Who are we and what do we do?

The likelihood is great that the Georgians, whose name for themselves is Kartveli (“Georgian” derived from the Persian name for them, Gorj), have always lived in this region, known to them as Sakartvelo. Ethnically, contemporary Georgia is not homogeneous but reflects the intermixtures and successions of the Caucasus region. About four-fifths of the people are Georgians; the rest are Armenians, Russians, Azerbaijanis, and, in smaller numbers, Ossetes, Greeks, Abkhazians, and others. The Georgian language is a member of the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) family of languages. Many Georgians are members of the Georgian Orthodox Church, an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. Population density in Georgia decreases with increasing altitude. The population of Georgia is concentrated in the narrow valley between the Greater Caucasus mountains in the north and the Lesser Caucasus in the south and along the coast of the Black Sea to the west. Tbilisi, the capital, an ancient city with many architectural monuments mingling with modern buildings, lies in eastern Georgia, partly in a scenic gorge of the Kura River. During the Soviet period the Georgian population increased, with a marked trend toward urbanization. The population of Georgia is aging. The Georgian economy includes diversified and mechanized agriculture alongside a well-developed industrial base. After independence the Georgian economy contracted sharply because of political instability (which discouraged foreign investment), the loss of favourable trading relationships with the states of the former Soviet Union, and the civil unrest in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where key pipelines and transport links were sabotaged or blockaded. Georgia sought to transform its command economy into one organized on market principles: prices were liberalized, the banking system reformed, and some state enterprises and retail establishments privatized. The National Bank of Georgia, which is the central bank, issues the national currency, the Georgian lari. The majority of Georgia’s financial institutions—the stock exchange and most of its banks—are situated in Tbilisi. The interior of Georgia has coal deposits (notably at Tqvarchʿeli and Tqibuli), petroleum (at Kazeti), and a variety of other resources ranging from peat to marble. A distinctive feature of the Georgian economy is that agricultural land is both in short supply and difficult to work; each patch of workable land, even on steep mountain slopes, is valued highly. The introduction of a system of collective farms ( kolkhozy) and state farms ( sovkhozy) by the Soviet government in 1929–30 radically altered the traditional structure of landowning and working, though a considerable portion of Georgia’s agricultural output continued to come from private garden plots. The vineyards of the republic constitute one of the oldest and most important branches of Georgian agriculture and perhaps the best loved. Georgian winemaking dates to 300 bce ; centuries of trial and error have produced more than 500 varieties of grapes. Georgian fruits are varied; even slight differences in climate and soil affect the yield, quality, and taste of the fruit.