Frontier barriers of the Georgian democracy

The Georgian authorities are demonstrating their "desire" to set up a dialogue with Russia by means of the people's democracy. The country has denied entrance to the initiators of the historic and literature award Marina Guseva and Alexander Veligonenko, who were carrying a book about Commander Bagration and were going to take part in the presentation of the World Congress of Peoples of Georgia branch office. The GeorgiaTimes correspondent interviewed Marina Guseva (see photo).

Everything happened quickly and unexpectedly in the early morning of November 13. Members of the Russian history and literature Alexander Nevskiy Prize Committee Marina Guseva and Alexander Veligonenko came out of an Armenian Airlines plane (there is no direct flight connection with Georgia) and started filling in the forms to obtain visas like many other Russians that arrived. At that moment, a customs officer came up to them, took their documents and went away.

"In forty minutes we were already flying back to Yerevan", - says Marina Anatolyevna. A Georgian policeman escorted the Russians to the Armenian airport. He carried the passports of the literature experts in his hand and gave them back only in Yerevan. There, the inspector left the expelled Russians, who found themselves in a rather embarrassing situation.

It turned out that they flew illegally, for they had the tickets only for the next day. Their luggage was nearly lost because they had no time to fetch it in Georgia. "We are very grateful to Armenian Airlines who helped us find our luggage and sent us to Moscow", - says the GeorgiaTimes' interlocutor.

The most curious thing is that the reason of expelling the Russians was not specified in the Act of Deportation to Yerevan. Guseva and Velokogonenko never made any unwanted political statements against Georgia; neither have they been to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, so is why they could not have been punished for visiting those republics without Tbilisi's permission.

Marina Guseva has been to Georgia, to Kobuleti in Soviet times.

«I like Georgia very much. I read a lot before going there, for I am the head of the Russian history and literature Alexander Nevskiy Prize Committee. As soon as we learnt that Ebralidze is going to establish a similar prize named after David the Builder (Agmashenebeli) in his country we decided to help him and share our experience with him", - she explained.

The workers of culture were carrying several copies of Bagration, a book about the Georgian commander that served the Russian throne. The essay was going to be translated into Georgian by the Georgian colleagues.

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