A FEW ISSUES OF ETHNO-CULTURAL LIFE OF THE GEORGIANS (ADJARIAN, ACCORDING TO TAO-IMERKHEVI MATERIALS)

Abstract

Abstract

In the analysis paper, we present new ethnographic materials on the possibility of the impact on Georgian national consciousness and the salvation from "conscriptive sacrifice" found in  Adjara (villages of the village of Didachar, Mareti, Khikhadziri and Chwana valleys) and Tao-Imerkhevi villages, social and cultural relations,  

We discuss the Adjarian "Gobegi" and "Ganarigi" similar in content and function to the widely-spread Georgian family division („sakhli“("house"), „Dziri“("stem"), „Fudze“("base"), „Sabude­be­li“("n­esting"), „Gvardziebi“("surnames"...). 

The source of history, content and function of the creation of these patronymic units, currently known or unknown reality, and the new ethnographic materials allow us to consistently study the mentality, cultural mosaics, lifestyle, and defence-survival based on Turkish-Georgian and Russian-Georgian forcible political relations, as well as the enemy-driven political, social and illiteracy limitations causing the "conversion of Adjarians and Tao-Imerkhevi Georgians" into " victims of violence". 

Despite the lack of communication with the rest of their ethnic group, the Adjarian and the Tao-Imerkhevans preserved language, self-awareness, and other ethnic and cultural features on the basis of the knowledge of "we" and "they". They did it  by “ not going away from the awareness of Georgian identity" and by consistently "retaining sense of nationality, decent, and a time-tested life of pedigree and the rules of Justice." 

The terms , toponyms, and other types of ethnographic material presented by us makes it clear that the basis for the survival of the Georgian world outlook  along with the predominance of the Georgian worldview was independence; survival condition for Georgian-Georgians ("We are one pillar with Georgians. That's why we refer to each other like this: "brother"; "I am a Christian by nation, and a Muslim in faith") was flexibile behaviour (/"politics of behavior"), conversing relationships with elements of foreign culture and lifestyle, disguise of active intolerance, discipline, and managed idle compromise; Constant readiness to save psychology (/"inner voice") dictated by historical relations.  

The result of the “Dazaboreba’ and "sacrificial" state of the locals into “savages” imposed by the Ottomans and Russians, the Soviet rulers (/"Russian communists") was the "sacrificial" state of the "savages" of the “hostile domestics", the “Nachalnik thinking”, the "back-and-forth landslide", the policy which, in fact, resulted into the change of self-awareness of some of the auto Georgians, and into their socio-cultural "retreat". 

keywords: “Nesting“; “Surnames“; “Lifestyle“; “Flexible behaviour(/”Politics of behaviour“); Psycho­logy­(/”I­nn­er voice“); „Soviet rulers“(/”Russioan comunists“); “Dazaboreba policy“; “Nachalnik Thinking“.