"A Wonderful Country in the Caucasus...": A Brief History of Russo-Georgian Relations in the Pre-Soviet Era
Abstract
This essay problematizes recently established clichés in both Russia and Georgia, clichés that promote mutual anxiety whose roots are traced back in the modern history of these two nations. It identifies the roots of these clichés as closely related to the stirred interrelationship of post-Soviet Russian and Georgian elites determined by discord over a series of political issues that resonated in both countries' public discourse attributing to the political conflict significant ethnic overtones.
Focusing on the Tsarist period, the article seeks to highlight the evolution of mutual perceptions between the Russians and Georgians, whilst emphasizing the Georgian perspective and concentrating heavily on the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as a crucial period that predetermined the Georgian view of Russia and the Russians as part of Georgians' modern-day self-consciousness.