Page 157 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 157
From War to Peace:
The Literary Life of Georgia
after the Second World War
Irma Ratiani
Georgian literature before the Second World War was by no means flour-
ishing. As a result of the political purges of the 1930s conducted by Sovi-
et government, the leading Georgian writers were eliminated. Georgian
Modernism and the Georgian Avant-Garde, which had found itself in an-
tagonism with the ideological principles of the Soviet dictatorship from
the outset, ceased to exist.1 This current of literature that rejected Social-
ist Realism was based on the progressive Western spirit and modernist
philosophy (intuitivism, Freudianism, pragmatism, and neo-positivism).
However, the traditional synthesis of national values with Western ten-
dencies was particularly observable in the establishment of the idea of
Georgian renewal, which was the sign of a desire to change reality. Ac-
companied by literature with the status of a bearer of culture, new inter-
pretations of national identity became “associated with awareness of the
national cultural image against the background of the inevitable process
1 Georgian Modernism and the Georgian Avant-Garde as two literary styles or vari-
ants were formed in the first half of the twentieth century, during the modernist pe-
riod. With its depth and subjectivism, the openness of its thinking, and the trans-
gression of stylistic boundaries, Georgian Modernism constituted a threat to the So-
viet ideological system, but according to Bela Tsipuria the Georgian Avant-Garde
created no less a threat to Soviet cultural policy, despite the fact that it rejected the
entire system of spiritual problems and existential relations (Tsipuria, 2010). Geor-
gian Modernism and the Georgian Avant-Garde, as forms of anti-Soviet discourse,
expressed the anti-Soviet pathos of artists distinguished by their free ideological posi-
tion. For more details, see also Bela Tsipuria and Gaga Lomidze (Tsipuria, 2010, Lo-
midze, 2016a, and Lomidze 2016b).
The Literary Life of Georgia
after the Second World War
Irma Ratiani
Georgian literature before the Second World War was by no means flour-
ishing. As a result of the political purges of the 1930s conducted by Sovi-
et government, the leading Georgian writers were eliminated. Georgian
Modernism and the Georgian Avant-Garde, which had found itself in an-
tagonism with the ideological principles of the Soviet dictatorship from
the outset, ceased to exist.1 This current of literature that rejected Social-
ist Realism was based on the progressive Western spirit and modernist
philosophy (intuitivism, Freudianism, pragmatism, and neo-positivism).
However, the traditional synthesis of national values with Western ten-
dencies was particularly observable in the establishment of the idea of
Georgian renewal, which was the sign of a desire to change reality. Ac-
companied by literature with the status of a bearer of culture, new inter-
pretations of national identity became “associated with awareness of the
national cultural image against the background of the inevitable process
1 Georgian Modernism and the Georgian Avant-Garde as two literary styles or vari-
ants were formed in the first half of the twentieth century, during the modernist pe-
riod. With its depth and subjectivism, the openness of its thinking, and the trans-
gression of stylistic boundaries, Georgian Modernism constituted a threat to the So-
viet ideological system, but according to Bela Tsipuria the Georgian Avant-Garde
created no less a threat to Soviet cultural policy, despite the fact that it rejected the
entire system of spiritual problems and existential relations (Tsipuria, 2010). Geor-
gian Modernism and the Georgian Avant-Garde, as forms of anti-Soviet discourse,
expressed the anti-Soviet pathos of artists distinguished by their free ideological posi-
tion. For more details, see also Bela Tsipuria and Gaga Lomidze (Tsipuria, 2010, Lo-
midze, 2016a, and Lomidze 2016b).
