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Accepted Paper:
Influences of the Russo-Ukrainian War on Georgia: Russian Voices in the Urban Space of Tbilisi
Tea Kamushadze
(Ivane Javakhishvili Institute of History and Ethnology)
The war that Russia launched against Ukraine, significantly challenged the world order. The consequences of this event can only partially be studied -- by attending its side effects, such as the Russian exodus to neighboring countries, including Georgia. Indeed, the war had a dramatic influence on the urban social fabric of the Georgian capital. Overnight, the Russian language suddenly became far more dominant in Tbilisi’s urban landscape than it has been at least within the last three decades of Georgia’s independence. The reaction of Georgians to the large-scale inflow of Russian citizens was not uniform: while some, especially in the hospitality sector, started to adapt to new reality and demand from its staff to communicate in Russian with the new customers, others boycotted Russian. One of the responses to the immigration of Russian nationals was decorating balconies and streets of Tbilisi with Ukrainian flags and anti-Russian graffities. While the Russian newcomers try. To pronounce the basic words in Georgia without an accent, Georgians greet them with “Slava Ukrainy” expecting to be answered with “Geroyam Slava”.
The proposed paper will attend to the ways in which the entering of the Russian language into Tbilisi’s everyday life has been perceived of by the locals. What types of interactions does the Russian language facilitate in the city’s social landscape?