"Old" Intelligentsia and "New" Intellectuals: The Georgian Experience

Author: Zaza Shatirishvili

About twelve years ago, when Sergei Paradzhanov[1] and Merab Mamardashvili[2] both died in the space of one year, everything was crystal clear in Georgian political life. The world was simple in a black-and-white way, divided into "us" and "them". "They" (the "Zviadists"[3]) were bad; as for "us" (the "anti-Zviadists"), although we might not have been perfectly good, we were still fighting for marvellously good, progressive and, as we later learned, "liberal" values. Today, a similar clarity reigns in Georgian intellectual life: on the one hand, there's the "old" (or, more pejoratively, "nomenclature") intelligentsia, on the other hand, there are the "new" (Western-type) intellectuals. This was the title of a seminar which took place last September at the Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development at the initiative of its director, the philosopher and political scientist Gia Nodia.....The full text you can find here

Source: NZ Debates on Politics and Culture