Your Holiness, esteemed members of the public, dear guests, I would like to pay my respects to the memory of our national hero. We, I and my friends, began our work to bring the remains of Kakutsa Cholokashvili home in 1997. Then the Georgian migrs who had been looking after the Leuville estate and Kakutsa's grave [in France] thought that the time was not ripe. It was Kakutsa Cholokashvili's wish that his remains be buried in a free Georgia.

I should say that today Georgia is a wounded but free country. Georgia has become free not only formally but also spiritually. Georgia has believed in its own strength. [Georgia] has believed that it can solve even the most difficult problems.

We have always had heroes. When the Kingdom of Georgia was abolished and most of our aristocrats readily swapped their country's independence for posts and high salaries Georgia's last queen, Queen Mariam, rejected the offer of a comfortable exile. When an oppressor general of the conquering army tried to force her out of her home, she drew a dagger and killed Gen Tsitsianov. She was then handcuffed and taken to the north on foot. It was a miracle that she survived the trip. Her name was forgotten, tabooed for the following two centuries because no-one wanted to acknowledge that there were people in Georgia who offered resistance. The official version was that we were happy to enter what was described as a golden cage. It wasn't made of gold at all.

The finest representatives of Georgian aristocracy, those who were not among the surrendered majority, rebelled in 1832. The rebellion failed. We have always had people who fought for Georgia. Later, in the 1860s we had a generation of Tergdaleulebi [Georgian public figures who returned home after studying in Russia]. One of them, Ilia Chavchavadze, said that Georgia wasn't dead and that the Georgian national spirit would revive. Ilia toured Georgia on foot, visited its every province and said that [Georgia] wasn't just a few districts and provinces but a united nation of people of different ethnic origin and traditions, which would rise one day like Phoenix.

We have endured many other misfortunes. There were the followers of Sergo Orjonikidze who led [the Bolshevik] conquerors to Georgia. It is a disgrace that Orjonikidze, Pilipe Makharadze and other ethnic Georgians headed that army. And there were the genuine patriots who fought against them in Tbilisi and elsewhere, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Ossetians, Abkhaz and others who cared about Georgia's freedom and independence. Orjonikidze's party won, temporarily but with very grave consequences for our country.

There always were attempts to mount resistance. Patriarch Ambrosi, another Georgian national hero and saint, wrote a letter to the Genoa Conference. It wasn't a church leader's job but there was no-one else in the country to do it. He wrote a letter and demanded that Georgia's independence be restored. Of course, Ambrosi Khelaia knew perfectly well what writing these sorts of letters would bring upon him. It was tantamount to signing his own death sentence. Yet he did it. He was arrested and tortured by the Bolsheviks. He knew that he would die but refused to denounce his ideals and said proudly: My soul belongs to God, my heart to my homeland Georgia, and you, butchers, can have my body and do as you please with it.

I think that this is the essence of our revival and our successful future. There have always been Orjonikidzes in Georgia, but for every dozen Orjonikidzes there always was at least one Kakutsa Cholokashvili, an Ekvtime Taqaishvili, an Ambrosi Khelaia or a Queen Mariam. In the end, these people turned out to be stronger than [the Orjonikidzes].

A big battle lies ahead of us and I am glad that our soldiers are here not just in their official capacity. I saw our uniformed soldiers paying tribute [to Kakutsa Cholokashvili] in the church, in our Holy Trinity Cathedral. I want to say that we count on them and we admire their bravery.

I saw many young people and many children here today. They are a completely different generation. They are a generation of people who will never mock Georgia's main symbols, Georgia's five cross flag, Georgia's anthem and other state symbols, as some do when they appear on television. These children are taking in the sense of respect for their country with their mothers' milk. They know what their country is worth and how to respect it better than many of those who pretend to be very educated but in truth are very stupid and uneducated. They know what a country's dignity means better than the Soviet conformists do.

Even today there are Orjonikidzes among us. You can see them on television from time to time. At times they say completely bizarre things. However, they won't win. They will never win because today Georgia is a state, albeit not a united one, while in Kakutsa's times Georgia wasn't a state, Georgia was fragmented. [Georgia] will definitely unite. We will embark on this path because we do not intend to go back. No-one will ever be able to defeat us.

Yesterday I saluted Kakutsa Cholokashvili as a soldier on your behalf, on Georgia's behalf. He was Georgia's most faithful soldier, its bravest soldier, a soldier who died, together with his brothers-in-arms, for his beloved country. He never retreated. Kakutsa Cholokashvili was leaving Georgia together with members of the Georgian government. He turned back from Batumi, from the border. He turned back to fight for a lost cause. It was obvious that there was no chance of winning. He believed that he should fight to the very end in his country. His brothers-in-arms were held in Metekhi fortress, not too far from here. They walked with their heads up, singing as they were led off to be executed. They were neither fanatics nor madmen. They simply loved their homeland and realized what it meant to die for their homeland. They believed that one day we would pay respects to their heroism.

This faith is the essence of our national spirit. We will be victorious. We have been prosperous and united in the past and we will come to be prosperous and united. We are walking firmly towards this goal. I pay my respects to Kakutsa Cholokashvili and every other hero who died for our country.

This translation is published with permission from BBC Monitoring, Reading UK

Communications Office
of the President of Georgia