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Continued
from here
Formation of the Georgian cabinet--Trends in Georgian
Socialism --The agrarian question--Financial instability--The British replace
the Germans--An Armenian invasion--Denikin and the Whites--The British
withdrawal--Georgia at the Paris Conference-- Collapse of the
White Russians--The Russo-Georgian Treaty-- Communist propaganda in
Georgia--Upheaval in Ossetia—Rise of Kemalist Turkey--Georgia and the Second
International-- Krassin and Lloyd George--The Red Army invades Georgia--Death
agony of independent Georgia--Lenin versus Stalin on Georgia
Formation of the Georgian cabinet
THE GEORGIAN GOVERNMENT formed by Noe Ramishvili on 26 May
1918 included several Menshevik leaders who had already held portfolios in
the former Transcaucasian administration. G. Giorgadze was made War Minister,
Noe Khomeriki Minister of Agriculture and Sh. Aleksishvili
(Aleksiev-Meskhiev) Minister of Justice. Other members of the cabinet were G.
Zhuruli (Commerce and Industry), G. Laskhishvili (Education), Ivane
Lortkipanidze (Communications, also Vice-Premier) and G. Eradze (Labour and
Supplies). During the ensuing weeks, a need was felt to strengthen the formal
links between the government and the Menshevik party organization, whose
chairman, Noe Zhordania, took over the post of Prime Minister on 24 June
1918, leaving Ramishvili with the Ministry of the Interior. At a later stage,
Akaki Chkhenkeli was replaced as Foreign Minister by Evgeni Gegechkori, while
Konstantine Kandelaki, leader of the Georgian Co-operative movement, was made
Minister of Finance, Commerce and Industry, and R. Arsenidze, Minister of
Justice.
With Georgia's
declaration of independence, the Transcaucasian Diet automatically ceased to
exist. There remained in being only the so-called Georgian National Council,
which had never been formally elected by the people. In February 1919, elections
were held for a new Georgian Constituent Assembly. Suffrage was universal,
equal and secret, and the method of proportional representation was employed.
In spite of heavy snow, 60 per cent of the electorate voted. It is a tribute
to the broad basis of Georgian democracy that fifteen parties were able to
put forward candidates. The Mensheviks were returned to power with an
overwhelming majority. Out of 505,477 votes cast, they polled 409,766, giving
them 109 out of the 130 seats in the Chamber. The other parties to return
delegates to the Constituent Assembly were the National Democrats (30,154
votes, 8 seats), the Social-Federalists (33,721 votes, 8 seats) and the
Social-Revolutionaries (21,453 votes, 5 seats). Supplementary elections held
some months later in areas of south-western Georgia previously held by the
Turks and the Armenians produced broadly similar results. 96 The
Constituent Assembly met for the first time on 12 March 1919, and continued
in being until the Bolshevik invasion two years later. Cabinet and
administration were answerable to the assembly according to the normal
conventions of Western parliamentary democracy.
Trends in Georgian Socialism
Few régimes have been more harshly condemned by hostile
critics than the Social-Democratic government which ruled Georgia from 1918 to 1921.
According to Russian Bolshevik writers, Zhordania and his colleagues were
rabid reactionaries, tools of the German and later of the British
imperialists, agents of the darkest obscurantism. After Georgia had fallen
and her government been forced to flee into exile, the former régime was
often criticized from the opposite viewpoint by Georgian patriots who alleged
that the Zhordania government placed socialist class warfare before national
unity and adopted social and economic policies which played into the hands of
the Communists and facilitated the annexation of Georgia by Soviet Russia.
Neither assessment appears altogether just or balanced.
The Georgian Mensheviks were indisputably returned to power with an
overwhelming majority by popular vote on a platform in which nationalization
of industry and natural resources and radical land reform bulked large. Given
time and immunity from foreign interference, their economic policy would have
turned Georgia
into a land of prosperous yeoman farmers and craftsmen and traders. The
Mensheviks confiscated the domains of the great landowners and commandeered
their city mansions, while the aristocracy often assented to the inevitable
with a good grace and served loyally as officers in the republican army.
Zhordania believed that, as Marx taught, the transition from a feudal to a socialist
society must be accomplished via an intermediate bourgeois order.
Accordingly, while declaring its devotion to working-class interests, the
Zhordania government refrained from overt persecution of the middle class and
former nobility. There was no extermination of bourgeois and aristocratic
elements until the Communist annexation in 1921.
It is in fact ironic to observe how the Georgian
SocialDemocrats, whose leaders were working as late as 1918 for the triumph
of democratic socialism in a Russia united and undivided, were at length
transformed by the force of circumstances into nationalists of chauvinistic
fervour and of an intransigence common in countries where independence has
recently been regained after a long spell of alien rule. It was not long
before the red banner of the revolution was replaced by an emblem depicting
Saint George, the national patron and protector. Georgian was declared the
sole permitted medium of official business, the use of Russian being outlawed
in the Constituent Assembly, the law courts and the army. Such policies
inflicted hardship upon Russian and Armenian officials and professional men,
who became estranged from the new régime. They do not, however, support the
allegation that the Zhordania régime was backward in fostering Georgia's
cultural and linguistic self-consciousness.
It was in the realm of education that the Mensheviks
scored their most notable successes. Early in 1918, Georgia's first regular university was opened
in Tbilisi,
thus realizing a dream cherished by generations of Georgian intellectuals but
consistently frustrated by Russian obscurantism. Under such great scholars as
the historian Ivane Javakhishvili and the literary historian Korneli
Kekelidze, the new-born university rapidly assumed a dominant position in Georgia's
educational life. From its walls there soon began to emerge hundreds of keen
and well-qualified graduates who rapidly made their mark as teachers,
scientific workers and members of the professions.
The agrarian question
The conflict between pure socialist ideals and bourgeois
moderation was clearly manifested in the government's approach to the vital
agrarian question. In December 1917, before Transcaucasia had proclaimed
itself independent of Russia,
the Mensheviks had brought the land issue before the Diet, which approved by
an overwhelming majority the principle of limiting land holdings and
confiscating without compensation all estates above a statutory maximum to be
established. The Transcaucasian Commissariat published a decree stating that
in order to alleviate the plight of the landless peasants, all estates
belonging to the former Russian crown and to the Church would be
nationalized, together with lands belonging to private individuals and
exceeding certain norms to be subsequently laid down. These norms as
eventually promulgated varied according to the type of land and the
profitability of the crops normally grown upon it. Where highly remunerative
cultures such as grapes and tobacco were produced, the maximum individual holding
was fixed at 7 desyatins, or about 19 acres. For corn-growing land,
the limit was raised to 15 desyatins, or about 40 acres. Persons
engaged in sheep and cattle raising and other forms
of stock-breeding might own up to 40 desyatins, or 108 acres. Surplus lands
went into a government pool, whence peasants with sub-average holdings could
lease extra land.
The reform was carried out with great thoroughness. A
special assembly of the Georgian nobility passed a resolution pledging
co-operation with the government in its land reform programme. By 1 January
1920 over 4,000 landed estates had been nationalized. The Georgian
Social-Democrats were at first undecided as to how to dispose of the vast
holdings of land contained in the government pool, estimated at over 5
million acres of forest, a million acres of arable land, and 3 million of
pasture land. The Minister of Agriculture, Khomeriki, favoured retention by
the state and ultimately, collectivization. However, Georgia was now facing an
economic blockade mounted by Bolshevik Russia on the one hand, and Denikin's
White Russian forces on the other. There were acute food shortages, while a
series of peasant uprisings also helped to force the government's hand.
Grumbling at the perverse and reactionary mentality of peasants, the
authorities gave in and agreed to sell land from the nationalized estates to
peasant small-holders. About a million acres were soon disposed of in this
way. The government also embarked on a programme of reclamation of
marsh-lands, irrigation of arid steppes and other measures designed to
increase fertility. The lot of the Georgian peasantry was materially
improved, as is admitted by the Communist writer Elena Drabkina, who states
that
"the agrarian reform, incomplete as it was, curtailed
the nobility's possession of the land; . . . the entire course adopted by the
SocialDemocratic government in the villages led to the formation of a strong
rural bourgeoisie and the development of capitalism in agriculture, i.e. to
the inevitable destruction of all the survivals of feudalism'. 97
In their labour and industrial policy, the Mensheviks were
able to follow socialist principles more faithfully. Hydroelectric power,
mineral springs and spas, the Tqibuli coal mines, the Chiatura manganese
industry, the ports and railways, were all nationalized. Of the 70,000
full-time workers employed in Georgian industry in 1920, official statistics
show that more than half were state employees, while a quarter worked for
municipal and co-operative enterprises. Less than 20 per cent were privately
employed. A number of labour laws were passed. An eight-hour day was
established. Overtime work entitled the worker to double pay. Child labour was
proscribed, as well as night work for women and adolescents. Unemployment and
sickness insurance was introduced. The right to strike,
withheld from the worker under Tsarism and again later under the Communists,
was established by law.
Financial instability
Whereas the Georgian government's social and economic
policies were basically sound and progressive, their realization was
frustrated by financial instability, combined with the prevailing political
chaos in Russia and the Near East. The budget was in chronic imbalance. Now
that Georgia
received no subsidy from the Russian central government, expenditure exceeded
income to an alarming extent. For the period from November 1917 to January
1919, the income of the Georgian Treasury amounted to under 100 million
rubles, while expenses came to nearly 350 million, leaving a deficit of
almost 250 million. Armenian merchants and financiers, as well as their
Georgian confrères headed by the millionaire A. M. Khoshtaria, a daring
business man who owned concessions in North Persia,
plunged into speculation and defrauded the Georgian treasury of vast sums of
foreign exchange. Inflation was rife. In 1919, the Georgian government was
issuing banknotes of denominations between 50 kopecks and 500 rubles. At the
time of the Communist invasion of 1921, common denominations were Of 50,000
and 100,000 rubles. Under Bolshevik rule, until the currency reform of 1924,
notes of up to 250 million rubles were in current use. Confidence in the
currency was fatally undermined.
Such financial instability led to all kinds of hardship
and social paradoxes. The salaries of officials and the savings of the middle
and upper classes could become valueless in the space of a few weeks. Prince
Orbeliani, head of one of Georgia's leading families, had to queue to use one
of the lavatories in his requisitioned palace in Tbilisi, and the Georgian
Patriarch depended for his daily bread on the private charity of Oliver
Wardrop, the British Chief Commissioner. At the same time, the wily financier
Khoshtaria safeguarded his own sumptuous mansion by lending it to the British
Mission, whose chief could disport himself in a bath
adorned with solid silver fittings, squirting water from every conceivable
angle. 98
However, there is little doubt that the economic situation would
gradually have reverted to normal if the Zhordania government had been left
to itself and given time to put its house in order. The vicissitudes of the
international situation and the activities of her predatory neighbours cut
short the life of the Georgian
Republic before she had
even emerged from the aftermath of war and revolution.
At first, however, the weather seemed set fair for the new
Georgian state. During the summer of 1918, the land was patrolled by German
helmets, some actually worn by polite, well-disciplined German soldiers, others lent out to the Georgian National Army
and prominently exhibited on sticks at strategic points along the Turkish
frontier. The Bolsheviks and the White Russians were not yet strong enough to
threaten Georgia's
new-found independence. The struggle for power in Caucasia centred now on the
neighbouring republic
of Azerbaijan. The Baku
Soviet, in strange alliance with an antiBolshevik Tsarist officer, Colonel
Lazar Bicherakov, was locked in a bitter struggle against Muslim Azeri
guerillas backed by Turkish troops. By 30 July 1918 the Turks were in sight
of the city. The following day, Shaumian attempted to flee the city together
with his Georgian lieutenant Alesha Japaridze and his other colleagues on the
Baku Soviet, but their ships were intercepted and forced to return to port. Baku was taken over by a
coalition government of SocialRevolutionaries and Armenian nationalists, who
attempted to defend the city against the Turks with the support of a small
British force under General Dunsterville. On 14 September 1918, Dunsterville
had to evacuate Baku,
which fell to the Turks and Azeris. The twenty-six imprisoned Baku Commissars
escaped from Baku
in the nick of time, but were landed at Krasnovodsk and shot by the local
Russian Social-Revolutionaries. Their execution, which the local British
agent failed to prevent, became a cause célèbre in the annals of the
revolution; responsibility for it has usually been laid at the door of the
British 'cannibals', as Stalin termed them in this connexion.
In September 1918, Niko Nikoladze, a member of the
Georgian negotiating team in Berlin,
returned to Tbilisi and informed Zhordania
that Germany's
defeat at the hands of the Allies appeared inevitable. Another member of the Berlin delegation, Zurab Avalishvili, was therefore
sent to neutral Scandinavia to make contact with British and French diplomats
there in an effort to secure recognition of Georgia's neutral status and pave
the way for a transfer of allegiance from the German to the Allied side. This
volte-face had to be accomplished with speed and agility. The
armistice of Mudros, concluded on 30 October 1918, obliged Turkey to withdraw
to the west of the 1914 Turco-Russian frontier, while the military collapse
of Imperial Germany in November 1918 led inevitably to the evacuation of
Georgia by the German garrisons there.
The British replace the Germans
The British returned to Baku
on 17 November 1918 and soon entered into relations with the Georgian
government in Tbilisi,
which they regarded with some suspicion, as a former German puppet régime.
The British commander, General Thomson, told Zhordania that British
objectives included the restoration of the Caucasian viceroyalty in the name
of Russian authority. Britain desired to liberate the Caucasus from the
Germans and the Bolsheviks; to re-establish order without interfering in the
internal affairs of the country; to restore trade with the ports of Persia
and other areas not occupied by Bolshevik Russia; and to provide for the
movement of Allied military personnel over the Transcaucasian railways. Such
a programme, particularly the first item, was naturally unacceptable to the
Georgians. In the memoirs which he wrote years later, Zhordania contrasts the
'genuinely noble, profoundly friendly and respectful' manners of the German
commander Kress von Kressenstein with the behaviour of the first British
representative to arrive in Tbilisi--'like
a sergeantmajor, coarse, rude, imperious and masterful'. 99 At
one point, the Georgians talked wildly of opposing by force the entry of
British troops into their country. However, more conciliatory counsels
prevailed. By the end of December 1918, Evgeni Gegechkori, who succeeded the
pro-German Chkhenkeli as Foreign Minister, was assuring the British Mission
in Tbilisi that 'the Georgian government, animated by the desire to work in
harmony with the Allies for the realization of the principles of right and
justice proclaimed by them, gives its consent to the entry of the troops'. 100
An Armenian invasion
To some extent, this change of heart was forced on the
Georgians by an Armenian invasion of Georgia's southern boundaries.
Now free from Turkish occupation, Armenia was basking in the favour
of President Wilson and confident of world support in the redressing of her
millennia! wrongs. When the Turks evacuated
Transcaucasia, they deliberately encouraged both the Armenians and the
Georgians to move into certain border territories, notably Lori and Borchalo
and the town of Akhalkalaki.
They gave the Georgians two days' start, so that when the Armenians moved in,
they found the Georgians already in occupation. Sporadic fighting ensued. The
Armenians were at first victorious and marched on Tbilisi itself, the large Armenian colony
of which was subjected to many outrages at the hands of the incensed
Georgians. On 29 December 1918 the Georgians defeated the Armenians at
Shulaveri and forced them to retreat. Two days later the British command was
able to force peace upon these two uneasy neighbours. The consequences of
this Armeno-Georgian conflict have been summed up by Kazemzadeh:
'The Armeno-Georgian war inflicted great injury on the
cause of the independence of the Transcaucasian republics. The old
hostilities of the Georgians toward the Armenians flared up and reached an
intensity unparallelled before, making impossible united ArmenoGeorgian
action at the Paris Peace Conference. The West was treated to a sad spectacle
of two peoples, ruled by parties which were members of the Second
International and professed peace to be their chief aim, fighting over a few
strips of land in the manner of a Germany
or a Russia.
Those who were called upon to decide the destinies of mankind at Paris could never again trust Georgia
or Armenia.
The enemies of Transcaucasia's independence were provided with excellent
material, on the basis of which they could, and did, argue that Armenia,
Georgia, and Azerbaijan ruled by the Dashnaks, the Mensheviks and the
Musavatists, were incapable of preserving order and of guaranteeing a
peaceful existence to their peoples. Even in Transcaucasia
doubts were raised whether this land could stand on its own feet.' 101
Denikin and the Whites
If Georgia's
relations with her southern neighbour, Armenia,
were unsatisfactory, those with the forces now vying to the north for control
of Russia
were equally so. The main threat from the Russian side appeared at first to
derive less from Lenin and Trotsky's Red Army than from the White Russian
Volunteer Army of Alekseev and Denikin. General Denikin was a bigoted
blockhead of the most reactionary kind, whose myopic policies wrecked all
hope of overthrowing the Bolsheviks. Denikin refused to admit any less
comprehensive aim than the restoration of Russia's frontiers as they were
in 1914 under Tsar Nicholas II.
'Instead, therefore, of making common cause with the other
enemies of Bolshevism, with Rumania, Poland, the Baltic and Caucasian States,
Makhno, Petlura and the rest, he not only rejected the help but definitely
provoked the enmity of these valuable, indeed indispensable, potential
allies. Had he possessed the most rudimentary political acumen he would have
made friends with Rumania and left the Bessarabian question to be settled
after the Bolsheviks were beaten; he would have acted similarly, mutatis
mutandis, with regard to Poland, the Baltic Republics, the Caucasians,
the Transcaucasians and the other Russian 'Succession States' instead of
antagonizing them and in some cases actually engaging in hostilities against
them.' 102
In his relations with the Georgian
Republic, Denikin's fatuity was
matched only by the intransigent volubility of Foreign Minister Gegechkori,
who spent months arguing with the White Russians about some insignificant
strips of remote territory in the region of Sochi
and Gagra along the Black Sea coast. Armed
clashes between Denikin and the Georgians had to be quelled by the British
military representatives. In November 1919 Denikin launched an economic
blockade of independent Georgia
and Azerbaijan.
He declared: 'I cannot permit the self-styled formations of Georgia and
Azerbaijan, which have sprung up to the detriment of Russian state interests
and which are clearly hostile to the idea of the Russian State, to receive
food supplies at the expense of the areas of Russia which are being liberated
from the Bolsheviks.' Denikin further noted with satisfaction that Georgia
was specially vulnerable to an economic blockade, since the harvest of 1919
had failed, which aggravated the chronic shortage of grain.103 Not
until February 1920, when the Whites were being rolled back in disorder by
the Red Army, did Denikin deign to acknowledge de facto the
governments of Russia's border areas which were hostile to Bolshevism. By now
it was too late to salvage anything from the wreck of the counter revolution.
The British withdrawal
The British military representatives in Georgia at first tended to
identify themselves with Denikin's neo-imperialist fantasies. In 1919,
however, the British government took the imaginative step of appointing
Oliver Wardrop, the well-known scholar of Georgian literature and history, to
be Chief British Commissioner to the Republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Wardrop,
set up his headquarters in Tbilisi and did his
best to reconcile the national interests of his beloved Georgia with those of Great Britain and the Entente.
British and Indian troops, highly unpopular with the Georgians, were withdrawn
to a British military district based on the port of Batumi.
The purblind patriots in the Georgian government resented even this last
British bridgehead as an affront to their national dignity. Gegechkori and
Zhordania continually pestered Wardrop and his successor, Harry Luke, to hand
the Batumi military district back to Georgia.
In July 1920 when the Bolsheviks were already encircling the Georgian Republic and Mustafa Kemal and his
followers sharpening their claws for an onslaught from the Turkish side, the
British finally withdrew. The streets of Batumi were bedecked with flags on 7 July
1920 as the British troops marched to the port and the Georgian army under
General Kvinitadze entered the city from the opposite direction. Georgia
hailed the disappearance of the British imperialists as a major triumph,
without giving much thought to the even more formidable foes which now ringed
her about.
The Georgians' self-reliance was bolstered by the
conviction that their sovereignty was guaranteed beyond all possibility of
violation through the Paris Peace Conference and the new international
machinery embodied in the League of Nations.
Fortified by the idealistic orations of President Wilson, both the Armenians
and the Georgians were pathetically certain that the victorious Entente
powers meant to establish a just and durable peace in Caucasia.
The Armenians for their part sent not one, but two rival delegations to
Paris, who put forward the most extravagant territorial demands, including
the seven eastern vilayets of Turkey, the four Cilician sanjaks,
as well as large areas of the Georgian Republic itself, including Batumi and
parts of Tbilisi province.
When the Paris Conference opened, the Armenians had
everybody's wholehearted sympathy, while the Georgians, as former protégés of
Germany,
were received rather coldly. However, the truculence of the Armenians soon
lost them influential friends, while the Georgians' charm and savoir-fairemade
a good impression. The ground had already been ably prepared in London by Zurab Avalishvili, a former member of the
Georgian delegation in Berlin, in
conjunction with his compatriot David Ghambashidze, a mining engineer who was
formerly Secretary of the Anglo-Russian Chamber of Commerce in London. Ghambashidze was
a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and in 1919 published a useful
book, written in English, on the mineral resources of Georgia and Caucasia.
Ghambashidze had many friends in British official circles, and was able to
enlist the support of Lord Curzon, himself an expert on Near Eastern and
Caucasian affairs. On 31 December 1918, Avalishvili and Ghambashidze received
from the Foreign Office a note declaring that His Majesty's Government viewed
with sympathy the proclamation of independence of the Georgian Republic,
and were ready to urge its recognition at the Peace Conference. This good
news was communicated to Tbilisi
without delay.
Georgia at the Paris Conference
The Georgian delegation in Paris was a high-powered one, headed as it
was by the veteran tribunes of the Russian Revolution, Nikolai (Karlo)
Chkheidze and Irakli Tsereteli. Most of the year 1919 was occupied in
pleading with the Allies to restrain their friends Kolchak and Denikin from
attacking the Caucasian republics. It was not until November 1919 that the
Allied Supreme Council realised that the Whites were hopelessly defeated, and
began to think seriously of encouraging the Transcaucasian Republics
as a possible barrier to the expansion of Soviet Russia. Lord Curzon himself
took the initiative of proposing to the Supreme Council of the Allies the
recognition de facto of the republics of Georgia
and Azerbaijan.
This proposal was adopted unanimously, with the result that France, Great
Britain and Italy
accorded de facto recognition to Georgia on 11 January 1920. The Georgian Republic
had already been recognized de jure by the Argentine Republic
on 13 September 1919. Georgia
was recognized de facto by Japan
and Belgium
on 7 February and 26 August 1920 respectively.
In January 1920, conferences took place between the
Georgian and Azerbaijani delegates and the British Imperial General Staff to
discuss problems of defense in the event of an attack by Soviet Russia. On 19
January the Georgian and Azerbaijani delegates were summoned before a plenary
meeting of the Supreme Council at the Quai d'Orsay, where they were
confronted by Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, Winston Churchill, Jules
Cambon, Francesco Nitti, Marshal Foch, Admiral Beatty, Sir Henry Wilson and
others, who enquired about the ability and determination of the Caucasian
peoples to withstand Russian aggression, and their requirements in terms of
military aid and supplies. Soon afterwards, however, it was announced that
the Allies had no intention of sending any fresh troops to Transcaucasia,
though the Transcaucasian republics were promised arms and ammunition. The
despatch of these was delayed by the appearance of a fresh bone of contention
between Georgia and Armenia--namely the possession of and access
to the port of Batumi following its evacuation by the
British Army. For weeks a diplomatic battle over this point raged between the
Armenian and Georgian delegations. Mr. Robert Vansittart (later Lord
Vansittart), the Foreign Office official dealing with Caucasian problems on
Curzon's behalf, was driven to despair.
'In the circles of the Supreme Council,' he told a
gathering of these rival delegates, 'many are of the opinion that the
Transcaucasian Republics have no future at all, as they are unable to achieve
any sort of solidarity, and are exhausting themselves in conflicts with each
other. . . . Is it not clear to you that the despatch of arms and munitions
for you has been delayed precisely because of your divergences, because of
the fear that these arms would be used in your conflicts with each other?'104
And yet, in spite of such warnings by their well-wishers,
these rival sets of politicians stood fast in their pretensions, at the very
moment when Azerbaijan was
actually falling into the hands of Moscow.
An eye-witness has left a graphic description of one of those crucial
meetings, in which Karlo Chkheidze, the chief Georgian delegate, 'stood with
his head thrown back, his eyes starting from their sockets and his face
purple, enraged by the French texts and formulae, the shades of meaning of
which he could not quite grasp, all his coolness and self-control gone, in
the pose of a minor Polish country squire vetoing an important decision of
the Diet'.105 Small wonder that the patient Vansittart, 'repeating
Pilate's gesture, his face expressing perplexity, weariness and boredom', was
obliged to wash his hands of the matter and report to Lord Curzon, the
British government and the Supreme Council of the Allies that the
Transcaucasian republics, unable to agree among themselves, could not be
expected to play any useful part in a defence system designed to check the
advance of Bolshevik Russia. Curzon's Caucasian policy suffered a major
setback, to the ill-concealed glee of Lloyd George, who was himself only too
eager to jettison Churchill and Curzon's policy of intervention and come to
terms with the Communist régime in Russia.
There were other factors which also helped to render
untenable the position of the Allies in Transcaucasia.
On 27-28 April 1920, a daring raid by Soviet armoured trains on Baku led to the overthrow of independent Azerbaijan
and the proclamation of a Soviet republic. One of the major reasons
justifying the British occupation of Batumi
was that this port was the Black Sea terminal of the Baku-Baturni pipeline,
through which Baku
oil was pumped for shipment overseas by the international oil companies. With
Baku in Bolshevik hands, no more oil would be
flowing to Batumi,
the commercial value of which was thereby impaired. On 7 May 1920 the
Georgian Menshevik government felt it advisable to sign a treaty of
friendship with Soviet Russia, pledging themselves among other things to work
for the removal of all foreign troops from Georgian soil. On 11 May, General
Sir George Milne, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Black Sea,
was accidentally fired upon by Georgian artillery when on an inspection tour
of the border area of the Batumi
military district. In Batumi
itself, Bolshevik agents were active. One of these, Gubeli (real name: S.
Medzmariashvili) murdered the White Russian General Lyakhov, notorious for
his suppression of the Constitutional movement in Persia
and his reign of terror in the northern Caucasus
under Denikin. Gubeli was arrested by the British, but such was the popular
outcry that Brigadier Cooke-Collis, the British governor, was forced to
release him. The special correspondent of Le Temps reported from Batumi: 'This city, as
well as the entire province, has become a centre of agitation and corruption,
where the Turkish nationalists and the Bolsheviks have already been able to
fraternize without danger.' In such circumstances, the British decision to
evacuate Batumi
early in July 1920 is understandable.
During the nine months which elapsed between the Georgian
occupation of Batumi
and the final débâcle, the Georgian cause scored more victories and more
defeats, but only on paper. On 16 December 1920 Georgia's
application for membership of the League of Nations
failed to secure the requisite majority, though she was admitted to
participation in the League's technical sub-committees. It is interesting to
note that among those who spoke most forcibly against Georgia's admission was the
British Minister of Education, the historian H. A. L. Fisher. Voting with Great Britain against granting membership of
the League to Georgia were
Australia, Canada, India,
New Zealand and France.
However, Georgia had one
last diplomatic triumph on 27 January 1921, when France and England accorded her full de
jure recognition as an independent sovereign state. On 25 February 1921,
Akaki Chkhenkeli presented his credentials at the Elysée
Palace as Georgia's
Minister Plenipotentiary to the French
Republic. That same
day, the Red Army was marching on Tbilisi,
forcing the government of the Georgian
Republic to flee for
their lives.
Collapse of the White Russians
FR0M THE TIME of the October revolution in 1917 until
early in 1920, there was no regular communication between Georgia and
Communist Russia. The White Russian forces of Denikin and his associates
formed a physical barrier between Moscow and Tbilisi, and political
mistrust inhibited any establishment of diplomatic relations between the two
centres. Communist Russia, indeed, refused to recognize the existence of
independent Georgia,
declaring on 24 December 1918 that 'all persons who consider themselves
Georgian citizens are recognized as Russian citizens, and as such are subject
to all the decrees and the enactments of the Soviet authority of the RSFSR.'
All manifestations of Bolshevism in Georgia were suppressed with a
firm hand by the unbending Georgian Minister of the Interior, Noe Ramishvili.
Two prominent Georgian Bolsheviks, Mamia Orakhelashvili and M. Okujava, sat
in Kutaisi jail, while the other members of the Bolshevik Regional Committee
left Tbilisi for Vladikavkaz in North Caucasia.
During the winter of 1919-20, the impending collapse of
Denikin's army in North Caucasia and the Black Sea region encouraged the
Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Chicherin, to invite Georgia to unite with Russia against the Whites.
Zhordania and Gegechkori refused, declaring that they 'preferred the
imperialists of the West to the fanatics of the East'. 106 Russia reacted to this rebuff by forming a
special committee for the establishment of Soviet authority in the Caucasus. The head of this committee, established by a
decree of the Bolshevik Central Committee on 4 February 1920, was the
Georgian Communist Sergo Orjonikidze, a friend of Stalin; the deputy chairman
was S. M. Kirov, and the other members included the Georgian Bolshevik Budu
Mdivani. On 8 April 1920, a North Caucasian bureau of the Central Committee
of the AllRussian Communist Party was set up, its members including
Orjonikidze, Smilga, Mdivani and Kirov. This bureau later formed the nucleus
of an enlarged Caucasian Bureau, which came into being in May. Orjonikidze
was also a member of the Revolutionary War Council of the Caucasian front and
Kirov a member of that of the Eleventh Red Army.
In spite of his declared hostility to the Kremlin
'fanatics', Zhordania found it prudent to initiate secret negotiations with
them in an effort to secure formal Communist recognition of Georgia's independence. Grigol
Uratadze, a veteran Menshevik, was sent clandestinely to Moscow to negotiate with Chicherin and the
other People's Commissars. While these talks were proceeding, on 27 April
1920, the Red Army launched its lightning attack on Baku. The Azerbaijan
government, which had a defensive alliance with Georgia,
appealed to Tbilisi
for help, but was overwhelmed in a few hours. Confident that the Eleventh Red
Army would at once continue its victorious march into Georgia, local Bolsheviks staged an armed
uprising in Tbilisi.
At one a.m. on 3 May 1920, twenty-five Bolsheviks, mostly Armenians,
attempted to seize the Military
Academy as a
preliminary to a coup d'état. It happened that General Kvinitadze,
commandant of the Academy prior to his appointment as Georgian
Commander-in-Chief two days previously, was still in residence. Kvinitadze
and his cadets put up a fight, killing two of the attackers and capturing
three others, who were sentenced to death by court martial and shot. At the
same time, Georgian frontier troops repulsed Red Army detachments which had
penetrated to the Georgian side of the frontier with Azerbaijan.
The Russo-Georgian Treaty
At this juncture, Uratadze reported from Moscow
that the Russians were prepared to sign a treaty with Georgia and recognize her de jure,
provided that the Mensheviks formally undertook not to grant asylum on
Georgian territory to troops of powers hostile to the Soviet
Union. Gegechkori, the Georgian Foreign Minister, regarded this
clause as an infringement of Georgia's
national sovereignty, and favoured rejection of the Soviet terms. Zhordania,
anxious above all to secure for Georgiade jure recognition by all the
great powers, overruled his Foreign Minister, and the treaty was signed in Moscow on 7 May 1920.
Among other provisions, Georgia
undertook to disarm and intern all military and naval units belonging to any
organization purporting to constitute the government of Russia, and to surrender such
detachments or groups to the Communists. In a secret supplement, not made
public for the time being, Georgia
made an even greater concession to the Bolsheviks. ' Georgia
pledges itself to recognize the right of free existence and activity
of the Communist party . . . and in particular its right to free meetings and
publications, including organs of the press.' The British Chief Commissioner
in Tbilisi
noted in his diary on 9 June 1920:
'Text of Georgian Treaty with Soviet Russia published
today. Treaty allots town and province
of Batum to Georgia. It contains ambiguous
clauses which could be read to mean that Georgia is obliged to evict the
Allies. The frontier on the Caucasus passes is unfavourable to Georgia and public opinion in Tiflis denounces
treaty as veiled subjection of Georgia
to Russia.
Anti-Bolshevik feeling here strong."107
Both in its provisions and in its consequences, the
RussoGeorgian agreement of 1920 indeed contains striking parallels with the
treaty concluded in 1783 between Catherine the Great of Russia and King
Erekle II of Georgia,
which proved to be the prelude to Georgia's complete annexation.
That the 1920 agreement would turn out in the same way could, however,
scarcely have been foreseen when it was signed.
Communist propaganda in Georgia
Unaware of the secret clause providing for toleration of
the Georgian Communist Party, the hard-pressed Georgian Bolsheviks were at
first stunned by the news that Moscow
had officially recognized the renegade Menshevik government of Zhordania.
They were soon reassured. S. M. Kirov, a member of the Caucasian Bureau of
the All-Russian Communist Party, was appointed the first Soviet Ambassador to
Tbilisi. The
British Chief Commissioner there noted on 20 June 1920:
'The Bolshevik Diplomatic Mission to Georgia, which has been dribbling
in by instalments, now almost complete with the arrival today of Head of
Mission, Kyrov. Staff of Mission,
including attendants and a group of seventeen persons ostensibly despatched
to settle details regarding Peace Treaty, numbers about seventy. Georgian
Government are alarmed at its size and have
protested, but Bolsheviks continue to pour in. I understand they propose to
make Tiflis headquarters of their eastern
propaganda. Kyrov on arrival harangued the crowd which had collected outside
his residence. Have protested strongly and, I am thankful to say, effectively
against Mission being accommodated, as was desired by the Bolshevik advance
guard, in the house immediately facing our Mission.' 108
The Georgian government were
forced to release the local Communist party members and sympathisers from
prison. Many of them promptly embarked on an overt campaign to overthrow the
Mensheviks by force, with the result that Noe Ramishvili, the Minister of the
Interior, clapped them back into jail. This provoked a fiery exchange of
notes between Kirov
and the Georgian Foreign Ministry.
On 29 June 1920, Kirov
threatened that 'if the happenings mentioned by me should not be stopped, my
Government would have no other choice but to retaliate against Georgian
citizens in the territory of the RSFSR.' Gegechkori retorted that 'members of
the Georgian Communist Party in addition to their legal work engage in active
propaganda among the troops, in the ranks of the People's Guard, and among
the wide masses of the peasantry, using for this purpose huge sums of money
received from abroad, and aiming at the overthrow of the order existing in the
country'.109 Given Moscow's provided, as the Kremlin intended, a
constant irritant and an excuse for Russian propaganda against the existing
Georgian government.
Conflict also arose out of Georgia's
contacts with Baron Wrangel, who had succeeded the inept Denikin as head of
the White Russian movement, and managed to maintain himself from April until
November 1920 in the Crimea. The Georgians
were in reality as hostile towards Wrangel as they had been towards Denikin.
However, they were obliged to negotiate with him concerning the supply of
wheat and oats for Georgia,
and there were occasions when the Georgians failed to intern and hand over to
the Communists certain White Russian units and ships seeking a temporary
refuge on Georgian soil or in Georgian ports. Kirov
and his successor, Sheinman, seized upon such incidents as a pretext for the
accusation that Georgia
was abetting the White Russian reactionaries.
Upheaval in Ossetia
Another hotbed of discord was the unsettled situation in
South Ossetia, a part of Georgia
inhabited by a people of Iranian stock, quite distinct from the Georgians in
customs, language and ethnic origin. The territory of the Ossetes straddles
the Daryal Pass
and extends on the Russian side well into North Caucasia.
A peasant uprising had already occurred in South Ossetia
in 1918 and been suppressed with great severity by the Menshevik People's
Guard commanded by Valiko Jugheli. In 1919, the Tbilisi régime outlawed the so-called
National Soviet of South Ossetia, a Bolshevik-dominated body, and refused any
grant of national self-determination for the Ossetes. In the spring of the
following year, the Caucasian Bureau of the All-Russian Communist Party
formed a special South Ossetian Revolutionary Committee to lead an armed
revolt against the Georgian government. A Russian-sponsored Ossete force
crossed the border from Vladikavkaz in June 1920 and attacked the Georgian
Army and People's Guard. The Georgians reacted with vigour and defeated the
insurgents and their supporters in a series of hard-fought battles. Five
thousand people perished in the fighting and 20,000 Ossetes fled into Soviet
Russia. The Georgian People's Guard displayed a frenzy of chauvinistic zeal
during the mopping-up operations, many villages being burnt to the ground and
large areas of fertile land ravaged and depopulated.
Rise of Kemalist Turkey
Fresh dangers were also beginning to threaten Georgia from another side, namely from the
direction of Turkey and Armenia.
In the Treaty of Sévres, signed on 10 August 1920 by plenipotentiaries of the
docile Ottoman government in Istanbul, Turkey undertook to recognize Armenia
as a free and independent state, within the boundaries of the so-called
Wilson Line, as the Allied Powers had already done. The signature of this treaty
by the Sultan led the Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal to declare
themselves armed opponents of the Allies. Kemal entered into friendly
relations with Soviet Russia, whose hostility to the Anglo-French Entente and
its protégés coincided with his own. In September 1920, the Kemalists
suddenly attacked Armenia,
taking Kars
and then Aleksandropol. The Russians on their side despatched to the harassed
Armenian Dashnaks an ultimatum demanding free passage for Soviet and Kemalist
troops through Armenian territory; Armenian renunciation of the Treaty of
Sèvres; and the cessation of all relations with the Allied powers. The
hollowness of Allied support for Armenia became immediately
apparent. Neither President Wilson nor Lloyd George raised a finger in defence
of the helpless Armenian
Republic which they
themselves had created amid such fanfares of democratic idealism. While the
Armenians were capitulating to the Kemahsts, the Bolsheviks entered their
country from Baku.
On "2 December 1920, a Soviet Republic was set up in Erivan.
In February 1921, during the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Armenian Dashnaks
staged a successful revolt against the Communist régime. Armenia's death agony was prolonged until
April 1921, when Bolshevik rule was re-established and the country finally
parcelled out between Soviet Russia and Kemalist Turkey.
During the summer and autumn of 1920, when Soviet Russia
and the Turkish nationalists had once again become dominant factors in
Caucasian affairs, while the Western powers, particularly England, had renounced any active policy in
that region, the Georgian government chose to ignore Moscow
and Ankara
and concentrate its efforts on the West. Three ministers--Gegechkori,
Kandelaki and P. Gogichaishvili (Minister of State Control), as well as the
President of the Constituent Assembly, Karlo Chkheidze, and the special
emissary of the republic, Irakli Tsereteli, toured the capitals of the great
powers in an attempt to win economic aid, loans and political recognition for
the Georgian Republic. The mission fulfilled its
task with fair success. It even succeeded in floating a loan in London, and there was talk of leasing the Batumi naval base and oil refineries to Britain.
Italian industrialists were granted a concession for exploitation of the
Tqvarcheli coal-fields on the Black Sea coast, in the region of Sukhumi. An agreement
was concluded with a French commercial syndicate for collaboration in
developing silk production in Georgia
and exporting silk cocoons to France.
On the political front, Gegechkori's efforts finally resulted in the de jure
recognition of independent Georgia
by the Allies on 27 January 1921, a few weeks before the country was overrun
by the Red Army.
Georgia and the Second
International
Georgia's cause was warmly espoused by
the moderate Socialists of the Second International, who viewed her as an
outpost of Western democratic socialism on the fringes of the domains of
Bolshevist collectivism. In September 1920, a delegation of leading Western
socialists visited the Georgian
Republic. They included
Ramsay MacDonald, Vandervelde, Mrs. E. Snowden, Renaudel, Kautsky, Huysmans
and others, who were thrilled by the official honours and gracious
hospitality dispensed to them by the Georgian government. In December, a French
naval flotilla visited Georgian ports. A French High Commissioner made his
appearance in Tbilisi, where he declared with
Gallic bravado that any infringement of Georgia's
integrity would be resisted to the death by France and her allies.
Krassin and Lloyd George
These comings and goings were viewed by Soviet Russia with
deep suspicion. The Kremlin propaganda machine proclaimed that following
Wrangel's collapse in the Crimea, Georgia was being turned into a
bastion of counter-revolution. Trade talks were proceeding in London at this time
between the British government and Krassin, the Soviet special envoy, who
exploited Lloyd George's personal opposition to Curzon's policy of propping
up the Transcaucasian republics as a bastion against Soviet Russia. Anxious
to cut the losses sustained by the Churchillian policy of anti-Bolshevik
intervention, Lloyd George was eager to resume normal commercial relations
with Russia, from which Britain's
strained post-war economy stood to benefit substantially. During Krassin's
negotiations in London, he was given to understand that Baku oil--the main
commodity he had to offer--lost much of its value without complete Russian
control of the Transcaucasian pipe-line leading into Batumi over a section of
Georgian territory. The moral of this was that to make his goods more
marketable, Krassin had to persuade his masters to gain possession of the
land separating Baku from Batumi,
namely the Republic
of Georgia. No advice
could have been more palatable, and the Bolsheviks were not slow to take the
hint. In view of Lloyd George's attitude, the Kremlin could discount a
telegram of protest from Lord Curzon against Russian mobilization on the
Georgian border. Chicherin replied to the British Foreign Secretary that
'Soviet Russia has not committed and will not commit in future any hostile
acts against the Republic
of Georgia', with which
assurance Curzon had to rest content.
On 7 February 1921, a banquet was held in Tbilisi
to celebrate the de jure recognition of Georgia by the Western Allies.
The Soviet Ambassador, Mr. Sheinman, stayed away, but sent as his
representative a Georgian Bolshevik, S. Kavtaradze, who made a speech in
which he saluted Zhordania as his mentor, a true Socialist leader, whose
health he drank 'with complete sincerity', coupled with that of the Georgian
toiling people. On the next day, Sheinman declared to the Press that Russia was delighted at Georgia's recognition and desired
only to live in peace and amity with her. At that moment, the Eleventh Red
Army was poised ready for a full-scale attack.
The Red Army invades Georgia
During the autumn of 1920, Russia
had repeatedly protested against the alleged build-up of the Georgian armed
forces, which, it was claimed, constituted a threat to the Soviet
Union. Soviet agents kept Moscow
well informed as to the real strength of the Georgian National Army and
People's Guard. Now that the substance of these secret reports has recently
been published, it is possible to form an accurate idea of independent
Georgia's military might.110 On 10 September 1920, the Kremlin learnt that
the Georgian regular army included 9,700 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, with 52
guns and a number of mortars, a battalion of sappers, one motorized company
and one signals company. The People's Guard consisted of 15,000 infantry,
1,600 cavalry, with 76 guns and a machine-gun regiment with 72 machine-guns.
The army further possessed 4 or 5 armoured trains, 3 armoured cars, 2 tanks,
a motorized machine-gun unit and 18 aircraft. It was estimated that full
mobilization could increase the total force in the field to a maximum of
50,000 men within three days.
The Kremlin was apprised during the winter of 1920-21 of
certain increases in Georgia's
armed strength. On 1 February 1921 the Georgians had concentrated on their
frontiers over 32,000 infantry, with 264 horsemen, 521 machine-guns, 56 light
and 18 heavy guns. However, the Georgians were scarcely in a position to
march on Moscow.
The morale of the troops was reported low, the ranks being undermined by revolutionary
propaganda; desertion was rife and mutual hostility existed between the
regular army and the People's Guard. The Georgian General Staff was far from
complacent about the position. General Odishelidze represented to his
government in January 1921 that in the event of a Russian attack, his front
line forces would be outnumbered two to one. Odishelidze proposed to increase
the army to 60,000, buy war materials and munitions abroad, and prepare a
careful plan of national defence. At grips with a fiscal crisis, the
Zhordania government refused to sanction the outlay. When war actually broke
out, Georgia
had a small, poorly equipped army with an insignificant cavalry, and a few
aeroplanes which remained grounded throughout the campaign through lack of
high-grade petrol.111
When Baron Wrangel's Crimean force collapsed in November
1920, the Red Army was free to send extra troops to reinforce the Caucasian
front. The following month, A. I. Gekker (Hecker), commander of the Eleventh
Red Army, sent to Moscow a secret appreciation
of the prospects of a military conquest of Georgia. Gekker emphasized that
it would first be necessary to secure the benevolent neutrality of Kazim
Karabekir Pasha, the Turkish commander in Armenia. Seven infantry divisions
and the Second Cavalry Army should then be assembled in Soviet Azerbaijan,
while smaller Red Army detachments would operate against the Georgian
frontier guards in the Sochi sector on the
Black Sea, and the Vladikavkaz-Daryal
Pass area in Central
Caucasia. Before launching the attack, therefore, Gekker
recommended that an understanding be reached with the Kemalists at Ankara,
with whom the Kremlin was already friendly, and that reinforcements and
stores be massed in Soviet Azerbaijan all ready for a propitious moment to
invade the Georgian Republic. 'The above-mentioned points are brought to your
attention not in order to demonstrate the impossibility of an attack on
Georgia, but because I consider that this attack should be launched only
after careful preparation, in order to finish as rapidly as possible with
those Tbilisi people'.112 The Gekker plan soon became known to the
Georgian Intelligence; before effective counter-measures could be taken, it
had already been carried successfully into effect.
On 11 February 1921, disorders broke out in the Lori
district, south of Tbilisi.
Simultaneously a revolt began in the nearby town of Shulaveri, near the Armenian and
Azerbaijani frontiers. The insurgents were Armenians and Russians, who
attacked local Georgian military posts. By 14 February, a regular battle was
raging on the Armeno-Georgian border, near a place called Vorontsovka. The
Soviet envoy in Tbilisi,
Sheinman, received on the next day a secret telegram from Gekker, the
Eleventh Red Army commander: 'Resolved to cross the Rubicon. Take action in
the light of this decision.' When the Georgian government protested to him
about the incidents which were taking place on the frontier, Sheinman played
for time, declaring that Russia
had no cognizance of military movements in that area; any disturbances which
might be taking place must be a spontaneous uprising by the Armenian
communists.
A Communist Revolutionary Committee (Revcom) had by now
been formed in Shulaveri. Its members included such prominent Georgian
Bolsheviks as P. Makharadze, Mamia Orakhelashvili and S. Eliava. The Revcom
proclaimed a Soviet régime and declared that only the forces of foreign
reaction were keeping the Tbilisi Mensheviks in power; an appeal for help was
addressed to the toiling masses of Moscow.
By a happy coincidence, the Eleventh Red Army was already poised on the
frontier between Georgia and Soviet Azerbaijan and crossed the border in
force at dawn on 16 February. Retreating westwards, the Georgian National
Army blew up railway bridges and demolished roads in an effort to delay the
enemy advance. Simultaneously, Red Army units prepared to invade Georgia from the north through the Daryal and
Mamison passes and along the Black Sea coast towards Sukhumi. While these events were
proceeding, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs issued a series of
statements disclaiming all knowledge of warlike acts between Georgia and the Red Army, and professing
willingness to mediate in any internal disputes which might have arisen
between Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Death agony of independent Georgia
The Georgian Army put up a stubborn fight in defence of
the approaches to Tbilisi,
which they held for a week in the face of overwhelming odds. The Russian
attack on Georgia produced
unexpected repercussions in neighbouring Armenia,
where the nationalists rose in force, marched on Erivan
and overthrew the Bolshevik régime there. Any encouragement which the
Georgians might have derived from this was outweighed by the actions of the
Turkish commander in Armenia,
Kazim Karabekir Pasha. On 23 February 1921, after prolonged consultations
with his superiors in Ankara and with the
Russian government in Moscow, Kazim issued an
ultimatum demanding the evacuation of Ardahan and Artvin by Georgia. Stabbed in the back by
the Kemalists, the Georgians were forced to comply and withdrew their forces
from the Turkish frontier area. The Georgian commander-in-chief, Kvinitadze,
was at length obliged to admit that Tbilisi
could hold out no longer. On the night of 24-25 February 1921, President
Zhordania left on the last train, hoping to set up his headquarters at Kutaisi in Western Georgia
and continue the struggle from there. Red Army detachments headed by Sergo
Orjonikidze entered Tbilisi
on 25 February. The city was given over to murder, pillage and rape. Famished
and threadbare Russian soldiers swarmed over the town, invading houses,
looting furniture, clothes, food and anything they could lay their hands on,
including the instruments from doctors' and dentists' surgeries. After a
prudent interval for mopping up operations, the Georgian Revcom headed by
Orakhelashvili and Eliava ventured into the city and proclaimed the overthrow
of the Menshevik régime, the dissolution of the Georgian National Army and
People's Guard, and the formation of a Georgian Soviet Republic.
The Mensheviks entertained hopes of aid from a French
naval squadron cruising in the Black Sea off
the Georgian coast. The French tried to bombard some Bolshevik detachments
operating near the shore, but made no attempt to land troops, and sheered off
as soon as a Russian aeroplane hove into view. The Georgians' hope of holding
out near Kutaisi was further dashed by the
bold advance of a Red Army detachment from North Caucasia which traversed the
difficult Mamison
Pass through deep snow
drifts in arctic conditions and advanced down the Rioni valley into Imereti.
On 8 March the Revcom invited the Mensheviks to end military resistance,
recognize the new Soviet régime in Georgia and form a coalition
government with the Bolsheviks. Zhordania at first agreed to negotiate,
particularly since both Bolshevik and Menshevik Georgians were united in
their desire to prevent the Turks from reoccupying Batumi, which they were on the point of
seizing. While the talks were proceeding, Zhordania learnt that the Red Army
was at the gates of Batumi.
Fearing a trap, he and his government set sail for Istanbul on 17 March 1921. A truce was
signed at Kutaisi
on the following day, couched in mild terms, and according a general amnesty
to the defeated nationalists.
It is interesting to note that during that same week, on
16 March 1921, the British and Soviet governments signed a trade agreement,
in which Lloyd George undertook inter alia to refrain from anti-Soviet
activity in all territories which had formed part of the old Tsarist empire.
This effectively precluded any British intervention against the Bolsheviks in
Georgia, which Great Britain
had recognized as an independent sovereign state less than two months
previously. Small wonder that the defeated Georgian patriots were loud in
their denunciation of perfidious Albion.
Simultaneously, a treaty of friendship was signed in Moscow
between Soviet Russia and Kemalist Turkey,
whereby the Georgian towns of Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe and Batumi
were awarded to the Soviet Union. Broadly
speaking, the agreement was extremely favourable to Turkey, the effect being to move
the Turco-Soviet frontier virtually to the line existing prior to the war of
1877-78. Although Batumi and the surrounding
region of Atchara were retained by the Soviet Union, large areas of territory
belonging historically to Georgia
were now regained by Turkey.
Lenin versus Stalin on Georgia
The unexpected mildness of the terms offered by the
Georgian Communists to their defeated rivals is to be explained in part by
divergent reactions to the Georgian affair within the Politbureau in Moscow. Lenin and his
colleagues had only given their sanction to the Red Army's advance when they
were assured by Stalin, as Commissar of Nationalities, that a massive
Bolshevik uprising had occurred in Tbilisi.
According to Stalin and his man on the spot, Orjonikidze, the Mensheviks had
already been virtually overthrown by the Georgian masses themselves, and the
appearance of a few Red Army soldiers would simply consolidate a victory
already won. Both Lenin and Trotsky were appalled when they later heard that
heavy fighting was taking place and that the Mensheviks had rallied the
nation to their side; they were most apprehensive of the impression which
would be created among foreign socialists when it was learnt that the Russian
Communists were now overthrowing other, independent socialist régimes by
force of arms.
The risk taken by Stalin in simultaneously hoodwinking his
own comrades and defying world opinion in this fashion is partly to be
accounted for in terms of his own past career, and his impatience to settle
old personal scores. Twenty years earlier, in the days of the old Mesame Dasi
when Social-Democracy was first taking root in Georgia, young Jughashvili-Stalin
had been the odd man out. Thrust into the background by Zhordania and the
other Mensheviks, Stalin had thrown in his lot with Lenin and the Russian
Communist party. In October 1917 he had the satisfaction of seeing his
compatriots and rivals Karlo Chkheidze and Irakli Tsereteli, both leading
figures in the Kerensky régime, turned out of Petrograd and banished to their
native Georgia.
But it was a standing affront to Stalin, as Soviet Commissar of
Nationalities, to be defied and held up to scorn in his own native Georgia of
all places, while his sway extended over most of the other territory of the
old Tsarist domains. Georgia
must at all costs be brought within the Soviet fold. The Soviet-Georgian
treaty of May 1920 was simply a tactical manœuvre; by November, Stalin was
declaring: ' Georgia, which has been transformed into the principal base of
the imperialist operations of England and France and which therefore has
entered into hostile relations with Soviet Russia, that Georgia is now living
out the last days of her life.' It was Stalin the Georgian who gave
independent Georgia
the coup de grâce.
In an effort to put a good face on the occupation of Georgia, Lenin wrote to Orjonikidze after the
fall of Tbilisi,
urging him to come to terms with the fallen Menshevik régime. 'I must remind
you that the internal and international position of Georgia requires of the Georgian
Communists not the application of the Russian stereotype, but . . . an
original tactic, based upon greater concessions to the petty bourgeois
elements.' When he learnt that Zhordania and his cabinet declined to enter
into a coalition and had embarked for Europe,
with the full intention of turning the Georgian issue into an international
scandal, Lenin was greatly perturbed. However, the Politbureau was obliged to
accept Georgia's
annexation as a fait accompli, and Trotsky, though highly critical of
Stalin's handling of the situation, wrote a pamphlet in defence of Russian
policy towards Georgia.
In accordance with Lenin's directive, the Georgian Communist leaders tried at
first to win over the people by fair words. However, they met with
nation-wide passive resistance. To make things worse, famine prevailed in the
towns and during the summer of 1921 an outbreak of cholera carried off
thousands of victims. The desperate shortage of food and the breakdown of
medical services resulted in heavy mortality, the Georgian
Catholicos-Patriarch Leonid being among the dead.
Even those Tbilisi
workers who were most sympathetic towards Communist doctrines remained
patriots at heart. A mass meeting of 3,000 representatives of the Tbilisi workers'
associations took place on 10 April 1921 at the Opera House on Rustaveli Avenue.
It passed resolutions calling upon the Revcom to defend Georgia's rights to
self-determination and independence; to hasten the formation of a national
Red Army of Georgia; to secure for the working masses of Georgia the right to
select their representatives by free elections; to ensure that the new Soviet
order was introduced into Georgia in such a way as to respect the customs of
the people; and to legalize the existence of all socialist organizations not
actually engaging in activities directed against the régime. Though
acceptable in the main to the local Georgian Bolsheviks, such resolutions as
these were not in accordance with the policies of Stalin and his immediate
associates. Far from permitting the formation of a Georgian Red Army, Stalin
saw that all military formations were disbanded, and posted Russian garrisons
at strategic points. Workers' organizations and trades unions were
subordinated to the Bolshevik party committees, which received their
instructions from Moscow.
Russian agents of the political police or Cheka were sent to Georgia
to mop up the local Mensheviks, whom the Georgian Bolsheviks would rather
have been left to win over or render harmless in their own way.
Stalin also began to toy with the idea of bringing Georgia into a Transcaucasian Federation of
Soviet Republics, into which Armenia
and Azerbaijan
would also be merged. The local Georgian Bolsheviks, on the other hand,
preferred to retain the country as an autonomous Soviet
Republic loosely associated with Moscow, and possessing
its own political and administrative organs. In July 1921 Stalin came to Tbilisi on a personal visit of inspection and addressed
a mass meeting in the working-class quarter of Tbilisi, where he had spent so many months
of revolutionary activity. As soon as he appeared on the platform, surrounded
by Cheka agents and guards, the crowd began to hiss. Old women in the
audience, some of whom had fed and sheltered Stalin when he was hiding from
the Tsarist secret police, shouted: 'Accursed one, renegade, traitor!' The
crowd reserved its ovation for the veteran revolutionary leader Isidore
Ramishvili and another of their leaders, Alexander Dgebuadze, who asked
Stalin straight out: 'Why have you destroyed Georgia? What have you to offer
by way of atonement?' Surrounded by the angry faces of his old comrades
Stalin turned pale and could only stutter a few words of selfjustification,
after which he left the hall cowering behind his Russian bodyguard. The next
day, he stormed into Tbilisi Party Headquarters and made a furious attack on
Philip Makharadze, whom he professed to hold personally responsible for his
humiliation. Addressing a meeting of Tbilisi Communists on 6 July 1921, he
urged them to renounce every vestige of local independence and merge into a
single Transcaucasian Federation, in return for which he promised Georgia unlimited free oil from Baku and a loan of several million gold rubles from Moscow. Changing his
tone, Stalin went on to attack what he called 'local chauvinism' among the
Georgians. The most urgent task of the Georgian Communists was a ruthless
struggle against the relics of nationalism. To smash 'the hydra of
nationalism', the party must purge its ranks of local patriots and get rid of
all who would not subordinate Georgia's interests to those of the entire
Soviet Union.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
96. Figures taken
from Gr. Uratadze, Sazogadoebrivi modzraoba Sakartveloshi 1821-1921 dr.
(The Social Movement in Georgia 1821-1921), Paris 1939, pp. 145-46.
97. E. Drabkina, Gruzinskaya
kontrrevolyutsiya (The Georgian Counter-revolution), Leningrad 1928, as cited by Kazemzadeh, The
Struggle for Transcaucada, p. 189.
98. Sir Harry,
Luke, Cities and Men. An Autobiography, Vol. II, London 1953, pp. 218-19, 147, 198-9.
99. N. Zhordania, Reminiscences,
pp. 133-34.
100. F.
Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Tramcaucada, p. 171.
101. The
Struggle for Transcaucasia, pp. 182-3.
102. Luke, Cities
and Men, Vol. II, p. 88.
103. A.I.
Denikin, Ocherki russkoy smut] (Sketches of Russia
in Turmoil), Vol. V, Berlin
1926, p. 246.
104. Z. Avalov
(Avalishvili), Nezavidmost' Gruzii v megzdunarodnoi politike (The Independence of Georgia
in International Politics), Paris
1924, pp. 265, 268.
105. Avalov, p.
276.
106. Quoted by
Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Tramcaucasia, p. 295.
107. Lake, Cities and Men, Vol. II, p. 153.
109. See the
texts in Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transraucasia, p. 308.
110. See A. B.
Kadishev, Interventsiya i grazhdanskaya voyna v Zakavkaz'e (The
Intervention and Civil War in Transcaucasia), Moscow 1960, p. 363.
111. Kazemzadeh,
The Struggle for Transcaucasia, pp.
318-19.
112. Documents
relatifs à la question de la Géorgie devant la Société des Nations, Paris
1925, P. 67. Professor B. Lewis kindly informs me that the first volume of
Kazim Karabekir Pasha's memoirs was published in Turkey in 1960.
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