REMAPPING THE AFFORDANCES OF RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN TBILISI, GEORGIA by Perry ...

239 Pages·2014·1.48 MB·English

by  Perry Sherouse

QUALITY, COMFORT, AND EASE: REMAPPING THE AFFORDANCES OF
RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN TBILISI, GEORGIA

by

Perry Maxfield Waldman Sherouse

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Anthropology)
in the University of Michigan
2014

Doctoral Committee:

Associate Professor Alaina Lemon, Chair
Professor Michael Makin
Professor Bruce Mannheim
Associate Professor Paul Manning, Trent University
Acknowledgments

This dissertation would not been possible without funding from the International Institute
at the University of Michigan. From the University of Michigan, I also received grants
from the Center of Russian and East European Studies, Rackham Graduate School, and
the Department of Anthropology.

Thank you to my Georgian teachers: Tamriko Bakuradze, Dodona Kiziria, Ramaz
Kurdadze, Nestan Ratiani, and Nana Tevzaia. For language study, I am grateful to have
received Title VIII grants and FLAS grants for both Russian and Georgian. Thank you to
Svitlana Rogovyk at the University of Michigan for an engaging Russian class.

Without my Georgian friends and contacts none of this would have been possible. Thanks
to the coaches at GEOWF, especially Giorgi Asanidze, Avtandil Gakhokidze, Ramaz
Gurgenidze, Temur Janjgava, Gela Makharashvili, Aleko Nozadze, and Guram Parulava.
To the weightlifters, keep training hard. Thank you to my amazing research assistant,
Elene Chumburidze. Thank you to those who provided me with conversation, ideas,
contacts, and inspiration: Rusiko Amirejibi-Mullen, Nargiza Arjevanidze, Tinatin
Bolkvadze, Hans Gutbrod, Lamara Kadagidze, Ani Kurdgelashvili, Neli Melkadze,
Manana Tabidze, Natia Tananashvili, and Lika Tsuladze. Thanks to Dato and Lika for
your hospitality, and to Vakho for hypnotizing me so I could learn Georgian.
ii
Thank you to my mentors, Alaina Lemon and Paul Manning, for providing feedback and
encouragement at every stage of this project. Thank you to Bruce Mannheim for
guidance.

Thank you to other scholars working in Georgia for putting up with me: Timothy
Blauvelt, Elizabeth Dunn, Jeremy Johnson, Erin Koch, Hulya Sakarya, and Gavin Slade.

Thank you to the members of the Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Michigan
Anthropology department for excellent feedback. Thank you to the Eurasian Collective
Workshop at University of Michigan. Thanks also to those who provided feedback on
earlier versions of these chapters, including: Erika Alpert, Casey Barrier, Ruth Behar,
Will Benton, Carrie Brezine, Nishaant Choksi, Craig Colligan, Nick Emlen, Eli Feiman,
Katherine Fultz, Krista Goff, Jodi Greig, Jessica Hill, Gabi Koch, Scott McLoughlin,
Michael Lempert, James Meador, Mike Prentice, Stuart Strange, Nik Sweet, and Chip
Zuckerman.

Thanks to the KNC consultants for helping with formatting issues. Thanks to the
Interlibrary Loan program at the University of Michigan. Thanks to the members of the
Michigan Powerlifting Club, and to my training partners over the years in Ann Arbor.

Special thanks to Zaza Abzianidze, Lesya Tavadze, and Nino Sanikidze for
encouragement, inspiration, and friendship. Without you this would be meaningless.
iii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii
List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... v
Note on Transliteration and Translation ............................................................................ vi
CHAPTER 1. The ideology of replacement: lingua franca and the expectations of
Empire ................................................................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER 2. Revaluing Russian: Linguistic Code as Infrastructure ............................. 43
CHAPTER 3. The Threat of Law: Real and Imagined Bans on Russian Language Songs
and Films ........................................................................................................................... 82
CHAPTER 4. Russian Presence in Georgian Film Dubbing: Scales of Inferiority ....... 124
CHAPTER 5. Hazardous Digits: Telephone Keypads and Russian Numbers ............... 152
CHAPTER 6. Skill and Masculinity in Olympic Weightlifting: Coaching Cues and
Cultivated Craziness ....................................................................................................... 183
CHAPTER 7. Conclusion .............................................................................................. 209
Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 213

iv
List of Figures
Figure 1: Movie-Goers by Age (Rustaveli/Amirani) ........................................................ 54
Figure 2: Movie-Goers by Age (Rustaveli/Amirani) ........................................................ 54
Figure 3: Knowledge of Russian by Settlement Type, 2011 ............................................ 57
Figure 4: Knowledge of Russian by Age Group, 2011 ..................................................... 57
Figure 5: "Mission: Impossible 4" .................................................................................. 100
Figure 6: Announcement on May 2, 2012 ...................................................................... 102
Figure 7: June 20, 2012 Announcement ......................................................................... 103
Figure 8: Comment from June 20, 2012 Announcement ................................................ 103
Figure 9 : "Rustaveli / Amirani /Apollo Batumi" ........................................................... 129

v
Note on Transliteration and Translation

For transliteration of Russian, I have followed the Library of Congress system, using the
ALA-LC Romanization Table. For transliteration of Georgian, I have followed the
Shukia Apridonidze's system, which marks abruptives with an apostrophe to differentiate
them from aspirates. In Georgian proper names I have omitted the apostrophe marking.
Unless noted otherwise, all translations are my own. I am solely responsible for any
errors.

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CHAPTER 1.
The ideology of replacement: lingua franca and the expectations of Empire

How can we describe the ways that the influence of empire is perceived,
registered, or rebuffed? Is there a concept of "influence" that can reveal more than it
occludes about the reciprocal, shifting networks of empire? To cultivate such a concept,
we must take seriously the ways that interfaces of various kinds are constructed,
negotiated, or dismissed. Signs of influence are shaped through interaction that is bodily,
material, and social. What I will demonstrate in this dissertation is that Russian has
become engrained in a variety of contexts as a medium considered ideal for interfaces
involving technical instruments and human bodies, whether in sports training, cellular
telephone communication, or film dubbing. Through habitual use, speakers channel
"influence" through infrastructures and material forms naturalized as proper, easy, and
comfortable for specific social practices.
The central contention of this thesis is that we approach languages as consisting
of a multiplicity of interfaces– between bodies and technologies, physical settings and
psychological states– that cross in habitual, regularized ways in social practice. It is these
interfaces, points of contact, frictional edges, and transitional zones through which the
1
qualities and affinities of objects are thrown into relief.1 Indeed, it is only through these
edges, borders, and interfaces that separate internalities are understood or imputed. I draw
inspiration from this observation by M.M. Bakhtin:
...a domain of culture should not be thought of as some kind of spatial
whole, possessing not only boundaries but an inner territory. A cultural
domain has no inner territory. It is located entirely upon boundaries,
boundaries intersect it everywhere, passing through each of its constituent
features [...] Every cultural act lives essentially on the boundaries, and it
derives its seriousness and significance from this fact. (Bakhtin 1995
[1924]: 274)
In other words, this study privileges points of contact, boundaries, and borders as most
active in determining the significance of phenomena, in contrastive and relational terms.
In contemporary Tbilisi there is a widespread view that the English language is
"replacing" Russian as the predominant secondary national language.2 This view is

1 Note that by "transitional zones," I am not referring to liminality or an "interstructural
situation" in Victor Turner's sense (1967:93). Victor Turner, owing to van Gennep,
advanced the concept of liminality with respect to a stage in rites de passage ritual in
which the state of the subject is ambiguous with respect to fixed social structure. Without
tarrying in the details, or later elaborations of Turner's concept of liminality, I stress here
that by "transitional zones," I have in mind spaces of connection, passage, and union that
are not special inversions or margins of social structure, but instead are located at the
very center of it.
2 What I term secondary national languages are those languages used in the capacity of
lingua francas, former state languages, or codes recognized as alternatives to the official
state languages, used in a variety of capacities, functions, and with various degrees of
speaker competence. These languages are not officially identified as national languages,
but nevertheless possess a scope and relevance that is best reckoned in national terms. In
Georgia, for example, the state language is Georgian, or Abkhaz on the territory of
Abkhazia. Yet Russian is a former state language, a language of interethnic
communication, and a code of enduring regional significance. The term secondary
national language seeks to capture those attributes of significance by calling attention to
2
reflected in official legislation, political rhetoric, and public opinion, accessible in both
informal interviews and formalized surveys. This ideology of replacement endures
despite the sociolinguistic facts on the ground, which indicate that Russian and English
occupy very different functions, niches, and sets of ascribed values. In effect, lingua
francas are cast as monolithic, interchangeable entities, transparently referring to Empires
through which one can experience modernities occurring outside of the borders of
Georgia. In this ideological framework, a form of national locality is understood as being
expressed through the use of Georgian and stands in opposition to forms of international
modernity expressed through the use of a lingua franca.3 How did such an ideology come
to be dominant in Georgia, and what are its consequences? Russian as a linguistic code is
associated with "high" culture of Soviet art, science, and literary life, and the "low"
criminal networks from the socialist past, as well as the many forms of intermediate,
lived experience, from administrative functions to counting out change for flowers
purchased in the market. I address the multiple lives of Russian linguistic code in Tbilisi,
including those forms that have been carried forth unaltered, those that have been

the link that such languages have in constructing the national. Another component of
secondary national languages is that they are the assumed default or normative languages
of communication in cases where the primary languages are not used, for whatever
reason. Rather than presenting secondary national languages as a rigid category, this term
is meant to capture dimensions of communication unsanctioned by but deeply attached to
the politics and history of state or national languages. By drawing attention to secondary
national languages, I am not endorsing a hierarchy of languages, nor am I suggesting that
such an arrangement of languages is natural, inevitable, or unchanging.
3 This ideology ignores the complexity of the local linguistic situation, in which non-
Georgian languages (such as Mingrelian, Svan, Laz, Abkhaz and others) also participate
in structuring the "national." Additionally, it overlooks the diverse ways in which lingua
francas function, are imputed with values, and come to represent aspirational forms of
elsewhere, in political, economic, and social senses.
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transformed, and those that have become apparitions "haunting"(Frederiksen 2013) the
present.
First, this thesis discusses what functions Russian as a lingua franca has come to
serve in Tbilisi by analyzing the values ascribed to its use in a variety of sociotechnical
settings. Beyond Russianized and Russian-influenced Georgian lexical forms, this
involves a consideration of how certain domains have become linked to Russian
infrastructural and evaluative systems. This includes taking stock of the historical,
political, and social trends that have contributed to a variety of perceptions about Russian
as part of the linguistic ecology in Tbilisi, as at once integral, natural, and potentially
threatening. Perceptions of Russian as a secondary national language ascribe to it social
functions with respect to the primary national language (Georgian) and minority
languages spoken on the territory of Georgia. At the same time, Russian is discursively
ascribed values based on the settings, speakers, and their associated genres of talk in
which it actively functions, or is considered to be an appropriate medium. This gets at the
more general theoretical point, applicable beyond the context of post-socialist studies,
that lingua francas are not transparent vessels of symbolic power, emanating identically
from Empire. Just as policies of colonial rule varied, so too have did the ways that lingua
francas variously populated specific settings, practices, capacities, and connections to
infrastructure and social life.
This study takes place beneath a larger historical arc in Georgian politics that has
focused on promoting Georgian language as a crucial point of national self-identification.
Many scholars have identified Georgian language as a central component of definitions
of Georgianness (kartveloba) throughout history (see especially Amirejibi-Mullen 2011
4