History and the Present: Sovietisation and Post-Sovietism of Memory

The term “Sovietisation” (Rus. советизация) appears repeatedly in this chapter. Firstly, it functions as a self-occurring noun denoting a multifaceted complex process of establishing an exclusive model of remembering. Secondly, it appears in the established contexts of the structures making up this process, when it is made specific through naming the particular aspect to which Sovietisation applies. Its example in this second sense is the construction of a Sovietised model of remembering. Thirdly, the term “Sovietisation” is used in its perfective form due to a political action and process, that is the actual implementation of Soviet power in the South Caucasus, which took place in the 1920s. The ambiguity and multidimensionality of the concept of Sovietisation are not only products of the above three distinct potentials of use but also of the polysemous context of the term’s use (or rather abuse). This polysemy is the result of journalistic exploitation of the term, as well as the a priori adoption of its understanding in most works dealing with the topic of Sovietisation (most often narrowed down to a specific fragment). Many works on the “politics” of Sovietisation are abstracted from an ontological reflection on the essence and substance of the process, and thus thoroughly ignore questions of the theoretical definition of the political of Sovietisation. In the face of this polysemy or semantic confusion, I distinguish two approaches to understanding Sovietisation—a narrower and broader one.