![Sample our Urban Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110826/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Urban-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
In this article we explore the spatial variation of support for former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in his home country, Georgia. This research contributes to the literature on reputational politics by highlighting the role of spatial, rather than only social, factors in the construction of public opinion about Stalin. We illustrate how geographic factors impact Georgians' perceptions of the Soviet dictator by examining various aspects of place at various scales—including distance to Gori, Stalin's birthplace, the history of urbanization, and economic and political indices. To this end we map attitudes toward the Soviet dictator and use a multilevel spatial regression technique to explain variance in support for Stalin across forty-seven districts of Georgia. This enables us to explore the impact of place on people's attitudes by examining (1) whether there are local and regional hotspots of Stalin admiration and, if so, (2) what the contextual explanations of these attitudes are.
我们于本文中, 探讨苏联前领导约瑟夫.史达林在其祖国格鲁吉亚的支持度之空间变异。本研究透过强调空间、而非仅是社会因素对史达林的公共舆论建构所扮演的角色, 以此对声望政治的文献作出贡献。我们透过检视不同尺度中的各种地方面向——包含距离史达林出生地哥里的距离、城市化的历史, 以及经济和政治指标, 描绘地理因素如何影响格鲁吉亚人对于苏联独裁者的认知。为此, 我们绘製对于苏联独裁者的态度, 并使用多层级空间迴归技术, 探讨格鲁吉亚四十七个行政区中支持史达林的差异性。透过检视 (1) 地方与区域中是否有景仰史达林的热点, 以及若有的话, (2) 这些态度的脉络化解释为何, 使我们得以探讨地方对于人民态度的影响。
Exploramos en este artículo la variación espacial del apoyo brindado al antiguo líder soviético José Stalin en Georgia, su país de origen. Esta investigación es un aporte a la literatura sobre política de reputación, destacando más los papeles espaciales que los sociales en la construcción de opinión pública sobre Stalin. Ilustramos el modo como los factores geográficos impactan la percepción que tienen los georgianos del dictador soviético, mediante el examen de varios elementos relacionados con lugar a diferentes escalas—incluyendo la distancia a Gori, el lugar de nacimiento de Stalin, la historia de la urbanización, e índices económicos y políticos. Con este propósito en mente, cartografiamos las actitudes hacia el dictador soviético y utilizamos una técnica de regresión espacial a múltiples niveles para explicar la varianza en apoyo a Stalin a través de cuarenta y siete distritos de Georgia. Esto nos habilita para explorar el impacto que tiene el lugar sobre las actitudes de la gente, examinando (1) si existen puntos calientes locales y regionales de admiración a Stalin, y (2) de ser así, cuáles serían las explicaciones contextuales de estas actitudes.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the editor of The Professional Geographer, Barney Warf, and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions that reframed the article and strengthened it immeasurably.
Funding
This work was partially supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) and the Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in South Caucasus Studies at the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre of St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, in association with the Academic Swiss Caucasus Net (ASCN) at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. This work was supported, in part, by a Dean's Research Scholarship and a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by the Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York.
Notes
1 Geographers have long examined more general processes of the hometown effect, usually referring to it as “neighborhood effect,” which explores how place impacts voters (e.g., Key Citation1949; Taylor and Johnston Citation1979; Johnston et al. Citation2005; Pattie and Johnston Citation2000).
2 Georgia has twelve administrative divisions, including nine regions, the autonomous republics of Adjara and Abkhazia, and Tbilisi, the capital.
3 Out of seventy-three electoral districts only fifty-one districts were represented in the Stalin survey, which after listwise deletion of missing data is further reduced to forty-seven districts. The districts that have no data tend to be the more remote and least densely populated areas of Georgia.
4 The results of the empirical analysis reported in this article are substantively similar if we exclude from the dependent variable the questions (e.g., Q2 and Q4) that might be less directly related to Stalin.
5 We do not include in the analysis respondents' education, as this variable proved to be insignificant in explaining attitudes toward Stalin.
6 At the time of writing this article, Georgia was conducting its new Census; however, the results were not yet published.
7 The GGS data set covers almost all districts throughout the country and is rich with various demographic and socioeconomic variables. We used some of the variables as a robustness check of our main findings, but this procedure did not generate statistically significant results.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alexi Gugushvili
ALEXI GUGUSHVILI is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at St. Antony College of the University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6JF, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include public opinion and attitudes, social stratification and mobility, comparative welfare research, migration studies, and the social determinants of health and mortality.
Peter Kabachnik
PETER KABACHNIK is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Global Affairs at the College of Staten Island, The City University of New York, Staten Island, NY 10314. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include memorialized landscapes in post-Soviet space and personality cults as a disciplinary technology of the state.
Aaron H. Gilbreath
AARON H. GILBREATH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Global Affairs at the College of Staten Island, The City University of New York, Staten Island, NY 10314. E-mail: [email protected]. His primary research interest is using mixed methodologies to study the place of drugs in society.