households that receive remittances, a regression analysis suggests that households with one adult household member are 21 percentage points more likely to get remittances than households with five adult members. Households with children are six percentage points more likely to get remittances than households without children.

What are the impacts of remittances?

Households which receive remittances report their economic conditions are relatively positive compared to similar households that do not receive remittances. They are five percentage points more likely to assess their economic condition as relatively good, and nine percentage points less likely to believe they have relatively poor economic conditions. 

In contrast, migrant households that do not receive remittances are slightly more likely to assess their economic condition negatively (by six percentage points) compared with households that do not have migrants. 

Note: Answer options 'good' and 'very good' are recoded as 'relatively good', while 'poor' and 'very poor' are recoded as 'relatively poor'. Due to their small number, 'don’t know' and 'refuse to answer' were dropped from the analysis. In some cases, figures in this post may not sum up to 100% due to rounding errors.

Households that receive remittances compared with all other households were nine percentage points more likely to be able to afford enough food and clothes, five percentage points more likely to be able to afford to buy expensive durables, and eight percentage points less likely to not have enough money for food compared with other similar households. 

Remittances also appear to be associated with higher monthly incomes. Households with remittances are seven percentage points slightly less likely to report they earn less than $100 a month compared with all other households and migrant households without remittances. However, households with remittances are slightly more likely to respond ‘don’t know’ or refuse to answer, which is often associated with higher levels of asset ownership and in turn, likely income, in Georgia. 

Households that receive remittances also have more durable goods than others. From a list of 10 different goods asked about on the survey, migrant households owned nearly one additional good on average. At the same time, households with migrants that do not receive remittances had slightly fewer durable goods than households without migrants.

Overall, the data suggests that people benefit from receiving remittances, at least in economic terms. In contrast, households that have migrants but do not receive remittances do relatively poorly on some measures, though by no means all. Despite these positive economic impacts, the results do not speak to any effects, social, psychological, or otherwise, which may be tied to migration.

The data used in this post as well as replication code for the analysis is available here. A full policy brief on this issue is available here. The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC Georgia.

Young people in Georgia want the government to focus on education

Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Tamuna Khoshtaria, a Senior Researcher at CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in the article are of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC Georgia, GFSIS, or any related entity. 

A study conducted in 2021 by CRRC Georgia for GFSIS focusing on the values and political activism of young people in Georgia shows that education is the primary field that young people aged 18–29 in Georgia want to be strengthened. 

Young people prioritise the development of education above other domains. Almost half of young people (48%) mentioned education when asked what field the government should support most. The next most common response was agriculture, which was named by a third (33%). Healthcare came in third, with a quarter of respondents naming this as a priority.

Note: Respondents could name up to two answers. Therefore the numbers do not add up to 100%.

A regression model suggests that whether young people prioritise education varies according to a number of factors.

Women were eight percentage points more likely to name education than men. 

Young people in rural areas named education less (49%) than those in the urban areas (56%) and the capital (57%). 

The younger a person was, the higher the chance they named education. The probability of someone aged 18–21 naming education was 61% compared to 48% for someone aged 26–29. 

Those with at least some tertiary education also name education more often. Young people with some tertiary education were 13 percentage points more likely to name education than young people with only secondary education.

That university students and recent graduates think that education should be a top priority may point to dissatisfaction with the quality of higher education. 

Other data in the study supports this conjecture. 

When asked to what extent the level of education in Georgian higher education institutions was satisfactory, almost half of those with at least some tertiary education expressed dissatisfaction in contrast to about one-third with secondary education.

Aside from demographics, young people’s attitudes towards the West also predicted whether or not they think education should be a top priority. Young people who said that integration with the European Union or NATO was very important to them were more likely to say that education should be a top priority compared to those who report EU/NATO integration was quite important or not that important.

Overall, the findings suggest that education is a top priority for young people aged 18–29 in Georgia. This is especially important for young women, those under 22, those living in the capital, those with experience in higher education, and those with pro-Western attitudes.  

The views presented in the article are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of GFSIS, CRRC Georgia or any related entity. 

Note: The analysis above is based on a logistic regression model.  The variables included in the regression include sex, age group, settlement type, and level of education. The analysis which included attitudes towards NATO and EU integration was conducted using a second and third model, where importance of NATO/EU integration were included as categorical variables in addition to the aforementioned variables. The data used in this blog post are available here.