University of Georgia Invited Lecturer Cultural Studies

Art History PhD

Tbilisi/Georgia

ninisanadiradze@gmail.com 

Orcid:

 

0009-0004-7161-5894

Abstract

Research on the history of Georgian statehood has traditionally relied on Georgian and Russian archival sources, official documents, and local periodicals. Polish newspapers published between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, remain an underexplored resource of exceptional value. This paper examines the Polish press as an alternative archive for the history of Georgian statehood a transnational space in which the European image of Georgia as a political and cultural entity was constructed beyond Georgian and Russian imperial narratives. The research is based on archival work conducted during the 2025 Thesaurus Poloniae Senior Fellowship at the International Cultural Centre in Kraków. It analyses Polish-language newspapers published between 1870 and 1921, including Kurier Warszawski, Gazeta Narodowa, Czas, Głos Narodu, and Dziennik Kijowski. More than 2,000 publications relating to Georgia's political, cultural, and social life were identified and analysed. Rather than focusing solely on the volume of historical evidence, the paper explores how the Polish press shaped knowledge and perceptions of Georgia within the Polish public sphere, representing it as an integral part of the European political and cultural landscape. Shared experiences of imperial domination and struggles for independence fostered a discourse of solidarity in which Georgia also became a mirror of Polish national self-understanding. The study argues that the Polish press constitutes a transnational archive of memory borrowing Pierre Nora's concept of lieu de mémoire and offers a new methodological perspective for studying the transnational construction of national narratives and the history of Georgian statehood.