Toponymy and the issues of memory and identity on the post-Soviet Tbilisi citycape

Then we come to the most prolific year of renamings of all: 1990, with no less than 49 names changed. While some of them were carried so to name previously unnamed streets and new sections of existing ones, the majority of the renamings took out distinctly Soviet names, such as Lenin, Marx, Herzen, Ordzhonikidze, Perovskaya and Volodarsky. They were replaced by Georgian people, which compose all of the anthroponyms of this year. More direct religious names also start to come up on the year, such as Anton Catholicos (a Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church), Transfiguration (of Christ), Bishop Gabriel, Ketevan the Martyr and Jerusalem (although being foreign, it is also important for the Orthodoxy). Geronti Kikodze, one of the members of the Constituent Assembly of the First Republic of Georgia, is commemorated in this year (Chelidze 2008: 336). It is also markedly the year when the main square of the city, Liberty Square, replaced Lenin Square, with an incredibly high symbolism. One medieval Georgian figure is present, too (Bagrat III). The next year, 1991, hosted way less renamings, 17. They were still following the trend to replace Soviet markers, though, and streets like “Communist Labor”, “Tsiteltsqaro” (Red Spring), “Mogilevsky”, and “Engels” were gone. Once again, predominantly Georgians names were brought back. “Dedoplistsqaro” (Queen's Spring) replaced Red Spring, since the name of the city commemorated also returned to that name (Chelidze 2008: 59), and Mogilevsky became Saint-Petersburg (before Mogilevsky, the street's name used to be Leningrad), a very political statement since it was also adhering to an old name of one of the most important cities in the late Soviet Union. Two medieval figures also appear (King Archil and Queen Tamar). A different kind of commemorated people (included in the Historical categorization) appear: the ones who died in the 9^th of April protests or were directly related to it. Eka Bezhanishvili is one of these, who was only 16 when she died, in 1989 (Chelidze 2008: 263).

In 1992 the first year after Georgia's Independence, the renamings raised in number, almost doubled, with 30 occurrences--it can be seen as a renewal in the effort now that the country was free to express its cultural elements without any fear of reprisal. Other Soviet names were erased, with this trend now consolidated definitely. Streets such as “26 (Baku) Commissars”, “Pravda”, “Paris Commune”, “Collective Agriculture”, “(Rosa) Luxembourg” and “Matrosov” disappeared, to give way to a myriad of ethnic Georgian names, such as Erekle II, a historical king from the 18^th century (Chelidze 2008: 281). Particularly important is the naming of a square as 26^th of May, the aforementioned Independence Day of Georgia, and the anniversary of the massacre at Rustaveli Avenue. In 1993, the number of renamings dropped again, to less than half of the previous year: only 12. Soviet commemorations were starting to become rare now, with only a few of them removed, like “Traktor”, “Grizodubov” and “Lunacharsky”. All of the replacements were Georgian anthroponyms. 1994 kept it around the same number, with 14 renamings, but this time only two Soviet commemorations were erased--“Komsomol” (Leninist Young Communist League) and “Kakhovka”, the city in Ukraine, which itself is not a great symbol of the Soviet Union, but the commemoration of another Soviet city can be seen as an ideological act. Georgian anthroponyms were the majority, with a few geographical places (one religiously relevant, Jerusalem Square) and a medieval king (Peter the Iberian, from the historical Georgian Kingdom of Iberia). Spiridon Kidia, a prominent figure during the First Republic, is commemorated as well (Chelidze 2008: 294). Another unique kind of commemoration, under the Historical theme, appears, with Koka Kldiashvili, a young man who died during the war in Abkhazia (Chelidze 2008: 295). 1995 had a small spike in numbers, with 21 changes, taking out names like “Labor”, “Deputies”, “Pioneers”, another “Lenin” and “Stakhanov”. All the replacements, like 1993, were Georgian anthroponyms. One of them was Sergo Ksovreli, who died in the Abkhazian war in 1993 (Chelidze 2008: 337); other was Gia (Giorgi) Chanturia, who along with Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Merab Kostava, was a prominent figure of the national movement, leader of the National Democratic Party (Chelidze 2008: 352).

The year 1996 saw the beginning of a decline in the renaming process, as the Soviet commemorations were becoming more and more scarce. Only nine streets were renamed that year, and only one of the renamings carries the former regime's ideology: “Leninasheni”. All the replacements are Georgian anthroponyms once again. Rostom Muskhelishvili is one of them--he was a colonel, Chief of Military Intelligence during the First Republic (Chelidze 2008: 308). 1997 dropped even more, with only six instances, with two of the replaced ones being heroes of the Soviet Union, “Shirshov” and “Voronin” (Chelidze 2008: 285). All the names that replaced the previous ones were of Georgian people in this year, too. In 1998, once again six toponyms were replaced; only one Soviet commemoration, however, “Budapest”, which referred to a fellow Socialist country's capital, at the time. The only non-Georgian name to figure in the new commemorations was Hermann Gmeiner, a famous Austrian philanthropist (Chelidze 2008: 270). In 1999 a sudden spike on the renaming activity happened, with 17 instances. Nevertheless, it only got rid of three Soviet names, “Pisarev”, one of the authors who influenced Lenin (Chelidze 2008: 316), “Gagarin”, the famed first man to go to space under the Soviet Union and worldwide (Chelidze 2008: 268), and “Kurnatovsky”, a revolutionary (Chelidze 2008: 298). One of the names of those years, which replaced a previously unnamed street, was “Fighters for Georgia's Unity”, a very ethnically and politically Georgian name, very expressive of the national discourse. As expected, the other names are Georgian anthroponyms.

On the turning of the millennium, 2000, the practice decreased again, to six replacements. Two distinct Soviet names were put out, “Tchernichevski” (a revolutionary writer who influenced Lenin) (Chelidze 2008: 343) and “Kaludin”, a famous revolutionary worker, and a symbol of labor (Chelidze 2008: 293). The totality of new names amounts to all of them being Georgians again. 2001 saw only two more streets than the previous year, eight, but with only one Soviet toponymy replaced, once again a street name commemorating Gagarin. The only name which is not a Georgian anthroponym is Ochamchire, a city on the coast of Abkhazia (Chelidze 2008: 138). In 2002, for unknown reasons, there are no renamings registered. They were revived in 2003, with a good increase in numbers--18 renamings, out of which only one Soviet commemoration was erased: “Kerch”, the strait in the Black Sea, where many Soviet Georgians fought and died in combat during World War II (Chelidze 2008: 178). The majority of the names put in the toponyms were Georgian people, apart from “Artist” Street, rather a concept. Four of them were naming previously unnamed parts of existing streets, including “Artist” Street. Zurab Abuladze, one the commemorated people, was a young man killed during the war in Abkhazia (Chelidze 2008: 251); another street was named “Student Heroes” (Gmiri Kursantebi), a reference to the students of the police academy who died in Abkhazia (Chelidze 2008: 46). In 2004, only three renamings were carried, but one of them is quite relevant: it replaced Stalin Embankment by Zviad Gamsakhurdia Embankment, figuring the first president of Georgia for the first time and removing the most infamous Georgian of the Soviet Union from the toponymy. It was part of Saakashvili's anti-Russian, selfaffirmation drive (de Waal 2010: 135, cited in Isaacs & Polese 2016: 32). Likely, removing Stalin's name from the embankment took so long because he was still revered by a good number of people and still is to this day, as evidenced very strongly by the street named after him in Gori, his hometown, and his museum there (Asatiani 2007, cited in Isaacs & Polese 2016: 31, 38). Another renaming put the name of Anatoly Sobchak on the commemorations; he was a prominent figure in the Soviet Union and demanded that the responsible people for the 9^th of April massacre to be punished (Chelidze 2008: 324). Yet one more important name is Noe Zhordania, who had an important role in the socialist movement in the Russian Empire, becoming the prime minister of the First Republic. He is the only declared Georgian Menshevik to be commemorated in the post-Soviet renamings (Chelidze 2008: 318). Only a bit more renamings were carried in 2005, six, and only one was replacing a Soviet element, “Atarbegov”, a member of the Cheka at the time of the Soviet Occupation of Georgia. Notably, new streets were named George Bush (the American president at the time, named after he visited Georgia) (Chelidze 2008: 264), Rose Revolution Square, commemorating the recent developments in the country, and Europe Square, showing Saakashvili's Western orientation very clearly. Another one was renamed after Zurab Zhvania, the only Prime Minister of Georgia who died while in office, in 2005 (Chelidze 2008: 318).

In the penultimate year included in this research, 2006, there were 12 renamings. Three of them replaced streets bearing the same name, all of them after Gagarin, like in previous years; and all but three of the new names weren't Georgian, namely, Picasso (the Spanish painter), King Solomon (the biblical figure) and Peking (the Chinese capital, also known as Beijing). One of the new names was after Natia Bashaleishvili, another 16-year- old protester who got killed in the 9^th of April events (Chelidze 2008: 263). Another was Kote Apkhazi, a General-major of Artillery during the First Republic (Chelidze 2008: 259). One more figure from the First Republic commemorated on the year is Giorgi Kvinitadze, the commander-in-chief of the army (Chelidze 2008: 295). An interesting name with a contested past commemorated in 2006 is Meliton Kantaria--he is the junior sergeant who (along with M. Egorov) raised the flag over the Reichstag in 1945, but his name was still chosen to be inscribed in the toponymy. It was part of Saakashvili's “nationalization” of Georgian war heroes, detaching the “Georgianness” from the “Sovietness”. Later, in 2011, Saakashvili named a school after him as well, lamenting that “Kantaria is the most classical example of the tragic fortune of our country” (president.gov.ge 2011e, cited in Isaacs & Polese 2016: 31) because he was a Georgian living in Abkhazia and ended up his life as a refugee; in fact, Kantaria was expelled from Abkhazia and even found refuge in Russia, making Saakashvili's act a selective appropriation and manipulation of history, confirming his narrative of Georgian victimhood and stressing its resilience (Isaacs & Polese 2016: 31). In the last year, 2007, eight renamings figured, and again, two Soviet names stand out for how long it took for them to be removed from the toponymy; Stalin and Red Army Street. All but one name is not Georgian on the new names, Heidar Aliyev, Azerbaijan's former president, who was one of the most important post-Soviet figures in the country (Chelidze 2008: 254). It is probably a representation of the friendship between the two post-Soviet Republics, but also a commemoration of the liberation of the Soviet times since Aliyev was an important figure on the consolidation of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

From this set of information about the years and their commemorations, we can draw some conclusions. As made clear in other sections and reinforced here, the renaming process echoed the political events in Georgia. Starting slowly with an oppositional movement, it grew to become a big mobilization, as made apparent by the renamings carried in 1990. A decrease during the year of Independence is probably due to the political turmoil that took the country by assault. Even though it contributes to political freedom, which lets the process carry on without censorship, the abrupt change on the power structure is traumatic and the City Council must have had other priorities. As with other projects of nationalistic revival, it kept steadily going, and even if decreased in number, renamings were constant and most of the time substituting the previous regime's ideology. And when not doing so, still reinforcing cultural, ethnic, and nationalistic elements, as evidenced by the fact that the bulk of new names commemorated Georgian people. Odd years, like the renamingless 2002, are an exception, and it will only be possible to know whether the process of renaming stalled after 2007 if we get a grip of a new, updated set of data. Now, a more geographical kind of analysis will be carried in the next part.

Renamings by district

In this ensuing subsection, we'll take a look at the spatial distribution of the renaming process, dividing it by district and year. A compilation of this data can be seen in Table 4 below:

Table 4

Renamings by district and year

In the past 200 years, Georgia has only been an Independent Nation for 31 of them, having only a few decades in hand to assert its sovereignty in recent times. Marks of past regimes can still be seen in its cities, and particularly in the capital; most of them are from the Soviet period, the most recent former regime to assert its power in it. Along with the national liberation movement, the revamping of the cityscape of Tbilisi carried on with a process of commemorating elements associated with the rich Georgian history, running in an opposite direction from the Soviet ideological imprinting; Bodaveli (2015: 177) comments that more than 90% of their place namings were anthroponyms, with an almost total absence of Georgian historical people and events--while the post-Soviet Republic filled the capital with more than 90% of anthroponyms, almost all of them referring to Georgians, historical, religious, and cultural figures altogether, as evidenced by this research. It is paradoxical, however, that the Soviet nationality and development policies ended up incentivizing the “Georgianisation” of the capital (in detriment to other nationalities) and fueling the national discourse. While the Soviets only left Tbilisi with cultural aspects of identity, the Independent Republic revived national, religious, and ethnic aspects to the cityscape. Analyzing the data brought into this research shows clearly that the renamings intended to make the city a portrait of a homogenous Georgia, an assertion of a regained sovereignty over totalizing efforts. Branding memory in a place requires choosing elements from a real or even imagined past, and such choice was made--the capital, once famous for its diverse and cosmopolitan culture, now is more Georgian than ever. The Armenians and Azeris, once teeming in population and influence, were gone, and the toponymy is not the place where they are remembered. A lack of the own city's past is evident, when it comes to the representation of the city culture and the participation of others in the urban space.

This research intended to unveil the process of inscribing the geopolitical landscape of the post-Soviet Tbilisi and its intentions--and what has been found is that the function of the capital turned a lot more to the commemoration of national figures and aspects, mostly disregarding local figures and the urban identity, with only a few foreign mentions. The city shows only shy signs of its diverse past, mostly in derivative names of old neighborhoods and metro stations, a few survivors from the Russian imperial rule. A nationalistic discourse is the rule when it comes to toponymy now, not only downplaying the Menshevik nature of the First Republic, but also ignoring national minorities and a broader, shared Transcaucasian history--the city now displays broader national themes instead of a particular city history and culture. The cityscape reflects the politics of Gamsakhurdia and Saakashvili, most of all, in their effort to consolidate Georgia as a united, homogenous country and solidify this claim by etching it in shared, public elements. From 1988 to 2007, old names were returned or undesired names were renamed so to achieve such objectives (with a particular vigor on the first years of the free republic), and although no specific patterns were perceived, the commemorations were mostly after famous Georgian people and, after the wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “martyrs” of the civil conflict. One thing that can be said for sure is that the naming process is consonant with the Georgian national narrative, adapting throughout the years to major political events and ideological changes, has been shown by the analysis of the data presented in this research. The public memory inscribed in the cityscape draws from history, but a specific and detached part of Georgian history, carefully sewn together so to reinforce the territorial and cultural claim.

The selective nature of the process, picking only the intended historical aspects in the memorial commemoration, is very clear. It is not only evident through the names, aspects, and events chosen but also the ones not chosen, and the ones which choice is deliberately oriented. There are important people from the First Republic present on the renamings, such as Noe Zhordania, and these commemorations, along with important dates from the time, are primarily concerned with bringing about the first democratic expression of power from the Georgian nation; it glosses over the Socialist, Menshevik nature of the First Republic, though, in a desire to forget everything related to the Soviet Union, even if sharing a few ideological traits. All other commemorated aspects from the First Republic were not party leaders or relevant participants, except for Zhordania, certainly only because he became president--a perfect example of the selectiveness of the process. These contested elements of the commemorative process express the troubles of Georgian people in dealing with the conflicting past they have--“toponymy with contested pasts”, clearly seen in Zhordania's case and in other instances like the aforementioned commemoration of Meliton Kantaria, where the appropriation of the Georgian character of the historical figure is done while stripping him of his “Sovietness”. This is all part of what Assman calls cultural memory, the cultivation of which stabilizes and forms a society's self-image; and according to Bucher et al. (2013), it is an indivisible part of the formation of group identity, in what is called social memory. Whatever memorialization concept we choose to apply, what is been looking at in this work is the expression of a shared history and culture in the toponymy, filtered by institutions and for the sake of a particular national discourse.

As we can see, a predominantly Georgian presence in the population and the naming of Tbilisi is a very recent thing--only the past few decades have seen it. With its regained sovereignty, the Republic of Georgia is now tasting a full-blown commemoration of its culture, its heroes and martyrs, its religion, and its history. The etching of its national elements in the capital serves a reminder of these very elements so that the population gets reminded every day of who they are, which history they are intended to share and which fellow countrymen they can look up to in the journey to contribute themselves to the Georgian Nation's progress. In retrospect, nevertheless, this stressing eliminates the signs of a shared past with other Caucasian peoples, and even if not completely intentionally, erases their participation in an essential era of the city's development. There is no evidence that the reason for such disregard of the foreign influence on Tbilisi's history should be other than simply the reinforcement of the national, homogenous Georgian discourse. For instance, in discourses like Gamsakhurdia's, one can see nationalistic ideas that downplay the significance of national minorities, like Abkhazians and Svans, in favor of a uniquely Georgian nation; doing the same with other nationalities is just the next step. There are no xenophobic connotations to this lack of foreign representation, historical or not, but it would be interesting to analyze the impact this has on the population--whether they are aware of such shared past, what their opinion on the nations in question is, and other related questions. While we know that in their overall national discourse Armenians and Azeris also downplay the participation of others in their historical journey, it would be interesting to conduct similar research in their capitals to see how their discourse deal with commemorations of the past--they may be just like Tbilisi, or maybe not. Identifying such tendencies in blooming nationalistic revivals (or even births) like the post-Soviet ones might show us interesting things about political processes as a whole.

The influence of the renamings on the people, however, is the subject of other researches, probably through interviews. The present work's intention was not only to show how the independent Georgian regime has reinforced its narrative on the cityscape but also to bring data and knowledge to the international academic world and audience, so that more people can access and produce such kinds of work, letting us better understand how political and historical processes are carried and how they cope with it. I do not claim that this research has brought all the knowledge on the renaming process even on the period here discussed--many of the streets present in the City Council decrees lack information, especially on the year of renaming. Perhaps in the future more sources (especially archival ones) will be found, more accurate and complete, and the understanding of the process will be even bigger. Further studies could also try to correlate Soviet policies with the process of renaming and building of the national identity (like the indigenization policy), and apply the same analysis to other Caucasian republics. This serves as an invitation for more research and memory work to be done and new conclusions be made from the data presented here and eventually other data, sharing the rich Caucasian history which we have still much to know about.

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