Tbilisi State University: Between Lecture Halls and Surveillance State – Welcome to 1984

It sounds like a bad joke—but sadly, it’s not. Tbilisi State University (TSU) seems to have transformed into an outpost of Georgia’s State Security Service (SSS). Where discussions about democracy, freedom, and the rule of law once took place, a quiet fear of surveillance now reigns—right in the heart of a country officially committed to European integration. Oh Georgia, how did you manage to backslide so far, so fast?

Agents Instead of Assistants: When Your Seminar Paper Turns Into an Intelligence Report

The names Mr. Kharjevanidze and Mr. Shamatava now drift like ominous legends through the university corridors.

Officially, they appear nowhere—but unofficially, everyone knows exactly who’s working on whose orders. According to internal sources, these men are agents of the State Security Service. Their mission: to identify and catalogue professors and students with oppositional views. Scholarly discourse? Forget it. Attendance lists have become watchlists.

Passing information to the authorities is only the first step. What follows is a carefully choreographed act of repression. Speak out critically, and you’ll find yourself on the target list faster than you can say “academic freedom.”

Seminar or Penal Colony? The University as a Stage for State “Punitive Operations”

This new approach to “campus security” became frighteningly clear during a lecture by Irakli Kobakhidze. While students peacefully protested outside, the state staged a live-action repression tutorial: masked thugs attacked the protesters while the police—led by none other than Goga Memanishvili—stood by, unmoved. Or was it active complicity?

The video footage speaks volumes: no attackers arrested, no investigations launched. Instead, a narrative spread claiming the students provoked the violence. A textbook case of victim-blaming—nostalgic even, for those familiar with the communication strategies of authoritarian regimes.

Okhanashvili: The Man Who Prefers Stasi Over State

Behind the scenes, an all-too-familiar name pulls the strings: Anri Okhanashvili, freshly promoted head of the State Security Service. In the past, he loved referencing German legal models—at least as long as it served to consolidate his own power. Ironically, his inspiration seems less drawn from the principles of the Federal Republic of Germany and more from the Stasi, the notorious East German secret police.

One has to wonder: Did Okhanashvili read a guidebook on “European Intelligence Agencies” and just bookmark the wrong chapter? Because what’s happening at TSU eerily resembles the tactics of the Stasi: informants among students, ideological purges of faculty, manipulated hiring processes, and systematic intimidation.

From Lecture Hall to “Ideological Battlefield”: Congratulations, TSU!

The parallels are chilling. In East Germany, it was the Stasi’s declared mission to monitor, control, and ideologically cleanse universities. Critical research was banned, “unreliable” scholars removed, and informal collaborators planted to eavesdrop even on private conversations.

And now? That same script seems to be playing out in Tbilisi. Think too loudly, and you’re declared an enemy. Dare to ask questions, and you’re isolated. Try to organize, and you’re criminalized. The university has ceased to be a place of knowledge production; it’s become an ideological battleground for a government more afraid of dissent than of international criticism.

“Student Self-Government” or the Junior Division of the Security Service?

As if all this weren’t absurd enough, the student self-government plays a questionable role in this system. Ever since the Ministry of Education introduced a new election model in 2006, critical voices have suspected it wasn’t about empowering students but rather creating a recruitment pool for the State Security Service.

In recent years, student self-government has increasingly become a political clique of privileged students—a counterpart to the student unions under authoritarian regimes of the past. Instead of representing student interests, it acts as an extension of the university administration—and thus the government. It doesn’t organize protests; it ensures they never happen. It doesn’t criticize the authorities; it defends them. It’s not the students’ voice—it’s their surveillance arm.

The irony couldn’t be sharper: an organization originally intended to foster student participation has become a tool to monitor, manipulate, and suppress dissent. A sad requiem for student autonomy—and yet another example of how deeply the state’s authoritarian tentacles have penetrated university life.

Freedom? Oh, That Was Just a Short Erasmus Semester

What’s most disheartening is the deafening silence from official channels. No outcry, no debate, no transparency. Just an unsettling quiet that signals one thing: the surveillance state on campus has long been accepted—or was actively enabled.

Meanwhile, the government continues to parade itself as a champion of European integration. Ironic, given that it tramples one of Europe’s fundamental values—academic freedom. Article 78 of Georgia’s constitution obliges the state to pursue EU integration. But how can a country walk that path when its universities can’t even guarantee the freedom to teach and learn without being spied on?

Courage Is Contagious—Sadly, So Is Repression

The real tragedy is that this is happening in a country that considers itself democratic. Georgia stands at a crossroads: Will it choose the path of an open society, freedom, and democracy—or that of surveillance, repression, and ideological conformity?

At TSU, the cold wind of the past is blowing once again. And as history has taught us: those who gag their universities strike at the very roots of a free society.

Hope now rests with the students and the few brave faculty members who refuse to bow to the pressure. Because in the end, history is not written by the bystanders—but by those who had the courage to say no.