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Abstract
Sudden collapse of Communism and uncertainty of the new order brought about renewed fascination with the national history. Much of the research on collective memory formation and identity-building in the post-Soviet space, however, paid disproportionate attention to the role of the state as the main locus of collective memory production. The method of qualitative inquiry proposed in this article, in a social constructivist vein, examines the formation of collective memory narratives and the visions of statehood from the ground up in the context of Georgia. Based on the analysis of the data derived from extensive interviews with 64 school teachers of history, as well as content analysis of nine textbooks, and several versions of the official curriculum plan, I suggest that societal views of history, are noticeably divided along the generational cleavage lines, forming four distinct categories of narratives that respond to and often contest the state-generated discourse, while informing the visions of statehood of the members of polity.
Acknowledgements
My special thanks goes to all my Georgian interviewees for being so generous with their time – this paper would not have been possible without them. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on the earlier draft of this paper. Equally invaluable was the feedback from the participants of Harvard’s Post-Communist Politics and Economics Workshop and the Tbilisi-based CCRC/ARISC Work-in-Progress series. Finally, I am thankful for the many suggestions I received while presenting this work at other conference venues, as well as the ASCN 2013 annual conference in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Notes
1. Giorgi Abramov ‘Song of Unity”.
2. Collected Works of Vladimir Lenin. Vol. 25: 79.
3. In the discussion of my arguments and throughout the rest of the paper, I refer to the perceived historical identity and collective memory narratives interchangeably. While semantically the two are different, Anthony Smith argued that ‘no memory – no identity; no identity – no nation’, thus implying a conceptual closeness between the two terms, since collective memory discourse is an articulation of the nation’s perceived historical identity.
4. Both Hopf and Wendt discuss identities within an international framework, focusing on states as the main actors, but I believe their ontological view of identity as inherently fluid could be profitably applied to other levels of identity (i.e. on a sub-state level).
5. Qtd. In Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn. ‘Taking stock: The constructivist research program in international relations and comparative politics’. Annual Political Review, 2001.
6. This approach is somewhat similar to Foucault’s argument about the dispersion of power ‘power is everywhere, diffused and embodied in discourse’, which I believe is especially applicable when discussing the formation of historical identities – a process that is inherently fluid and pluralistic.
7. Importantly, the term ‘space’ that I use is different from the famous term ‘lieux de memoire’ (the realms/spaces of memory) coined by Pierre Nora. Nora is referring to material and non-material objects (e.g. museums, architecture and commemorations) that are fixed in time and form. My understanding of the space is more dynamic in that its focus is not on a space itself, but the constantly changing discourses that inhabit it, in line with my first argument on the general fluidity of historical identities.
8. Zviad Gamsakhurdia: Speech delivered on 26 May 1990. Published in: Theatrical News, 1990, #3.
9. For an overview of the state of Georgian historiography, see Reisner, Oliver. 1998. What can and should we learn from Georgian history? Observations of someone who was trained in the western tradition of science. International Textbook Research 20. For information on the tendencies in history textbooks in the South Caucasus, see Vesely, 2008.
10. For more information about memory politics in Georgia since 2003, please see Shatirishvili, Zaza. 2009. National narratives and new politics of memory in Georgia. Small Wars and Insurgencies 20, no. 2: 391–9.
11. Durkheim, Educational Thought, 227.
12. As with any categorization in social sciences, one has to remain cognizant of the fact that while the categories discussed in this article are helpful paradigms for understanding the majority of prevailing narratives among teachers in Georgian schools, I do not deny the existence of occasional outliers.
13. This more prominent public resistance to the state through classroom history discourses is captured well through the changing image of a history teacher in the Soviet film. For example, see Mikhailin, Vadim and Belyaeva, Galina. ‘Uchitel Istorii v Sovetskom Kino Rubezha 1960–1970x’ (The image of a history teacher in Soviet films from 1960–1970s.). http://www.intelros.ru/readroom/nz/n5-2012/16913-istorik-v-isterike-uchitel-istorii-v-sovetskom-kino-rubezha-19601970-h-godov.html.
14. These statements were provided in response to a question asked by the interviewer ‘What academic influences and/or historical events shaped your own understanding of history?”.
15. A very similar anti-Western approach can be observed in Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s statements. Compare L.’s statement with the following: ‘The West is staunchly against any national movement. The main tenet of their global order is to destroy all nation-states, carry out the genocide against these states’ population, and bring together those who’ll survive under 1 conglomerate’. Interview: Zviad Gamsakhuria – ‘Animals do not have a nationality.’ Published in: Newspaper Aghdgoma #29, 6 December 1992.
16. Ilia Chavchavadze – a writer, a lawyer and a journalist of the nineteenth century, who is considered to be one of the founding fathers of the modern Georgian state by spearheading the national movement and reviving the Georgian language. He was canonized in 1987, the same period that I associate with the hybrids.
17. M.’s response was strikingly similar to the conception of the Georgian history by Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Compare M.’s statement to those of Gamsakhurdia: ‘Ioane thus says in “Praise and Glory” … that [the Georgian nation] will once again become the spiritual leader and judge of the mankind”. Zviad Gamsakhurdia: Essays and Letters. Praise and Glory of the Georgian Language.
18. Noe Jordania – Georgian journalist and Menshevik leader.
19. For a similar discussion, Aguilar Fernandez and Hite, Authoritarian legacies and democracy in Latin America and Southern Europe, 2003.