Nr. 66: Sites of Memory

This issue of the Caucasus Analytical Digest discusses Sites of Memory in the South Caucasus. Dustin Gilbreath, using the results of a MYPLACE survey, argues that under the governance of the United National Movement (UNM) sites of memory in the Georgian town of Telavi were transformed in their function through rehabilitation programs. Sites took on new functions as sites of reminder of the Rose Revolutionary government. Decisions made in the aftermath of the 2012 parliamentary elections about rehabilitation programs, in turn, have again complicated the meaning and memories associated with sites of memory, concluding that present and future political regimes will continue to attempt to produce effects and affects through the use of the past, as well as through the projection of visions into the future. Tamta Khalvashi examines the social role of photographic images in relation to the rapidly changing urban space of Batumi, Adjara, arguing that although photographic images selectively freeze certain moments of the past and render them stable, they simultaneously highlight the ambiguous aspects of the present and capture the socially marginal positions of their authors and analyzing how this tension plays out among a middle-aged and elderly generation of Soviet photographers in Batumi who, by capturing the past through their photographs, try to position themselves in an uncertain present and imagine their future(s). Leyla Sayfutdinova examines the evolution of Baku’s Alley of Martyrs, tracing how, as different authorities came to power over the course of the last one hundred years, they have transformed the site to serve a variety of purposes.