Memorializing and Prefiguring (In‐)Justices: Perspectives From the 1990s Leftist Generation in Georgia

On September 18, 2012, 2 weeks before the country's parliamentary elections, video footage that exposed the sexual humiliation, rape, and torture of male inmates in Georgian prisons provoked outcry in many streets and households of the Republic of Georgia. Following years of harsh political and economic reforms (Gugushvili 2017), the videos were a culmination point of the authoritarian practices employed by the governance under then President Mikheil Saakashvili (2004–2013) and his circle of close political allies, who were assembled around the political party called the United National Movement (UNM). Simultaneously, they heralded the beginning of a new political administration that, initially branding itself ‘social democratic’ (Civil.ge 2012), would, as part of its electoral campaign, promise to “restore justice”1 (Austin 2018; see also Varney 2017). In years to come, then new and now incumbent political party, Georgian Dream (GD) would continuously instrumentalize and abuse this slogan to justify its own authoritarian and violent hold on power2. At the same time, far from the spotlight of international attention, 18 September 2012 marked a catalyst for the social formation of something else. A wave of anger and excitement went through the small groups of young students who called themselves communist, Marxist, socialist, social democratic, anarchist, and feminist (G3). Most were in their early 20s and studied in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. Similar to the popular slogan of then incoming party GD's, they demanded an alternative political vision of a “more just” future (G17). Less than 1 year had passed since 14 of these students (Barkaia 2014, 33, G9) had established a joint collective and left-wing student group called Laboratoria1918 at Tbilisi State University (TSU).3 This group evolved from a small initiative of three students (called Targme, which is Georgian for “translate”) who demanded that the university administration provide students with Georgian translations of basic social science literature (G3 and G6). On September 18, 2012, many of the young students took to the streets and angrily recited chants to “destroy the system.” Soon, the protests grew larger, and Laboratoria1918 members assumed “a vanguard role” (Barkaia 2014, 63) in cross-group mobilization. Following a “police raid and crackdown on May 1, [Labor Day] 2013, and the subsequent arrests of […] Laboratoria1918 members”, the group fragmented and gradually dissolved until 2014 (G9, via social media exchange, August 2024). More than 10 years have passed since then and the back then young leftists have become adults. How do these former young leftists, who were born around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and in close proximity to these protests, remember the past in terms of (in-)justice? How do these narratives relate to their prefigured imaginaries of justice? What roles do their transmitted memories of the Soviet Union play in the conceptualization of (in-)justice? These are the central research questions that this essay answers. It focuses on memories and conceptual imaginaries of justice through the lens of left-leaning adolescents who belong to what I call and will later elaborate more on in detail “the second generation” of Georgia's new left. Thus, this paper neither illustrates the evolution of the post-Soviet left in Georgia4 nor does it explain its political marginality. Instead, it focuses on the memorialization and prefiguration of (in-)justice. The paper is structured as follows. First, I prime the concepts from which I draw, which include political ideology, memory, the imaginary, and generationality. Following interpretivism, I state that what is at stake in the analysis is the heterogeneous articulation of these concepts. Consequently, my work concerns the “reconstruction” of “justice” from a left-wing perspective embedded in a specific framework of time (the 1990s generation) and space (Georgia). Second, I present my methodological approach. I follow discourse theory, as advanced by the Essex School, and the approach of dialogical “critique as social practice” proposed by Robin Celikates. Empirically, I proceed with a four-step process. First, I broadly introduce the empirical context in which leftists have found themselves in Georgia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Second, I outline my interlocutors’ understandings of their left-wing positions as members of the 1990s generation. This is, third, followed by a presentation of their perceptions of (in-)justices in Soviet and post-Soviet Georgia. Finally, these steps enable me to portray my conversation partners’ visions of justice as an answer to the analyzed wrongs. In conclusion, I answer the research questions and outline potential future directions for research. Following Hinton (2011), I propose the revitalization of an anthropological turn in transformative transitional justice that covers the actual lived experiences of ordinary agents. Previous research on transitional justice in Georgia (Dolidze 2013, 2015; Dolidze and de Waal 2012; Varney 2017) focused on the government. Thus, a substantial research gap persists with regard to the analysis of the political thoughts and desires of the country's citizens. In recent years, transitional justice scholarship has evolved to cover the human, everyday dimension (Sharp 2019). However, the methodological tools used to do so have remained unsubstantiated. In response, this paper aims to conceptually and empirically showcase that ideologies help structure memories and visions of justice. In addition, it proposes widening the onto-epistemic foundations of transitional justice scholarship and enhancing a reading of transformative justice by focusing on an aparadigmatic case (see Destrooper, Carlson, and Engbo Gissel 2023.). An aparadgimatic case is understood as “a context unlike the ones for which the transitional justice paradigm was initially developed, notably because of the absence of a clear political transition, but where certain stakeholders nevertheless call on the approach and normative objectives of transitional justice” (Kerremans and Thus, I a approach to (in-)justices that are and an by focusing on what and propose than the of who are and part of this I the 1990s of the post-Soviet in Georgia. left-wing in the former Soviet Union on on on the Georgian left has the of research analysis to who on the post-Soviet left have empirical in to the of formation the of left-wing protests in the of and for the of new left-wing do they have the social these have empirical the thoughts of who are studied have the of a (Barkaia have with the actual experiences of leftists in their of I also the 1990s because it a specific new for I that members of the 1990s would remember the 2012 from the to in a to the that they were part of it themselves and have and provide a of the of justice. 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