They’re Soviets All, but Watch Whom You Call a Russian

Georgians prefer tea and wine. The Russians’ drink of choice is vodka.

Georgians eat white bread. Russians eat dark bread.

Georgians are primarily Christian. Russians are more the proteges of Marxism, which is inherently atheistic.

Food and supplies in Moscow and Leningrad--Russia--are scarce, and the lines are long. Lush, fertile Georgia enjoys an abundance of goods.

The link between the two is that both are republics of the Soviet Union. But, please, don’t confuse one with the other.

“I’ve been telling everybody I know, ‘Don’t call anybody Russian if they happen to be Georgian,’ and if you don’t know what to call them, at least call them Soviet instead of insulting them to their face,” said Piret Munger, the San Diego restaurateur appointed by Mayor Maureen O’Connor to squire a delegation of Georgian chefs around town during the Soviet arts festival.

Munger said the chefs were furious with The Times for running a recent photograph that in the caption labeled them as “Russian.”

“They loved the picture but hated the wording,” Munger said. “We’ve all had to be careful about this.”

Bruce Herring, executive director of the festival, said this week that one of the biggest hurdles facing him and his corps of organizers is having to educate otherwise informed San Diegans about the ways in which Georgians and Russians are different.

Robert Edelman, professor of Russian and Soviet history at UC San Diego, said the fiercest bond shared by Georgians, Russians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians, et al , is not membership in the Soviet Union, but rather the ignorance of the world at large in failing to grasp boundaries and shadings of the U.S.S.R.

Edelman said Georgia is vastly different from neighboring republics.

Georgia is lush and mountainous; Russia is flat and stark. Georgia enjoys milder weather than Moscow or Leningrad, and arguably, Edelman said, has a richer, deeper cultural folklore.

He said Georgia has long been a bastion of art and literature, and at the moment, is a leader in computer science to an extent that has left the Americans and Japanese curious and envious.

Mikhail Stronin, literary manager for the Maly Drama Theatre (of Russia), said, “The other performers in town, they are Georgian, and that is quite another nationality. We have no Georgians in our company. They live in another hotel, and I don’t know them.

“I would say, though, that Georgia has a very deep and profound, and very traditional, culture. It has great literature and great theater, with its own great masterpieces. It’s just that I don’t know many Georgians.”

“The Georgians will tell you immediately, ‘We are Georgians,’ ” said Lygia Krijanovsky, who was hired by the San Diego Opera as an interpreter for the Georgian singers appearing in “Boris Godunov.” “When filling out their applications for visas, they listed their nationality as Georgian, their citizenship as Soviet Union.”

Krijanovsky, a native Lithuanian who speaks both Georgian and Russian, said the Georgians are “a little touchy on the subject” of San Diegans confusing them for Russians.

“Things were a little strained until they all got to know one another,” she said of the four Georgians and two Russians who appear in “Godunov.” “But isn’t it true that you don’t know how to approach anyone until you get to know them?”

Krijanovsky said Russians are known more for ballet and symphonies, the likes of which you’ll never experience in Georgia. She said Georgians crave spicy food--not unlike Louisiana’s Cajuns--and pride themselves on being an ebullient people “who sing at the drop of a hat, a distinctly nun-Russian behavior.”

“Georgia was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1921 (four years after the Bolshevik revolution),” Edelman said. “It has a dramatically different culture, different alphabet, different language (Georgian). . . . The differences are sharp; it’s like comparing Italians and Swedes. And recently, major demonstrations--riots--have broken out in Georgia. Many Georgians long for independence from the Kremlin.”

Herring said that, of the 320 artists encamped in San Diego, about 170 are from Soviet Georgia. The cast of “Brothers and Sisters,” now playing at the Old Globe Theatre, is from the Maly Drama Theatre of Leningrad--in northwestern Russia. The Georgian dancers and members of the Tbilisi State Marionette Theatre are from Georgia, in the fertile southwestern corner of the Soviet Union.

“There are 15 republics in what is called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” Herring said. “And right now, largely because glasnost has loosened things up, each republic hopes to be recognized politically, as a separate and distinct entity. People in San Diego ought to be most cognizant of this during the festival. . . .

“Many of these people visiting are from regions searching desperately for their own individuality, their own . . . nationality.”

Herring pooh-poohed tensions between the Russians and Georgians, but others didn’t sound so sure. Karen Rohrbaugh of the mayor’s office set up accommodations for many of the Soviet artists.

“We’ve tried to put them at different hotels,” Rohrbaugh said of the Russians and Georgians. “They each have their own identity. It’s different from states in the United States. It goes beyond that.”

Munger said she had heard of Georgians and Russians asking to sit apart from each other during joint sessions but that flagrant animosity had not yet surfaced.

Many Georgians, however, have complained about the festival’s official insignia, which depicts the Cathedral of St. Basil in Moscow--a Russian shrine. As a result, many refuse to wear the festival pin that bears the insignia and are, instead, wearing Georgian pins.

The San Diego Opera is one institution sharing Russian and Georgian talents. Brenda Hughes, opera spokeswoman, said the maestro for performances of “Boris Godunov” is Jansoug Kakhidze, who, along with three singers in the cast, is Georgian. Hughes said two other singers are from Russian Leningrad.

Hughes said members of the company were made aware of differences between the regions as fast as you can say, “Georgia on My Mind.”

“We were asked never to make the mistake of calling the Georgians Russians,” Hughes said. “From the beginning, we were made aware of who was who and where they were from. We all tend to think of Russia as Russia, but Russia is only one republic of the U.S.S.R.”

Paul Downey, a spokesman for the mayor, said the Soviet Union is made up of 100 ethnic groups for whom Russia or Russian is not the generic term. Soviet is the universal term, a point he and others have struggled to make.

Herring, the festival organizer, said he hoped San Diegans would flock to the exhibition of Soviet folk art at the B Street Pier Cruise Ship Terminal, because the emphasis of the work is distinctions between Soviet republics.

The Rev. Paul O’Callaghan, pastor of the St. George Antiochan Orthodox Church in San Diego, said divisions between Georgians and Russians have escalated since the revolution, with religion at the center of conflict. He said the rift had widened in recent years.

“The Georgians are an ancient Christian people, among the first to accept Christianity,” O’Callaghan explained. “Historically, the advent of a godless Marxism fostered by the Soviet government delivered an undeniable blow to the people of Georgia. Now that glasnost has permitted more fervent displays of belief, it has--curiously, at the same time--widened the gap between Georgians and the Kremlin.