ENGINES OF SOLIDARITY: MILIJA GLUHOVIC INTERVIEWS EVELINA GAMBINO ON A STATE IN A STATE

So we're here today to talk about the film A State in a State, which is directed by Tekla Aslanishvili, and on which you worked as a researcher. The film is an experimental documentary that, as the title suggests, traces the construction, disruption, and fragmentation of railways in the South Caucasus and Caspian regions, observing how these transport infrastructures have come to materialise the fragile political borders that re-emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Could you maybe start by briefly discussing your involvement in the film, the type of research you conducted for it, how your collaboration with Tekla came about, and what you found most interesting and rewarding in that collaboration?

Thank you so much, it’s a pleasure to meet you and talk to you. My name is Evelina Gambino, and I am the Margaret Tyler Research Fellow in Geography at Girton College, University of Cambridge. I have been studying infrastructure in Georgia for several years. In 2017, I set out to study the construction and subsequent failure of what was then one of the largest infrastructure projects in the country—and certainly the most publicised, as it was known as the "project of the century"—the port of Anaklia. Anaklia is at the border between Georgia and the defacto state of Abkhazia and for this reason, the port was invested with a geopolitical meaning, as an infrastructure potentially capable of creating a bridge the two sides of this contested border. It was in Anaklia, during my fieldwork, that I met Tekla, who was filming her documentary on the same project.

When we met, we discovered that we were not only interested in the same project, but we were also asking the same questions. Specifically, we wanted to understand how transnational narratives attached to infrastructure—such as those of global logistical development and infrastructure-led development—were being translated and materialised in a place like Anaklia, a remote yet geopolitically charged village on the Black Sea coast. In other words, we wanted to know how logistics transformed from something abstract into something situated.

We began our projects in parallel and in collaboration. After we finished our respective projects—through which there was significant cross-pollination—we decided to start a new project together. This time, we focused on a different infrastructure: a railway that crosses the south-western part of Georgia, linking it to Turkey and Azerbaijan. This railway is known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK). It was during this project that we created what became A State in a State.

The film was a collaborative effort. We both conducted research for it, sometimes together, sometimes independently. We filmed in various locations, and we wrote the script together as Tekla edited the footage.

In many ways, our collaboration has been a constant throughout my research, and our understanding of infrastructure has grown together across our different projects.

One of your major research interests is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the large infrastructure project introduced by China and Xi Jinping in Kazakhstan in 2013. How do you see the BTK railway aligning or mapping onto the BRI?

I think the BTK railway line is a very interesting infrastructure through which to examine the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), mainly because, like many other infrastructures that are part of this route, it’s not entirely new. By looking at the BTK, one can clearly see that the BRI is a mix of both new and very old infrastructures. It brings together not only different places but also the various stories and logics behind these infrastructures. In many ways, we can say that the BRI is a palimpsest of different infrastructures, logics, places, and histories.

I believe this is important, not just because it acknowledges the complexities and depth of a project like the BRI, but also because it allows us to ask different questions about the BRI. If we begin to view the BRI as something that looks very different in various locations, we may be able to counteract some of the dominant narratives that portray the BRI as necessarily threatening or as a singular entity.

It reveals the BRI as a multiplicity. In the case of the BTK railway, it also highlights some of the uglier sides of infrastructural development within the BRI, largely due to the specific history of the BTK railway, which is deeply connected to conflict. The wars that ravaged the Caucasus following the collapse of the Soviet Union are directly tied to this railway.

To briefly explain, the contemporary origins of the BTK railway lie in the aftermath of the first Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan (1988-1994). This railway was conceived to allow Azerbaijan and Turkey to bypass Armenia by routing through Georgia. In many ways, as we show in our film, this railway logistically excluded Armenia, compounding the outcomes of the war and translating them into infrastructural relations.

Looking at the BRI from this perspective reveals different facets of it. As for how the BTK fits into the BRI, it sought to become part of the initiative much later. While its inception dates back to 1993, it wasn’t until more than two decades later that the BTK became one of the key infrastructures of the so-called Middle Corridor of the BRI.

The BRI operates across various corridors. There’s the northern corridor through Russia, a southern corridor passing through Iran, a maritime corridor, and the Middle Corridor, which passes through several Central Asian countries, including Kazakhstan (which has developed significant infrastructure), Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. This corridor, however, has struggled to develop as expected, largely due to the complexities of managing a route that traverses multiple countries. For logistical companies, it’s far simpler to move cargo through one country, such as Russia, than to cross several borders.

However, after February 2022—following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the imposition of sanctions, and the risks associated with moving goods through Ukraine and Russia—the Middle Corridor began to gain importance. When Tekla and I started investigating this infrastructure, we were at a turning point for the BTK. It had acquired a new function, one now connected to the BRI.

Thank you very much, that was very useful for providing geopolitical and historical background to better understand how this particular railway fits within its geography.

Now, going back to the film:

It has this biographical element, which I found very interesting—Tekla reflecting on her memories of the railway, recalling how, as a child, she didn’t really know where the trains were coming from or going to. Then, many years later, she became interested in discovering that finding out this information might actually be politically sensitive. Her exploration of this issue offers, in a way, an ethnographic study.

It’s not the bird's-eye view of the BRI that we often encounter in the social sciences—the top-down approach—but rather a deeply situated investigation, featuring conversations with railway workers and people living along the line who support this infrastructure. The film examines the railway as, as you say, a kind of palimpsestic structure, moving between Soviet times, the present, and the various ways it has been repurposed over time.

What do you take away in particular from this kind of engagement with ordinary people on the ground? How have these infrastructures impacted their lives across these time spans—before the collapse of the Soviet Union, immediately after, and in the present day? What would you like us to take away from the film? What were the key findings for you?

I think this brings us back to the idea of what infrastructures really are. In my teaching, I tell my students that if we want to understand infrastructure, both as a set of objects and as a series of concepts, it's helpful to start with the term itself. Infrastructure is a composite word: infra means underneath and structure refers to the physical or organisational framework. So, infrastructures are, at their most basic, structures that underpin larger systems.

When we examine infrastructure in a place like Georgia, a country grappling with a new sense of identity after the collapse of the Soviet Union, these structures become very telling. The key question is: what systems do these infrastructures support? This question arises repeatedly in my research, revealing a significant gap between the promise of infrastructure and its reality. After the Soviet Union collapsed, when things no longer made sense, infrastructure was seen as a kind of thread that would weave everything back together. Georgia envisioned itself as a place that could make infrastructural sense in the new global order that was emerging.

However, when we conducted our research—nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union—we found that infrastructures make very little sense to people on the ground. In fact, they are often confusing, even for those who are supposed to be promoting them. This gap in meaning is something that researchers need to explore. In particular, our experience of trying to understand how the specific infrastructure of the BTK railway made sense in the region and to its people revealed forms of marginalisation and disconnection far beyond what I had imagined.

One of the key questions we were left with, especially after speaking with the minority Armenian population living in the area, was this: how is it possible that a project, justified from the Georgian perspective as something that would develop the region, ended up further marginalising a population that was already profoundly marginalised? This question is not only crucial in the context of Georgia but also leads us to question infrastructure more broadly. Why are we building these structures? If they are not designed to improve people’s lives—even marginally—then what are they for?

Unfortunately, what we saw in the case of the BTK is that infrastructures are not necessarily built for people. Rather, they are part of different "sense-making" projects, often driven by explicit forms of violence. This was a sombre realisation. It’s also why we wanted to incorporate an intimate element into the film—because we believe that personal relationships to infrastructure matter. And, to avoid being entirely bleak, it’s worth noting that we found some of the most hopeful stories in personal interactions. These individual stories offered glimpses of resilience and possibility amidst the broader struggles.

Can you tell us a bit more about these hopeful stories? There’s a particularly interesting moment, where in an interview with Tekla, she introduces the concept of infrastructural consciousness in relation to the solidarity that emerged between railway workers in Belarus and Ukraine.

We’re shifting geographically now, but she discusses how, during the invasion of Ukraine, railway workers in Belarus effectively sabotaged the signalling system to slow down the advance of Russian troops and artillery moving from Belarus into Ukraine. This is one powerful vignette. Tekla also talks about the long-standing connectivity between railway workers during Soviet times, which is where this idea of a "state within a state" emerged. As she puts it in the documentary, railway workers had their own systems—schools, kindergartens, hospitals, communication networks, and so on.

Could you tell us more about this solidarity that existed and seems to persist today? And, if you’re familiar with the term infrastructural consciousness, could you unpack it for us a bit?

You're pointing out one of the key features of the film, which is where it gets its name from. Tekla and I had many discussions about the title because, while this is just one element of the film, we both felt it was the most important and touching of the various threads we were weaving together, and one we wanted to leave the viewers with.

For the film, we interviewed several people who used to work on these railway lines, as well as those seeking employment on the railways today. Most of the former railway workers we interviewed were from Georgia and Armenia, and they had been part of the Soviet railway system. While earlier I mentioned the railway’s post-Soviet life, it actually has a much longer history, dating back to the Russian Empire when it was first built in the late 19th century to connect Russia with its newly acquired territories in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Later, under Soviet rule, it was repurposed to become part of the USSR's logistical system.

The people we interviewed were retired workers who shared their memories of working on the railway, and what we found deeply moving was that their recollections often stood in contrast to the current, post-Soviet purpose of the railway. As I mentioned before, today this railway serves to disconnect, particularly excluding Armenia from the broader logistical network. But the workers we spoke to, from various countries across the Caucasus, remembered it as a space that fostered connection—not just between individuals, but between different groups of people.

Their stories were often ones of solidarity, particularly between workers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, even during difficult times. One worker in the film says, “Our railway faced very hard times, but in those moments of hardship and danger, we always had each other as fellow workers.” This solidarity was made possible through the infrastructure itself.

What we wanted to highlight in the film was that this consciousness of solidarity as workers was mediated through their connection to the railway. It wasn’t born from a shared culture or background, but from the fact that they were all connected by working on this particular piece of infrastructure—by knowing how it functioned, how to repair it, how to navigate it. The infrastructure also provided them with guidance, education, and leisure time, creating an ecosystem that brought them together.

When Tekla spoke of infrastructural consciousness, this is what she meant—the idea that infrastructure is not just an accessory to political consciousness, but a fundamental site where political awareness can emerge. This concept resonates with the work of scholars in Science and Technology Studies, such as Timothy Mitchell, whose book Carbon Democracy explores the relationship between materials of infrastructure and different forms of political consciousness.

For me, this is one of the most moving aspects of the film—particularly in a context that, as I’ve explained, is often quite bleak. Speaking with people who had a different, more hopeful experience of infrastructure was incredibly powerful.

That's a really interesting narrative. In a way, it starts with invasive infrastructures, so to speak, using North American scholar Anne Spice’s term. We see invasive structures during the Russian Imperial period, which then map onto the Soviet era. With this comes a progressivist idea of connection and development, but there is also an extractivist dimension to consider.

Then there are ways of life, in a broader sense, and different milieus that emerge, but also disappear or change, which introduces an element of loss. I'm curious to hear how you interpret this present moment: what remains of that milieu or those people who possess that living memory?

Are they now in a radically different situation due to the new geopolitics? How does China factor into all of this? Who are the winners and losers in this new context along the BTK line? If we think of it in that broader context of current geopolitics, what insights can we draw?

I mean, this is a very hard question to answer right now, especially from Georgia, where we are less than a month away from the elections that will determine the fate of the country. These elections involve infrastructure, which plays a significant role in this context, as conflicts surrounding infrastructure have been very vocal in recent years. There has been a backlash from the government against these conflicts and against the idea of what infrastructure should provide for the country. We will see what happens in the elections, but, unfortunately, in terms of winners and losers, I feel that there are mostly losers in infrastructural development in countries like Georgia. Georgia is a peripheral country that is not particularly powerful on the global stage. It’s not rich and does not have natural resources like Azerbaijan, which means it lacks the financial and geopolitical leverage to disrupt existing balances. Consequently, when infrastructure is developed in a country like this, it often has to accept very unfavourable terms.

I want to be very clear here: I don't believe that the unfavourable terms offered by China are worse than those that have been offered in the past. There is a tendency to portray China as a unique monstrosity regarding the damage that its infrastructure development can inflict on different countries, and I think that is not true. This portrayal is often imbued with Orientalist, if not outright racist, fantasies. However, I also do not want to suggest that China can necessarily be a solution. The issue is that infrastructures are built to yield a return, which can be either an economic return through financialisation or a geopolitical return in the case of the BTK. However, these infrastructures are also very volatile; the conditions necessary for them to deliver these returns are often unfavourable. Thus, I feel that, at the moment, there are mostly losers in infrastructural development in Georgia.

That said, one of the reasons we have highlighted the stories of infrastructure again is not to idealise a presumably idyllic time of infrastructural life, such as that during the Soviet Union, against the present. Instead, it is to emphasise that, in  unfavourable circumstances, both past and present, there is always something excessive, something different. There are always ways in which people can express solidarity with each other, and they can, in fact, create different infrastructural worlds. If we pay attention to these infrastructural worlds and to the logics that govern them, then a better, more equitable vision of infrastructure could potentially emerge.

Thank you very much. Before we close this conversation, I'm aware that you’re working on a new project with Tekla. Would you like to give us a sneak preview of what you’re up to?

Currently, as we're conducting the interview, I am sitting in an increasingly dark room at the Institute of Hydrometeorology in Tbilisi, which is a Soviet-era institute that is no longer operational. Tomorrow, the Tbilisi Architecture Biennale will open. Tekla and I have a project together, but it's primarily Tekla’s project, in which I am participating.

It’s a collaboration between Tekla and a Georgian architect named Natalia Nebieridze, along with a Georgian scholar called Aleksandra Aroshvili and myself. Our project is titled Unmapping Energy Geography, and we will premiere Tekla's new film, which is again an experimental documentary titled “the mountain speaks to the sea” that explores the various conflicts arising from the development of hydropower infrastructure in one of Georgia's mountainous regions, Svaneti.

The film aims to unpack how the pursuit of hydropower has altered socioeconomic and environmental relations in Svaneti, with effects that trickle down to the rest of Georgia. Our collective project attempts to unmap these relationships and propose a different way of understanding Georgia's rivers beyond hydropower. This is a temporary project, as it will be an exhibition open for the next month, but Tekla will continue to work on hydropower, and we will collaborate with this team in the future.

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Evelina Gambino is the Margaret Tyler Research Fellow in Geography at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her research is concerned with a situated analysis of global logistics. She has done ethnographic work around several flagship connectivity infrastructures in Georgia and the South Caucasus. In collaboration with artist and director Tekla Aslanishvili she has produced the experimental documentary A State in A State.

Milija Gluhovic is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick. His research interests include contemporary European theatre and performance, memory studies and psychoanalysis, discourses of European identity, migration and human rights, as well as religion, secularity, and politics.