როცა წარსულის გასაღები დაკარგულია: ტრავმის კვალი პოსტტოტალიტარულ საქართველოში

ანოტაცია

The totalitarian situation implies a Victim-Aggressor-Bystander triangle, where the three roles are interchangeable. After the totalitarian regime is over, to recover the situation and heal the society, institutional mechanisms of dealing with the past should be put in place. Those are: lustration, restorative justice, memorization & symbolization strategies, etc.

In Georgia none of the mentioned above measures took place since regaining independence in the early nineties. In contrary, the society maintains Conspiracy of Silence regarding the totalitarian repressions, lustration was not implemented, restorative justice was not applied; the State legislation restricts scientists/historians to access the archives to study the Soviet past, and no memorization or symbolization strategies are in place. This does not help the Georgian society to mourn out the losses related to the traumatizing totalitarian experiences.

The analysis presented in the paper is based on the study exploring impact of totalitarian trauma on the Georgian society, conducted by the author of the paper as a principle investigator together with the team of researchers in the period from 2011 to 2018. The study is based on the qualitative, phenomenological approach and implies two components. The first component explores the impact of the totalitarian trauma on a current socio-political life of Georgia, based on the works of Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Earl Hopper and Vamik Volkan, by the means of the Critical Discourse Analysis. The second component of the study explores the impact of the totalitarian repressions related trauma on the second and third generation of the repressed families, implying individual in-depth interviews.

The study results show that the Georgian society failed to mourn out the totalitarian repressions related losses. Due to this, the totalitarian trauma is not processed, dealing with the past is ignored and the totalitarian past is even denied. This situation creates an impression that Georgia ‘has lost its keys to the Past’, which prevents the country from concluding the lessons from the past and preventing alike malignant developments in the future.

The unmourned societal trauma reveals itself via Basic Assumptions of Dependency, Fight & Flight, Paring and Incohesion (Massification/ Aggregation) shaping regressive socio-political dynamics, which keeps the Georgian society trapped within the totalitarian triangle. The Georgian Orthodox Church plays an active role in the implementation of the Basic Assumptions based socio- political dynamics.

The traumatic experiences related to the totalitarian repressions affect the next generations of the repressed both directly and indirectly. One can observe the direct symptoms related to trauma exposure among the second-generation representatives (i.e. panic attacks in case if a car stops in the night in front of the building, which reminds them of the arrest of their parent(s)). But the most significant impact of trauma could be observed via life trajectories of the family members: their most important life decisions (choosing a profession, choice of a partner, etc.) are influenced by the traumatic experiences.

The Study reveals paradoxical resilience strategies, as well as paradoxical patterns of attachment between the second and third generations. Namely, due to the high level of anxiety the survived parent (the first generation) tried to protect the second generation representatives and implied overprotective controlling authoritarian upbringing strategies; the second generation representative, witnessing parent’s high level of anxiety, in turn, tries to protect the parent which turns into so called “parentification”. Described patterns reveal a high risk for transgenerational transmission of trauma.

All the respondents stressed their dissatisfaction with the State measures focused at rehabilitation of the victims of totalitarian repressions, as they were fragmented and limited to the provision of the extremely low material compensation without any attempts for moral compensation or restorative justice.

To contribute to societal healing, the work should be implemented in the following directions: advocating for the relevant legislative changes, promoting multidisciplinary studies exploring the totalitarian past, working on the dissemination of studies’ results as well as memorization & symbolization of the past. This will contribute to the overcoming conspiracy of silence existed in the country towards the totalitarian past and will facilitate corresponding reflection.