Meador, Clifton: Tourist Refugee Right in the center of Tbilisi, in the Republic of Georgia, there stands what used to be a modernist,
high-rise luxury hotel. It was the first such hotel in the Soviet Union, built to international
standards of luxury and convenience and intended to be a crowning achievement for tourism in
the Caucasus.
When the Republic of Georgia declared its independence in 1989, long-suppressed ethnic
tensions began to be expressed. Civil war finally erupted and a part of the country declared its
own independence. This process of war and secession created hundreds of thousands of internal
refugees, a population that the government of Georgia could not manage. Many of the former
tourist hotels in Georgia were converted to refugee housing, filled with all kinds of people, many
of whom had never been in a high-rise building.
en., offset lithography, softcover, 30p, 5.9 x 8.9 inch, New York, 2005, Studio of Exhaustion Request of availability backnext