CRRC, American Councils and ARISC are proud to present the 12th talk of the Works-in-Progress Series for the Fall 2012 Season!
Claire P. Kaiser
“Georgia’s March 1956 and Soviet Nationalism”
Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 6:15pm
ISET/CRRC Georgia, Zandukeli St. 16, Tbilisi, GEORGIA
Abstract: In spite of Nikita Khrushchev’s February 1956 “secret speech” and the initiation of a campaign of de-Stalinization across the Union, Georgians in Tbilisi and elsewhere commemorated the third anniversary of Stalin’s death on 5 March 1956. What began as commemoration evolved into demonstrations with concrete demands that were violently suppressed by Soviet troops on the night of 9-10 March. Claire will share her archival findings regarding the ways two groups of stakeholders in Soviet Georgia — Communist Party members and servicemen — interpreted the March events and the anti-Stalin campaign over the course of 1956. Additionally, Claire will situate the events of 1956 within her broader dissertation project, which studies nationality policies and the cultivation of a “Soviet Georgian” national interest and identity between 1938 and 1978, drawing from the fields of Soviet history and nationalism studies.
Claire Kaiser is a Ph.D. candidate in Russian and Soviet history at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She is conducting archival research in Tbilisi for the 2012-2013 academic year as an American Councils Title VIII Research and Language Scholar. Her dissertation examines nationality policies in the late- and post-Stalin-era Georgian S.S.R. Prior to coming to Penn, Claire worked at an international strategic advisory firm in Washington, DC, the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, and has served in Azerbaijan and Ukraine on OSCE election observation missions. She holds a B.S. in foreign service and an M.A. in Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.
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W-i-P is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place at the International School of Economics (ISET) building (16 Zandukeli Street). It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.The purpose of the W-i-P series is to provide support and productive criticism to those researching and developing academic projects pertaining the Caucasus region.
Would you like to present at one of the W-i-P sessions? Send an e-mail to natia@crrccenters.org.