Abstract

During the 2024 parliamentary election campaign, the ruling party, Georgian Dream, used billboards depicting destroyed Ukrainian cities alongside peaceful Georgian towns. The visual contrast reinforced the party’s narrative that Georgia could become a “second front” in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Government representatives linked this scenario to the risk of deteriorating relations with the European Union and argued that avoiding tensions with Russia required maintaining a cautious or neutral political stance. The possibility of a “second front” became widely debated in public discourse and played an important role in shaping political attitudes during the election campaign.

This paper examines how collective memories of war and crisis shape contemporary political narratives in Georgia. The research draws on in-depth interviews conducted in 2018 in the regional towns of Borjomi and Telavi and forms part of my doctoral dissertation, “Generations in Transition: The Interplay of History, Trust, and Activism in Georgia’s Social Attitudes.” The study explores how different generations remember key traumatic experiences, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the conflicts of the 1990s, and the Russo-Georgian War.

Building on the theory of generations developed by Karl Mannheim, the research demonstrates that these historical experiences continue to shape political perceptions and emotional responses across age cohorts. Older respondents often recall the economic collapse and social insecurity of the early 1990s as a defining trauma, while younger generations more strongly associate national vulnerability with the 2008 war. Despite generational differences, memories of war and instability remain central to the collective understanding of political risk.

The Georgian case demonstrates how collective trauma can function as a political resource. By mobilising memories of past conflicts, political actors frame electoral competition through narratives of security and existential threat. The paper argues that such strategies illustrate how memory politics operate in post-Soviet societies and may offer insights for understanding similar dynamics in other parts of the region, including Central Asia.