The 1990s "Kutaisi wave": music and youth movement in a postindustrial periphery

Having apologized for the unanticipated human cost, the ruling party defended the move, claiming that it would partially relocate the country's "political epicenter" from Tbilisi to western Georgia, contribute to political stability and the "revitalization of political life" in Georgia's second largest city, and help "to increase economic dynamism" in the region (Civil Georgia 2009). For the current Georgian government, dramatic acts like the removal of the Kutaisi monument are a means of staging a cathartic break with the previous regime; for the young people who lived in Kutaisi in the transitional years, the symbolic interventions of politicians are tiresome, insincere, and out-of-touch.24 Both the incumbent government in 2009 and the Kutaisi wave participants in the 1990s contributed in a significant way to ongoing negotiations over Kutaisi's political and cultural identity vis-à-vis Tbilisi and the rest of Georgia.