BUCHBESPRECHUNG: Über eine faszinierende Geschichte russisch-georgischer Beziehungen. Von Dieter Boden via @theeuropean

Buch: Philipp Ammon, Georgien zwischen Eigenstaatlichkeit und russischer Okkupation. Die Wurzeln des Konflikts vom 18. Jh. bis 1924, Frankfurt/M 2020.

Früherer Deutscher Botschafter 

in Georgien, Dieter Boden

(theeuropean.de) Dies ist die faszinierende Geschichte russisch-georgischer Beziehungen zwischen 1801, dem Jahr der Annexion Georgiens durch das zaristische Rußland, bis nach dem ersten Weltkrieg. Es ist ein Thema, das bis zum Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion allenfalls für Fachleute der Geschichtswissenschaft von Interesse gewesen sein mag. Inzwischen hat der Kaukasus als ein regionaler Spannungsherd in unserer unmittelbaren Nachbarschaft neue Aktualität erhalten. Dieses Buch von Philipp Ammon ist insofern auch ein Beitrag zur politischen Zeitgeschichte.

Ammon behandelt einen entscheidenden Abschnitt in den Beziehungen zwischen den beiden Völkern und Nachbarn, die sich in ihrer Kultur, ihrer Mentalität und ihren Lebensgewohnheiten grundlegend unterscheiden. Es ist eine Geschichte, die geprägt ist von Gewalt, Verrat und Täuschungen, aber auch von friedlichem, oftmals sogar harmonischen Zusammenleben – mit einem Wort: ein Musterbeispiel aus dem Fach politischer Staatenbeziehungen, das uns auch heute noch manches lehren kann. Dies gilt sicherlich insbesondere hinsichtlich unseres heutigen Verhältnisses zu Rußland.

Mit viel Sachkunde schildert Ammon die Periode der bilateralen Beziehungen in dem sich insgesamt über 115 Jahre erstreckenden Zeitabschnitt, in dem Georgien Teil des Russischen Zarenreiches war. Der Band enthält eine Fülle an Anmerkungen sowie ausführliche Hinweise auf weiterführende Literatur zum Thema; ein wenig störend wirkt die umständliche Transskription der Personennamen ins Deutsche, die nicht selten das Lesen beeinträchtigt. Kurz behandelt Ammon auch die Periode von 1918 bis 1921, in der Georgien erstmals seine Unabhängigkeit errang, bevor diese im Februar 1921 durch den Einmarsch der Roten Armee wieder zunichte gemacht wurde – weitgehend unbemerkt durch das restliche Europa, das mit den Folgen des vorangegangenen Weltkrieges beschäftigt war. Die darauffolgende Periode, in der Georgien über 70 Jahre als Bundessstaat Teil der Sowjetunion war, wird von Ammon nur gestreift. Viel Aufmerksamkeit widmet er den Beziehungen zwischen den beiden orthodoxen Kirchen.

Die Annexiuon durch Rußland von 1801 brachte für Georgien zunächst das übliche Schicksal eines unterworfenen Landes: Ausplünderung, Zwangsassimilierung und Niederschlagung von immer wieder aufflammenden Aufständen. Als schlimmste Demütigung, so bemerkt Ammon zutreffenderweise, empfanden die Georgier die Unterstellung ihrer orthodoxen Kirche unter die des Moskauer Patriarchats im Jahre 1811. Jedoch setzt Ammon denjenigen, die die russische Herrschaft allein als eine Leidensgeschichte fortdauernder Unterdrückung sehen wollen, eine differenziernde Betrachtungsweise entgegen. Die Bilanz ist ambivalent: in der Zeit bis 1914 erlebte Georgien eine Friedenszeit ohne die Verwüstungen, die es in den Jahrhunderten vorher durch eine endlose Folge an Invasionen durch fremde Eroberer erlitten hatte. Unter „befreundeten Bajonetten“, wie der Dichter Lermontov dies bezeichnete, erholte sich das Land allmählich. Es fand Anschluß an die Moderne durch den Bau von Infrastrukturen, durch die beginnende Umstellung einer archaischen Agrarwirtschaft auf eine industrielle Erschließung seiner Ressourcen, durch den Aufbau von Telekommunikationen, bei der die deutsche Firma Siemens entscheidend mitwirkte.

Wiederbelebt wurden nun auch die zuvor jahrhundertelang unterbrochenen Verbindungen zu Europa, und Rußland spielte bei der Vermittlung eine entscheidende Rolle. Es waren russische Universitäten, die die neuen georgischen Eliten ausbildeten. Die georgischen Studenten kamen von dort als „Westler“ zurück, hatten Kant und Hegel gelesen und traten bald auch für nationale Selbstbestimmung ihres Landes ein.

Auch nach 115 Jahren gemeinsamer Staatlichkeit blieben jedoch die Unterschiede in Kultur, Lebensgefühl und Mentalität zwischen beiden Ländern bestehen. Daß die russische Epoche heute überwiegend als eine traumatische Erfahrung wahrgenommen wird, ist eine Folge der anschließenden 70 Jahre unter sowjetkommunistischer Herrschaft, die am 9.4.1989 mit einem besonders brutalen Akt abschloss: einem Massaker sowjetischer Truppen an der georgischen Zivilbevölkerung.

Es wäre wünschenswert, wenn diese vergangene Geschichte der russisch-georgischen Beziehungen durch ein Kapitel über die Sowjetzeit und die Gegenwart seit der neuen georgischen Unabhängigkeit von 1991 ergänzt würde. Das Buch von Ammon ist jedenfalls ein verdienstvoller Anstoß. Heute werden die russisch-georgischen Beziehungen durch die Auseinandersetzung um die von Georgien abgefallenen und von Rußland unterstützten Separatstaaten Abchasien und Südossetien bestimmt. Eine einvernehmliche Regelung dieses Konflikts ist nicht in Sicht. Seit 2008 sind die bilateralen Beziehungen zwischen beiden Ländern abgebrochen. Die Wirkungen dieses Konflikts strahlen vielfältig zu uns in den Westen Europas aus. Auch dies macht Ammons Buch deutlich: ohne eine Normalisierung der georgisch-russischen Beziehungen wird die Region des Südkaukasus nicht zur Stabilität finden.

BÜCHERSCHAU von Urs Unkauf: Ammon, Philipp (2020): Georgien zwischen Eigenstaatlichkeit und russischer Okkupation. Klostermann-Verlag

Die Beziehungen zwischen Georgien und Russland sind heute überschattet. Einerseits kritisiert Georgien die Einmischung Russlands und dessen Aktivitäten in Abchasien und Südossetien. Andererseits sieht die russische Seite ihre traditionelle politische Einflusssphäre durch die Entscheidung Georgiens für den Weg in die euro-atlantische Integration gefährdet. Dass die Wurzeln dieser aktuellen Konflikte tiefer liegen, zeigt Philipp Ammon in seinem Buch. Ausgehend von der Frage „wie es zur Konfrontation zweier Völker kam, die keine tiefverwurzelte, gleichsam metaphysische Feindschaft“ (S. 9) trenne, stellt Ammon die georgische und russische Perspektiven gegeneinander. Dabei kommen politische, aber auch literarische Akteure zu Wort. Ammon beginnt mit der georgischen Geschichte. Er startet in der Antike und kommt dann im 18. Jahrhundert an. Konkret geht es um den 1783 geschlossenen Vertrag von Georgijewsk, in dem die georgischen Könige einem Bündnis mit dem Zaren beitraten. Dies hatte den Verlust der Souveränität über die außenpolitischen Kompetenzen zur Konsequenz. Es geht weiter mit der Annexion Georgiens durch das Zarenmanifest von 1801. Es folgen wechselseitige literarische Wahrnehmungen, die Entwicklung der georgischen Nationalbewegung und kirchliche Konflikte. Das letzte Kapitel nimmt den chronologischen Faden wieder auf. Es befasst sich mit der Zeit nach der Revolution von 1905 bis zur ersten georgischen Republik, die 1921 durch den Einmarsch der Roten Armee endete.

Die Beziehungen zwischen Georgien und Russland waren nach Ammon „ein Muster von Nähe und Fremdheit, von Verbundenheit und Abkehr, von russisch-imperialer Homogenisierung und georgischer Identitätsbehauptung“ (S. 212). Ammon legt die historischen Wurzeln dieses Spannungsgeflechtes frei. Ein lesenswertes Werk für alle, die Georgien besser verstehen wollen, und zugleich bereit sind, auch über Russland Neues zu lernen.

Urs Unkauf, Berlin Bücherschau WeltTrends • Das außenpolitische Journal • 161 • März 2020 • 28. Jahrgang • S. 66 Ammon, Philipp (2020): Georgien zwischen Eigenstaatlichkeit und russischer Okkupation. Klostermann-Verlag, 238 Seiten, 29,80 Euro.

welttrends.de

#GeorgianWine: Amber Revolution. How the World learnded to love #OrangeWine. By Simon J Woolf - Review by David Crossley [wideworldofwine.co]

Photo: Sarah May Grunwald

[wideworldofwine.co] Simon Woolf’s Amber Revolution fits firmly in that category, and has generated a massive amount of excitement already on social media since its publication a few weeks ago. A pic of its striking cover is almost as ubiquitous right now as a bottle of Ganevat (in this case it’s a good thing)

We often think of orange wines in connection with amphora, and specifically the Georgian qvevri, a clay vessel with a small aperture, traditionally buried in the ground, in which the wine more or less makes itself. What we should remember is that amber/orange wine is actually made in a range of containers, even including epoxy tanks and stainless steel.

Full text here ...

Amber Revolution – How the World Learned to Love Orange Wine is written by Simon J Woolf, with a Foreword by Les Caves’ Doug Wregg, who has probably imported significantly more different orange wines into the UK than anyone else has, or will. The book is published in The Netherlands by Morning Claret (www.themorningclaret.com) at €35/£30, and in the USA by Interlink Books, Northampton, Massachusetts ($35). I understand that wider UK and European distribution will be forthcoming within a couple of months, but contact Simon Woolf on the above link for sales enquiries in the meantime.
more:
twitter.com/simonjwoolf
www.themorningclaret.com/

BOOK: Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces. Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus. Edited by Tsypylma Darieva, Florian Mühlfried, & Kevin Tuite (berghahnbooks.com)

Source: berghahnbooks.com


Reviews
“This volume shares in a rich resurgence of writing on religious activity across the former Soviet Union and particularly in areas of the Caucasus, offering sharp insight into arguably one of the most popular religious traditions, shrine pilgrimage, about which we know surprisingly little. The editors have gathered the highly qualified scholars for the task, including a number of specialists from the Caucasus proper.” • Bruce Grant, New York University

Description
Though long-associated with violence, the Caucasus is a region rich with religious conviviality. Based on fresh ethnographies in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation, Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces discusses vanishing and emerging sacred places in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious post-Soviet Caucasus. In exploring the effects of de-secularization, growing institutional control over hybrid sacred sites, and attempts to review social boundaries between the religious and the secular, these essays give way to an emergent Caucasus viewed from the ground up: dynamic, continually remaking itself, within shifting and indefinite frontiers.

Tsypylma Darieva is a senior research fellow at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin and is teaching at Humboldt University Berlin. Her research and teaching interests include anthropology of migration, diaspora and homeland, urbanity, and sacred places in Central Eurasia. She has conducted fieldwork in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Germany. Darieva is the author of Russkij Berlin: Migranten und Medien in Berlin und London (LIT, 2004), co-editor of Cosmopolitan Sociability: Locating Transnational Religious and Diasporic Networks (Routledge, 2011), Urban Spaces after Socialism: Ethnographies of Public Places in Eurasian Cities (Campus, 2011) and of the forthcoming volume Sakralität und Mobilität in Südosteuropa und im Kaukasus.

Florian Mühlfried is a social anthropologist in the Caucasus Studies Program at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and a visiting professor at UNICAMP, Brazil. He has published the monograph Being a State and States of Being in Highland Georgia (Berghahn, 2014), a book on feasting in Georgia (ibidem, 2006), and edited the volume Mistrust: Ethnographic Approximations (Transcript, 2018).

Kevin Tuite is Professor of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. He also directed the Caucasus Studies Program at the FSU-Jena from 2011 to 2014. His publications include Language, Culture and Society: Key Topics in Linguistic Anthropology (co-edited with Christine Jourdan) (Cambridge, 2006).

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Tsypylma Darieva, Florian Mühlfried and Kevin Tuite

Chapter 1. Between ‘Great’ and ‘Little' Traditions? Situating Shia Saints in Contemporary Baku
Tsypylma Darieva

Chapter 2. Women as Bread-Bakers and Ritual-Makers: Gender, Visibility and Sacred Space in Upper Svaneti
Nino Tserediani, Kevin Tuite and Paata Bukhrashvili

Chapter 3. The Chain of Seven Pilgrimages in Kotaik, Armenia: Between Folk and Official Christianity
Levon Abrahamian, Zaruhi Hambardzumyan, Gayane Shagoyan and Gohar Stepanyan

Chapter 4. Sacred Sites in the Western Caucasus and the Black Sea Region: Typology, Hybridization, Functioning
Igor V. Kuznetsov

Chapter 5. The Power of the Shrine and Creative Performances in Ingiloy Sacred Rituals
Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne

Chapter 6. Accompanying the Souls of the Dead: The Transformation of Sacral Time and Encounters
Hege Toje

Chapter 7. Not Sharing the Sacra
Florian Mühlfried

Chapter 8. Informal Shrines and Social Transformations: The Murids as New Religious Mediators among Yezidis in Armenia
Hamlet Melkumyan

Chapter 9. Sharing the Not-Sacred: Rabati and Displays of Multiculturalism
Silvia Serrano

Index

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.

TRAILER: "Khibula" - Trailer a new film by George Ovashvili / ხიბულა თრეილერი [ hollywoodreporter.com ]

A new film by George Ovashvili "Khibula" (trailer) 2017. produced by Alamday (Georgia), 42Film (Germany), Arizona (France), ZDF/ARTE.

'Khibula': Film Review | Karlovy Vary 2017

Source: hollywoodreporter.com

Georgian director George Ovashvili, whose 'Corn Island' was shortlisted in the 2015 foreign-language Oscar race, tackles the last days of his country's first democratically elected president in his third feature.

The first democratically elected president of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, had a fascinating life. Starting as a scholar and human rights activist who helped usher in Georgia’s independence in the era of the Soviet glasnost, he in turn was accused of human rights abuses once he became the leader of a country with a population of which almost one-third consisted of minorities, barely represented at the legislative level. Additionally, he had to deal with pushback from not only the Russians but also two regions of the country, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, that claimed their independence from Georgia, which led to a civil war.

But viewers of Khibula, named after the village where Gamsakhurdia died in 1993 under still-mysterious circumstances and while technically still in office, will be hard-pressed to find much biographical information in George Ovashvili’s portrait of the man’s last days that’s not already in the film’s opening title cards. Poetic and elliptical, politically and psychologically often cryptic but ethnographically and geographically quite lovingly detailed, this is the kind of art house film for which a lot of patience is required and which offers modest — and some might argue ambiguous — rewards.

Nonetheless, there is no denying the filmmaking prowess of Ovashvili, whose previous, largely dialogue-free film, Corn Island, won the top prize at the Karlovy Vary fest in 2014 and which managed to make the shortlist for the foreign-language film Oscar later that year. Given the subject, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see his latest, which also premiered at Karlovy Vary, again submitted by Georgia as its contender, though the film might be at once too historically and culturally specific and too narratively oblique to achieve a similar level of success.

Ovashvili again wrote the film with Dutch playwright Roelof-Jan Minneboo, who co-wrote Corn Island and also worked on this year’s Azerbaijani Karlovy Vary entry, Pomegranate Orchard. Their narrative here is one that has been emptied of any kind of background information, is set entirely in the present — there are no flashbacks — and focuses on the president (Hossein Mahjoob), his prime minister (Kishvard Manvelishvili), their small entourage and some armed militia as they move through the mountains of the Caucasus, from refuge to refuge. A military coup and a Civil War has made them fugitives in their own country and they hope to regroup and re-establish themselves as the democratically elected leaders that they are. An early scene illustrates the absurdity of the situation, as one of Gamsakhurdia’s men asks whether a mountain lodge will take guests for the night and the president then walks into the building and past a reception desk that still has his portrait hanging on the wall behind it.

It is through small moments such as these that Ovashvili hints at the much larger picture, and people well-versed in Georgia’s recent political history will be able to pick up on all such references. For neophytes, however, it is harder to dig into the substrata of allusions to the immediately preceding events and the socio-political situation portrayed. And even so, some matters, such as Gamsakhurdia’s well-documented spiritual side, never some quite seem to break the surface, which seems odd in a film that uses the name of the place of his demise as its title, turning the film itself into a slow but sure march to a death foretold.

Interestingly, the director cast Iranian actor Mahjoob (The Color of Paradise), who has the appropriate patrician bearing, in the lead, rather than an actual Georgian. This should help local audiences see their own president as a clear outsider, even though he seems to be revered or at least respected whenever he runs into unsuspecting locals as they keep moving through the mountains, hoping to avoid being caught by the men of the junta. Throughout, Gamsakhurdia is a regal but also very stoic presence without any precise idea on how to recapture the country. It’s clear he doesn’t want to abandon his people again — he already fled the country once before — but there are virtually no discussions of a possible military or diplomatic plan that could help the delegation achieve its goal.

The film doesn’t seem to want to judge the president — and there's only a brief mention of his supposed human-rights abuses — but this has the unfortunate result of leaving the reasons behind his inaction open to interpretation. Is he being foolhardy and delusional, hoping that he’ll somehow magically come back to power again as long as the new rulers don’t catch him first, or is he simply resigned to his fate and putting on a brave poker face for those close to him who haven’t given up hope? “Fate makes plans, we just follow them,” he says toward the end, when he is handed a gun (he was later killed by a single gunshot). If the main idea behind Khibula was to illustrate this maxim, then Ovashvili succeeded, though audiences might have to do a little work themselves to figure out that he did.

The director knows how to make the most of his modest, $1.7 million budget, especially through his cunning use of offscreen space. The president’s handful of men are thus all gathered in a claustrophobic log cabin when they hear — but we never see — helicopters overhead, suggesting the enemy is closing in on them and they might be trapped. Similarly, a breathtakingly staged nighttime sequence sees them chasing away howling wolves by swinging ropes over their head that have been lit on fire at one end. It’s a striking image that was created very economically, as not a single wolf comes out of the shadows and Ovashvili again relies purely on sound to suggest that unseen enemies are near. The spectral presence of these threats also work on a thematic level, as Zviad seems to be haunted by opponents that he can't even see. The latter sequence also teases out one of the film’s underlying ideas, which is that both humans and nature can be fickle; they can protect or help you but also become your worst enemy. In this sense, Ovashvili's film is as much a meditation on the nature of power and man's place in the universe as it is the specific story of the country's first post-Soviet president.

For roughly the first half, Ovashvili and his cinematographer, regular Tornatore collaborator Enrico Lucidi, approach their subject in a stately yet almost documentary manner. We get to see the gorgeous mountain landscapes, the faces of the people and the hardships of the small group having to constantly navigate difficult terrain in a dignified manner. Gamsakhurdia is always impeccably and presidentially dressed, even when he’s helping to push a vehicle stuck in the mud that’s threatening to tumble off a cliff in one nail-bitingly shot sequence. There is no music to accompany them except for the traditional, deep-throated Georgian songs the men like to sing occasionally.

As their trek continues and becomes more exhausting — the story seems partially monotonous by design, which won't fly with all art house patrons — the director gradually introduces the film’s score, courtesy of Israeli-Georgian composer Joseph Bardanashvili (he also wrote the music for Corn Island and titles such as Late Wedding). The first piece of non-diegetic music appears some 50 minutes in and comes in the form of a flute-heavy passage that accompanies the sighting of a deer in the forest, lending the moment an almost otherworldly air. Was this a presidential epiphany in hindsight? For non-experts it might be hard to say, but what’s certain is that Ovashvili has accumulated an impressive command of all the elements in his cinematic toolbox over the course of just three feature films.

Production companies: Alamdary, 42film, Arizona Productions
Cast: Hossein Mahjoob, Kishvard Manvelishvili, Nodar Dzidziguri, Zurab Antelava
Director: George Ovashvili
Screenplay: George Ovashvili, Roelof-Jan Minneboo
Producers: George Ovashvili, Eike Goreczka, Christoph Kukula, Guillaume de Seille
Director of photography: Enrico Lucidi
Production designer: Teona Kavelashvili
Editor: Sun-Min Kim
Music: Joseph Bardanashvili
Sales: Pluto Film Distribution Network

In Georgian
98 minutes

REZENSION: Nino Haratischwilis „Das achte Leben (Für Brilka)“ – Über die Unausweichlichkeit dieser beispielhaften Leben. Von Bernd Schneid (medienobservationen.lmu.de)

(medienobservationen.lmu.de) Diesen Herbst wird die deutsche Literaturlandschaft endlich um einen großen neuen Roman reicher. Reich nicht nur ob sein es Umfangs von fast 1300 Seiten, sondern reich auf Grund seiner 107 Jahre umfassenden erzählten Zeit, die einen anderen Blickwinkel auf da s vermeintlich bekannte 20. Jahrhundert liefert. Einen Blickwinkel auf das Jahrhundert der ehemaligen Sowjetunion und auf den Verfall der georgischen Familie Jaschi, auf ihre Schicksale, ihre Lieben, Geburten, Tode und ihre fluchbehafteten Schokoladengeheimnisse.

Ein achtes Leben? Keine einfache 8, auch nicht die 9 Leben einer Katze können diesen Roman zusammenfassen, sondern ∞ wie unendlich. So beginnt der Roman und so schließt sich auch der Kreis oder besser das Möbiusband, das diesen grandiosen Roman umfasst. Zentrum der Jahrhunderterzählung ist die georgische Familie Jaschi aus Tbilissi in der auch die Autorin Nino Haratischwili 1983 geboren wurde und die neben ihrer Arbeit als Theaterregisseurin und Dramatikerin bisher die beiden Romane "Juja" und "Mein sanfter Zwilling" veröffentlicht hat.

"Das achte Leben (Für Brilka)" ist zweifelsohne ein literarischer Durchbruch. Es sind die acht Leben der familiär sich forterzählenden ProtagonistInnen des Romans, die den Schrecklichkeiten des 20. Jahrhunderts im "sowjetischen" Umfeld zu trotzen versuchen: Stasia, Christine, Kostja, Kitty, Elene, Daria, Niza und zu guter Letzt Brilka (die auch eigentlich Anastasia heißt, den Bezug zur Urgroßmutter mit demselben Namen herstellt und so einen Bogen von 1900 bis über 2000 spannt).

Parallel wird von Niza (der Erzählerin, die Historikerin ist) dann auch noch die Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts sehr versiert zusammengefasst. Das ist sowohl die Geschichte der ehemaligen Sowjetunion, als auch letztlich die der europäischen und internationalen Geschichte, die unausweichlich miteinander verknüpft sind, mit ihren Weltkriegen, dem Kalten Krieg, über die Perestroika und so weiter.

Die komplex verwobenen Paargeschichten um Stasia und Simon, Christine und Rabas, Gula und Andro, Kostja und Kitty, Kitty und Fred, Kitty und Giorgi und all den folgenden sind beeindruckend angeordnet und spiegeln eine lange literarische Tradition. Nicht von ungefähr kann man ein paar bekannte Namen aus der Weltliteratur finden, wie die bereits erwähnte Anastasia oder Daria und Kitty, die man aus Tolstois "Anna Karenina" kennt oder in anderer Form und Tradition bei Flauberts Emma Bovary und Fontanes Effi Briest findet, deren ProtagonistInnen in „Das achte Leben (Für Brilka)“ mit einer aktualisierten Durchschlagkraft auferstehen.

Doch in Haratischwilis Romanepos geht es nicht allein um Gefühl und Verführung, um das Anna-Karenina-Prinzip der glücklichen oder unglücklichen Familien, das ja Nabokov in seinem Roman "Ada, oder Das Verlangen" schon kongenial anders interpretiert und übersetzt hat, um das Prinzip jener Familien, die sich gleichen oder unterscheiden; nein, es geht nicht nur um Ehen und Ehebrüche, um Züge, Kutschen und Duelle, Grafen und weite Felder, wie das in vielen Kolportagen serialisiert wurde. Im „achten Leben“ geht es um diese Metaphern und Motive als die existentiellen Themen eben dieser Weltliteratur, aktualisiert für das 20. Jahrhundert.

Es scheint fast so, als ob die Weltkriege nie geendet haben und sich stattdessen immer wieder fortpflanzten. All die in der Erzählung gewählten Orte wie Klassenzimmer oder Druckereien werden im Roman umfunktioniert zu schrecklichen Heterotopien mit Folter und Vergewaltigungen, einem totalitären Staat und nie zu tilgender Schuld. Die Orte verlieren ihre ursprüngliche Bedeutung und werden zum Trauma der jeweiligen Verhältnisse. Edith Piafs "La Foule" liefert der Erzählerin Niza in einer ihrer schwersten Stunden einen besonders bitteren Soundtrack, der einem den Hals zuschnürt.

Doch eines zeigt Haratischwilis Romanepos neben all dem Grauen: dass die ProtagonistInnen immer Sinn und Hoffnung aufrechterhalten, auch wenn es manchmal kaum möglich ist, einen unbedingten Lebenswillen und eine Hingabe an das Leben. Das dicht konstruierte Handlungsgefüge verwendet hierfür ebenfalls eine aktualisierte Tradition des magischen Realismus, wie ihn z.B. schon Bulgakow in "Der Meister und Margarita" vertreten hat. Ob Schicksal, Faktum oder Magie, die individuell-kollektiven ProtagonistInnen sind in eine historische Differenz eingeschrieben, für die jegliche Deterritorialisierung unmöglich ist und für die es keine staatliche Sicherheit mehr geben kann.

„Das achte Leben (Für Brilka)“ verdient Raum, um all die Verwebungen zu analysieren, die Haratischwili herstellt. In Motiven und Symbolen wird die Geschichte der Sowjetunion, mit Georgien, Tbilissi und den Kleinen großen Männern oder Diktatoren, verknüpft. Das Rezept für eine besondere und „magische“ Schokolade stellt sich gegenüber die als Intertexte fungierenden Zitate von Anna Achmatowa bis David Bowie. Auch ein epischer Witz aus Dantes Inferno reflektiert mit dem Figurenpersonal aus all den Schwestern, Brüdern, Männern, Frauen, Kindern, Gespenstern und dem unendlichen Meer zwischen Himmel und Chaos, den ewigen Kreislauf zwischen Schöpfung und Zerstörung.

Wenn man also bemäkeln wollte, dass es unrealistisch sei, dass sich die Figuren immer wieder treffen, dass es artifiziell konstruiert erscheint, dass gerade die und der schließlich zueinander finden und der und die aneinander zerbrechen, ob hier, ob dort: es ist nicht zufällig. Nein, die spannende Struktur des Romans macht diesen familiären Stamm notwendig. Die Familie Jaschi ist das Gewebe dieses Teppichs. Ihre über fünf Generationen und acht Schicksale ausgebreitete Geschichte ist eben nicht wahllos, sondern ergibt am Ende eine spezielle und doch allgemeine Chronik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ob in Tbilisi, Moskau, Berlin oder Paris, die Charaktere – allen voran die im Westen als Protests ängerin erfolgreiche Kitty – liefern einen individuell-kollektiven Spiegel der Geschichte.

In „Das achte Leben (Für Brilka)“ entfaltet sich kein purer sozialer Realismus, sondern eine magische Realismus-Möglichkeit, die unabdingbar mit der Erzählerin Niza verbunden ist, die bis hin zur Urgroßmutter Anastasia zurückblickt und die unbeugsame Realität der Zeit, der Gesellschaft und ihrer ProtagonistInn en zeigt. Das süße Zauberrezept des Schokoladenfabrikanten und Ururgroßvaters von Niza ist das magische Serum, das gar nicht anders kann, als ein letztes Geheimnis aufzubewahren. Was aber ist das Geheimnis dieses süßen Familienfluchs? Gibt es den überhaupt? Sollte er bewahrt werden? Darauf gibt die Erzählung letzten Endes die einzig mögliche Antwort. Denn Adressatin dieses Epos ist für Niza die 13-jährige Nichte Brilka, die als Endpunkt dieser besonderen und dennoch beispielhaften Figuren das gegenwärtigste Leben im Gefüge dieser fluchbeladenen Familie repräsentiert. Wenn Niza am Ende diesen roten Schokoladenfaden endlich kappt, schließt sich der Kreis erst wirklich.

Die Literatur steht hier am Umschlagpunkt zur Geschichte, die Literatur und der unendliche Wunsch zu erzählen, die Wahrhaftigkeit auszusprechen, das Schweigen zu durchbrechen und immer wieder die ursprüngliche Liebesbeziehung jede r Botschaft als transsubstantiellen Akt zu zeigen. Denn nicht immer – oder sogar nie – steckt tatsächlich ein Familienfluch hinter einer geheimen Schokoladenmischung, sondern es ist die Unausweichlichkeit von Hippolyte Taines Diktum temps, race, milieu, dem die ProtagonistInnen ausgesetzt sind. Dagegen hilft tat sächlich nur das unendliche Weitererzählen, ein bisschen Magie und die Sendung von Liebesbotschaften, die Kitty persönlich in ihren Liedern verpackt und um die ganze Welt schickt.

Die literarischste Metaphorik zeigt der Roman in diesem Sinne mit dem Teppich und seiner Herstellung. Man muss sich die ProtagonistInnen als Teppichwirkerinnen vorstellen, ständig am familiären Text webend, die das Geflecht, das diese beispielhaften Leben miteinander verknüpft, anordnen, in eine Ordnung bringen, die wahrhaftig ist, erotisch, grausam, rührselig, ohnmächtig, mächtig, aber auch komisch und zärtlich. Allezeit jedoch ist die Erzählung von einer tiefen Ehrlichkeit durchzogen, die gegen das Schweigen der Macht anschreibt und eine Notwendigkeit des immerwährenden Versuchs des Erzählens deutlich macht. Nicht allein für Niza wird das notwendig, die in ihrer Funktion als direkte Erzählerin des Romans fungiert, sondern auch im Hinblick auf die vielleicht zukünftige Erzählerin Brilka, für die Ni za die Familienchronik niederschreibt. Brilkas Roman jedoch bleibt ungeschrieben, muss noch geschrieben werden, wie de r Erzähler in Dostojewskis Roman "Die Brüder Karamasov" das schon mit Aljoscha angedeutet hat. Denn auch Niza kann die Unendlichkeit dieser Erzählungen nicht allein tragen. Aber sie kann Verantwortung übernehmen. Für ihre Nichte. Und das tut sie mit ihrer Erzählung. Sie durchbricht das Schweigen.

Leben ist im „achten Leben“ Erzählen, unendliches Erzählen, wie in Tausendundeiner Nacht, gegen den Tod, gegen die Gra uen des 20. Jahrhunderts, ob in der Gefangenschaft von Sultanen oder einem gewissen Generalissimus (wie Stalin hier nur genannt wird). Die Geschichten sind Teppiche und Schichten aus Geschichten, die Ebene um Ebene verwoben sind, Faden um Faden verknüpfen, abschneiden und wieder neu aufnehmen. Haratischwilis Romanepos zeigt die Unausweichlichkeit dieser beispielhaften Leben. Es liegt nicht alles in der Hand der Figuren. Schreckliche Dinge passieren.Die Zukunft bleibt in einem gewissen Nebel. Es kann jedenfalls kein einfaches Happy End geben. Das Erzählen muss weitergehen.

Kurzum, Nino Haratischwili hat mit „Das achte Leben (FürBrilka)“ einen existentiellen und historisch bedeutsamen Gesellschafts- und Familienroman der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur geschrieben, der noch lange nachhallen wird. Die deutsche Literatur wird mit diesem Roman durch eine unerwartete deutsch-georgische Verbindung und Freundschaft bereichert. Und letzten Endes geht es in diesem Gefüge um nichts anderes als um eine Leerstelle, das titelgebende ac hte Buch als achtes Leben von Brilka, das noch nicht geschrieben ist. Es bleibt der Wunsch nach einem Zustand der Geschichte im Werden.

Und letzten Endes geht es in diesem Gefüge um nichts anderes als um den Wunsch nach dem, was Don DeLillo ans Ende seines großen Romanepos Unterwelt als letztes Wort stellt: ...

+++

Blog von Bernd Schneid: ecrinautik.blog.de
phil. Bernd Schneid, born in 1978. 1995 Education as an machining mechanic. 2004 Study in German Literature, Theatre Studies and American Literature in Munich. 2009 completion as Master of Arts. Then doctorate to spring 2012 in Literature and Media Studies. Since 2013 Assistant to the Board for an Association for Psychotherapists and freelance Author.
Focus: phenomenology, psychoanalysis, poststrukturalism, deconstruction, media theories, theatre, film, television and epicity.
Books about Shakespeare and the return of the epic in Quality-TV exemplified on The Sopranos and Lost.

PDF: medienobservationen.lmu.de/pdf

twitter: twitter.com/Ecrinautik

BOOK-REVIEW: A Tangled Path to Europe. Written by Dustin Gilbreath (neweasterneurope.eu)

(neweasterneurope.eu) Review of Bittersweet Europe. Albanian and Georgian Discourses on Europe, 1878-2008. By: Adrian Brisku. Publisher: Berghahn Books, August 2013.

Since independence, Georgia has been on what has often looked like a quixotic quest towards joining the EU. Multiple wars, a resurgent Russia, breakaway territories and a consistently difficult economic situation which has gone through hyper-inflation and has had consistently high unemployment and underemployment over the last 25 years must, at the minimum, make prospects for EU integration seem distant at best to many in Brussels. Yet, with the recent signingof the Association Agreement with the European Union on June 27th 2014, Georgia is closer to its European dreams than ever. Remembering that the EuroMaiden protests, which were the match to the powder keg igniting the Ukraine Crisis, were set off by former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s failure to sign an association agreement that would have brought Ukraine closer to Europe and considering the historical ambivalence among elites in Albania and Georgia towards Europe over the course of the last 130 years, there could not be a more important time for academics, policymakers and journalists working on the Eurasian region to read Adrian Brisku’s Bittersweet Europe.

Brisku skillfully disentangles the often competing webs of discourse on Europe coming out of Georgia over the past 130 years. The book simultaneously decentres Caucasus watchers’ purview through placing Georgian discourse on Europe in a comparative perspective with Albania’s conversations on Europe over the same period. Furthermore, by implanting the conversation in broader pan-European historical frames, the author provides valuable insight into how Georgia’s relationship to Europe has been conditioned historically.

Since the Russian imperial period, discourse on Europe has been mixed, but one of the most important points of contention in Georgia has been whether the country would “look West” on its own or look north to Russia in order to look West to what Brisku describes as the “triadic Europe.” The triadic Europe which Brisku refers to is Europe “as geopolitically important; as a torchbearer of progress; and as the symbol of civilisation and high culture”. This distinction is valuable in that it lends an understanding to the often confounding claims of Europeanness from Georgian elites due to its ambiguous geographical location on the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the sometimes questionable reasoning behind such claims by providing the polysemous meaning of Europe in Georgia.

In diametric contrast to nationalist leaders today, the Georgian “Father of the Nation” and canonized Saint in the Georgian Orthodox Church, Ilia Chavchavadze, believed that Georgia should and would move towards Europe, but through its relationship with Russia, as Georgia was a part of the Tsarist Empire at the time. In opposition to this, Noe Zhordania, another aristocrat but one who had studied in France during his first term in exile from Georgia, developing an inclination towards French Socialism in the process, and the eventual first and only president of the independent, Menshevik, Georgian Republic of 1918-1921, thought that Georgia’s relationship to Europe should not be mediated through the Russian space. The contentions surrounding Europe and Georgia as a part of Europe would not end here though.

With the First World War and the Bolshevik takeover of Georgia, the discourse shifted. As the socialist state was supposed to be the vanguard of progressivism in the world, Georgia, as part of the Soviet Union, was meant to be in a position to help the working classes of Europe towards the progress represented by socialism. Much like how Karl Marx had flipped Georg W.F. Hegel on his head in philosophy, who and what represented progress had been spun around in the Georgian discourse.

Georgia has had a pro-European policy since independence, with short exceptions, and Brisku traces this shift back to the 1975 signing of the Helsinki Accords. In Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, through co-founding the Georgian Helsinki Group, began the discursive shift towards relations with Europe directly instead of through the mediation of the Soviet state. In doing so, he set the stage for changes to come. From this point onward, with one exception, and especially after independence, a pro-European discourse emanated from Georgia.

In a strange twist of irony, the exception to Georgia’s pro-EU discourse came from the same person who re-ignited it, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. This though, was not the dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia which founded the Helsinki Group in Tbilisi nor the man who led the anti-Soviet movement in Georgia to the Soviet Union’s collapse, but the Zviad Gamsakhurdia who was elected the first head of state of Georgia after independence. His rule was characterised by strong nationalist tendencies which alienated the country’s ethnic minorities leading to the de facto loss of control of South Ossetia for Georgia. From human rights advocate and dissident to human rights violator, Zviad Gamsakhurdia in his turn moved away from Europe due to European criticism of his human rights abuses.

The persistent question which has dominated and lay beneath the surface of the discourses on Europe in both Georgia and Albania is “Are we European?” From this underlying question, Brisku highlights the ethnocentric euro-centrism that emerged in both contexts from anxieties and insecurities and the overcompensation resulting from this question. In both contexts, prominent thinkers and politicians ended up emphasising the countries’ ancient histories and numerous invasions in order to justify their Europeanness in contrast to cultural and confessional differences compared to predominant conceptions of what it conventionally meant to be European. Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s third post-Soviet elected head of state stated in European Parliament that"since the time when Prometheus was chained to our mountains and the Argonauts came to our country in search of the Golden Fleece ... we are an ancient European nation." Hyperbole not intended. 

Further contributing to these anxieties and adding to the reader’s understanding of how they emerged, the book tracks how European powers have interacted with the two countries historically. Being small countries, the feeling that interaction, and more importantly the frequent lack thereof, was based on Europe’s interests have contributed to anxieties in both nations.

The book concludes that the political and intellectual elite in Georgia and Albania have historically been “ambivalent” about their relationship to Europe. Today, in Georgia, we can see this ambivalence quite strongly. When it comes to policy, Georgian support for closer ties to the EU is unquestionable. The ruling Georgian Dream Coalition and the opposition United National Movement disagree on what seems to be just about everything, but the one thing that neither side has wavered from is their dedication to further Euro-Atlantic integration. Moreover, according to the study, “Knowledge and Attitudes towards the EU in Georgia: Changes and Trends 2009 – 2013” conducted by CRRC-Georgia for the Eurasia Partnership Foundation in 2013, 83 per cent of Georgians reported that they would vote to join the EU tomorrow if a referendum were to be held, with support consistently near these levels in recent years. At the popular and elite level, support for closer integration with Europe is clear.

Despite this clear policy direction, opposition to the recently passed anti-discrimination law, which was required for the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU, highlights that many Georgians still oppose or potentially misunderstand some features commonly associated with Europe, specifically the defence of sexual minority rights. Controversy surrounded the bill as a number of priests claimed that the bill would lead to the legalisation of gay marriage in Georgia (it wouldn’t and hasn’t), something the population of the country would largely be against. Moreover, the passing of the law at certain times was opposed by the Patriarch Illia II of the Georgian Orthodox Church, who is widely considered to be the most trusted person in Georgia. In this way, aspects of the cultural Europe, which Brisku identifies early on, are those which many Georgians today are still ambivalent about.

Overall, Bittersweet Europe offers a masterful juxtaposition of Georgian and Albanian discourses towards Europe in addition to the accompanying insecurities over Europe and Europeanness in both countries. This in conjunction to the decentring effect gained through the added context leads the reader to a better understanding of Georgia’s history and relationship to Europe - something needed now more than ever.

Dustin Gilbreath is a research consultant at CRRC-Georgia.

REVIEW: ETHNOGRAPHIES OF ABSENCE IN CONTEMPORARY GEORGIA (slavicreview.illinois.edu)

(slavicreview.illinois.edu) Elizabeth Cullen Dunn and Martin Demant Frederiksen, Special Section Guest Editors
Introduction
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn and Martin Demant Frederiksen 241

Void Pasts and Marginal Presents: On Nostalgia and Obsolete Futures in the Republic of Georgia
Katrine Bendtsen Gotfredsen 246

Once Upon a Time, There Was Sex in Georgia
Paul Manning 265

Humanitarianism, Displacement, and the Politics of Nothing in Postwar Georgia
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn 287

The Would-Be State: Reforms, NGOs, and Absent Presents in Postrevolutionary Georgia
Martin Demant Frederiksen 307

ARTICLES

Christian Hajjis-the Other Orthodox Pilgrims to Jerusalem
Valentina Izmirlieva 322

Reconstructing the Meaning of Being “Montenegrin”
Jelena Džankić 307

FEATURED REVIEWS

David Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Wilno (Theodore R. Weeks) 372

Keith Brown, Loyal unto Death: Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia (Isa Blumi) 375

Derek Sayer, Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Thomas Ort) 378

Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, eds., Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Mark von Hagen) 381

Katherine Lebow, Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949-56 (Anthony Kemp-Welch) 384

Diane P. Koenker, Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream (Polly Jones) 387

BOOK REVIEWS

Pauline Fairclough, ed., Twentieth-Century Music and Politics: Essays in Memory of Neil Edmunds (Linda Edmondson) 391

Albert Kaganovitch, The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa: A Community in Belarus, 1526-2000 (Eugene M. Avrutin) 392

Walter Richmond, The Circassian Genocide (Sufian Zhemukhov) 393

Benjamin C. Fortna, Stefanos Katsikas, Dimitris Kamouzis, and Paraskevas Konortas, eds., State-Nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Turkey: Orthodox and Muslims, 1830-1945 (Evguenia Davidova) 395

Olga Litvak, Haskalah: The Romantic Movement in Judaism (Israel Bartal) 396

Marcin Wodziński, Hasidism and Politics: The Kingdom of Poland, 1815-1864 (Gershon Bacon) 398

Joshua M. Karlip, The Tragedy of a Generation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe (Barry Trachtenberg) 399

Karen Auerbach, The House at Ujazdowskie 16: Jewish Families in Warsaw after the Holocaust (Antony Polonsky) 401

Marinia Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff, and Dieter Langewiesche, eds., Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War: Goals, Expectations, Practices (Nancy M. Wingfield) 402

James Mace Ward, Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia (Melissa Feinberg) 404

Olaf Leiße, Martin Roth, and Christian Gesellmann, eds., Die Republik Kosovo-Der jüngste Staat Europas: Eine politische Bestandsaufnahme seit der Unabhängigkeitserklärung (Sabrina P. Ramet) 405

Anna Moskal, Im Spannungsfeld von Region und Nation: Die Polonisierung der Stadt Posen nach 1918 und 1945 (Winson Chu) 406

Cathleen M. Guistino, Catherine J. Plum, and Alexander Vari, eds., Socialist Escapes: Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 (Scott Moranda) 408

Charles King, Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams (Rebecca Stanton) 409

Alex Drace-Francis, The Traditions of Invention: Romanian Ethnic and Social Stereotypes in Historical Context   (Keith Hitchins) 411

Mark Thompson, Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kiš (David A. Norris) 412

Catherine Portuges and Peter Hames, eds., Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 (Gordana P. Crnković) 413

Ewa Stańczyk, Contact Zone Identities in the Poetry of Jerzy Harasymowicz: A Postcolonial Analysis (Charles S. Kraszewski) 415

Katka Reszke, Return of the Jew: Identity Narratives of the Third Post-Holocaust Generations of Jews in Poland (Genevieve Zubrzycki) 417

Jesse Paul Lehrke, The Transition to National Armies in the Former Soviet Republics, 1988-2005 (Dmitry Gorenburg) 418

Richard Connolly, The Economic Sources of Social Order Development in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe (Béla Greskovits) 419

János Mátyás Kovács and Violetta Zentai, eds., Capitalism from Outside? Economic Cultures in Eastern Europe after 1989 (Ivan T. Berend) 421

Marlene Laruelle and Sebastien Peyrouse, Globalizing Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Challenges of Economic Development (Emilian Kavalski) 422

N. N. Pokrovskii and G. D. Lenkhoff [Gail D. Lenhoff], eds., Stepennaia kniga tsarskogo rodosloviia po drevneishim spiskam: Teksty i kommentarii, 3 vols. Vol. 3, Commentary, G. D. Lenkhoff (David K. Prestel) 424

Alanna E. Cooper, Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism (Albert Kaganovitch) 425

Anna Kuxhausen, From the Womb to the Body Politic: Raising the Nation in Enlightenment Russia (Katherine Pickering Antonova) 426

A. S. Tumanova, ed., Samoorganizatsiia rossiiskoi obshchestvennosti v poslednei treti XVIII-nachale XX v. (Lynn M. Sargeant) 428

Ol’ga Malinova-Tziafeta, Iz goroda na dachu: Sotsiokul’turnye faktory osvoeniia dachnogo prostranstva vokrug Peterburga (1860-1914) (Natalia Baschmakoff) 429

Catherine Wanner, ed., State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine (Roy R. Robson) 431

Annie Epelboin and Assia Kovriguina, La littérature des ravins: Écrire sur la Shoah en URSS (Leona Toker) 433

Gary Rosenshield, Challenging the Bard: Dostoevsky and Pushkin, a Study of Literary Relationship (Ian Helfant) 434

Boris Dralyuk, Western Crime Fiction Goes East: The Russian Pinkerton Craze 1907-1934 (Elena Baraban) 435

Greta N. Slobin, Russians Abroad: Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora (1919-1939), ed. Katerina Clark, Nancy Condee, Dan Slobin, and Mark Slobin (Adrian Wanner) 436

Lidiia Ginzburg, Prokhodiashchie kharaktery: Proza voennykh let; Zapiski blokadnogo cheloveka, ed. Emily Van Buskirk and Andrei Zorin; Emily Van Buskirk and Andrei Zorin, eds., Lydia Ginzburg’s Alternative Literary Identities: A Collection of Articles and New Translations (Evgenii Bershtein) 438

Simon Morrison, Lina and Serge: The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev (Neil Minturn) 440

Stephen M. Norris, Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, and Patriotism (Anna Lawton) 442

Carol Apollonio and Angela Brintlinger, eds., Chekhov for the 21st Century (Andrew R. Durkin) 443

Brian Donahoe and Joachim Otto Habeck, eds., Reconstructing the House of Culture: Community, Self, and the Makings of Culture in Russia and Beyond (Melissa L. Caldwell) 445

Denis Kozlov, The Readers of Novyi Mir: Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past (Donald J. Raleigh) 446

COLLECTED ESSAYS 448
OTHER BOOKS OF INTEREST 451
LETTERS 453
IN MEMORIAM 455