CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Gulbani, Otari |
|---|---|
| Title | Backward and Deficient: Exploring Soviet Imaginations and the Modernization of Svaneti, 1920s-1930s |
| Summary | The MA thesis explores the changes that took place in a remote mountainous region of the Georgian SSR called Svaneti under the Soviet system in the 1920s and the 1930s. The Soviet Union had identified cultural “backwardness” and illness-related physical impairments as the main problems of the group that populated a geographically disconnected area. To effectuate the Soviet project and usher the Svans through the Marxist historical timeline towards communism, the USSR started the rapid, state-driven modernization of Svaneti. In this context, my thesis asks the following questions: What did the modernization of Svaneti look like? What was the ideological and historical context that shaped it? How did the USSR deal with the identified aspects of the region’s “backwardness” and what were its collateral effects? And finally, what does the Svan case tell us about the USSR as an imperial formation? Based on three-months-long archival fieldwork in Tbilisi and Mestia, utilizing discourse analysis to study historical sources on the Svaneti region, as well as observing their logic of documentation, my thesis puts forward three arguments: i) the rationale of Soviet modernization was fundamentally at odds with the local value systems and created tensions; ii) the large-scale process of goiter treatment in Svaneti generated a medicalized subjectivity that circumscribed the region’s position with respect to the state; iii) the analysis of changes in peripheral Soviet Svaneti can bolster the academic position that conceptualizes the USSR as an “imperial formation”. The discussion also sets the tone for further developments in the field, including the relevance of post-colonial theory for Soviet studies. |
| Supervisor | Naumescu, Vlad; Rajaram, Prem Kumar |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/gulbani_otari.pdf |
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