TBILISI -- When protests in Georgia's capital against the country's "foreign agent" bill began last month, organizers originally planned to hold protests only on days when parliament took action on the bill, so as to conserve protesters' energy.

But after the parliament on April 17 passed on its first reading the bill -- which would require media outlets and NGOs to register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power" if more than 20 percent of their funding comes from abroad -- many young protesters didn't want to rest.

"They stopped protesting and told people we should wait until the second reading," said Zviad Tsetskhladze, an 18-year-old first-year law student at Tbilisi State University. "But we, the new Generation Z, we didn't like this situation. So we started protesting by ourselves," he said.

He and other students began nightly marches from the university campus to the parliament, about 2 1/2 kilometers away. At first, other protest organizers discouraged the marches, Tsetskhladze said, worried that if not many people joined them then photos of meager protests would spread and create a narrative that the movement was dying. But the marches quickly gained popularity. "When we started to create big marches, [the other organizers] started to like us," he said.

And now, these young people -- mostly from Generation Z, which consists of people born roughly between the late 1990s and the early 2010s -- have become the defining element of Georgia's protests, providing energy, numbers on the streets, and, in some cases, inspiration for their elders.

In an essay for RFE/RL's Georgian Service, prominent novelist Zaza Burchuladze wrote that the movement should be called the "children's revolution." Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, a supporter of the protests, has repeatedly praised the country's "youth with fire in their hearts." "We will show the world what Georgia and its youth can do," she said in a recent speech.

Foreign Agent Revisited

After originally introducing the bill into parliament in March 2023, the ruling Georgian Dream party ending up withdrawing it after a widespread public outcry and mass street protests. A year later, the revival of what opponents call the "Russian law" has resulted in the most serious political crisis of Georgian Dream's 12-year rule and has sparked fears among pro-Western Georgians that the party may be trying to steer their country away from their European aspirations.

Previous Georgian protest movements have not been nearly so youth-dominated, said Vano Abramishvili, a program director at Caucasian House, a Tbilisi NGO that runs many programs directed at Georgian young people. "This is a very new phenomenon," he said.

Although there were also large numbers of young people at the "foreign agent" protests last year, that movement lasted only a matter of days and so the youth factor wasn't much commented on. But the ruling party noticed, Abramishvili said.

Following the 2023 protests, the government introduced several new youth-oriented policies, such as debt relief for student loans and a paid internship program. This time around, just a month before rolling out the "foreign agent" law again, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced a new four-year youth action plan. "They paid massive attention to young people," Abramishvili said.

Now that young people are again demonstrating in large numbers -- apparently unmoved by the party's efforts -- Georgian Dream officials have scrambled to respond.

A pro-government rally organized by Georgian Dream featured a youth march, too -- led by Tsotne Ivanishvili, the teenage son of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder and still informal leader of Georgian Dream. The rally featured speeches by no fewer than five members of the party's youth wing. "You could see how artificially some of these youngsters were squeezed in," Abramashvili said.

Pro-government media has portrayed the youth protesters as naive and manipulated by their elders, in particular the opposition parties and NGOs that the law is meant to target. Kobakhidze went so far as to label the entire "Generation Z" as a "violent movement."

Getting the young people on side won't be easy for Georgian Dream. Polls have shown that younger people have significantly less trust in the ruling party than other age brackets. They also are significantly more likely to believe the country should strive for European integration: a March 2023 poll by the Caucasus Research Resource Center found that 93 percent of Georgians between 18 and 34 wanted their country to join the European Union, as compared to 82 percent of the population as a whole.

Helena Adamia, another first-year Tbilisi State University student, studying psychology, estimates that about half of the students at the university are participating in the protests. Most of them are driven by a "romanticized" view of Europe, she said. But she is a frequent protester, as well, and sees the demonstrations as fighting for Georgia's European future. While she doesn't agree with everything the EU does -- particularly what she sees as excessive support for Israel in its war in Gaza -- she thinks Georgia doesn't have any alternative to Europe.

"In our case, given Georgia's situation, the only way for us to move forward, for there to be any progress in our country, is to be part of the European Union," she said. Given Moscow's overbearing influence in the region, she said that: "Truly, it's Russia or Europe for us."

One value that is clearly on display in the youth protests, and which differentiates young Georgians from many of their peers in other countries, is a strong sense of patriotism.

Georgian flags are ubiquitous at the demonstrations, and singing the national anthem is common. During one recent student march, the group stopped midway for a break to sing the anthem. Adamia, wearing a lip ring and a Palestinian scarf, immediately put her hand to her heart and sang along.

Law student Tsetskhladze, who helped start the student marches, is one of the leaders of a youth group called Dafioni ("Sunset"), which has come to prominence during these protests. The group raised eyebrows at one early protest by having members swear an oath to "defend Georgia's statehood" and to "never be co-opted by the force that tries to transfer our country to our enemy, Russia."

Sunset's ideology could be described as "liberal nationalist or democratic nationalist," Tsetskhladze said. In Tsetskhladze's Facebook profile photo, he is wearing camouflage military gear, complete with a balaclava. "I love military stuff," he said. "Soldiers in Georgia, throughout our history, they are defending the country, not attacking."

"Gen Z is the most patriotic generation that has lived in our country since independence," Tsetskhladze said.

Political Shift

In many ways, the politics of today's Generation Z track those of their elders. Opinion polls consistently show that economic issues are at the top of their agenda, as with every generation in Georgia.

But in other important aspects, the young people protesting today represent a significant shift in political thinking.

Today's students have little memory of a time before when Georgian Dream -- which took power in 2012 -- ruled the country. That makes them less vulnerable to the ruling party's most common line of attack: associating any opponent with the former, and still widely unpopular, regime of Mikheil Saakashvili and his United National Movement (UNM) party.

"You cannot point your finger at them and say that they are UNM supporters or pro-Misha," said Abramishvili, using Saakashvili's nickname. "The only government these young people saw growing up was Georgian Dream, and they are making their own conclusions."

At the same time, most young Georgians get their information largely from social media, where news on the country is dominated by Western-funded media and NGOs run by liberal millennials or Gen Xers. These groups -- human rights organizations, watchdog organizations, and liberal media organizations -- control much of the mainstream narrative in Georgia, if not much direct political power.

Georgian media is polarized into pro- and anti-government, and the latter space "is completely taken over by these organizations. "It's like you cannot get a new voice [heard], because the space is completely full," said Gio Meskhi, a third-year political science student at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. "These NGOs have way more influence on young people than the government or actual political structures like parties," he said.

Although Meskhi opposes the "foreign agent" law, he has not been participating in the protests because he feels their agenda is "completely curated and manipulated by the leaders of the opposition [political parties] and the top dogs of the big NGOs," he said. "It's top-down, not bottom-up. They play on the ego of the youth to mobilize them."

Still, many young people distrust the country's political parties, both ruling and opposition. Surveys have shown that young Georgians are much more likely to feel that no political party represents them. Meskhi said he didn't know a single supporter of UNM at his university, even though that is still the most popular opposition party among Georgians as a whole. Opposition oriented students are more likely to support the libertarian Girchi (Pine Cone) or the staunchly pro-Western Droa (It's Time) parties, he said.

While Dafioni has a loose affiliation with UNM, Tsetskhladze said he still doesn't trust Saakashvili or any other opposition leader, believing them all to have "Soviet mentalities."

"Yes, [Saakashvili] created the European course of this country, but he also has some problems with democracy, and they became authoritarian," he said. "So, we don't want old guys in the new political reality. We want new blood, we want a new generation."

The youth movements involved in the protests do cooperate with their elders; there are regular coordination meetings in which figures from opposition parties, NGOs, and the activist movements all discuss strategy. "We coordinate with everyone, which is a rare thing in Georgian politics," said Kote Chakhunashvili, a member of another youth group, Jiuti (Stubborn). (Chakhunashvili, a 32-year-old doctor, is himself not strictly Generation Z.) "We need everyone if we are going to defeat this monster," he said.

Still, he said, younger protesters want a more decentralized approach. "The older generation thinks that you need some kind of a leader, so they have a strict power vertical," he said. "But this generation is more horizontal, they are for a lot of sergeants and fewer generals."