Prof. Tariel Putkaradze on Khevsureti

(Based on His Notes)

Abstract

The article examines a significant direction of Prof. Tariel Putkaradze’s educational and pedagogical activity – his concern for the national-ethnic unity of Georgians from all regions. This is directly connected with his linguistic conception, which envisions the equal participation of the Kartvelian dialects in the process of developing the common literary language.
The relevance of the topic is conditioned by the problem of national identity within Georgian society, and in particular, as the scholar himself frequently observes, by the question of how well the new generation knows „who else is Georgian“. It was precisely with the aim of introducing students to the ancestral regions of historical Georgia that the dialectological-ethnographic-folkloric student expeditions were conducted under the guidance of Prof. Tariel Putkaradze. These expeditions were first introduced into the teaching and methodological work of Kutaisi State University through the active efforts and support of staff members of the Scientific-Research Institute of Dialectology. Other institutions of higher education later joined this field practice as well, in particular the Saint Andrew the First-Called Georgian University of the Patriarchate of Georgia, along with the universities of Sokhumi and Javakheti.

The article focuses attention on those letters and notes of Prof. Tariel Putkaradze in which are reflected the impressions gained during the expeditions to Khevsureti, his observations on the speech and traditions of the local population, on the mountaindwellers devoted to their native region, and on the problems and future tasks facing contemporary Khevsureti.
On the basis of the material analyzed, the following conclusion is reached: through the letters and notes he produced on the subject of Khevsureti, Prof. Tariel Putkaradze develops his scholarly conception concerning the contribution of Georgians from every region to the process of forming a unified, common Kartvelian literary culture. Accordingly, one of the principal directions of his pedagogical activity became the introduction to and study of Georgia’s regions, and helping students to grasp the problems of these regions in order to strengthen their civic consciousness. Against this background, the significance of the dialectological- ethnographic-folkloric expeditions conducted under Prof. Tariel Putkaradze’s guidance emerges clearly – a significance that is both purely scholarly and rightly oriented toward matters of state.