“I tell the Russians this: ‘There is no chance that any pro-Russian is going to get and keep power in Georgia. It is a mistake to support people who wave Russian flags,’ ” said Ms. Burjanadze, who has met Mr. Putin several times, opening herself up to charges of treachery. Eight years after a brief and disastrous war with Russia, Georgia still has no diplomatic relations with its giant neighbor to the north.

With more than 200 registered political parties, Georgia is a vibrant and also deeply fractured democracy. But what was once the biggest and most hotly debated issue — whether Georgia should tilt toward the West or toward Russia — is almost absent from political discourse ahead of elections on Saturday to elect a new Parliament.

Despite opinion polls that show a modest softening in recent years of public support for integration with the West, which this year included the signing of a so-called Association Agreement with the European Union, no party or politicians are openly calling for a tilt toward Russia. One party that advocated Russian military bases and Russian pensions was disqualified from the parliamentary election by the electoral commission.

The prime minister, Giorgi Kvirikashvili, whose Georgian Dream party has at times been accused by rivals of favoring Russia, said in an interview that Georgia’s geopolitical orientation, an issue that once convulsed Georgian politics, had been firmly settled in favor of the West. “The only way forward for Georgia is to make the country a full member of the Western family,” he said.

A clear majority, according to an opinion poll released in July by the National Democratic Institute, believes Georgia’s future lies with the West, not Russia. The percentage is not as high as it was two years ago, but it is still far higher than the 29 percent who said Georgia should abandon its pro-Western course in favor of closer relations with Russia.