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TOWARDS
GEORGIAN
INDEPENDENCE:
1917-18
Abdication of Nicholas II--Kerensky and the Georgian SocialDemocrats--Economic change and social revolution--Restoration
of the Georgian Church--Disintegration of Russia's Caucasian Front--Short
rations and Bolshevik broadsheets--The Bolsheviks seize power--The Transcaucasian Commissariat--The Turkish
menace--Brest-Litovsk repudiated--An ephemeral federation-Germany takes a
hand--Birth of the Georgian Republic
Abdication
of Nicholas II
THE STRESSES of World War I precipitated the Russian
political débâcle which many observers had long
predicted. In March 1917, when the revolution ultimately took place, the fall
of Tsardom was comparatively effortless. Bread
riots in Petrograd were followed by a mutiny
of the garrison there. The Duma refused to obey the
Tsar's orders any longer. A provisional government was formed on 14 March,
and Nicholas gave in and abdicated without a struggle.
When the news of the revolution reached Georgia, the fabric of authority
crumbled and collapsed. In Tbilisi
and elsewhere, the police vanished from their posts and administrative
offices closed down. Bands of revolutionaries appeared from their hiding
places. Mass meetings were held in the principal towns, at which fierce
mountaineers and grimy workers fraternized and congratulated one another on
the achievement of their longed-for freedom. The once formidable viceroy,
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, haggard, with
bloodshot eyes and trembling hands, declared to the local representative of
the British fatherland. To the Georgian Social-Democrats Zhordania
and Noe Ramishvili, the
grand duke expressed the hope that he might himself be granted a seat in the
Constituent Assembly which would be called upon to decide the future
organization of the Russian state. However, this was not to be. Nikolai Nikolaevich was very soon relieved of his post by the new
Petrograd government, and politely escorted to Tbilisi railway station by squads of
cheering soldiers waving red banners and singing the Internationale.
Aware of the urgency of establishing some form of
authority in Transcaucasia, the Provisional Government in Petrograd formed a
special committee, consisting in the main of Caucasian members of the Duma, to exercise civil power in Georgia, Armenia
and Azerbaijan.
The chairman of this committee, the so-called Ozakom,
was B. A. Kharlamov. At the outset its only
Georgian member was Prince Kita Abashidze.
Kerensky
and the Georgian Social-Democrats
Representations by the Tbilisi
socialists later brought about the co-option of Akaki
Chkhenkeli, the Georgian SocialDemocrat,
who also acted as the Petrograd Soviet's Commissar for Caucasia
and on the Turkish military front. The Ozakom has
been described as 'a collective Viceroy, only much weaker and without the
prestige which the representatives of the Tsars had enjoyed'. 92 One
of the sources of weakness of the Kerensky government in Russia was incessant rivalry
between the administration and the Soviets, both of which regarded themselves
as the true repositories of revolutionary power. A similar dualism existed in
Transcaucasia. Everywhere selfappointed revolutionary bodies sprang up, ready to
assume various functions of government. Among these we may mention the
executive committees of the cities of Tbilisi and Kutaisi, which represented
a wide range of social groups and classes, and normally obeyed the directives
of the Ozakom, and the Tbilisi Soviet of Workers'
Deputies ( Chairman, Noe Zhordania), in which the Georgian Mensheviks had a
decisive majority and to which as time went on deputies of the soldiers and
peasants also adhered.
Economic
change and social revolution
As during the 1905 revolution, the Georgian revolutionary
organizations behaved during the trying circumstances of 1917 with moderation
and public spirit. They lent their influence to keeping the peace, preventing
inter-communal strife, and bringing about social and economic reforms in the
midst of the war conditions and general upheaval. The leading Georgian SocialDemocrats renounced for the time being the
extremist slogans of Bolshevik class war and came out on the side of national
unity.
'The present revolution,' Zhordania
declared on 18 March 1917, 'is not the affair of some one class; the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie are together directing the affairs of the
revolution. . . . We must walk together with those forces which participate
in the movement of the revolution and organize the Republic with our forces
in common.' 93
The March revolution brought again into the forefront all the
old social and economic problems which the Tsarist government had failed to
tackle. First and foremost was the agrarian problem. This, obviously, could
not be settled overnight. Accordingly, peasants and landowners in many parts
of Georgia adopted an interim solution, whereby share-cropping peasants
settled on a landowner's estates simply ceased handing over the master's
share of the crop, the so-called gala, amounting to between
one-quarter and one-half of the total. Having no one to cultivate them on their
behalf, the nobility found their domains slipping from their grasp, while the
peasants were now endowed with both their own former small-holdings and those
portions of their former lord's estates which they had formerly cultivated as
share-croppers. Access to communal woodlands and pastures, monopolized by the
landed proprietors under the terms of the liberation decrees of 1864 onwards,
reverted to the peasantry. Plantations, forests and vineyards owned by
members of the former Russian imperial family were confiscated and
nationalized. Small farms belonging to the lesser squirearchy,
a numerous category in Georgian rural society, were
relatively little affected.
Restoration
of the Georgian
Church
Another burning question also swept into the forefront--that
of the autocephaly or independent status of the Georgian Orthodox Church. As
soon as news of the March revolution reached Tbilisi, the Georgian bishops invaded the
headquarters of the Russian exarchate and ejected the Russian chief bishop
and his staff. Georgians were appointed to take their places and administer
the property and estates of the Georgian
Church. The Ozakom was asked to give official sanction to the
restoration of the Georgian patriarchate, abolished by Russia in 1811. However, this question
was simply shelved until the eventual convention of the all-Russian
Constituent Assembly. This did not deter the Georgians from going ahead with
the reorganization of their old national Church. Bishop Kyrion
was elected Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia,
taking the title of Kyrion II, and new statutes
were worked out at synods held in Tbilisi
in 1917 and at the historic monastery of Gelati in
1921. Patriarch Kyrion died in 1918, and was
succeeded by Patriarch Leonid, who lived until shortly after the Bolshevik
invasion of 1921.
The collapse of the old Tsarist police and gendarmerie
inevitably led in some regions of Georgia to anarchy and unrest.
During the summer of 1917 criminal elements masquerading as revolutionaries
found frequent opportunities for pillage and arson. The Ozakom
and the local Executive Committees set up field courts-martial and a number
of terrorists were shot. Pending the establishment of a regular People's
Guard, Zhordania and his colleagues recruited from Guria a detachment of people's militia commanded by V.
and K. Imnadze, which helped to maintain order
where needed. Belated steps were taken to introduce into Georgia the Russian Zemstvo or rural district council organization, which had
played a leading part in local government affairs as well as in the liberal
reform movement since its inception during the 1860's. Ilia
Chavchavadze and other leading figures in Georgian
public life had for half a century petitioned successive Russian governors to
introduce the Zemstvo pattern of local government
into Georgia--a demand
regularly rejected by St. Petersburg.
Only now, when the old order was already in dissolution, could this overdue
reform be tried out for a brief season, only to be swept away by the invasion
of Communist Russia in 1921.
From March 1917, then, local authority within Georgia resided principally with the
Social-Democrats, whose Tbilisi
committee, directed by Zhordania and his deputy Noe Ramishvili, formed the backbone of the Petrograd-appointed Ozakom. Between the Georgian Social-Democrats and the
Kerensky régime in Petrograd there was
little basic divergence of aim. With Nikolai (Karlo)
Chkheidze as Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and Irakli Tsereteli a prominent
minister in the Provisional Government, the Georgian Mensheviks were able to
make their voices heard insistently in the councils of Russia and the world. In fact,
Trotsky and the Bolsheviks were somewhat afraid of what they contemptuously
termed the 'Georgian Gironde', and accused Chkheidze,
Tsereteli and Zhordania
of attempting to dominate and pervert the Russian revolution and foist upon
it their own provincial interests and ideology.
Disintegration
of Russia's
Caucasian Front
Nevertheless, Tbilisi and Petrograd were not always in complete harmony. Divergences
often broke out over tactics and priorities. Thus, Zhordania
was strongly critical of the 'democratic cretinism' which inspired the
Kerensky government to postpone settlement of the many crying social and
economic problems left over from Tsardom until
these could be referred to a constituent assembly convened with every
refinement of electoral procedure from all corners of the farflung
Russian state. Many of the Tbilisi Social-Democrats were also opposed, in
private at least, to continuance of the unpopular war with Germany and Turkey
which, it was manifest, was beyond Russia's physical resources and
presented a serious threat to the future of the revolution. There was indeed
much to be said in favour of a ceasefire on the
Caucasian front, where the Russian army had conquered vast areas of Turkish
Anatolia and Armenia
and was holding out deep in Turkish territory against the depleted and
demoralized remains of the Ottoman Army. Terms advantageous to Russia
could, on this front at least, readily have been obtained. Zhordania later recalled:
'Preoccupied with these matters, we got into direct
telephone contact with I. Tsereteli and K. Chkheidze at Petrograd.
We had discussions with them and acquainted them with the views of our party
and our Soviet. We demanded reforms, decisive steps towards the conclusion of
peace, and so forth. No reply could we get, except for vague reassurances and
appeals for calm: "We are making preparations, everything will be all
right, etc., etc."'94
In the meantime, Russia was moving rapidly towards
the left. Demands for peace at any price resounded through the land, while
Bolshevik agitators urged the peasants to seize the landlords' estates
without awaiting the nebulous deliberations of the Constituent Assembly. By
failing to come to grips with these two fundamental problems--peace and land
reform-the Kerensky government dug its own grave, while Zhordania
and his associates impotently fretted and fumed far away in Tbilisi.
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In May 1917, the first congress of delegates of the
Caucasian army met in Tbilisi.
It was dominated by the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutionaries. There were
only a few Bolsheviks among the delegates, notably Korganov,
later Commissar of War in the Baku Commune, and the Georgian S. Kavtaradze. The Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks
professed, in public at least, to believe in the need to continue the war to
a victorious end, whereas the Bolshevik minority unsuccessfully demanded
peace at any price. Whatever the Georgians might have felt,
the need to continue the struggle to the bitter end was irresistibly pressed
by the Armenian Dashnaks and other representatives
of the Armenian nation. Mortally afraid of the Turks, the Armenians had been
encouraged by the American President Wilson to believe that an Allied victory
would be followed by the creation of an independent Greater Armenia carved
from the debris of the Turkish empire and stretching from the Mediterranean
to the Caspian Sea. The Armenians called for
complete support of the Petrograd government
and the prosecution of war to the death. And so the war on the Caucasian
front was allowed to drag on for many months more.
Short
rations and Bolshevik broadsheets
As the year 1917 wore on, the situation of Russia's
Caucasian Command became increasingly unfavourable.
The majority of the half-million troops engaged against Turkey were not
Georgians or Armenians, but Russian peasants from the European provinces,
whose only concern was to finish fighting as soon as possible and return home
to seize their share of the estates of dispossessed landlords. Conditions at
the front were extremely harsh. At times, the men of the 4th Caucasian Rifle
Division, whose chief of staff was the Georgian General Kvinitadze,
received only half a pound of bread per day, and horses only one and a half
pounds of barley. There was no meat and no conserves, and the men were
boiling soup from the flesh of donkeys, cats and dogs. Bolshevik newspapers
and broadsheets began to circulate in the ranks, while democratic changes
introduced into army structure by the Provisional Government under pressure
from the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets rapidly affected discipline and
morale. In June 1917, the Russian commander in the Caucasus,
Yudenich, resigned and was replaced by General Przhevalsky. This change did not improve the military
position. The standstill along the front continued, while there was a further
increase in incidents and disturbances in the rear echelons. With the October
Revolution, demobilization became spontaneous and irresistible, even before
Trotsky began the official negotiations that led to the peace of
Brest-Litovsk.
In the autumn of 1917, the food shortage in Georgia and Transcaucasia
generally became acute. Caucasia had long depended for a large portion of her
wheat and other grain supplies on South Russia.
With the general anarchy prevailing in Russia, these supplies were
largely cut off. On 15 October, a special conference on food supplies was
convened in Tbilisi,
attended by the Russian commander on the Caucasian front, General Przhevalsky. It was estimated that the requirements of
the Caucasian Army amounted to 24 million poods
(1 pood = 36 lb.) of flour and 36 million poods of corn, oats and barley annually, while the
needs of the civilian population of Transcaucasia
amounted to another 51 million poods of
grain-a total of 111 million poods. The
procurement of such quantities was out of the question. For the civilian
population of Tbilisi,
ten wagon-loads of wheat a day were required, whereas only four were
currently being delivered. A ship which arrived at Batumi
carrying corn from Russia
was commandeered by demobilized soldiers, who sailed back to Russia
in it without unloading the cargo. The bread ration in Georgia was cut still further,
while measures were taken to evacuate town dwellers to country districts.
Schools in Tbilisi
were shut down and the pupils sent off to rural areas. By such measures as
these, the population of the Georgian capital was quickly reduced by some
15,000.
The
Bolsheviks seize power
Early in November 1917, news was received in Tbilisi of the successful Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd and the fall of Kerensky's Provisional
Government. The reaction of the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani Soviets
and executive committees was immediate and hostile. On 8 November 1917, the
Regional Centre of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies met
at Tbilisi together with the executive committees of the Social-Revolutionary
and Social-Democratic (Menshevik) parties and resolved that the interests of
the revolution demanded the liquidation of the Bolshevik insurrection and the
immediate convocation of the all-Russian Constituent Assembly. A few days
later, another meeting declared that the war with Germany
and Turkey
should go on and no separate peace be concluded.
The position of the Georgian Social-Democrats at this
juncture was somewhat paradoxical. In their dim, dogmatic way, they were, no
doubt, excellent patriots, though rather indifferent nationalists, being
wholeheartedly devoted to the fashionable slogans of international
brotherhood and workingclass solidarity. Since the
beginning of the century, they had been stumping the country proclaiming Georgia's destiny to help the workers and
peasants of the entire Russian Empire towards economic and political fulfilment, and combating those who thought that Georgia's national salvation lay in
independence through separation from Russia. With public speakers of
the calibre of Irakli Tsereteli and Nikolai Chkheidze
prominent first in the Tsarist Dumas and then under Kerensky, the Georgian
Mensheviks exerted an influence in Russian affairs out of all proportion to
their numerical strength. The Russian political dog had sometimes been wagged
by its Georgian Menshevik tail. With the triumph of Lenin's Bolsheviks, the
Russian dog had cut itself adrift with a vengeance, while the Georgian tail
was left wagging furiously in a void. Far from rejoicing at their new-found
freedom, the Georgian Mensheviks quailed at the prospect before them. 'A
misfortune has befallen us,' Noe Zhordania lamented. 'The connection with Russia has been broken and Transcaucasia
has been left alone. We have to stand on our own feet and either help
ourselves or perish through anarchy.' 95
Instead of proclaiming Transcaucasia's independence, as
they could readily have done, and coming to terms immediately with Turkey
and the Central Powers, the Caucasian politicians dallied and played for
time. On 24 November 1917, a conference of the Regional Centre of Soviets,
the Regional Soviet of the Caucasian Army, the Tbilisi City Council, the Ozakom, the trades unions and other representative bodies
met in Tbilisi and decided that since
Transcaucasia could not recognize the Bolshevik usurpation in Petrograd, a local régime would have to be organized.
Since this was regarded as merely a temporary expedient, pending the
suppression of the Bolshevik rebels, the Georgians continued to make
arrangements for the forthcoming elections to the all-Russian Constituent
Assembly. This much-heralded body, it was fondly believed, would soon quell
the unspeakable Bolsheviks and bring Russia back to the paths of
reason and order. In the event, the Constituent Assembly, in which Lenin's
followers were a minority, was forcibly dispersed by Bolshevik troops after
one sitting in January 1918--an event which marked the deathknell
of Russian parliamentary democracy.
The Transcaucasian Commissariat
Meanwhile, the Transcaucasian
Soviet and party organizations had set up on 28 November 1917 a provisional
government, called the Transcaucasian Commissariat.
It included three Georgians, three Azerbaijanis, three Armenians and two
Russians. The Georgian Menshevik Evgeni Gegechkori was elected chairman, as well as being
Commissar of Labour and External Affairs. The other
two Georgian commissars were Akaki Chkhenkeli (Interior) and Aleksiev-Meskhiev(Education). While
predominantly Menshevik in character, the commissariat also included nominees
of the Muslim Musavat organization, the Armenian Dashnaks, and the SocialRevolutionaries.
The Bolsheviks were excluded. On the very next day, a detachment of Georgian
Red Guards, recruited from Menshevik workers and led by a former Bolshevik
named Valiko Jugheli,
seized the Tbilisi
arsenal, held hitherto by a detachment of Russian soldiers with strong
Bolshevik leanings. Ordered by the Tbilisi Soviet to surrender the place, the
baffled soldiers gave in after a token resistance. In this way the Georgian
capital was preserved from the marauding hordes of Russian troops returning
home pell-mell from the Caucasian front. The capture of the arsenal was a
decisive setback to the Georgian Bolsheviks, and Lenin was extremely
displeased when the news reached him.
While shrinking still from any formal declaration of
independence from Russia,
the Transcaucasian Commissariat entered forthwith
into negotiations with the Turks for an armistice on the crumbling Caucasian
front. A provisional agreement between the Russian General Przhevalsky and the Turkish commander, Vehip Pasha, was concluded at Erzinjan
on 18 December 1917. However, Enver Pasha's Young
Turk government at Istanbul was well aware of
the heaven-sent chance which the Russian revolution offered for Turkey to recover Caucasian territories
wrested from her by Russia
over the preceding century, so that this move was mainly designed to gain
time pending further weakening of Russia's
military and political grip on Caucasia.
Meanwhile, the Russian Bolsheviks were busily negotiating a separate peace
with Germany
and Austro-Hungary at Brest-Litovsk, at which conference, however, the
Caucasian peoples were not directly represented.
The
Turkish menace
During the winter of 1917-18, the situation in the
Anatolian border areas around the Russo-Turkish front lines deteriorated still further. Vehip Pasha protested repeatedly to the Russian commander
and the Transcaucasian government about alleged
massacres of Turks and other Muslims by vengeful Armenian guerilla bands. On
12 February 1918 the Turks broke the truce and advanced against Erzinjan. Before the end of the month, Erzinjan and Trebizond
were once more in Turkish hands. The Russian Army had by now virtually melted
away. Against Vehip's force of 50,000 men and 160
field guns, the Georgians could muster only about 10,000 men, of indifferent
quality and morale, while the small Armenian national army, heroic but
hopelessly outnumbered, was spread thinly over a very wide area of difficult
and exposed country. The nominal head of these armies was the Russian general,
Lebedinsky, but the real confidence of the Transcaucasian government was given to the Georgian
commander, General I. Z. Odishelidze, a Knight of
the Order of St. George, former Governor of Samarkand, and late chief of
staff of one of the Russian armies on the European front. Erzurum was defended by an Armenian
garrison under the partisan leader Andronik. The RussoCaucasian forces were hampered by thousands of panicstricken refugees, Christian Armenians for the most
part, fleeing from the implacable vengeance of the advancing Turks. There was
every prospect that hundreds of thousands of the Turks and Tatars living in
the Caucasus would rise in support of their
triumphant Muslim brethren. Andronik evacuated Erzurum on 12 March 1918, while Batumi,
Ispir, Kars
and Van were menaced by the Turkish spearheads.
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on the mini-map for better resolution
In the meantime, Trotsky had signed the Treaty of BrestLitovsk, whereby the Bolsheviks agreed to exclude
from Russian territory the districts of Batumi,
Ardahan and Kars,
where the fate of the population was to be decided by a free plebiscite. In
prevailing conditions, this meant abandoning the Armenian and Georgian
Christian inhabitants to the mercy of the Turks.
A peace conference between representatives of Turkey and Transcaucasia opened at Trebizond on 14 March 1918. Vehip
Pasha immediately demanded the evacuation of all districts abandoned by Russia
at Brest-Litovsk. The Transcaucasian delegates, led
by the Georgian politician Akaki Chkhenkeli, protested that they did not recognize
Brest-Litovsk and were not bound by its conditions. Prolonged parleys took
place until the Turks, flushed with victory, delivered an ultimatum demanding
the evacuation of the disputed districts not later than 10 April 1918.
Brest-Litovsk
repudiated
The Turkish ultimatum was received with the greatest
indignation in the Transcaucasian Diet or Seim. This new parliamentary body, which assembled
at Tbilisi on 23 February 1918, was a local
substitute for the short-lived Russian Constituent Assembly in Petrograd which had been so unceremoniously dispersed
by Lenin's Bolsheviks. Nikolai Chkheidze and Irakli Tsereteli, dethroned
from their tribunes in the Petrograd Soviet and Provisional Government, now
reappeared in their native Georgia
to raise the clarion call of revolutionary democracy. A tug-of-war ensued
between the Transcaucasian delegation at the
Trebizond peace conference and the government and Diet in Tbilisi. On 10 April 1918, Chkhenkeli declared himself
willing to accept the Brest-Litovsk treaty and conduct further negotiations
based upon it. Simultaneously, Tbilisi
was gripped by patriotic and warlike frenzy. On 13 April 1918, Irakli Tsereteli declared in
the Diet: 'Turkish imperialism has issued an ultimatum to Transcaucasian
democracy to recognize the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. We know of no such
treaty. We know that in Brest-Litovsk the death sentence was passed upon
Revolutionary Russia, and that death sentence to our
fatherland we will never sign!' Tsereteli's speech
was greeted with thunderous applause. The next day, Evgeni
Gegechkori, the Transcaucasian
Premier, telegraphed Chkhenkeli and told him to
break off negotiations with the Turks and leave Trebizond.
That night, despite the manifest reluctance of the Muslim representatives,
the Transcaucasian Diet declared war on the Turks.
This bellicose act was a piece of somewhat ridiculous panache.
Divided against itself, Transcaucasia had
neither the means nor, in so far as the Muslim elements were concerned, the
will to resist. On 15 April 1918, it was announced in Istanbul
that the Turkish Army had entered Batumi.
Some of the forts had surrendered without firing a shot and the town and port
had been occupied without resistance. The Muslim Georgians of Lazistan and of Atchara, of
which Batumi is the main city, were helping the Turks, tearing up railway
lines, wrecking trains and conducting guerilla operations generally. Having
now seized most of the territories they coveted, the Turks renewed their
peace overtures. On 22 April 1918, Vehip Pasha
telegraphed Chkhenkeli and asked whether he was now
prepared to resume peace talks. The Transcaucasian
Diet had no alternative but to accept the offer.
An
ephemeral federation
For the last six months, the Transcaucasian
Commissariat had clung to the illusion that Russia
would soon quell the Bolshevik usurpers and revert to the paths of true
democracy, in which case Transcaucasia would
be painlessly restored to the broad bosom of Russian Social-Democracy. While
refusing to recognize the surrender at Brest-Litovsk, these half-hearted
patriots delayed taking the only step which could preserve their country from
complete ruin--namely a declaration of complete independence from Russia,
combined with a real effort to enlist the support of interested foreign
powers against the Turkish peril. At the end of March 1918 the question of Transcaucasian independence was discussed in the Diet,
which voted 'categorically and irrevocably' against independence. On 22 April
another lengthy debate on this issue took place, as a result of which the
majority of the assembly adopted the motion 'that the Transcaucasian
Seim decide to proclaim Transcaucasia an independent Democratic Federative
Republic'. The formation of a cabinet was entrusted to the Georgian Chkhenkeli.
On 26 April 1918, Chkhenkeli,
who combined the offices of Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, published
the names of the members of his new Transcaucasian
Ministry, which contained four Georgians (including Chkhenkeli
himself), five Armenians and four Azerbaijani Muslims. The other Georgian
ministers were Noe Ramishvili
(Minister of the Interior), G. Giorgadze (Minister
of War) and Noe Khomeriki
(Minister of Agriculture). When presenting his cabinet to the Diet, Chkhenkeli made a speech in which he outlined his
government's programme, which featured the writing
of a constitution, the delineation of the new state's frontiers, the
liquidation of the war with Turkey, the combating of both counter-revolution
and anarchy, and finally, the carrying through of land reform. On 28 April
1918, the newly created Democratic Federative Republic of Transcaucasia was
recognized by the Ottoman Empire.
The Federative
Republic, born under
such unfavourable auspices, lived but one brief
month. Three days after its formation, the Turks occupied the great fortress
of Kars, from
which thousands of panic-stricken men and women streamed out, carrying their
children and their possessions on their backs. Those who were too old or too
sick to walk were left to the mercies of the Turk. Food shortages were
producing famine in many regions of Caucasia, notably in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Another disruptive
factor was the situation in the great oil port of Baku
on the Caspian, which was a Bolshevik stronghold within otherwise Menshevik
Transcaucasia. In December 1917, Lenin had appointed the Armenian Bolshevik Stepan Shaumian as Commissar
Extraordinary of the Caucasus. Shaumian was chairman of the Baku Soviet, in which he was
backed by the well known Georgian Bolshevik Prokopi
(Alesha) Japaridze. In
March 1918, the Baku Soviet was involved in open conflict with the
Azerbaijani nationalist organization, the Musavat.
This led to inter-communal fighting between the Baku Armenians and Tatars,
lasting for several weeks, and resulting in wholesale massacre of innocent
victims. When the streets had been cleared of thousands of dead bodies and
the fires extinguished, the Bolsheviks emerged as the strongest force in the
city. On 25 April 1918, a local Council of People's Commissars, modelled on the one in Moscow, was formed under Shaumian's chairmanship. Spurning all allegiance to the
Menshevik régime in Tbilisi, the Baku
Bolsheviks nationalized the vast oilfields around their city and placed them
at the disposal of the Moscow
government, from which they derived constant moral support.
The resumed peace talks between Turkey
and Transcaucasia opened at Batumi,
now in Turkish hands, on 11 May 1918. The Transcaucasian
delegation, forty-five strong, was headed by Premier Chkhenkeli,
and also included the veteran Georgian revolutionary and publicist Niko Nikoladze, and the jurist Zurab Avalishvili. Vehip Pasha stated that the old peace conditions no
longer applied, since the Armenians and Georgians had responded to the
earlier Turkish proposals by armed resistance. Vehip
now demanded the cession of the Georgian regions of Akhaltsikhe
and Akhalkalaki and the Armenian district of Aleksandropol by the Turks of all Transcaucasian
railways so long as the war against Great Britain continued. In view
of the impossibility of armed resistance, there seemed nothing to prevent the
Turks from establishing complete hegemony over the Caucasian isthmus.
German
takes a hand
The Turks had reckoned without one very important factor,
namely the intervention of their ally Imperial Germany, which at this time
dominated the Ukraine and
the Crimea and had virtually turned the Black Sea
into a German lake. The Germans were in urgent need of the oil of Baku and had no desire to see the entire Middle East,
and perhaps Central Asia too, fall into the
hands of their ambitious Turkish friends. Thus it was that a strong and alert
German delegation also attended the Batumi
conference. Headed by the Bavarian general von Lossow,
it also included Count von der Schulenburg, a
former German Consul in Tbilisi, Arthur Leist, famous as a translator and scholar of Georgian
literature, and O. von Wesendonk, later
Consul-General in Tbilisi
and author of studies on Georgian history and civilization. Von Lossow proffered his services as mediator between the
Turks and the Transcaucasians. He also sent to
Tbilisi Colonel Kress von Kressenstein, who entered
into close touch with the Georgian members of the Transcaucasian
government and started collecting together a special German task force from
prisoners of war, peasants from the German settlements around Tbilisi, and any other
German nationals whom he could assemble. Since the Georgians and Armenians
regarded the Germans as among the highest representatives of European
culture, science and technology, they were delighted at the sudden prospect
of this excellent barrier which would halt Turkey's onward advance. At
railway stations and other strategic points German helmets were soon to be
seen, which the Christian inhabitants thought vastly preferable to the
Turkish fez.
Birth
of the Georgian
Republic
There was no time to lose, if anything was to be salvaged
from the wreck of united Transcaucasia. The
Azerbaijani Muslims, who had nothing to lose by a complete Turkish victory,
were opposed to further resistance. The Armenians, for all their heroism,
were exhausted and incapable of organized action. Each of the Caucasian
nations had to look to its own corporate survival. As soon as this became
evident, Noe Zhordania,
leader of the Georgian Social-Democrats and President of the Georgian
National Council in Tbilisi, was summoned to Batumi. There he
concerted measures with the Georgian delegation at the peace conference and
then returned to Tbilisi with the necessary
authority to proclaim Georgia
an independent republic and to bring about the final dissolution of the Transcaucasian Diet. On 24 May 1918, von Lossow announced that owing to Turkish intransigence, his
efforts at mediation had failed, and that the German delegation would leave Batumi at once on the
S.S. Minna Horn. Two days later, the Transcaucasian delegation received a Turkish ultimatum,
demanding the acceptance of all Turkish proposals within seventy-two hours,
including the cession to Turkey
of vast tracts of Georgian territory. But the Turks had been outwitted. That
same day, 26 May 1918, Irakli Tsereteli
in the Diet in Tbilisi had proclaimed Georgia a sovereign country independent
of the Transcaucasian Federative Republic, which
was now dissolved; Zhordania read a formal Act of
Independence; and von Kressenstein and von der Schulenburg appeared in person at the Tbilisi Town
Hall, to announce the establishment of a German protectorate over the newly
born Georgian republic.
The first Prime Minister of the Georgian Republic
was Noe Ramishvili, while
Akaki Chkhenkeli received
the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. These two new ministers immediately hurried
to the Black Sea port
of Poti,
where von Lossow and his German colleagues were
waiting impatiently on board their steamer. A provisional agreement between
Imperial Germany and the Georgian
Republic was signed at Poti on 28 May 1918. this convention provided among other
things for Germany to have free and unrestricted use of Georgia's railway
system and all ships found in Georgian ports, for the occupation of strategic
points by German troops, the free circulation of German money in Georgia, the
establishment of a German-Georgian mining corporation, and the exchange of
diplomatic and consular representatives. Von Lossow
also sent a secret letter to the Georgian government, pledging his good
offices towards securing international recognition for the Georgian republic
and safeguarding her territorial integrity. Thereupon, von Lossow and his suite set off across the Black Sea to Constanza, taking with them a Georgian delegation
composed of Chkhenkeli, Avalishvili
and Nikoladze, who were sent on to Berlin to enter
into formal discussions with the Kaiser's government and the officials of the
Wilhelmstrasse. Lengthy negotiations between the
Georgians and the German Foreign Ministry ensued, only to be rendered abortive
by the defeat of Imperial Germany at the hands of the Allies in November
1918.
Back in Batumi, a peace
treaty between Turkey and Georgia was signed on 4 June 1918, whereby Turkey regained Batumi,
Ardahan and Kars,
as well as Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalaki.
However, the main treaty of peace and friendship between Georgia and Turkey was never formally
ratified. True to their policy of playing off the Turks and Germans against
one another, the Georgian delegation in Berlin declared to the German Foreign
Ministry that 'inasmuch as Georgia, under direct pressure from Turkey, was
compelled to sign any agreement whatsoever with her alone, the obligations
incurred in such conditions must be considered null and void'. An attempt by
Turkish troops to take possession of certain border areas of Georgia allegedly ceded to Turkey by the treaty of 4 June
was repulsed by Georgian and German troops acting in concert, provoking a
regular crisis between the German and Turkish governments. On 20 June 1918, a
Georgian delegation headed by Evgeni Gegechkori arrived at Istanbul
to take part in a general conference to revise the treaties of Batumi. Before anything
had been settled, military defeat brought the Ottoman
Empire itself tumbling down in ruin. By the end of 1918, as we shall
see, German and Turkish hegemony over Caucasia
had melted away, to be replaced for a short season by the rather less popular
occupation of the victorious British.
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92. F. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917-1921,
New York, Oxford 1951, p. 34.
93. Quoted by Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia,
p. 37.
94. N. Zhordania, Reminiscences, p. 113.
95. Quoted by Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia,
p. 55.
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