in Cornell Svante and Starr Fredrick (eds.), “Guns of August, Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008”, New-York, ME Sharpe, 2009
Imperial servant at the head of the state: Eduard Shevardnadze’s uneasy relations with Russia in Cornell Svante and Starr Fredrick (eds.), “Guns of August, Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008”, New-York, ME Sharpe, 2009 Thornike Gordadze French Institute of Anatolian Studies (IFEA), Caucasus observatory head. Associated researcher at the CERI “Four centuries of resistance!” – so proclaimed thousands of leaflets distributed in Tbilisi by young Georgian activists during the August 2008 war with Russia. Analyzing Georgian-Russian relations solely in terms of resistance is understandable when Russian tanks were 40 km away from the country’s capital, but a more balanced assessment requires a more nuanced understanding of the question. The relationship between a local polity and an external center of power