Description
Veronika Pfeilschifter
PhD Student in Caucasus Studies at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena
v.pfeilschifter@uni-jena.de
Abstract
The post-Soviet left in Georgia is a theoretically and empirically under-reflected and not yet sufficiently understood historical and social phenomenon. This paper is an attempt to offer scientific ideological analysis which is based on grounded theory and inductively develop a ‘left-wing’ concept of justice. After drawing an empirical picture of two generations of Georgia’s post-Soviet leftists and outlining the plurality of left-wing ideologies, the paper examines their social conditions and social practices of justification.
These steps help developing an own concept of justice: Based on in-depth conversations with 30 interlocutors in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi in September 2022 and April 2023, the paper has found that a localized justice concept consists of four main cleavages: the centrality of social justice and redistribution (social), the focus and precarity of gender (political), the importance of emotional coherence and retrospective compensation (affective) and finally the centrality of historical (un-)wholeness and ‘hopeful’projection into the future (historico-affective).
The paper concludes by outlining the ideological contradictions among the post-Soviet left, and between them and the Georgian post-Soviet governments. Here, the differences between power centralization, revenge and social healing are explored.
