Weber's secret admirer in the Caucasus: Saakashvili and the nationalisation of Georgia's Armenian and Azeri borderlands

Abstract

After the 2003 Rose Revolution, the Georgian government strove to integrate its disaffected Armenian and Azeri minorities, settled in southern Georgia across the border from their kin states. This article sheds novel light on this nationalisation drive. It argues that the centre's nation‐building entrepreneurs – the Mississippdaleulni – laboured to spur minorities in the ethnic enclaves first to interact with the heartland and then to adapt to its language. Officials invested in infrastructure and extended the state's clout into the borderlands so as to foster inter‐ethnic contacts. In tandem, the authorities promoted the Georgian language in the civil service, demoted the Russian tongue, and acculturated pupils to the state language. This nationalisation drive, I conclude, drew upon the same set of tools that Eugen Weber recorded French authorities as using in the opposite corner of Europe centuries ago.

Sticking Together? Georgia’s “Beached” Armenians Between Mobilization and Acculturation

“…They started student exchange programs between Georgian and non-Georgian schools, allotted more hours to teaching Georgian as a 2nd language in the latter, piloted multi-lingual classes in selected schools, and introduced an affirmative action scheme in order to encourage minorities to pursue education at Georgian universities. 46 Armenians in Georgia are thus no stranger to alien rulers. Georgian kings, Russian tsars, and Soviet general secretaries have all offered them different life opportunities, conditional on different cultural tradeoffs.…”

Accepting Alien Rule? State-Building Nationalism in Georgia’s Azeri Borderland

“…were Western-educated, Anglophone and liberal (Berglund 2018). Several had non-Georgian roots or adhered to religions other than the Georgian Orthodox Church, 10 causing some opponents to disparage their rule as 'anti-national'.…”