Project description
Sunni Muslim memory and Soviet repression in Georgia
Between 2017 and 2022, mass graves of 150 to over 200 victims of Stalinist-era repressions, were found near Batumi in Georgia. Research often overlooks the repression of ethnic and religious minorities in the Soviet-era Georgia. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the GEMS project will investigate how Sunni Muslim minorities in borderland Georgia engage with the memory of Soviet repression, in relation to the discovered mass grave. It will explore the effects of Soviet colonial practices on these communities and how they navigate their collective memory amid historical violence and current geopolitical tensions, including Russian influence. The project will shed light on how marginalised groups challenge dominant narratives about the Gulag.
Objective
The GEMS project proposes to investigate how Sunni Muslim minorities in borderland Georgia engage with the memory of Soviet repression, focusing on the recent discovery of a mass grave near the city of Batumi, the capital of the region of Adjara. Unlike existing research that centers on Orthodox Christian narratives in urban settings, this project innovatively addresses the largely overlooked role of Soviet Georgia’s colonial project targeting ethnic and religious minorities through repression. It examines how these communities navigate collective memory shaped by both Soviet-era violence and contemporary post-Soviet state practices.
GEMS offers a novel perspective on how to deal with difficult heritages by analysing the negotiation of Gulag memory within the complex dynamics of Soviet and post-Soviet Georgia’s internal colonialism. The project explores how local Muslim families, religious leaders, and state institutions confront the memory of repressions amidst current geopolitical tensions, including Russian imperial influence in the region. By focusing on epistemic anxieties and political subjectivity formation, the study explores how and when marginalised groups challenge dominant national narratives about the Gulag and assert their place in Georgian memory politics.
Interdisciplinary in its focus and methodology, GEMS combines anthropology of memory, religion, and post-Soviet studies to examine the contested burial rituals, commemorative practices, and historical interpretations surrounding the Batumi mass grave. This research expands understanding of how post-colonial and post-imperial legacies continue to shape borderland Georgia, offering critical insights into the politics of memory, minority inclusion, and state power. Ultimately, GEMS contributes to broader debates on memory and postsecularism, decolonisation, and the geopolitics of memory.
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- social sciences other social sciences development studies development theories post-colonial theories
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion religions
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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11000 Praha 1
Czechia
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