CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 140

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA
ditions, propagandizing international ideas by the leaders of a sovereign
state would be at least politically disadvantageous. That is why the regu-
lation of processes was made free. An irony of fate, even for the Menshe-
vik government, the main goal became the independence and the main-
tenance of national unity. 25 Even in this case like the 1801, the forming
process of Georgian nationalism canceled Russia’s invasion.
Military attack with ethnic minorities in 1918-1921, and then soviet-
ization of Georgia, the process of shifting from the ethnical concepts to
the civic stopped. After the loss of independence, actualization of ethnical
sentiments was expected.
The Georgian writer, who became a victim of repressions in 1937, by
his novel Jako’s Lodgers, published in 1924, responds to the events de-
veloped in Georgia in the twentieth century. In the novel Jako’s Lodgers,
the author demonstrated the two sores of the nation – the last off spring of
the feudal aristocracy, the prince Teimuraz Khevistavi outcasted by the
revolutionary Epoch and the Ossetian Jako, full of predator’s energy and
with an evil soul, 26 who stole his own property and even wife. Jako as
a predator was not just a literary character, he represented the common
image of an Ossetian settler with consciousness of a Georgian man. The
novels by Aleksandre Kazbegi are also full of negative messages towards
Ossetians. An Ossetian is represented as a dissembler and liar, a person
who is an antagonist and can take liberties of doing things that are unac-
ceptable for a Georgian person. 27 The same author enlivens the character
of an Ossetian captive and kidnapper seller – Makhameta, in his novel
Elguja. 28
It is interesting that in this period we fi nd the literary compositions
written about the Abkhazians and Abkhazia, where in contrast to the Os-
setians, relatively positive messages are given. On the one hand, it should
have been caused by that policy of the right of motion’s to self-determi-
nation, which had a great scope in the Soviet period and excluded the
ethno-national confrontation and on the other hand, by a long-term his-
torical experience, propelled them peacefully solved inherent problems.
As for the evidently negative attitudes towards Ossetians, it should have
been caused by the especially complex migration processes in the 19th
and 20th centuries.
25
26
27
28
Zurab Targamadze, “Georgian Interpretation of a National Issue,” Georgian Source-Studies
XVII-XVIII, (2015/2016): 238.
MIkheil Javakhishvili,“Jakho’s Lodgers,” Georgian soviet novel., (Tbilisi: Merani, 1985),
9-10.
Aleksandre Kazbegi,“Tsitsia”. Stories and Novels, volumes 2, 2:67-163, (Tbilisi: Sabchota
Sakartvelo, 1962 b), 125,127.
Aleksandre Kazbegi, “Elguja”. Stories and Novels, volumes 1:44-195, (Tbilisi: Sabchota
Sakartvelo, 1962 a), 47.
140