From the early 1990s through the 2008 “Russo-Georgian war,” waves of armed conflicts in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia/Tskhinvali regions of Georgia forced thousands of residents, mainly ethnic Georgians, to leave their homes. More than two decades of protracted internal displacement, marked by tough economic and social problems, led this vulnerable community to a common trap in reckoning with the past: an overwhelming sense of the fundamental ruptures between the idealized past and current, miserable reality. Failures of the displacement policy and “side effects” of numerous humanitarian aid projects hinder internally displaced persons’ social integration and leave them on the margins of Georgian society with almost a singular option: to constantly recall meaningful life in the lost homeland, which they remember as free of ethnic phobias and economic problems. In this article, we suggest that for persons who are internally displaced, memories are defined not only by their past lived experiences and present hardships, but also by the official historical narratives that argue that Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian “endemic” unity and cohabitation was destroyed by Russian imperial politics. Living in constant pain also narrows the future expectations of the internally displaced persons. However, it is the past and the memories that are supposed to be useful in achieving the utopian dream of a return.
Today, Stalin still haunts the Georgian public. Recent studies have focused solely on “collected” quantitative surveys, rather than “collective” memory on Stalin in Georgia. This paper approaches the Stalin puzzle differently by introducing specific social frameworks and by going beyond a generational analysis. This study illustrates a case of contested memory around Stalin monuments. Drawing on fieldwork (ethnography and interviews) conducted in the Kakheti region and the city of Gori, we analyse how the Stalin cult developed into a memory site. This transformation happened by applying a specific narrative template, which was adapted to different political environments, from the Stalin era until today. We conclude that two opposing interpretations of the narrative template for Stalin as a memory site rely on the same forms, while containing totally different content that we label as an affirmative “golden” variant and an unfavourable “pink” one.
This paper investigates the construction and role of national memory in exile through the intersection of nationalism and memory studies. Building on descriptions of the Georgian émigré memory, its comparison with the Soviet Georgian identity and its travelling trajectory, this study illustrates the potential of subaltern national exilic memory. My research data on prominent Georgian émigrés are juxtaposed with a recent historical study of the internal diaspora of prominent Georgians in the Soviet Union. This is a story of postcolonial intellectuals and nationalist elites who acted as a carrier group in 1921, advocating internationally against the suffering of Soviet Georgians. Exiles produced an alternative account, comprised of four counternarratives, to that of the Soviet Union. These identified narratives constitute a stored memory that became an available past for Georgia. The safeguarded émigré memory was negotiated, recovered, used for centennial celebrations in 2018 and finally reintegrated into the national body.
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