Lasha bakradze biography examples

At times the life of Roza Tavdidishvili sounds like one of her fairy tales. 

Her story, like any good tale, starts in a time far away—the end of the 19th century—and includes a strong hero overcoming challenges to help the less fortunate and give a voice to the oppressed. It also includes a hidden treasure, rediscovered years after the hero’s death.

Tavdidishvili was born into a Georgian Jewish family in 1886, when Georgia was still part of the Russian Empire. Jewish communities have thrived in Georgia for centuries—2600 years by most counts—and were well assimilated in society during Tavdidishvili’s life.

She was, by all accounts, an amazing character. By the time she was 40, Georgia had reestablished its independence and lost it again. Despite limited rights for women during her life, she created a space for herself as a journalist, activist, public figure and writer.

For two years, from 1926-1928 Tavdidishvili served as a member of the Kutaisi City Council and the Executive Committee. She headed the Women’s Delegation Club in the Jewish Quarter of the city and helped young Jewish pupils read and write. 

She also worked tirelessly to promote women’s equality, especially through the right to education and the right to work outside the home. 

“All her life Roza fought for better educational opportunities and a better future for the Jewish people. That was the reason why she decided to write down everything,” noted her granddaughter, Dodo Chikvashvili.

“She was a representative of the generation who thought much about the past, present, and according to it, about the future. It led her to publish an academic paper in 1940; an ethnographic essay about the life of Jewish people living in Kutaisi in olden times. This publication unites stories about the Jewish holidays, about Jewish legends, about folklore, about proverbs and puzzles.”

This article is the second of five in a series for the Future of Georgia project run by Carnegie Europe and the Levan Mikeladze Foundation analyzing contentious issues in Georgian society.

“The Roman Empire is extinct but Georgia still exists.” No one knows the origin of this phrase, but it is frequently repeated in Georgia. It expresses a public pride in the idea that the country has possessed a historical continuity of statehood since ancient times that has been interrupted but never extinguished.

Georgia won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and was admitted to the United Nations in July 1992. Georgians’ pride in their statehood has shaped a collective memory of the country’s history since 1989.

The story told in Georgia’s public domain about its modern history has a strong focus on the struggle for freedom from Russia and the preservation of independence. Georgians are proud to see their country as an established democracy. Yet, thirty years on, the mainstream historical narrative still portrays the country as vulnerable and facing existential threats to its statehood. That means there is little debate about what mistakes may have been made in 1989–1992 during what is known as Georgia’s national liberation struggle. This narrative also, arguably, limits frank discussion of other issues, such as the country’s conflicts, the status of its minorities, or its socioeconomic development.

The Sacrifices of Independence

Georgians are generally proud of the path their country has taken since independence and believe it to be a democracy. This is one of the findings of a September 2020 survey by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), commissioned by Carnegie Europe and the Levan Mikeladze Foundation for the Future of Georgia project. Despite civil war and many political and economic crises, 54 percent of respondents disagreed with the view that since independence, Georgia has had more failures than successes (see figure 1). Any negative event is

by Dr. Lasha Bakradze:

Grigol Robakidze, one of the respected Georgian authors of the time, had this to say about Georgia’s second largest city in 1918: “the philistinism of Kutaisi is truly tragic (and that it is perhaps a gruesome symbol of all present-day Georgia)”. He was writing in the Tbilisi-based journal ARS about Georgian Modernism. Despite his harsh words, Kutaisi merited his attention precisely because this petty-bourgeois city became, from 1915 on, the home to a group of young poets that came to be known as the “Blue Horns” (tsisferi qantsebi – more precisely translated as the “sky-blue drinking horns”).

Controversial bohemians

The young poets appeared and, Robakidze reminisced, “the pubs of Kutaisi suddenly turned into Parisian literary cafes, where alongside the hoarse tunes of the barrel organs and the indispensable Mravalzhamier [a Georgian polyphonic table song] exquisite names such as Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde, Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé, José María Heredia and Emile Verhaeren, Konstantin Balmont and Valery Bryusov … were invoked.”

The heart of the group, Paolo Iashvili, had returned from Paris in 1915. By 1913, at the age of 19, he had already published the journal Golden Fleece, which brought many young writers into the limelight. In 1916 he founded the journal Blue Horns.

In his youthful exuberance, Paolo proclaimed a manifesto: “Listen to our sermon. […] We have appeared to the ghostly figure of Georgia, shrouded in new brilliance, to show those who have lost their dreams a clear path to the blue temple of the future. ”

The self-proclaimed teachers and trailblazers did not always encounter an enthusiastic reception in Georgia.

One Philipe Makharadze lambasted the young poets in a 1916 newspaper article titled “The Worst Litera

Bakradze, Lasha. "Past and future of the Stalin museum in Gori". Identities and Representations in Georgia from the 19th Century to the Present, edited by Hubertus Jahn, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021, pp. 9-16. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110663600-002

Bakradze, L. (2021). Past and future of the Stalin museum in Gori. In H. Jahn (Ed.), Identities and Representations in Georgia from the 19th Century to the Present (pp. 9-16). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110663600-002

Bakradze, L. 2021. Past and future of the Stalin museum in Gori. In: Jahn, H. ed. Identities and Representations in Georgia from the 19th Century to the Present. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, pp. 9-16. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110663600-002

Bakradze, Lasha. "Past and future of the Stalin museum in Gori" In Identities and Representations in Georgia from the 19th Century to the Present edited by Hubertus Jahn, 9-16. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110663600-002

Bakradze L. Past and future of the Stalin museum in Gori. In: Jahn H (ed.) Identities and Representations in Georgia from the 19th Century to the Present. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg; 2021. p.9-16. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110663600-002

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