Conclusion

It would be appropriate to begin this summary by recalling the assumptions I laid out in the introduction. The book presented here is not an attempt to create an integral description of collective memory in Georgia, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia. In terms of subject, its primary goal was to show the different representations of memory, ways of commemorating and forgetting, and structures that have broken down or, much more often, persist, constituting the memory space of the studied area. This results in omitting or backgrounding many important aspects of collective memory, such as in-depth analysis of historiography and historical policy, analysis of historical education and thus textbook content, or quantitative analysis and interpretation of collective (in the sociological sense) perceptions of particular elements of the past. The premise of this book was to present the relations of memory, power, and the political contained in representations of memory that are most frequently non-obvious, multidimensional, hybrid, or explicitly repressed and forgotten. Describing this dynamic, open-ended structure certainly indicates how memory in various possible forms constitutes an essential element of all political narratives in the South Caucasus region. Concurrently, outlining the most significant mechanisms and structures in representations, in the relationship of memory to power and the political, urges separate in-depth case studies.