The year 2011 marks the twentieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1991 fifteen states emerged from the Union, each with its own specificities and each with challenging tasks ahead: to maintain public order, to rebuild identities, societies, laws and economic systems. In a nutshell, fifteen parallel processes of state and nation building started simultaneously, with a wide set of outputs. On the eve of 1991 some countries still had memories of a previous period of independence, as some had already been incorporated into the Union in the form of modern nation states, whilst others, although having had separate and well-identified national/local features for centuries, were turned into modern states under Soviet rule. However, all the independent republics had to invest resources and energy in state and nation building processes. These two processes have interacted over the last twenty years, with unpredictable and sometimes disrupting consequences. Within this framework, the case of Georgia has been analyzed in terms of the impact of its nationalist trends on citizenship and territorial integrity, two pillars of statehood.