Rewriting History: Allocating the Ganmukhuri Patriot Youth Camp in the Memory Politics of the Post-Rose Revolution Regime

Abstract

The article allocates the opening of the Ganmukhuri Patriot Youth Camp (GPYC) near the border of the conflict region of Abkhazia to a timeline of other historical processes unfolding in the same region. By doing so, the broader historical context is rebuilt and the chronological sequence of the events is reconstructed. The orderly investigation of the historical processes that led to the erection of the Ganmukhuri patriot camp only a kilometer from the administrative Abkhazian border and its demolition by Russian military forces reveals the motives standing behind the initiative to build the youth patriot camp in the conflict area. The United National Movement (UNM) government built the camp in 2007 as a part of an extension of the state-sponsored programme, planning to set up youth patriot camps across Georgia. The GPYC was sheltering approximately six hundred youngsters during the summer vacation. By reconstructing a chronological sequence of the events, the article addresses whether or not the Ganmukhuri camp was part of the revanchism of the UNM government and if these spaces, like other patriot camps, were used to reinforce the official memory politics of the ruling party. In the process of analysis, we are to disclose whether participants of the camp were used as a human shield against Russian military aggression and if the building of the camp was a well-planned provocation of the UNM to justify their aggressive campaign of reclaiming the territories lost in the near past. For this, the paper examines the historical context and looks closely at the environment, disposition, and inner structure of the camps.