Talk:Culture of Georgia (country)

No mention of Tsarist suppression of Georgian culture

Why is there absolutely no mention of the forced assimilation and Russification policies imposed against Georgian culture for 116 years by the Russian Empire (as the tsars did to every other minority nation the empire occupied). Right now, section 2, "Culture of Georgia today", is 9 paragraphs long, covering 400 years of Georgia including 116 of imperial Russian rule, but makes absolutely no mention of Russification or suppression of Georgian culture during this time, which was far more severe than under the Soviets. Schools had to be taught in Russian, the Georgian language was outlawed in writing, and the name "Georgia" did not even exist as a legal geographical term anywhere in Russia after 1846. Now, section 2 of this article has an entire paragraph purely devoted to Soviet suppression of Georgian culture, with no citations or even actual examples given. The Soviets, though not totally innocent of Russification, restored Georgian from an illegal to an official language, restored Georgia from a legally-unnamed and unrecognized region to the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, on the same constitutional footing as Russia, in 1921--the first time in 80 years there had been a state legally known and recognized as Georgia in that land; the Soviets made the official motto of the Georgian SSR in the Georgian language and every citizen had the right to attend school or court in Georgian if they chose. None of that is mentioned. But somehow the Soviet repression is so great that it got its own paragraph, but the tsarist oppression which went MUCH further doesn't merit a mention, and this article only lists Georgian artistic and cultural accomishments done during the tsarist era as if the Empire can somehow take credit for that. In fact the last thing it mentions before the Soviets is that "The Tbilisi State Academy of Arts was founded in 1917." This was the last year of the pre-Soviet era, suggesting this could have been the work of the tsarist or provisional governments. Not only is this year not correct, since according to both the Wikipedia article on the school itself and also the official website of the academy itself the academy was founded in 1922 (firmly during the Soviet era of Georgia); but in fact this academy was established BY the Soviet government under the People’s Commissariat for Education (which again is also mentioned both in the school's Wikipedia article and its official website). So in this article we have mention of Soviet repression with no examples; no mention of tsarist suppression even though there's a thousand examples much much worse than anything under the Soviets; seemingly implying the tsarists supported Georgian culture by not explaining any of the relationship between Georgian culture and the tsarist establishment during the era instead of just listing Georgian cultural accomplishments with no context or elaboration; no mention of any Soviet accomplishments in supporting Georgian culture; and actually taking away Soviet accomplishments and misattributing them to the tsarist era. Now I'm not asking for the article to be rewritten from a pro-Soviet perspective here but come on. This whitewashing, imbalance, strategic omission, and in certain cases historical dishonesty, is glaring. VolatileChemical (talk) 07:16, 7 June 2024 (UTC)