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Eldar ISMAILOV
Director, Institute of Strategic Studies of the Caucasus;
Chairman of the Editorial Council of The Caucasus & Globalization Journal (Baku, Azerbaijan).
Rauf GARAGOZOV
Ph.D. (Psychol.), leading research associate at the Institute of Strategic Studies of the Caucasus
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
CONFRONTATIONAL COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN THE CAUCASUS: HOW CAN THE "CURSE OF THE PAST" BE OVERCOME?
Abstract
The authors have investigated certain specific features of the development and reproduction of the collective memory of the Central Caucasian nations (the Azeri, Armenians, and Georgians), as well as of the Russians, who also contributed to the process to a certain extent. They have pointed to the “confrontational” nature of the collective memory of the local peoples,
which interferes with their mutual understanding and regional cooperation; the authors are also trying to identify social and psychological factors in the development and transformation of collective memory, which could, in the final analysis, help to create a new form of common Caucasian identity based on the values of a pluralist and democratic society.
“We all thought that history is the past to be described in more or less soothing terms by those who seek academic degrees or are fascinated by it. It turned out to be a vibrant future that calls us all to account.”
A. Ukhtomskiy1
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Academics have frequently pointed to the confrontational nature of the Caucasian nations’ collective memory.2 Indeed, nearly all the local ethnic groups have accumulated enough collective stories, which are spearheaded, as a rule, against their neighbors. This happens for at least two reasons: first, in-group favoritism (preference for one’s own group) and out-group libeling (discrediting of alien groups) as part of the social identity development.3 In the local extremely varied ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious context, this social-psychological factor contributes to the development of group identity and betrays itself in legends and stories “about ourselves and others.” M. Billig has written that “historically, myths about the nation tend to be developed as the nation is being created in contradistinction to other nations.”4
Second, the confrontational collective memory is rooted in Caucasian history: for many centuries, the region has been attracting all sorts of geopolitical forces and powerful empires, which, in pursuit of their own aims, set the local groups and ethnoses against one another.5 Nino Chikovani has the following to say about this: “The idea of Caucasian unity (or unity of one of its regions) is an ideal the Caucasian nations want to achieve. However, even the most superficial knowledge of the history of the past ten centuries shows that there is no unity or harmony of interests.”6 Confrontational history creates confrontational memory.
Today, confrontational collective memory, or even the “curse of the past,” breeds and fans conflicts.7 It overshadows everything that is going on among the local nations and keeps the local contradictions alive, making genuine regional cooperation impossible.
The Caucasian peoples are obviously unable to act together; they fall an easy prey to outside forces still pursuing their own aims in the Caucasus, which have very little in common with what its nations want and need.
These negative and deeply rooted group historical reminiscences should be overcome at all costs; to achieve this we should probe into the nature of collective memory.
Instrumental Nature of Collective Memory
The very concept of collective memory is connected with the name of French sociologist M. Halbwachs, who was convinced that reminiscences might come to the fore in one of two forms: either
1 A.A. Ukhtomskiy, Intuitsia sovesti, Peterburgskiy pisatel Publishers, St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 500.
2 See, for example: T. de Waal, Black Garden. Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, New York University Press, New York, 2003.
3 See: H. Tajfel & J. Turner, “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior,” in: The Psychology of Intergroup Relations, Vol. 2, ed. by S. Worchel & W.G. Austin, Nelson Hall, New York, 1986, pp. 23-53.
4 M. Billig, Banal Nationalism, Sage, London, 1995, p. 190.
5 See: N. Chikovani, “A United Caucasus: Reality Rooted in the Past or High-Flown Political Illusions?” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 5 (35), 2005, p. 48.
6 Ibid., p. 54.
7 See: Th.W. Adorno, “Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit,” in: Eingriffe.Neun kritische Modelle, Frankfurt, 1969, S. 125-146.
as personal reminiscences to be contemplated from the personal point of view, or as reminiscences of large or small communities to become part of their image.8 He argued that when perceiving, thinking about and, consequently, memorizing what is happening around us, we use methods largely determined by our social groups. In other words, collective memory is “activated” though certain “suggestions” produced by our social group. There is another no less important aspect: collective memory can be interpreted as what is memorized by a member of a certain social group rather than by a private person. Halbwachs formulated the collective memory problem in 1925, but it was much later, in the 1960s, that a genuine and mounting interest in the issue appeared.9 Despite the steadily growing number of studies, the concept of collective memory still raises many more questions than it provides answers.
A look at the academic literature convinces us that the thesis regarding the significant influence collective memory has on the conduct, feelings, and thinking of individuals as well as various social groups is perhaps the only undisputed conviction on this concept among researchers. At the individual level, collective memory helps the person to rest assured that nothing changes, that he remains equal to himself and is still different from others. At the collective level, memory brings social groups closer together, shapes individual identities, and outlines their future wishes and expectations to guide those who form these groups and collectives. In other words, group memory connects people with their past, breeds pride and sadness, ties people together, shapes group identity, and mobilizes people for collective actions. The communities and collectives exposed to “group amnesia” might fall apart.
As for individual memory, we are dealing with a more or less developed conception, an adequate number of scholarly investigations, as well as certain ideas about the neuro-cognitive and biochemical mechanisms of the brain responsible for memory (the latter is testified by the long list of medicines that jolt the memory). As for group, or collective, memory, the situation is different: the list of recommended medicines does not contain anything suitable for improving collective memory. In other words, there is no biochemical substratum responsive to medical treatment. At the same time, one of the present authors10 has recently developed the sociocultural approach to the analysis of collective memory,11 which makes it possible to identify the conditions and mechanisms in which collective memory is formed.
He proceeded from one of the major postulates of the sociocultural approach, which treats collective memory as the textually mediated memory conditioned by all sorts of narratives, particularly historical narratives. The annals, chronicles, and history textbooks (in short, all historical narratives) are seen as “cultural instruments” that promote collective memory.
The nature of collective memory depends to a great extent on the schematic narrative templates typical of all “textual resources.” It was American academic J. Wertsch who put the term into circulation by saying that “when addressing issues of the role of narrative as a cultural tool in collective remembering, however, it will turn out to be useful to contrast this sort of specific narrative with more generalized, abstract forms, the latter being schematic narrative templates ... a generalized narrative form may underlie a range of narratives in a cultural tradition ... collective remembering is grounded in a generalized narrative tradition defined in terms of schematic narrative templates.”12
It should be said here that the subject, or the subject-based composition might contain and demonstrate certain constants, such as “models based on invariant subjects.”13 This means that the histori-
8 See: M. Halbwachs, La memoire collective, Les Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1967, p. 23.
9 See: S. Radstone, “Working with Memory: An Introduction,” in: Memory and Methodology, ed. by S. Radstone, Oxford International Publishers, Oxford, 2000, pp. 1-22.
10 See: R. Garagozov, Metamorfozy kollektivnoy pamiati v Rossii i na Tsentral’nom Kavkaze, ed. by E. Ismailov, Nurlan Publishers, Baku, 2005.
11 For more detail, see: J.V. Wertsch, Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1991; M. Cole, Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1996.
12 J.V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 60-62.
13 Iu.M. Lotman. “O siuzhetnom prostranstve russkogo romana XIX stoletia,” in: Aktual’nye problemy semiotiki kul’tury. Trudy po znakovym sistemam, Issue 20, Tartu University Press, Tartu, 1987, pp. 102-114.
cally recurring schematic templates (“subject-based models” of sorts) are found only in historical narratives based on a detailed subject-based composition.
In this sense, the templates belong only to a definite type of historical discourse, the “narrative” discourse to use H. White’s term.14 By way of explanation, H. White has pointed out that as distinct from the “artless” narrative typical of chronicles, which merely described what the author saw or learned or believed he had seen or learned, narrative discourse is a story about the past, typical of so-called historical novels with ramified compositions and subjects arranged according to a definite pattern: a beginning, middle and, most important, moralizing conclusion.15
Rauf Garagozov16 used the approach to analyze the specific features of the text resources on which the collective memory of the Russians, Armenians, Azeri, and Georgians rests; he has identified the different forms of collective memory typical of these nations and used a systemic approach to reveal the role of state and religious institutions as important tools that affected to the greatest degree the way collective memory was taking shape.
The Armenian, Georgian, and Russian enthnocultural communities relied on historical narratives to shape their own collective memory. As for the Azeri, the ancient epic narrative Dede Gorgud and the heroic dastan Kerogly served as another depository of the nation’s collective memory.
These and other epics sang of individual heroism and selfless love; they mentioned certain historical, and sometimes ancient, events, but never offered historical interpretations. The later Azeri historical narratives represent history in the chronicle form and do not reveal an accomplished schematic narrative template.
The Georgian historical narratives, which in the 18th century assumed their final form in the shape of a collection of manuscripts known as Kartlis tskhovreba, developed a very specific biographic genre that reproduced history in the form of biographies (mainly of the Georgian czars).17 These are chronicles in the sense that they are deprived of clearly articulated schematic narrative templates.
As distinct from the Azeri and Georgians with their narrative historical discourse, the medieval historical narratives of the Russians and Armenians can be described as historical novels that narrativ-ized history and contained schematic narrative templates planted, deliberately or otherwise, in these nations’ collective memory.
J.V. Wertsch describes the Russians’ schematic narrative template as consisting of the following elements:
“1. An ‘initial situation’—in which the Russian people are living in a peaceful setting where they are no threat to others is disrupted by:
“2. The initiation of trouble or aggression by an alien force, or agent, which leads to:
“3. A time of crisis and great suffering, which is:
“4. Overcome by the triumph over alien force by the Russian people, acting heroically and alone.”18
Later the template served as the foundation for all sorts of historical narratives created within the mainstream of the Russian historiographic tradition planted in the collective memory mainly through general education and the teaching of history. After a while, this narrative template becomes not only the fact of the Russians’ collective memory: it structures, so to speak, the Russians’ perception of themselves and their history, influences their interpretation of their own actions and motives
14 H. White, The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse & Historical Representation, The Johns Hopkins University Press, London, 1987.
15 See: Ibid., p. 24.
16 See: R. Garagozov, op. cit.
17 See: R.W. Thomson, “Introduction,” in: Rewriting Caucasian History. The Medieval Armenian Adaptation of the Georgian Chronicles, Transl. with Introduction and Commentary by R.W. Thomson, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996.
18 J.V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, p. 93.
and those of other actors, etc. In other words, there appears a pattern of Russian collective memory, by which we mean the form of collective experience that creates consistent ideas in the mass consciousness about the historical past and affects the way historical events, motives, and heroes are seen and interpreted.
In other words, the pattern can be described as a template fixed in group experience not only at the historiographic level, but also in various spheres of human life and culture, some of them far removed from the concerns of historiography. From this it follows that while the narrative template belongs to the sphere of historical writing, the collective memory pattern belongs to the mental sphere.
It can be said in this connection that the Russian Orthodox Church, and later the state (through “official” historiography), played the main role in shaping Russian mentality and in particular the ideas of “Russian exclusiveness” and “imperial thinking” by writing historical narratives rooted in the specifically Russian schematic narrative template.
The Armenian Church, in turn, played an important role in shaping the Armenians’ self-identity; it relied on historical narratives mediated by the ideologemes created in the Armenian church milieu. Described as “the loyal people living among enemies and tortured by them,” the Armenian schematic narrative template consists of the following elements:
1. An initial situation (the Golden Age)—in which the Armenian people are living in glorious times disrupted by enemy intrigues, as a result of which
2. the Armenians fell victim to aggression,
3. they have to live through a period of suffering and difficulties,
4. if they remained loyal to their faith, they overcame their enemies; if they betrayed their faith, they were defeated.19
While the Russian historical narratives concentrated on the “God-chosen Russian people,” the Armenian narratives aimed at reviving Great Armenia and the memory of its “might.” It is interesting to note that while the Russian historical narratives were rooted in the “sacrificial” model (the Russians were invariably victims of aggression), in real life the Russian Empire was steadily enlarging its territory.
Armenian historical narratives likewise combine “sacrificial” and “imperial” ideas. The former is created by the image of a “lonely Christian Armenian nation surrounded by barbarians,” while the latter is confirmed by the image of “Great Armenia,” which in real life is transformed into Armenian’s territorial claims against its neighbors.
Collective Memory and Geopolitics
Collective memory patterns do not only affect the historical perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of the members of any ethnic group; they also leave their imprint on collective actions and might develop into a powerful factor of ethnopolitical conflicts and geopolitical speculations.20 This factor has retained its importance. After becoming independent at the turn of the 21st century, Armenia occupied one-fifth of the Azeri territory (Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent districts); encouraged separatist sentiments in the Armenian-populated region of Georgia (Samtskhe-Javakheti), and revived its claims to the northeastern provinces of Turkey (Kars, Van, Igdyr, etc.).
19 See: R. Garagozov, “Collective Memory and Memory Politics in the Central Caucasian Countries,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (36), 2005, p. 54.
20 See: R. Garagozov, “Collective Memory in Ethnopolitical Conflicts: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, 1 5 (41), 2006, pp. 145-155.
Late in the 18th century, Russia, which came to the Caucasus to conquer it, needed a regional “satellite factor” to realize its strategy. At first Orthodox Russia looked at Orthodox Georgia as the most suitable candidate. Indeed, throughout the centuries, Georgians had their own statehood, shared the same faith with the Russians, and were encircled by Muslim powers. This explains why Georgia was selected as Russia’s strategic partner, a decision reflected in the Georgievsk Treaty, and liquidation of the autocephalous nature of the Georgian Apostolic Orthodox Church, which was incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church. Despite numerous geopolitical advantages, Georgia did not become a “satellite factor “ for many reasons, the different structure of its collective memory being one of them.
Russia had to look for another satellite to realize its domestic (Caucasian) and external (Mid-Eastern) policies. It found its satellite in the Armenians, the collective memory patterns of whom were based on the correlation between the “sacrificial” and the “imperial,” very much similar to those of the Russians. It was no easy task: first, since there were practically no Armenians in the Russian Caucasus, they had to be resettled there from Iran and the Ottoman Empire.21 Second, the Armenian statehood had to be created from scratch; third, their religion (Gregorian) differed from Russian Orthodoxy.
Undaunted, Russia got down to the task of moving Armenians into the newly conquered Caucasus; it allowed the Armenian Church to exploit and develop the Armenian narrative template in the context of the emerging Russian historiography. It should be taken into account that in Russia it was the state, not the Church, that shaped the Russian narrative template and planted it in collective memory; with the Armenians, the Church played the leading role at the initial stages. Starting in the early 19th century, the Armenians gradually developed the sociopolitical mechanism of collective memory mediated by Armenian public organizations, political parties, financial and industrial groups, and the political, academic and creative intelligentsia, who acted in conformity with Russia’s geohistorical and geopolitical interests.
Having selected the Armenians as a “satellite factor” in the Caucasus and the Middle East for the reasons enumerated above, the Russian Empire (at the initial period until the Armenians acquired a state of their own) together with the Armenian Church was involved to a certain extent in the state function of creating and planting the Armenian template of collective consciousness (with due account of Russia’s geohistorical interests) and collective behavior. To achieve this, the Russian state supervised historical education, translation, and publishing historical writings in great numbers and encouraged the writing of new historical works and fiction. In simpler terms, we can say that the political establishment of Russia, which for many centuries opposed the Ottoman Empire, was absolutely content to accept the Armenian “sacrificial” historical narratives. One of the foreign scholars offered his comment about this: “If you read Armenian history it sounds as though the Turks have been slaughtering the Armenians for hundreds of years.”22
The above suggests that collective memory is an important factor that limits the realization of the interests of various geopolitical forces. It is, at the same time, a powerful integrating or conflicting factor, which betrays itself in regions or on a worldwide scale. This means that to achieve the region’s balanced development and let it smoothly join the international community, we should create mechanisms that would tie together the collective memory policy and regional geopolitics.
Collective Memory and the Memory Policy
The historical conception of the Caucasus and its nations (as well as of the nations of Russia, for that matter), built under Soviet power or even before it, brimmed with diverse ideological and myth-
21 The mass resettlement of the Armenians to Georgia and Azerbaijan was made possible by Russia’s two wars with Iran that ended in the Gulistan (1813) and Turkmanchai (1828) treaties, as well as the Treaty of Adrianople with the Ottoman Empire (1829).
22 S. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001, p. 82.
ological elements. Indeed, nearly all the Caucasian ethnoses wished, to different degrees, to make their history much older than it was and to tie it to one particular territory. This is largely explained by excessive politicization and ideologization of history for the purposes of justifying Russia’s (first imperial Russia, which fought in the Caucasus in the 19th century, and later, in the 20th century, Soviet Russia) geostrategic aims and attitudes. Even though the Soviet principles and methods of history writing—on which the sociopsychological mechanism of collective memory rests—did not always coincide in form with the imperial ideological principles and methods, the mythological and ideological elements of national historiographies (created for the Russians and the Caucasian nations) remained basically the same.
This means that the present ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus are to a great extent the results of the Russian imperial and Soviet traditions of history writing, the “structural” elements of collective memory of all nations. In this way collective memory was distorted; the results were different for different nations: some things were allowed for some nations and were not allowed for others.
The Azeri, who were the victims of the most energetic efforts to destroy the past (suffice it to mention that during the 20th century, the nation lost its alphabet twice, a measure imposed from the Center to rupture historical and cultural traditions), were less lucky than their neighbors. Frightened by pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism, as well as apprehensive of other threats, the imperial and Soviet powers distorted beyond recognition the fairly complicated Azeri history to deprive the nation of selfidentification. Duped by the talk about the Soviet man, the Soviet family, and the Soviet people, the Azeri, to a greater extent than others, were guided by these myths. They had nearly forgotten their ethnic roots and their real sociopolitical interests. Their neighbors, however, exposed to the Soviet mythology to a much lesser degree, preserved cultural continuity and looked after their national interests much better. The Soviet Union retreated from the historical stage to reveal the fact that the collective memory of the Caucasian nations was filled with conflicting images and ideas about the past.
The Soviet tradition of ideologization and mythologization of national histories did not die along with the country, which means that the post-Soviet independent states, in the Central Cauca-sus23 in particular, should revise their falsified histories to be able to create new historiographies. This is a very difficult task since the surviving stereotypes and commonly accepted ideas about the past (collective memory) should be overcome for the sake of new conceptions of Caucasian history that will meet the needs of social development. It should be said in this connection that the templates described above can be overcome through “reflexive practices” and a “scientific approach to the past.”24
So far, the Caucasian nations have not yet arrived at an “understanding that collective memory is a tool and that the reflexive practices of memory are valuable.”25 The same author goes on to say: “Pluralization of the representation of the past ... per se cannot bring us to these practices; it interferes with them until the government, society, and science develop a critical attitude toward the passion for templates.”26
It should be said that each of the memory structures is at the same time “a system of translation of values and identities.”27 In real life, collective memory structures are set up not so much to reveal the true picture of the past, as to be used for the purposes at hand. H. Weltzer has written about this: “Memory ... is not associated with objective historical facts—it deals with specific identities. This
23 The Central Caucasus category much better describes the region’s geopolitical reality than the Transcaucasus or the Southern Caucasus categories. The Central Caucasus includes Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia (see: E. Islamilov, “O geopoliticheskikh predposylkakh ekonomicheskoy integratsii Tsentral’nogo Kavkaza,” Izvestia AN Gruziii. Seria eko-nomicheskaia, Vol. 10, No. 3-4, 2002, pp. 123-148; E. Ismailov, Z. Kengerli, “O kategorii Kavkaz,” Doklady Akademii nauk Azerbaijana, 2002, pp. 290-294).
24 Th.W. Adorno, op. cit.
25 I. Hessler, “Chto znachit ‘prorabotka proshlogo’?” in: Pamiat o voyne 60 let spustia, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow, 2005, pp. 156-169.
26 Ibid., p. 168.
27 M. Ferretti, “Neprimirimaia pamiat: Rossia i voyna,” in: Pamiat o voyne 60 let spustia, pp. 135-146.
explains why from time to time historical events that remained shelved for a long time are retrieved or even invented. The Battle at Kosovo Polje for the Serbs is as important as the oath of mutual support on the Rutli meadow. Memory about both events is based on antedated historical accounts. In some cases, it is merely forgotten that a historical or social myth remained absolutely irrelevant for collective identity for many centuries. The normative criteria of what should be forgotten and what should be remembered are loosely connected with what really happened. The way the memory about this is used today is all-important.”28
In the Caucasus it has not yet been decided which of the memory policies should be selected. The tradition of national mythologies can be continued (the historians and ideologists of the conflicting sides have never abandoned it) to keep the nations under the spell of past hatreds and to sacrifice their future and the future of the region to them. There is an option: we should look at the past from the point of view of the future, which may become genuinely historic for all the Caucasian peoples. The road to it lies through reconciliation, civil nationalism, democracy, and open society, rather than through ethnic nationalism.
C o n c l u s i o n
The above suggests that the common Caucasian identity29 built on reconciliation and mutual assistance, rather than on mutual rejection, without which no effective regional cooperation is possible, calls for new forms of collective memory. They should be built to achieve a new form of Caucasian identity resting on the new and still unfamiliar values of a pluralist, democratic, open, and free society ruled by law.
To sum up: the dynamic development of good-neighborly relations among the local nations calls, first, for scientific revision and reflection of their historical narratives and creation of an adequate sociopsychological mechanism to shape new collective memory in the future generations. It is not easy to change historical perceptions and reminiscences, but the earlier the process is launched, at least in the form of public debates involving international organizations, the better. This is one of the key conditions that can help the region leave the impasse of deadly conflicts. Anyone wishing to know what sort of history the Caucasian peoples need should be answered: history that has been freed from its obsolete ideological and mythological wrappings and that will remove at last the “curse of the past” still overshadowing the lives of the Caucasian people.
28 H. Weltzer, “Istoria, pamiat i sovremennost proshlogo,” in: Pamiat o voyne 60 let spustia, pp. 51-63.
29 See, for example, H. Guliyev’s article, “On the Methodology for Identifying an Archetypical Caucasus,” in which the author offered his philosophical approach to the task of creating the common Caucasian identity (The Caucasus
& Globalization, Vol. 1 (1), 2006, pp. 126-135).
