Tskaltubo is a place of lost pride and lots of brides. Take a trip there on any sunny Saturday to see the beautiful ruins of what was once a popular western Georgian spa resort, and you may have to wait a while till you enter the remains of abandoned sanatoriums: wedding crews from nearby places flock to the desolate town and queue up for their photo shoots, with professional photographers knowing just the right spots to make it look like the old grandeur never went anywhere. But outside the pictures, the truth of the contrast is undeniable: who would choose for their big day, when a couple celebrates their future together, a place that offers nothing but ruins, a sense of loss, and a memory of broken promises?
Yet if there’s one energy in the city that a Georgian couple might crave, it’s probably an unwavering commitment to holding on to old, crumbling things, even if they’ve long outlived their purpose. And the couples may not be alone in that craving: as the Georgian election campaign enters its final weeks, Georgian politicians are once again struggling to offer voters political and economic visions that are fresh, convincing, and relatable enough to move the country’s citizens out of its comfort zone of resignation.
Here is Nini and the Dispatch to tell the story of the lost glory of a small town that best represents Georgia’s painful struggle to crawl out of the past and risk change.
Tskaltubo is less than half an hour’s drive from Kutaisi, a central western Georgian city with its own struggles to regain past significance. But unlike Kutaisi, Tskaltubo is not a place to stop for business or a coffee break on a longer trip, but rather something that should attract visitors for its own sake. The town is rich in mineral springs carbonated with radon, a radioactive gas believed to work wonders for various ailments. This quality pushed the Soviet authorities to build a large spa resort there, with 22 sanatoriums and nine bathhouses, all unique and remarkable pieces of architecture. The resort boomed during the Soviet years, welcoming health tourists from all over the bloc who rushed to expose their bodies to the healing powers of its magical waters.
Then, the Soviet Union ended, and so did the boom. The tourists disappeared, but there were new arrivals: thousands displaced by the conflict in Abkhazia in the early 1990s were settled on the sanatorium grounds, and it took generations for the state to provide adequate housing for all of them. The resettlement was carried over from one election campaign to the next and – like so much else – with a superficial ticking of boxes: those who moved to new homes complained that their interests had been ignored, leading them only to relive the bitter experience of losing their former habitat and community. In recent years, some displaced families still remained there, hiding among the ruins, perhaps with a self-denial that stems from the memory of initial displacement when they were viewed as a burden by communities that were supposed to welcome them.
Remains of the day
The coexistence of a larger IDP community with the remnants of a once-glorious spa town turned Tskaltubo into a kind of limbo of indecision between the past and the future. The damaged buildings in Stalinist Empire style stood disheveled, taking on a new eerie beauty as wild green plants grew in and around the facilities, giving the town its current post-apocalyptic feel. This wild beauty attracted new kinds of tourists interested in the Soviet past, confused younger Georgians who didn’t know what to make of the same past, and depressed the locals, who, tired of looking at those bare walls, began to emigrate en masse to make a living abroad. The ruins remained still beautiful and seemingly solid – at least solid enough to survive both the Midas touch of reformer ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili and the savior complex of Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s billionaire ruler.
It’s not that they haven’t tried. In 2012, Saakashvili, who already had the revival of some other historical sites on his resume, kept promising to turn Tskaltubo into “the biggest resort in the former Soviet territory and Eastern Europe.” But months later, Saakashvili’s party lost power, and the man who took over didn’t grow the same appetite until 2019. In 2019, Ivanishvili promised to take matters into his own hands and buy and renovate all the sanatoriums and baths himself, vowing to launch new infrastructure projects along the way, inviting Georgian businesses to share the arch-angelic burden. But when three years passed and nothing happened, it was the government’s turn to take over: in 2022, the Ministry of Economy announced a new project – “Tskaltubo’s New Life” – and put part of these facilities up for sale to investors.
Tskaltubo and other misdevelopments
It’s 2024, another heated election campaign is running its course, and the state has only managed to sell part of the sanatorium buildings. That’s it. The closest Tskaltubo has come to innovation in recent years was in 2022 when actor and comedian Jim Carrey bought the photo from one of the sanatoriums as his first NFT – that digital asset that lost its hype before the world had time to figure out what it was exactly. The celebrity, excited about his new purchase, said at the time that the photo captured “nature’s exquisite and relentless reinvention.” And the closest Tskaltubo came to an electoral mention this year was when an elderly supporter of the ruling Georgian Dream party tragically died there during a verbal altercation with a member of the opposition United National Movement party, leading Georgian Dream leaders to blame the opposition.
Tskaltubo’s revival is far from the only stillborn project of recent decades. On Saturday, October 12, a small rally was held in front of the now-abandoned UNM-era parliament building in nearby Kutaisi, where activists said they had tried to search with Diogenesque “lanterns” for the finished development projects promised by the government – and could find none.
But based on what Georgians have seen and experienced with the development models of the past few decades, they may face a tough dilemma about what to fear more: the government that breaks its promises or the one that keeps them.
Stuck in the middle (corridor)?
As crucial elections approach, Georgians are excitedly served the stale menu of “hubs,” “corridors,” and “investments.” They are on everyone’s table, from the campaign programs of the ruling party to the speeches of mercurial opposition leaders, from incumbent government leaders to jack-in-the-box ex-officials popping up during a campaign. It seems that all they are offering is to revive the economy by exploiting the transit potential of the Middle Corridor and ensure rapid growth that will propel the country up the international economic rankings – especially those that are hardest to feel in individual pockets.
Yet, wisened by two undemocratic rules behind them, Georgian voters will be increasingly hard to charm with such promises. With memories of visionary leaders taking such ambitions too far—and too far from the people—it won’t be easy to relate to big development models individually.
Some may claustrophobically dread suffocation in the same corridor where distant politicians see opportunity. Others may fear that the obsession with international connectivity comes at the risk of local disconnection. But what is the alternative? What is the model that isn’t just a superficial, ill-considered projection of leaders’ egos, or that doesn’t come at the expense of democracy, or that leaves room for individuals alongside the giant infrastructure projects, long undersea cables, and various international rankings?
For the correct answers, one must perhaps wait a little: maybe someday—like with those wild plants inside Tskaltubo’s beautiful ruins that fascinated the famous comedian so much—some bigger grassroots reinvention will also take place in politics.