On April 3, the third session of the course “Modern and Contemporary History of Sakartvelo” took place. The topic of the session was the movement of Georgian dissidents and human rights defenders during the Soviet period, as well as the struggle to preserve the Georgian language on April 14, 1978.
Although the independent statehood of the Democratic Republic of Georgia of 1918–1921 was brought to an end as a result of the military intervention of Soviet Russia, which led to the occupation of its territory, resistance to Soviet power — associated with national oppression — continued.
This resistance took various forms: underground activity, partisan actions against the occupiers, émigré centers abroad, and the coordination of resistance points, which eventually led to a large-scale armed uprising for the restoration of independence in August 1924. It covered Imereti, Guria, Shida Kartli, Gori, Kakheti, Mtskheta-Mtianeti, including mountainous regions, and Tbilisi. The uprising was suppressed, but the struggle to restore independence continued in other forms, including political dissidence and human rights activity, in which anti-Soviet sentiment was intertwined with the national liberation idea.
For example, one of the largest protests in Tbilisi in 1956 began as a defense of the “symbolic image of Stalin,” but quickly shifted into the realm of anti-Soviet demands and ended in a shooting.
In the 1970s, as in many republics of the USSR, the dissident movement developed actively in Georgia. Its most prominent figures were Merab Kostava and Zviad Gamsakhurdia.
In 1974, they organized the first human rights organization, and after the appearance of the Helsinki Declaration in 1975, they created the Georgian Helsinki Group. They collected data on human rights violations in Georgia and participated in the production of samizdat, including the famous Chronicle of Current Events, which was sent abroad and used as an instrument of pressure on the Soviet leadership.
Later, during the events in Tbilisi in 1978, under pressure from mass demands to preserve Georgian as the state language, the authorities backed down. The Georgian language retained its status as a state language, which became a victory for the national movement.
Thus, in the first years of Soviet rule, an armed struggle was waged to restore independence. Later, after World War II, in the 1960s and 1970s, a dissident and human rights movement emerged and developed. Its representatives criticized the Soviet system, and in the 1980s they became active participants in the independence movement. A gradual transition took place toward a national-political agenda and stronger demands for independence.
The next session will be dedicated to the struggle to leave the USSR and the tragedy of April 9, 1989.
