Abstract
This article represents the independent part of the broad academic project conducted by the author at Tbilisi State University. The article, on the basis of triangulation content analysis of four official publications of the Glasnost-period Soviet Georgia during 1986-1990, studies the trends of the process of re-writing of the past declared by the last Soviet Authorities. The main focus of the article is an inter-replacement of official and unofficial versions of histories in Georgia, or expressing more imaginably—yesterday as today or restoration of historical truth and justice as ideological change. The author concerns discursive and non-discursive realities in Glasnost-Period official press in Soviet Georgia. The term “official publications” implies newspapers that were official bodies of the Soviet and communist-party authorities of Georgia. The range of these publications in the article includes Georgian-language and Russian-language dailies, as well as the official youth press in both languages. The hypotheses of the study are posed to: 1) the time dimension of the re-assessment of history; and 2) the ideological platform of the re-interpretation of history. The article studies a really unique historical period when the official Soviet power and the informal power of the National Liberation Movement, official communist publications and the party press of newly established parties with different political ideologies coexisted in the conditions of one sociopolitical formation. The main findings of the article can be formulated as follows: 1) the official press of Georgia, despite the freedom of speech allowed from above and the vaguely restricted boundaries of this freedom, did not use the strategies of time-shifting discourse in reproducing history in constructing the Glasnost narrative, and 2) the official press of Georgia still covered historical events from the Marxist-Leninist platform.
Highlights
Prospects for AnalysisThe policy of Perestroika and Glasnost has been studying and analyzing by the community of scholars worldwide for more than three decades
Perestroika is an element of linguistic, discursive reality, mainly expressed in the statements of political leaders or in official materials printed from the central press; 2) 1986-mid-1987—Georgian media awaken, new publications appear; 3) 1987-1988—untabooing of hitherto prohibited topics; 4) 1988-1990—the national question, the true history of Georgia, the desire for independence, the tragedy of April 9, when Soviet troops cruelly defeated a peaceful rally in front of the Georgian Government House using deadly weapons and asphyxiating gas, which resulted in human casualties, are actualized
In the Georgian reality, we find a certain paradoxical circumstance—at a time when the official publications of the Communist Party were printing legal decrees on the rehabilitation of repressed party figures, a separate media narrative was forming a text about the repressed intelligentsia, there was little criticism of Stalin’s person
Summary
The policy of Perestroika and Glasnost has been studying and analyzing by the community of scholars worldwide for more than three decades. Perestroika and Glasnost were studied when they were actual policies, and no one could predict how the ideological modernization of the Soviet system would end. Glasnost has been studied and analyzed from all possible perspectives—from political, state-governing, historical, social, cultural, phenomenological, comparative (for example, Glasnost in the Centre and Glasnost at the National Peripheries, expectations from Glasnost in the Soviet Union and abroad), etc. Kouki (2004) focused attention to the shifting of the key political figure of criticism in the process of Perestroika, having pointed out that “ the driving force of this historical Glasnost in 1987 appeared to be de-Stalinization, the terms of discourse on the Soviet past soon became so uncontrolled and extended that it even embraced anti-Leninist positions” At the beginning of 2000s, McQuail (2005) gave to Glasnost the name of Model of Change and Development
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