“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

Abstract

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n = 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.

Untitled

“…For Georgians, security is linked to integration and multicultural ideology, but not to ethnic tolerance. It might be a result of previous territorial conflicts that aggravated the sense of threat from ethnic minorities among Georgians, as well as nationalist rhetoric that existed in the country for a long time (Berglund, 2016;Sabanadze, 2011;Ulasiuk, 2013), which affected the lower level of ethnic tolerance in comparison with Russians. Their fears are related to the integrity of the country which has been disrupted by ethnically-related conflicts.…”

“…Before the collapse of the USSR, Georgia was one of the most multiethnic regions of the South Caucasus. However, even at the time when Georgia was a part of the USSR, the popular primordial doctrines expressed in the slogan "Georgia for Georgians" prevailed among Georgian intellectuals, which led to the growing movement in support of the independence of the Republic in the late 1980s (Berglund, 2016). Therefore, after the declaration of Georgia's independence in 1991, ethnic minorities found themselves in a country "ruled by and for ethnic Georgians" (Ibid, p. 2) that in turn led to changes in self-determination among ethnic minorities members.…”

Trauma och kollektiva minnen i Georgiens utrikespolitik

“…Saakasjvili betonade att strategin byggde på att ökad georgisk ekonomisk tillväxt skulle attrahera utbrytarrepublikerna, men att en stark militär också var nödvändig. Saakasjviliregeringen gjorde även ansträngningar för att inkludera landets minoriteter (Berglund, 2016). Denna mjuka strategi varierades emellertid med hårdför retorik och kontroversiella metoder när den förstnämnda strategin inte gav resultat (De Waal, 2019;Jones, 2013;Toal, 2017).…”

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

“…During the Soviet period, Russian was the de facto lingua franca between most ethnic groups in the region, and there was little incentive for ethnic minorities to learn Georgian. Following independence from the Soviet Union, and during the past decade in particular, the Georgian government undertook efforts to increase proficiency in the state language among ethnic minorities with some success (Berglund, 2016). Nevertheless, Georgian fluency remains low among the Armenian and Azerbaijani populations in Georgia, and these groups primarily speak their respective heritage languages (i.e., Armenian and Azerbaijani) at home and many still receive primary schooling in these languages (Driscoll, Berglund, & Blauvelt, 2016).…”