Creative Approaches to a Relevant Competition Topic
By what means did youth organisations influence their young members during the Soviet era in Georgia? What traces has Soviet propaganda left in families? And what role does the falsification of history play when it comes to armed conflict? These were the questions addressed by three of the five prize winning entries of the current edition of the Georgian History Competition. From different perspectives all participants explored the topic of “Faking History – A Tool of Propaganda”. A competition topic which for the organisers was “particularly interesting, relevant and at the same time difficult”.
With all the deserved appreciation the winning entries were honoured in a festive award ceremony on 22 September 2024. Lika Katsitadze, project coordinator at DVV International Georgia, welcomed participants and guests at Tbilisi State University. In their speeches, both Leif Striosner, Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thea Karchava, representative of the Ministry of Education of Georgia, stressed the importance of projects like the history competition and congratulated the winners for their outstanding works. As president of the history teachers association (GAHE), Nana Tsikhistav highlighted the success and the positive effects of the Georgian history competition in its seven year history.
The creativity and diversity of the participants' approaches to the topic became evident when the prize winners took the stage. For his video on the objectives and techniques of the Young Pioneer Organisation during the Soviet era Nikoloz Skhirtladze received the first prize. Mariam Areshidze investigated how propaganda affected her grandmother growing up in the Soviet era in her essay “A phantom of the past”. Mariam Talakhadze, Ani Kikadze and Lizi Makharadze’s group work on how the Soviet government used media, art, and education to control and manipulate societal beliefs won the third prize. The fourth prizes went to Mikael Kurtanidze and Tatuli Kupradze. The former analysed the falsification during the conflict in Abkhazia 1992 to 1993, while the latter examined Kakutsa Cholokashvili – a Georgian military officer in World War I – and his status s as (anti-)hero in public opinion. All prize winners expressed their gratitude, four of them being selected to participate in an international youth activity in Riga, organised by Körber-Stiftung.
The competition is a part of the international project “A Toolkit for Critical History Teaching", financed by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany. The project's main partners are DVV International and Körber-Stiftung. It is implemented jointly by DVV International representative offices and local NGOs: Teachers Association NOVA DOBA (Ukraine), The National Association of Young Historians of Moldova ANTIM (Moldova), Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SovLab) and GAHE - Georgian Association of History Educators (Georgia), and "Hazarashen" Armenian Center for Ethnological Studies (Armenia).