CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 142

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA
In exchange to the party functionaries commitment to the Soviet pol-
icy, denationalization and plenty of practical examples of a particular
progress in this regard, Georgians received a myth about their own elit-
ism. Popularization of this myth especially helped unnatural mixing of
the civil self-consciousness, which itself was due to the development of
the Media opportunities at this period, with ethno-cultural conceptions. In
reality, at the expense of those compromises, were carried out dismantle
and falsifi cation of Georgian national ideas. 31
It should be noted that this process accidentally was helped by the
Georgian historians. Despite the fact, that the majority of factual and
chronological discussions regarding various issues of Georgian history in
the Soviet Georgian historiography refl ect historical reality, the context,
where those ideas dominated and articulated, created and still creates arti-
fi cial barriers for understanding historically established ideas of Georgian
nationalism. In turn, neither Ossetian nor Abkhazian historians were dis-
tinguished with their balanced position.
The way, which stimulated Georgian ethnic nationalism in the Soviet
period, as we have already mentioned, passed through belief of its cul-
tural elitism and uniqueness. On the one hand, this fact comforted a hu-
man soul, who had lost independence and on the other hand, it played on
its pride. 32 Soviet narrative reached the compatibility of multicultural and
multiethnic environment with the principles of elitism, through margin-
alization of a national tradition of Georgian tolerance, hospitability and
respect for foreigners. That is why Georgians stunned by the progress of
processes today, cannot clarify its essence and absolutely sincerely cannot
understand the reason of the ‘ingratitude’ Abkhazian and Ossetian people
show in exchange for the favor they expressed over the centuries.
The fundamentals of the belief of Georgian ethnic group, as a sort of su-
per-ethnie, shall be searched in a deep historical past, still in the 10th centu-
ry. When term Georgia serves as a sort of social-cultural purpose together
with its ethnic and political meanings. 33 However, during the Soviet era, at-
tachment and faith with these ideas became much stronger and what is the
most important, they were transformed into a new idea of the Soviet home-
land and were perceived on an organic level. So much so, that the trauma
caused by Russia’s starting the invasion of Georgia in 1801 and collapse of
Soviet Union in 1991, turned to be equally destructive for Georgians.
In 1990s the breakage of Soviet Union, the ideas of nationalism start-
ed to grow up in parallel to the national movement and gaining the inde-
31
32
33
Targamadze, “Georgian Interpretation of a National Issue,” 232.
Ibid., 232, 237.
George Anchabadze, “Principal Stages of Ethnical Development of the Georgian Nation
from Ancient Times to the Phase of National Formation,” Identity Studies #1, (2009): 60.
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