Bolshevik order in Georgia: Ethnic Origin in Place of Citizenship

This chapter is translated from “Bolschewistische Ordnung in Georgien: Der Große Terror in einer kleinen kaukasischen Republik (Bolshevik order in Georgia: The Great Terror in a Small Caucasian Republic)” by Marc Junge and Bernd Bonwetsch, pp. 275–276 (“Abstammung statt Staatsbürgerschaft”).

Ethnic Origin in Place of Citizenship

The aim of the Great Terror in Georgia, unlike the deportations, was not the physical expulsion of entire ethnic groups, but rather the systematic violent disciplining and marginalisation of nations in order to punish them for their alleged lack of loyalty to the Soviet system. It should be noted that the already fragile balance that had for decades underpinned the coexistence of various peoples in Georgia had been seriously undermined by collectivisation, but it was only the Great Terror that became its ultimate gravedigger.

Thus, the national component of the mass repressions of 1937–1938 should be viewed as a radical element of the long-term policy of ethnic homogenisation pursued by the party and state elites of the Georgian Soviet state. From the perspective of Georgian realities, the thesis formulated by the German historian and political scientist Gerhard Simon with regard to the entire Soviet Union appears overly risky. According to Simon, beginning in 1933, Stalin slowed down the process of nation-building, which only gained a new dimension in the 1950s.[321]

In contrast, in Georgia the Great Terror largely accelerated the formation of the Georgian nation and, paradoxically, contributed to the strengthening of Georgian nationalism. As a result of Moscow’s short-sighted policies, it was precisely on the periphery that the structures of the slow disintegration of the Soviet empire were irreversibly laid down. The former People’s Commissar for Nationalities, Joseph Stalin, being the true architect of this policy, became, quite literally, the gravedigger of the Soviet Union.

However, the consequences for Georgia itself of the assimilationist policy toward national minorities—implemented by local party and state elites through repressive means—were equally dramatic. It was precisely in the 1930s, drawing on the old traditions of nineteenth-century Georgian nationalism, and perhaps even earlier precedents, that the foundations were laid not only for the separation of the Abkhazians and Ossetians, but also for the “[…] ethnocultural definition of the Georgian nation,” which continues to this day, harming the unity and well-being of the country.[322]

In Georgia, the notion of Kartveloba—the Georgian spirit—still prevails, according to which Georgian descent (ethnic Georgians, Mingrelians, Svans, Laz) is valued more highly than belonging to the Georgian state or holding Georgian citizenship.[323] Only this development, in the broad sense defined by Eric Weitz, can be characterised as “latent racism.”

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[321] Gerhard Simon, Der Kommunismus und die nationale Frage, // Osteuropa, 2013, Vol. 63, Nos. 5–6, pp. 118–119.

Until 2001, G. Simon was Director of Research at the Federal Institute for International and East European Studies (Bundesinstitut für internationale und ostwissenschaftliche Studien, Cologne, BIOst).

[322] Reisner, Between State and Nation, p. 163. See also: Reisner, O. “Zur Geschichte des Begriffs ‘eri’ in der modernen georgischen Historiographie,” // Georgica, 2012, No. 35, pp. 62–77.

[323] “[…] Biological or genetic naturalism is by no means the only foundation of human behaviour and social affiliation. […] Culture, too, may function as a means of keeping individuals and groups within the bounds of their genealogy—within definitions that are, for them, a priori inviolable and immaterial. [Such an approach] dictates not so much racial belonging as racial behaviour.”

This quotation by Étienne Balibar is cited in Eric Weitz, Racial Politics without the Concept of Race, p. 8.

See also:

+ Bolshevik order in Georgia: Social Status and Repressions: Abkhazians, Adjarians, Ossetians, by Marc Junge & Bernd Bonwetsch

+ The Stalin-Beria Terror in Abkhazia, 1936-1953, by Stephen D. Shenfield

+ What’s Yours Is Mine: Nation-Building and Extraterritorial Nationhood Inside the South Caucasus, by Krista A. Goff