With the two men now so at odds that they are not speaking, their mutual dislike has in some ways come to define the current state of ties between Russia and Georgia. Mr. Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, has unabashedly told the Russian people that he would like Mr. Saakashvili hung by his private parts. Mr. Saakashvili is said to have mocked Mr. Putin as "Lilli-Putin," a reference to his height.
"They hate each other," said Zurab Abashidze, a former Georgian ambassador to Moscow. "I heard, many times, very emotional statements from Saakashvili and from people around him about Putin. And unfortunately, this personal element in the political life of Russia as well as Georgia is still very important."
In Tbilisi, the Putin fixation is so entrenched that it is an undercurrent in the protests being held this month that are demanding Mr. Saakashvili's resignation. Mr. Saakashvili's aides have spoken darkly of plots that they insisted were being hatched by Mr. Putin's henchmen to provide arms and money to the Georgian opposition.
The Putin-Saakashvili relationship also cannot be divorced from their nations' shared history, which over hundreds of years has given rise to all sorts of affinities and complexes. (Perhaps the foremost Soviet leader was an ethnic Georgian named Iosif Dzhugashvili, who ruled in Moscow under the name Josef Stalin.)
Russians retain deep affection for Georgian culture, society and food, but at the same time the old guard in Moscow sometimes views Georgia as a wayward province. Mr. Saakashvili sought to rupture the traditional bonds by flamboyantly allying Georgia with Washington, even naming a main road after George W. Bush.
"We always have in Russia the image of the big brother towards Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan -- it's the big brother complex," said Aleksandr G. Asmolov, a psychology professor at Moscow State University. "As soon as the older brother sees the little brother begin to misbehave, to get into mischief, truly sharp discord occurs."
