The Cultural Bases of Soviet Georgia's Second Economy

THE primary purpose of this paper is to demonstrate, with the aid of illustrative cases, the link between the core values of Georgian culture and the working principles of its second economy. We aim to show that only by first understanding underlying cultural forces can we begin to grasp the reasons why Georgia, of all the Soviet Republics, should possess such a dynamic and deeply entrenched second economy (Grossman, 1977)-estimated by some scholars at over 25% of the Republic's GNP (Wiles, 1981). The method we have adopted to obtain our data is a unique variant of anthropological fieldwork and a methodological note is therefore in order.