Erik Scott (USA)

Born in 1978, is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas. He also serves as Editor of The Russian Review. His research focuses on the multiethnic Soviet Union and its global legacies. He examines migration, diaspora, and empire within and beyond Eurasia to illuminate the region’s diversity and reconsider its relationship to the broader world.

He is the author of Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of Soviet Empire. Exploring the Soviet Union from the perspective of an internal diaspora that emerged from the Caucasus to take center stage in Moscow, this book examines the remarkable prominence of Georgians in the Soviet empire. Employing recognizable ethnic difference in restaurants and cultural institutions, marketing their goods in the informal economy, and testing the limits of allowable expression on stage and screen, Georgians left an indelible mark in Soviet politics, economics, and culture.

FAMILIAR STRANGERS: THE GEORGIAN DIASPORA AND THE EVOLUTION OF SOVIET EMPIRE
(Exerpt)

Georgians were the multiethnic Soviet empire’s most familiar strangers. They moved beyond their native republic in the Caucasus to gain imperial prominence in Moscow yet remained a distinctive national community. They were a diaspora defined by ethnic difference, yet one internal to the Soviet Union. Georgians employed strangeness in ways that met the demands of the Soviet state, but they did so largely for their own benefit. They succeeded because their cultural repertoire emphasized recognizable difference, because their networks stretched beyond the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) to intersect with central institutions, and because their homeland was firmly within Soviet borders, able to provide a steady supply of ideologically sanctioned cultural and material resources. Georgians had a distinct set of skills and a cultivated mythology that fit those skills. The Soviet authorities used, promoted, and sometimes resented Georgian success, while Georgians capitalized on it, negotiating between imperial prominence and local self-assertion.