BOUNDARIES LEFT UNSPOKEN
Competing Russian Language Ideologies in a Tbilisi Theatre
MSc. Cultural and Social Anthropology
University of Amsterdam
September 12, 2018
Peer van Tetterode
Student# 10448470
Word count: 31016
Supervisor: dr. Julie McBrien
2nd reader: dr. Vincent de Rooij
3rd reader: dr. Artemy Kalinovsky
1 A note on plagiarism This thesis meets the rules and regulations for fraud and plagiarism as stated by the examination committee of the MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. I hereby assure all readers that all ideas, concepts and passages of other authors’ works in this work are acknowledged and referenced in a way that is deemed proper within contemporary social sciences.
Peer van Tetterode
2 Quote ‘So it is clear that redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it. And particularly at times when the State takes reality into its own hands, and sets about distorting it, altering the past to fit its present needs, then the making of the alternative realities of art, including the novel of memory, becomes politicized.’
Salmon Rushdie1
1 Page 13 -14 in chapter ‘Imaginary Homelands’ in (1991) Imaginary Homelands: Essays and criticism 1981-1991 Granta books London
3 Abstract This thesis asks how a changing language ideology towards Russian in Tbilisi affects the usage and appreciation of the Russian language in the multilingual Griboyedov theatre environment. Two theoretical takes on language ideology are explored, one with a focus on power that engages with the debate about postcolonial theory’s place in descriptions of the post-Soviet condition. By using Gibson’s affordance it explores the possibilities of language ideologies’ ties to the material environment. I argue that Tbilisi is home to two different language ideologies that are historically rooted in the material environment and form two ends of a spectrum along which Tbilisi residents place their views. On the one hand Tbilisi residents perceive the Russian language as a symbol that is foreign to the Georgian nation and therefore the ‘multi-ethnic’ ‘Soviet’ Russian language’s ties to the material and public sphere are described as a phenomenon that has to vanish. On the other hand there is a language ideology that appreciates the Russian language as a symbol of continuous historical ties –that envisions Russian to be essential to a Tbilisi tolerant multicultural community, it imagines a primordial harmony between Russian speaking peoples. The study on the Russian language Griboyedov theatre shows that the latter perception dominates here and that this is also manifest when looking at the material environment and ritual appreciation of what is considered pure Russian speech. However when zooming in, Conversation analyses reveal that there are actually two speech communities within the multi-ethnic theatre staff that maintain mutual exclusivity when it comes to Georgian-Russian code switching patterns. Since the boundaries between the speech communities are isomorphic to ethnic categories, the findings in this thesis problematize common held assumptions about the neutrality of a lingua franca in current multilingualism studies, since ethnicity seems to mark the use of this common language.
4 Acknowledgements It is incredible how willing people are to help. Therefore my gratitude requires paragraphs. I first and foremost want to express my sincere gratitude to all those who have participated in this project and gave me a glimpse into their daily lives, views and aspirations. დიდი მადლობა! /Огромное спасибо вам!
Personally I would like to thank my wonderful girlfriend Judith, my father Jan Roland, Adèle and my family for sticking with me and making me the person who I am. Although life has not been kind on us two, I too wish to thank my mother Ria in this regard and wish her all the strength she needs. A big shock for my friends and me was the young death of our friend Noud. I personally thank him for being the weird, beautiful and inspiring person that he was.
Where the development of this master’s thesis research itself is concerned I would like to thank the wonderful people I met in Tbilisi for their help. My local supervisor, the knowledgeable ever kind Keti Gurchiani at Ilia State University helped me out with regaining the focus that I would lose every once and a while. A special thanks also goes out to my smart and vigorous research assistants Megi Sajaia and Salome Gogilashvili who have helped me out immensely with interpreting and support. Timothy Blauvelt is thanked for showing me around and being such an active member in Tbilisi’s academic community. Moreover I am grateful for the help of my Georgian teacher Maka Tetradze and her husband Alex Popiel.
At the University of Amsterdam, I would like to thank my supervisor Julie McBrien; if readers stumble upon any cohesive arguments or clear descriptions in this thesis, then I can assure them that she had a part in tackling the sloppy filler that preceded these. At the anthropology department I want to thank my friends, particularly Senya and Nick for their company and general interest in this project and me. Lucie is greatly thanked for her spelling and phrasing check. Lastly, this thesis’s readers are thanked for their reading effort.
5 Contents
Introduction ...... 7
Red Carnations 7 Setting 8 Post-colonial multilingual speech in a post-Soviet state 12 Language ideologies through a lens of power 17 Language ideologies’ ties to space and materiality 18 Purity and time 20 Position, methodology & ethics 22 Outline 26
1...... 28
Trends, classroom stubbornness & hands-on jargon in a changing Tbilisi
2...... 42
Chistaya Russkaya Rech’Purity and old ties in the Griboyedov theatre
3...... 66
Awkward accommodations: Configuring identities in Griboyedov speech
Conclusion ...... 80
Bibliography ...... 86
6
Introduction
Red Carnations Matvey informs me that the day before there was a big plane crash near Moscow.
71 deceased were the result of the Russian Saratov Airlines flight 703 crash. The commemoration takes place in front of the Russian embassy in Vake. We have a bouquet of red carnations with us. There are reporters from the Russian television-broadcasting channel ‘Russia 1’ who are filming. Daur, the Abkhazian stands in the spotlight. This is a strange moment, since he briefly before, together with Matvey and a friend was talking in Georgian all the time - yet when the reporter asks for his views he gets out on the stage and puts forth the most sincere Russian words of loss. Afterwards he immediately switches to Georgian and begins joking and laughing with his friends. They seem to be making fun of the situation. The actors and me all burn a tea light. There is a ritual walk to the fence where all the flowers and tea lights are stacked up. An official statement follows [in Russian]. Literally everyone that is involved in the memorial sermon speaks Russian at this moment. One of the actresses, Gulisa when she sees me, insists on speaking English. When we do, this feels highly inappropriate and rather alienating from the whole set up. An older lady asks her who I am and when she tells her who I am in Russian, the older woman nods and turns away before I can speak.
This vignette is a description of the first day I had contact with the young actors of the Tbilisi based Russian language Griboyedov theatre. After a focus group interview the young actors and I went to a commemoration of a Russian plane crash. What leaves me puzzled initially in this chain of events is that Daur switches so easily between a Russian language enactment of a serious affair in front of Russian national television and a nonchalant, frivolous state of being with his friends in Georgian in a matter of seconds. It is very easy in this way to hop between linguistically bounded realms of social interaction that are so detached from each other that their whole atmosphere can be entirely different simultaneously. Later on an actress begins to speak with me in English, but only after everybody speaks in Russian. For the older woman this seems to be a sign that I cannot
7 communicate with her, and so I am excluded from the group. These swift linguistically bounded configurations of identity initially leave me puzzled and therefore are at the core of this thesis’ inquiry. To get more insight in these configurations I prompted the following question: How does a changing language ideology towards Russian in Tbilisi affect the usage and appreciation of the Russian language in the multilingual environment of the Griboyedov theatre? To accurately answer this question I have subdivided this question in three relating chapter sub-questions, which are respectively:
1) How could the Russian language have been spoken and appreciated in Tbilisi and how did the language’s usage and the appreciation for it change? 2) What makes the theatrical experience Chistaya for the workers of the Griboyedov theatre? 3) How is a Tbilisi urban identity configured within the multilingual environment of the Griboeyedov and in what way does this urban identity become apparent in everyday conversations?
Setting Georgia is a country situated to the north of Turkey and south of Russia, next to the Black Sea. The country makes up a part of the South-Western Caucasus mountain range. Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia is inhabited by almost half of all 3.8 million Georgians. Georgia has an interesting political situation within the region, mostly because it is less dependent on Russia and the CIS countries, and in this sense it is unique in the Caucasus. To understand this regional political oddity one requires some recent historical context.
Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1921. In the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic Georgian has remained the official state language (Kaiser 2015) thus in Georgia unlike other states to be Soviet did not mean to be fully Russified-as was the case in Ukraine (Bilianuk 2010)- yet Russian was commonly used as a second language that facilitated interethnic communication and official spaces, of political life. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgian became the official and primary language, however Russian was still used in public spheres. This changed after the 2004 Rose revolution. Russian obligatory education hours decreased critically and Russian street names were removed after president
8 Mikhail Saakashvili2 took office. Four years later in 2008, a war broke out in the Georgian province South Ossetia. The South Ossetian rebels claimed their national independence and were aided by Russian military troops to fight the Georgian power. In the aftermath of this short war, the combination of a politicized climate, less stress on Russian in education and the fact that English became an obligatory course in schools instead of Russian from 2006 onwards meant that younger Georgians were raised in a different Georgia than their parents. Although the government is encouraging the learning of English as a second language for the youngest generation (that grew up after the rose revolution) in urban areas, Russian is still widely spoken as a second language nowadays. Although non-Indo European Georgian has a far older literary tradition than Indo- European Russian; the nation has long been confronted with Russian as a regional lingua franca. In the beginning of the period between 1789 and 1811 the area that is now Georgia became part of the Russian tsarist empire; a form of ‘soft-Russification’ was applied (Sherouse 2014: 8). Local aristocrats started to learn Russian in order to climb up tsarist military and administrative ranks. This was also the time in which Georgian nationalism developed among a group of intellectuals that defined the Georgian nation as a territory that was not Russian. In their article about language myths Smith et al. give a telling example of the importance of the Georgian language in the forming of the first independent Georgia. A year after the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1918, they state that Nikolay Chkeidze, the chairman of the National council ordered that all Cyrillic typewriters should be replaced by Georgian ones (1998). After its short-lived independence in 1921 Georgia was annexed by Soviet troops and became a socialist republic in the USSR. In the USSR, Russian became the language of socialism, effectively a default language. However, official languages of the independent states in the Soviet Union were not banned but instead encouraged (Slezkine 1994 & Hirsch 2005); they were carefully recorded, standardized and taught in schools (Slezkine 1994: 420).
2 Mikhail Saakashvili was the Georgian president that came to the front after involved in Georgian politics being since 1995 and became president after 2003. He is known for his all compassing and sometimes aggressive reforms in the fields of geopolitical orientation, economy, education, democratization and justice, retrieved from Petersen, A. & Cashman, R. (2014).
9 In early Soviet years they were often reduced to a Latin alphabet, a tragedy for Georgians, as they have a very old entirely original alphabet. Then in the 1930’s the alphabet was standardized into Cyrillic, and Russian was mostly set up for intercultural or ‘inter-socialistic’ communication between the inhabitants of Soviet socialist states. The native language was so promoted that the main political party in Moscow–among them the Georgian Joseph Stalin- mocked the Georgian leaders in the 1930’s –among them Georgian Lavrenti Beria-, proclaiming that Tbilisi was being transformed from a multi-ethnic city (where only 25 percent spoke Georgian) into an all Georgian capital (Slezkine 1994: 426). There was a conflict in the Soviet ideology between egalitarianism and the privileged position of Russian (Sherouse 2014: 9-11). Russian had symbolic connotations from the thirties onwards because it symbolized Soviet power while through that it was also a window to western media (Lemon 1991). To learn how to speak Russian was also a part of learning how to speak internationalist Bolshevik (Slezkine 2000: 232). Speaking Russian in the Soviet era can be seen as a performance of what Yurchak describes with Mikhail Bakhtin’s authoritative discourse, this is a discourse that is omnipresent and asks to be performed (Yurchak 2003: 283). The structural promotion of Russian and native language bilingualism from the late Stalinist era onwards is an example of how this lingua franca was envisioned next to the vernacular (Crisp 1989 in Sherouse 2014: 12).
For many Georgians the Soviet Union offered possibilities outside of their national borders. The Georgian diaspora was successful in the sense that Georgians could maintain a distinct community identity while they were accepted into foreign Soviet cities. Comparably to Italian communities in the USA (Scott 2017: 37), Georgian restaurants, music and entertainment were well known in every major city in the USSR (Scott 2017: 109) Furthermore, Georgian intelligentsia, as with Italians in the USA, ‘could claim status as the heirs of a long-standing European high-culture tradition (ibid: 37)’. Although not numerous, Georgians were relatively overrepresented in Soviet governing bodies in the Kremlin until 19533 (ibid: 21). Georgian writers published their works often in both Georgian and Russian,
3 In 1953 the Georgian Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died. After a brief political instable situation, the Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev takes over power, while he agrees on a position that comes with more checks and balances. This marks a shift in the ethnic composition and two generations of Georgians in the highest levels of Soviet power in both the central party and the NKVD (a precursor of the KGB) of which Georgian Lavrenti Beria was the head at this time. Beria, who did had a rather bloody resume was competing for Stalin’s previous position was ousted, trialed without judicial defense and executed.
10 while Georgian music, film and theatre producers were acclaimed all throughout the union (ibid.: 128). Extremist Georgian nationalists in the late 1980’s, among them Gamzakhurdia condemned Georgian intelligentsia’s Russian language Soviet cosmopolitanism and gained popularity by promoting an idea of Georgian exclusivity. Georgians now faced the choice between ‘Soviet cosmopolitanism and a promise of national greatness; unsurprisingly, many chose the latter (ibid: 234).’ In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed officially. For Georgia this would mean that it entered an era of failed state that was typified by corruption of government, outright poverty and long-term precariousness for big parts of the population that was used to a certain standard of living under the Soviet Union (Rayfield 2012). Thieves-in-law [Russian: Vory v Zakonye] were controlling much of economic and juridical practices in urban areas in the 1990’s. These various criminal networks that originated in the Soviet prison system were popular and normalized, illustrated by a 1993 survey that found that one in four Georgian school children wanted to become a thief (Slade 2007: 179). Georgian thieves could have an international career in the Soviet Union, since their network was vast and organized. The thieves spoke Russian and were historically tied to the Russian language Soviet prison system (ibid). Their influence on Georgian street slang was significant (Sherouse 2014: 35). The last major leaders of the criminal networks were detained violently in the early 2000’s, placing the thieves back in prison, a place where they originated from and thrived. In this sense the symbolical image of the criminal network never really went away (Slade 2007: 127).
Zviad Gamsakhurdia was independent Georgia’s first president from 1991 onto 1992. In his first months in office, he launched the campaign ‘Georgia for Georgians’ that was a teaching program that taught the Georgian language to ethnic minorities. In Georgian periphery territories with a lot of ethnic minorities this campaign was not popular, since these ethnic minorities were used to communicating in Russian with Georgians. Also, in this period the Abkhaz independence war (aided by Russian troops) ensued, making the Georgian province Abkhazia semi-independent and non-cooperative with Georgia politically. After the ousting of Gamsakhurdia in a raging civil war, the president that had occupied high posts in Georgia’s government in Soviet times already; Shevardnadze would remain the leader of Georgia until 2003. Although his reign is considered in line with Soviet rule he was the first to start initiating trade agreement and educational exchange deals with western countries. In 2003, the political tide changed with what came to be called the Rose
11 Revolution. One of the prominent initiators of this democratic peaceful revolution was Mikhail Saakashvili who thereafter became president and introduced a pro-European style of politics. Saakashvili became known for big building projects in Tbilisi and Batumi, which were supposed to symbolically signal Georgia’s climbing out of the transition period. In august 2008 Georgia waged war with its province South-Ossetia that self- proclaimed its independence with help of Russian military force. The war lasted days but the expansion of claimed South Ossetian unofficial borders continues up until now (Kakachia et al. 2018). The political threat though more stabilized is thus still present. Indicating the politicized nature of Russian immediately after 2008, Tbilisi residents claimed that bans on Russian film dubbing and popular Russian songs on the radio (Sherouse 2014: 83) would follow; yet this proved to be an imagined anxiety. Russian schools did close before and after the war. From the 200 Russian schools that were in Georgia in 2001, only 28 are still opened.4 The popular stance held by many young Georgians in Tbilisi is that Russian is being replaced by a new lingua franca, namely English. However, proficiency rates between both languages are still not comparable, with English lacking capacity (Alan, D., & Astghik, M. 2015).
Post-colonial multilingual speech in a post-Soviet state To look into considerations or habits that play a role in the ‘ways of speaking’ (Dell Hymes 1989) of the Griboyedov theatre speech community I look at the bigger picture.
In Soviet times and throughout the 19th century under imperialist Russian rule, Russian was the second language in Georgia, spoken by a large percentage of the population (Pavlenko 2008). In 20065 all Russian language education that was mandatory in schools was scaled down in total education hours whilst simultaneously the language was discarded in the streets from 2004 onwards. These sanctions put forward by the Saakashvili administration were abrupt though in line with a larger Europeanizing discourse. This discourse that isolated Russian as a non-native language, was projected top-down upon the Georgian population and
4 Retrieved from https://www.russkiymir.ru/en/publications/182780/ (visited on July 27th, 2018) 5 In 2005 new Law on General Education has been approved and National Curriculum introduced. It stated that every school can choose two foreign languages. The teaching of two foreign languages has been mandatory since the introduction of the new National Curriculum, implemented in 2006. Russian is still taught as second foreign language in 1995 public schools out of 2077 public schools, yet not as a second language of near-native command as it was the case before the reform. (Retrieved from http://liberali.ge/news/view/34407/inglisuri-franguli-rusuli-germanuli--ramdeni-utskho-enis-pedagogi-astsavlis- sajaro-skolebshi on August 6th 2018)
12 it was aiming to constitute a European Georgia. This European Georgia had to become less reliant on agreements or alliances with the former Soviet bloc and Russia as it had been until then. Furthermore the discourse highlighted new affiliations with the west, indexing the geopolitical sphere of material and ideological influence of the US and the EU. Georgia is often described as a post-socialist transition country that has followed a political trajectory that is atypical for Central Asian post-Soviet states and more comparable to western post-Soviet states such as Ukraine and the Baltic states (Kakachia, K., & Minesashvili, S. 2015). From the 90’s onwards it started to approach European trade markets, the European Union and abruptly distanced itself from Russia and the commonwealth of independent states (ibid). Therefore on the backdrop of this study Europeanization also plays a role. With Europeanization in Georgia, I refer to the process of European integration in which Georgia’s state actors engage aided by EU institutions and the intensified trade regulations between European member states and Georgia. Yet more importantly with Europeanization I highlight the impact of this usage on identity and everyday practices of both the state actors and the population of Georgia that is engaged in the process (Amashukeli et al. 2016: 126). A recent event that might have caused this last form of Europeanization to grow is the no-visa barrier policy that was adopted by Georgia in regard to traveling in the Schengen countries.6 Europeanization in the sense of identity also implies that the Russian language is seen as something that does not belong to a modern European Georgian identity. A thick contour in the background of my inquiry is the presence of the state. It is useful to locate these effects of state in the banal encounters of everyday life, since it is here where they surface occasionally (Trouillot 2001: 126). This is especially true when considering the role of language in the USSR. Yurchak shows that the large amount of people that supported the socialist state cannot be understood by seeing these citizens as a producers and transmitters of hidden rebellious meanings (Scott 1990) or a general public that was acting ‘as if’ it was supportive of the system (Yurchak 2003: 483, 484). As Yurchak describes, in the case of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic state power was maintained in part through the performance-based repetition of certain forms of party language in rituals. Yurchak argues that it is not that important that Soviet Russians actually believed in Soviet
6 Retrieved from https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/georgian-citizens-can-travel-to-the-schengen-zone- without- a-visa/ (visited on the 25th of July 2018)
13 ideology, but that it is more important how they gave meaning to what it was that was Soviet (Yurchak 2006: 285). This meaning often was not excluding other identifications to develop such as more extreme nationalist ones in Georgia (Rayfield 2012: 351). A process that is more widespread and for instance comparable to McBrien’s (2017: 25) description of re-emerging Muslim identifications in late socialist Kyrgyzstan that were already preserved in the common view of Kyrgyz national identity. Both the internationalist Soviet identity and the nationalist identity could exist within one person (Coombs 2012: 57). With an eye on this project it is relevant to understand what being Soviet meant for my interlocutors and how the performance of certain attributes of this identity claim is still relevant in the present day. The aim of this exercise is not to speculate on whether being Soviet actually implies believing the ideology but to grasp at what it means for my interlocutors and why it is important to keep those past attributes alive. Next to this, a big question in Post-Soviet area studies is whether empire or post- colonial theory is relevant to take into account when looking at post-Soviet nation-states. By pointing out the two most commonly debated points I argue that the objects of study of both schools show significant resemblance. Firstly there is the question of colonial empire, what is the colonial empire that is relevant here? I am referring to both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union as making up the colonial heritage of Georgia. There is a substantive consensus that tsarist Russia was a colonial empire (Jersild 2002 &Thompson 2008) and that Georgia was its colony (Rayfield 2012). The state that followed the last tsar’s reign: the USSR is not considered the most typical colonial empire because from its outset its most prominent designer Vladimir Lenin ideologically defined the USSR to be a state that firmly opposed imperialism and colonialism (Yekelchyk 2004: 487). However the shape that the USSR took in its initial decades of existence was a state that promoted aggressive modernization (Péteri 2008: 930) . On top of that, an important way in which this modernization was established was through systematic accumulation by dispossession; the capital and goods that were dispossessed where redistributed in a way that created new tiers of dependency: the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, the other Soviet states, the Central and European socialist republics and dependent communist regimes that were supported overseas (Chari & Verdery 2009: 14). The colonial imperialistic practice within the USSR in other words overshadows its guiding anti- imperialistic ideology and outward actions (after all the Comintern -communist international, the USSR’s organ that supported movements that promoted international communism- helped
14 to decolonize states). Secondly, an important difference between Europe-centered colonial empires lies in the fact that the Soviet Union from the outset promoted ethnic particularism, decentralization and self-governance among all its nation-states (Hirsch 2005, Slezkine 1994, Slezkine 2000). This is in contrast to imperialism, which could be described in Said’s terms as in need of a ‘dominating metropolitan center (1993: 8)’, and colonialism as the implantation of settlements in distant territory (ibid). National mistrust in the USSR had to be overcome by promotions of localized identities. That is why the native national language of the unions’ fixed member states was promoted during the initial years of the USSR (Martin 2001: 394) although its promotion was contested during its entire existence (Slezkine 1994: 432). Cultural heritages of the peoples of the USSR were furthermore studied and material artifacts were preserved with care and exhibited in museums (Hirsch 2005). However there continued to be an assumption of seeing non-Russian center regions as backward and in need of rapid modernization. In the new regions the speaking of Russian was considered neutral and was most of all associated with bolshevist modernity (Slezkine 1994: 437). Regarding the neutrality of modernization I see an important link that has to be stressed between former colonial empires and the Soviet Union that was enacted in empire’s regions. After all, the promoting of ethnic particularism existed in colonial history as well. In India for instance, the autonomy that local elites were granted under British colonial administration enabled them to dominate cultural practices, a process that in turn inspired the rise of opposing subaltern movements. On top of this the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, during Soviet times was structurally prioritized as a leading nation, both considering the relative redistribution of goods within the union (Chari and Verdery 2009: 14 & Moore 2001: 14) as culturally, reflected in the ‘elder brother’ image (Peteri 2008). Once the USSR (at least to some extent) can be seen as a colonial empire then this opens up new horizons that can be explored by ‘thinking between the posts (Chari & Verdery 2009: 12)’. In line with Chari and Verdery, I argue not that the post-Soviet should be studied as post-colonial but that the insights of both academic schools should be combined in a collective field of inquiry that they name post-Cold War (ibid: 18). Such a framework is useful for both scholars of the post-Soviet area as post-colonial scholars. It shifts our attention to parallels between desovietization and decolonization as ongoing processes (ibid: 17) that leave a hallmark on lived realities in many post-Cold War societies up to this date, Georgia being no exception. Therefore I think that the commonalities between the inquiries of
15 academics of the post-colonial and post-socialist field are larger than their differences (Chari & Verdery 2009: 29). A focus on these processes also shifts the attention to historically grown, subtle continuities between the Soviet and the post-Soviet. To get a better grasp at these I apply Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial conceptualization of hybridity and more prominently ‘the third space of enunciation (1994: 37)’. Hybridity in broad terms circumscribes the crossbreeding of two cultural forms. The term was used in colonial times but gained prominence in cultural theory via Mikhail Bakthin who used it to describe how multifocal text and narrative can have a capacity for cultural change (Clark & Holquist 1984:4). Bhabha reframed the concept to describe the (post-) colonial setting where the dominant colonial and colonized cultures meet. The colonizer and the colonized historically negotiate identities in the third space of enunciation or third space. The third space is a place where identities are negotiated between the colonizer and the colonized. This space is both ambivalent and inspiring mimicry. It is an ambivalent place in the sense that colonial dominance is never clear-cut, dominance is fractured and conveyed by the colonized that resists and complies with the colonizer at the same time. Whereas the initial ideal of colonial governing is to let the colonized become like the colonizer, the mimicry is never perfect and instead leaves space for mockery. Parodies can always be inscribed in copying the colonizer (Huddart 2006: 57)- such actions have the potential of reversing power relations because they turn the colonized into a creative agent (Young 1995: 161), giving voice to the subaltern. Third space has grown to be a concept that has proven itself relevant for socio- linguistic research (López-Robertson & Schramm-Pate 2013) but has not been used in post- Soviet literature much and therefore I feel inspired to engage with it, although I have to specify. In studies of bilingual teaching settings the concept is often reduced to an instance of multicultural exchange and the imagining of the learned target language’s culture. Such a usage however has been criticized for leaving the configurations of dominance out of the equation, a point that was important to Bhabha (1994: 37). I use third space to look into how identities are configured in everyday conversations between Russians and Georgians. Georgians here are the formerly colonized and Russians the former colonizers and although this is not the case anymore and nuances regarding the nature of the dominance should apply, third spaces that are created are interesting to discover.
16 Language ideologies through a lens of power A language ideology is a combination of two notions that are tough to pin down: language and ideology. The common view of language ideologies as overarching systems of meaning can be traced back to the philosophical development of the concept of ideology, which has become a very broad, widely known and yet multifocal term. Ideology in its modern academic conception has basically four strands (Woolard 1998: 5-7). Firstly it is seen as matter that is situated within the head such as ideas, beliefs and representations. A second strand is that ideology is not exclusively ideational but also reflective of a social position, although it can be presented as universally true. A third strand is closely related to this; mainly that it is not only reflective of a social position but is actually a tool for the subject in the social position to overcome a power struggle. Lastly, there has been an influential philosophical argument stressing the distortion present in ideology. A well-known idea that illustrates this take on ideology is the Marxist notion of false consciousness that implies that a dominating power or structure profits when its subject or the proletariat is misled. The greatest academic friction as Woolard notes (ibid: 7), is located between proponents of the second and the third strand. While the second strand perceives ideology as an uncritical reflection of the social structure based on meaning, the third stresses unequal power relations between social positions, which are reflected through the ideological. This dialectic between academic positions echoes into recent debates. Expanding on these ideology strands its relation to culture has been discussed by anthropologists Geertz and Bloch. They debated the implication of both strands on culture. Geertz stressed that whether ideologies are held to be true by people does not matter as much as an ideology’s capability of signifying meaning between their social groups. Bloch contested this less politicized view and held that ideologies are always mystifying the normative [oppressive] social and cultural order. I hold the middle ground in these views, seeing ideology as a locus of power in the process of meaning making that subtly disables other possible meanings. In this study I will make clear that my interlocutors are referring to the Russian language in similar terms, and all relate to a spectrum of views that is popular in the urban setting of Tbilisi, they do not express views outside of this spectrum, all other options are left unspoken.
The reason why I decided to sketch a rough background considering the development of ideology is that within language ideology a similar divide persists in the concepts’ usage
17 among scholars. To show how power relations have historically shaped the speaking situations I subscribe to the critical strand that sees ideology as obfuscating cultural embedded dominance.
In general, language ideologies are common understandings on how to use language and these conceptions and implications of practices can be both consciously and unconsciously reproduced. Such common understandings are situated in all places where ‘human beings and language intersect’(Woolard & Schiefellin 1994 elaborating on a quote by Raymond Williams). ‘These representations can be seen as ‘beliefs about language [that are] articulated by users as a rationalization of perceived language structure and use’ (Silverstein 1979: 193). Initially these beliefs were studied through written sources. In the last two decades scholars have stressed that a shift towards a more contemporary social field implies to step away from the more mental beliefs and texts to practices to observe the working of language ideology. In this view, there is room for speakers to contest existing representations by altering their speaking practices (Cameron in Holmes & Meyerhoff 2006: 448). I see this as a fruitful approach and that is why I took up the task of studying both language appreciations and speaking practice in order to get information about the workings of Tbilisi language ideologies.
Commenting on Geertz’s and Bloch’s debate on ideology I see language ideology as having the potential for people to have a certain set of dominant or dominating ideas about other social groups that keep in place a historical power structure that enables and disables the behavior between people in everyday settings. In this thesis this conviction has implications for the way that I view conversations between Russians and Georgians.
Language ideologies’ ties to space and materiality Anticipating on a shift from beliefs and texts to practices there is a more recent academic development in anthropology that takes spaces and things into account. I agree with the scholars (Cavanaugh & Shankar 2017, Sherouse 2014, Kress 2010) subscribing to this development that it is odd that the agency of the object is still quite irrelevant in sociolinguistic inquiries since technologies and its products engage in the social world now far more than ever before, while the combination of objects and language has been around for a long time. Anthropologists and social scholars have granted more agency to objects in non- linguistic anthropology for some time now. Noteworthy examples are the following authors. Bateson (1972) already was making linguistic claims in an analysis of how ‘things’ (material
18 and immaterial) are stressed instead of relations between them in the western context. Latour stresses the networks of material objects and people (1996). Miller who makes aware of objects as mnemonic devices (1987). Ingold envisions a different ontology that is focused on cultural interactions that merge the human and the material environment (2000). Recently language’s ontological move to the material is becoming a more active discussion among linguistic anthropologists (Cavanaugh & Shankar 2017). There are two relevant ideas in recent linguistic anthropology that define links between language ideology and the material: linguistic landscape and affordance. The notion of linguistic landscape has overlap with later elaborations on language ideology by Irvine and Gal (2000) in which some languages or ideas about language are prominently displayed while others are erased; this in turn is a way to reestablish power relations and language hierarchies. However while the notion is good to make systematic scans of the linguistic compositions of a public site (Shibliyev 2014: 207), it does not pay attention to how the signs affect the behavior of people. Affordance has this potential. Affordances are transmitting stations that enable people to perform a certain practice. Through time these stations become naturalized and people start perceiving them as natural to the environment (Chemero 2003, Stoffregen 2003 on the application of Gibson 1977 in psychology). To understand how affordances work, one is required to accept that they are not a part of the subject nor are they a part of an object, both the subject and the object get blended in with the environment.7 The affordance transmits and enables practices between object and subject, and between subject and subject. Affordances can be understood in the linguistic anthropological sense as the –material- presence in a space that makes it desirable for a language or language code (a lexical form or word descending from one language that is used in another language in particular instances) to be used. Linguistic anthropologist Sherouse shows that in Tbilisi, there are spaces where affordances surface and Georgians are used to come into contact with the Russian language. According to him Georgians are more likely to use Russians within spheres having to do with technology (sizes, decimal number systems, phone dialing, gears), spheres that had to do with high Soviet culture (education, theaters, and cinema’s). In both these spheres, Sherouse argues, Russian was seen as neutral because it stood for the modern, as he explains: ‘Serving
7 Here I am paraphrasing the conception of the psychologist that coined the term -see Gibson 1977: 70
19 "art" of a spiritual yearning neutralizes the politics of linguistic code choice by framing the human organism as a medium rather than a locus of choice. Similarly, science and technology, by standing in opposition to human-ness also neutralize linguistic code choice. Both profound feeling and the cold emptiness of machines configure the communicative channel (…) as neutral and autonomous (2014: 63).’ This assumption of neutrality is a misconception I find. Russian in the USSR was the language through which modern technologies became available and because of this it was perceived as neutral since it was not tied to national identity – the realm of ethnicized Georgian culture. The assumption of neutrality however mystifies the continuous inequality in past and persisting social realities. A useful insight comes from a colonial study on the Dutch Indies by Mra’zek (2002). The construction of new roads on which the first motorcycles in the colony drove in the 1910’s, as one would expect heralded not only a change of scenery but also a change of speaking about these new features. Talking about these roads was done preferably in Dutch, instead of Malay, Bahasa or Javanese, and discourse about infrastructure and the technical was filled with words denoting purity such as ‘smooth asphalt’ or ‘clean tracks’ (Mra’zek 2002: 25). Infrastructure became the new language of building modernity on Java, the Indonesian island that housed most Dutch colonial institutions. In line with colonial scholar Mra’zek, I would like to pay attention to the ways that affordances are consciously mystifying historical dominance in the case of ‘neutral’ technology and the arts in Tbilisi and the Russian language Griboyedov theatre.
Purity and time For my analysis I propose a new take on the well-known conceptual framework that acclaimed author Mary Douglas uses in her book ‘Purity and Danger’. This book examines purity and impurity rituals through examples from various communities in the world at various times. In her book, Douglas envisions pollutions ‘as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order (Douglas 1980: 3-4).’ By means of purity and impurity rituals, dirt is categorized as ‘matter out of place’ (ibid: 35), with this act of drawing symbolic boundaries, what is considered to be pure and at the same time what is considered to be the social structure, is symbolized. For instance she gives the example of beliefs (that inspire purity rituals) that portray each sex as a danger to the other because of contact with sexual fluids, while in other communities or societies only the male is claimed to be endangered by the female when it comes to sexual endeavors. Douglas in this case argues that ‘it is
20 implausible to interpret them as expressing something about the actual relation of the sexes. I suggest that many ideas about sexual dangers are better interpreted as symbols of the relation between parts of society (ibid.4).’ This relation can be symmetrical or hierarchical and they can already be seen symbolized within the symbols apparent in the ritual or conviction. These symbols are thus mirroring a social system of a society or community, because the act of pointing out certain sexual dangers can stigmatize certain sexes in this case and prioritize the other -often male- sex (ibid: 3-4).
Looking at the face value of a purity ritual and its creation of social boundaries, the focus of Douglas, is valuable for my research because I think that it is applicable to theatre shows with a focus on ‘pure Russian’ as well. This was the core of every play I watched in the theatre where I did research. ‘Pure speech’ was always highly regarded and seemed to be a fundament for the social structure of the theatre and its regular attendants. In this sense I regard the theatre play as a purity ritual focused on speech, and just like every ritual it is involved with the material (artifacts play an active role) as well as the immaterial (people speak and act in a certain way during the ritual).
Although the focus of my study is the interplay of language ideologies and the valuing of pure speech in it, I must acknowledge that the very notion of pure speech also implies impure speech, and also in the theatre that I will introduce there is impure speech that enables and at the same time threatens speech considered pure. I see parallels in this dynamic of linguistic purification with surzhyk, a mix between Ukrainian and Russian that after the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of an independent Ukraine suddenly was considered impure by media and Ukrainian officials of both Russian and Ukrainian speech communities. (Bilianuk 2004: 423). The Georgian case is different in the sense that Georgian does not have a dominant mix language of Russian together with Georgian such as this, but there are negative associations with the impure Russian-Georgian mix that was spoken among Georgia’s organized criminal networks. The danger to be associated with this impure ‘Zhargoni’ affiliated with the mafia indirectly, threatens the social order in the theatre and attempts to speak or value a certain kind of cultured Russian associated with Soviet era intelligentsia, to be in effect the only pure Russian.
This research also has to be seen against the backdrop of Post-Soviet anthropological debates on nostalgia (Boyer 2010, Boym 2002, Berdahl 1999). The theatre company I studied
21 could be nostalgic by choice of its repertoire yet it risks or fears becoming irrelevant when it would not show classical plays with the enactment of beautiful accent-less Russian in it. I interpret the act of distancing oneself from impure Russian as reflecting a fear to be excluded from the project of building a modern Georgia. Such a fear meets the description of Martin Demant Frederiksen in his ethnography on adolescent male youth in the Georgian coastal town Batumi. Like Frederiksen’s interlocutors who grew up in Russian-Georgian speaking petty criminal networks in the country’s chaotic and violent transition period and had to reinvent themselves under Saakashvili (2013: 66), theatre workers fear that they are not confined to the present but tossed into the past. This is a past that is in fact not situated in a time frame gone by but functions as an imagined stigma in the present. The theatre as a whole is sometimes named ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘nostalgic’, because it just does not fit anymore in the direction in which they find that society is heading. I think that this temporal exclusion gives an extra dimension to both the ideas of nostalgia and purity, since it perceives the nostalgic as a way to safeguard the future in a climate wherein a confinement to the past is a threat.
Position, methodology & ethics Since this study is about language, my sociolinguistic position, which colored every method I used is prioritized in this section. I am a 26-year-old Dutch male and I have been raised monolingual as a child. From my 9th life year onwards I attended English classes although before that I already watched subtitled English television shows. From that time onwards I have been speaking and using the English language more regularly every year. I started out learning Russian two years before I arrived in Georgia for this project. I had been to Georgia four times before I began my fieldwork. I would describe my Russian proficiency as a shy B28 with amnesia-like tendencies yet still improving. My command of the Georgian language is not worthy to be referred to as A1 on the same scale.9 From the outset this meant that I could do participant observation among Russian speakers, but that I had to prepare everything that I was to say in broad terms and that
8Retrieved from https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/resources/european-language-levels-cefr (visited on the 18th of June 2018) 9 I can understand the Georgian alphabet, greet people, pronounce geographical names in an artificially sounding Georgian manner; I can let taxi drivers describe their neighborhood (while not understanding what they say) and order dishes in a restaurant.
22 I never knew what my interlocutors were saying if they spoke in Georgian (the same goes for fast paced colloquial Russian). That is why I decided to approach research assistants that could interpret Georgian-English, English-Georgian and later on in the research also Russian- English and English-Russian if needed. The latter Russian interpretations were not always necessary but were very useful when going to theatre plays, which require a great comprehension of Russian. Megi and Salome could also get access more easily into the schools I visited and the theatre, since they had a better understanding of cultural norms and had good communication skills. Seeing interpreters as merely neutral transmitters of information has been criticized in the reflexive turn (Edwards 1998: 202). In line with these criticisms I find that a researcher should reflect on the position of interpreters as well as their role in interactions. The fact that both my interpreters were Georgian, middle class young females had an effect on the materials I gathered. The mechanics, which I interviewed, were very talkative, because supposedly they were not accustomed to a female (my interpreter) asking them a lot of Georgian technical questions. This rich information would have been much more scarce if I would have tried to ask the same questions. As a Georgian speaking both Russian and Georgian, Salome did not only interpret but also functioned as a key informant in the sense that she knew a lot about Tbilisi theatres and was raised bilingual. When interviewing she could create a common everyday conversation instead of a stagnant inquiry. The driving force behind this research has been my curiosity for the apparent discrepancy between urban linguistic identities manifest in views on language and apparent in language practice. That is why some methods focus on ideas about language and/or monitored language practice. I conducted 28 informal semi-structured interviews that were recorded by a voice recorder or a phone in various urban spaces in Tbilisi. These interviews were about the appreciation and use of the Russian language and took half an hour to one and a half hours. They were conducted among five taxi drivers, two vocational school car mechanics teachers, six school teachers and a school principal (of whom two teachers of a private school specialized track for Russian language and literature and four from Georgian public schools with a Russian sector), six university teachers (of which two were specialized in teaching the Russian language and Russian philology), six theatre community workers, one editor-in-chief of the Russian Club Journal and ten young actors (in a group interview). 24 conversations were more structured than regular informal conversations and which
23 I therefore labeled small-talk interviews in my field notes. These small talk interviews were set up to get insight into my interlocutor’s views on language and their life trajectories (inspired by the small talk method explained in Driesen 2013: 259) while at the same time attempting to work with my Russian language barrier in a fruitful way. Of the 24 Small talk interviews I have conducted (with and without a research assistant) there were 10 held among mechanics, and 14 held within the Griboyedov community in multiple settings. In terms of nationality all my interlocutors identified themselves as Georgian except for four people that saw themselves and were seen as Russians. Inspired by anthropologists working with photo elucidation (Harper 2002), I found a way in which I could add a more tangible component to the small talk interviews my research assistant Megi and I held with car mechanics: I printed out ten technical drawings. These technical drawings were found online. I used a Russian language car manual of a Jaguar XJ10 and drawings from a car’s internal and external parts such as steers, engines etcetera.11 When a mechanic knew the Georgian word, which turned out to be rare, then notes of this were taken accompanied by information on whether they used the Georgian term or the Russian term and how often. The form of participant observation in the Russian language Griboyedov theatre I undertook was relying more on systematic observations and less on participation. I observed 20 theatre plays and 6 rehearsals. During these theatre plays I often went with Salome, who interpreted the play for me while we were watching and often I made audio or film recordings (which I have erased now for copyright reasons). I used these recordings and translated notes to make transcripts, which I used in turn for discourse analysis purposes. The situations in which I could do participant-like observation were numbered. I had the opportunity of doing a volunteering job in the theatre, but after a couple of times I was not needed anymore, so I could not keep the job. The workers I met here were mostly older than 40 and both female and male. Another instance in which I could do more participant-like observation was when I was allowed to go along on a one day ‘gastroli’ [theatre tour], on this day I spoke with a lot of
10 Retrieved from http://84.22.143.158/files/%D0%A0%D1%83%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%81%D1 %82%D0%B2%D0%B0/%D0%98%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B8/Jagu ar/Jaguar_XJ_X351_Owners_Handbook.pdf on the 1st of February 2018 11 Retrieved from http://lib.madi.ru/fel/fel1/fel14M213.pdf on the 1st of February, 2018
24 actors that mostly were between 22 and 65 years old of somewhat evenly spread genders and could see them interact with one another in a way that seemed everyday-like. Although I do not think that my presence effected the way in which the actors (or the workers when I was working in the theatre) normally interacted with one another much, my situational position as a relatively well-off Dutch or West-European person that could not speak their language well could have alienated me from them. Although participant observation, with a stress on participant is a very valuable method I want to point out the value of methodological flexibility. In his inspiring recent book, Ingold points out the following: ‘All study calls for observation, but in anthropology we observe not by objectifying others but by paying attention to them, watching what they do and listening to what they say. We study with people, rather than making studies of them. We call this way of working “participant observation”. It is a cornerstone of the discipline (Ingold 2018: 11).’ I did not succeed fully in studying with people in the way that Ingold is stressing. -Am I not an anthropologist, or at least an anthropologist-to-be for this? This is a question that bothered me throughout the course of my research project. I have been studying anthropology for a quarter of my life and I was brought up in an academic tradition in which the virtues of wisdom acquired by means of participant observation were always accentuated as most central to anthropology’s insights and aspirations. Although I failed to ‘study with people’, I still returned from the field with a corpus of useful material and reflections.
That is why I want to make the methodological argument that while knowledge and wisdom acquired through ‘studying with people’ is very useful information, it is not by definition the weightiest of insights because it can leave out what people do without each other. Just because this method is the bread and butter of the anthropological discipline, it is not superior to different kinds of methods. Because I encountered a theatre in which I could not play a role, I searched for small events in which I could take part. I went on a theatre tour and I watered plants yet I could not do the things that the workers did. If researchers cannot participate and live with a community or are excluded then at least they must be flexible and turn to other methods. I have turned to being a fly on the wall, an interviewer and an anthropologist taking reflexive notes. I have experienced the way in which the feeling of failing to be a good participant-observer can become detrimental to the project (and the person behind the research) and I am convinced that this should not be the aim of the exercise. Yet the lack of participation shifted my attention to exclusions and boundaries and the kinds
25 of observations this focus allowed formed the core of this thesis. Therefore I feel that training to cope with not being accepted in groups is an ethical task that anthropology as an academic discipline should embrace as I felt not sufficiently prepared for that, while on the other hand it can be a rewarding research attitude. Community acceptation and participation is our discipline’s doxa (Bourdieu 1977 [1972]: 164) that deserves to be granted situational leeway.
Furthermore I want to state that I have tried to safeguard my interlocutors. Only public figures are named with their real names in this thesis. Theatre workers, actors, mechanics, taxi drivers, teachers and university teachers that play a part in this work were all given pseudonyms. Next to this I have left personal information that could be used against them out of their profiles. With an eye on my interlocutors’ privacy I must state that in the rare cases in which I was allowed to record everyday conversations, I have erased all the files that were used before finalizing this work.
Outline Apart from the introduction, this thesis is structured into three chapters. Although I have tried to contextualize my field already, I have not touched upon living Russian language ideologies in Tbilisi. That is why in the first chapter I will look into prevalent appreciations and usages of the Russian language in various city sites. My data is reflecting views held by university professors, teachers, a taxi driver, the CEO of a job-site, a vocational school teacher and the artistic director of the Griboyedov theatre. This data is viewed in relation to language ideology’s power dimension and its ties to the material environment.
In chapter 2 the Griboyedov theatre is explored as a space in which the term Chistaya Russkaya Rech’, a claim about the purity of speech content and form takes central stage in the experience of the theatre. Following my interlocutors in the Griboyedov environment I take the term to be a worldview. Therefore, the reconstruction of a theatre visit is put forth wherein spaces and artifacts as well as the play itself are taken into account in order to determine what the term means and what its significance is. This data is also viewed in relation to language ideology’s ties to the material environment and explores the temporal dimension of symbolic boundaries.
The last and third chapter sheds light onto the Griboyedov theatre community and its particular configurations of essentialized identities. Following this, I problematize Russian as a neutral interethnic lingua franca by looking at cases of Georgian and Russian conversations
26 at the Griboyedov theatre and on a theatre tour. In light of these conversations I explore hints of the postcolonial in post-Soviet Georgia.
27 1.
Trends, classroom stubbornness & hands-on jargon in a changing Tbilisi
‘Saint Petersburg, that is the most romantic city, me and my sister grew up there, yes… ah well… but times have changed in Tbilisi…in Georgia… what can I say…(vocational school car mechanics teacher Khatuna [Georgian]) ’
Preface: Zooming out When I am looking for an urban language ideology, I wander around Tbilisi looking for people that I can bother with my project for a month. The first place I visit regularly is a market place that is called Didube. Didube is a big transit station for the metro, minibuses that drive towards the north and for a lot of taxi drivers. When I come here I have already visited Tbilisi four times in the past and I’ve always had a lot of Russian conversations with taxi drivers at this place. Therefore I think that this will be a good place to start my fieldwork. I want to know what the language means for them and in what situations they speak it.
However, when I arrive in Didube and start to live in the area I find out that the Russian language is spoken with tourists only and that the language does not seem to have any meaning besides this user value. So the only considerations that the taxi drivers seem to have regarding the speaking of Russian is that if they speak it they will have potentially more clients. This is contrary to my expectations, since I was under the impression that Russian would still be spoken actively among the Soviet generation. Most of the taxi drivers are all male and above 45. As I want to have a more diverse research population in terms of gender and age, I leave Didube.
Once I leave I begin to zoom out to the city as a whole. I get back to my initial focus: finding an urban Russian language ideology. My initial setup is involving school- and university teachers as well, and so I am still busy when I leave Didube. To interview teachers about their changing views and usage of the Russian language I navigate through different parts of the city. From Didube I make my way into different parts of town. I go to the more chic Vake neighborhood were the Javakhishvili State- and Ilia State University buildings are
28 situated. I also go to neighborhoods in the outskirts of Tbilisi such as Isani and Gldani. The people I interview give me a more solid grasp of what more common ideas the Russian language and its ties to urban and national identities are. These ideas prove to be crucial to understand the dynamics that I encounter in the theatre later on as they point to two competing stances when it comes to appreciating the Russian language. Next to this I also interview mechanics in an unofficial learning setting: the Eliava market and an official learning setting Mate Motors and the Mermisi vocational school.
To situate my reflections on the Russian language Griboyedov theatre where I have done the majority of my fieldwork, it is necessary to have a notion about what the Russian language ideology and societal changes in Tbilisi and Georgia are in general. This chapter therefore is not about the theatre but about the city. It examines language ideologies that are dominant in various sites I have visited. The question this chapter answers is: How could the Russian language have been spoken and appreciated in Tbilisi and how did the language’s usage and appreciation change?
Changing language trends: prestige, corrosion, pragmatism and refusal When people describe their subjective habit of speaking or not speaking Russian and their views on how they think their city has changed when it comes to language it becomes apparent that there are particular fashions or trends that died out or emerged within urban spaces at various points in time. Some of these trends could have parallels in other post-Soviet cities while others are quite distinct to Georgia and Tbilisi in particular. These trends are linked to opinions about what the Russian language stands for. Often there is a tendency among my interlocutors to see the Russian language as a symbol. The content of what this symbol should entail exactly seems to be a topic of debate. There are two strands when explaining the content of the symbol and a vast grey area in between those poles. On the one hand there are Georgians that see the Russian language as a language of opportunity and widened worldview. A clear proponent of such a stance is Russian philologist Davit Gotsiridze who states: ‘After joining the Russian culture through the Russian language, Georgian culture expanded the boundaries of its world, was able to rethink its own, having a unique opportunity to look at oneself from the outside. Together with the Russian language, a new vision of the world has come.’ Explaining the symbol as an unnecessary continuing historical dependence, undermining national self-worth or maintaining an antagonistic presence could characterize the other strand of the debate. History
29 teacher Gvantsa’s view can be placed more on this side as she notes:‘so because people speak the language… Georgia is sometimes reconfigured as part of Russian territory… [By Russians] They are forgetting that already in the 6th century there was an independent state here. That is not how it ought to work.’ Most of my informants could be described as choosing a middle ground in between these poles. What people think that the Russian language stands for in the present often relates to the manner in which they use the language in the present. Having said that, the symbolic quality of Russian speaking changed a lot. The waning trend here is the Russian speaker’s prestige. The following interview fragment between Georgian university professor Miriami and a befriended NGO worker Nana shows how this prestige could manifest itself in Tbilisi in the early 1980’s.
Nana: ‘In the past it was … in the eighties… Russian could be heard everywhere… on the street and in the metro. But the intelligentsia spoke Russian far better than common folk let’s say; because it was stylish… it was necessary and fashionable.’ Miriami: ‘I agree, I remember now that when I was a student I was on my way to what was then called the Lenin square, yes and there were like nine Georgian women dressed well in clothes that were sought after so to say… They were chatting with each other in both Georgian and Russian with a very coquettish pronunciation and I remember that I was struck by what one of those women in the bus said. Youngsters need eccentric people to gossip about you know… And one of the women, we – my friends and I will always remember this, the woman says to the other: ‘(Russian) Akh, kak mne nravit’sya etot Shadrevani! [O, how I love that ‘Shadrevan’! {Georgian word for fountain}].’
Besides that this vignette shows that the Russian language was more common in Tbilisi’s public spaces it shows that Russian was considered chic, indicating certain kinds of people. That the women were all dressed in clothes that were not easy to come by in that time indicates that these women were more well off than average people in Soviet times. The fact that the woman in the anecdote uses the Georgian noun for fountain while the rest of the sentence is structured in Russian, makes the word fountain somewhat of an anticlimax. While the sentence has a more chic phrasing because of the Russian words, the Georgian makes the attempt somewhat clumsy and therefore funny. This joke is not only pointing at the woman
30 that fails to totally master coquettish Russian but it is also meant as mocking the status of Russian as a chic linguistic style in Georgia. This is a parody of an attribute of the colonizer (Bhabha 1994: 34), which would not make sense if Russian were considered a merely neutral lingua franca.
In my interviews Soviet Tbilisi seems to have been an urban environment in which the Russian language was to some extent omnipresent but not always practiced within ethnic Georgian circles. Soviet intelligentsia was expected to speak Russian in everyday life. During my time in Tbilisi, interviewers’ assumptions are widespread that people from more elite families during Soviet times spoke Russian amongst each other. For instance when the already mentioned Georgian Russian language philologist Davit Gotsiridze is interviewed about his work for a Russian educational platform, one of the first questions he gets asked is: ‘With what or with whom specifically did the Russian language began to play a role in your life? After all, you grew up, as I understand in a Georgian intelligentsia family...’ 12 Indeed all Georgians that I meet that do something within the Russian cultural or academic sector in Tbilisi grew up in families that were considered intelligentsia back in Soviet times. Mr. Varsimashvili’s upbringing is telling. He states the following: ‘My father was an engineer and my mom was a French teacher… They settled in Tbilisi. I had good parents. I was taught Georgian and Russian at exactly the same time. Back then I also thought in two languages, while now I only think in Georgian. On birthdays people talked in two languages […]’. What I want to make clear here is that the Russian language, especially speaking it well, was a prestige item for people in relatively well-off more cultured urban milieus. When I hear this for the first time it is hard to imagine since more than once I speak with professionals that, although having learned Russian in their youth, never speak the language anymore in the universities where they work or even within their social circles. One university professor when interviewing him did not speak sufficiently in Russian or in English and thus we conducted the interview in Russian with English filler words. An example of such a sentence would be: ‘(Russian) Da, ya pomniu, v tom vremya uchiteley (English) everywhere (Russian) Russkiy’ [Yes I remember that in that time teachers would speak Russian everywhere]’. The corrosion of Russian as an institutional language is nowadays
12 From http://www.ug.ru/archive/71891 Uchitel’skaya Gazeta, the Teacher’s Newspaper (visited on the 20th of July, 2018)
31 fully evolved. Nobody with whom I spoke in universities spoke Russian amongst colleagues for instance; even within Russian philological departments this happened rarely, because people reported that they were used to speak Georgian. Next to intelligentsia and apparatchiks (civil servants for the government communist party), also workers had to learn Russian, although not necessarily well in school. Under Soviet rule every adult male citizen within the bloc had to serve in the army. All taxi drivers that I spoke with in Didube that were above 40 could tell me stories about their military service, while stationed in bases outside of Georgia, together with men from mixed ethnic and national backgrounds, the only language they had in common was Russian. The language proved useful again when they started to work as taxi drivers, driving tourists from Russia and other former Soviet Republics. In this sense their Russian language skills froze for a while when they were in their own ethnic Georgian Tbilisi bubble, but within the tourist industry these old skills were needed again. There is in this case an old kind of pragmatism transferred from one time into another.
There is also a new kind of pragmatism concerning the usage of the Russian language in Tbilisi. Often young Georgians want to learn how to speak Russian to have better chances at acquiring jobs abroad. Almost everyone that I speak to refers to the proverb ‘Tyem bolshe, tyem luchshe’: the more languages you know, the better it is. Yet when I ask my Georgian interlocutors to clarify what they mean with ‘more languages’ they elucidate that it is not really about quantity. The commonplace is more pointing at the quality of a few languages next to Georgian: good working knowledge of Russian and English is meant instead. Marina, a Georgian university professor teaching Russian exemplifies: ‘I always ask my students: Why do you want to learn the Russian language in university? The average answer that I get is: because I want to work in Russia. Nobody wants to have an academic career… that is very difficult here… they want to learn Russian in order to have better job opportunities abroad… Not in Georgia itself.’ The fact that a lot of students want to migrate to Russia is also reflected in the growth of the number of Marina’s first year students: instead of eleven students a year; a number that was common until 2012, nowadays she has 25 students.
While Marina’s students seem to learn Russian mostly to migrate for better job opportunities, Russian language skills are less important on the Georgian labor market than could have been the case in the past. Lexo Khubulava, the CEO of Georgia’s biggest online job search engine jobs,ge also exemplifies that Russian is no longer a language that comes in
32 handy in particular when looking for a job on the Georgian labor market. He elaborates: ‘There are not a lot of Russian vacancies on our website also because we do not have any subpage that is dedicated to the Russian language. I would say maybe 2 percent of all the positions posted on our site require Russian-speaking applicants, while 15 to 20 percent require English-speaking applicants in total.’ So English has replaced Russian as a useful language that young Georgians must learn, at least when it comes to job security within Georgia itself. Lexo continues: ‘[…] online vacancies that ask for Russian language skills are usually posted by companies that are operating in Azeri territories in Georgia or within the tourist industry. English speaking skills are a requirement that is asked by companies in more sectors.’ Here its apparent that Russian keeps its old lingua franca function when it comes to interethnic contact between Georgians (or Russian speakers of different ethnicities) and ethnicities in the regions. A lot of the young bi- or multilingual Georgian and Russian speaking young actors of the Griboyedov theatre company furthermore claimed to work or have worked as a tour guide or as chauffeurs driving interested crowds from site to site. Because of their above average command of both Russian and English they are valued employees within this sector, as both Russian and international tourism is booming in modern day Georgia.
The Abkhazian and South-Ossetia independence war in 1991 and the South Ossetia independence war in 2008, where Russia played an active role in siding with the independence fighters have had the effect that Georgians have shown signs of protest and in some cases it colored the Russian language to be a foreign and even antagonistic medium. Common Georgian discourse on the subject is not a discourse that uses terms as civil war but instead sees the presence of Russians in the borderlands as a sign of the occupation of Georgia by Russians. Up to this day Georgians use badges on their Facebook profile pictures with barbed wire and the following statement: ‘I am a Georgian and my country is occupied by Russia.’ The 64 year old history professor at the Javakhishvili state university Gvantsa, out of solidarity with the friends who she lost during the Abkhaz war withdrew from all Russian friendships she had up to that point and spoke Russian only when she had to after it:
‘There was never a negative association with Russians or the Russian language. In the nineties with the protests and the wars, this changed. I always spoke in Russian also with Georgian families, but when this war went on, we stopped speaking Russian. It was
33 embarrassing, it was the enemy-language and it still is. The position they take… it hurts… My generation died in the war. They are occupiers and they occupied our country. They have displaced people, and they did not stop, they went further and further and they took more territories. Ossetia, was named this way in Soviet times, beforehand it was a Georgian princedom. They seized so much… It is not the Russian people or Russian culture but their politics that spoiled everything. They believe their propaganda.’
Gvantsa describes the personal process of distancing oneself from the Russian language as a political act of protest against Russia. Judging by Gvantsa’s story, the change that the Russian language went through is remarkable. The language went from a neutral lingua Franca that anybody could speak (also amongst Georgian families) to a language that is associated with a particular ethnicity and worldview and is thus not suitable for Georgian- Georgian conversations. What is furthermore interesting in her response is that although she separates Russians and Russian culture from Russian politics, this distinction becomes problematic and inconsistent when the Russian language is judged as a representation of Russian dominance within Georgia. The assumption that there is a clear-cut separation between Russian people and culture on the one hand versus Russian politics on the other hand is widespread in contemporary Tbilisi, yet the symbolic relation between Russian dominance and language sketched out in her response is very extreme. That makes her refusal to speak Russian in most situations stand out as the outer end of a spectrum.
I tried to explore a general spectrum of opinions and memories regarding the Russian language as a symbol in Georgia (although this spectrum is biased). In Soviet times the Russian language was associated with prestige and Soviet elites: apparatchiks and intelligentsia. The language was considered to be chic when its speakers were well articulating. While it was a language of Soviet elites, within Soviet times the Russian language was already applied pragmatically by its speakers, it was a lingua franca among various ethnicities for instance. While the language’s association with elitism vanished partially, the pragmatic dimension is alive and kicking. Russian language abilities are useful when looking for jobs outside of Georgia since judging by what Lexo of online platform jobs.ge says the Georgian labor market is not requiring a lot of Russian speakers. Only in tourism is this a valued skill. Besides pragmatism there is a less common more extreme response namely that the Russian language, as a symbol is associated with Russian dominance that is not tolerated
34 within Georgia and thus must be stood up against. This spectrum is also manifest when it comes to education, only here the agent envisioning the Russian language, as a foreign entity in particular was the state. This ambivalence between pragmatism and hostility in Tbilisi, although much milder is comparable to what Bilianuk observes when she describes language ideologies towards Russian in Ukraine that emerged since the country was engaged in war as of 2014. She observes two camps: one group stating that language does matter and another group stating that it does not. She argues that even the pragmatist is neutral in her case because the latter still envisions a Ukrainophone path for the country as a whole, so the status quo is very politicized towards one direction (Bilaniuk 2016: 157). The same can be said for Tbilisi, pragmatism being the most popular stance is not a middle position, it highlights that Georgian identity is that of native Georgian speakers. This is far distanced from the Soviet intelligentsia ideal that was to raise a child with Georgian and Russian at the same time.
Classroom stubbornness After Georgia’s post-Soviet independence in 1991 the obligatory hours of teaching Russian in schools13 decreased, yet as a prerequisite for World Bank aid, the Saakaskhvili administration in 2005 agreed on a more decisive change. The implementation trajectory of the Law on General Education overlapped with that of the Bologna process (that had similar implications for Higher education). The new regulations stated that the number of hours that were devoted to foreign language learning were reduced and that a pupil had to choose two foreign languages instead of the previously mandatory Russian14. Of the 200 Russian language schools that existed before the Rose Revolution, nowadays there are only 30 left, of which only two in the country’s capital. Also more than five thousand Russian language teachers have lost their jobs in recent years.15 Besides the learning hours being reduced in which Russian is taught in public schools, also public school teachers start teaching the language later on in the trajectory. Instead of the first grade (when pupils are aged
13 In Georgia elementary, primary and middle school are one organ. 14 Sharvashidze, G. (2002).educational reform, curriculum change and teacher education in Georgia,
Educational Policy, Planning and Management (EPPM), retrieved from www.eppm.org.ge. on the 22th of July, 2018
15 Retrieved from https://www.russkiymir.ru/en/publications/182780/ (visited on the 22nd of July)
35 approximately six years onwards) in which together with Georgian, Russian was taught as a native language before the law was passed, children started to learn two chosen foreign languages starting in the 7th grade (pupils aged twelve or thirteen years onwards).16
The confusion Tbilisi residents seem to have about whether the decrease of Russian language hours was part of a bigger political de-russifying measure plan activated after the Ossetia war between Russia and Georgia is understandable when considering Russian language philologist’s Davit Gotsiridze’s words: ‘The change of [Georgia’s] political paradigm, as well as the increased role of English in the globalizing world, have led to a change in the status of the Russian language in the educational system of Georgia. Along with German, French, Spanish, Russian has received the status of a foreign language in Georgia with all the ensuing consequences.’ The educational reforms in other words coincided very much with a more intensified political reorientation.
The most important phenomenon I want to stress about the Russian language schoolteachers who I have interviewed is that they often met these educational reforms with stubborn protest and that Russian sections in big sized schools often were a compromise resulted after long intense negotiations with government bodies. Russian sector schools are schools in which one tenth of a public school that has more than a thousand pupils enrolled is allowed to follow an intense track focusing on Russian language and culture education. I only interviewed teachers from public schools that have these Russian sectors and private schools that pay special attention to the early socialization of the Russian language. For all teachers the educational reforms were a very sensitive subject.
The views that were expressed in the interviews I held could be placed on the same spectrum of stances that was already sketched in the previous section. Whilst the Saakashvili legislation was pushing for a worldview in which Russian was less close to home for Georgians, the teachers and principals of Russian sector schools to-be saw the Russian language as a salable condition for ‘getting along with the neighbors’. In this view nobody makes any claims of a Georgian identity that is entwined with the Russian language. In this
16 Some of my interlocutors speculated that this changed in recent years; they asserted that Russian was now taught earlier again, from the fifth grade onwards. However I could not find evidence to support these claims.
36 sense the Russian teachers exhibited a very pragmatic view when it comes to the worth of the Russian language.
What hands-on jargon to use? Tbilisi is a city wherein cars are the number one means of transportation. Due to lack of sufficient public transport everybody drives a car or regularly makes use of cabs. This is why there are a lot of job opportunities for car mechanics. These mechanics used to be taught the handicraft in informal guilds most of which are still situated in the area named Eliava, near the Tsereteli metro station in the Didube district. From the eighties onwards this changed and there appeared more formalized educational trajectories in Tbilisi and Georgia. An example of which is the vocational school ‘Mermisi’, which was founded as result of an educational treaty signed when president Saakashvili took his first office. The Georgian vocational school is a school wherein pupils that have finished their ninth grade (a year earlier than finishing ‘middle school’ in the US system) are eligible to learn a specific technical profession.17 The difference between the terminology taught to Georgian aspiring car mechanics in vocational
A Russian language car model manual with Georgian notes used in the research
17 An explanatory scheme can be found on the Georgian vocational education website: http://vet.ge/en/%E1%83%9E%E1%83%A0%E1%83%9D%E1%83%A4%E1%83%94%E1%83%A1%E1%83%98%E1%83%A3%E1%83%9A%E1%83%98- %E1%83%92%E1%83%90%E1%83%9C%E1%83%90%E1%83%97%E1%83%9A%E1%83%94%E1%83%91%E1%83%98%E1%83%A1- %E1%83%A1%E1%83%98/%E1%83%A1%E1%83%90%E1%83%A5%E1%83%90%E1%83%A0%E1%83%97%E1%83%95%E1%83%94%E1%83%9A%E 1%83%9D%E1%83%A1- %E1%83%92%E1%83%90%E1%83%9C%E1%83%90%E1%83%97%E1%83%9A%E1%83%94%E1%83%91%E1%83%98%E1%83%A1-%E1%83%A1/ (visited on the 22th of July 2018)
37 schools and informal working stations such as Eliava seems to be the difference between day and night. While the ‘Mermisi’ vocational school is a Georgian space where people speak only Georgian, in Eliava almost all signs and advertisements (slogans as ‘replace your wheels here’) are written in Cyrillic Russian and Russian words can be heard every minute. Moreover the argument that Eliava is a heavily Russified urban space is strengthened after I analyze reactions on the drawings. The very few times that Eliava mechanics do know the Georgian terms for parts, they only know this because they had to learn it or because they have a general interest in knowing the parts in both languages, not because they use the terms (If they knew the terms I wrote these terms in the manual pictures).
Mechanics in Tbilisi use Russian terms everyday as part of their jargon. This specific kind of jargon mostly relates to car parts. Formerly car parts also have Georgian names, however nobody except for new students of car mechanics in formal vocational schools have learned these names and used them. Sherouse has argued that technical and mechanical terms still carry Russian names in Tbilisi since this domain of knowledge is considered to be more neutral (Sherouse 2014: 63). Although the vast majority of the city’s mechanics use Russian terminology for car parts and seeing this usage as unproblematic, my findings show that the neutrality of the domain and the usage of Russian is debated. In this section I will reflect on the differing views of two agents that work within the car mechanics sector to show how people think about language that it is so omnipresent in the material environment around them. Vibrant 42-year-old Eliava mechanic Ilo has been a mechanic for all his life and worked in both Russia and Georgia. He is unique in his workplace since he is the only person that knows a lot of Georgian terms he explains:
I learnt my profession here from one mechanic and I know everything in Russian but during practice I learnt Georgian terms out of interest. Next to the entrance of my garage ‘Tokari [wheel turners]’ is written, it is a Russian term that people know. After all if I write the term in Georgian maybe none will come. I also teach Russian terms because most car mechanics don’t know car parts in Georgian… Another problem is when I am ordering a car part, for example ‘Khundbebi [break blocks in Georgian]’, I should say, ‘Kalotkebi’ [breaks
38 blocks- derivation from the Russian ‘kalodka’ in the form of a Georgian plural noun], because otherwise the distributor doesn’t know what I mean.’18
What Ilo gives insight into is that Russian is in the very infrastructure involved in the daily lives of car mechanics. Even if a car mechanic decides to learn all the Georgian terms for car parts, then still they have to deal with a socio-linguistic contract among Tbilisi residents involved in the industry. If Ilo for instance decides to not use Russian words anymore he risks losing customers, teaching pupils working terms they cannot apply in professional lives and miscommunication with part distributors. This makes it very unpractical and therefore unattractive to start using Georgian terms in the first place. Thus the world of Georgian car mechanics is highly Russified. This does not matter when the whole technical domain is perceived to be neutral. But this is not always the case.
Enthusiastic 58-year-old Khatuna [Georgian] is a vocational school teacher in car mechanics has a distinct vision on Georgian car mechanics:
‘I am working in this field since 1982. Out of conviction I am always instructing my students in Georgian but there are problems when they are doing internships, since mechanics on the work floor are always using Russian terms. I am teaching theoretical and practical classes. We have permanent internship positions for our pupils at “Mate Motors” and “Elit Motors.” I never use Russian terminology in my theory lessons. I make my own materials, since there is nothing in Georgian. In Soviet times I had problems with authorities because of this. But against my principles still today when I am facilitating practical trainings, I have to name the parts in Russian because I know that without those it will be hard for my pupils to use their knowledge. Nowadays there seems to be a growing demand at the companies we work with to use more Georgian language using mechanics. I know of one former pupil who has his own clientele that want to be helped only in Georgian. That is a good development. As a Georgian professor in Georgia I want to teach, see and hear technical terms in my language, because I am patriot of my country.’ Interestingly, when my interview with Khatuna is finished she says
18 Translated from Georgian by my research assistant
39 in Russian: ‘Saint Petersburg, that is the most romantic city, me and my sister grew up there, yes… ah well… but times have changed in Tbilisi… in Georgia… what can I say…’19
Khatuna sees the Russian language as a symbol that is foreign to the Georgian nation and in her vision the neutral technical domain of car mechanics is reconfigured into a space in which national identity is debated. Russian is somehow entangled with practical learning. What pupils do with their hands has to be taught in Russian because when they hear a certain Russian term in the internship garage and they associate the same item with a Georgian noun there will arise structural communication problems. Mistakes that may follow from such problems can cost the company and is thus undesirable20. Khatuna’s story suggests that Sherouse’s suggestion that in the neutral societal domains of the technical the Russian lingua franca persists. If we take Khatuna’s words seriously however, this very neutral quality is actually not taken for granted and even debated. Her relation to the Russian language, as well as her association with Russia has changed as is exemplified in her statement about Saint Petersburg, a memory that she links to changes in Tbilisi and Georgia.
Thus urban sites where the Russian language is manifest and part of the infrastructure are sites that are associated with technical spheres, such as car mechanic’s garages. Sherouse argues that the Russian language persisted in these spheres because they were considered to be neutral, not part of Georgian culture and external to Georgian national identity. However, I argue that the neutrality of this domain is debatable. Even the neutral technical field of car mechanics is a potential site for negotiating national identities.
Conclusion In this chapter I explored wider spread language ideologies; that is the appreciation and usage of the Russian language in Tbilisi. Because I wanted to avoid reductionisms I described a spectrum of various visions. This spectrum is a scale of symbols that the Russian language in Tbilisi stands for, judging by my fieldwork material. On the one end of this spectrum there
19 Translated from Georgian by my research assistent 20 Together with my research assistant I have been to the main Mate motors location and asked internees what terms they used. The internees forgot all the Georgian terms and only knew Russian terms for gears and parts.
40 are Tbilisi Georgians 21 that envision the Russian language as part of their culture or as a bridge to the outside world, on the other side of the spectrum there are Tbilisi Georgians that see the Russian language as a threat to Georgian national identity. The most popular views can be placed somewhere between the outer poles of this spectrum. Pragmatism that is popular when talking about the usage and learning of the Russian language in Tbilisi is however not resting on an ideal of Georgian and Russian as both native languages, as was the reality for some Georgians in Soviet times, rather it is reflecting an omnipresent shift toward an exclusive nation using other languages. The dominant Ukrainian equals Ukrainophone identity claim is prevalent in a bipolar model of views on Russian and Ukrainian in Bilaniuk’s study on ideologies of language in Ukraine during wartime (2016). Next to this mechanics use Russian language terms a lot, because almost all car parts have Russian names. Yet the neutrality in the technical sector, that Sherouse describes, is not really neutral since it is questioned. The idea that Georgians should use Georgian and not Russian here also permeates, although the entire context is vastly more Russified than anywhere else in Tbilisi.
21 With this I mean ethnic Georgians that live in Tbilisi
41 2.
Chistaya Russkaya Rech’: Purity and old ties in the Griboyedov theatre
‘In the theatre I always speak Russian. And the actors have to speak in Russian... Maybe near the exit we speak Georgian again... You know… It is very important that everybody speaks good Russian; because it is a Russian theater…. The only one that is allowed to speak with an accent I always say, is me… Because when there is a play, I do not go out on the stage... People come for Russian theatre, culture…Russian words…(The Griboyedov’s artistic director Mr. Varsimashvili {Georgian})’
Preface: The Griboyedov The theatre is hidden. In the center of Tbilisi, next to Freedom Square stands a large mall: a large modern day white spaceship. The spaceship has just landed. It was finished less than a year ago, in 201722. Upon entering; an immense sparkling white hall full of glimmering stone appears. Everywhere where there is not white there are glass panels. These panels give a sterile atmosphere to the shops. Noticing the sterility is unavoidable since continuously from ten to ten, day in -day out cleaners make sure that every last bit of the floor is swept and polished up to a level of sheer gloss. Continuously the same music can be heard. The playlist features twelve popular English songs. One track on this list that aggressively blends into the background is an atmospheric acoustic cover of the song ‘Adventure of a Lifetime’.23 Most of the shops in the mall are fancy brand cloth shops selling clothes that are in the same privileged price range. In a corner there is a desk with the theatre logo on it -a yellow silhouette in profile of a 19th century gentleman with a stretched collar and a small glasses that balances on a thin long nose. The logo’s blue background contrasts the bright icon. Considering the space, the theatre looks as if it is just another extension of the mall because
22 Retrieved from http://agenda.ge/news/52238/eng (visited on the 29th of July 2018) 23 Originally performed by the band Coldplay. During my fieldwork I have counted this particular song one hundred and twenty-three times in various public places in Tbilisi while staying there for a three-month period.
42 just like its surroundings it has glass walls. What makes the front of the theatre different from the rest of the mall, are the many life-sized posters shown behind the glass. Near the entrance the ticket lady and a security guard sit. The ticket lady sells tickets with pictures on them - previews of what the theatre looks like from the inside. On entering the theatre, a different world emerges out of the shadows, a microcosm that could not be more different then the mall. The walls of the foyer are covered with relics that represent the past. A past that, judging by what one sees was glorious and grand. Photos of old theatre companies that once were associated with the theatre reveal laughing faces that welcome the entering audience. Golden plaques and red flags show names and faces of actors and directors. Renaissance style soldier costumes are exhibited in tall vitrines.
The cloakroom is far too large for the amount of visitors. It’s marble top stretches for not less than one hundred meters. Only one eighth of the entire space is actually used. By default, the visitors are received in Russian ‘Sleduyushi pazhalusta!]24[Next in line please!]’ Is called out by one of the cloakroom assistant. Often the cloakroom attendant will have a small chat with the visitors that she is acquainted with. These acquaintances turn out to be a comprehensive part of the audience.
A marble winding stairs leads to the theatre. On the first floor there are various showcases of old décor designs of classic plays. Each case shows a tiny universe; in one there are hanging ropes camouflaging a small village cottage with a black pool, in the other Tbilisi’s multicolored balconies with swaying trees. When you enter the big hall, you will be surprised by its size. There are 960 seats. Towering over the audience’s head is a big oval space with beige balconies on orange walls with a heavy chandelier that shines like a crystal sun that is about to set. An usher helps the just arrived ‘zritely’ [spectators] with finding their place. Once you’ve found your place there will be three sinister bell rings. The intercom takes the opportunity to make a notification: ‘Dear ladies and gentlemen, please turn off your mobile phones and other devices. We thank you for your understanding.' After the third ring your eyes have to adjust to the dimming of the chandelier and the side lamps. Swiftly the
24 In GN/PCGN transliteration system from Russian Cyrillic script to US English Roman script, for more information about this system see: (https://libraries.ucsd.edu/bib/fed/USBGN_romanization.pdf - visited on the 24th of April ’18)
43 curtains open. As if he can see you through the darkness, while fighting the spotlight, there is an actor looking you straight in the eyes. He grins.
Plaques, red stars and a matching interior
The Griboyedov theatre is a state funded theatre that was founded in 1845 and is the oldest Russian language theatre outside the borders of Russia. The Russian viceroy of the Caucasus, count Michail Vorontsov founded it and named it after one of the most famous Russian playwrights of his time, Alexander Griboyedov.25 Griboyedov himself was a well- esteemed Russian diplomat in the Caucasus who married a Georgian princess. He moved to Teheran, Iran to work in the Russian embassy. Soon after his arrival he was killed when the building was stormed in a local riot. There were no survivors. He was buried on his beloved Mtatsminda Mountain in Tbilisi. The theatre’s ‘about’ page on its website states that viceroy Vorontsov aimed "for [the peoples of Tbilisi’s] acquaintance with the Russian language, Russian customs and gradual rapprochement with Russia..." The first theatre was a wooden structure situated on the place that is now Freedom Square, carved out in Moorish style that was even praised by French writer Alexandre Dumas in his travel journals.26
25 Retrieved from https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/aleksandr-griboyedov/ visited on the 24th of April ’18 26 Retrieved from http://griboedovtheatre.ge/%D0%BE- %D1%82%D0%B5%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5/ visited on 24th of April ’18
44 Today the theatre is widely known in Russian and Tbilisi’s Russian speaking circles, but has a fading presence in the minds of people outside of it. The theatre did enjoy an established international status in Tsarist and later Soviet times. The theatre’s sophisticated [Gastroly] tours were known even in the Moscow cultural circuit.27 With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the theatre went through tough times. The final blow to the theatre’s golden epoch came with the departure of its most loyal audience, the Soviet army elite. For many decennia, the biggest army base in the Caucasus was in Tbilisi and its associates invested in the theatre community. Every week they would come. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, its army disintegrated and the majority of the disillusioned de facto veterans went back to their native former Socialist countries. In Georgia, in the nineties, because of the ‘nationalist’ civil war and unstable conditions, there was a steady decrease of theatregoers, while in some periods the entire theatre had to shut its doors. In a time when it became increasingly hard for many to make ends meet and store shelves were empty, the theatre’s food for thought grew into an issue of secondary importance. When the Soviet army was dissolved and the conflict that was fought among ethnic lines, intensified, the Russian population left Tbilisi. As a result, the Russian theatre is not a place where many Russians come anymore. Nowadays the theatre is left with a small audience that consists of a seasonal fluctuating amount of tourists from post-Soviet countries, Armenians, and a vast majority of Georgians. The pieces de resistance for the theatre’s PR- department are definitely the guest performances of Russian companies such as Sovryemyenik from Moscow; these plays continue to draw attention outside the common circles. Despite these upswings in attendance, for some Georgians that I speak to who are working outside of a Russian-speaking environment, the theatre seems to be associated with an unattractive or dusty past. For the Georgians I speak to outside the theatre community, the place is a Soviet remnant. While for them the Griboyedov is associated with a place of high culture that is still part of the Tbilisi cultural spectrum, Georgian language theatres are more loved. Interestingly, these Georgians that do not go to the Griboyedov anymore often claim to be as fluent in Russian as they are in Georgian. Yet if language does not matter, then what happened? Has the theatre lost its broad appeal or does the continuous small size of the audience have to do
27 This particular statement concerning the theatre’s history is based on various interview materials.
45 with a changed appreciation of the Russian language? To give an answer to this question, I explore a term that is inescapable.
Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ We meet in a chic lunchroom in Vake. She wears a black dress that together with her dark hair accentuates a white chain of beads. Sopio worked for the theatre for ten years.
‘The theatre is special’, she says. ‘It is special because of the quality of the plays, its history and because of the way that people speak; ‘yes it must be grammatically correct, it is appropriate for the stage, people have to play it… but it is also stylistic, and classical in nature. It is as it ought to be and not as what people are talking in everyday life. I do not know how to name it. It comes very naturally to me.’
‘Chisto?’ I ask.
‘Euh no… yes, yes… that is the word… Chistaya Russkaya Rech’, that is what people come for.’
The term slips my tongue because I remember that my Russian teacher used it in her lessons when she was talking about speech wherein accents are lacking. When I used the term she nods, and drops it the whole conversation through as if she is relieved that she can use it as a commonplace. Thus, what makes the theatre unique in her eyes is that the actors speak Chistaya Russkaya Rech’28. It is a term, which is so central to what Sopio envisions the theatre to be that it is almost as if it is the sole spectacle that the audience comes for. It leaves me to wonder; what if it is?
28 More common among Russian speakers is the following word order: Russkaya Chistaya Rech’, yet I use this word order since it was more regularly used in the theatre.
46 As this vignette shows, the term Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ does not just cover grammatically correct speech, but instead assumes from its speakers many skills and knowledge –as if it is an art or craft on itself. On the surface there is not a lot of coherency in what Sopio exactly says about the term. This is because the term is ambiguous: while on the one hand it is a term that expresses a special connection with the Russian language, on the other hand she recalls that it is as it is ought to be, so there could be some unspoken assumptions about the commonness of the term. For the greater part, though this term leaves me confused since she seems to doubt whether the term should be used at all. It is not something about which she seems to think often because it is so part of the environment that she knows, it is something that transcends speech, a mindset. When I ask ‘Chisto?’ she first is doubtful, as I interpret the words ‘euh no… yes, yes…’ after some initial doubt however she uses the term during the entire conversation.
Sopio has been raised bilingual and when she was nineteen she started to work as a journalist for the Russian club magazine. Later on she became the head of PR in the theatre. The magazine and the theatre are intimately connected and are located in the same building, so her promotion is understandable considering the close ties of both societies. When I speak to her she is in the beginning of her thirties. Because for an important part of her life she had worked in the Russian cultural scene of Tbilisi, this also meant that she has a very clear conception of what Chistaya Rech’ should be.
As I learn later in my fieldwork, Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ is of core importance to understand the Griboyedov. Many people I meet in and around the theatre are talking about it, when the topic of speech is relating to three aspects: space, classical themes and upbringing. It is a term that is spoken about in one way or another by the director and the receptionist, by the actors and the members of the audience.
The term Chistaya Russkaya Rech’, is a term that is composed out of two adjectives and one noun. The adjective Russkaya means Russian. Just like the word Russian in the English language, it can refer to a nationality, a culturally or ethnically defined group and their language. The term Rech’, is more difficult to translate but is most commonly translated as speech or a noun that has to do with speech performance (language, discourse or an address). Chistaya, which is the feminine form of the adjective chistiy, denotes many mainly positive things in the Russian language. It is a very special word. Among its many English translations the most used are clean and pure while less common translations are also words
47 that do not classify as mutual synonyms within the English language – such as pristine, fresh, perfect, innocent, immaculate, unsophisticated and even unwritten, to name a few (Google translate gives 47 translations of chistaya alone, and this is merely a fraction29 of what a dictionary reveals when searching for chistyi).30
The order of the words is uncommon to use for mainland Russians. Russians commonly will say Russkaya Chistaya Rech’ instead of Chistaya Russkaya Rech’, I interpret this used word order as a point of perspective, since most people I spoke to were bi- or multi- linguals, they see the Chistaya- [pure] factor as more important, and thus put it up front in the word order. The Chistaya factor is more important to them than the Russkaya, since Russian is only one of the languages in their repertoire.
In this chapter I take the term Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ into consideration and I reflect on the different facets, I look explicitly for places where the term seems to be expected or assumed as part of the theatrical experience. This has been done with other terms. Linguistic anthropologist Michael Agar argues that within speaking communities rich terms exist. A rich term is a term that creates a sense of belonging for members of a speech community. Agar exemplifies for instance that the term Schmäh that has different mutual exclusive yet comic meanings for many Austrian German speakers in Vienna (1996: 100). What is unique about such a rich term is that while it is a commonplace that all members of the speaking community can relate to, it is difficult for the members to exactly pinpoint what it is. Yet while individual conceptions of the term differ, the basis for the term to be a community-term is constantly foregrounded in situations wherein the term is used.
Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ is a rich term in the sense that it too prescribes a view of the world. It is a term that prescribes both the constant search of an aesthetic form and a collective significance. The aesthetic form will be discussed next to the meaning for the theatre community. It serves as shorthand for evoking a collective purpose while remaining an oracular term for members of the Griboyedov community; nobody can quite give all aspects
29 (Retrieved from http://gramota.ru/slovari/dic/?lop=x&bts=x&ro=x&zar=x&ag=x&ab=x&sin=x&lv=x&az=x&pe=x&word=%D1 %87%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%B9 visited on the 24th of April ) 30 2007 ed. Marcus Wheeler and Boris Unbegaun, Oxford Russian-English Dictionary , Oxford University Press
48 that are associated with it. That is why the central question of this chapter is: What makes the theatrical experience Chistaya for the workers and audience of the Griboyedov theatre? This chapter is all about sketching out the contours of this rich term and it does so on the canvasses of space and experience, firstly by reconstructing a visit to the theatre and secondly by a discussion of what people value as important ingredients for a Chistaya [pure] play.
Chasing Chistaya Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ is the most important aspect of a theatrical experience in the Griboyedov theatre that is expressed in both the content and style of its plays as well as in artifacts. It is an experiential unifier that merges the spatial and the idealistic. The disparate elements of the theatrical experience are both material and immaterial. The performance of Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ can be seen as a purity ritual that that purifies speech and is expressed in artifacts, the movement through spaces that are marked by those artifacts and in the performance itself. In the opening paragraphs of the late great Mary Douglas’ ‘Purity and Danger’ she argues that ‘rituals of purity and impurity create unity in experience. […] By their means, symbolic patterns are worked out and publicly displayed. Within these patterns disparate elements are related and disparate experience is given meaning (1980:2).’ Although Mary Douglas is building on accounts and debates having to do with religious practice, I argue that her particular idea of ritualistic purity as an experiential unifier, in which it merges the spatial and the idealistic is relevant to better understand what is going on with Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ in the Griboyedov. I would like to explore how the Griboyedov’s purity rituals are drawing symbolical boundaries by putting a certain kind of cultured Russian speech on a pedestal. This exploration is being done by means of an artificially composed theatre visit in which the spaces and the displayed object next to the performance of two plays are put forth. Beginning with the stuff: the theatre’s different spaces express a varying continuance with a Russian language past worked out into material items that are then publically displayed. The symbolic pattern between the spaces becomes apparent when comparing the spaces in detail.
From the Tbilisi Galleria mall, the theatre can be entered from three sides, of which two entrances are designated for the audience and one for the theatre’s staff. All information here is written in both Georgian and Russian. In all spaces (except for the exterior of the small hall’s entrance -since this entrance is under constant renovation when I conduct fieldwork), a yellow silhouette in profile of a 19th century gentleman on a blue background is depicted. To
49 the left side of the logo is the theatre’s name written in Russian, to the right side of the icon it is written in Georgian. The folders at the cash desk are written in two languages, just as the programs, the same goes for the posters on the glass panels that close the theatre off from the mall. The tickets are strangely enough printed in Georgian. So a Russian monolingual audience cannot know where to sit from the ticket alone. The cashier also receives the bypassing customer in both Russian and Georgian. The people that gather around for a play meet each other in the halls; Georgian and Russian can be heard. A lot of the audience members are acquaintances, even outside of one’s own family or company there is a lot of interaction between groups. People give each other hugs and make a lot remarks about each other’s families and kids. Let us enter.
When comparing the entrance halls for both the staff and the audience, both spaces show resemblance. All three spaces, the entrance of the big-, the small theatre and the staff entrance look completely Russified; all walls pasted with posters of Russian plays that once were set on the stage’s boards. If you would be blindfolded, set on a plane and taken to the corridors of the theatre and if you were to be told that you were not in Tbilisi but in a theatre in Saint-Petersburg it would not be hard to believe. The display cabinets that show old scenario’s, biographies of old actors and directors, film recordings of plays, Russian club magazines and newspaper articles are overawing. Most prominently are golden and silver awards that are all-over. The past productions are large in number. Considering the latter, the whole hall is a promenade of robust glimmering plaques. All items have Cyrillic engravings, using Russian words as Nagrada [award] and Deyatel’ Iskusstv [prominent figure/ artist/ art worker31] as leitmotivs. Not only the halls on the front side of the theatre, but also in the staff part, in each corridor, in each hall and in each office are Cyrillic inscribed remnants that narrate stories of the theatre’s past. The halls are not merely halls; they are halls of fame, a particular Griboyedov fame, aiming for the silent admiration of a faithful in-crowd. When a play is performed, people gather around in the entrances and look at the objects. They chat with the cloakroom
31 The way I have learned it, the term also could imply that someone is active in society, being a Maecenas, an impresario attracting sources or rooting for a specific art form. A good example in which these facets overlapped is the person of S. P. Diaghilev. In study texts, he was always addressed as Deyatel’. For a source of these study texts I refer to the following Russian-Dutch method (https://www.pegasusboek.nl/paspoort- voor-rusland-3-tekstboek.html visited on the 31th of May 2018)
50 attendants in Russian and afterwards it is very common to start speaking Russian amongst each other.
The lobby of the small theatre hall makes spectators remember the stars d
Most personal is the atmosphere in the lobbies, just before the entrance of the theatre halls. Here all walls are full with photos and banners of old and current notables. The artistic directors and the CEO’s faces are depicted in the middle of a canon full of names and faces that developed careers in the theatre from the 1930’s onwards. Indeed it seems that the lobbies that are entered before entering the central theatre hall, are more personalized than the hallways before. Profile pictures of old stars and artistic directors, old customary, hats and swords can be seen everywhere whilst only rarely the occasional plaque can be discovered. People are conversing here; they look at- and take photos with portraits and costumes. The spectators reflect on their personal remembrance of the faces that are portrayed.
Now that we moved from the entrance where every material object associated with the theatre is consisting of text with images in Cyrillic Russian and Mkhedruli Georgian and the general public constantly mixes languages to the halls and corridors in the front and the back of the theatre, here are images accompanied by texts only written in Cyrillic script and the majority speaks Russian here. This is where the threshold of the realm of Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ was. From there on out we moved to the lobbies where the emphasis is on imagery and not on text, people make a lot of pictures in these lobbies. However, once we enter the theatre there is nothing, no Mkhedruli, no Cyrillic, no posters, no portraits, no plaques. There are
51 only white walls and a sterile focus on the theatre, a 3D showcase frame around the spectacle that will take place.
The objects in the spaces I describe work as affordances for the theatre’s visitors. After leaving wherever they came from visitors start their night out in a Tbilisi mall where the greater part of all conversations and signs are in Georgian or English32. From there onwards they are slowly pulled into an in-between space in which both Georgian and Russian are used, namely the cash desk. The hallways are the first space in which everything is in Russian, the objects and the signs, no Georgian can be found. Relating to this I argue that the objects work as transmitting stations for Georgian bi- or multilingual visitors. The visitors here are effected and often start speaking Russian, whilst before in the mall they did not.33 The Russian speaking and reading visitors are thrown into the theatre’s past exposed everywhere, whether they like it or not. This is from the hallways into the lobby objects involve less inscribed items and signs and are more focusing on portraits, this leaves more room for conversations, while the atmosphere is less demanding by means of script and more by means of images. Within the theatre there is a total lacuna in terms of language inscribed objects and all focus is on the stage. While the spaces are marked by linguistic boundaries, the material language dimension of the theatre visiting experience flows into the immaterial at this point.
Supposing that this performance is a purity ritual then what does the purity that it aims for, consist of? To answer this question I discuss two important recurring notions that I encounter in the play’s script and performance: a shared historical trauma and a skeptical or critical position vis-à-vis power or status. These notions regenerate a specific Tbilisi Russian speaking community feeling.34 Both notions surface most clearly in the two plays that I focus on, yet they are part of every play I watch. The plays I choose are also the most popular plays I witness and plays which were described as ‘Chistaya’ plays. The fact that unlike with other plays the attendance is vast puts strength to my argument: these themes resonate with the
32 English signs can be found in most public spaces and buildings. Interestingly Demant Frederiksen notes that in Batumi he saw public language change while in the field as English named places became more and more appealing to an international crowd in the period from 2004 onwards, while (young) Georgians became more accustomed to it (2013:41). Tbilisi nowadays is full of English named bars, shops and companies. 33 I have asked most visitors whom I followed through the theatre if they were bi-lingual or multilingual and what ethnicity they considered themselves to be.
52 audience. In order to show how I pay attention to atmosphere, intonation and the force in which speech is delivered.
A.L.ZH.I.R. tells the touching story of censored artists’ and writer’s wives known back then as betrayers of the motherland who were sent to a Soviet gulag that was situated near present day Astana in Kazakhstan. It is loosely based on factual history and thus carries the label ‘documentary drama’; it is adopted for the theatre by the Griboyedov’s artistic director mr. Varsimashvili and premiered on April 28, 2017. The form in which the play evolves is already quite disturbing. The spectator looks at actors declaiming diary excerpts in monologues. There is no dialogue in this play. Because of the weight put on the intonation and the ongoing repetition, the overall effect is that the monologues seem like prayers that draw the audience into the play. The set holds no pretentions; there is a big barbed wire fence that stretches to the highest point of the stage. Photos of actual families, men, women, children can be seen. These are photos of people that were kept in the camp in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Prominent artists such as the bard-poet Bulat Okudzhava hang on the wall as well. His mother was send to A.L.ZH.I.R. and his father to another camp. A grim family history that is typical for the play. A moment of collective ecstasy is exhibited on the stage after a series of traumatic stories about the women’s loss of loved ones: kids, husbands and parents. The play has a rare few important moments in which after a series of chilling monologues there is a moment of collective interaction and even celebration. Most notable is the way a recital is done of a poem written by the all-time great Russian poet Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin:
35 The transcribing technique for doing discourse analysis is used is described in the following article: Gumperz, John J. and Norine Berenz (1993). 'Transcribing conversational exchanges.' In: Jane A. Edwards and Martin D. Lampert (eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. 91-121. An article, which I found via the Dutch online course, named ‘Algemene Taalwetenschap’, the content of which was created by linguistic anthropologist Vincent de Rooij. Retrieved from http://vincentderooij.socsci.uva.nl/atw/week12.html (visited on the 28th of July, 2018)
53
[p]Moy dyadya samikh chestnikh pravil, == [tr: My uncle, man of firm convictions*… ] Kogda ne v shutku zanemog [pp]/, =YYY= {on uvazhat’ sebya zastavil, I luchshe vydumat’ ne mog.} [tr: By falling gravely ill, he's won, a due respect for his afflictions- the only clever thing he has done.]
The title of the work is proclaimed ceremoniously with extra force <[f]> in the first sequence, whilst the author’s name is mentioned in a soft voice <[p]>. A common frame of reference is assumed here. Everybody in the audience must know who Pushkin is and have knowledge of his work. The poem itself is commenced with a very soft voice, as if it does not matter who commences since the people surrounding the reciter are already reciting together with her. The second line is voiced even softer, almost whispering <[pp]>. Then with the third line, everybody on stage and the audience as well <=YYY=> is joining her and reciting simultaneously and the recital slowly becomes a blur of incomprehensible screams. The actors are dancing in the snow at this point, as if celebrating. Accompanied by blue spots they raise their arms into the sky and turn circles. When there are such instances of collective joy it they are always set against the backdrop of isolation from society and threat of the Soviet (gulag-) system. The knowledge of the classic poem here is bridging between the victims of the gulag and the contemporary Griboyedov audience, it serves as a vehicle of emotional attachment, it engages them with the past.
This engagement is provoked by the form of the performance which is particularly aimed at showcasing pure well-articulated Russian speech or Chistaya Russkaya Rech’. The
36 A poetic translation into English by James Falen was used https://zodml.org/sites/default/files/%5BAlexander_Pushkin%2C_Charles_Johnston%2C_John_Bayley%5D.pdf (visited on the 19th of June 2018)
54 style of the performance by means of particular intonation and volume changes affects the audience because it highlights the living function of the Russian speech involved. Here the spotlight that is on the actress performs the speech drives out the threats for the portrayed collective. The actresses in this way are portraying the speech as a source of empowerment and identity.
A collective sensation in the play is clearly invigorated in the end as well, when again attention is being drawn to a continuum between the time in which the play is set and the current time, since there is an actress that presents herself as a survivor. This older woman narrates the ending epilogue in which she tells the story of what happened to the A.L.ZH.I.R. -women. Most women died from hunger and disease, some people did not or coped with mental illnesses for years on end afterwards. The story builds up to an interesting climax. She stops and walks to the front, while staring into the dark void of the theatre hall. With a trembling yet powerful voice she utters:
No ne ‘ya/, {[f] [dc] ya vsegda budu pomnit’} shto zdes’ prozo**shlo, eto moye obyazatelstvo dlya etikh lyud**ey - [dc] [p]{kotorie nye vizhili}/. [But not me, I will forever remember what happened here, that is my obligation to those people that did not survive].
Here the utterance commences with force [f] and the intonation pitch of the first sentence is descending [/] quite early on. After this, the actor is declaiming very slowly. The style figure of the Pushkin fragment is recurring, as it did there, here also it adds solemnity to the message. A stop follows after this sentence, a break [-] in which the audience can overthink the weight of the message. Finally the last part of the last sentence is voiced very softly [p], almost voiceless. This also leaves space to think about the deceased, a moment of silence.
In the above fragment a same solemn recitation- like style is used. What needs to be stressed here is that the community that is portrayed in the play, a community of Russian speakers has survived; a direct line between the camp’s survivors and the audience as recipients of the story is envisioned. I interpret this as a way to collectively as a theatre community emphasize the status that they have of being the Russian speaking cultural community in Tbilisi. The act of remembering here can be seen as safeguarding social structure in a Douglas-like manner (Douglas 1980: 2), in the sense that the essence of a
55 collective defined by speaking -multiple ethnicities in a camp all speaking Russian- remained and did survive the threat.
The Griboyedov rendition of the classical play ‘the Government Inspector’37 written by Nikolai Gogol has very similar social dynamics of threat and exorcising in the play, although central to this play is not collective grief but the absurdity of power. In this play it is not so much what is being said, but the atmosphere of the play that is important to see a parallel in how Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ affects the ritualistic experience. A small Russian provincial town in tsarist times is visited by a government inspector, a person that is said to do a check of stock and governance in the regions in accordance to the empirical center Saint Petersburg. They know this because a messenger of a neighboring town has sent a carrier pigeon. The townspeople do everything in their power to facilitate the inspector’s wishes. The moment just before the villagers find out that the government inspector is a profiteer they shout their expectations about how they will be rewarded in the snow.
The climax of the play here again is exhibited in a similar style as previously described. In my view the reason why this is done is also similar to why it is done in the A.L.ZH.I.R. play, the actors want to drive out imagined threats and they do this by engaging into a ceremonial speech endeavor that turns into a very loud collective exorcising effort. This again safeguards the community by means of language. When the play is done, the audience moves through distinct phases. There is an applause that has three parts. Firstly the actors get off the stage and the audience applauds, the curtains open and the actors appear from the coulisses one by one and individually bow, embracing the spectator’s grace. Then the actors get off the stage a second time and a second round of applause grows and rumbles into a space filling noise. The actors then return to the stage and a worker of the theatre gives flowers to the actors. The audience stands and claps its many hands once more. Then in the big hall the audience discusses the play and can see remnants of old plays.
37 All plays that are analyzed in this thesis are only judged on content where the choice of message and delivery is concerned, I leave the rest to dramaturges and theatre critics. In this way I see the Griboyedov performances of these plays as distinct social situations that cannot be reduced to common scripts of well-known plays of which they of course can be versions, as is the case here. I interpret only what I experienced in the theatre.
56
Left: The townsfolk are fantasizing about how the Revisor will reward them for their kindness Right: The Revisor’s stage design in a showcase
Here, the Groboyedovtsi and their night out are made part of history, of the material again, the stage set of the evening already is or will become a showcase that is set in the hallway, where dozens of them are exhibited. The stage design for the play ‘the government inspector’ for instance is also exhibited. The whole experience in this way is incorporated into the future experience of the space and the ritual. The audience members stay and talk Russian for a while in the theatre hallways. Within half an hour they leave the theatre and often continue their conversations in the mall, speaking Georgian and Russian.
Concluding, the audience moves closer towards the stage, more Russian is spoken and less Georgian. The spaces become more and more Russified as the audience moves closer to the theatre’s heart and less so as they move in the reverse direction. Although the majority of people that go to the theatre are multilingual, they are affected by the Russified environment and tend to speak Russian. The displayed objects here I argue work as affordances; they transmit a Russian linguistic code or atmosphere onto the (often multilingual) speaker that than in turn is more likely to speak Russian as well. Next to this I have argued that the theatre’s artifacts mark the audience as a ritualistic community, yet this is not only done in material terms. The plays that are performed are the center of the purity ritual, for both their form and content engages the audience and the actors in chasing away imagined community threats and in the act drawing boundaries around the community. Yet this is not the only part of the worldview that is Chistaya Russkaya Rech’, and where there is a purity there is also an impurity to be sketched.
57 Guarding old ties to be relevant in the present As was shown, the feeling of belonging that is communicated through the performance of Chistaya Russkaya Rech’ is framed negatively vis-à-vis the inducers of trauma in the Soviet system or versus centralized power. What were described are scenarios wherein there are threats to the community. In order to experience Chistaya Russkaya Rech’, a positive formula of belonging is also required. I argue that this positive formulation of belonging in the Griboyedov always has to do with a Georgian- Russian common ground. Russian speaking in this sense is a meditation aiming to conserve a Russia- friendly Tbilisi. When the theatre’s founder, viceroy Vorontsov established the the Griboyedov theatre in the first half of the 19th century there existed a hostile relationship between Russia and Georgia as the Caucasian wars outside of Tbilisi were still raging.38 Back then the Russian Imperial annexation of the Caucasus was still in full swing. Today’s Georgia again has tense relations with Russia as the two countries are officially not on speaking terms with one another since the 2008 war, and president Saakashvili’s government’s following anti-Russian stance continued under the succeeding Margvelashvili government (Kakachia, K. et al. 2018: 2) Yet in March 2018 PM Kvirikashvili has pleaded to ‘normalize bilateral relations’ with Russia39.
Because the representatives, the spokesmen and actors of the Griboyedov are always expected to represent the theatre’s mission, and because this mission is not always in line with outside opinions about politics, often they avoid politics.
Mr. Varsimashvili, the {Georgian} artistic director of the Griboyedov, who quotes the theatre’s founder viceroy Vorontsov on his own vision statement on theatre’s website has a clear conception of what the implication of the tense political situation for the theatre is. In the following excerpt Mr Varsimashvili states his views regarding Russian people and politics:
38 Kreiten, Irma. “A Colonial Experiment in Cleansing: the Russian Conquest of Western Caucasus, 1856-65.” Journal of Genocide Research 11, no. 2-3 (2009)( pp. 213-241): 217
39 Retrieved from http://tass.com/politics/993616/amp (visited on the 8th of August, 2018)
58 ‘People come to the Griboyedov not for political critique; people come here for classical plays […] Chistaya Rech’. […] You know, my views about Russian people and politics… If you are talking about the empire or imperial pretensions of Russians… yes then they have changed… unambiguously. When you are talking about Russian people… no my views did not change and they never will change…40 I… always thought that Russia is an empire… and especially the last 20 years I have come to realize that even better but… my views on my Russian colleagues, friends and acquaintances that I have known, know and will know will never change because of this... I know that they themselves know that they live in an empire… And because they know this… I can get along with them just fine... We often see each other and maintain good relationships. As long as they know that they live in an empire. Then it is okay.’
In this interview excerpt Mr. Varsimashvili foregrounds the split between people and politics and an image of a persisting repressive Russian empire. Politics in his view seems to be disarmed when Russians make the right choices in what they support. The Griboyedov theatre is no place for a political message in Mr. Varsimashvili’s view. Yet it is a political choice that the Griboyedov is no place for politics. The view that he expresses splits his Russian colleagues and friends from the image of a Russian empire I see as a cornerstone of the theatre’s perspective. This split between Russian top-down politics and normal people comes to the forefront in all interviews I have conducted in the theatre. The narrative of splitting people and governmental action however contradicts the view that Russia is still an empire and that Russians that know this remain good people. This is a contradiction because it implies that Russians that would hypothetically deny that Russia is an empire are held responsible for their government or governmental system. Within this frame there is a tension between the image of good Russians that are trapped in their political system and a repressive empire with conscious oppressors that continues to mingle in affairs outside their state’s periphery.
40 The ‘change’ was a change of views that was asked about; here mister Varsimashvili is talking about the changes in his personal views after the Georgian de-russifying regime under Saakashvili came to power in the Rose revolution and after the South-Ossetia war of 2008.
59 This particular political view is at the core of the content of every play that is considered Chistaya. The message is associated with a certain style of deliverance and both the style and the message are important for how people relate to the general Russian language ideology spectrum. This particular view proposes a way around choosing sides. The Russian language in this sense can be held very close to the proponent that has this view without being less Georgian. Next to this this view what is important for a play to be considered Chistaya together with the style of a play that has to be classical per se. The following vignette explores this view among one of the visitors.
So the political view that Russian people and Russian empire are separated and thus are the befriended neighbors of Georgia has be part of a play if it is considered to be good. Next to this a play is only considered good when it has a classical theme. But what happens if these components that are considered prerequisites for a play to be Chistaya are missing?
The following scene is representative for what happens when a play is performed in which an alternative style and a lack of the popular political view is performed.
Scene 1. 70-year-old {Georgian} actor Gabrieli compares theatrical education in the USSR with that of contemporary Georgia. ‘To be convincing, young actors must first learn how to speak; vot [colloquial expletive, here: you know]… how they must do a good monologue or dialogue- the message has to come across… seriously… Chistaya and believable… we do important work… we unite people… back in the day we learned, every day we were improving… whereas now young actors only learn how to do a nice dance and sing a silly song... And then they go home! It’s a tragedy!’ The opinion that Gabrieli voices is in line with what some audience members say. After the modern drama play ‘Ice Pictures’ performed by the Griboyedov’s young actor company the 65-year-old {Armenian} Margrit responds: ‘Well… it is nicely done… they played well and seriously but I don’t like that there was so much movement and endless common drama in the play…’ Her 35-year-old daughter Sirun agrees: ‘We come here in the first place to hear and see something that is out of the ordinary that people can relate to but gets them away from normal trouble, the play does not tell you how to live a better life together…but stresses minor individual burdens… although these young people are very talented…’ Margrit remarks: ‘It is just not our style… we like the classics better…’
60 For Gabrieli the quality of acting deteriorated after the collapse of the USSR. What is most tragic about this in his view is that the theatre can no longer fulfill its role as a place where people are united. The classical style; a focus on speech instead of movement is envisioned as intrinsically connected with the political message. This unity is also something that Margrit and her daughter Sirun appreciate in a play. An inappropriate message in a theatre play in their view is a play that is ordinary, while an appropriate message in a play tells the audience how to live a better life together. I interpret this as a unity between the Russian and the Georgian nation because most plays are engaging somehow with such a theme. I have now discussed the style of speech and its political message that is associated with a Chistaya [pure] play, yet I did not explore what is considered impurity. What is the matter out of place (Douglas 1980)? In the next scene might lie an answer to this issue.
Scene 2. After the performance of Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard I talk with a 65-year-old man called Davit about the play. ‘I love this play, it resonates with me, I saw many different versions of this play in my life. The actors on the stage here speak in a velichavoye [dignified, cultured] way, it reminds me of the Soviet era, a neostorozhnoye [carefree] time. People in Tbilisi do not talk like that nowadays; they add [Georgian] words… to Russian. Things get messy... [gryazni]. But this here is quality. We have a shared history... You cannot deny that…’
Davit argues that for him there is a relationship between cultured Russian speech and the past. Next to this he states that there has been a societal change and this change has not been for the better for him personally. The Russian language is for him a unifying force that has to be safeguarded, for it preserves old ties between Georgia and Russia. The style that he connects to this again is cultured Russian speech, a form in which the switching of codes between Russian to Georgian is lacking. The everyday styles of communication in Russian are in this sense portrayed as impure, as he says ‘things get messy’. So it is not so much that Georgian is considered impure, that of course would be strange to say for a Georgian-Russian bilingual, it is the mixing of Russian and Georgian that is considered impure.
So within the theatre there is a certain political vision or message that is foregrounded that conceptually splits Russian people from a political system that is seen as a dominating empire, this is a unifying view because in this view there are no barriers between peoples.
61 Next to this a certain dignified classic style of Russian speech that is more appreciated by the audience, when this is lacking then the quality of the plays and its actors is considered to be deteriorating. Classical style is also nostalgically associated with the Soviet past. On the other hand a lack of message is experienced when the content of a play is not in some way orienting the audience towards a unity between peoples, Russian, Georgian and other nations. The classical style is considered to be a kind of cultured Russian that is not mixing with Georgian.
Impure speech in the Russian language theatre is thus not Georgian but a mixed language that is not really Georgian and not really Russian. This distinction is also made in Ukraine where there are various variations of a mix between Ukrainian and Russian that was already existent in the Soviet Union but came to be considered impure after the fall of the Soviet Union (Bilaniuk 2004). In Ukraine however there are large groups of Russian ethnic minorities that actively speak Russian and the mix language. In Georgia this was never the case to such a degree. That is why I argue that impure mixing is not associated with the small Russian ethnic group that for the most part left Georgia in the nineties41 but with the ‘thieves in law’ which where dominant organized criminal groups in Georgia (and other post-Soviet countries). These criminal bands were known to code-switch a lot between Russian and Georgian. These groups had international networks all over the former Soviet Union, that were established within prisons and gulags. They are associated with the turbulent period before the Saakashvili government. Pure Russian speech on the other hand symbolizes ties between Georgia and Russia because of the cultured intelligentsia that often had an education in Georgia, before they started working in Georgia (Scott 2017). So there are actually two examples of unofficial historical ties between Russia and Georgia here, a pure intelligentsia connection and an impure criminal connection, both associated with a particular style of Russian speech.
These two kinds of historically grounded associations are underlying a present day quest for relevance. The theatre community’s taste for only classical Russian plays that make use of a specific kind of pure speech that conveys a message of unity between Russians and Georgians cannot be understood as merely a nostalgic yearning for the past that is nostalgic because there is no place for it in the now. It is instead a fear to be named ‘archaic’ or ‘old-
41 Retrieved from http://www.ethno-kavkaz.narod.ru/rnabkhazia.html (on the 8th of August 2018)
62 fashioned’ in a specific way –a way that is associated with the turbulent past of the thieves in law, and a particular Russian-Georgian switching that is the driving force behind the quest for Russkaya Chistaya Rech’. This is a quest for relevance in the present that refuses to be tossed into a timeframe on the side (Frederiksen 2012: 20). The driving force in this sense is making the heritage of the Georgian Russian speaking intelligentsia relevant for generations to come that grew up after Saakashvili took office.
These two kinds of historically grounded associations are underlying a present day quest for relevance. The theatre community’s taste for only classical Russian plays that makes use of a specific kind of pure speech and that conveys a message of unity between Russians and Georgians cannot be understood as merely a nostalgic yearning for the past that is nostalgic because there is no place for it in the now. It is instead a fear to be named ‘archaic’ or ‘old-fashioned’ in a specific way –a way that is associated with the turbulent past of the thieves in law, and a particular Russian-Georgian code switching that is the driving force behind the quest for Chistaya Russkaya Rech’. This is a quest for relevance in the present and a demonstration against being tossed into a timeframe on the side (Frederiksen 2012: 7). The driving force in this sense is making the heritage of the Georgian Russian speaking intelligentsia relevant for the generations to come that grew up after Saakashvili took office. Concluding, the strengthening and maintenance of ties between two countries -in this case Georgia and Russia is seen as very important in the Griboyedov theatre. This idea is manifest in the vision of theatre workers and officials as well as in the content of the theatre’s plays. The message furthermore is associated with a certain style that could be described as stagnant well-articulated or cultured speech. Both the theatre’s actors and audience criticize plays in which the rapprochement message or the presumed style of its deliverance was missing. The presumed style overlaps with what was already described as Chistaya Russkaya Rech’. Lastly, what is considered impure in the theatre was reflected upon. I argued that this notion had to do with the mixed heritage (both in language as in general) of the thieves in law that is opposed to the high-class Russian language culture of the Soviet intelligentsia. Expanding on this, I have argued that the freight of impurity in the theatre is not so much a anguish of impure speech itself but a freight to be associated with a negative past and therefore of becoming irrelevant. There is a dynamic that purifies old fashioned associations with an era that is imagined gone-by.
63 Conclusion In this chapter I discussed what makes the theatrical experience Chistaya for the workers of the Griboyedov theatre. The term Chistaya is a particular form of purity that is derived from the term Chistaya Russkaya Rech’, which is a particular Russian speech form. This classical speech form is considered very important for a play to be good. I however argued that the Chistaya or purity factor is not only about speech but in fact is also apparent in the spatial dimension. Both of these dimensions, the speech performance and the spatial are united in the theatrical experience and all make up a part of its Chistaya quality. To monitor and reflect on both these dimensions I have explored Mary Douglas’ reflections on a purity ritual. In the experience of a purity ritual, some phenomenon that doesn’t seem to fit in is exorcized or left out to reestablish the dominant social order (Douglas 1980: 34). A suchlike process also occurs in the Griboyedov theatre. In both speech and the spatial dimension I have shown that there is a form of symbolic boundary drawing. This boundary drawing occurs in the spatial by means of affordance like- objects that Russianize spaces within the theatre while it also occurs in speech by means of instances of solemn monologues that erupt into outbreaks of exorcizing chants that try to exclude imagined threats. The theatrical experience thus works as a ritual. Theoretically, this chapter explored the ties of the Russian language ideology to cultural knowledge and materiality. Firstly, I explained that spaces contain increasing numbers of artifacts with Russian names once getting closer to the stage. The outer appearance of the theatre, the advertisements and ticket office signs are in both languages, while the corridors, offices and the halls just before the theatre are all full with posters and artifacts that remind of a Russian past. On the stage and in the theatre the artifacts are missing. This omission, I argue, is leaving space for reliving, reinterpreting and re- establishing the past. The degree to which a space is Russified often has implications for the extent to which people speak Russian or Georgian. In more Russified spaces people speak more Russian and less Georgian while the vice versa is also true. Secondly, historical ties are stressed in the theatre. The theatre workers consider Russian people to be separated from their government’s action; this implies a message of unity between Georgians and Russians that is omnipresent in the content of theatre plays and the experience of them. This unity is part of the Chistaya worldview.
A consideration on what is impurity has also been put forth. Impure speech seems to be a code-switching practice that combines Russian structure with Georgian words or vice
64 versa. This association with this kind of code switching I argued is historically grounded and has to do with criminal networks of thieves in law that are considered remnants of an impure past, versus the pure speech that is associated with the old Soviet intelligentsia. This threat of being associated with negative images of the past is not selective nostalgia, but expressing a wish that Griboyedov workers have to stay relevant in the present.
65 3.
Awkward Accommodations: Configuring identities in Griboyedov speech
‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, this is it. I am leaving. So long!’ ‘My love, don’t leave! You can’t leave […] Not before I tell you something. Do you know how they make Shashlik in Georgia? (Mayakovski in the Griboyedov play of the same name)’
Preface: ‘participating’ in the Griboyedov as a foreign Russian learner I start going to the theatre like everyone does, I buy a ticket for a play. Three times per week I go to a theatre play for two months on end and I chat with members of the audience, often accompanied by my research assistant who interprets. I do not know at this point who the theatre workers are and what they do, how the cultural community operates and what they stand for. In order to find out more about this I make several efforts to participate in the theatre’s more mundane realities, behind the scenes. From the outset however it is clear that this is not going to be easy.
After many detours, I finally get to talk with the CEO. After I conduct a small interview with him, he offers me to meet that evening in a bar in the old German district. After having met him there, suddenly I can walk in and out of the Griboyedov without explaining myself a dozen of times. I get a volunteering job, watering plants in and around the theatre. I also go to rehearsals regularly. On top of that I am allowed to go on a theatre tour or Gastroly once with the Griboyedov actors to the small town Akhalsithke, near the Turkish border. In my time in the theatre community I discover some patterns in the way workers from different backgrounds talk with one another. These conversations and the choices that conversational partners make in them seem somehow related to other conversations I have already heard. These conversational choices I find out can be explained better by comparing them to contrasting identity ideas that are voiced within the theatre environment. These
66 configurations of urban and national identity praise unity between Georgians and Russians but at the same time maintain a specific kind of difference.
Overthinking these conversational choices and the configuration of identities within the community lead me to pose the following question: How is a Tbilisi urban identity configured within the multilingual environment of the Griboeyedov and in what way does this urban identity become apparent in everyday conversations? In this chapter I will firstly look at configurations of history and identity within the theater community, and then I will look at how this identity is surfacing in everyday conversations among theatre workers.
Configuring Georgia’s Past through the Griboyedov lens That the Russian language is a vehicle for uniting, a lingua franca for Georgians, Russians and other ethnicities is often emphasized within the multilingual environment of the Griboeyedov. A common way in which this uniting potential of the language is communicated is in terms of mixed cultural heritage expressed in stories about Soviet artist’s lives in Tbilisi.
Behind one of the many walls in the theatre building there is a special department for the editorial office of the ‘Russian Club’ magazine. The Russian club journal is printed here every month. After publishing, the journal is distributed among various working spaces, museums and exhibition spaces, libraries, café’s and the theatre itself. The readers can also have a subscription. In the magazine, mostly people that represent the small Russian language cultural scene in Tbilisi are interviewed. A big article is devoted to the eightieth anniversary of the famous Soviet Russian musician and artist Vladimir Vysotsky and a book about his ties to Georgia. Vysotsky was very popular in the whole Soviet Union and had various collisions with the ruling Soviet state party.42 In reply to this article on the next page a mini-essay elaborates on Vysotsky’s Georgian colleague Vakhtang Kikabidze.
‘Georgia has always had a special meaning for Russian cultural figures. Here they found shelter and refuge, they could rest their soul and drew inspiration (from what they found). […] For them Georgia became a true home, a
42 Retrieved from http://www.krugosvet.ru/enc/kultura_i_obrazovanie/literatura/VISOTSKI_VLADIMIR_SEMENOVICH.html (visited on the 26th of July 26, 2018)
67 second homeland. […][Vysotsky] came over to Georgia not one but a dozen of times. Not only for theatre or music tours but also just for fun. He would visit friends or walk along the colorful alleyways of Tbilisi’s old town. Later on in the article, another well-known Soviet Georgian singer and actor named Vakhtang Kikabidze commentates on Vysotsky’s status as an artist. ‘In Italy outstanding artists are called «internatsionalniy» because they are the face of the nation. This is the case for our Shukshin43 and Vysotsky.’ A mini-essay on the following page is called ‘I am your brother (these are not my words)’44 written by a Russian author. The author is arguing that the decision of singer Vakhtang Kikabidze to decline the most prestigious Russian cultural lifetime achievement award was morally right. It was a right act because Kikabidze is Georgian while the Russian state was at war with- and is currently occupying and threatening his country. After this the author makes the distinction between two types of Russians, the ones that understand Kikabidze’s decision and the ones who do not. He ends by representing the former group together with Georgians. ‘We'll smile to you. We say "hello" in our common Russian language. [A language] that most of us still speak majestically. (...)'
An interethnic metropolis in a tolerant country is configured in the vignette. Vysotsky’s not so well known Georgian life is sketched, and by doing this a version of Georgia and Tbilisi as part of the Russian cultural landscape is imagined. Vysotsky is put in a bigger canon of names of artists. On top of this the ‘internatsionalniy’ label is given to Vysotsky by fellow contemporary musician/actor Kikabidze. This label, that turns its bearer into a ‘face of a nation’ attests to a diplomatic quality that Vysotsky has in Kikabidze’s eyes; he is put forth as a representative of Russia, or at least of the ‘real’ Russian nation. The distinction between a ‘real’ Russian nation and a nation that seems to be set less real is also highlighted in the next vignette. The following vignette is from a mini-essay on the page that follows the Vysotsky-article. This mini-essay has the same theme, in the sense that it ascribes representatives of nations.
43 A popular Soviet Russian film maker, director, writer and actor retrieved (from https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/vasily-shukshin/ visited on the 26th of July, 2018) 44 The words that are not the authors are Gogol’s.
68 The author of the piece is reflecting on the choices of the already introduced Georgian singer and actor Vakhtang Kikabidze who was at the height of his international fame in Soviet times. What this mini-essay shows is that there is a presupposed unity between some Russians and Georgians within Tbilisi’s cultural community. But again the condition that Russians have to fulfill in order for a unity to exist is to openly reject their government actions when it comes to foreign policy. A Russian that is accepted in the Tbilisi Russian language community is a Russian that chooses sides. There is a choice to be made; everyone that is on Kikabidze’s side is a true Russian while the ones that are not will not be accepted in the interethnic lingua franca community that is envisioned. What is highlighted here is that while the lingua franca Russian is still functioning as such in Georgia, in order to truly communicate; the speaker must be on the same moral ground as the dominant members of the interethnic community. In this vain, a common language is not enough to be part of the same community. It seems that the author here is echoing Kikabidze’s label ‘internatsionalniy’: an artist being the face of a nation. The author argues that because Kikabidze built the bridge between nations (by singing in his mother tongue and in Russian) he deserves the same bridge-building effort of those that respect him besides his own nation. Just like the vignette about Vysotsky, this vignette shows that the interethnic community is typified by mutual respect between Georgians and Russians for each other’s nation. At the same time the tolerance of this interethnic community knows limits, because when the respect is not there on either side for the other nation, then the not respecting party is essentially not welcome. The Russian editor in chief Aleksandr Svatikov of the ‘Russian Club Journal’ and the Georgian head of the Griboyedov literature department Nina Shaduri share this vision when I ask them about the importance of the Russian language and common cultural heritage between Georgians and Russians.
Russian chief editor of the ‘Russian Club’ journal Aleksandr Svatikov states: ‘in the theatre community there are a lot of people with a Russian upbringing because the older generation of the Georgian intelligentsia studied in Russia [during Soviet times]. For them the language of instruction in the university and the language that was spoken outside of it have always been Russian. Traveling was easier… Back then of course there were no visa barriers as is the case today...’ In line with this Nina Shaduri, the Georgian head of the Griboyedov literature department speaks about the roots of cultural ties between
69 Russia and Georgia: ‘we already have relations for eleven centuries. Boris Pasternak wrote that Georgia had a messianistic quality for Russians. This is heaven for them, a safe haven. Never did a famous Russian die in Georgia, in Georgia they lived. To speak Russian in Tbilisi is therefore more than necessary, it is part of who we [Georgians] are.’
The Russian language in the visions of the above interlocutors serves as a prerequisite for a deep sense of commonality between Georgians and Russians portraying Georgia as a breeding ground for Russian culture. The people that are working in the theatre community were brought up in the Russian education system and next to a devotion to language they are participating actively in the Tbilisi Russian cultural scene. By doing this, following Shaduri they are walking in the footsteps of many Georgians and Russians, who also had long lasting relations. She more explicitly states that (famous) Russians were always accommodated in Georgia and that Russians have grown to be very close to Georgians. This idea of Georgia having deep -‘eleven centuries old’- primordial45 ties to Georgia has the implication that Russians always must be accommodated.
Despite that, as was stressed with the earlier vignettes the Griboyedov community envisions an interethnic community within Tbilisi that is typified by mutual respect and tolerance, although this tolerance is also selective when the respect is not mutual. The legitimation of this specific kind of multiethnic Russian lingua franca community is that it is a very old kind of community and resting on experienced mutual accommodation, both in Russia and in Georgia. The most obvious example of this being the Georgian Soviet poet Mayakovski.
A common genre of theatre in the Griboyedov theatre is the biopic of famous artists. A suchlike biopic is about Mayakovski. Although quite early in his life, the poet moved to Russia the play exhibits a particular focus on Mayakovski’s flashbacks in and reflections on his Georgian upbringing. First the play begins with a small dialogue between Mayakovski and his girlfriend: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, this is it. I am leaving. So long!’ ‘My love, don’t leave!
45 With primordial I want to stress the long lasting, mythic and natural qualities that are associated with both the countries’ ties.
70 You can’t leave […] Not before I tell you something. Do you know how they make Shashlik in Georgia?’ After this the audience is taken back to Mayakovski’s native Kutaisi, where a communist march is held wherein Mayakovski declares himself to be a proud citizen of the USSR (at that time in the 1910’s not yet existing).
While Mayakovski is known in Russia as a Soviet poet, the play here shows that he never really parted with his Georgian identity. Firstly the poet is shown as ideologically supporting an important cornerstone of the Soviet ideology, a big socialist international interethnic community. It is shown that he declares his allegiance to this project. Yet, next to this there is shown that while he envisions an interethnic community, this does not imply that he must get rid of his Georgian habits, such as making Shashlick in a Georgian fashion and speaking Georgian in uncanny situations. In fact Mayakovski is made to look more Georgian than Russian in this play, which seems surprising since most of his life he spent in Russia being a Russian language poet. So while on mutual sides accommodation occurs, this also implies that mixing between ethnic identities is not possible. A Georgian remains a Georgian and a Russian remains a Russian.
As was shown, the ideal for good Georgian-Russian relations is often linked to an interethnic community and a tolerant Tbilisi or Georgia in which Russians are not only welcome but also accommodated. The Griboyedov’s configurations of community envision the Russian language and Russian culture as part of Georgia. Shown was the practice of placing national representatives on pedestals-‘faces of nations’, examples that were examined here are the singers and actors Vladimir Vysotsky and Vakhtang Kikabidze both symbolic figures that stand for the love of and life in the other country (whether that is Russia or Georgia). The Griboyedov workers whose views were discussed stress accommodating Russians and Russia is imagined as having a primordial base. Following this line of reasoning these ties have always been this way including their life and shall therefore continue. However, accommodating never means assimilating, becoming a Russian poet, for Mayakovski in this way never implied to give up his Georgian heritage. So tolerance and accommodation is seen as a historical grounded way to coexist with Russians, but this has never meant and will presumably never mean that Georgians can or will become Russian, just like Russians never become Georgian. The existing nations are thus configured as tolerant and even closely befriended, yet exclusive from each other in essence.
71 Awkward Accommodations The particular multiethnic lingua franca community that was described in the previous section leaves its traces in configurations of identity in conversations amongst workers of the Griboyedov theatre. In the following section I will reflect on code switching choices in this asymmetrical bilingual context. By code switching here I mean the switching between the Georgian and the Russian language46 among Russian Georgian-Russian bilinguals.47 In the next session I use the term accommodation to refer to a premise of the socio- psychological Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) that states that bilinguals are more likely to be reciprocal- thus talking in one language to each other when they like each other. Bilianuk in her study of Ukrainian television shows makes clear that this premise is dependent on the socio-cultural context (2010: 110). Not reciprocating speech in the same language as the conversational partner can be considered to be an act that reduces tension because Ukraine linguistic differences are very politicized since the Soviet Union (back then Ukrainian was not considered an official language) up until now (wherein Ukrainian is installed as the official institutional language despite the fact that many Ukrainians still speak Russian in informal settings). Non-accommodation is the act of two conversational partners that can understand both languages yet do not switch mutually and keep on speaking in different languages. According to her this non-accommodation has a neutralizing effect (ibid: 129) because in a situation wherein everybody can understand the other language it leaves the possibility for Ukrainophones and Russophones open to choose to speak the language that they feel most confident in speaking. Non-accommodation also occurs in the theatre, yet in a different way. {Russian}Viktor is a 64-year-old actor who was born in Moscow and finished the theatre academy there. He worked for the Taganka theatre in Moscow before he went to Georgia. Viktor went to Georgia in the 1990’s. He is married to a Georgian woman. I watch a lot of rehearsals in which he was working. One of the rehearsals is a rendition of the Soviet TV drama The Elder Son (Starshiy sin) that was based on the play by the Russian playwright Aleksandr Vampilov, an absurdist family drama in which Viktor has both played the
46 In some cases these bilinguals are in fact multilingual, I refer to them as bilinguals since I only examine switches between two languages: Russian and Georgian. 47 To make my case I will work with the following notation: {…} indicating self-acclaimed ethnicity, […] indicating language used and a second […] indicating an English translation
72 illegitimate son and the father in his life. Apart from him, the whole cast that is at the rehearsal the day before the performance mostly speaks in Georgian. The following field-note sketches an instance in more detail:
{Russian} Viktor: [Russian]‘Moy sin, moy davno poteryanniy sin vernulsya! [My son, my long lost son has returned!]’
{Georgian} Daviti: [Russian] ‘Da, papa, eta ya! [Yes father, it’s me!]’
This section has to be done yet again. After the cut, the Georgian speaking players begin to talk for a minute or so and only later Daviti that plays the son says to Viktor: ‘It is not about you, you did great, it is about how long the silence in between the statements must be.’ When I later ask Viktor if he ever takes part in these Georgian conversations, he says he can understand them, but that he and his colleague actors are used to speak in Russian with him.
This vignette makes clear that Viktor’s life history influences the way that his fellow actors interact with him. Although Viktor reports to know Georgian, he does not take part I”n the conversation. Nobody discusses in what way the performance must change in the common Russian language; instructions behind the scenes are commonly given in Georgian. What is surprising is that Viktor does not mingle in the conversation at all. Instead he waits. Because he does report to understand Georgian sufficiently, it is probably because he wants to live up to the expectations that Georgians have. If he asks control questions to know, it is always after his Georgian colleague addresses him, a dynamic that is described in the vignette as well. Where the language ideology of Russian is configured as inclusive, this is not the case with Georgian. Georgian seems to be only for Georgians. That could explain why Viktor is accommodated in his native language.
The accommodation in Russian on the surface is indicating the classic CAT-premise about sympathy: Daviti respects Viktor and therefore he switches to Russian. The non- accommodation in Georgian probably has to do with the Georgian actors who presume that the capability of Viktor to speak Georgian is insufficient. A Ukrainian scenario of non- accommodation in which Russian speakers and speakers of the other language understand each other is not the case since Viktor does not talk back. Yet the conditions seem to be in place for an Ukrainian-like non-accommodation scenario because Viktor reports to know
73 Georgian, and probably he can understand it since he lives in Georgia for a long time and is married to a Georgian woman. Expanding, he is only spoken to in Russian and thus excluded from Georgian. To elaborate on a possibility that plays a role here I will compare this instance to another Russian working in the theatre.
Like {Russian} Viktor, is a first generation Russian migrant as well. Yuliya is the central head of internal communication in the theatre. She is a 60-year-old Russian lady. She has been living in Tbilisi since the 80’s. She is the head of administration in the theatre. Yuliya can speak Georgian, but does not get the opportunity often. Because we want to attend a rehearsal, she takes Salome and me to the actors’ backstage area. One actor accompanies us. Yuliya and the actor have an informal conversation. While their conversation starts off in Georgian, they switch to Russian in the following piece of dialogue. The conversation takes place in Georgian until the elevator is set in motion. At that moment the following scene occurs:
{Georgian} Nico jokes: [Russian] ‘Vot… Takoye udobno v malen’kom liftye, davai poboyemcya! [‘It’s so cozy and small in this elevator together… let’s have sex!’]
Everybody in the elevator is laughing in an awkward fashion and then a silence follows.
Nico: [Russian] ‘Kstati, vi uzhe pogovorili o programye maia? Ya voobshche ne mogu na nekotorie daty.’ [By the way, have you already discussed the May program? I really can’t work on some dates.]
{Russian} Yuliya: [Russian] ‘Nyet, prostitye … no bistro budu’ [No I am sorry... but I will do it soon.]
Georgian Nico: [Russian] ‘Pozhaluysta… a nye volnuetes’ [Please… but don’t worry (formal)]
This vignette shows that the Russian language is both a language to address the community as a whole and a plenary language within the theatre. The switch of languages here has to do with the company that is present in the elevator. The company that is present in
74 the elevator is my {Georgian} research-assistant Salome, {Russian} Yuliya, {Georgian} actor Nico and {Dutch} I. Nico makes a weird joke that picks up on the awkward atmosphere in the elevator due to the lack of space. For this joke he switches to Russian because he seems to want everybody in the elevator as his audience for the joke, including me- an outsider that does not speak Georgian. Only shortly after his joke, unexpectedly he immediately continues to ask a work-related question. But because it is aimed at Yuliya, I expect him to switch back to Georgian again.
Both {Russian} Viktor and Yuliya are expected to speak Russian when their Georgian conversational partners do. Just like the previous speech instance with Viktor, this instance shows that non-accommodation, as is common practice in Ukrainian television shows is not fully applicable to describe what is going on among the workers of the Griboyedov theatre, yet accommodation is still useful to interpret these bilingual conversational speech patterns because it marks the code switching agreement in a conversation. What I propose that is going on is presumed accommodation. The Georgian conversational partners of these Russians presume that for whatever reason the latter want to speak their native language.
To understand this linguistic exclusion from Georgian, Bhabha’s conception of third space is relevant. The third space is a place where a group can get stuck between supposed identities (Hollinsheed 1998: 214). Viktor and Yuliya are not treated the same as Georgian Russian bilinguals, they are accommodated in their native Russian language on the Georgian bilingual’s terms. I see this as a way in which Russians are marked off from Georgian bilingualism, by extension they cannot partake at all times in general talk. Russians are stuck in a third space between two indexical ambiguous hybrid identities, namely that of the former colonizer and the minority, and from there they cannot be accepted as Georgians (at least judging by everyday conversations and not on state citizenship). Whereas Yuliya sporadically speaks Georgian, Natasha never speaks it. {Russian}Natasha is a 35-year-old woman. She has been working as an actress in the Griboyedov Company for ten years. I get to know her on a theatre tour (Gastroli). She is a second-generation Russian immigrant. Her parents came to Georgia in the 70’s. She has been raised monolingual at home and attended a Russian school. She claims that it has never been necessary for her to speak Georgian. Natasha never speaks the language. When I ask her why she does not speak Georgian she replies: ‘You know that it is not part of who I am and all Georgians speak Russian anyway, they accept it.’ This turns out to be the case indeed in every
75 conversation I see her having. When we stop in a shop along the way to the town Akhalsitkhe, she gets out of the company-van to buy snacks and drinks. The following scene ensues:
{Georgian} Shop attendant:[Georgian] Gamarjobat! [Hello]
{Russian} Natasha:[Russian] Zdravstvuyete! [Hello]
Natasha:[Russian] U vas est’ Tarkhuna Natakhtari? [Do you have Tarkhan Natakhtari (a Georgian tarragon soda)
Shop attendant: [Russian] Koneshno, tam na uglu, v kholodilnike. [Of course, in the fridge on the corner]
A stop on the way to a performance in Akhalsikhe near the Turkish border
{Russian} Natasha does not speak a word of Georgian as is apparent in the small excerpt. While the shop attendant greats her in Georgian, she immediately replies in Russian. The {Georgian} shop attendant plays along in the conversational mode. Natasha’s case shows that Russians can in fact be born in Georgia, grow up there and not speak a word of Georgian in their lives while Georgians such as the shopkeeper accommodate this kind of linguistic behavior. This shows that Russian still is perceived as ingrained within Georgian society to such an extent that a lot of Georgians have the linguistic repertoire to accommodate Russian- speaking Russians in their native language. Russians in turn are somehow also not expected to
76 participate fully within Georgian language social situations. In this fashion, Natasha can presume accommodation because she can always let people speak in the language she speaks.
The fact that she does not learn Georgian could be seen as a symbolic act that goes against the omnipresent accommodation. Because she is put in the third space, there is no real use to speak Georgian anyway, she does not have to know how to speak it. She is a Russian and will always be perceived as such, and Russians are known by Georgians to only speak Russian and not Georgian.
I have put forth three profiles of different kind of members of the Griboyedov community that all have to cope in one way or the other with the same linguistic and social dynamic: while Russians live and work in the Griboyedov theatre they cannot participate in conversations in the same way as Georgians can. I argue that from the outset Russians are expected to switch to Russian when the Georgian does. In this way the Russians are accommodated with speech and they are expected to go along with this. This could be intended to be hospitable and kind, but it is also something that seems to happen subconsciously or automatically and can at times be awkward. The accommodation can be awkward in the sense that the habit of accommodating Russians in speech upholds differences and downplays full participation in a bigger interethnic group. Russians can participate in the most important social interactions in the theatre community, but they are also casually excluded from the rest. Next to this the data seems to suggest that the speech groups that exist are isomorphic to ethno national boundaries that exist; the general model in the Griboyedov community seems to be that Georgians speak Georgian with Georgians, and Russian with Russians for community related purposes.
Hence the Ukrainian model of non-accommodation between Russophone and Ukrainophone bilinguals although on the surface related, is not applicable to get a better grasp of conversational encounters between Russian and Georgian theatre workers. Instead I have proposed a different model of accommodation that is labeled presumed accommodation. Georgian bilinguals presume that long-term residing Russians, bilingual or not want to speak Russian rather than Georgian. This allows for a space for Georgians to interact outside of interethnic Russian discourse which even occurs within the Russianized Griboyedov theatre. I have argued furthermore that Russians are placed in this third space of two in-between identities, presumably that of a very small minority and that of a former colonizer. In this sense there are two speech communities that make indexical use of both situational Russian
77 national identity and a presumed neutral quality of the Russian lingua franca. The split of speech communities in terms of code-switching activities actually shows resemblance to the spectrum that is apparent in wider held urban Russian language ideologies. The Griboyedov is an outspoken community within Tbilisi that propagates a view of the Russian language as something inclusive to Georgian identity, while internally, when looking closer at the Griboyedov theatre as a speech community that I have explored in terms of their code switching practices there is a split in terms of who chooses to do what in a conversation. The Georgian bilinguals get to decide when it is time to speak Russian and when it is time to speak Georgian. Georgians thus in this way upkeep their own linguistic identities whilst placing Russian outside their comfort zone. So just because the Griboyedov upholds one kind of identity and Russian language ideology in public, unconsciously, as their linguistic behavior shows, that does not mean that the theatre workers are isolated from linguistic processes and ideas that are apparent in Tbilisi.
Conclusion In this chapter I have argued mainly that there is a specific dominant configuration of a lingua franca community within the Griboyedov theatre that is seen as primordially rooted in Georgian-Russian ties and is regenerated. Russian culture is seen as common ground for all the members of this community. This lingua franca community is tolerant yet selectively tolerant, since Russians that are accepted in the community have to respect Georgians and denounce decisions of the Russian state where it comes to its interminglement and support of the war and occupation of Georgia’s semi-autonomous regions. Also the configuration of a suchlike lingua franca community is not in any way overcoming existing ethnicities or ethnic identities. As shown, Griboyedov community members agree for instance that Russians must always be accommodated as if Georgia and Tbilisi is their second home.
When looking at code-switching patterns between Griboyedov community members’ conversations accommodation also becomes apparent. Georgian bilinguals are shown to be prone to taking the switching initiative from Georgian to Russian even if both conversational speakers are bilingual. When the Russian conversational partner is not bilingual than the Russian also gets accommodated in his or her native language. Also I have shown that it seems that Russians can still do everything in their life by speaking Russian and not Georgian within Georgia. Overall however, Russian bilinguals within the theatre sometimes speak Georgian but Georgian bilinguals can decide on whether the conversation will be held in
78 either Russian or Georgian. In this sense, the decision of a Russian long-term Tbilisi resident to speak only Russian can also be explained as a protest against presumed accommodation in Russian. These code-switching practices can be informed by what kind of conversation it is and can exclude Russians from some Georgian conversations. What then happens is that the interethnic lingua franca, Russian, the language that is the interethnic bridging language for the community, paradoxically is used to mark difference. Russians are marked off as external, presumably representing an old colonizer and contemporary minority and are left out of Georgian conversational encounters.
I argue therefore that what happens in the theatre is actually a form of what seems to happen in in Tbilisi in general with regard to the Russian language. Namely that the Georgian Griboyedov community members seem to evaluate the Russian language along the lines of a spectrum that exists between two urban competing Russian language ideologies. Within this context, while the theatre presents itself as a monolithic Russian bilingual community, the representation of Russian culture there is thus a boundary between ethnicities that gets re- enacted within speech patterns.
79 Conclusion My curiosity for Georgian’s relation to Russian and Russia got triggered a few years before this project started when I was on a reportage trip and I wandered through the city’s streets. A lot of back alleys in the city still had Cyrillic name signs while the main streets were all named in Mkhedruli and Latin script. Initially thus it started out as an urban ethnography, a tale of a city. The city has kept on playing an active role in the research. The central movement in the writing process has been to zoom in; I have zoomed in from the city as a whole, to people working in various urban spaces, onto the Griboyedov theatre and finally the focus rested on daily encounters of the Russians within and around the theatre company. How the thesis developed and the movement of zooming in is still manifested in the research question I have tried to answer, which is: How does a changing language ideology towards Russian in Tbilisi affect the usage and appreciation of the Russian language in the multilingual environment of the Griboyedov theatre? The first part of the question is the matter of an urban ethnography while the second part elaborates on my primary field site. For my choice of the combination of urban scope, linguistic anthropological theory and the focus on Russian in Tbilisi I am greatly indebted to the work of Sherouse who already did more work in this direction (2014, 2014, 2017). Although he does a wonderful job in sketching out how Russian is used within the Georgian language in Tbilisi what I found lacking in his approach was the interaction between speaking communities, the extent to which Georgians are attached to the Russian language, reflections on the possible friction between speaking communities and a critical gaze at the neutrality of a lingua franca in a conflict zone. I sought out to describe the processes present within this gap in regional anthropological knowledge.
Based on reflections on the past and the present together with examples of language use I can state that the Russian language ideology in Tbilisi changed mostly in terms of general appreciation and public usage. In chapter one I discussed that the views that Tbilisi residents have are not univocal yet fit in the same spectrum of views. This spectrum is characterized by a few recurrent stances Tbilisi residents voice when speaking about the Russian language. The first stance is that Russian used to be considered chic; this changed and is not the case anymore. The second stance is that Russian is corroding through time in Tbilisi as a publicly spoken everyday language; the Georgian state played an active role in dismantling public functions of Russian and its former dominant place in education. The third stance is that Russian comes in handy to have in the linguistic repertoire -it has a pragmatic
80 quality to it; this stance is the most dominant view. The last stance that I encountered is that it is considered not moral to speak Russian anymore and that if one pays true respects to the refugees and causalities of the Abkhazia and Ossetia wars one must conclude that Russian has become alien to Georgians and Tbilisi; this view is not commonly held.
After having explored the concept of language ideology configured as affordance in this research I must conclude that the Russian language as affordance -a transmitting station that enables people and objects to engage with a language- is not always experienced as neutral in Tbilisi. I encountered two situations in the city in which Russian language affordances were presumed to be neutral but were not truly. In car mechanics technical terms are predominantly Russian, it is common to work with these terms, yet I have discussed the case of teacher Khatuna, who refuses to teach Russian terms and instead teaches Georgian terms because she considers herself to be a ‘patriot’. She sees the neutral user value of the lingua franca here as something alien to her identity. Another important case is the way that affordances draw symbolic boundaries within the Griboyedov theatre, Russian inscribed objects within the different spaces of the theatre make them Russified, while the audience and theatre workers are enabled to speak Russian. These affordances in turn symbolically mark the theatre off from the modern day Georgian speaking capital.
Yet symbolical boundaries also mark off the purity of Russian speech in the theatre. I have speculated that this idea of linguistic purity, which is dominant in the theatre, is a way in which the theatre representatives safeguard a vision of the present from prevalent negative associations with the Russian language in the past. This makes sense for it would be nonsensical to say that pure Russian speech is opposed to Georgian, for the majority of the theatre’s workers and audience are Georgian bilinguals. I have applied Mary Douglas’s structuralist framework concerning purity and danger for this, in her view the existing categorical cultural order is always in threat of contamination of unfitting categories that do not fit into the dominant categorization of a given community. Time, I have argued is here the unfitting category for the near present was categorized by impure speech. The nineties were a period in which criminal networks that had a heavily Russified jargon were dominant in Tbilisi, and I argue that it is these associations tied to a specific era that are avoided. Instead, in the theatre an association with a Russian speaking cosmopolitan Soviet era intelligentsia is aspired to. Although experienced in such a way, both associations here are truly limited by time for they are still living associations that pose alternative, more inclusive models to a
81 merely Georgian speaking city. A last symbolic boundary I have described is the boundary between speech communities that is apparent within and around the theatre company. First I described that configurations of Georgia’s and Tbilisi’s past and its relation to Russians are often configured through a tolerant but essentializing lens. This view of essentialized identities is recurrent in conversations. By applying both accommodation theory and the postcolonial theory concept of third space I have argued that there are two speech communities: a dominant and a minor one. The speech communities are isomorphic to ethnicities or nations, namely the dominant one is Georgian and the minor is Russian. The Georgian bilinguals tend to exclude Russians from Georgian language conversation by presuming that the Russians want to be accommodated in their native language. This is a finding that is not introduced in contemporary post-Soviet sociolinguistic literature as far as I know of and is distinct from - although comparable to- the Ukrainian case in which Russians and Ukrainians tend not to accommodate each other in multiethnic conversations (Bilianuk 2010). I have argued that this presumed accommodation is a manifestation of drawing boundaries around the Georgian third space, the common ground for Georgian bilingual identity that is rooted in a colonial past. In excluding Russians from this space, they are discreetly refused social acceptance as Russian Georgians and are left in their own limited spaces, presumably as hybrids both as a minority and a former colonizer. This presumed accommodation is a form of selfing and othering that is most discreet in marking difference. It is a negotiation of what Georgia-historian Erik Scott calls familiar strangers, Georgians as a people keeping their distance while knowing the other very well.
The spectrum of competing urban language ideologies that I commenced with is manifest in the theatre as well. Yet it is not so that my interlocutors are choosing sides. Rather they negotiate and explore the spectrum in each new situation. For instance, I interpret discussions that I had with theatre workers about the modern-day societal value of the Griboyedov as mostly rooted in pragmatism- young Georgians should know the language and culture of their neighbor. This discourse of pragmatism is presumably also brought to the table in board discussions with the theatre’s sponsors; representatives of the Georgian state. The fear of negative past associations is only understandable in an environment wherein the Russian language does not have its former status anymore.
82 Next to my general findings I want to make the reader aware of my methodological argument; all findings presented could not be possible without a focus on boundaries. Such a focus although formed by circumstances and barriers in the field, was a methodological ethnographic choice. My personal language barriers in Georgian and Russian and understandable group exclusion led me to look for other people in the field encountering or perceiving boundaries. What I found turned out to be useful information that eventually supported the arguments I made. So in a sense there is an auto-ethnographic undercurrent underlying this thesis as although I tried to make my interlocutors the indisputable center of the ethnography, it describes my own mindset in the field as well. Often the stress in anthropological academia lies on studying with people, doing participant observation that requires communalities between researcher and interlocutor, yet I want to make aware that it is also useful to look for differences. Although I am certainly not the first to have done this48, if you deem this thesis to be relevant then consider the relevance of a boundary-focus as well.
The limitations of this study are of course manifold. I am aware that the biggest problem has to do with the reliability (LeCompte & Goetz 1982:32) of the research done. I encountered very specific problems in the field, was often placed outside of the group (although I could observe) and unquestionably an ethnographer who is linguistically better equipped could present different findings. Also this research is for the most part representing Russophone Georgian bilingual’s views and is not fully generalizable to the complex urban linguistic setting that is Tbilisi. Theoretical limits are also apparent, although this study is conceptualized in terms of power, -besides reflecting on the position of a minority-I do not take an activist position and it can therefore not benefit from such literature. The power dimension is taken into consideration more to understand the complex historical structure in my field of inquiry.
If, as I did you choose to see Georgia as not only a post-Soviet but also a postcolonial state than soon it turns out that Georgia is very peculiar. It is as it were a postcolonial state
48 A foundational work in this direction is Frederik Barth’s Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969. Reissued Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1998
83 without a ‘mimic man’49. While to be an Indian upper-class elite person often implied to mimic certain British imperial habits such as clothing, education and ideas (Huddart 2006: 57), to be a Soviet Georgian intelligentsia meant that one focused firstly on Georgian and later on the Soviet socialist culture (Scott 2017). This relates to how I interpret that Russian speech was considered pure and chic. This is not so much mimicry because speaking Russian was being part of being a successful Georgian. In this sense I interpret both these conceptions of linguistic purity in a foreign language and the chic quality that was given to it as a form of hypercorrection. Bourdieu describes this as a way in which the middle class constantly corrects each other’s language use in order to inform each other’s legitimate linguistic habitus, the form of speech that is expected in a particular class and among a particular cultural group (Susen 2013: 209-210 & Bourdieu 1977: 62). The second peculiarity about the colony Soviet Georgia was that there were very view Russians actually living there year- round in the present day and historically.50 In this sense it is a not a full-flung form of colonialism without large numbers of colonial era and/or Soviet settlers. Only in nuanced apprehension then I see the postcolonial lens as helpful for the Georgian case. It does not mean that I subscribe to faithful usage of a postcolonial framework for every phenomenon post-Soviet scholars are studying since easily it runs the danger of reifying a region with a unique and complex history
The state’s willingness to politicize art and to distort reality by changing the past as prophetically described in the quote of Rushdie on page 3 shows the usefulness of a nuanced fused framework for the post-Soviet region. A researcher can only understand the workings of subtle force behind these actions after comparing long-term movements and structures to rapid changes. A rapid change such as the war in South-Ossetia does not explain why the Russian language has a different appreciation in today’s Tbilisi. The insight that for me was most valuable is the realization that reality instead is an accumulation of historical state imposed distortions under tsarist; Soviet and Georgian rule that made a reality possible. These
49 Homi Bhabha uses this term that is initially playfully set forth in V.S. Naipaul’s novel Mimic Men [1967] (London: Picador, 2011)
50 Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20120801113419/http://www.diversity.ge/eng/resources.php?coi=0|15|13 (on the 2nd of September 2018)
84 distortions enabled configurations of identity that are comparable to formations in former European colonies, yet are also very distinct because among other reasons many people felt that during Soviet times they were empowered by the state and its new projects. Such configurations are quintessentially post-Cold War (Chari & Verdery 2009), made possible only by the aftermath of a unique global performance on which the curtains have really yet to fall.
85 Bibliography Agar, M. H. (1996). Language Shock : Understanding the culture of conversation. New York: Perennial.
Alan, D., & Astghik, M. (2015). Russian language skills and employment in the former Soviet union. Economics of Transition, 23(3), 625-656.
Amashukeli, M., Tsuladze, L., Osepashvili, I., Esebua, F., Kakhidze, I., & Kvintradze, A. (2016). Performing Europeanization – political vis-à-vis popular discourses on Europeanization in Georgia
Atkinson, Paul,,. (2001). Handbook of ethnography. London; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE.
Bateson, Gregory (1972) The Cybernetics of “Self”: A Theory of Alcoholism. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [http://www.orange- papers.org/the_cybernetics_of_self.doc.]
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Hasan Amara, M., & Trumper-Hecht, N. (2006). Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of israel. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 7-30. Berdahl, D. (1999). ‘(N)ostalgie’ for the present: Memory, longing, and East German things. Ethnos, 64(2), 192-211. Bhabha, Homi K. (2004). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge
Bilaniuk, L. (2010). Language in the balance: The politics of non-accommodation on bilingual Ukrainian–Russian television shows. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2010(201), 105-133.
Bilaniuk, L. 2016 Ideologies of Language in Wartime In Revolution and War in Contemporary Ukraine: The Challenge of Change, Olga Bertelsen (ed) Pp. 139-160
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977 [1972]. Outline of a Theory of Practice. R. Nice, transl. Volume 16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Boyer, Dominic. 2010. “From algos to autonomous: Nostalgic Eastern Europe as postimperial mania.” In Post-communist nostalgia , ed. Maria Tedorova and Zsuzsa Gille, 17–29. New York: Berghahn Books.
86 Boym, Svetlana. 2002. The future of nostalgia . New York: Basic Books
Bilaniuk, L. (2004). A typology of surzhyk: Mixed ukrainian-russian language. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8(4), 409-425.
Bryman, A. (2012) Social research Methods(4th ed.) Oxford University Press
Cameron, D. 2006. Gender and language ideologies. In J. M. Holmes M. (Ed.), The handbook of language and gender () Blackwell publishing
Caucasus Research Resource Centers. (2011) "Caucasus Barometer" [Media Survey 2011] Retrieved from [http://www.crrccenters.org/caucasusbarometer/]
Cavanaugh J. 2009b. Living Memory: The Social Aesthetics of Language in a Northern Italian Town. Malden -Blackwell
Cavanaugh, J. & Shankar, S. (Eds.) 2017 Language and Materiality: Ethnographic and theoretical explorations (pp. i-ii). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chari, S., & Verdery, K. (2009). Thinking between the posts: Postcolonialism, postsocialism, and ethnography after the cold war. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51(1), 6-34.
Chemero, A. (2003). An outline of a theory of affordances. Ecological Psychology, 15(2), 181-195.
Chkheidze, Valentina, Zhanpeissova, Naziya, Chachanidze, Zinaida Multilingualism in Post- Soviet Space (in Kazakhstan and Georgia). Intercultural Communication. 1 March 2018, (4), pp. 9–20.
Coombs, D.S. (2011), Entwining tongues:Postcolonial theory, post-Soviet literatures and bilingualism in Chingiz Aitmatov’s I dol’she veka dlitsia den’. Journal of Modern Literature, 34(3), 47-64
Douglas, M. (1980) [1966]. Purity and danger : An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London [England]: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
87 Driessen, H. J., W. (2013). The hard work of small talk in ethnographic fieldwork. Journal of Anthropological Research, 69(2)
Edwards, R. (1998). A critical examination of the use of interpreters in the qualitative research process. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 24(1), 197-208.
Frederiksen, M. D. (2013). Young men, time, and boredom in the republic of Georgia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Farah, I. (1998) 'The Ethnography of Communication', in N. H. Hornberger and P. Corson (eds.) Encyclopedia of Language and Education: Volume 8: Research Methods in Language and Education. Dordrecht: Kluwer. pp. 125-7 Harper, D. (2002). Talking about pictures: A case for photo elicitation. Visual Studies, 17(1), 13-26.
Hill, J. H. (1992). “Today there is no respect”: Nostalgia, “ respect” and oppositional discourse in Mexicano (Nahuatl) language ideology. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), 2(3), 263-280.
Hirsch, F. (2005). Empire of nations : Ethnographic knowledge and the making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca etc.: Ithaca etc.] : Cornell University Press.
Hollinshead, K. (1998). Tourism, hybridity, and ambiguity: The relevance of Bhabha's ' Third Space' cultures. Journal of Leisure Research, 30(1), 121.
Hymes, D. H. (1989) 'Ways of speaking', in R. Bauman and J. Sherzer (eds) Explorations in the ethnography of speaking. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 433-51.
Holquist M. & Clark K. (1984) Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge, Ma. Harvard University Press
Huddart, D. (2006). Homi Bhabha. London: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2011[2000]). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2018). Anthropology: Why it matters.
88 Cambridge UK. Polity Press.
Irvine, J.T., & Gal, S. (2000). Language Ideologies and linguistic differentiation. In P.V. Kroskerity, (Ed.), Regimes of language: ideologies, polities and identities. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 35-84.
Jersild, Austin (2002) Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 1845-1917. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press
Kaiser, Claire Pogue 2015. "Lived Nationality: Policy and Practice in Soviet Georgia, 1945- 1978." University of Pennsylvania dissertation
Kakachia, K., Minesashvili, S., & Kakhishvili, L. (2018). Change and continuity in the foreign policies of small states: Elite perceptions and Georgia’s foreign policy towards Russia. Europe-Asia Studies, , 1-18
Kakachia, K., & Minesashvili, S. (2015). Identity politics: Exploring Georgian foreign policy behavior Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality : A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication.
Latour, B. (1996). On actor- network theory. A few clarifications. Soziale Welt, 47(4), 369.
LeCompte, M. D., & Goetz, J. P. (1982). Problems of reliability and validity in ethnographic research. Review of Educational Research, 52(1), 31-60.
Lemon, Alaina 1991 M aiakovskii and the 'Language of Lenin'. Chicago Anthropology Exchange 19: 1-26.
López-Robertson, J., & Schramm-Pate, S. (2013). (Un)official knowledge and identity: An emerging bilingual's journey into hybridity. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 7(1), 40-56
Miller, D. (1987). Material culture and mass consumption. Oxford, UK; New York: Basil Blackwell.
Morozov, V. & Palgrave MacMillan. (2015). Russia’s postcolonial identity: A subaltern empire in a Eurocentric world. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
89 Moore, D. C. (2001). Is the post- in postcolonial the post- in post-Soviet? Toward a global postcolonial critique. Pmla, 116(1), 111-128. Mra ́zek R. 2002. Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
Pavlenko, A. Russian in post-Soviet countries. Russian Linguistics (2008) 32: 59-80
Petersen, Alexandros,,Cashman, Richard,,. (2014). Misha: Saakashvili, Georgia and the inside story of the war that shook the post-Soviet world
Péteri, G. (2008) ‘The occident within-or the drive for exceptionalism and modernity’ Kritika: Explorations In Russian And Eurasian History 9(4): 929-937
Rayfield, D. (2012). Edge of Empires: A history of Georgia. London: London: Reaktion Books
Richardson, T. (2004)”Disciplining the Past in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Memory and History in Schools and Families, “in Politics, Religion and Memory: The Past Meets the Present in Contemporary Europe, 109-135 eds Frances Pine, Deema Kaneff and Haldis Haukanes. Lit: Munster.
Scott, Erik (2017). Familiar strangers: The Georgian diaspora and the evolution of Soviet Empire Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sherouse, P. M. W. (2014) Quality, comfort, and ease: Remapping the affordances of Russian language in Tbilisi, Georgia. -phd dissertation. [https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/109060.]
Shibliyev, J. (2014) Linguistic Landscape Approach to Language Visibility in Post-Soviet Baku Bilig 71
Slezkine, Y. (1994). The USSR as a communal apartment, or how a socialist state promoted ethnic particularism. Slavic Review, 53(2), 414.
90 Slezkine, Y. (2000). Imperialism as the highest stage of socialism. Russian Review, 59(2), 227-234.
Smith, G. Law, V. Wilson, A. Bohr, A. and Allworth E. (1998) Language Myths and the Discourse of Nation-building in Georgia. In Nation-building in the post-Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National Identities. Pp. 167-196. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Susen, S. (2013). Bourdieusian reflections on language: Unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation. Social Epistemology, 27(3-4), 199-246 Morris, R. (Ed.). (2010). Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea. Columbia University Press
Stoffregen, T. A. (2003). Affordances are enough: Reply to chemero et al. ( 2003). Ecological Psychology, 15(1), 29-36.
Richardson, T. (2004)”Disciplining the Past in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Memory and History in Schools and Families, “in Politics, Religion and Memory: The Past Meets the Present in Contemporary Europe, 109-135 eds Frances Pine, Deema Kaneff and Haldis Haukanes. Lit: Munster.
Sherouse, P. (2014). Hazardous digits: Telephone keypads and russian numbers in Tbilisi, Georgia. Language & Communication, 37(1), 1-11.
Sherouse, P. 2014, Quality, comfort, and ease: Remapping the affordances of Russian language in Tbilisi, Georgia. –PhD dissertation.
Sherouse, P. (2017). The politics of Russian‐ Language film showings in Post‐ Soviet Georgia. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 40(1), 137-157.
Silverstein, M. (1979). Language structure and linguistic ideology. The elements: A para-session on linguistic units and levels, ed. Paul R. Clyne, William F. hanks, and Carol L. Hofbauer, pp. 193-247. Chicago Linguistic Society
Suthar, S. K. (2014) Postcolonial and Post-Soviet experiences of constitution making: Comparing India and Russia. International Studies: 51 (1-4), 56-71.
91 Thompson, Ewa 2008. Postcolonial Russia. – Historical Companion to postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and Its Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press lk: 412-417.
Trouillot, M. (2001). CA forum on theory in anthropology: The anthropology of the state in the age of globalization: Close encounters of the deceptive kind. Current Anthropology, 42(1), 125-138.
De Waal, T. (2011). Georgia's choices: Charting a future in uncertain times. Carnegie endowment for international peace
Woolard, K. A. 1998 Introduction: Language Ideology as a Field of Inquiry. In Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, K. Paul V. Kroskrity, eds. Pp. 3-47. New York: Oxford University Press.
Woolard, K., & Schieffelin, B. (1994). Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology. Issue 23: pp. 55-82
Yekelchyk, S. (2004).
Interpreting Russia’s imperial dimension Routledge.
Yurchak, A. (2003). Soviet hegemony of form: Everything was forever, until it was no more. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45(3), 480-510.
Yurchak, A. (2006). Everything was forever, until it was no more : The last Soviet generation /. Princeton, NJ: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press.
92