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The Georgian Language State Program and its Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Stephen F. Jones
Stephen F. Jones*
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts
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Extract

Minority language rights in Georgia, which are inseparable from economic, social and educational inequalities among the different ethnic groups, run along two axes: Georgian's relation to Russian and Georgian's relation with its own minority languages. Since the late 1980s, Moscow's diminishing power and the republic's internal fragmentation have shifted the emphasis from the first to the second. Newly independent Georgia, which is 70% Georgian, now confronts a problem familiar to many post-colonial states: what status should the multiplicity of languages in the republic have? Should Georgian be the only official language, and if so, in what contexts can non-Georgians use their native language? Such issues are part of larger questions about domination, entitlement and ethnic status, issues which have bedeviled the successive Georgian governments' attempts at state-building. In the last two years, language conflicts in Georgia have been overwhelmed by violent secessionist struggles, and the state language program which was perceived as vital to Georgia's future when it was adopted in August 1989, has become secondary today. But if the ethnically based wars are to end, language relations must be settled. As it stands, the language program is unlikely to help.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 23 , Issue 3: (Special Topic Issue) Implementing Language Laws: Perestroika and its Legacy in Five Republics , September 1995 , pp. 535 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastem Europe and ex-USSR, Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. According to the 1989 census, the national composition of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was as follows: Georgians 70.1%, Armenians 8.1%, Russians 6.3%, Azeris 5.7%, Ossetians 3.0%, Abxazians 1.8%, Greeks 1.9% and others 3.1%. (Data taken from K'omunist'i, 13 January 1990.)Google Scholar

2. The Georgian literary language is over 1500 years old. Georgian (Kartuli) belongs, along with Svan, Mingrelian, and Laz, to the Southwest Caucasian branch of the Ibero-Caucasian languages. It is non-Indo-European. For many centuries the Georgian literary language, despite periods of political disunity, was the language of administration, law, religion and interethnic communication for most peoples living on what is now the territory of the Republic of Georgia.Google Scholar

3. On the constitutional history of the Georgian language this century, see K'omunist'i, 15 April 1990.Google Scholar

4. In 1989, 98.2% of Georgians considered Georgian their native tongue and 95.1% lived in their own republic, the second highest residential concentration (after the Lithuanians) in the Union. In 1985 the Georgian language share of total book production in the republic was 91%. In 1979, 86% of all newspaper titles and 83% of total newspaper circulation was in Georgian; these all represented improvements since the 1920s. Georgians in the 1980s had two Georgian-language TV stations and a network of eleven radio stations. These figures are taken from K'omunist'i, 13 January 1990; Narodnoe khoziaistvo Gruzinskoi SSR v 1985 godu (Tbilisi: Sabc'ota Sakartvelo, 1986), p. 250; P. Gugushvili, Sakartvelos da amierk'avkaziis ek'onomiuri ganvit'areba XIX-XX ss, Vol. 7 (Tbilisi: Mecniereba, 1984), p. 272.Google Scholar

5. For typical expressions of concern about Georgian demographic decline, see K'omunist'i, 11 January 1989 and 29 January 1990. See also Elizabeth Fuller, “Manifestations of Nationalism in Current Georgian Language Literature,” Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, 14 March 1980.Google Scholar

6. Clumsy Russification measures introduced in the republic before 1978 such as the 1975 requirement to submit Kandidat (PhD) materials in Russian as well as Georgian, and changes in school and higher education syllabi in 1976 and 1978 which increased Russian hours of instruction, led to Georgian protest. But Moscow's attempt to remove from the Georgian constitution the article defining Georgian as the republic's state language produced the first large public demonstration of discontent in Georgia since the pro-Stalinist demonstration of 1956. See Ann Sheehy, “The National Languages and the New Constitution of the Transcaucasian Republics.” Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, 3 May 1978.Google Scholar

7. For this resolution, see Kommunisticheskaia partiia Gruzii v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s”ezdov konferentsii i plenumov Tsk, Tom 4, 1972-1980 (Tbilisi: Sabcota Sakartvelo, 1980), pp. 898-901.Google Scholar

8. Apart from the major groups listed in note 1, there were in 1989 representatives from 115 other nations in the republic. The largest of the smaller groups included Ukrainians (52,443), Kurds (33,331), Georgian Jews (14,314), other Jews (10,302), Belorussians (8,595), Assyrians (6,206), Tatars (4,099), and Avars (4,230) from Sakartvelos dasaxlebuli p'unkt'ebi da mosaxleoba: st'at'ist'ik'uri cnobari (Tbilisi: Sakartvelos respublik'is uzenaesi sabc'ostan arsebuli socialur-ek'onomik'uri inpormaciis k'omit'et'i, 1991).Google Scholar

9. It should be noted, however, that the Armenians in the southern districts of Axalcixe, Axalkalaki, C'alka, Aspinza and Ninoc'minda are predominantly rural.Google Scholar

10. On the Azeris in Georgia, see Elizabeth Fuller, “Marneuli: Georgia's Potential Nagorno-Karabagh?” Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, 18 October 1988; and Stephen Jones, “Revolutions in Revolutions within Revolution: Minorities in the Georgian Republic,” Zvi Gitelman, ed., The Politics of Nationality and the Erosion of the USSR (New York: St Martin's Press, 1992) pp. 77–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. See B. G. Hewitt, “Language Planning in Georgia (Georgian and Abkhaz),” Michael Kirkwood, ed., Language Planning in the Soviet Union (New York: St Martin's Press, 1990), pp. 123-144.Google Scholar

12. Between 1926-1989, they have declined from 28% of the Abxazian republic to 18%. For the best (but dated) survey of Abxazians, see Darrell Slider “Crisis and Response in Soviet Nationality Policy: the Case of Abxazia,” Central Asian Survey, 4, no. 4 (1985), pp. 51–68. See also Stephen Jones, “Revolutions in Revolutions,” op. cit. Google Scholar

13. The letter is discussed in the materials cited above by Darrell Slider, and in Hewitt. See also Abkhazskoe Pis'mo—Prezidiumu XIX-oi Vsesoiuznoi partiinoi konferentsii (dated 17 June 1988), in which the 1978 accusations are recalled and reiterated. (The author has a manuscript in his possession.) Georgian and Soviet actions from the period of 1918 onwards, including the Georgian Social Democratic government's crushing of a Bolshevik-led Abxazian revolt in 1918, to Lavrenti Beria's imposition of the Georgian alphabet and closure of Abxazian schools and radio in the late 1930s, are seen as a deliberate attempt to eliminate the Abxazian population.Google Scholar

14. For details of these measures, see Kommunisticheskaia partiia Gruzii v rezoliutsiiakh…, pp. 795-804. In the 1937 Abxazian constitution, Russian was removed as one of the three state languages in Abxazia (the other two were Georgian and Abxazian). It was restored in 1978.Google Scholar

15. Hewitt, See, “Language Planning in Georgia,” and also his Abxazia: a Problem of Identity and Ownership: History and Documents (in press). (The author has a copy of this manuscript in his possession.)Google Scholar

16. Mingrelian is not a literary language and is closer to Laz than Georgian proper (Kartuli). The majority of the more than half a million Mingrelians in the region of Samegrelo (Mingrelia) and southern Abxazia speak it among themselves at home. Mingrelians, however, continue to identify themselves as Georgian. See Stephen Jones “The Mingrelians,” The Encyclopedia of World Cultures, G. K. Hall (in press).Google Scholar

17. , Hewitt, “Language Planning in Georgia,” pp. 131. Rasma Karklins in her study Ethnic Relations in the USSR: the Perspective from Below (Boston: Allen ∧ Unwin, 1986), provides convincing evidence that language attitudes are closely related to ethnic relations. See especially pp. 55–63.Google Scholar

18. “O merakh po dal'neishemu razvitiiu ekonomiki i kul'tury Iugo-Osetinskoi Avtonomnoi oblasti,” Kommunisticheskaia partiia Gruzii v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh…, pp. 881-886.Google Scholar

19. After Eduard Shevardnadze was appointed foreign minister in July 1985, he was succeeded by Jumbar Pat'iashvili. Pat'iashvili was replaced by Givi Gumbaridze in April 1989, who was in power when the Communist Party of Georgia lost the election in October 1990 to the Round Table-Free Georgia bloc.Google Scholar

20. For a history of the first Georgian informal organizations, see Stephen Jones, “Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Georgian SSR,” Armenian Review, 43, Nos. 2-3 (1990), pp. 127-152.Google Scholar

21. “Sakartvelos saxalxo pront'i: miznebi da st'rukt'ura,” (draft) p. 6. (The author has a manuscript in his possession.)Google Scholar

22. K'omunist'i, 3 November 1988.Google Scholar

23. There is a detailed discussion of the April 9th events in Stephen Jones “Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Georgian SSR,” pp. 138-139.Google Scholar

24. For a full version of the final program, see K'omunist'i, 25 August 1989. The final version contains 106 articles compared to the draft's 85.Google Scholar

25. Kirkwood, Michael, “Language Planning: Some Methodological Preliminaries,” Language Planning in the Soviet Union, pp. 1-2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. The final version mentions financial aid, an omission in the draft.Google Scholar

27. These are all improvements on the draft, where such concessions are more limited. The article (Art. 14, Section III) which stipulates a “conversation” on Georgian language and literature is ambigious about which language the conversation should be conducted in, and allows the examiner to determine the form of the conversation.Google Scholar

28. The Soviet Georgian constitution, which remained in place without significant amendments to article 75 on the status of the Georgian language throughout the Gamsaxurdia period, guaranteed that non-Georgian languages could be used in the republic's institutions, a clause which seems to contradict the language program.Google Scholar

29. Charles F. Furtado Jr. and Andrea Chandler, eds, Perestroika in the Soviet Republics: Documents on the National Question (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), p. 377.Google Scholar

30. Abkhazskoe Pis'mo—Prezidiumu XIX-oi Vsesoiuznoi partiinoi konferentsii. Google Scholar

31. Fuller, Elizabth, “South Ossetia: Analysis of a Permanent Crisis,” Report on the USSR, 3, No. 7 (1991) p. 21.Google Scholar

32. For a critique of the electoral law, see Guram Mamulia in K'omunist'i, 9 August 1990.Google Scholar

33. K'omunist'i, 23 October 1990.Google Scholar

34. Axali Sakartvelo, 14 November 1990, p. 1.Google Scholar

35. Axali Sakartvelo, 16 November 1990, p. 2.Google Scholar

36. Axali Sakartvelo, 27 November 1990, p. 5; Roman Miminoshvili and Guram Pandzhikidze, Pravda ob Abkhazii, Merani, Tbilisi, 1990, p. 59.Google Scholar

37. The citizenship law is printed in Sakartvelos Respublik'a, 25 June 1991, pp. 1-2.Google Scholar

38. See article 75 in the Georgian Constitution (Sakartvelos respublik'is k'onst'it'ucia), Tbilisi, November, 1991, p. 22.Google Scholar

39. “Georgian Education Official Discusses Language,” Moscow Domestic Service in Russian, 12 September 1989 cited in FBIS-SOV (Foreign Broadcast Information Services-Soviet Union), 89–176 (13 September 1989), pp. 66–67.Google Scholar

40. For a good discussion of the relationship between language and nationalism, see Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 180-185.Google Scholar

41. , Karklins, p. 60.Google Scholar

42. Interview with Igor Bogomolov, President of the Russian Cultural and Educational Society, Tbilisi, July 1993.Google Scholar

43. “Ganatlebis sist'emashi kartuli enis saxelmc'ipo p'rogramis shesrulebis mimdinareobisa da shemdgomi amocanebis shesaxeb,” Sakartvelos respublik'is minist'rta k'abinet'i dadgenileba, No. 495, Tbilisi, 28 June, 1993 (the author has a copy in his possession.)Google Scholar

44. Axali Sakartvelo, 4 December 1990, p. 2.Google Scholar

45. Interview with Van Barbuti and Suluman Sulumeinov, editors respectively of Vrastan and Gurjistan, official newspapers of the Armenian and Azeri communities in Georgia, Tbilisi, July 1993.Google Scholar