Habilitationsprojekt: Red Sailors in Troubled Waters. Maritime Infrastructure, the Soviet Georgian Merchant Fleet, and 'being global' during the Cold War.

In 1967, the Soviet Republic of Georgia established its own merchant fleet, allowing Georgian sailors to travel far beyond the socialist realm. This initiative was part of Moscow’s grand strategy to emerge as a sea power and participate in global maritime trade. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union had developed the third-largest merchant fleet in the world. Maritime transport became integral to the establishment of a Soviet global economic empire, necessitating a well-maintained merchant fleet and efficient ports, but also global agencies, maritime education, and operating intelligence. These infrastructures form the core of my research project on the Soviet merchant fleet, an area that has been largely understudied compared to the history of the Soviet military fleet.

The second focus of the project is on the sailors of long-distance voyages. These sailors became a privileged group, able to travel abroad and thus required careful monitoring to ensure they represented the Soviet Union well. Additionally, the project aims to understand the global dynamics within the Soviet Union and their effects on regions, collectives, and individuals.

Beyond maritime history, this project integrates approaches from mobility history, global history, infrastructure studies, and cultural history. It aims to understand how the Soviet Union emerged and acted globally with a major merchant fleet and the effects this maritime pivot had on the Soviet coastal republics on the Black Sea.
It is primarily centered in Georgia, a country whose maritimization policy was a top priority for the Soviets yet conceptualized in relation to and entanglement with the Soviet center and the Black Sea riparian states. Thus, this research seeks to provide new perspectives on the functioning of the Soviet Empire during the Cold War and analyze the peripheral republics’ own experience of globalization.