After Independence: Making and Protecting the Nation in Postcolonial and Postcommunist States

10. Georgia: Nationalism from under the Rubble

10. Georgia Nationalism from under the Rubble STEPHEN JONES What happens to nationalism after it has attained its putative aim: a self-governing territory under the nation’s control? A glance at the exUSSR suggests there is no pattern. The Soviet system—standardizing, homogenizing, and a powerful legacy for all the nations that were part of it—has been an important but unpredictable variable in shaping nationand state-building among former Soviet peoples. It was clear even before statehood was achieved that the nationalist movements in the USSR had different goals and tactics, shaped in part by speci‹c histories and demographics, but also by different experiences under Soviet rule. As Slezkine puts it, the Soviet regimes in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Georgia, and elsewhere were united by a state that allocated them separate rooms in a communal apartment, but the tenants arranged these rooms differently and dealt with the landlord in cleverly varied ways.1 Brubaker is right to stress, as did Rakowska-Harmstone over twenty-‹ve years ago, that the Soviet state reinforced or created nationalism by prescribing national identities and establishing national borders.2 But the internal design of the rooms, “landlord-tenant relations,” the nature of the neighborhood, and the psychology of the new bosses all contributed to variations in post-Soviet nationalism and why some tenants proved better at managing their newly independent “rooms” than others. Georgian Roommates: Can They Behave? Georgians, and more generally Caucasians, are perceived as bad roommates . Since 1991, Georgia has undergone two wars of secession, a civil 248 war, a number of failed (and badly planned) coups, and at least two assassination attempts on former president Shevardnadze. Western commentators often suggest that, like their Balkan confreres (if the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Albanians can be treated as one group), Georgians cannot shake their bloody past or inclination to violence .3 Georgian history is con›ict, and therefore con›ict is Georgian. But nationalism in Georgia today, when put in context, is more “modern” and “normal” than most Western analysts—still reeling from the heated rhetoric of Georgia’s militant nationalist pamphleteers of the early 1990s— suggest. Our focus on national con›ict and violence in Caucasia distorts our understanding of Caucasian history and Caucasian nationalist movements and raises broader questions as to what exactly we mean by terms like ethnic con›ict and nationalism. Caucasian history is not just one of con›ict; it has other traditions too, including interethnic cooperation. The recovery of the Caucasian past should not be equated with only “the revenge of the past.” Western academic studies of Caucasia show an overwhelming bias toward national con›ict and its resolution, perhaps in part because such studies are more likely to obtain ‹nancial support.4 But this narrow focus leads to incorrect assumptions about the relationship between nationalism and politics in the region. Walker Connor has pointed out that Western scholarship is confused about the concept of nationalism.5 Nationalism covers the broadest spectrum of popular movements and states dedicated to maintaining the identity , unity, and autonomy of the nation, however conceived.6 De‹ning nation and nationalism is not the central concern of this chapter; there are many worthy studies on this issue,7 and the terms have been de‹ned in the introductory chapter of this volume. But as I argue in this chapter, at a minimum one needs to distinguish between the core beliefs of nationalism, on the one hand, and the methods, style, and emphases of nationalist movements and states, on the other. At the ‹rst level, most people share the aspirations of nationalism—the pursuit of autonomy, unity, and common identity—but on the second level they differ considerably. Some, but not all, nationalists have an exclusive view of identity, promote popular mobilization around political and cultural homogeneity, and consider autonomy an insuf‹cient guarantee of self-rule free of foreign in›uence. These nationalists—on the more extreme spectrum of nationalism—are more likely to scapegoat minorities and use force. Yet there are other nationalist 249 Georgia movements characterized by inclusive views of the nation, political tolerance , and civil rights. The more extreme forms of nationalism can develop into moderate, constructive nationalisms, and liberal nationalisms can metamorphose into radical jingoism. However, the distinction between different forms of nationalism is crucial. Many scholars and Western analysts when discussing Caucasia do not differentiate and as a result fail to see...