Gender in Georgia: Feminist Perspectives on Culture, Nation, and History in the South Caucasus

By Alisse Waterston

As Georgia seeks to reinvent itself as a nation-state in the post-Soviet period, Georgian women are maneuvering, adjusting, resisting and transforming the new economic, social and political order. In Gender in Georgia, editors Maia Barkaia and Alisse Waterston bring together an international group of feminist scholars to explore the socio-political and cultural conditions that have shaped gender dynamics in Georgia from the late 19th century to the present. In doing so, they provide the first-ever woman-centered collection of research on Georgia, offering a feminist critique of power in its many manifestations, and an assessment of women’s political agency in Georgia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781785336768

Book preview

Part I

Power and Politics

Chapter 1

Pioneer Women

Herstories of Feminist Movements in Georgia

Lela Gaprindashvili

Introduction

In post-Soviet Georgia, women’s civic activity and public discourse on gender equality have been an essential part of the democratic process. Political leaders and members of the general public frequently question the need for women’s emancipation, which they think is unnecessary considering sexual equality is guaranteed by Georgian law and is believed to be the cultural norm. As if to affirm their beliefs, skeptics name eminent women from the ancient Georgian past who are recognized for their the religious and political contributions: Queen Tamar from the twelfth century, Queen Ketevan from the seventeenth century and the monument Kartlis Deda (Mother of Georgia), who have come to symbolize Georgian history. From their point of view, recognizing these mythical-historical figures signals respect for the historical and cultural roles of women in Georgian society.

As a feminist researcher and civic activist, I find these discussions useful in raising questions and in inspiring me to look for answers—a search at the center of my professional life. It has led me to study women’s pursuits not in the ancient past but in the nineteenth century, when, by means of putting enlightenment ideas into practice, the foundation was laid for building a secular state. It has also led me to bring this history into the contemporary women’s movement in Georgia, both as a source of inspiration and as an effective argument in response to those who call Georgia’s feminist movement a recent import that is irrelevant to contemporary Georgian society.

It took many years for me to accomplish my goal of uncovering nineteenth-century women’s histories. I found it challenging to obtain reliable information and to gather the data I needed to reanimate the women’s voices. My exhaustive search took me to books, journals, newspapers, memoirs of famous male writers and public figures, and archives of their descendants. By means of this intellectual archaeology, I had the good fortune to meet other women like myself who also conduct research on women’s roles in Georgian society. Gathering data from scientific research organizations, museums, and archives of the Soviet era, these scholars have published articles and monographs on women who were Georgian public figures in different historical periods.¹

This chapter focuses on the stories of three important nineteenth-century Georgian women who helped place women’s issues in the public sphere, and played critical roles in women’s liberation. In what follows, I narrate the political biographies of Barbare Eristavi-Jorjadze, Ekaterine Tarkhnishvili-Gabashvili, and Kato Mikeladze. Even as it is true that women’s activism has increased in the post-Soviet period, this history contests the commonly held view that women’s activism in Georgia was born with the fall of the Soviet Union. Ideas about gender equality, women’s rights and the women’s movement were not simply recent imports but are linked to Georgian history, traditions, and culture. The herstories presented here reveal that Georgian ideas about women’s personal, sexual, social, economic, and political freedoms were synchronized early on with the European/Western process; but this was interrupted by the Russian imperia and later by the Soviets, resulting in the marginalization of civil activism and women’s movements after 1921.

Out of the Home and into the Community

By the mid nineteenth century, Georgia was already part of the Russian Empire. As the previous century came to a close, Georgia’s northern friend would violate the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk, designed to ensure mutual military-political security, which ultimately resulted in the subjugation of the Georgian kingdoms to Russia. In the turbulent period leading up to nineteenth-century Russian rule, some members of the Georgian royal family were deported, some acceded, and the most disobedient Georgians survived by fleeing to Persia and the Ottoman Empire where they made several unsuccessful attempts to organize a rebellion.

Having cleared Georgia of the rebels, the Russians carried out what Georgians considered to be economic and later cultural enslavement of the population. The Russian Prikaz (literally, an order)—a mortgage loan given by the representatives of the empire to the Georgian nobility—significantly contributed to the impoverishment of the country. In the transition from feudalism to capitalism, debtors were unable to pay back the loans, which left their landed fortunes open to Russian possession.

The Russian effort to culturally assimilate Georgia began in the schools. The primary, two-year education was available only to a very small number of those ranked high in the social order. The masses, girls among them, received education in so-called home schools, where they were instructed to memorize historical legends, fairy tales and religious texts. There were also private boarding schools for girls from elite households who were taught sewing, embroidery, and how to play the piano, as well provided with instruction in the natural sciences and Russian, French, and Georgian. In these various educational contexts, the Georgian language was relegated to subordinate status. If taught at all, classes in Georgian were scheduled at the end of a long school day and ignorance of one’s mother tongue was not a barrier to academic advancement. In the personal archive of Nino Kipiani, a nineteenth-century Georgian public figure, she describes the demonization of Georgian, an essential step in the Russian forced assimilation process:

The Georgian language was labeled as a language of dogs, and speaking Georgian was prohibited. If somebody dared to speak Georgian, they would hang a red plate over his neck with an image of a dog’s tongue on it. If a student was seen reading a Georgian newspaper, the teacher would snatch it out of his hands and say, Do not fool yourself with this rubbish (Kipiani Archive: 6087).²

Not everyone acquiesced to the pressure to assimilate. Some people found ways to resist, including through the use of print media. Notwithstanding pervasive censorship, writers helped unify those Georgians who were deeply concerned about the situation facing their country, which many considered a tragic situation. One example was the journal Tsiskari, which under the editorship of Ivane Kereselidze (1829–1883) published the poem The Sad Woman Sitting by the River, introducing Georgian society to 26-year-old Barbare Eristavi-Jorjadze, whose herstory I outline here.

Eristavi-Jorjadze was born to Nino Amilakhvari and David Eristavi in 1833. After her mother’s death, Eristavi-Jorjadze was raised by her nurse, Dilavardisa, who taught the girl to read and write as well as to sew and embroider, which every girl was obligated to learn. According to Ketevan Iremadze, Dilavardisa would tell the child Barbare stories about prominent historical and religious figures (Iremadze 1945: 66–67). At seven years old, Barbare was fully ready for school, though it seems nobody thought about her education. Her brother Raphiel would study in the Gori district school and then in the Tbilisi