Sergei Meskhi – 180 Guardian and Defender of the Georgian Essence

Abstract

Sergei Meskhi's main concern, his sorrow and pain, the main purpose of his work and existence was his homeland and nation, which had their freedom and dignity taken from them by Russia. Everything he wrote and covered on the pages of “Droeba” was a kind of campaign aimed at awake­ning and bringing his poor nation out of its mental crisis. From a patriotic point of view, he was an invaluable phenomenon – always steady, with a pure conscience and a heart burning with love for his country.

Slavery made Georgian people forget and become unaccustomed to many things. Ioane Sabanisdze’s warning in the 8^th century, that we were mixed in a foreign nation and had forgotten our ancestral path, was already an established fact in Georgia at the time of Sergei Meskhi. Time and cir­cum­stances put many traditional and national identity-defining events in dan­ger. In the face of the worldview-aesthetic paradigm of the generation of the new era, going against tradition or fighting it was considered the pri­mary sign of the nation’s degeneration. It is precisely this danger that S. Meskhi saw in the life of Georgian people and wrote that there was almost nothing left that connected us with the old life and reminded us of the deeds of our ancestors, as if we wanted to throw away all traditions, get rid of them, and couldn't introduce anything new in their place. Every generation leaves its own style. Sergei Meskhi couldn't adapt to this as well. He was fascinated by everything Georgian, he saw historical context and purpose in it. Fashion is a determinant of the consciousness and taste of society. For S. Meskhi, there was also a discourse expressing the idea of ​​freedom, which was related to fashion, but innovation should be directed towards national culture – he evaluated the tradition and innovation from this perspective. Sergei received his higher education in St. Petersburg, spent 14 months observing life in Europe and had his eyes on America – taking all this into account, he felt well that Georgian life needed innovation. In general, no­velty for him was associated with the degree of freedom and boldness of thought, but in his opinion it should not come at the expense of putting the national identity at risk. At that time, the mediocre everyday life of globali­za­tion was not a threat, but S. Meskhi warned Georgian youth that novelty should be compatible with traditional cultural norms; our main niche should not be lost and we should not be mixed with a foreign nation so much that we would face the threat of extinction.