Projects and Events on "Rethinking the Soviet Past"

In 1989, a wave of revolutions swept the Eastern Bloc in Europe. The reform movement that ended communism in East Central Europe began in Poland. Solidarity, an anti-Communist trade union and social movement, had forced Poland’s Communist government to recognize it in the 1980s through a wave of strikes that gained international attention.

My research focused on the protest rallies that took place on April 9, 1989. Today in Georgia, on the 30th anniversary of the 9th of April, many associate this day with the restoration of Georgia’s independence. In fact, it is undeniable that the sequence of the events that transpired that day, coupled with all the other circumstances unfolding in 1989, created the preconditions for the restoration of Georgia’s independence.

This paper discusses the structural and ideological transformations of the Communist party’s official newspaper Soviet Armenia and follows a case-study approach based on the oral history interview.

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(ongoing porject) In 2018-2020 the goal of the cooperation between hbs South Caucasus and Soviet Past Research Laboratory is to strengthen SOVLAB institutionally and support sustainable development of educational and research resources that are focused on the critical rethinking of the Soviet period.

On November 8, 2017,  hbs South Caucasus organized public discussion After the Empire: Russia’s Revolutions of 1917 and the political project of Georgia.

In the twilight years of the 19th century, the Georgian people were faced with a number of challenges. Although the abolition of feudalism had liberated the peasantry, they had not been given land and their afflicted state remained the same. A number of freed peasants headed for the cities and filled the ranks of the proletariat, encountering “brute capitalism” in a place where basic labour rights were not regulated.

On 5 March 1917, at 11 o’clock in the morning, many members of the Caucasian workers’ movement and thousands of ordinary citizens gathered in Nadzaladevi’s Theatre Square. The revolutionaries had assembled in order to receive the latest reports of the events then unfolding in St Petersburg. The people were interested in hearing whether the February Revolution had achieved its goal.

(pilot project) In 2017 the South Caucasus Regional Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation will support institutional development of the Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SOVLAB). Goal of the pilot project is to promote issues related to Georgia’s Soviet past through mobilizing SovLab's resources.

(closed project) A non-governmental organization Cooperation for Peace and Progress (CPP) in partnership with the South Caucasus Regional Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation implemented a project Lectures in Gori: the “Unknown” Soviet Past in 2017.

The South Caucasus Regional Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation announces the first results of the Call for Project Proposals for 2017.

(ongoing project) TASO Foundation in cooperation with the Heinrich Boell Foundation South Caucasus Regional Office implements project “Soviet Trauma” in Rural Women’s Memory.

(closed project) Cooperation for Peace and Progress (CPP) in partnership with the Heinrich Boell Foundation continued implementation of the project Lectures in Gori: the "Unknown" Soviet Past in 2016.

(closed project) In 2016 The Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SOVLAB) implemented the project Forgotten History - Memory between Defiance and Collaboration in cooperation with the Heinrich Boell Foundation South Caucasus Regional Office.

(closed project) Initiative Unknown Stories of the Soviet Gori by the Cooperation for Peace and Progress has emerged from the project Lectures in Gori: the “Unknown” Soviet Past supported by the HBS in January-June 2015.

(closed project) A non-governmental organization Cooperation for Peace and Progress (CPP) in partnership with the South Caucasus Regional Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation implemented a project Lectures in Gori: the “Unknown” Soviet Past.

Seven Months after the first meeting of 14 Georgian researchers within the workshop on oral history methodology the results of the project were presented at the Europe House in Tbilisi on November 11, 2014.

(closed project) The goal of the project implemented in June-October, 2014 was to publish the Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy D. Snyder in Georgian. The given book which was awarded a 2013 Hannah Arendt prize is a highly original treatment of the atrocities Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia committed in the territory between them — what are now the modern Baltic countries, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and a portion of Russia.

The South Caucasus Regional Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation hosted the first round of the workshops on Oral History methodology on April 11-12, 2014.

(closed project) In April, 2014 Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SovLab) with financial support of the Heinrich Boell Foundation South Caucasus Regional Office has started implementation of the project "XX century Georgia in twenty snapshots"

(closed project) In 2011-13 Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) in cooperation with International Society “Memorial” (Russian Federation) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia with financial support of the Embassy of Switzerland in Georgia and Heinrich Boell Foundation South Caucasus Regional Office implemented a project "Stalin's lists from Georgia." The group of researchers was searching and analyzing information about the 1937-38 “Great Terror” victims for more than 2 years.

Three years after Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the cult of Stalin and values that had been at the core of the Soviet experience for a period of at least 30 years. His secret speech shook the Party at its foundations.

Stalin still evokes sympathy decades and generations later, as more time passes. What do schools teach pupils about Stalin, why does the new generation feel sympathy for Stalin’s image?

49 photos and 3 essays presented in catalogue “Playing with Statues: Stalin Here and Now” is the imprint of the Soviet regime on modern Georgia. This regime had been waging the war against its own people for decades by persecuting its own citizens, restricting their freedom of speech, choice and movement, spying and using violence against them.

At the first convention of Soviet writers in 1934, Titsian Tabidze and Paolo Iashvili were strongly criticized. However, during this period their essays were also translated, events were organized in their honor, and their poems were widely read.

This discussion held at HBF’s South Caucasus Regional Office concerned archives. What is the knowledge that can be generated, or what is the knowledge preserved by, archives? How can researchers or regular citizens find information and read case materials? What are the problems regarding this issue in Georgia and Russia?

On April 15, 2011 the Heinrich Boell Foundation organized a presentation at the National Library of the Parliament of Georgia to mark the donation of a collection of publications and academic papers on Soviet history to the National Library.

On Wednesday, 15 December 2010, the South Caucasus Regional Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation hosted a public debate on “Coming to Terms with Georgia’s Soviet Past”.