We cordially invite you to a public lecture organised as part of the Memory and History course in cooperation with the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies by Prof. Ketevan Kakitelashvili, PhD:
Georgia After Independence: Memory of Trauma and Victory.
This lecture examines the political and social transformations in Georgia during the late 1980s and early 1990s, spanning the final years of the Soviet period and the first years of independence. The collapse of the communist system triggered rapid, comprehensive, and often traumatic social changes. While the restoration of Georgia’s independence in 1991 was a long-sought victory for which people fought, adapting to the ensuing changes proved profoundly challenging. The transitional period was marked by dramatic and painful events, including the tragedy of April 9, 1989, the 1991–1992 Tbilisi War and civil unrest, conflicts in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region, natural disasters, economic collapse, social hardship, and energy crises. The lecture applies theories of cultural trauma, the trauma of victory, and collective memory to the Georgian experience of the 1980s and 1990s. These frameworks help to understand the period’s events not merely as historical facts, but as culturally constructed phenomena shaped by meanings specific to Georgian society.
A focus will be placed on the everyday and individual dimensions of political, economic, and social transformations. The lecture explores how these changes affected ordinary people’s lives, identities, attitudes, and worldviews, and how the generation that lived through this period remembers and evaluates those years today. Using empirical material, it illustrates the emergence of a traumatic ethos in the 1990s: pervasive fear, despair, and feelings of loss and hopelessness as state institutions collapsed, crime surged, and social support structures faltered. It also examines the struggle of individuals to find their place and moral footing in a society whose previously shared values and principles no longer applied.
The lecture will be held in English, on Wednesday, 22 April 2026 at 1:00 PM in the Conference room of the Institute for Cultural and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU, Trg francoske revolucije 7, 2nd floor, Ljubljana.
Dr. Ketevan Kakitelashvili, PhD in History, is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia). Her research focuses on mechanisms of identity formation, including collective memory, cultural trauma, and their impact on identity construction. Her publications include: Her publications include Georgia: Trauma and Triumph on the Way to Independence (Tbilisi: Samshoblo 2022, co-author), A national figure as a memory site: reinterpretations of Ilia Chavchavadze in the 1910s–1940s (Caucasus Survey, 9(3):220-234, co-author), Georgian Israelites or Jews of Georgia Religious and National Dimensions of the Georgian Jewish Identity (Journal of Religion in Europe 14, 3-4 (2021): 339-366).
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