Reimagining Soviet Georgia

This episode explores how, through the process of developing a model of socialism applicable in the Third World, local actors interacted with the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact countries, China and the West. These political and economic interactions shaped not only the trajectory of these specific countries but of socialism globally. Our guest is Jeremy Friedman to discuss all of this and more with his...

Highly lauded and acclaimed architect Vladimir (Lado) Alexi-Meskhishvili  (1915-1978) worked on the designs of some of Soviet Georgia's most iconic buildings. A partial list includes: Sanatorium “Imereti”, Tskaltubo (1957),   Tbilisi Sports Palace, Tbilisi (1961),  Restaurant “Iori”, Tbilisi (1962),  Lower floor of Freedom Square metro station, (then “Lenin Square”), ...

On this episode we have a wide ranging conversation with the illustrious historian Candan Badem who his an expert on the South Caucasus and in particular the borderlands between the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries prior to the Russian Revolution. He has written on The Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War of the 1850s, Russian imperial administration in the city...

Anastas Mikoyan was an incredible figure. An Armenian old Bolshevik whose career spanned decades all the way from active involvement in the Baku Commune of 1918 to playing a central role in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Mikoyan's role as First Deputy Premier under Khrushchev and architect of de-Stalinization and thaw-era nationality policies meant his career of policy making influenced the tra...

On today's episode we welcome Samuel Moyn, professor of Law and History at Yale, to discuss the political history of human rights and in particular how this relates to the Cold War, Soviet collapse, and neoliberalism as a politics in the post-Cold War era. Here's an article by Samuel Moyn based on his book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/human...

On this episode, we have a discussion with political geographer Dr. Gerard Toal about the 2008 August War that embroiled Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia in conflict, along with the contingencies and background that led to the fighting and what this event can tell us or not tell us about Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Dr. Toal wrote a book in 2016 entitled "Near Abroad: Putin, The West and th...

In this interview with French political scientist Laure Neumayer, we discuss how a particular form of anti-communist memory politics were mobilized and utilized by "memory entrepreneurs" in Europe following the Cold War. A particular interpretation of the socialist past was put up against  official European memory of the 20th century as the EU enlarged into Eastern Europe. A mixture of anti-c...

In this episode we sit down with anthropologist Erin Koch to have a conversation about the shifts in medical practices, treatments as well as epidemic management from the Soviet period to Post-Soviet period in Georgia through a discussion of her 2013 book Free Market Tuberculosis: Managing Epidemics in Post-Soviet Georgia. The shift to a market economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union radica...

One of the Soviet Union's most well known directors Mikhail Kalatozov was born as Mikhail Kalatoziashvili in Tiflis in 1903. Before releasing his more famous works such as Soy Cuba (1964) and The Cranes Are Flying (1957), or winning an award at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, he along with N utsa Gogoberidze (Soviet Georgia's first female director) co-directed their first film together - a document...

On today's episode we sit down with prolific historian Dr. Gerald Horne to discuss the intimate political relationship in the 20th century between the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of the USA and Black political struggle in the United States. We discuss a number of topics including African American Marxists such as Paul Robeson - who Dr. Horne has written a biography on - as well as the role t...

Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell Orenstein have recently released a new book entitled "Taking Stock of Shock: The Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions" - this week we have both authors on as guests to discuss their new book, their methodological process, how to make sense of the social consequences of socialist collapse and how it relates to Georgia. You can check out their new book's website h...

In this episode we sit down with Tbilisi-based researcher and lecturer Archil Sikharulidze, who specializes in securitization, Georgia-Russia relations and more, to discuss the hurdles that dominant forms of nationalism pose to doing research on critical yet politically sensitive topics in Georgia. His most recent article here on Georgian identity and the West is available here: https://www.common...

On today’s show we welcome Anastasia Shesterinina to discuss her excellent new book Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia which, using hundreds interviews and extensive field research, explains how and why Abkhaz did or did not mobilize to fight in the war with Georgia in the early 1990s, and how to many Abkhaz as the war was beginning  it came as an unexpected...

Our guests for today's episode are author, educator and journalist Vijay Prashad as well as world literature professor and author Ian Almond.  With Vijay Prashad, we discuss the basic idea of one of his recent books Red Star Over the Third World (2019, Pluto Press) - how the 1917 Russian Revolution and then the seventy year existence of the Soviet Union directly inspired Third World Marxism a...

We discuss the book Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of Soviet Empire with the author Erik Scott and much more. In the book, Scott discusses the unique opportunities Soviet Georgians were afforded due to their position within Soviet society as a coherent, institutionalized nationality. Unlike other histories that touch on Georgia, or nationality within the USSR, Scott's...

On today’s episode, we sat down with Georgia based writer and researcher Katie Sartania. In April of this year, Katie wrote an excellent article entitled “Struggle and Sacrifice: Narratives of Georgia’s Modern History” which critically interrogates the role of Georgian nationalism and independence in the post-Soviet period, and how narratives of independence politically overshadow pressing social...

On today’s episode, Sopo Japaridze and Beka Natsvlishvili have an engaging discussion with philosopher Keti Chukhrov. Keti was born in Soviet Georgia in the 1970s and since then has gone on to write articles and books touching subjects such as art criticism, philosophy, political theory and more. Sopo, Beka and Keti discuss the premise of her recent book Practicing the Good: Desire and Boredom in...

During the Russian Civil War, between May 1918 and February 1921, the Democratic Republic of Georgia – known as the First Republic  - was a nominally independent state controlled by social democrats. These Georgian social democrats were Mensheviks. Formally, Menshevism and Bolshevism were two distinct wings of the empire wide Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In the decades leading up to...

Ronald Grigor Suny’s decades long career as a historian transformed historiography of the Soviet Union by centering the nation and nationality. He did this with special attention to the nations of the South Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan and of course, Georgia. Suny’s analysis focused on how nationhood is a constructed product of history, and imagined, not a primordial, essential, ethnic community...

During the late USSR, thousands of people from Soviet Georgia relocated to both Leningrad and the all-Soviet capital, Moscow. Many left Soviet Georgia to study in universities, for job placements or other career opportunities. Some of these people stayed, while others returned. Some went to Leningrad and Moscow as traders of fruits or flowers, using trade networks and access to desirable goods in...

In Episode 1, Part II we interview Beka Natsvlishvili, professor and former MP in Georgia to discuss the use of anti-Soviet memory politics in Georgia and the implications this has on political development and debate in the country. Beka shares his own experiences in both the university setting and as a politician in Georgia to shed light on the real uses and misuses of Georgia's Soviet experience...

Episode 1 - The State of Soviet History in Georgia In this episode we explore how Soviet History and its legacies in Georgia are generally understood and approached today in academia, politics, the NGO sector and society at large. In Part I we interview Timothy Blauvelt - professor of History at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. Teaching in Georgia for almost 19 years he has produced a ra...

Welcome to the first, introductory podcast of Reimagining Soviet Georgia! We are a new, multigenerational, multilingual, Tbilisi based collective. Our goal is to reexamine and rearticulate the history of Soviet Georgia by producing and supporting critical research, including oral and written histories, and a podcast for both Georgian and English speaking audiences. By documenting the perspectives...