Collective memory and reputational politics of national heroes and villains

Abstract

The politics of memory plays an important role in the ways certain figures are evaluated and remembered, as they can be rehabilitated or vilified, or both, as these processes are contested. We explore these issues using a transition society, Georgia, as a case study. Who are the heroes and villains in Georgian collective memory? What factors influence who is seen as a hero or a villain and why? How do these selections correlate with Georgian national identity? We attempt to answer these research questions using a newly generated data set of contemporary Georgian perspectives on recent history. Our survey results show that according to a representative sample of the Georgian population, the main heroes from the beginning of the twentieth century include Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Ilia Chavchavadze, and Patriarch Ilia II. Eduard Shevardnadze, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and Vladimir Putin represent the main villains, and those that appear on both lists are Mikheil Saakashvili and Joseph Stalin. We highlight two clusters of attitudes that are indicative of how people think about Georgian national identity, mirroring civic and ethnic conceptions of nationalism. How Georgians understand national identity impacts not only who they choose as heroes or villains, but also whether they provide an answer at all.

Post-Socialist Political Necromancy: Weaponization of Dead Bodies in Czech Culture Wars

“…13 On the part of political necromancers, the dead bodies of American soldiers killed in the fight for freedom are sent to fight communism and Russia. In contrast, Russian or Soviet dead bodies are entirely ignored (Gugushvili, Kabachnik, and Kirvalidze 2018).…”

“…Dead bodies and their instrumentalization can therefore polarize society. Social contestation is conducted along the lines of which specific dead bodies will be remembered and which, on the contrary, will be ignored and forgotten ( Gugushvili, Kabachnik and Kirvalidze 2018).…”

“A nossa lâmpada não se apaga”: The Mnemonic Return of Angola’s Jonas Savimbi

“…While the interdisciplinary fields of African studies and memory studies do intersect in the research of African liberation (see MacArthur 2017; Lentz & Lowe 2018), colonialism (see Ball 2018; Alexander, McGregor, & Ranger 2000), post-colonialism (see Kössler 2010; Werbner 1998b), monumentalization (see Becker 2011; Marschall 2005), and the political uses of memory (see Baba & Freire 2019; Pearce 2015a; Igreja 2008; Pitcher 2006), there is scarce understanding of the political memorialization of heroes and villains in public thought (exceptions include, for example, Rantala 2016; Fouéré 2014; Becker 2013). Specifically, there is little on the correlation between the “villain-ization and hero-ization of certain individuals” and political attitudes (Gugushvili et al 2017:2). To unpack this task, a focus on the politics of memorialization can assist in unravelling the construction of historical figures, how they are remembered, forgotten, or silenced, and in which socio-political context this takes place.…”

A counterexample to secularization theory? Assessing the Georgian religious revival

“…8 Poll by the International Centre on Conflicts and Negotiation (2008) and survey by the Caucasus Research Resource Pew Research Center (2013) (cited according toKöksal (2019). Compare also toGugushvili et al (2017).…”