Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T17:20:46.943Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Collective memory and reputational politics of national heroes and villains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Alexi Gugushvili Open the ORCID record for Alexi Gugushvili [Opens in a new window] ,
Peter Kabachnik  and
Ana Kirvalidze
Alexi Gugushvili*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy and Intervention and Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Peter Kabachnik
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and Global Affairs, College of Staten Island, The City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA Graduate Faculty, Earth and Environmental Sciences Program, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA
Ana Kirvalidze
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
*
∗Corresponding author. Email: alexi.gugushvili@spi.ox.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Keywords

heroesvillainsGeorgianational identitymemory
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , May 2017 , pp. 464 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alam, Asad. 2012. Fighting Corruption in Public Services: Chronicling Georgia's Reforms. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/GEORGIAEXTN/Resources/9780821394755.pdf.Google Scholar
Alderman, Derek H. 2002. “Street Names as Memorial Arenas: The Reputational Politics of Commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. in a Georgia County.” Historical Geography 30: 99–120.Google Scholar
Alderman, Derek H. 2003. “Street Names and the Scaling of Memory: The Politics of Commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. Within the African American Community.” Area 35 (2): 163–173.Google Scholar
Allison, Lincoln, Kukhianidze, Alexander, Matsaberidze, Malkhaz, and Dolidze, Valeri. 1996. “Problems of Democratization in the Republic of Georgia.” Democratization 3 (4): 517–529.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua D., and Pischke, Jörn-Steffen. 2009. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Assmann, Jan. 1995. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique 65: 125–133.Google Scholar
Bahry, Donna. 1993. “Society Transformed? Rethinking the Social Roots of Perestroika.” Slavic Review 52 (3): 512–524.Google Scholar
Bakradze, Lasha. 2013. “Georgia and Stalin: Still Living with the Great Son of the Nation.” In The Stalin Puzzle: Deciphering Post-Soviet Public Opinion, edited by de Waal, Thomas, 47–54. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Google Scholar
Batiashvili, Nutsa. 2011. “The ‘Myth’ of the Self: The Georgian National Narrative and Quest for ‘Georgianness'.” In Memory and Political Change, edited by Assman, Aleida and Shortt, Linda, 186–200. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Beissinger, Mark R. 2002. Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blauvelt, Timothy K. 2009. “Status Shift and Ethnic Mobilisation in the March 1956 Events in Georgia.” Europe-Asia Studies 61 (4): 651–668.Google Scholar
Bodnar, John. 1992. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brisku, Adrian. 2016. “Renegotiating the Empire, Forging the Nation-State: The Georgian Case Through the Political Economic Thought of Niko Nikoladze and Noe Zhordania, C. 1870–1920.” Nationalities Papers 44 (2): 299–318.Google Scholar
Broers, Laurence. 2008. “Filling the Void: Ethnic Politics and Nationalities Policy in Post-Conflict Georgia.” Nationalities Papers 36 (2): 275–304.Google Scholar
Broers, Laurence. 2012. “Two Sons of One Mother': Nested Identities and Centre-Periphery Politics in Post-Soviet Georgia.” In When the Elephant Broke Out of the Zoo: A Festschrift for Donald Rayfield, edited by Schonle, Andreas, 234–267. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 1998. “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism.” In National Self-determination and Secession, edited by Moore, Margaret, 233–265. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cheterian, Vicken. 2008. “Georgia's Rose Revolution: Change or Repetition? Tension Between State-building and Modernization Projects.” Nationalities Papers 36 (4): 689–712.Google Scholar
Chubinishvili, Ketevan. 2009. Cultural Trauma, Memory and Post Soviet Georgia. Brno: Masaryk University.Google Scholar
Georgia, Civil. 2003. “New Deputy State Ministers Appointed.” Civil Georgia: Daily News Online, December 9. http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=5778.Google Scholar
Civil Georgia. 2004. “Late President's Ally Released.” Civil Georgia: Daily News Online, May 10. http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=6908.Google Scholar
Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Corning, Amy, Gaidys, Vladas, and Schuman, Howard. 2013. “Transformative Events and Generational Memory: A Case Study Over Time in Lithuania.” Sociological Forum 28 (2): 373–394.Google Scholar
CRRC. 2013. Caucasus Barometer Time-series Dataset Georgia. Tbilisi. http://caucasusbarometer.org/en/cb-ge/codebook/.Google Scholar
English, Robert. 2008. “Georgia: The Ignored History.” The New York Review of Books 55 (17). http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/ll/06/georgia-the-ignored-history/.Google Scholar
Fairbanks, Charles H. 2014. “Georgian Democracy: Seizing or Losing the Chance?” Journal of Democracy 25 (1): 154–165.Google Scholar
Fairbanks, Charles H., and Gugushvili, Alexi. 2013. “A New Chance for Georgian Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 24 (1): 116–127.Google Scholar
Fine, Gary Alan. 1996. “Reputational Entrepreneurs and the Memory of Incompetence: Melting Supporters, Partisan Warriors, and Images of President Harding.” American Journal of Sociology 101 (5): 1159–1193.Google Scholar
Geer, John G. 1991. “Do Open-ended Questions Measure ‘Salient’ Issues?” The Public Opinion Quarterly 55 (3): 360–370.Google Scholar
Gotfredsen, Katrine Bendtsen. 2014. “Void Pasts and Marginal Presents: On Nostalgia and Obsolete Futures in the Republic of Georgia.” Slavic Review 73 (2): 246–264.Google Scholar
Grdzelidze, Tamara. 2010. “The Orthodox Church of Georgia: Challenges under Democracy and Freedom (1990–2009).” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 10 (2–3): 160–175.Google Scholar
Gugushvili, Alexi. 2011. “Understanding Poverty in Georgia.” Caucasus Analytical Digest 34: 15–18.Google Scholar
Gugushvili, Alexi. 2012. Material Deprivation and the District Level Outcomes of the 2012 Parliamentary Elections in Georgia. Tbilisi: Center for Social Sciences, Applied Social Research Programme.Google Scholar
Gugushvili, Alexi. 2015. “Self-interest, Perceptions of Transition and Welfare Preferences in the New Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus.” Europe-Asia Studies 67 (5): 718–746.Google Scholar
Gugushvili, Alexi. 2016. “‘Money Can't Buy Me Land': Foreign Land Ownership Regime and Public Opinion in a Transition Society.” Land Use Policy 55: 142–153.Google Scholar
Gugushvili, Alexi, Babunashvili, Giorgi, Kabachnik, Peter, Kirvalidze, Ana, and Rcheulishvili, Nino. 2015. Collective Memory, National Identity, and Contemporary Georgian Perspectives on Stalin and the Soviet Past. Tbilisi: Academic Swiss Caucasus Net (ASCN). http://www.stalintoday.com.Google Scholar
Gugushvili, Alexi, and Kabachnik, Peter. 2015. “Stalin Is Dead, Long Live Stalin? Testing Socialization, Structural, Ideological, Nationalist, and Gender Hypotheses.” Post-Soviet Affairs 31 (1): 1–36.Google Scholar
Gugushvili, Alexi, Kabachnik, Peter, and Gilbreath, Aaron H. 2016. “Cartographies of Stalin: Place, Scale, and Reputational Politics.” The Professional Geographer 68 (3): 356–367.Google Scholar
Hanke, Katja, Liu, James H., Sibley, Chris G., Paez, Dario, Gaines, Stanley O., Moloney, Gail, Leong, Chan-Hoong, et al. 2015. “‘Heroes’ and ‘Villains’ of World History across Cultures.” PloS One 10 (2): e0115641.Google Scholar
Hjerm, Mikael. 1998. “National Identities, National Pride and Xenophobia: A Comparison of Four Western Countries.” Acta Sociologica 41 (4): 335–347.Google Scholar
Hjerm, Mikael. 2003. “National Sentiments in Eastern and Western Europe.” Nationalities Papers 31 (4): 413–429.Google Scholar
Jones, Stephen F. 1994. “Old Ghosts and New Chains: Ethnicity and Memory in the Georgian Republic.” In Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism, edited by Watson, Rubie S., 149–165. Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Stephen F. 1997. “Georgia: The Trauma of Statehood.” In New States, New Politics: Building the Post-soviet Nations, edited by Bremmer, Ian and Taras, Ray, 505–543. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Stephen F. 2006. “Georgia: Nationalism from under the Rubble.” In After Independence, edited by Barrington, Lowell W., 248–276. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Jones, F. L., and Smith, Philip. 2001. “Individual and Societal Bases of National Identity. A Comparative Multi-level Analysis.” European Sociological Review 17 (2): 103–118.Google Scholar
Kabachnik, Peter. 2012. “Wounds That Won't Heal: Cartographic Anxieties and the Quest for Territorial Integrity in Georgia.” Central Asian Survey 31 (1): 45–60.Google Scholar
Kabachnik, Peter, and Gugushvili, Alexi. 2015. “Unconditional Love? Exploring Hometown Effect in Stalin's Birthplace.” Caucasus Survey 3 (2): 101–123.Google Scholar
Kabachnik, Peter, Gugushvili, Alexi, and Jishkariani, David. 2015. “A Personality Cult's Rise and Fall: Three Cities after Khrushchev's ‘Secret Speech’ and the Stalin Monument That Never Was.” Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia 4 (2): 309–326.Google Scholar
Kabachnik, Peter, Kirvalidze, Ana, and Gugushvili, Alexi. 2016. Stalin Today: Contending with the Soviet Past in Georgia. Tbilisi: Ilia State University.Google Scholar
Kastellec, Jonathan P., and Leoni, Eduardo L. 2007. “Using Graphs Instead of Tables in Political Science.” Perspectives on Politics 5 (4): 755–771.Google Scholar
Katchanovski, Ivan. 2010. “The Politics of Soviet and Nazi Genocides in Orange Ukraine.” Europe-Asia Studies 62 (6): 973–997.Google Scholar
Katchanovski, Ivan. 2015. “Terrorists or National Heroes? Politics and Perceptions of the OUN and the UPA in Ukraine.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 48 (2–3): 217–228.Google Scholar
Khatchadouri, Lori. 2008. “Making Nations from the Ground Up: Traditions in the South Caucasus Classical Archaeology.” American Journal of Archaeology 112 (2): 247–278.Google Scholar
Khinchagashvili, Shota. 2008. Post-Soviet Georgian Nationalism in the Context of Social Memory and Collective Trauma Theories. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Kinzer, Stephen. 1998. “Saguramo Journal; On the Tallest Pedestal, a Man for All Georgians.” The New York Times, May 7. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/07/world/saguramo-journal-on-the-tallest-pedestal-a-man-for-all-georgians.html.Google Scholar
Kitaevich, Evgenia Jane. 2014. “History That Splinters: Education Reforms and Memory Politics in the Republic of Georgia.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 14 (2): 319–338.Google Scholar
Kunovich, Robert M. 2009. “The Sources and Consequences of National Identification.” American Sociological Review 74 (4): 573–593.Google Scholar
Lapidus, Gail W. 2002. “Ethnicity and State-building: Accommodating Ethnic Differences in Post-Soviet Eurasia.” In Beyond State Crisis? Postcolonial Africa in Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective, edited by Beissinger, Mark R. and Young, Crawford, 323–358. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.Google Scholar
Leib, Jonathan I. 2002. “Separate Times, Shared Spaces: Arthur Ashe, Monument Avenue and the Politics of Richmond, Virginia's Symbolic Landscape.” Cultural Geographies 9: 286–312.Google Scholar
Leib, Jonathan I. 2004. “Robert E. Lee, ‘Race,’ Representation and Redevelopment along Richmond, Virginia's Canal Walk.” Southeastern Geographer 44: 236–262.Google Scholar
Liebich, Andre, and Myshlovska, Oksana. 2014. “Bandera: Memorialization and Commemoration.” Nationalities Papers 42 (5): 750–770.Google Scholar
MacFarlane, Tim. 2015. “An Albino Rapper Son, a £30 m ‘Bond Villain Mansion’ and a Menagerie of Sharks, Zebras and Penguins: Inside the Weird World of the Factory Cleaner Turned Billionaire ‘Georgian Scaramanga'.” Daily Mail, June 15. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3131175/Georgian-Scaramanga-Bidzina-Ivanishvili-albino-rapper-son-love-zebras-30million-Bond-villain-mansion-Tiblisi.html.Google Scholar
Marples, David R. 2006. “Stepan Bandera: The Resurrection of a Ukrainian National Hero.” Europe-Asia Studies 58 (4): 555–566.Google Scholar
Marples, David R. 2010. “Anti-Soviet Partisans and Ukrainian Memory.” East European Politics & Societies 24 (1): 26–43.Google Scholar
Mars, Gerald, and Altman, Yochanan. 1983. “The Cultural Bases of Soviet Georgia's Second Economy.” Soviet Studies 35 (4): 546–560.Google Scholar
Megoran, Nick. 2007. “On Researching ‘Ethnic Conflict': Epistemology, Politics, and a Central Asian Boundary Dispute.” Europe-Asia Studies 59 (2): 253–277.Google Scholar
Mendelson, Sarah E., and Gerber, Theodore P. 2006. “Failing the Stalin Test: Russians and Their Dictator.” Foreign Affairs 85 (1): 2–8.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Lincoln A. 2009. “Compromising Democracy: State Building in Saakashvili's Georgia.” Central Asian Survey 28 (2): 171–183.Google Scholar
Navarri, Luis, and Woodward, Ian T. 2011. Public Opinion in Georgia. Tbilisi: National Democratic Institute.Google Scholar
Navarro, Luis, and Woodward, Ian T. 2012. Public Attitudes in Georgia: Results of a June 2012 Survey Carried out for NDI by CRRC. Tbilisi: NDI Georgia.Google Scholar
Nodia, Ghia. 1996. “Political Turmoil in Georgia and the Ethnic Policies of Zviad Gamsakhurdia.” In Contested Borders in the Caucasus, edited by Coppieters, Bruno, 73–89. Brussels: Vub Press.Google Scholar
Nodia, Ghia. 1998. “The Conflict in Abkhazia: National Projects and Political Circumstances.” In Georgians and Abkhazians: The Search for a Peace Settlement, edited by Coppieters, Bruno, Nodia, Ghia, and Anchabadze, Yuri, 15–44. Köln: Sonderveröffentlichung/BIOst Okt.Google Scholar
Nodia, Ghia. 2005. “Georgia: Dimensions of Insecurity.” In Statehood and Security: Georgia After the Rose Revolution, edited by Coppieters, B. and Legvold, R., 39–82. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nodia, Ghia. 2009. “Components of the Georgian National Idea: An Outline.” Identity Studies 1 (1): 84–101.Google Scholar
Nodia, Ghia. 2012. “The August 2008 War: Main Consequences for Georgia and Its Conflicts.” Nationalities Papers 40 (5): 721–738.Google Scholar
Nodia, Ghia. 2014. “The Values of the Georgian Supra: Nationalist or Nativist?” Ab Imperio 2014: 69–74.Google Scholar
Ó Beacháin, Donnacha, and Coene, Frederik. 2014. “Go West: Georgia's European Identity and Its Role in Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy Objectives.” Nationalities Papers 42 (6): 923–941.Google Scholar
O'Loughlin, John, Toal, Gerard, and Kolossov, Vladimir. 2008. “The Localized Geopolitics of Displacement and Return in Eastern Prigorodnyy Rayon, North Ossetia.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 49 (6): 635–669.Google Scholar
Parsons, J. W. R. 1982. “National Integration in Soviet Georgia.” Soviet Studies 34 (4): 547–569.Google Scholar
Post, Chris. 2009. “Reputational Politics and the Symbolic Accretion of John Brown in Kansas.” Historical Geography 37: 92–113.Google Scholar
Ratiani, Sergo. 2009. “The Modern Age and the Birth of Nation.” Identity Studies in the Caucasus and the Black Sea Region 1 (1): 22–35.Google Scholar
Reddaway, Peter. 1975. ‘The Georgian Orthodox Church: Corruption and Renewal.” Religion in Communist Lands 3 (4–5): 14–23.Google Scholar
Roediger, H. L., and Wertsch, J. V. 2008. “Creating a New Discipline of Memory Studies” Memory Studies 1 (1): 9–22.Google Scholar
Schueth, Samuel. 2012. “Apparatus of Capture: Fiscal State Formation in the Republic of Georeia” Political Geography 31 (3): 133–143.Google Scholar
Serrano, Silvia. 2014. “The Georgian Church.” Russian Politics and Law 52 (4): 74–92.Google Scholar
Shatirishvili, Zaza. 2009. “National Narratives and New Politics of Memory in Georgia.” Small Wars & Insurgencies 20 (2): 391–399.Google Scholar
Slade, Gavin. 2012. “No Country for Made Men: The Decline of the Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia.” Law & Society Review 46 (3): 623–649.Google Scholar
Slider, Darrell. 1991. “The Politics of Georgia's Independence.” Problems of Communism 40 (6): 63–79.Google Scholar
Sumbadze, Nana. 2009. “Saakashvili in the Public Eye: What Public Opinion Polls Tell Us.” Central Asian Survey 28 (2): 185–197.Google Scholar
Suny, Ronald Grigor. 1993. The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Suny, Ronald Grigor. 2006. “Nationalism, Nation Making, & the Postcolonial State of Asia, Africa, & Eurasia.” In After Independence, edited by Barrington, Lowell W., 279–295. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Tevzadze, Gigi. 2009. “The Birth of the Georgian Nation. Identity and Ideology. Political and Societal Identities. Nationality and Religiosity.” Identity Studies in the Caucasus and the Black Sea Region 1 (1): 5–21.Google Scholar
Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
de Waal, Thomas, ed. 2013. The Stalin Puzzle: Deciphering Post-Soviet Public Opinion. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Google Scholar
Wertsch, James V. 2002. Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zedania, Giga. 2011. “Societal Values in Georgia: Twenty Years Later.” In 20 Years After the Collapse of Communism: Expectations, Achievements and Disillusions of 1989, edited by Hayoz, Nicolas, Jesien, Leszek, and Koleva, Daniela, 253–272. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Zedania, Giga. 2012. “The Rise of Religious Nationalism in Georgia.” Identity Studies 3: 120–128. http://www.identitystudies.ac.ge/index.php/IStudies/article/view/38.Google Scholar
Zinam, Oleg. 1974. “Georgians in Tsarist Russia and in the USSR.” Nationalities Papers 2 (2): 39–60.Google Scholar