Peter Kabachnik

Dr. Kabachnik is a Professor of Geography in the Department of Political Science and Global Affairs and Coordinator of the Geography program at the College of Staten Island-The City University of New York (CUNY) and a member of the Earth and Environmental Sciences program graduate faculty at The Graduate Center-The City University of New York (CUNY). He received his PhD in Geography (2007) from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). He is a political and cultural geographer, whose interests lie in the way that people interact with places, and the interplay between place, mobility, and identity more generally. He is currently working on a research project examining the role that personality cults play as a form of social and spatial control in authoritarian regimes. This project explores more broadly how personality cults function, how they act as a disciplinary mechanism, and how they engender practices of compliance and resistance. He also examines the role of memory and memorialized landscapes in shaping national narratives, geopolitical contestations, and people’s everyday practices. He is particularly interested in post-Soviet memory and the memorialized landscape in Georgia, focusing on contemporary understandings of Stalin. His previous research has investigated topics such as discrimination against nomadic Gypsy and Traveler groups and the issues facing internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Georgia.

Recent Publications:

• Kabachnik, Peter, Gugushvili, Alexi, and Kirvalidze, Ana. “What About the Monument? Public Opinion and Contentious Politics in Stalin’s Homeland.” Problems in Post-Communism. Forthcoming.

• Gugushvili, Alexi and Kabachnik, Peter. 2019. “Stalin on Their Minds: Understanding Contemporary Public Perceptions of the Soviet Dictator in Russia and Georgia.” International Journal of Sociology. 49 (5-6): 317-341.

• Kabachnik, Peter. 2018. “The Power of Place, or Powerless Places? Hybrid Attitudes Toward Soviet Symbols in Post-Soviet Georgia.” Central Asian Survey. 37 (2): 265-285.

• Gugushvili, Alexi, Kabachnik, Peter, and Gilbreath, Aaron. 2016. “Cartographies of Stalin: Place, Scale, and Reputational Politics.” Professional Geographer. 68 (3): 356-367

• Kabachnik, Peter, Grabowska, Magda, Regulska, Joanna, Mitchneck, Beth, and Mayorova, Olga V.  2013. “Traumatic Masculinities: The Gendered Geographies of Georgian IDPs from Abkhazia.” Gender, Place, and Culture. 20 (6): 773-79.

• Kabachnik, Peter. 2013. “Prison, Nuisance, or Spectacle ?: The 2009 “Cell” Protests in Tbilisi,Georgia.” Geopolitics. 18 (1): 1-23.

• Kabachnik, Peter. 2012. “Nomads and Mobile Places: Disentangling Place, Space, and Mobility.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. 19 (2): 210-228.