DIALECTICS OF FILIATION AND AFFILIATION

Abstract

An English translation of the ‘Last Will and Testament of Toma Baliauri’ is given here along with a critical introduction to this text. The introduction frames Baliauri's testament within the context of the anticolonial revolutionary movements that spread through the Caucasus during the first quarter of the twentieth century and studies how this text contributes to the global history of anticolonialism and can serve as a point of departure for a postcolonial theory inflected by the hitherto neglected post-Soviet world. Baliauri's testament was first published in Georgian in 1995, and is here translated for the first time into a foreign language.

Keywords:

• Anticolonialism
• Georgian literature
• postcolonialism
• revolution
• Said

Notes

¹For a broader analysis of Natela Baliauri's Khevsur ethnography, see Manning (2007).

²Said's distinction is elaborated throughout the course of his book, esp. pp. 174–5. For another productive application of Said's textual distinction to political realities, see Abu El-Haj (2005).

³In fairness, it should be noted that Allen (1932) and Lang (1957) are specifically concerned with the precolonial period. The omission of Choloqashvili's rebellion is more problematic with respect to Suny and Jones’ historiographies. Suny does refer to Choloqashvili on one occasion (1994: 223).

⁴Three major Georgian publications concerned with Choloqashvili's uprising appeared in the 1980s: Cargaretheli (1981); Sharadze (1989); Sulxanishvili (2007) (I follow the inconsistent transliteration in the Worldcat database for ease of reference). The first known émigré source in Georgian is Zaldastanishvili (1956).

⁵Unfortunately, this new wave of Georgian-language scholarship is not free of nationalistic bias.

⁶The richest documentation of anti-Soviet movements in the Caucasus focuses mostly on Daghestan. For one collection of primary sources, see Kakagasanov and Osmanov (1994).

⁷For an excellent analysis of Vazha's representation of Khevsur–Chechen relations, see Tuite (2008). Vazha's poems are available in Vazha-Pshavela (1981).

⁸For a contemporary nationalist reading of Choloqashvili's legacy that describes him as ‘the National Hero of Georgia, leader of the National-Liberation, anti-Bolshevik Movement of Georgian People’, see Urushadze (2006).

⁹For the post-Soviet space generally, see Chernetsky et al. (2006), Chioni Moore (2001), Khalid (2007) and Buckler (2009). For postcolonial attention to colonial history in the Caucasus, see Layton (1994), Ram (2003) and Jersild (2003). All of these texts, with the exception of Jersild, critically engage with Edward Said's Orientalism. Like Orientalism, they concentrate more on European (Russian) than on non-European representations and perspectives.

¹⁰In addition to Cania's monograph, see Gould (2007, Gould 2009, Gould 2010, Gould 2011a, Gould 2011b, Gould 2011c).

¹¹Marchevsky was a revolutionary activist who died in the 1937 Stalinist purge. Gori is the site of Georgia's most prestigious seminary, attended by Stalin and many important Georgian writers.

¹²In 1981 this Sulkhanishvili published his memoir of the rebellion (Sulkhanishvili 2007).

¹³As Lela is a name common to Islamic peoples (from the Arabic layla, ‘night’) it may be that Baliauri's caretaker was Ingush or of Ingush descent, although Lela is also common among Christian Georgians.