Georgian Literature Against the Red Terror

The beginning of 20th century was marked by the fatal clash of Modernistic tendencies, already established in Georgian literature, with newly born Soviet ideology. The Bolshevik Revolution, which reached Georgia in 1921, put an end to the three-year independence of the Republic of Georgia (1918-1921) as the country was forcedly reunited with the Soviet Union.

If we bear in mind the inherent aspiration of literature to intellectual and representative freedom, we may form a clear idea of the contradiction that arises in conditions of a totalitarian regime between the artistic text and the actual context. This lecture will begin to explore these issues, the literary artists caught up in them, as well as some of their longer-term effects.