Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Dating
Introduction
Chapter 1 - An Empire of Diasporas
Chapter 2 - Between the Caucasus and the Kremlin
Chapter 3 - Edible Ethnicity
Chapter 4 - Dances of Difference
Chapter 5 - Strangeness for Sale
Chapter 6 - Beyond the Ethnic Repertoire
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Erik R. Scott is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas.
"Unlike most works...Scott takes an unfamiliar approach. He has
chosen to focus on a minority group through the lens of diaspora
community within the USSR. This approach allows Scott to reveal the
larger and often overlooked interactions between ethnic and
imperial networks and uncover the mutual benefits derived by the
minority and the empire."--Arsène Saparov, American Historical
Review
"This is an intriguing study of the role Georgians--whether
prominent Bolsheviks, restaurateurs, musicians, film directors, or
black-market entrepreneurs--played in the politics, economy, and
culture of the Soviet Union....[A] well-researched and annotated
book..."--Donald Rayfield, Journal of Modern History
"Instead of depicting them as victims, Scott illustrates the role
that mobile Georgians played in the making and shaping of the
Soviet Union....Familiar Strangers provides a significant
contribution to the discussion whether or not the Soviet Union was
genuinely an imperial endeavour....As Scott convincingly
illustrates, however, in the case of Soviet Georgia it was not so
clear who was exploiting whom. It is not uncommon that Georgians
appear rather
as the colonizers than as the colonized....To Scott, the Soviet
Union was a state with no centre at its core...and without
'familiar strangers' such as Georgians, this state would not have
been the
same."--Florian Mühlfried, Caucasus Survey
"[An] excellent book..."--Bruce Grant, Slavic Review
"Illustrates how the Soviet state shaped the modern national
culture of Georgia, generously providing the resources, structures,
and ideological supports for a Soviet-national hybrid consisting of
a rich blend of Soviet and Georgian cultures This is a welcome and
innovative book; it is well written and well researched."--Stephen
Jones, Russian Review
"Drawing on an impressive range of archival, periodical and
secondary sources in
both Russian and Georgian, as well as numerous interviews in Russia
and in Georgia,
Familiar Strangers is an important contribution to the study of
Soviet history, political
and cultural, and despite - or perhaps, because of - its focus on
the concept of diaspora,
it makes a strong contribution as well to recent Georgian
historiography. Most importantly,
in focusing on the ways in which national identity was exploited
and 'performed'
beyond the boundaries of specific national territories, it brings a
new approach to generalising from the study of ethnicity in the
Soviet experiment, and presents a powerful
case study of the ways in which a particular nationality both
shaped and was shaped by
the empire of which it was a part."--Timothy K. Blauvelt,
Revolutionary Russia
"This book makes an important contribution to the study of
nationality in the Soviet Union...Recommended."--CHOICE
"Erik Scott's fascinating and groundbreaking study upends the
conventional view that the Soviet Union's multiethnic empire
possessed an ethnic Russian core, and reshapes how we understand
national minorities in the USSR and the nature of the Soviet
empire. The book is meticulously researched and beautifully
written, with rich details and surprising material. His analysis
calls to mind other cases of prominent minorities in revolution,
such as the Alawites in
Syria and the Sunni minority in Ba'athist Iraq. The book will be of
great interest not only to students of Georgia, the Soviet Union,
and Stalinism, but also to those interested in revolution and
empire."--Golfo Alexopoulos, University of South Florida
"Familiar Strangers provocatively explores how internally mobile
Soviet Georgians successfully performed their otherness for a
pan-Soviet audience, without sacrificing the core of their
difference. In a superb study that ranges from politics to cuisine
to music to market trade to film, Scott challenges conventional
notions of the 'Soviet empire,' showing how the view from the
periphery provides a unique yardstick to measure the rise and fall
of the
Soviet project of domestic internationalism."--Diane P. Koenker,
author of Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream
"Familiar Strangers tells us that the Soviet Union made modern
Georgia in two ways. First, it gave Georgians a mass of resources
to promote and protect their language, food, and culture, in ways
that few other modern states would have countenanced. Second, it
gave them an enormous space in which to project an identity and
participate in global geopolitics. From Stalin to the Moscow
restaurant table, from the folkloric stage to the black market,
and
from the heights of Soviet politics to the center of its break-up,
Scott gives us revealing snapshots of one of the country's great
internal diasporas. Those seeking a thoughtful and accessible
history of
Georgians and the question of nationality in the USSR will be
deeply satisfied."--Yanni Kotsonis, New York University
"A finely tuned study of Georgians in the Soviet landscape .\Scott
makes the case for how Georgians became 'familiar strangers,' the
most legible among non-Russian peoples across the spectrum of
Soviet life given their prominent place in politics, market stalls,
on the theater stage, and perhaps most enduringly, at restaurant
tables."--Bruce Grant, Slavic Review
"Scott argues that the experience of Georgians who have made their
way in Russia reveals the Soviet empire's uniquely multiethnic
quality. Rather than think of the Soviet Union as a checkerboard of
territorial units with Russia at its core, one could better
understand it as 'an empire of mobile diasporas that...helped
construct a truly multiethnic society."--Robert Legvold, Foreign
Affairs
"This is a readable book that is in no way only about Georgians,
but powerfully illuminates how internal diasporas, understood
implicitly as parts of cultures of circulation in which ethnicity
can circulate both embodied in persons as well as things, were
crucial in the formation of the peculiar multi-ethnic empire of the
Soviet Union."--Paul Manning, Diasporas
"Illuminating...Scott's writing has a fine narrative sweep, but one
does not forget that this is a work of careful analysis that makes
many close readings of a good range of source materials...This rich
assessment of Georgian influence in the Soviet Union will be of
interest not only to historians of Soviet Russia, but those
interested in the history of migration, the evolution of formal and
informal empires, and cultural history, especially concerning
the
histories of art and food."--George Gilbert, English Historical
Review
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