Memory Politics

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.

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Undoubtedly the emergence of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan (ADR) was the by-product of a broad range of processes and dynamics in and around of the Caucasus, the developments in the Tsarist Russia as well as in the neighbouring countries of the Russian Caucasus, the Ottoman Empire and Persia. The elites of the ADR, both of Muslim and of non-Muslim faith were socialized in the late Romanov period. Azərbaycan dilində

For a people whose history covers a few millennia, the significance of the First Republic of Armenia far exceeds the number of years it lasted. Other than the Genocide that preceded it, I doubt that there is another period of two and one-half years that has received more attention by scholars, memoirists, and polemicists. հայերեն

(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.

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.

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.

(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.

(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) 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.