Familiar Strangers

Erik R. Scott’s illuminating study of the Georgian ‘internal diaspora’ in the Soviet Union has three stated aims. First, it is a consideration of the Soviet Union as an empire of diasporas and related processes concerning internal mobility; second, it considers the Georgian people as ‘familiar strangers’, at once different from other Soviet peoples and thus readily identifiable; finally, it is also a study of ‘domestic internationalism’, of population movement within the Soviet Union (p. 11). While over the last few decades the literature on the Soviet periphery has grown vastly in scale, there are still relatively few accounts of the history of Georgia, and especially of its history within the wider framework of Soviet identity. Scott’s work seeks to fill this lacuna and contest existing historiography by focusing on ‘domestic internationalism’. The book is a careful analysis of the changing relationship between multivalent Soviet and Georgian identities. The study is based on a rich selection of materials, including author interviews; most of all, it is informed by a wide selection of archival sources, many drawn from collections housed in both Tbilisi and Moscow. Scott’s writing has a fine narrative sweep, but one does not forget that this is a work of careful analysis that makes many close readings of a good range of source materials

Ancient history · Diaspora · Empire · Georgian · Linguistics · Political science · History · Law · Philosophy · Soviet and Russian History