საბჭოთა წარსულის გავლენები თანამედროვე საქართველოზე – გათელილი ბილიკის სინდრომი
Abstract
Many of those domestic political challenges, faced currently by Georgia, derive from the cultural and social characteristics essentially formed in the Soviet times. To reveal them and show their contemporary mutations, historical institutionalist approach may be found indispensable. Besides, concrete studies within the elite theories’ framework, as well as particular works in Georgian contemporary history provide a large body of empirical and comparative material, which helps to draw parallels between the country’s Soviet and Post-Soviet forms of existence.
Based particularly on Wilfredo Pareto’s concept of psycho-social human types (residues) and their irrational justifications (derivations), this article tries to delineate three layers of Soviet influences over contemporary Georgian socio-political system. The first is the black-n-white, Manichean political discourse, which is a continuation of the Soviet tradition, dividing Georgian political class into hostile camps. The second is the conflict-driven collective memory about the USSR. It partially is based on past and present social stratification and partially contributes to its construction. The third layer of the Soviet heritage, which is still alive and at work, is constituted by governance style and practices.
Of course, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Its official Marxist-Leninist ideology is dead or substantially marginalized. But that reality is only a tip of the iceberg: the fact that the red banner and atheistic communist beliefs have been substituted for mass religiousness, does not imply that we cannot still witness those very psychological and cultural structures, penetrating contemporary political domains in Georgia, which caused old Soviet dramas.
The author of the article argues that Georgian uneven, bewildering democratization record is as much caused by influences, practices and traditions inherited from the Soviet past, as by contemporary geopolitical or geo-economic troubles. The article also touches upon the theme of elite circulation and reproduction and stresses that representatives of the old communist Nomenklatura are still influential on Georgian political scene. It provides the rationale and the blueprint for further quantitative studies in this respect.
The author also brings up the issues of Georgian nationalism, and the periodization of modern Georgian history. For these and above mentioned reasons, he gives a review of academic assessments of the Soviet Social-Political system, dominant in the scholarly world.
