Education reform in Georgia: Back to the Soviet era?

This text appears as part of the taz panterstiftung's “Decolonizing East” project. You can find the entire article in Russian at sovanews.

A young woman in Tbilisi is looking for her way to university. She asks in Georgian, a passer-by answers in Russian: “I don’t understand you.” Another pedestrian points out that she is on the street of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire who made his fortune in Russia and is considered the most powerful man behind the ruling Georgian Dream party. The young woman asks in despair: “Then why do you need a road that doesn’t lead to education?”

The scene comes from a video that the student movement “Defend Ilia” published at the end of October 2026. At the end there is a portrait of Giorgi Anzuchelidze, who was killed in captivity in the Russian-Georgian war in 2008 and is considered a Georgian national hero. Next to it you can see the EU flag and the words: “Our choice is Ilia’s way.”

The name in the slogan says it all: The movement is based on Ilia Chavchavadze, the pioneer of the Georgian national movement. One of the country's most important liberal universities also bears his name. Ilia University, of all places, could lose a large part of its academic independence as a result of the planned educational reform.

The government is planning far-reaching changes: uniforms and standardized textbooks are to be compulsory in schools, and the length of schooling is to be shortened from twelve to eleven years. Critics fear that this will make it harder for Georgian young people to get into European universities, which require twelve years of schooling. The plans come at a time when relations between Tbilisi and Brussels have reached a low point and the EU accession process is effectively on hold.

The university reform is even more controversial: according to the principle of “one city, one faculty”, courses of study offered by several universities in a city are to be merged. The government expects this to distribute funds more efficiently. Critics warn of the loss of academic diversity and an infringement on university autonomy.

Ilia University, which has been an important site of pro-European protests over the past two years, would be particularly hard hit. If faculties were transferred to other universities and internationally accredited degree programs were discontinued, it would be significantly weakened without being officially closed.

The political scientist and former education minister Gia Nodia sees the reform as a return of control mechanisms from Soviet times: “If you look at the general orientation, the underlying world views and the control of the Ministry of Education over the system, then we are returning to Soviet standards and patterns of thought,” says Nodia.

The “Georgian Dream” once came with pro-European promises. The ruling party is now presenting itself as a defender of traditional values ​​and national sovereignty against “Western pressure”. Critics accuse her of dismantling democratic institutions and moving closer to Moscow, even though Georgia has not had diplomatic relations with Russia since the 2008 war.

The dispute over universities has a long history. Even in the Russian Empire, education was also an instrument of imperial rule. The tsarist administration saw the training of Caucasian elites as a means of political integration and “pacification” of the region, says historian Amiran Urushadze. A draft to redesign the Noble School of Tiflis, as Tbilisi was called at the time, stipulated that its graduates should spread the “Russian way of life” beyond the school.

At the same time, Russian institutions claimed the authority to research and describe the history and society of the Caucasus. The Georgian national movement, on the other hand, demanded its own higher education. In 1918, in the short phase of the first independence, the historian Ivane Dzhavachishvili founded the Tbilisi State University.

According to the philosopher Giga Zedania, the founding was a direct response to the plans of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg to establish a joint "Caucasian" university with Russian as the language of instruction.

Georgian intellectuals instead called for a national university that could determine its own language and focus. Georgia should no longer be merely the subject of a science centered outside the country. The founding was therefore also an act of intellectual self-determination.

With Sovietization in 1921, higher education once again came under Russian control. Research and teaching were subject to ideological guidelines, and academic freedom remained limited. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 did Georgia begin to realign its education system.

The changes after the Rose Revolution in 2003 were particularly profound: President Mikheil Saakashvili introduced a three-tier university system and uniform national entrance examinations, which significantly reduced widespread corruption in university entrance. English became more important than Russian and joining the Bologna Process strengthened ties to Europe.

However, the turn to Europe did not eliminate the old power structures on its own. It remained unclear how much freedom the universities actually received to decide for themselves about research, teaching and their development.

“More than 35 years have passed, but the psychological and cultural attitudes of the Soviet era still have an impact,” says former education minister Nodia. “You can’t just send the older generation to Mars and rely exclusively on the new one.” A study by educational scientist Anatoli Oleksijenko from the Education University of Hong Kong, who researches the de-Sovietization of higher education, shows how deep such influences go.

A Georgian university professor reports that scientists could only tell “half the truth” for fear of repression. That is why disciplines such as sociology, political science and philosophy were only able to fully develop relatively recently. Other respondents described an academic culture in which professors were viewed as infallible and dissenting opinions were treated as ideological errors. The Soviet education system produced an adapted, uncritical and obedient person - Homo sovieticus.

However, the term carries the risk of reducing social problems to a supposed “Soviet mentality”. Oleksiyenko's research also shows that even pro-Western reforms were implemented according to Soviet-style patterns: decisions often came from above, and knowledge of English sometimes counted for more than many years of educational experience.

The experiences of two young people from Georgia show how different academic cultures can shape thinking. Elene studied international law at Tbilisi State University and spent an exchange semester in Finland, where she got to know a different relationship between teachers and students.

“Based on my experiences at school and in my bachelor’s degree, education in Georgia often means working in an environment in which teachers consider their knowledge and methods to be without alternative,” says Elene. Anyone who only studies in Georgia can easily stay in a closed system without getting to know other perspectives. “I’m not saying one way is better than the other.”

Elene would like to continue her studies in Europe, but later return to Georgia to bring her experience and knowledge there.

Dato, on the other hand, wants to leave Georgia. He comes from Tbilisi, went to school in Moscow and then studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, one of Russia's leading technical universities. He later earned a master's degree from the London Business School. "Russian technical education gave me a strong scientific foundation. But studying in the UK completely changed my worldview," he says.

"If I hadn't gone to London, I would probably have remained more conservative. English as a language of communication gave me access to a completely different world." Looking back, he describes his time in Moscow as living behind an Iron Curtain that had long since fallen.

“It was only when I emerged from this preserved world that I realized that I belonged to a much larger world than the one with which I had previously identified.” Dato does not question the professional quality of his Russian education. Rather, his experience shows that academic excellence and intellectual openness are not the same thing.

The government is talking about modernization and more efficient universities, but critics fear renewed centralization, which could cost independent universities influence.

Today's reform cannot be equated with the educational policy of the Tsarist Empire or the Soviet Union. But it touches on the same question: Who decides what knowledge is imparted and how independently scientific institutions can work?

For the protesting students, there is more at stake than the future of individual faculties. Your reference to “The Way of the Iliad” is reminiscent of the fight for education as a prerequisite for national self-determination. More than a century later, the question of who determines Georgia's educational path is once again at stake.

Khatia Khasaia is a Georgian journalist from Tbilisi and a participant in the “Decolonize East” project of the taz Panter Foundation. Translation from Russian and editing: Tigran Petrosyan.

Donations to the taz panter foundation provide financial support to independent and critical journalists and photographers in Armenia, Georgia and Moldova as part of the “Decolonize East” project.