Is Georgia a part of Europe?
I decided to write the posting after reading readers' comments on the issue. Then I searched Internet and found a poll called “Georgia (Country) part of Europe or Asia?”
So is Georgia a part of Europe or Middle East?
Georgia has huge cultural and historical links to East Europe and also West Europe. Georgia is a part of the Byzantium civilization system so Orthodox Georgia, unlike Turkey, stays in the same civilization row with Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria.
As for geography people usually say the border of Europe goes on the Caucasus Mountains so a smaller mountain part of Georgia is situated in Europe.
The secret is there is no scientific agreement where the Eastern European border is situated. It goes on the Urals mountains and then? Somewhere in Kazakhstan steppe - Ural river or Emba river? The same uncertainty is in question on the Caucasus border of Europe. So you see Islam Turkic nomad steppes and Russian *stans lay inside of Europe. Is here some logic? I don't think so. And the reason is that Europe is more historical and political term than geographical one. Usual Western Europeans wasn't interested in where Eastern European border is situated because Russian Empire and USSR was the edge of Europe. Now the empire is broken and nobody knows if Russia will be united in the future. So the time has come to realize what Europe means in details.
Georgia is very special. Its face covered with post-Soviet dirt and it is hard to recognize what Georgia really is now. Someone says Georgia is too small to examine carefully its dossier. But if you want to learn something in details you should pay attention to small pieces that arrange the borders because they do determine the form and sometimes even the meaning.
We can’t consider Georgia is Middle East because the statement contraries to history, politics, ethnography, economics and partly geography. So the answer is Georgia is a historical and political part of Europe.
