经济学人168:格鲁吉亚的历史 糟糕的位置

　　Georgia's history

格鲁吉亚的历史

Bad location

糟糕的位置

Despite its unhappy history and dire 1 geography, Georgia is doing well

虽然历史坎坷，位置糟糕，格鲁吉亚现在做得不错

Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. By Donald Rayfield.

帝国的边缘：格鲁吉亚的历史》。作者：Donald Rayfield。

Georgia: A Political History since Independence.

格鲁吉亚：自独立开始的政治历史》。作者：Stephen Jones。

TO MOST outsiders Georgian history is a closed book. Indeed for English-speakers there are practically no books at all. Georgia mostly features on the edges of other peoples' histories. Xenophon, describing Greek mercenaries' attempts to get home in 400BC, wrote the first description of it. Books about the Soviet 2 Union highlight Georgia's role as a rebellious 3 captive and as the birthplace of Josef Stalin, its most infamous 4 son. A flurry of recent accounts describe the brief, disastrous 5 war with Russia in 2008. Now Donald Rayfield of the University of London and Stephen Jones of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts have written ambitious and comprehensive histories of a complex country.

大多数非格鲁吉亚人对格鲁吉亚的历史一无所知。实际上基本没有一本关于格鲁吉亚历史的书籍是用英语写的。大多数情况下，格鲁吉亚只能在别国历史的边边角角里看到。公元前400年，描述希腊雇佣兵为回家而努力的色诺芬第一次提到了格鲁吉亚。关于苏联的史书将格鲁吉亚要么视为叛逆的俘虏，要么视为其最罪名昭著的国民约瑟夫·斯大林的诞生地。最近出版的一系列书描述了格鲁吉亚与俄罗斯在2008年展开的那场灾难性的短暂战争。现在，伦敦大学的Donald Rayfield和马萨诸塞州曼荷莲女子学院的Stephen Jones为读者描绘出这个复杂的国家恢弘而又全面的历史。

The authors are among a handful of foreigners to have mastered Georgian. Part of the small and ancient Kartvelian language family, it is related to no others, though some have fancifully claimed a distant cousinhood with Basque. Its roots are as obscure as the origins of those who speak it. Mr Rayfield starts around 1100BC, with the first mention in an Assyrian source of the “Mushki”. The first Georgian king, Parnavaz, was born in 326BC.

这两名作者是少数几个掌握格鲁吉亚语的外国人。尽管有些人异想天开地宣称格鲁吉亚语和巴斯克语许久之前同系一源，但其实格鲁吉亚语是卡特维利语族的一个古老的小分支，和其他语言都不相关。格鲁吉亚语的起源和格鲁吉亚人的起源一样湮灭在历史的尘埃中。Rayfield从公元前1100年左右开始写起，亚叙的史书在那时第一次提到“Mushki”。第一个格鲁吉亚国王Parnavaz诞生于公元前326年。

The scope of Georgian history may be a humbling 7 shock for those who thought the country appeared on the map only when the Soviet Union collapsed 9 in 1991. But the reader needs to take a deep breath, for the next 200 pages could be mistaken at times for a stray appendix from J.R.R. Tolkien's “The Lord of the Rings”. The tersely 10 told stories involve hundreds of unknown but like-sounding people and places which appear and disappear in quick succession. The beheadings, castrations, sodomisations, rapes 11 and eye-gougings—a local speciality—that dot the pages are jolting 12. But a little more in the way of analogies, signposts, interpretation 13 and characterisation would have lightened the mixture.

对于那些认为格鲁吉亚在1991年苏联解体时才出现在地图上的人来说，格鲁吉亚历史的源远流长可能是个令人羞愧的发现。但是读者需要深呼吸一下，因为之后的200页有时候会被人误以为是J.R.R.托尔金所著的《指环王》丢失的附录。一个个用词简练的故事里有着成百上千个不知名却听起来都很像的人物和地点，这些名字快速地出现，又快速地消失。在这部分，不时出现的砍头、阉割、鸡奸、强奸和挖眼情节让人看得触目惊心。如果多点类比、线索、解释和特征描述将会使这部分读起来不那么沉重。

The most cheerful pages concern Georgia's golden age—around 1212 at the height of Queen Tamar's reign 6. The country has never since been bigger, stronger or safer, stretching 800 miles (1,288km) from what is now Trabzon in Turkey to the shores of the Caspian sea. Georgia's fortunes depend on the weakness or goodwill 14 of its much larger neighbours: Russia to the north, Persia to the south-east, Turkey to the west. Mr Rayfield's powerful theme is of brief periods of prosperity and security, ended by invasion, conquest, looting and despoliation 15. Georgians have had to get used to rule by outsiders: they often outwit them. Kremlin rule began with mass murder and ruinous economic planning, but in later decades Georgia was one of the most prosperous and enjoyable places to live in the Soviet Union. It was a similar story in the 19th century under Russian imperial rule.

在该书中，读起来最让人心情愉快的部分与格鲁吉亚的黄金时代有关—格鲁吉亚的黄金时代在1212年左右塔玛皇后执政时期达到顶峰。那时的格鲁吉亚的疆域最大、国力最强、局势最稳。其疆域绵延800英里（1288公里），从现在位于土耳其的特拉布宗一直到里海的海岸。只有在那些比格鲁吉亚大得多的邻国处于衰弱时期，或者对格鲁吉亚态度友好时，格鲁吉亚才得以繁荣。这些邻国有北部的俄罗斯，东南部的波斯以及西部的土耳其。在Rayfield宏大的著作中，格鲁吉亚每次短暂的繁荣和稳定后都是列强的侵略和肆意抢劫。格鲁吉亚人不得不习惯于被外国人统治：但他们常常比统治者更聪明。苏联占领格鲁吉亚初期展开大屠杀和毁灭性的计划经济，但在随后的几十年里格鲁吉亚是苏联最繁荣最适宜居住的地方。19世纪格鲁吉亚被俄国君王统治时也是相似的情形。

Georgia's rulers' own penchant 16 for internal divisions and double-dealing has played a big role in prompting the country's many disasters. So too has the failure of faraway outside powers to reciprocate 17 Georgia's pro-Western sentiments. The story of the years 1918-21, when the Georgian Democratic Republic made repeated vain appeals to Britain and other Western powers, before the Bolsheviks invaded, make poignant 18 reading. They echo previous episodes involving Georgian rulers' entreaties 19 to the Byzantine empire and Venice—and foretell 20, perhaps, the let-down that many Georgians felt when nobody came to their aid in 2008.

格鲁吉亚的许多灾难都是因为该国统治者喜欢内部斗争和耍两面派造成的。遥远的外部力量没能回应格鲁吉亚亲西方的感情也是因为这些统治者。1918至1921年间，格鲁吉亚民主共和党一次又一次向英国和其他西方列强求助无果，最后被布尔什维克侵略，这个故事读起来让人辛酸。这与该书之前讲到的格鲁吉亚统治者向拜占庭帝王和威尼斯求助的故事惊人地相似。这个故事也许还预示着2008年因为无人帮忙许多格鲁吉亚人会品尝到失望。

Mr Jones deals at book-length with the years covered by Mr Rayfield's final chapter. Georgia's disastrous rebirth, amid economic collapse 8 and civil war, gave way to a period of sleazy stagnation 21 under Eduard Shevardnadze, who had run the place in Soviet times and then served as Mikhail Gorbachev's foreign minister.

Jones的书涵盖的年份和Rayfield的书中最后一章相同。先是格鲁吉亚在经济崩溃和内战后充满灾难的重生，随后就是Eduard Shevardnadze领导下的经济停滞。Eduard Shevardnadze在苏联时期管理格鲁吉亚，后来成为米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫执政时期苏联的外交部长。

Amid much useful detail, Mr Jones snipes at the record of Mikheil Saakashvili, who became president after the “Rose Revolution” of 2003. His party narrowly lost the parliamentary election this year. To the surprise of those who saw Putinesque tendencies in his camp's authoritarian 22 approach, Mr Saakashvili's party has calmly conceded defeat.

Jones的书提供了很多有用的细节。其中的一个是米哈伊尔·萨卡什维利的执政履历。萨卡什维利在2003年的“玫瑰革命”后成为总统。他所在的政党在今年的议会选举中惜败。然而令那些认为该党独裁的统治方式越来越接近普京时，萨卡什维利所在的政党平静地承认了失败。

That came too late for either book, which is a pity because it would offset 23 many of Mr Jones's criticisms of Georgia's failure to meet his perhaps rather unrealistic standards of “virtuous” democracy. Much of the country outside the capital, Tbilisi, is still dreadfully poor; institutions are imperfect; government pressure on the media and judiciary can be heavy-handed or even nastier. But for a place that was a failed state only 20 years ago the progress is startling, especially given the near- constant pressure, subversion 24 and denigration 25 from Russia.

可惜他的竞选失利对于这两本书而言都来地太晚了。如果这发生地再早些，就能推翻Jones对格鲁吉亚没能达到他可能相当不实际的“高尚”民主标准的许多批评。首都第比利斯以外的许多地区仍然极度贫困；各类机构问题百出；政府对媒体和司法的压力很大，有时甚至会采用下流的手段。但对于一个20年前还被认为是“失败国家”的地方来说，特别是考虑到该国几乎一直受到俄罗斯的压迫、暗中破坏和抹黑，其进步还是非常惊人的。

Mr Jones skates over the problems caused by Russia and underplays the real achievements of the Saakashvili years. These include bringing the country closer to the West, eliminating petty corruption 26, for example in the customs service and the traffic police, modernising public services, attracting foreign investment and establishing an open if rough-hewn political system. Georgia is now a country where the opposition 27 has a real chance of winning power, and all sides abide 28 by the constitution. Readers of Mr Rayfield's book may feel that in the past 2,500 years Georgians have seldom had so much to be happy about.

Jones一笔带过俄罗斯给格鲁吉亚造成的问题，轻描淡写萨卡什维利执政时期取得的成就。这些成就包括使该国与西方关系更紧密，消灭了诸如在海关和交警的基层腐败，使公共服务现代化，吸引外商投资，并创建了一个开放的、可能还不健全的政治体系。格鲁吉亚的反对党有可能赢得政权，而且所有各方都遵守宪法。Rayfield的读者们可能觉得在过去的2500年，格鲁吉亚人民从没有像现在一样有这么多值得高兴的事。