Georgia Celebrates Galaktionoba

Georgia celebrated the annual festival Galaktionoba, dedicated to Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze, for the seventh time on May 30 in Tchkvishi village in Vani municipality.

Organized by Mtatsminda Moon (an organization named after one of Tabidze’s poems) and the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia, the event was held on Tabidze’s 123 year anniversary in the format of a competition and included students of all accredited universities and schools as well as professional artists, all of whom created works on the topic of Tabidze’s poetry.

Other competitions were held separately among students and participants (under 30s) in different nominations, such as verse readings, creating pictures inspired by Tabidze’s poems, literature sketches dedicated to Tabize and so on.

The winners received tomes of Tabidze’s poems, diplomas and a variety of other prizes.

The festival also included horse racing, Polo games and a concert by Gio Dzamukashvili and band Nikolshow.

Tabidze is a leading Georgian poet of the twentieth century whose writings profoundly influenced all subsequent generations of Georgian poets. He survived Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s, which claimed the lives of many of his fellow writers, friends and relatives, but came under heavy pressure from the Soviet authorities. Those years plunged him into depression and alcoholism. He was placed in a psychiatric hospital in Tbilisi where he later committed suicide.

Tatia Megeneishvili