During the past decade Georgia underwent drastic changes. The disintegration of Soviet Union in 1991 and subsequent establishment of independence in the South-Caucasian republic of Georgia was strongly linked with the population’s expectations of democratic development, prosperity and inclusion into global processes. However, it resulted in political instability leading to bloody ethno-territorial and civil wars, economic standstill, mass unemployment and impoverishment of population. Weakness of the state, mismanagement and lack of strategic thinking resulted in demolishing of the social security system and led to mass impoverishment. During these years the social stratification became more visible, partly due to increasing income gap between the new poor (more than a half of the population is considered to live below the poverty line) and the thin layer of the new rich who either used available financial and social resources to accumulate capital mainly through privatisation or tr...

The paper analyzes the phenomenon of the " Jeans Generation " as a part of cultural memory in Georgian society, through the prism of subcultures and countercultures theories. It locates the analysis within the broader geopolitical settings of the late Cold War period in order to explain the subcultural nature of this 'generation,' juxtaposed to the Soviet regime. The group of Georgian youngsters from the late 1970s, their style and their beliefs about reality and 'jeans', as ascribed to them in the cultural memory, are analyzed vis-à-vis the scarcity of information affecting their perceptions of 'America' and 'the West'. The theoretical part of the article goes through the main traditions within the research field of subcultures and countercultures, outlines analytical differences between these two concepts, and establishes a working conceptualization from a constructivist perspective. Subsequent analysis of the phenomenon enables to conclude that this group of youth, although lacking any apparent ideological motives, ought to be categorized as a youth subculture according to the persistency and commonality of their visions on certain matters. The article also shows how this group has inspired a more tenacious belief counterculture, which has come to be associated with the phenomenon of the " Jeans Generation " in post-Soviet Georgia after the Cold War. Considering the political circumstances in the late Cold War period is also important for the analysis of the case. 1 Nino Gozalishvili is a PhD student at Central European University (CEU), in the Nationalism-History Joint Doctoral program. She holds an MA degree in Nationalism Studies from CEU. Her main area of research is Eastern Europe, with a focus on the history and current rise of National-Populism. Currently she is researching the internationalization of right-wing populist discourses in Europe. Her academic interests include EU integration processes vis-à-vis national projects of the post-Communist states in Eastern Europe. She is a graduate of Tbilisi State University, department of International Relations. She was also visiting student at the University of Warsaw Department of Political Sciences and at European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), at the department of Social and Cultural Studies.

In contemporary Georgia and beyond, nostalgia for the Soviet past is often ridiculed and dismissed as a reactionary wish to turn back time. In this article, however, I explore generational nostalgia as temporal displacement of present political struggles. Drawing on life story interviews with middle-aged and elderly people in the provincial town of Gori, I argue that nostalgic longings may be understood as active attempts to presence personal pasts and futures that have publicly been rendered absent by an official rhetoric and practice that explicitly rejects the Soviet past. From this perspective, post-Soviet generational nostalgia temporally connects several dimensions of absence: the experience of one’s personal past being publicly cast as void; a perceived lack of social security, influence, and significance in the present; and a dynamic whereby these two dimensions render former dreams and visions for the future obsolete.

The aim of the paper is to examine the status and role of the young generation in the social and political space of Georgia. The paper states that the young generation of Georgians does not enjoy high social status, even though the young can and probably will constitute the future elite of Georgian society. To analyze this research problem, I have used a number of research methods based partly on secondary sources. Three main research methods have been used in the study-desk research method, comparison, and the statistical method based on secondary data that have been extracted from the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC) database. The paper is a snapshot of studies on the theory of notions of “status” and “role”, and it presents the work of Polish scholars. Moreover, the paper opens the door to further research on the young and democracy in Georgia. The studied issue is essential for analyzing the perception of democracy and democratization among the generations in Georgia. The paper is part of a series of articles on the opinion of the young generation of Georgians about democracy and democratization.

This paper deals with the politics of memory in contemporary Georgia's public space. It explores the relations between official and vernacular commemorations of the Soviet past in Tbilisi. In this paper, I have studied the forms of materialization of vernacular memories in the public space and provided a frame in which they exist, including the ideological background of decommunization in Georgia and peculiarities of the Soviet era museumizing in state museums. The official discourse demonizes the previous epoque and neglects all its benefits, whereas the ordinary people are quite nuanced in their memories of their past – this contradiction leads to manifestations of vernacular memories. Therefore, this paper focuses mostly on Tbilisi's Dry Bridge, a famous flea market where the memory of the recent Soviet past is negotiated. The main argument is that this particular flea market and its artifacts might be regarded as a " vernacular memorial " and " lieu de memoire " where nostalgia for an officially demonized era can be expressed and materialized. This paper explores the items that are on sale, explaining their meaning for the post-Soviet people, and describes the intangible practices that can be observed there. In addition, this paper unpacks that these nostalgic practices should not be considered as " unhealthy " or " retrospective " as it helps people to adapt to modernity and develop by considering more than one hegemonic version of their past.