I interviewed Ia Eradze, a leftwing political economist in Georgia, on October 28, two days after the controversial Georgia parliamentary election. We talked in the afternoon before a protest demonstration against election rigging by the democratic opposition would be held that night. Ia discusses the popular movement in the spring against the authoritarian foreign agents law, the difficulties that a small, economically peripheral country like Georgia faces in navigating its way amidst big imperial powers like Russia and the EU, and the need for international solidarity on the left to address these issues.
Ia Eradze’s research focus as a political economist is on finance in the post-socialist space. She is currently an associate professor at the Georgian Institute for Public Affairs (GIPA) and a CERGE-EI Foundation teaching fellow. She is also a researcher at the Institute for Social and Cultural Research, Ilia State University.
Here are two articles that Ia Eradze co-authored that deal with the issues addressed in this interview:
“There’s more at stake in the fight against the Foreign Agents Law than liberal NGOs: Why the left should show solidarity with the protests in Georgia,” LeftEast, May 28, 2024, https://lefteast.org/
Ia Eradze, Giorgi Kartvelishvili, Luka Nakhutsrishvili, Tamar Qeburia, and Lela Rekhviashvili, “Resisting authoritarianism in the Caucasus: Interview with Georgians about their struggle to defend democracy,” Tempest and Posle Media, June 5, 2024, https://tempestmag.org/
Ia Eradze’s website has more of her work: https://iaeradze.org/.
