The East Looks West

The Kremlin may act triumphant, but Russia is losing its hold on the youth of former Soviet states.

It’s been more than a century since a member of the Mebagishvili family of Tbilisi, Georgia, grew up not speaking Russian. Like educated clans all over the Russian Empire, the Mebagishvilis considered the language of Pushkin and Tolstoy essential for anyone who wanted to get ahead—or to be considered fully civilized. But 20-year-old Helen Mebagishvili, a philosophy and social-science student at Tbilisi’s Ilia Chavchavadze State University, has chosen English, not Russian, as her first foreign language. She’s learning another one, too: French. “I do not feel any attachment toward Russia,” she says as she fills the shelves of a new university library with Penguin editions of Mark Twain, James Joyce and Charles Dickens. “Once, Russia introduced European ideas to Georgia—but now we have direct access to European ideas without Russia.” ...