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Abstract
Three years after the forceful imposition of Soviet rule in Georgia, the Bolshevik leadership there, itself fractious and lacking a broad base of popular support, faced a large-scale armed uprising in August 1924. Making use of a range of recently available and underutilized primary sources from the period as well as the existing secondary literature, this article considers the 1924 uprising in Georgia from several different perspectives – of the Georgian Government-in-Exile in France, of the leadership of the Communist Party in Georgia, of the Georgian secret police, the Cheka, and of the central Bolshevik leadership in Moscow – in order to explore the likely causes and consequences of these events.
Abstract
Published just prior to WWII in German, allegedly by a Jewish convert to Islam who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution, and currently dubbed the national novel of Azerbaijan, Kurban Said’s Ali & Nino gets less attention than it deserves. And to the extent that this little-known work of classical stature is recognized by the international reading public, it is for its combination of the East-West dichotomy and cosmopolitanism. But even as Kurban Said’s love story between a Muslim bachelor, Ali, and a Georgian damsel, Nino, does favorably present cosmopolitan yearnings within the framework of westernization, this article highlights the evil Armenian leitmotif in it, through surveying the misdoing of Ali’s rival Nachararyan and how that relates to ethno-political conflict in the Caucasus.
Abstract
This article examines the role of the progressive forces in recent revolutions in Kyrgyzstan, and asks why their movements have not led to real political change in this Central Asian country. In Kyrgyzstan, the progressive forces are identified with such groups as young people, the educated middle class, lawyers, and journalists. Their discourses, such as demands for fair elections and the rule of law, have been central to the three revolutions that have taken place in Kyrgyzstan since 2005, as has their concept of Umut, or hope. The central thesis of this article is that, although these forces may have led recent revolutionary movements, they have proved unable to establish political dominance after the completion of revolutionary processes. Instead, after each revolutionary attempt, the rules of “local politics” have been consistently reasserted in Kyrgyzstan. These are rules based on the power of informal social and political networks governed by rules of reciprocity and the pursuit of self-interest. In spite of this recurring outcome, the progressive forces retain their commitment to hope, and it is the prism of hope which this paper uses to make sense of revolution’s failure. In this paper, a contribution to the anthropology of revolution, that idea of hope is deconstructed: this permits a greater focus on how and why the promises of revolution have, so far, been betrayed and unfulfilled in contemporary Kyrgyzstan, where the idea of hope plays a fundamental representational and political role.
Abstract
In this article, we analyze how the operation of the Russian Aerospace forces is presented in the official Russian discourse. The analysis is based on a collected database of statements made by the Russian authorities. Relying on social identity theory, we argue that the Russian operation in Syria became a key element in changing the Russian strategy in the Middle East. In other words, beginning in the mid-2010s, Russian policy in the Middle East moved from social competition to social creativity. Taking the Russian operation in Syria as an example, we assert that the second half of 2017 was a turning point because the military narration of the discourse was replaced at that point with the narration of the unique role of Russia in the regulation of the Syrian conflict. This narration included narratives related to ‘sovereignty’, ‘territorial integrity’, and the creation of alternative platforms to maintain stability.