Mikhako Tsereteli and the conceptualization of Nation in Georgia in the Early 20th Century (“Nation and Mankind”)

Abstract

The concept of nation by Mikhako Tsereteli is important for several reasons: 1) Anarchists represented extreme left-wing of Georgian society and political sphere. Certain anarchistic ideas as a form of socialist doctrines have begun to exist in Georgia since the 1860s. Mikhako Tsereteli belonged to the group of anarchists, who always considered the concept of nation as prime and prioritized in spite of ideological views. Mikhako Tsereteli was a clear and rare example of how a Georgian thinker preferred to deal with a national problem existing in Georgia rather  than his political ideology; 2) Mikhako Tsereteli’s opinion about the concept of nation is extremely important, because he is the author of the first sociological research in Georgia – “Nation and Mankind” (1910), in which the author tries to analyze the categories of nation and mankind and it finally leads us to the fact, that Mikhako Tsereteli denies the phenomenon of man and admits original nature of the phenomenon of nation; 3) It is worth noting, that Mikhako Tsereteli was greatly influenced by his contemporary European thinkers, especially sociologists. While formulating the concept of nation, he scrutinizes the theories of nation existing in Europe and forms his own concept of nation on account of criticizing or partially agreeing with the different thinkers’ viewpoints such as Salomon Reinach, Ernest Nys, Pasquale Stanislao Mancini, Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, Ernest Renan, de Greef, René Worms, Tard, Otto Bauer, Rudolf Springer. There is no doubt, that Mikhako Tsereteli studied the European theories of nation and created “Nation and Mankind” based on them, which doubles the interest towards the author.