Please join us for a discussion with Tinatin Japaridze (MARS-REERS ’19), author of Stalin’s Millenials: Nostalgia, Trauma, and Nationalism (Lexington Books, February 2022), moderated by Alexander Cooley, Claire Tow Professor of Political Science, Barnard College.
Stalin’s Millennials examines Joseph Stalin’s increasing popularity in the post-Soviet space, and analyzes how his image, and the nostalgia it evokes, is manipulated and exploited for political gain. The author argues that, in addition to the evil dictator and the Georgian comrade, there is a third portrayal of Stalin—the one projected by the generation that saw the tail end of the USSR, the post-Soviet millennials. This book is not a biography of one of the most controversial historical figures of the past century. Rather, through a combination of sociopolitical commentary and autobiographical elements that are uncommon in monographs of this kind, the attempt is to explore how Joseph Stalin’s complex legacies and the conflicting cult of his irreconcilable tripartite of personalities still loom over the region as a whole, including Russia and, perhaps to an even deeper extent, Koba’s native land—now the independent Republic of Georgia, caught between its unreconciled Soviet past and the potential future within the European Union.
Read more about Japaridze and how the book came to be in a profile from the Summer 2021 issue of Harriman Magazine.
Tinatin Japaridze (MARS-REERS ’19) is currently the Director of Policy and Strategy at The Critical Mass, whose mission is to transcend existing global security assistance silos by supporting a critical mass of professionals with the capabilities and sustainment architecture needed to meet and defeat persistent and emerging threats and vulnerabilities. Prior to this position, Japaridze worked for the City of New York, first as the Field and Digital Community Engagement Specialist at the NYC Census, a Mayoral initiative, and later as the Press Secretary for New York’s COVID-19 Response at NYC Health & Hospitals. Previously, she was the United Nations Bureau Chief for Eastern European media outlets and U.N. Radio host and producer of her own radio show on current affairs and security in the international arena. In 2019, she became a Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Student Ambassador on Cyber Ethics and Digital Leadership. The idea for Stalin’s Millennials was sparked by an assignment she completed for a class by former Director of the Harriman Institute, Alexander Cooley on Soviet Legacies. She was a University Consortium fellow, and through that connection, she then worked as a “Go Big” Officer at the European Leadership Network (ELN), crafting a digital campaign to extend the New START between Russia and the US. In 2021, she became a member of the ELN’s Younger Generation Leaders Network.
