Presentation Schedule
Soviet Cultural Diplomacy in the Stalinist Era: Soviet Georgia as a Case Study (107511)
Session Chair: Yuwen Su
Saturday, 11 July 2026 14:35
Session: Session 4
Room: UCL Torrington, G20 (Ground Floor)
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
This paper examines Franco-Georgian cultural diplomacy under the Soviet regime, focusing on how Stalin-era cultural relations with the West were reconfigured rather than cancelled. Through the Georgian reception of three francophone writers-Henri Barbusse, André Gide, and Panait Istrati- it analyzes how Soviet institutions managed Western cultural contact to present socialism as a global achievement while reshaping Georgian literary life. The article traces the institutional “filters” of exchange - surveillance, censorship, and mediation through VOKS and Glavlit- alongside translation policy, staged encounters, and press campaigns that framed visiting intellectuals for both foreign and domestic audiences. By comparing different trajectories of travel and reception, the study highlights the contrast between encounters that reinforced the official script (as in Barbusse’s guided visit and its affirmative press framing) and moments of dissonance, when observation and conversations with Georgian writers complicated or contradicted the intended narrative (as suggested by the later positions associated with Gide and Istrati). Based on archival materials and Soviet-period Georgian periodicals, the paper reconstructs cultural diplomacy as a full cycle - from preparation and narrative orchestration to strategies of discursive containment when external accounts diverged from Soviet messaging. In doing so, it clarifies how literature functioned as a tool of ideological consolidation inside Soviet Georgia and as a mechanism of international legitimation, raising broader questions about the durability of such cultural-propaganda techniques beyond the Stalinist period.
Authors:
Tatia Oboladze, Tbilisi State University, Georgia
About the Presenter(s)
Researcher, Lecturer at Tbilisi State University
See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule
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