University of Bordeaux
PhD student
Bordeaux/France
tiphaine.gingelwein@gmail.com
Abstract
As a Soviet Socialist Republic, Georgia adopted in November 1989 a resolution characterizing its Sovietization in 1921 as an annexation. This act signaled an explicit rejection of Soviet rule, already foreshadowed by the April 9th Tragedy. Yet the rejection of the Soviet regime, formalized by later independence in 1991, could not occur without considering the material and symbolic traces left by seventy years of Soviet governance.
These traces, both tangible and intangible, constitute a legacy that bears witness to Georgia’s recent history, as well as that of other post-Soviet and Eastern European states. Unlike heritage, defined as the product of conscious selection and identity-based valorization through the process of “heritagization” (Davallon, 2010), legacy refers to non-chosen elements inherited from the past. Post-Soviet states therefore confront a Soviet legacy that they must accept, reject, transform or even reframe as heritage. This dynamic is particularly visible in the fate of Lenin statues across the former Soviet space.
The Soviet legacy is also present in the field of sport, where processes of reconfiguration are underway, as states variously preserve, abandon, repurpose or replace sports structures inherited from the Soviet period. While Georgia appeared to reject Sovietism entirely in the early 1990s, this study aims to ask how are Soviet sports infrastructures and practices selectively managed in contemporary Georgia, and what does that reveal about broader strategies of negotiating the country’s Soviet past?
Focusing on selected sports places and practices, this work examines different modes of engagement with Soviet legacy, through examples of preservation, replacement, transformation, and rejection. It draws on case studies, interviews and participative observations conducted in 2026 across various regions illustrating the preservation of Tbilisi Workforce Reserves sport hall; the construction of new facilities such as Batumi Sports Palaces (Ajara) and Oni wrestling school (Racha-Lechkhumi-Lower Svaneti); and the transformation of former Soviet sites, including Samtredia tea-laurel factory and Amaghleba sanatorium (Imereti) into sport halls. This study also explores the rejection of Soviet sporting influence in judo and sambo, where Soviet legacy competes with national heritage embodied by Georgina traditional wrestling chidaoba. More broadly, it argues that sport appears as a key arena through which Georgia selectively reinterprets and renegotiates its Soviet past.
Keywords: Post-Soviet Georgia, Legacy, Sports