Timothy K. Blauvelt

Endurance of the Soviet imperial tongue: the Russian language in contemporary Georgia

This article will examine the role of the Russian language on the periphery of the post-Soviet space by using multiple sources of data, including original matched-guise experiments, to examine the language situation in contemporary Georgia. This is one of the former Soviet republics in which the use of the titular language was most intensively institutionalized and that most ardently resisted Russification, and one that today for various reasons is most eager to escape the legacy of its Soviet past and to embed itself in the global community. In Georgia the cultural and political influence of the former imperial centre has been greatly reduced, and Russian has been challenged in functional roles by the new international lingua franca of English. The direction that the Russian language takes in a place like Georgia may be a useful bellwether for such transformations elsewhere in the post-Soviet periphery.

Status Shift and Ethnic Mobilisation in the March 1956 Events in Georgia

Abstract The large-scale demonstrations that took place in Georgia in early March 1956 following Khrushchevs criticism of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress were the first significant expressions of public protest and civil disobedience in the Soviet Union for decades, and they also bore a clearly nationalistic character. Based primarily on materials from the Georgian KGB and Party archives and interviews with former Party officials and participants of the events, this article examines potential interpretations of these events derived from elite incorporation and ethnic mobilisation theories.

Abkhazia: Patronage and Power in the Stalin Era

Abkhazia during the Stalin era was at the same time a subtropical haven where the great leader and his lieutenants built grand dachas and took extended holidays away from Moscow, and also a key piece in the continuing chess match of Soviet politics. This paper will examine how and why this small, sunny autonomous republic on the Black Sea, and the political networks that developed there, played a prominent role in the politics of the south Caucasus region and in Soviet politics as a whole during the Stalin period.

Language Hierarchies in Georgia: An Experimental Approach

ABSTRACT How do Georgian citizens of different nationalities evaluate people when they speak in different languages? This article presents the results of three sets of “matched-guise” experiments, a method long used by sociolinguists to evaluate attitudes to different language varieties and their speakers. The results are revealing of the language hierarchies that prevail in Tbilisi and in the southern border regions of Samtskhe-Javakheti and Kvemo Kartli (where Georgias Armenian and Azerbaijani populations are concentrated). Our results suggest that social rewards for linguistic assimilation from one national group to another are very low in both rural and urban parts of Georgia. These findings show that with linguistic assimilation unrewarded, contemporary language hierarchies leave room for Russian to be sustained as a bridge language between communities. The results also show that native speakers of English are afforded higher social status than native speakers of Russian in Tbilisi.

Attitudes Toward Tbilisi- and Mingrelian-Accented Georgian Among Georgian Youth: On the Road to Linguistic Homogenization?

Two matched-guise studies examined language attitudes among Georgian youth toward two varieties of spoken Georgian: Tbilisi-accented Georgian (standard variety) and Mingrelian-accented Georgian (nonstandard variety). Study 1, conducted in Tbilisi, found that listeners (N = 106) attributed more status and solidarity to the standard variety, regardless of self-reported regional identity (Tbilisieli, Mingrelian, other). Study 2, conducted in Samegrelo, found that self-identified Mingrelians (N = 96) attributed more status and solidarity to the standard variety, regardless of language use at home. Together, these findings suggest that Mingrelians may be undergoing a generational shift in their language attitudes in favor of linguistic homogenization.

Figuring Out Who’s Who: The Role of Social Categorization in the Language Attitudes Process:

This study examined the role of social categorization in the language attitudes process. Participants (N = 1,915) from three ethnolinguistic groups residing in the republic of Georgia—Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis—listened to a speaker reading a text in a Tbilisi-accented (standard variety) and a Mingrelian-accented (nonstandard variety) Georgian guise. We predicted that the three groups would vary in their ability to correctly categorize the two guises and that this intergroup variation in categorization accuracy would result in intergroup variation in language attitudes. These hypotheses were supported. Georgians were more accurate than Armenians and Azerbaijanis in their categorization of both guises. The Tbilisi-accented (Mingrelian-accented) guise was evaluated more (less) favorably when categorized correctly than when miscategorized. This resulted in intergroup variation in language attitudes: Overall, Georgians evaluated the Tbilisi-accented (Mingrelian-accented) guise more (less) favorably than Armenians and Azerbaijanis, due in part to Georgians’ higher categorization accuracy of both guises.

The ‘Mingrelian Question’: Institutional Resources and the Limits of Soviet Nationality Policy

Based on primary source materials from the Georgian Party archive and periodical press, this article examines the conflict between central and local elites in the Soviet Republic of Georgia over whether or not to grant linguistic and territorial rights to residents of one of its regions. The case demonstrates how the promises and aspirations of Soviet nationality policy were actually negotiated and interpreted on the local level in the early years of Soviet power, and how actors attempted to make use of nationality policy in order to mobilise the institutional resources available to them.

Pedagogy, modernity and nationalism in the Caucasus in the age of reaction, 1880–1905

ABSTRACT The head of the Caucasus Educational District (CED), K.P. Yanovskiy, epitomized the liberal minded reformers in the Russian Empire who saw the reform of pedagogy – introducing modern sciences, languages, critical thinking and emphasis on the individual – as a means to bring modernity and civilization while respecting ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. The CED became a sort of refuge for liberal reformers among educational administrators, beyond the grasp of conservative elements in St. Petersburg. Yet under their administration, language education policies for local nationalities in the Caucasus shifted from encouraging local languages to demanding instruction in Russian, and Yanovskiy and his colleagues in the CED came to be viewed in the narratives of nationalists as instruments of russification and assimilation. Using archival sources and other contemporary materials, this article examines the intersection of reform and nationalism in the question of language pedagogy in schools in the Caucasus at a time of state-directed centralization in the Russian Empire and seeks to understand the often complex motives behind the changes in policy and their unintended consequences.

The Muslim uprising in Ajara and the Stalinist revolution in the periphery

In 1929, local officials in the mountainous region of upper Ajara in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) pursued aggressive policies to force women to remove their veils and to close religious schools, provoking the Muslim peasant population to rebellion in one of the largest and most violent of such incidents in Soviet history. The central authorities in Moscow authorized the use of Red Army troops to suppress the uprising, but they also reversed the local initiatives and offered the peasants concessions. Based on Party and secret police files from the Georgian archives in Tbilisi and Batumi, this article will explore the ways in which local cadres interpreted regime policies in this Muslim region of Georgia, and the interaction of the center and periphery in dealing with national identity, Islam, gender, and everyday life in the early Soviet period.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SOVIET POWER IN ABKHAZIA: ETHNICITY, CONTESTATION AND CLIENTELISM IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIPHERY

This article investigates the intersection of Soviet nationality policy, ethno-federal territorialism, clientelism and the creation of new administrative institutions in the course of the establishment of Soviet power in Abkhazia, an ethnically diverse territory in the periphery of the former tsarist empire. Based on materials from the Georgian archives, as well as from the personal collections of Efrem Eshba and Nestor Lakoba, this article demonstrates the ways in which nationality policy played out at the local level and how the ‘indigenisation’ of local titular elites intersected with contestations over power and the distribution of resources inherent to the construction of the new institutions of Soviet rule.