The project aims to initiate creation of an oral history corpus of Jewry in Georgia for analysis of the identities of Georgian Jewry on the threshold of the collapse of the USSR and the relations of local Jewry with their neighbors. Based on the collected oral history interviews, supported by archival sources, a collective monograph will be published. The project will include archival and library research in several cities in Georgia and in Moscow, as well as collection of oral history in Georgia with representatives of local Jewry (Georgian and Ashkenazi) and with their “neighbors” - those who remember the life of Jewish communities in Georgia in the late Soviet era.
This project is an attempt to overcome the established postcolonial tradition of writing the history of the Jewish communities of the former Soviet republics as a common history and to examine thoroughly the local characteristics of the life of the Jewish communities of Georgia in the period under study. The focus is on people’s personal stories. Through oral history, we explore the main narratives, mechanisms of coexistence, and identity constructs associated with the Soviet period of the history of Jewry in Georgia.
Head of the project team:
Lela Tsitsuashvili, Head of the Temporary Exhibitions Department (Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi), Associate Professor at the University of Georgia (Tbilisi).
The main participants:
Yulia Oreshina, Georgian-American University (Tbilisi).
Ketevan Kakitelashvili, Associate Professor at the Tbilisi State University.
Photo: Gori, Georgia, USSR. Parade on 7 November 1984. (The collection of Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center)