An Untamed Word: (Conception of Georgian national identity to Akaki Bakradze)

Abstract

The painful problems of Georgian identity and ethno-portrait run through the entire biography of Akaki Bakradze – this outstanding publicist and public figure of the second part of the XX century. So as to make Akaki Bakradze’s aforementioned national conception easily accessible to the reader, we shall try to point out a few major aspects in a historical retrospective. In accordance with this principle, the first concept will be “Georgian messianic idea,” which is laid out in an article by Akaki Bakradze, “A Forgotten Idea” (1987). It is precisely in the historical retrospective that Akaki Bakradze presents an ensemble of constants of Georgian national character and ethnoculture in his polemical text, “An Acerb Exclamation” (1983).