Reimagining Soviet Georgia

Latest Episodes:

Episode 14: Managing Epidemics in Post-Soviet Georgia with Erin Koch Jan 26, 2022

Show notes

In this episode we sit down with anthropologist Erin Koch to have a conversation about the shifts in medical practices, treatments as well as epidemic management from the Soviet period to Post-Soviet period in Georgia through a discussion of her 2013 book Free Market Tuberculosis: Managing Epidemics in Post-Soviet Georgia. The shift to a market economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union radically transformed health care and epidemic management in Georgia resulting in drastic consequences for patient care and public health.
Here's a description of Erin Koch's book Free Market Tuberculosis: Managing Epidemics in Post-Soviet Georgia:
"The Soviet health care infrastructure and its tuberculosis-control system were anchored in biomedicine, but the dire resurgence of tuberculosis at the end of the twentieth century changed how experts in post-Soviet nations--and globally--would treat the disease. As Free Market Tuberculosis dramatically demonstrates, market reforms and standardized treatment programs have both influenced and undermined the management of tuberculosis care in the now-independent country of Georgia. The alarming rate of tuberculosis infection in this nation at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Asia cannot be disputed, and yet solutions to attacking the disease are very much debated.
Anthropologist Erin Koch explores the intersection of the nation's extensive medical history, the effects of Soviet control, and the highly standardized yet poorly regulated treatments promoted by the World Health Organization. Although statistics and reports tell one story--a tale of success in Georgia--Koch's ethnographic approach reveals all facets of this cautionary tale of a monolithic approach to medicine."

Episode 13: Women & Film in Early Soviet Georgia with Salome Tsopurashvili Dec 30, 2021

Show notes

One of the Soviet Union's most well known directors Mikhail Kalatozov was born as Mikhail Kalatoziashvili in Tiflis in 1903. Before releasing his more famous works such as Soy Cuba (1964) and The Cranes Are Flying (1957), or winning an award at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, he along with Nutsa Gogoberidze (Soviet Georgia's first female director) co-directed their first film together - a documentary called Their Kingdom (1928). For decades Their Kingdom was lost in Moscow archives and was only recently rediscovered. The film is an early Soviet critique of the Menshevik controlled Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-21) (also known as the First Republic). The portion of the film that was recently restored was recently shown at a film festival in Tbilisi showcasing early Soviet Georgian films and we were lucky enough to watch it.
This episode begins with Sopo Japaridze reflecting on the film Their Kingdom and is followed by an interview with scholar Salome Tsopurashvili. Salome is currently a professor at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, and author of an upcoming book that explores women and film in 1920s Soviet Georgia.

Episode 12: Black Communists and the Soviet Union with Gerald Horne Nov 23, 2021

Show notes

On today's episode we sit down with prolific historian Dr. Gerald Horne to discuss the intimate political relationship in the 20th century between the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of the USA and Black political struggle in the United States. We discuss a number of topics including African American Marxists such as Paul Robeson - who Dr. Horne has written a biography on - as well as the role the Soviet Union's political support of Civil Rights in the United States had in strengthening the movement for black civil rights.
Dr. Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.

Episode 11: The Social Consequences of the end of Socialism with Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell Orenstein Nov 04, 2021

Show notes

Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell Orenstein have recently released a new book entitled "Taking Stock of Shock: The Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions" - this week we have both authors on as guests to discuss their new book, their methodological process, how to make sense of the social consequences of socialist collapse and how it relates to Georgia.
You can check out their new book's website here;
https://www.takingstockofshock.com/
And here's the book's description:
"After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, more than 400 million people suddenly found themselves in a new reality, a dramatic transition from state socialist and centrally planned workers' states to liberal democracy (in most cases) and free markets. Thirty years later, postsocialist citizens remain sharply divided on the legacies of transition. Was it a success that produced great progress after a short recession, or a socio-economic catastrophe foisted on the East by Western capitalists? Taking Stock of Shock aims to uncover the truth using a unique, interdisciplinary investigation into the social consequences of transition—including the rise of authoritarian populism and xenophobia. Showing that economic, demographic, sociological, political scientific, and ethnographic research produce contradictory results based on different disciplinary methods and data, Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell A. Orenstein triangulate the results. They find that both the J-curve model, which anticipates sustained growth after a sharp downturn, and the "disaster capitalism" perspective, which posits that neoliberalism led to devastating outcomes, have significant basis in fact. While substantial percentages of the populations across a variety of postsocialist countries enjoyed remarkable success, prosperity, and progress, many others suffered an unprecedented socio-economic catastrophe. Ghodsee and Orenstein conclude that the promise of transition still remains elusive for many and offer policy ideas for overcoming negative social and political consequences."

Episode 10: Navigating Nationalism, Russia and Research in Georgia with Archil Sikharulidze Oct 26, 2021

Show notes

In this episode we sit down with Tbilisi-based researcher and lecturer Archil Sikharulidze, who specializes in securitization, Georgia-Russia relations and more, to discuss the hurdles that dominant forms of nationalism pose to doing research on critical yet politically sensitive topics in Georgia.

His most recent article here on Georgian identity and the West is available here:
https://www.commonspace.eu/opinion/opinion-alternative-view-georgias-european-identity-and-past-history

Episode 9: Abkhaz Mobilization in the Georgian-Abkhaz War with Anastasia Shesterinina Oct 06, 2021

Show notes

On today’s show we welcome Anastasia Shesterinina to discuss her excellent new book Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia which, using hundreds interviews and extensive field research, explains how and why Abkhaz did or did not mobilize to fight in the war with Georgia in the early 1990s, and how to many Abkhaz as the war was beginning it came as an unexpected surprise leading to the uncertain and uneven mobilization of a collective identity both immediately preceding and during the 1992-1993 war with Georgia.

Episode 8: Soviet Internationalism, Third World Marxism and World Literature with Vijay Prashad & Ian Almond Sep 28, 2021

Show notes

Our guests for today's episode are author, educator and journalist Vijay Prashad as well as world literature professor and author Ian Almond.

With Vijay Prashad, we discuss the basic idea of one of his recent books Red Star Over the Third World (2019, Pluto Press) - how the 1917 Russian Revolution and then the seventy year existence of the Soviet Union directly inspired Third World Marxism and anti-colonial struggles during the 20th century, as well as what this century of Soviet internationalism and the collapse of the socialist world mean today.

With Ian Almond we explore how 20th century Soviet internationalism and it's anti-communist opposite both influenced and manifested themselves in the global literary imagination and more.

Episode 7: The Soviet World of Soviet Georgians with Erik Scott Aug 24, 2021

Show notes

We discuss the book Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of Soviet Empire with the author Erik Scott and much more.
In the book, Scott discusses the unique opportunities Soviet Georgians were afforded due to their position within Soviet society as a coherent, institutionalized nationality. Unlike other histories that touch on Georgia, or nationality within the USSR, Scott's book tries and complicates the narrative by focusing on Soviet Georgians as a diaspora within the Soviet Union and participated in a dynamic of domestic internationalism - a multinational cultural-political connectedness within the USSR. In particular, Scott focuses on how Georgians in Moscow were able to benefit from and excel within the Soviet system because of their Georgianness. He also problematizes the idea of nationhood as a purely territorial concept, especially within how Soviet society was built and constructed. In the case of Georgians, their active participation as Georgians was a critical dimension of the Soviet project, not only in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic but in the all-Soviet capital Moscow, and beyond.

Episode 6: National Narratives and Implications of Independence with Katie Sartania Aug 02, 2021

Show notes

On today’s episode, we sat down with Georgia based writer and researcher Katie Sartania. In April of this year, Katie wrote an excellent article entitled “Struggle and Sacrifice: Narratives of Georgia’s Modern History” which critically interrogates the role of Georgian nationalism and independence in the post-Soviet period, and how narratives of independence politically overshadow pressing social concerns in the country. We discuss not only her article and the legacies of Georgian nationalism, but also what it means to do historical research in Georgia today and the ways that the pressures of nationalism can come into conflict with critical historical inquiry.

You can read the above mentioned article here:

https://carnegieeurope.eu/2021/04/27/struggle-and-sacrifice-narratives-of-georgia-s-modern-history-pub-84391

Episode 5: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism with Keti Chukhrov Jul 02, 2021

Show notes

On today’s episode, Sopo Japaridze and Beka Natsvlishvili have an engaging discussion with philosopher Keti Chukhrov. Keti was born in Soviet Georgia in the 1970s and since then has gone on to write articles and books touching subjects such as art criticism, philosophy, political theory and more.

Sopo, Beka and Keti discuss the premise of her recent book Practicing the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism. Keti’s book is a much needed intervention into anti-capitalist discourse. Her thorough knowledge of both Soviet philosophy and Marxists from the West allow her to grapple directly with the philosophical and political tensions between how those anti-capitalists in the West imagined communism, how their own ideals reproduced capitalism and how those same ideals or ideas functioned (or didn’t) within Soviet society. Keti’s work is not only refreshing but takes to task common understandings of the USSR from the Left.

Her book description is as follows:

“This book, a philosophical consideration of Soviet socialism, is not meant simply to revisit the communist past; its aim, rather, is to witness certain zones where capitalism’s domination is resisted—the zones of counter-capitalist critique, civil society agencies, and theoretical provisions of emancipation or progress—and to inquire to what extent those zones are in fact permeated by unconscious capitalism and thus unwittingly affirm the capitalist condition.

By means of the philosophical and politico-economical consideration of Soviet socialism of the 1960 and 1970s, this book manages to reveal the hidden desire for capitalism in contemporaneous anti-capitalist discourse and theory. The research is marked by a broad cross-disciplinary approach based on political economy, philosophy, art theory, and cultural theory that redefines old Cold War and Slavic studies’ views of the post-Stalinist years, as well as challenges the interpretations of this period of historical socialism in Western Marxist thought.”

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