Tata Grdzelishvili is among those who may soon find themselves reviving old routines in the coming weeks. Last spring, before taking to the streets, Grdzelishvili recalled that she meticulously packed her protester kit. Her checklist included a pack of medical facemasks, a pair of swimming goggles and a couple of energy bars. A bottle of sodium chloride solution went into a side pocket of her backpack. “This is to wash tear gas from your eyes,” explained Grdzelishvili, a petite, soft-spoken 22-year-old Georgian. 

The final order of business was to pin her chestnut brown curls into a tight bun. “You should never leave your hair down because then it is easier for the police to grab you,” she said. 

“And don’t separate yourself from the crowd,” she added, dropping more protest knowledge before she went out to attend a protest last May. “The Robocops [nickname for riot police] tend to pick up single protesters and don’t usually venture into a large crowd that can fight back.”

Memories of the protests that rocked the Georgian capital a few months ago provide the context for the upcoming high-stakes election, scheduled to take place October 26, when everything from Georgia’s long-running foreign policy goals of integrating with Western political and economic institutions to its commitment to democratic governance will be put to the test.   

The spring protests were triggered by the adoption of a repressive law that threatens fundamental freedoms and throws the nation off its path toward joining the European Union. Sensing that their freedoms and future in Europe were at risk, Georgian youth poured into the streets, chanting “this country belongs to us and we are going to Europe.” 

With mostly young people gathered outside the parliament and their middle-aged antagonists gathered inside, the demonstrations turned into something of a generational conflict. In a quintessential moment, one student even took to the stage to publicly confront her government-supporting father. “Daddy, this government does not need your support, I’m the one who needs it,” she said.

Authorities responded to the manifestations of youth discontent with a full range of crowd-control measures. Riot police beat and detained protesters in the streets. Water cannons and tear gas rained on Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilisi’s embattled central thoroughfare. 

Refusing to back down, young protesters used their phones to look up ways of fighting back. Learning from the experience of protesters around the world, they borrowed ideas for protective gear from the demonstrators in Hong-Kong, emulated the antics of the Gezi Park protesters in Istanbul, and read up on the forms of civilian resistance in Ukraine.

They set up food delivery and medical aid points, came up with creative slogans and theatrics, and recorded viral videos. They planned and strategized, used apps and gadgets, leaving politicians and parents struggling to keep up.

“Knowledge is the best defense,” said Grdzelishvili, who after a few days of protests carried an air of a seasoned guerrilla fighter. “It often goes down to small things,” she continued. “For instance, now I know that after a water canon truck starts revving its engine I have five seconds to retreat before the water hits and then another few minutes to come back before the truck can strike again.”

With Georgia’s Generation Z being in the vanguard of resistance, the protests evoked parallels to the War of Fathers and Sons, a 19th century Georgian literary polemic that brought about national awaking in Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. But modern-day Georgian sons and daughters were, and still are, battling mainly against one father-figure in particular. That would be Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man and the eminence grise of Georgian politics. 

Ivanishvili is widely seen by Gen Zers as intent on rigging Georgian politics to ensure that his all-powerful influence remains unchallenged. The existence of a vibrant civil society, independent media and democracy watchdogs does not sit well with this goal. Neither does Georgia’s constitutionally mandated aim of joining the European Union. 

To qualify for membership, the EU requires Georgia to ensure political pluralism, an independent judiciary and free and fair elections. All of those things pose a threat to the prolonged rule of the governing Georgian Dream party and its creator, Ivanishvili. 

Critics say that the explosively controversial law on “Transparency of Foreign Influence,” colloquially known as the foreign agents’ law, intends to kill both birds in Ivanishvili’s way with one stone. 

Labeling internationally funded news organizations and non-profit groups as agents of foreign influence (read “spies”), the law threatens to stigmatize and potentially muzzle civil society activists, who serve as the guardians of Georgia’s young and weak-kneed democracy. It also puts distance between the EU and Georgia: European officials said the law makes Georgia unfit for membership. 

Ivanishvili may have other reasons to subvert Georgia’s European trajectory. Many believe that the billionaire maintains strong connections to the Kremlin and is playing a long game to steer Georgia back into Russia’s geopolitical orbit. Georgian Dream leaders ardently deny allegations of a pro-Russian agenda. 

Either way, for Georgia’s Gen Z the choice now is between control and freedom, between past and future. Young Georgians don’t view Europe and Russia just as opposing geopolitical poles. Russia is seen as an embodiment of a repressive, closed society and the past, while Europe stands for openness, internationalism and the future.

“We don’t want to live in a place without open debate, diversity and free choice, a place where a handful of power-obsessed old men are telling the entire society what to do,” said Maka, a 18-year-old history major, who participated in protests last spring.

“I want my country to become European in every sense,” she went on. “Tomorrow we can be like Portugal, Estonia or Poland, but that man [Ivanishvili] wants Georgia to be a fancy version of Chechnya –chronically poor, authoritarian and under Russia’s thumb, but with a wonderful song and dance culture to make up for it.” Maka declined to provide her last name, fearing she might be tracked down by the police or groups of pro-government thugs that have harassed protesters.

To many protesting Georgians, it does not necessarily matter if Ivanishvili is actually in cahoots with Moscow, or is acting on his own autocratic urges. The result is all the same, they say. “I can’t say for certain that our government is collaborating with Russia, but it is certainly borrowing repressive ideas from there,” Maka said.

What confirms that Tbilisi has taken pages out of Moscow’s playbook, members of the protest generation say, is the foreign agents’ law. Protesters in the spring even labeled the legislation “the Russian Law” partly because the Kremlin used a similarly worded legislation to crush government critics, democracy watchdogs and independent media. 

Faced with mass demonstrations in the spring, the Georgian Dream initially tried to dismiss the protesters as marginal gangs of hoodlums, fighting against the nation’s conservative cultural traditions. Styling itself as a defender of Christian values, the establishment employed right-wing rhetoric, blaming Western influence for spreading blasphemous concepts and gender confusion to Georgia. 

Leaning on faith and conservative mores is an old political trick in Georgia, but the men now walking in the corridors of power have missed a global cultural revolution that has quietly taken place in recent years. 

While conservative views still run strong, Georgian youth has grown increasingly progressive, globally aware and open to diversity. 

Even some older Georgians are embracing new views. A Facebook page jestingly called “the ancestors” was created in the spring for older Georgians to throw around ideas and coordinate assistance to the young protesters. That page is still active today and its members are bracing for a potential second round of protests this fall.  

The government is also making preparations. Georgian Dream offered to launch a program of paid internships and state-sponsored youth camps to win over the young minds but, so far, the initiative has had little effect on the younger generation’s mood.    

The protest movement took a summer break, but vowed to take Ivanishvili’s government to task at the ballot box in October. Tensions are almost certain to flare up again if young Georgians find that the voting does not reflect the free expression of voters’ will.