CRRC, ARISC and American Councils are pleased to announce the 12th session of the Spring/Summer 2025 Tbilisi Works-in-Progress series!
This week’s session will be in hybrid format in-person at the CRRC Georgia office (Chavchavadze Ave. 5, Tbilisi, Georgia, 0179) and online via Zoom through a registration link that will be posted here before the talk.
Remembering Sukhumi: Russophone Writing and the Conflict in Abkhazia
Benjamin Sutcliffe, Miami University of Ohio
The causes and consequences of the 1992-1993 war in Abkhazia continue to echo throughout the South Caucasus. The battle for the city of Sukhumi, the key moment in the conflict, has come to symbolize brutal ethnic strife in post-Soviet Eurasia. Three contemporary Russophone writers in Abkhazia and Georgia give contrasting images of this event, what preceded it, and what came after. Aleksei Gogua (1932-), Daur Nachkebia (1960- ), and Guram Odisharia (1961-) see Sukhumi variously as multicultural city, sanctuary for the Soviet intelligentsia, colonial socialist resort, site of atrocities, or monument to Abkhaz independence. I explore how authors who are not ethnically Russian use the language to describe the cosmopolitan capital (Sukhumi) of a marginalized territory (Abkhazia) within a former Soviet republic (Georgia) that fears domination by Russia. These writers’ images of Sukhumi illuminate the Abkhazia conflict alongside the changing, contested status of Russophonia in the South Caucasus. The presentation is part of an article under peer review and also a portion of the first chapter of my book project, which examines Russophone prose in contemporary Georgia and Armenia.
Benjamin Sutcliffe is Professor of Russian and a Faculty Associate with the Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Miami University. He has published three monographs on Soviet and Russian literature, all with University of Wisconsin Press. Sutcliffe is working on a book on contemporary Russophone prose in the South Caucasus. This project is supported in part by a Title VIII Combined Research and Language Training grant from American Councils and a National Council for Eurasian and East European Research Short-Term Travel Grant.
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Works-in-Progress is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place at the CRRC office at Chavchavadze Ave. 5 and online. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC) Georgia, the American Councils for International Education, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.
In observation of the spirit of the Chatham House Rule, the talks will not be recorded, and we courteously request that the other participants refrain from recording and/or distributing recordings as well or citing anything expressed therein in the press without explicit permission. The opinions expressed in WiP talks are those of the speakers alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC, ARISC or of American Councils.
