Violent Georgia

This book intends to show that the violent disintegration of the Soviet Union, characteristic for the South Caucasus region and most prominently Georgia, cannot be fully explained solely by an investigation of the ethnopolitical and national uprisings which were stimulated by the political changes of the Perestroika period. Instead, it argues that a rigorous analysis of the late 1980s/early 1990s violent transitions has to be linked with a longer-term perspective focusing on the function and development of the Soviet developmentalist state. This perspective tends to view the Soviet system as an alternative to the Western capitalist system and aims towards an understanding the socio-economic processes which determined the dynamics of the system. In this sense, violent mobilizations in Georgia resulted from the processes that were determined by the function and decline of the Soviet developmentalist state. While accepting the dynamics of ethnopolitical mobilization, this monograph addresses the issue of which socio-economic processes bred those mobilizations.

Introduction

1. Studying the Collapse of the Soviet Union
1.1 Transitological Perspective
1.2 National and Identity Mobilization
1.3 Institutions and Mobilization

2. Theoretical Framework
2.1 The Modernization Paradigm
2.1.1 Modernization and the Decline of Ethnic Identities
2.1.2 Modernization and Ethnic (Political) Conflict
2.1.3 Modernization Challenged
2.2 Coining the Alternative

3. Methodology
3.1 Causal Mechanisms
3.1.1 Explaining Causal Mechanism
3.1.2 Defining Causal Mechanisms
3.1.2.1 Developmentalist State
3.1.2.2 Class Dynamics
3.1.2.3 State Functioning
3.1.2.4 Ethnopolitical Mobilization
3.1.2.5 Environmental Mechanism of Social Change
3.1.2.6 Relational Mechanism of Class Dynamics
3.1.2.7 Cognitive Mechanism of Identity Mobilization

4. Georgia: from Developmentalist Transformation to War
4.1 Mechanisms of Social Changes in Georgia
4.2 Mechanisms of Class Dynamics
4.2.1 Functioning of the State
4.3 Mechanisms of Ethnopolical Mobilization
4.3.1 Georgian National Mobilization
4.3.2 National Mobilization in Abkhazia
4.3.2.1 Mobilization to War
4.3.3 National Non-mobilization in Ajaria
4.3.3.1 De-mobilization to Stability

5. Conclusion
5.1 From Developmentalist State to Ethnopolitical Mobilization
5.2 Conclusion

Bibliography