Malkhaz Saldadze
Malkhaz Saldadze is an assistant professor at George Mason University Korea. He earned his Ph.D. from George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. He also holds an MA in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His Ph.D. research examines how history is narrated and how conflicts transform in Georgia, engaging social, cultural, and political perspectives on these issues. As part of civil society and various research institutions in Georgia, he worked on peace and conflict issues through programs and projects, including cross-border South Caucasus initiatives that shaped public discourse on conflict transformation, gender equality, civic engagement, and European integration. Malkhaz Saldadze also worked to empower CSOs in Georgia, developing skills and expertise in organizational culture and conflict management.
George Mason University Korea
Session
In 2005, while addressing the Federal Assembly, President Putin of Russia stressed that the “dissolution of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” that made the Russians the most divided people (ethnos) in the world. Later, in his interview with Rossia 1 TV Channel (documentary Russia), he added that this event marked the beginning of the “collapse of historical Russia” – “everything that was accumulated during this millennium had been lost.”
Framing the recent historical developments in Russia and its former colonies as “loss” and “trauma,” the Russian political establishment impersonated by President Putin mainstreamed the imperial historical narratives and started censoring those that contradict the former. These policies had a twofold direction. On the one hand, the Russian government targeted the memories and their bearers that contradicted the abovementioned mainstream “correct” memories in the Russian public. On the other hand, Russia turned its attention to former Soviet Union republics and intensified pressure upon their governments to limit or eliminate the presence of historical memories and relevant narratives from the public.
The Russian government aims to instrumentalize historical memories for its expansionist and neocolonial politics. Domestic “consumption” of these memory policies is intended to discipline Russian society and mobilize its support for the “historical mission” of preserving the “sacred” character of the Russian state, which must expand to “protect” itself from outer enemies (e.g., NATO). 2008 invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, and following intervention in the neighboring nation’s eastern provinces, and especially the full-scale war against it launched in 2022, are all legitimized by this historical memory formula coined by President Putin in 2005.