Book Talk: Georgia, 1918-21, The World's First Social Democratic State?

Stephen Jones explains in his new book the paradox most European socialists of the time could not understand. Georgia was the first social democratic state in Europe (in contrast to social democratic coalitions in Sweden, Belgium and elsewhere) in an impoverished corner of the Russian empire where 90% of the population was peasant. The republic embodied an anti-colonial movement, but it was adamantly pro-Western, defiantly liberal and pluralist, an advocate of a mixed economy, and a herald of a new form of people's democracy. But did it work? The book asks questions about how the great ideologies of the twentieth century such as nationalism, socialism and liberalism both clashed and fused in this small country to establish something no one was expecting, a social democratic state on the periphery of Europe.

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Host or Publisher Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies