TOL STORE BY COUNTRY "Georgia"

The 2006 Economic and Product Market Databook for TBilisi, Georgia

In performing various economic analyses for its clients, I have occasionally been asked to investigate the market potential for various products and services in Georgia. The purpose of this study is to understand the density of demand within Georgia and the extent to which T’Bilisi might be used as a point of distribution within Europe. From an economic perspective, however, T’Bilisi does not represent a population within rigid geographical boundaries, rather, it represents an area of dominant influence over markets in adjacent areas. This influence varies from one industry to another, but also from one period of time to another. In what follows, I summarize the economic potential for T’Bilisi over the next five years for hundreds of industries, categories and products. The goal of this report is to report the real economic potential, or what an economist calls the latent demand, represented by T’Bilisi when defined as an area of dominant influence. The reader needs to realize that latent demand may or may not represent real sales. For many items, latent demand is clearly observable in sales, as in the case for food or housing items. Consider, however, the category "satellite launch vehicles". Clearly, there are no launch pads in T’Bilisi used by the space industry to launch satellites. However, the core benefit of the vehicles (e.g. telecommunications, etc.) is "consumed" by the area served by T’Bilisi. Without T’Bilisi, in other words, the market for satellite launch vehicles would be lower for the population in Georgia, Europe, or the world in general. One needs to allocate, therefore, a portion of the worldwide economic demand for launch vehicles to both Europe and T’Bilisi. The data presented are the result of various spatial econometric and time-series forecasting models which, for each category presented, are applied to forecast and allocate demand across all countries of the world and major distribution centers or centers of dominant influence within each country. This is accomplished knowing that economic fundamentals (e.g. income) generally vary from one city to another within a given country over time. In this report, I report the allocation for each category for T’Bilisi as an area of dominant influence in Georgia and, potentially, Europe. Important Caveat. Category definitions may overlap. The sum of multiple categories, therefore, may double count.

How NGOs React: Globalization and Education Reform in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Mongolia

* Critical retrospective on the first decades of the transition from planned to free-market economy in Central Asia
* Contributions from both Eastern and Western scholars
* Includes both theoretical NGO research and practical examples taken from experience

During the important, early years of transition for the post-socialist countries in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Mongolia, the Open Society Institute/Soros Foundation was arguably the largest and most influential network in the region. How NGOs React follows the Soros Foundation's educational reform programs there and raises larger questions about the role of NGOs in a centralist government, relationships NGOs have with international donors and development banks, and how projects are adopted and interpreted in different contexts.

Case studies (authored by former or current educational experts of the Soros Network based in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) look at the impact of capacity-building programs, the professional development of teachers, school administrators, government officials, textbook authors, publishers, teacher educators, and university lecturers, among others. Soros's particular focus on capacity-building and how this strategy was adopted across a wide area reveals much that will instruct NGOs working in international education policy. The unique combination of perspectives from Western as well as Eastern scholars based in the region makes this collection an essential retrospective on key processes involved in the transformation of closed societies into open and free ones.

The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus

The Caucasus mountains rise at the intersection of Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. A land of astonishing natural beauty and a dizzying array of ancient cultures, the Caucasus has often been the object of imperial ambition. South of the mountains, Persia and Ottoman Turkey vied for control of the lowland shepherds abd upland khans who inhabited the zone; to the north, the Russian empire wasged a war for mastery of the higlnads that lasted th better part of the nineteenth century. For most of the twentieth century, the entire Caucasus lay inside the Soviet Union, before movements of national liberation created newly independent countries and sparked the devastating war in Chechnya. The Ghost of Freedom is the first general history of the modern Caucasus, from the beginning of Russian imperial exapnsion up to rise of new countries after the Societ Union's collapse. Combining riveting storytelling with insightful essay-writing, the book provides an indispensible guide to the complicated histories, politics, and cultures of this intriguing frontier. Based on new research in multiple languages, it shows how the struggle for freedom in the mountains, hills, and plains of the Caucasus has been a perennial theme over the last two hundred years - a struggle which has led to liberation as well as to new forms of captivity. In evocative and accessible prose, Charles King reveals how tsars, highlanders, revolutionaries, and adventures have contributed to the fascinating history of this borderland. Ranging from the salons of Russian writers to the circus sideshows of America, from the offices of European diplomats to the village of Muslim mountaineers, The Ghost of Freedom paints a rich portrait of one the world's most volatile and least understood regions.

The Captive and the Gift: Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus

The Caucasus region of Eurasia, wedged in between the Black and Caspian Seas, encompasses the modern territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the troubled republic of Chechnya in southern Russia. A site of invasion, conquest, and resistance since the onset of historical record, it has earned a reputation for fearsome violence and isolated mountain redoubts closed to outsiders. Over extended efforts to control the Caucasus area, Russians have long mythologized stories of their countrymen taken captive by bands of mountain brigands.

In The Captive and the Gift, the anthropologist Bruce Grant explores the long relationship between Russia and the Caucasus and the means by which sovereignty has been exercised in this contested area. Taking his lead from Aleksandr Pushkin's 1822 poem "Prisoner of the Caucasus," Grant explores the extraordinary resonances of the themes of violence, captivity, and empire in the Caucasus through mythology, poetry, short stories, ballet, opera, and film.

Grant argues that while the recurring Russian captivity narrative reflected a wide range of political positions, it most often and compellingly suggested a vision of Caucasus peoples as thankless, lawless subjects of empire who were unwilling to acknowledge and accept the gifts of civilization and protection extended by Russian leaders. Drawing on years of field and archival research, Grant moves beyond myth and mass culture to suggest how real-life Caucasus practices of exchange, by contrast, aimed to control and diminish rather than unleash and increase violence.

The result is a historical anthropology of sovereign forms that underscores how enduring popular narratives and close readings of ritual practices can shed light on the management of pluralism in long-fraught world areas.