Invention of ‘Gruzia’: The Role of Culture in Russia’s Politics towards Georgia

Abstract

This article examines Russia’s imperial relationship with Georgia and conceptualizes “Gruziia” as a discursive formation grounded in the interrelation of knowledge and power. It explores the formation of the Russian imperial Self through the “Gruziianization” of its peripheries, accompanied by their degradation and marginalization. The article demonstrates that Russian literature and the cultural industry played an active role in shaping a colonial imaginary in which Georgia was represented as an exoticized, feminized, and historically deficient space requiring the civilizing, paternalistic, and disciplinary intervention of the Russian imperial center. Drawing on Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism and Michel Foucault’s genealogical methodology, the article analyzes the construction of Georgia in Russian literature and cultural production as an “exotic Other.” A genealogical perspective makes it possible to trace the trajectories through which this discourse was materialized and institutionalized, ultimately becoming a fundamental component of Russian imperial identity. By examining the role of the Russian cultural industry-and, most importantly, literature-the article demonstrates how the Caucasus and Georgia were transformed into an exoticized “non-space,” deprived of an autonomous history and modernity. This literary tradition, extending from Pushkin and Lermontov to the Soviet-era representation of “sunny Georgia,” functioned as an instrument of biopolitics aimed at producing “docile subjects” and portraying the imperial center as a benevolent missionary, modernizer, and savior of small nations. The article also traces the historical trajectory of Russian imperial consciousness from the Tsarist period through the Soviet Union to the contemporary Russian Federation, examining its relationship to discourses of the civilizing mission, the “near abroad,” and the “Russian world.” The continuity of these tropes across the Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods highlights the resilience of the imperial imaginary despite changes in its ideological framing-from the image of the enlightened autocrat, through Orthodoxy and socialist internationalism, to the contemporary conception of the “Russian world” as a distinct civilizational sphere. This study seeks to contribute to filling the “blank spots” on the postcolonial map of the Caucasus. It argues that the genuine decolonization of the region requires the deconstruction of deeply embedded cultural representations that deny Georgia autonomous agency and subjectivity in the eyes of the imperial center. The article thus underscores the need for the continued decolonization of Russian cultural narratives and greater attention to subaltern voices in order to rethink relations with former imperial peripheries.