Abstract
The Republic of Georgia adamantly rejected Russian cultural hegemony following the USSR’s collapse. However, there are two recent Russian-language depictions of Tbilisi, the country’s capital. Authors Baadur Chkhatarashvili and Natal’ia Gvelesiani describe their childhoods in Soviet Tbilisi. Chkhatarashvili’s novel What Years Did We Have? (Kakie nashi gody!, 2023) gives a modernist image of the city, continuing the legacy of 1920s Georgian authors. In the novel My Little Soviet Union (Moi malen’kii Sovetskii Soiuz, 2017), Gvelesiani portrays childhood, violence, and friendship on the outskirts of 1970s Tbilisi. These writers avoid the extremes of post-1991 images of the USSR: uncritical nostalgia or simply rejecting the Soviet past. Naomi Caffee and Kevin Platt argue that Russophonia (Russian-language writing by non-Russians) is a new trend that opposes Kremlin politics and traditional ideas about Russian writing outside Russia. I explore how Chkhatarashvili and Gvelesiani craft an innovative Russophone vision of the socialist experience, even as Georgian culture tries to erase Russian-Soviet influence. This paper is a part of my future monograph on Russophonia and contemporary prose in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.
Presenters
Benjamin SutcliffeProfessor of Russian, German, Russian, Asian, Middle Eastern Languages and Cuultures, Miami University, Ohio, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Vectors of Society and Culture
KEYWORDS
Republic of Georgia, Contemporary Prose, USSR
