CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 141

ZURAB TARGAMADZE
Confl icts and nationalism: pre, soviet and post soviet period
Georgian nationalism is characterized by a lot of stigmas, understand-
ing of which is impossible without realizing it. But the question is – Is it
possible to answer the questions, contents of which are not dictated by
the needs of a modern life, by reconstruction of the past? Probably no! At
least, possible multitude answers often off er us completely new explana-
tions, which are adjusted to the present tense, instead of describing past
stories objectively. Especially, when the truth we are striving to gain is at
odds with dormant ideas of our own imagination. Those imaginations are
becoming real in parallel with this or that threat having a national charac-
ter. After passing, it is lost back into a deep memory. The dialogue in the
form of questions and answers, is determined by the content of the ques-
tions. For this reason, needed answers are impossible to fi nd neither by
historians and politicians nor by ordinary people. 29
Although the 18th century is the period when the historically formed
conceptions became bricks for developing of nationalism, the visions of
modern Georgian regarding: others, gender, age, traditions, ancestry,
past, mourning, happiness, birth, death, the West, the East are totally con-
nected with a Soviet narrative and what they have in common with the
same categories, historically shaped in Georgian’s outlook, is only the
fact that they are distorted copies of true ideas. Thus, this is a society with
a bifurcated consciousness in the imagination of which there are actually
confi rmed memory-defi ned icons and symbols formed on Georgian his-
torical grounds on the one hand and on the other hand, those symbols are
parts of a Soviet history as well and accordingly, they dwell in Georgians
consciousness as Soviet icons too. Twenty-fi ve years of independence
was not enough to overcome this resistance.
Reproduction of the nationalism ideas in Soviet Georgia, despite the
fact, that the central government had announced the nationalism as a
chauvinistic and a reactionary, did not stop. Reasons for that, with other
factors as well, was strongly defi ned cultural identity of Georgian unity.
During the Soviet times national ideas were transformed and unlike the
concept, developed by Ilia Chavchavadze, which referred to ethnic and
cultural movements, but eventually was directed towards the formation of
a general social consensus: 30 feeling of the ethnic and cultural preferences
has become central and uncontested.
29
30
Georgian society, is still not released from Soviet mentality, has blurred visions about its own
culture and history, which is becoming even more blurred by public eff orts of collective re-
fl ection.
Ckhartishvili, Mania, Coverage of the Process, 104.
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