Rose Revolution

And it actually predates much Georgia's candidate status itself, Sarah, by many years actually.

Security and stability were already there as part of the elements of European neighborhood policy, which Georgia joined in 2004 after the Rose Revolution and later the Eastern Partnership Initiative also.

established or initiated back then by Poland and Sweden in 2009, bringing Georgia into much deeper framework of political association and institutional cooperation.

So the EU-Georgia relationship was never simply about trade or just legislative approximation, definitely not.

So privatization, obviously the collapse of the Soviet economy happens, and there's these ways that people on the ground are forced to adapt to this new capitalist, marketized, privatized reality.

And then when the Rose Revolution happens, there's not a fundamental attempt to transform the education system per se, but rather to formalize what had emerged from the ruinous privatization process of the 90s.

Is that correct? Yes.

Yeah, it was turbocharged as well.

So you talked about the removal of Chavchavadze from the curriculum, and you're kind of painting the picture of how there's this radical neoliberalization that formalizes the privatized education sector.

And how did, and you mentioned, excuse me, and you mentioned the curriculum in general.

And so I'm curious that like in this post- Rose Revolution period.

How does the ideology of neoliberalism, privatization, globalization, and marketization affect the curriculums in the schools in terms of how they're explaining how the world works? Because on the one hand, you, of course, have this state-led attempt to institutionalize neoliberalism in a specific way.

Um, and they all, they all had names.

So you had the Rose Revolution in Georgia.

You had the Orange Revolution in-

Right

You know, in, they did so in Yugoslavia, in Ukraine, in Georgia, in Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, uh, and, and the world over.

And they openly boasted about doing this, and, you know, G- George Bush gave speeches about how, oh, freedom is the future of the world, and the rest of Central Asia will follow the Geo- Georgia's Rose Revolution, you know, entirely orchestrated by your NED, uh, National Endowment for Democracy, CIA-fund- funded activists.

Uh, and yeah, that, that was the plan, to expand this much further, um, than initially happened.

And that, you know, that didn't come to pass, and we, we are, you know, speaking today on N- 9/11's anniversary in this, you know, beautiful kind of, uh, twist of history.