Wednesday, November 22, 2017
DOCUMENTARY: Quarter Century-Georgia-Great Britain. By Irakli Mezurnishvili and Sofio Katsarava
"Quarter Century-Georgia-Great Britain” is a documentary by Irakli Mezurnishvili and Sofio Katsarava, head of Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament, who worked for ten years at the British Embassy, Tbilisi before representing the Georgian people in the legislative body. The author shares her goals, emotions and consequences over the documentary with Agenda.ge readers.
I have been the Chair of the Georgian Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament for nearly a year now, and during this time I have had the opportunity to travel across Europe, America and Asia.
On these travels I have met so many people committed to working with Georgia, to partnering with Georgia on our journey to improved political and economic development and greater standing in the world.
The purpose of our partnerships with other countries is clear to me, but I wanted to do something to really show people the importance of these partnerships. So I committed myself to making a documentary about one of these relationships.
This relationship is closest to my heart, having worked at the British Embassy in Tbilisi for over 10 years.
I am absolutely thrilled to see the completion of this documentary that I made with colleague, Irakli Mezurnishvili. The documentary showcases the relationship between Georgia and the United Kingdom. These ties between our countries began over a century ago and have blossomed into meaningful cooperation, which has practically benefitted the economic development of Georgia and our role in the world today.
The process of making the documentary was highly rewarding. I met almost all the ambassadors with whom I had worked in the embassy over the last twenty years, but this time, rather than as an employee, as a representative of the Georgian people. It was so great to hear their impressions, from their experiences of living and working in Georgia, of the work they did then and their praise at how far we have come since.
Despite the fact that they have moved to other embassies or other jobs in other regions, Georgia remains dear to every single one of them.
I could not have made this documentary without the support of the current British Ambassador to Georgia, Justin McKenzie Smith, or without the support of the British Embassy as a whole. In making this documentary I learned more about how Britain and the British people have always stood with Georgia and the Georgian people – how they continue to do so and how they believe in our country, its people and the future of Georgia!
This was a powerful journey for me in many ways; first to look back at a time when Georgia was 25 years ago and how important it was to us when countries like Britain recognised our strategic importance and aspirations. Even 25 years ago, when the embassy first opened in Tbilisi, I was part of that journey. I remember watching the first steps of this relationship and had the opportunity while working at the embassy to watch these new relations develop into the strategic ties that exist today.
But despite having a front seat to these relations as they developed over the last 25 years, it was still enlightening to me to make this documentary as a representative of Georgia. What was amazing about this journey, was the genuine interest and willingness of all the ambassadors and all our British friends, to support the film and to show that Britain indeed is a true friend of Georgia!
Now, watching the documentary, makes me not only so proud to have made something to help people understand the importance of this relationship and the 25th anniversary of Georgia and Britain’s diplomatic ties, but also because I was at the heart of this work over the last quarter century which continues to move Georgia forward and to develop these important ties with more countries. I hope this documentary will serve as a demonstration of what that can achieve and what it means.
Once again, I’d like to thank everyone who made this documentary possible, whose contributions were so important to me. This would not have been possible without our British friends' genuine faith and trust in our country!
Source: agenda.ge
Sunday, November 19, 2017
VIDEO: Supra Nova - Innovating #GeorgianCuisine | Tekuna Gachechiladze | TEDxTbilisi
Does traditional food have a future? In this conversation renowned Chef Tekuna Gachechiladze describes her work to renew one of the world’s oldest food cultures, and discusses how traditions are both made and misunderstood.
Tekuna Gachechiladze is one of Georgia’s leading and most innovative chefs. After training in New York she served as the head chef at several establishments in Tbilisi before opening her own restaurants. Tekuna regularly promotes Georgian cuisine and culture at home and abroad and is the creator of the “Supra Nova” concept, which seeks to update and renew traditional Georgian dishes.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
More links:
Tekuna Gachechiladze: the Queen of Georgian Fusion [finedininglovers.com]
Café Littera: Din't Call It Fusion. By Paul Rimple [culinarybackstreets.com]
Tekuna Gachechiladze chef / owner culinarium, cafe littera #cafelittera_tbilisi and culinarium-khasheria#culinarium-khasheria [instagram.com/tekunia]
Tekuna Gachechiladze [calvertjournal.com]
Georgia: Restaurants, hotels and shops. By Carla Capalbo [decanter.com]
VIDEO: A State at a Crossroads - Georgia: Donald Rayfield at TEDxTbilisi
Historian Donald Rayfield draws lessons from Georgia's long and complex history to illuminate the foreign policy choices of the present. In 1973 he first visited Georgia and has since written a history of Georgian literature, edited a Comprehensive Georgian-English Dictionary and, recently, published a history of Georgia.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
BOOK: Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. By Donald Rayfield - Review by Professor Ronald Grigor Suny (history.ac.uk)
Review by Professor Ronald Grigor Suny, review of Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia, (review no. 1375)
www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1375
Date accessed: 19 November, 2017
Think of what you are about to read more as a dialogue between two scholars of Georgia than a conventional review of a colleague’s book. Those few of us outside of Georgia who chose to study the Georgian language and delve into the three millennia history of that beautiful and beleaguered country have usually shaped our narratives in the template of national history – the story of a distinct people who managed to maintain a continuous existence despite invasions, occupations, exile, and the fall of their polities. Writing in a mode that only became imperative in the nationalist 19th century provides a coherence and continuity that belies the eclectic, disjointed, and cosmopolitan actualities of the Caucasian longue durėe. Yet since sources often are generated by states, and archival materials are usually organized by governments, the imprimatur of nation effaces the more complex variations of how people in the past understood themselves and others.
Donald Rayfield, Professor Emeritus of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London, has undertaken just such a national story, even while his book’s title – Edge of Empires – affirms Georgia’s liminal position between great multiethnic states. His subtitle suggests that he is presenting one possible account and that others will offer different readings. When I first went to Georgia nearly half a century ago, Donald Rayfield was somewhat of a legend, a stellar student with fluent Georgian and a deep knowledge of its literature. Yet despite the proximity in our scholarly interests, over many decades we never met. He had left Georgia before I arrived, and though he apparently came to a lecture I delivered in London, he left with making himself known to me. When I published The Making of the Georgian Nation in 1988, Rayfield gave the book a relatively critical review in which he even took issue with the title. How could this book, which centered on the 19th and 20th centuries, be about the making of a nation whose origins reached back into prehistoric times? I finally met Professor Rayfield a year ago when we shared glasses of wine after the successful dissertation defense of one of his protégés. Later I bought his extraordinary two-volume dictionary of Georgian, which his wife delivered to me in a plastic bag in Victoria Station.
After the usual linguistic and archaeological introduction, Georgia’s history is conventionally said to begin with its first king, Parnavaz, who may or may not have existed, but who is enshrined in chronicles both Georgian and Armenian. Georgia’s mixed heritage is attested to by Parnavaz’s name and his mother, both Persian. The king married a North Caucasian (Chechen or Ingush) and gave his daughter in marriage to an Ossetian. The Georgian king Mirian III converted to Christianity circa 317, and a century later the first Georgian alphabet was devised. Georgians had their own identity, religion, and language but were deeply embroiled in the shifting alliances, allegiances, and imperial rivalries that roiled through Caucasia and Anatolia. King Vakhtang Gorgasali, founder of Georgia’s eventual capital, Tbilisi, was also the son of a Persian mother and the husband first of a Persian wife and later a Byzantine royal. His country’s affinity with Iran marked Georgian culture until the 19th century. Colchis (Lazica), Western Georgia, remained more firmly in the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sphere of cultural and political influence until the coming of the Ottomans. The fateful decision of Catholicos Kvirion II in the seventh century to accept the dyophysite Christology of Byzantium ended the centuries-old closeness with the monophysite Armenians and secured Georgia as an eastern outpost of Orthodox Christianity.
The Arab invasions in that same period were an even more radical rupture in the history of Caucasia. Three Christian peoples – Georgians, Armenians, and Caucasian Albanians – would henceforth live with the threat, as well as the promise of tolerance, from Islam. Throughout the following centuries Georgia was more like a mini-empire, with a diverse population, and hierarchical inequitable relations of power among its peoples, than an ethnically and religiously homogeneous nation-state. Its history paralleled those of its neighbors (Armenia, Persia, Turkey, and Russia) at least until late Soviet times. Rather than ethnicity, it was religion and language that determined who might pass for Georgian. Rayfield is fond of the definition of Georgia offered by the ninth century author Giorgi Merchule: ‘We can consider as Greater Georgia wherever Mass and prayers are said in Georgian’ (p. 62). But as in Armenia, so in Georgia, many of the towns were inhabited by Muslim merchants and workers. A traveller in the late tenth century observed that Tbilisi was ‘wholly Muslim’ (p. 72).
Georgia (sakartvelo) was first united only in the early 11th century under Bagrat III, king of the Abkhaz. But soon the kingdoms of Caucasia, particularly the Armenian, faced a new and mortal danger – the invasions of the Seljuk Turks. Georgia’s monarchs made strategic agreements with the invaders, heralding a period of expansion and prosperity under the two most eminent rulers of the medieval period, David aghmashenebeli (the Builder) (1089–1125) and Tamar (1178–1213). David gave up his Armenian queen for a Qipchak to promote his kingdom’s security interests, while Tamar’s consort, David Soslan, was an Ossetian. Their empires, with their cosmopolitan capital at Tbilisi, were devastated in the early 13th century by the Mongols, and Georgia’s fortunes ebbed and flowed in the ensuing half millennium until by early modern times its monarchs repeatedly petitioned Russian tsars for protection against the predations of the Persians and the Ottomans.
Rayfield’s opus is very informative, in the sense that it is chock full of information – reigns, dynasties, foreign incursions, efforts at unification, and multiple failures to hold fragile states together. Like an earlier specialist, Cyril Toumanoff, he is obsessed with how various princes were related to one another, who was legitimate and who a pretender or usurper. His focus is on politics, the role of elites, rather than on society and social relations more broadly. He largely leaves out culture and literature, perhaps justifiably since he has treated Georgian writing extensively in his earlier history of Georgian literature. When the rulers of Georgia cease to be native royals, Rayfield follows the adventures and misadventures, amorous and military, of the various Russian governors and viceroys. In such a history from the top down, with much of the down left out, Georgia recedes from view as palace intrigues and personalities take center stage. The emancipation of the serfs is given short shrift. The dominance of Armenians in Tbilisi and other towns is mentioned in passing. Thanks to a Georgian study, he provides interesting details on anti-Semitism, which was largely a local Russian rather than a Georgian problem.
For all its suggestive material Rayfield’s construction of the Georgian past fails to give much analysis of why events or processes occurred. The story is Georgian–centric and Georgian-philic, a national narrative focused on the steady march forward of the Georgians themselves. Georgians’ implicit nationalism is taken for granted rather than investigated. The rule of Russians is largely seen as a negative imperial imposition, though Rayfield concedes at several points that the authorities ‘did some good’ or ‘Not all government measures were reactionary’ (pp. 304, 310). Almost completely missing are the complex relations of Georgians with the other peoples of Georgia, particularly their social rivals, the Armenians, which in my understanding was a primary ingredient in the generation of Georgian nationalism and even the particular Menshevik brand of Marxism that became hegemonic in the national liberation movement.
Still, what Rayfield gives us is usually reliable and clearly presented. The single doubtful episode comes with the appearance of Stalin, whom he claims framed an innocent watchseller, Arsena Jorjiashvili, for the assassination of General Fedor Griaznov in 1906, which in fact Stalin organized. Rayfield’s source is a post-Soviet article, but close reading of the evidence from earlier memoirs indicts Jorjiashvili, who carried out the killing even as Stalin’s group of terrorists was preparing to murder the hated officer (p. 315). There is also no evidence connecting Stalin with the murder a year later of the nationalist poet and political figure Ilia Chavchavadze (now Saint Ilia), which Rayfield pins on the Bolshevik leader.
The chapter on the revolution and Georgian independence (1917–21) is bizarre in two ways. Rather than using recent research and writing on the period, Rayfield depends almost exclusively on memoirs, for example, of the German general Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein. The years in which masses of people moved onto the stage of history are told as the maneuvering of key leaders, a throwback to older modes of diplomatic and military history. The word ‘soviet’ is studiously avoided in favor of ‘council,’ and the role of the Mensheviks is grossly underestimated.
Things go downhill both for Georgia and the book when we reach the ‘Soviet annexation.’ After 1921 the history of Georgia as told here was one of unremitting repression, executions, and resistance. Sanguinary as the Communists could be, they managed to create a degree of loyalty as formerly subaltern people moved up the social ladder and peasant Georgia was transformed into a modern urban and industrial society. Literacy, mass education, better health care, and public support of literature and national culture were also products of the Soviet state. Yet here Soviet power is depicted basically as a terror regime built on unspeakable brutality. How raw power translated into a grudging legitimacy needs to be explained. Rather than conceptualizations or interpretations, we are given reportage and indictment. It should be noted that Rayfield has uncovered fascinating material on Georgian émigré activity against the USSR and Soviet counterespionage targeting Georgians, though one might question the balance between the treatment of the emigration and internal affairs. Rayfield’s Soviet chapters are clearly post-Soviet history, a post-revisionist chronicle that reflects the current anti-Soviet, even anti-Russian, mood of present-day Georgians. What the Soviets called their dostizheniia (achievements) have fallen into a deep memory hole and left on the surface are the ruins of a cruel failed experiment in human engineering.
Rayfield regains his footing in the last chapter, which covers the years of restored independence. Although he was once a friend of the troubled dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who became Georgia’s freely elected president in 1991, Rayfield is balanced and judicious in sorting through the contentious politics and suicidal civil and ethnic wars that divided and ultimately led to the disintegration of Georgia. While there is no love lost with the former communist, and second president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze, the author acknowledges that this survivor of numerous assassination attempts was able to disarm the reckless paramilitaries and reestablish a modicum of state authority. Rayfield is equally critical of Mikheil Saakashvili, the flamboyant young lawyer who overthrew Shevardnadze in the “Rose Revolution” of November 2003. Unlike some pro-Georgian Western writers, Rayfield does not claim that Russia rather than Georgia initiated the disastrous Russo-Georgian war of August 2008. In this dubious adventure Saakashvili was the provocative David to Russia’s slow-footed Goliath. Rayfield’s narrative ends on the eve of Saakashvili’s electoral defeat by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in 2012.
This book will fascinate anyone interested in the turbulent, tangled past of the Georgians. What it lacks in analysis and overriding interpretation it makes up with recovered tales of willful characters who in their zeal usually brought disaster to their country. When I attempted five decades ago to bring some coherence, if not unbroken continuity, to Georgia’s history, I emphasized the theme of cultural and social construction of national identity and argued that only in modern times did politics, culture, territory, and popular sovereignty come together in a discourse of nationhood. Whatever Georgia was in its thousands of years – tribal society, dynastic realm, ethnoreligious community – it became a nation only in the 19th century with the rise of its secular intelligentsia and even more forcefully in the 20th century in the years of Soviet rule. A second argument in The Making of the Georgian Nation was that the histories of small peoples like Georgians and Armenians cannot be told in isolation from the histories of the empires with which and within which they existed. Empires both thwarted and enabled the making of nations. That complex story may be underplayed in Rayfield, yet he gives us sufficient detail to illuminate the paradoxical interplay between the imperial and the national. Georgians were made and remade over time, both by their own efforts and the restraints imposed and possibilities provided by those that dominated them.
Donald Rayfield, Professor Emeritus of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London, has undertaken just such a national story, even while his book’s title – Edge of Empires – affirms Georgia’s liminal position between great multiethnic states. His subtitle suggests that he is presenting one possible account and that others will offer different readings. When I first went to Georgia nearly half a century ago, Donald Rayfield was somewhat of a legend, a stellar student with fluent Georgian and a deep knowledge of its literature. Yet despite the proximity in our scholarly interests, over many decades we never met. He had left Georgia before I arrived, and though he apparently came to a lecture I delivered in London, he left with making himself known to me. When I published The Making of the Georgian Nation in 1988, Rayfield gave the book a relatively critical review in which he even took issue with the title. How could this book, which centered on the 19th and 20th centuries, be about the making of a nation whose origins reached back into prehistoric times? I finally met Professor Rayfield a year ago when we shared glasses of wine after the successful dissertation defense of one of his protégés. Later I bought his extraordinary two-volume dictionary of Georgian, which his wife delivered to me in a plastic bag in Victoria Station.
After the usual linguistic and archaeological introduction, Georgia’s history is conventionally said to begin with its first king, Parnavaz, who may or may not have existed, but who is enshrined in chronicles both Georgian and Armenian. Georgia’s mixed heritage is attested to by Parnavaz’s name and his mother, both Persian. The king married a North Caucasian (Chechen or Ingush) and gave his daughter in marriage to an Ossetian. The Georgian king Mirian III converted to Christianity circa 317, and a century later the first Georgian alphabet was devised. Georgians had their own identity, religion, and language but were deeply embroiled in the shifting alliances, allegiances, and imperial rivalries that roiled through Caucasia and Anatolia. King Vakhtang Gorgasali, founder of Georgia’s eventual capital, Tbilisi, was also the son of a Persian mother and the husband first of a Persian wife and later a Byzantine royal. His country’s affinity with Iran marked Georgian culture until the 19th century. Colchis (Lazica), Western Georgia, remained more firmly in the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sphere of cultural and political influence until the coming of the Ottomans. The fateful decision of Catholicos Kvirion II in the seventh century to accept the dyophysite Christology of Byzantium ended the centuries-old closeness with the monophysite Armenians and secured Georgia as an eastern outpost of Orthodox Christianity.
The Arab invasions in that same period were an even more radical rupture in the history of Caucasia. Three Christian peoples – Georgians, Armenians, and Caucasian Albanians – would henceforth live with the threat, as well as the promise of tolerance, from Islam. Throughout the following centuries Georgia was more like a mini-empire, with a diverse population, and hierarchical inequitable relations of power among its peoples, than an ethnically and religiously homogeneous nation-state. Its history paralleled those of its neighbors (Armenia, Persia, Turkey, and Russia) at least until late Soviet times. Rather than ethnicity, it was religion and language that determined who might pass for Georgian. Rayfield is fond of the definition of Georgia offered by the ninth century author Giorgi Merchule: ‘We can consider as Greater Georgia wherever Mass and prayers are said in Georgian’ (p. 62). But as in Armenia, so in Georgia, many of the towns were inhabited by Muslim merchants and workers. A traveller in the late tenth century observed that Tbilisi was ‘wholly Muslim’ (p. 72).
Georgia (sakartvelo) was first united only in the early 11th century under Bagrat III, king of the Abkhaz. But soon the kingdoms of Caucasia, particularly the Armenian, faced a new and mortal danger – the invasions of the Seljuk Turks. Georgia’s monarchs made strategic agreements with the invaders, heralding a period of expansion and prosperity under the two most eminent rulers of the medieval period, David aghmashenebeli (the Builder) (1089–1125) and Tamar (1178–1213). David gave up his Armenian queen for a Qipchak to promote his kingdom’s security interests, while Tamar’s consort, David Soslan, was an Ossetian. Their empires, with their cosmopolitan capital at Tbilisi, were devastated in the early 13th century by the Mongols, and Georgia’s fortunes ebbed and flowed in the ensuing half millennium until by early modern times its monarchs repeatedly petitioned Russian tsars for protection against the predations of the Persians and the Ottomans.
Rayfield’s opus is very informative, in the sense that it is chock full of information – reigns, dynasties, foreign incursions, efforts at unification, and multiple failures to hold fragile states together. Like an earlier specialist, Cyril Toumanoff, he is obsessed with how various princes were related to one another, who was legitimate and who a pretender or usurper. His focus is on politics, the role of elites, rather than on society and social relations more broadly. He largely leaves out culture and literature, perhaps justifiably since he has treated Georgian writing extensively in his earlier history of Georgian literature. When the rulers of Georgia cease to be native royals, Rayfield follows the adventures and misadventures, amorous and military, of the various Russian governors and viceroys. In such a history from the top down, with much of the down left out, Georgia recedes from view as palace intrigues and personalities take center stage. The emancipation of the serfs is given short shrift. The dominance of Armenians in Tbilisi and other towns is mentioned in passing. Thanks to a Georgian study, he provides interesting details on anti-Semitism, which was largely a local Russian rather than a Georgian problem.
For all its suggestive material Rayfield’s construction of the Georgian past fails to give much analysis of why events or processes occurred. The story is Georgian–centric and Georgian-philic, a national narrative focused on the steady march forward of the Georgians themselves. Georgians’ implicit nationalism is taken for granted rather than investigated. The rule of Russians is largely seen as a negative imperial imposition, though Rayfield concedes at several points that the authorities ‘did some good’ or ‘Not all government measures were reactionary’ (pp. 304, 310). Almost completely missing are the complex relations of Georgians with the other peoples of Georgia, particularly their social rivals, the Armenians, which in my understanding was a primary ingredient in the generation of Georgian nationalism and even the particular Menshevik brand of Marxism that became hegemonic in the national liberation movement.
Still, what Rayfield gives us is usually reliable and clearly presented. The single doubtful episode comes with the appearance of Stalin, whom he claims framed an innocent watchseller, Arsena Jorjiashvili, for the assassination of General Fedor Griaznov in 1906, which in fact Stalin organized. Rayfield’s source is a post-Soviet article, but close reading of the evidence from earlier memoirs indicts Jorjiashvili, who carried out the killing even as Stalin’s group of terrorists was preparing to murder the hated officer (p. 315). There is also no evidence connecting Stalin with the murder a year later of the nationalist poet and political figure Ilia Chavchavadze (now Saint Ilia), which Rayfield pins on the Bolshevik leader.
The chapter on the revolution and Georgian independence (1917–21) is bizarre in two ways. Rather than using recent research and writing on the period, Rayfield depends almost exclusively on memoirs, for example, of the German general Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein. The years in which masses of people moved onto the stage of history are told as the maneuvering of key leaders, a throwback to older modes of diplomatic and military history. The word ‘soviet’ is studiously avoided in favor of ‘council,’ and the role of the Mensheviks is grossly underestimated.
Things go downhill both for Georgia and the book when we reach the ‘Soviet annexation.’ After 1921 the history of Georgia as told here was one of unremitting repression, executions, and resistance. Sanguinary as the Communists could be, they managed to create a degree of loyalty as formerly subaltern people moved up the social ladder and peasant Georgia was transformed into a modern urban and industrial society. Literacy, mass education, better health care, and public support of literature and national culture were also products of the Soviet state. Yet here Soviet power is depicted basically as a terror regime built on unspeakable brutality. How raw power translated into a grudging legitimacy needs to be explained. Rather than conceptualizations or interpretations, we are given reportage and indictment. It should be noted that Rayfield has uncovered fascinating material on Georgian émigré activity against the USSR and Soviet counterespionage targeting Georgians, though one might question the balance between the treatment of the emigration and internal affairs. Rayfield’s Soviet chapters are clearly post-Soviet history, a post-revisionist chronicle that reflects the current anti-Soviet, even anti-Russian, mood of present-day Georgians. What the Soviets called their dostizheniia (achievements) have fallen into a deep memory hole and left on the surface are the ruins of a cruel failed experiment in human engineering.
Rayfield regains his footing in the last chapter, which covers the years of restored independence. Although he was once a friend of the troubled dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who became Georgia’s freely elected president in 1991, Rayfield is balanced and judicious in sorting through the contentious politics and suicidal civil and ethnic wars that divided and ultimately led to the disintegration of Georgia. While there is no love lost with the former communist, and second president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze, the author acknowledges that this survivor of numerous assassination attempts was able to disarm the reckless paramilitaries and reestablish a modicum of state authority. Rayfield is equally critical of Mikheil Saakashvili, the flamboyant young lawyer who overthrew Shevardnadze in the “Rose Revolution” of November 2003. Unlike some pro-Georgian Western writers, Rayfield does not claim that Russia rather than Georgia initiated the disastrous Russo-Georgian war of August 2008. In this dubious adventure Saakashvili was the provocative David to Russia’s slow-footed Goliath. Rayfield’s narrative ends on the eve of Saakashvili’s electoral defeat by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in 2012.
This book will fascinate anyone interested in the turbulent, tangled past of the Georgians. What it lacks in analysis and overriding interpretation it makes up with recovered tales of willful characters who in their zeal usually brought disaster to their country. When I attempted five decades ago to bring some coherence, if not unbroken continuity, to Georgia’s history, I emphasized the theme of cultural and social construction of national identity and argued that only in modern times did politics, culture, territory, and popular sovereignty come together in a discourse of nationhood. Whatever Georgia was in its thousands of years – tribal society, dynastic realm, ethnoreligious community – it became a nation only in the 19th century with the rise of its secular intelligentsia and even more forcefully in the 20th century in the years of Soviet rule. A second argument in The Making of the Georgian Nation was that the histories of small peoples like Georgians and Armenians cannot be told in isolation from the histories of the empires with which and within which they existed. Empires both thwarted and enabled the making of nations. That complex story may be underplayed in Rayfield, yet he gives us sufficient detail to illuminate the paradoxical interplay between the imperial and the national. Georgians were made and remade over time, both by their own efforts and the restraints imposed and possibilities provided by those that dominated them.
FOTOGRAFIE: Bildband von Wolfgang Korall - DIE SEELE GEORGIENS
Die Herausgabe wird gefördert vom Georgian National Book Center in Tiflis und dem georgischen Kulturministerium.
Ein Bildband mit Texten und Farbfotos von Wolfgang Korall im Großformat 28x28 cm seines Buches "SWANETIEN - Abschied von der Zeit".
Vorbestellungen für Weihnachten beim Verlag oder im Handel: ISBN 978-3-95462-305-1
Georgien ist kein großes Land, aber groß in der Vielfalt geschichtlicher Zeiten, geografischer Regionen, anstrengender Wege und gastfreundlicher Menschen wie ein kleiner Kontinent. Georgien ist ein Mysterium, ein Abenteuer, eine Offenbarung. Wolfgang Korall ist der Autor des Bildbandes "SWANETIEN – Abschied von der Zeit". 2008 bis 2011 folgt Wolfgang Korall auf mehreren Reisen den Wegen der Heiligen Nino, die das Christentum nach Georgien brachte, bis zu den Orten ihres Wirkens. Es ist eine Suche in der Natur des Landes und seiner Menschen nach der Seele Georgiens und eine Zeitreise von den Traditionen zur Moderne. Seit seiner Jugend durch Reisen und Freundschaften mit Georgien verbunden und inspiriert von den Bildern des Malers Niko Pirosmani gelingen Wolfgang Korall sensible Fotografien der kraftvollen Seele Georgiens.
Ein Unfall im Kaukasus beendet 2011 auf dramatische Weise die Arbeit Wolfgang Koralls. Georgien wird zum Schicksalsland und hier sind seine Bilder ...
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Friday, November 17, 2017
GEDICHTE: Die Kartoffelernte. Neue Georgische Lyrik II. Herausgegeben von Matthias Unger
Die Kartoffelernte. Neue Georgische Lyrik II.
Ab dem 26.10. lieferbar. Jetzt schon bestellbar bei Corvinus Presse. Das Buch hat 88 Seiten und kostet 20 €.
Herausgegeben von Matthias Unger.
Gedichte von Besik Kharanauli, Temur Chkhetiani, Rusudan Kaishauri, Lela Tsutskiridze, Nato Ingorokva, Giorgi Lobzhanidze und Nika Jorjaneli.
Zeichnungen von Dieter Goltzsche.
Nachsichtungen von Norbert Hummelt und Sabine Schiffner (nur Nika Jorjaneli).
Deutsche Erstausgabe, Herbst 2017
Die Grafike von Dieter Goltzsche entstanden speziell zu diesen Gedichten. Interlinear ins Deutsche übertragen von Nana Tchigladze.
Dank an Harald Weller für Satz und Layout und natürlich an den Verleger Hendrik Liersch
Corvinus Presse Berlin
www.corvinus-presse.de
BestellEmail: corvinus@nafu.de
ISBN 978-3-942280-41-9
CHARITY-PROJEKT: Vom Kaukasus zum Königsstuhl. Martin Fluch - 4.500 km auf Cross-Skates von Georgien bis nach Deutschland.
Ein gemeinsames Charity-Projekt von Martin Fluch und der Kaukasischen Post
Seit Februar 2013 ist Martin Fluch Deutsch-Lehrer in Batumi/Georgien. Sein Arbeitsverhältnis mit der Schule Euro 2000 endet im Juni 2018. Die Rückkehr nach Eppelheim/Heidelberg, wo er wohnt, will er mit Cross-Skates in maximal 90 Tagen (inklusive der eingeplanten Erholungspausen auch für Presse- Foto- und Filmtermine) über die Türkei, Griechenland, Bulgarien, Serbien, Ungarn und Österreich bewältigen. Es soll eine langsame Wieder-Annäherung an Deutschland werden und eine ebensolche Entfernung aus Georgien. Und ist nebenbei auch ein völkerverbindender Lauf während des vom Auswärtigen Amt offiziell ausgerufenen Deutsch-Georgischen Jahres.
Erfahrungen aus früheren sozialgeprägten Sportprojekten - einer Kanu-Tour über die gesamte Donaustrecke von der Quelle bis zur Mündung (2811 Km) und einem Langstreckenlauf über 885 Kilometer und 2 Gebirgspässe über 3000 Meter in 11 Tagen durch Kirgistan - liegen diesem neuen Vorhaben des ambitionierten Ausdauer-Sportlers zugrunde.
So soll auch dieser Lauf einem gemeinnützigen Zweck dienen – Charity-Partner ist die Kinderkrebshilfe des georgischen Solidarity Funds zusammen mit der Uni-Kinder-Klinik Freiburg, wobei dem Läufer selbst keine großen Privatkosten entstehen sollten.
Medien-Partner: Kaukasische Post, rainer.kaufmann@erkanet.de
Ausrüster: boss sports, Stettiner Str. 24, 76356 Weingarten(Baden), Tel.: +4972442059888
Finanzierung und Charity:
Pro Tag ist ein Budget von 50,-- € fest eingeplant, in der Summe € 4.500,--. Dazu eine Reserve für unvorhergesehene Ausgaben von € 1.000,--. Das Geld soll durch Sponsoring aufgebracht werden. Aufgerufen sind Firmen und Privatpersonen, sich mit einem Tagessatz von € 1,-- bis € 25,-- zu beteiligen.
“Grenzen für eine Spende sind weder nach oben noch nach unten gesetzt.“
Platin-Sponsor: € 25,-- pro Tag = € 2.250,--
großes Logo auf allen Veröffentlichungen, sofern machbar Sonder-Termine mit Presse, Verlinkung auf Webseite
Gold-Sponsor: € 20,-- pro Tag = € 1.800,--
großes Logo auf allen Veröffentlichungen, Verlinkung auf Webseite
Silber-Sponsor: € 15,-- pro Tag = € 1.350,-- <
mittel großes Logo auf allen Veröffentlichungen, Verlinkung auf Webseite
Bronze-Sponsor: € 10,-- pro Tag = € 900,--
kleines Logo auf allen Veröffentlichungen, Verlinkung auf Webseite
Premium-Supporter: Tagesbeiträge von mindestens € 1,-- (90 Euro).
Unterstützer: Beiträge ab 10 Euro
Alle Sponsoren und Unterstützer werden namentlich auf der Webseite gelistet (nach Wunsch mit Höhe der Spende).
Charity-Partner:
Kinderkrebshilfe des georgischen Solidarity Funds zusammen mit der Uni-Kinder-Klinik Freiburg
Charity-Beitrag: 25 % der Sponsoring-Beiträge gehen sofort direkt an die Kinderkrebshilfe, dazu alle erzielten Überschüsse. Die eingespielten Tagessätze werden für jeden Tag, den Martin Fluch früher in Heidelberg ankommt als geplant, in voller Höhe an die Kinderkrebshilfe weitergeleitet. Je mehr Spenden eingehen, umso größer werden die prozentualen Sponsoring-Beiträge.
Rechenbeispiele: Wenn 5.000,- Euro gesponsert werden, gehen 1250 Euro an den Solidarity-Fond, das fehlende Geld für den Lauf trägt der Läufer selbst. Bei 7.000 Euro könnten schon mindestens 2000 Euro an die Kinderkrebshilfe gehen (knapp 30%)
Ab 10.000 Sponsoring erhöht sich der Charity-Beitrag auf ca. 50%.
Mit jedem Tag, den Martin Fluch das Ziel früher als die angesetzten 90 Tage erreicht, erhöht sich die Spendensumme an die Kinderkrebshilfe ebenfalls.
Die Kaukasische Post hat ein Sonderkonto eingerichtet, wird die Beiträge der Sponsoren und Unterstützer verwalten und nach der Reise eine transparente Abrechnung erstellen.
Spendenquittungen können – nach Wunsch - ab einer Höhe von 200 Euro ausgestellt werden.
KaPost Kinderkrebshilfe Georgien
Sparkasse Kraichgau
IBAN: DE48 6635 0036 0018 2986 89
BIC: BRUSDE66XXX
Medien-Partner Kaukasische Post:
Die Kaukasische Post begleitet das Projekt als Medienpartner mit einer eigenen Webseite ab Dezember 2017. In ihr werden Vorbereitung und Streckenverlauf dargestellt, ebenso wird während des Laufs regelmäßig in Bild, Text und Video über den Verlauf berichtet. Auf der ganzen Strecke wird außerdem intensive Medienarbeit betrieben.
Geplant sind über die Fahrt noch eine TV-Dokumentation und ein Buch zu produzieren.
Ausrüster:
boss sports
Stettiner Str. 24, 76356 Weingarten (Baden), Deutschland
Telefon: +49 7244 2059888
Susanne Boss
Kontakt:
Rainer Kaufmann
Kaukasische Post
rainer.kaufmann@erkanet.de
Seit Februar 2013 ist Martin Fluch Deutsch-Lehrer in Batumi/Georgien. Sein Arbeitsverhältnis mit der Schule Euro 2000 endet im Juni 2018. Die Rückkehr nach Eppelheim/Heidelberg, wo er wohnt, will er mit Cross-Skates in maximal 90 Tagen (inklusive der eingeplanten Erholungspausen auch für Presse- Foto- und Filmtermine) über die Türkei, Griechenland, Bulgarien, Serbien, Ungarn und Österreich bewältigen. Es soll eine langsame Wieder-Annäherung an Deutschland werden und eine ebensolche Entfernung aus Georgien. Und ist nebenbei auch ein völkerverbindender Lauf während des vom Auswärtigen Amt offiziell ausgerufenen Deutsch-Georgischen Jahres.
Erfahrungen aus früheren sozialgeprägten Sportprojekten - einer Kanu-Tour über die gesamte Donaustrecke von der Quelle bis zur Mündung (2811 Km) und einem Langstreckenlauf über 885 Kilometer und 2 Gebirgspässe über 3000 Meter in 11 Tagen durch Kirgistan - liegen diesem neuen Vorhaben des ambitionierten Ausdauer-Sportlers zugrunde.
So soll auch dieser Lauf einem gemeinnützigen Zweck dienen – Charity-Partner ist die Kinderkrebshilfe des georgischen Solidarity Funds zusammen mit der Uni-Kinder-Klinik Freiburg, wobei dem Läufer selbst keine großen Privatkosten entstehen sollten.
Medien-Partner: Kaukasische Post, rainer.kaufmann@erkanet.de
Ausrüster: boss sports, Stettiner Str. 24, 76356 Weingarten(Baden), Tel.: +4972442059888
Finanzierung und Charity:
Pro Tag ist ein Budget von 50,-- € fest eingeplant, in der Summe € 4.500,--. Dazu eine Reserve für unvorhergesehene Ausgaben von € 1.000,--. Das Geld soll durch Sponsoring aufgebracht werden. Aufgerufen sind Firmen und Privatpersonen, sich mit einem Tagessatz von € 1,-- bis € 25,-- zu beteiligen.
“Grenzen für eine Spende sind weder nach oben noch nach unten gesetzt.“
Platin-Sponsor: € 25,-- pro Tag = € 2.250,--
großes Logo auf allen Veröffentlichungen, sofern machbar Sonder-Termine mit Presse, Verlinkung auf Webseite
Gold-Sponsor: € 20,-- pro Tag = € 1.800,--
großes Logo auf allen Veröffentlichungen, Verlinkung auf Webseite
Silber-Sponsor: € 15,-- pro Tag = € 1.350,-- <
mittel großes Logo auf allen Veröffentlichungen, Verlinkung auf Webseite
Bronze-Sponsor: € 10,-- pro Tag = € 900,--
kleines Logo auf allen Veröffentlichungen, Verlinkung auf Webseite
Premium-Supporter: Tagesbeiträge von mindestens € 1,-- (90 Euro).
Unterstützer: Beiträge ab 10 Euro
Alle Sponsoren und Unterstützer werden namentlich auf der Webseite gelistet (nach Wunsch mit Höhe der Spende).
Charity-Partner:
Kinderkrebshilfe des georgischen Solidarity Funds zusammen mit der Uni-Kinder-Klinik Freiburg
Charity-Beitrag: 25 % der Sponsoring-Beiträge gehen sofort direkt an die Kinderkrebshilfe, dazu alle erzielten Überschüsse. Die eingespielten Tagessätze werden für jeden Tag, den Martin Fluch früher in Heidelberg ankommt als geplant, in voller Höhe an die Kinderkrebshilfe weitergeleitet. Je mehr Spenden eingehen, umso größer werden die prozentualen Sponsoring-Beiträge.
Rechenbeispiele: Wenn 5.000,- Euro gesponsert werden, gehen 1250 Euro an den Solidarity-Fond, das fehlende Geld für den Lauf trägt der Läufer selbst. Bei 7.000 Euro könnten schon mindestens 2000 Euro an die Kinderkrebshilfe gehen (knapp 30%)
Ab 10.000 Sponsoring erhöht sich der Charity-Beitrag auf ca. 50%.
Mit jedem Tag, den Martin Fluch das Ziel früher als die angesetzten 90 Tage erreicht, erhöht sich die Spendensumme an die Kinderkrebshilfe ebenfalls.
Die Kaukasische Post hat ein Sonderkonto eingerichtet, wird die Beiträge der Sponsoren und Unterstützer verwalten und nach der Reise eine transparente Abrechnung erstellen.
Spendenquittungen können – nach Wunsch - ab einer Höhe von 200 Euro ausgestellt werden.
KaPost Kinderkrebshilfe Georgien
Sparkasse Kraichgau
IBAN: DE48 6635 0036 0018 2986 89
BIC: BRUSDE66XXX
Medien-Partner Kaukasische Post:
Die Kaukasische Post begleitet das Projekt als Medienpartner mit einer eigenen Webseite ab Dezember 2017. In ihr werden Vorbereitung und Streckenverlauf dargestellt, ebenso wird während des Laufs regelmäßig in Bild, Text und Video über den Verlauf berichtet. Auf der ganzen Strecke wird außerdem intensive Medienarbeit betrieben.
Geplant sind über die Fahrt noch eine TV-Dokumentation und ein Buch zu produzieren.
Ausrüster:
boss sports
Stettiner Str. 24, 76356 Weingarten (Baden), Deutschland
Telefon: +49 7244 2059888
Susanne Boss
Kontakt:
Rainer Kaufmann
Kaukasische Post
rainer.kaufmann@erkanet.de
Thursday, November 16, 2017
DOKUMENTARFILM: In der Schwebe (Georgien-Doku) - WHEN THE EARTH SEEMS TO BE LIGHT - Von Salome Machaidze, Tamuna Karumidze und David Meskhi, Deutschland/Georgien 2016
Skaten ist im postsowjetischen Georgien mehr als ein westlicher Freizeitsport. Der Film zeigt eine Gruppe junger Männer auf ihrer Suche nach Identität und Freiheit.
Dokumentarfilm von Salome Machaidze, Tamuna Karumidze und David Meskhi, Deutschland/Georgien 2016
Weitere Links:
whenearthseemstobelight.tumblr.com
www.calvertjournal.com
ostpol.de
www.dokfest-muenchen.de
www.3sat.de
i-d.vice.com
kritikerblog.com
vimeo.com
www.filmfestival-goeast.de
filmfinder.dok-leipzig.de
www.tgnili.com
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