Zviad Gamsakhurdia—a prominent intellectual, dissident, and the first democratically elected president of post-Soviet Georgia—was, as his son Konstantin put it in a letter to Europäer,[1] “probably the only head of state to have ever embraced anthroposophy” (Gamsakhurdia 2002, 25). Despite this noteworthy distinction, the influence of the esoteric upon—and the resultant esoteric dimension of—Gamsakhurdia’s worldview has, thus far, received limited scholarly attention. Gamsakhurdia himself remains largely overlooked by scholars of esotericism, while scholars of Georgia tend to see the esoteric influences he drew upon as little more than an assemblage of “vague allegories” and “similarities between archaeology, history, and religion” which allowed him to “reach […] into history” and “present himself as somewhat more cosmopolitan” (Zwart 2023, 23). I argue, however, that understanding Gamsakhurdia (and by extension, his political ideology and political project) requires serious engagement with these ideas—not just as curiosities to be explained away or nestled in a footnote, but as integral (but by no means the sole) influences on his worldview.
In these pieces, I begin (but certainly do not finish) the process of undertaking that engagement by tracing and examining the esoteric sources that shaped Gamsakhurdia’s worldview. I focus primarily on Gamsakhurdia’s writings and lectures in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when his public engagement with these sources was most pronounced. This period coincided, not coincidentally, with the unraveling of Marxism-Leninism’s monopoly on public meaning-making across the Soviet Union, set off by the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev. With this, the crisis of meaning that gripped late Soviet society was brought out into the open, as the public articulation of doubts, longings, and alternative frameworks that had long circulated beneath the surface became the norm. It was this opening that allowed Gamsakhurdia to publicly engage with ideas so far afield from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy—and, as the Soviet collapse accelerated, to do so with increasing boldness.
Then, as the question of what would succeed the Soviet order in Georgia came to the fore—and following from it, questions not just about what the borders, laws, and government of an independent Georgian state would look like, but about what “Georgian-ness” (kartveloba) meant and entailed—Gamsakhurdia maneuvered his way to the presidency, establishing himself as the figure who would, decisively, answer these questions. And indeed, from the bully pulpit, he would articulate not just a political program, but a comprehensive vision of Georgia’s national identity and place in history.
To Gamsakhurdia, Georgia was not just a newly independent state among many newly independent states, but the bearer of an ancient history and a future mission of great significance. It was a chosen mediator between—and synthesizer of—worlds: Western and Eastern, earthly and divine. Independence thus became not only a political event, but a pivotal moment in the cosmic drama of humanity’s spiritual evolution. As he stated in his first address to the Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia:
“Our just struggle for freedom and independence is […] the center of the world’s attention. Let everyone know that we fought and are fighting for the revival of the religious and national ideals of our ancestors, for Georgia was entrusted with a great mission by fate. The Georgian nation walked the thorny path of history with unprecedented torments, it has always been a supporter of morality and justice, it has sacrificed its flesh for its soul, it has set the service of truth as its supreme goal, for which it has repeatedly been persecuted and tortured by barbarians and the oppressed. But it has gone through the Golgotha of history, so that the time of its resurrection and ascension, its shining before the peoples of the world, may come, so that humanity may share the light of Georgia, blessed by God. The time is not far off when Georgia will become an example of moral greatness for the peoples of the world” (Gamsakhurdia 1990).
It would, of course, be mistaken to claim that Gamsakhurdia’s worldview determined Georgia’s post-Soviet trajectory. The country’s fate was shaped far more by economic collapse, ethnic conflict, institutional fragility, and external pressures than by the thinking (or even actions) of any one individual. Yet, these ideas undoubtedly shaped how Gamsakhurdia himself interpreted the political realities before him, and how he thought he needed to navigate them.[2] To understand Gamsakhurdia, then, is to understand the ideas that shaped him and structured his understanding of himself, his people, humanity, and the divine—a task that requires treating his esoteric influences with the same seriousness he afforded them.
Gamsakhurdia’s esoteric influences were diverse and often interwoven, but for the sake of clarity, I have grouped them into two main streams: Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy and Georgian Christian mysticism. I further divide this latter stream into two sub-streams, or currents. The first, what I term the “Gelati current,” was centered on the medieval Gelati Academy and its theological-philosophical activity. The second, the “prophetic current,” was anchored in Ioane-Zosime’s tenth-century hymn “Praise and Exaltation of the Georgian Language.” Together, anthroposophy and Georgian Christian mysticism lent Gamsakhurdia both a universal spiritual framework and a particular theological-philosophical vocabulary through which to articulate a cosmic vision of Georgian distinctiveness and grand importance, centered on a “spiritual mission” (sulieri misia)—ultimately producing a kind of transcendent nationalism or national mysticism. Examining these streams and currents in greater detail will be the subject of two forthcoming follow-ups to this piece—Parts II and III—each focusing on a single stream.
Of course, Gamsakhurdia’s esoteric sources were not the sole shapers of his worldview. He also drew extensively on non-esoteric sources—primarily Soviet-era scholarship on linguistics, ancient history, and mythology—and from this material, constructed what he presented as an empirical ethnogeny of the Georgian people. At a functional level, this ethnogeny helped answer questions that Gamsakhurdia’s esoteric sources raised (but never fully answered themselves). More interestingly, at an epistemological level, by claiming empirical credibility, Gamsakhurdia capitalized on the enduring authority of science to further legitimize his project (and in some cases, his sources themselves[3]), even as (or perhaps especially because) its accepted definition, boundaries, and uses grew more flexible at the Soviet collapse (Kellner 2025).
I leave for my future work—because it lies well beyond the scope of this piece—a more thorough analysis of how Gamsakhurdia used and reinvented these non-esoteric sources—sometimes (as with the linguistic theories of Nikolai Marr) not just Soviet in origin, but in content—alongside esoteric sources from outside (as with Steiner’s anthroposophy) or prior to the establishment of (as with Georgian Christian mysticism) the Soviet Union in service of a decidedly nationalist end-product. Such work, I believe, will help further illuminate the complex relationship between Soviet, non-Soviet, and emerging post-Soviet epistemologies at the collapse: How new worldviews were constructed through selective appropriation and reinterpretation of existing knowledge structures, and how the lines between seemingly concrete categories—Soviet and anti-Soviet, scientific and esoteric, nationalist and internationalist—blurred amidst a broader disorientation and search for belonging, meaning, and purpose.
ENDNOTES
[1] A “journal based on Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science.”
[2] Gamsakhurdia’s presidency proved turbulent and brief, marked by conflicts with opposition groups, tensions with ethnic minorities (particularly Abkhazians and Ossetians), and incontestable authoritarianism. By early 1992, a coup launched by disgruntled paramilitary groups had ousted him from power and installed Eduard Shevardnadze (1928–2014)—former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union and First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party—in his place. A bloody civil war followed, during which Gamsakhurdia died under unclear circumstances.
[3] As with the largely discredited linguistic theories of Nikolai Marr.
REFERENCES
Gamsakhurdia, Konstantin. “Swiad Gamsachurdia und die Anthroposophie” [Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Anthroposophy]. Der Europäer [The European] 7, no. 5. March 2002.
Gamsakhurdia, Zviad. “Sakartvelos uzenaesi sabch’os tavmjdomaris – Zviad Gamsakhurdias gamosvla uzenaesi sabch’os pirvel sesiaze” [Speech by the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Georgia – Zviad Gamsakhurdia at the First Session of the Supreme Council]. Speech, Tbilisi, Georgia, November 14, 1990.
Kellner, Joseph. The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2025.
Zwart, Wietse. “The Georgian Memory of Zviad Gamsakhurdia.” Master’s thesis. Leiden University, 2023.
Author
Alexander John Paul Lutz is (as of early 2026) a Max Kampelman Policy Fellow at the U.S. Helsinki Commission, a Junior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council (working mostly within the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute), and the Caucasus Editor at Lossi 36. His research explores religion and spirituality as spaces for the creation, legitimization, and contestation of visions of belonging, meaning, and purpose in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
