The Depths of the Golden Age
The Soviet Past in Georgia’s Textbooks
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The memory of Socialism in Georgia is a contradictory one. Some romanticise it as a golden age of stability, others construe it as foreign rule. Assessments of Stalin are also subject to controversy. At the moment, Georgia’s leadership is stressing the repressive traits of the Soviet system. That allows the current leadership to set itself apart from the old elite. An important instrument for the socialisation of youth and for conveying a homogenous national view of history is the textbook. It is the link between politics, pedagogy, and history. But in Georgian textbooks, more pluralism reigns in the presentation of history than in the discourse of the elite. How the past is construed is in flux.
(Osteuropa 8/2010, pp. 91–104)