August Uprising in Georgia
Encyclopedia
The August Uprising was an unsuccessful insurrection against Soviet rule
in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic from late August to early September 1924.
Aimed at restoring the independence of Georgia
from the Soviet Union, the uprising was led by the Committee for Independence of Georgia
, a bloc of anti-Soviet political organizations chaired by the Georgian Social Democratic (Menshevik) Party
. It was a culmination of the three-year struggle against the Bolshevik
regime established by the Soviet Russia’s Red Army
during a military campaign against
the Democratic Republic of Georgia
in early 1921. The insurrection was suppressed by the Red Army and Cheka
troops under orders of Joseph Stalin
and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and was followed by a wave of mass repressions in which several thousand citizens of Georgia were purged. The August uprising proved to be one of the last major rebellions against the early Soviet government, and its defeat marked the final establishment of Communist rule in Georgia.
Yet, Georgia’s loyalty to the new regime proved not so easy to obtain. Within the first three years of their rule, the Bolsheviks managed to recruit fewer than 10,000 people into their party, while the Mensheviks still enjoyed significant popularity in Georgia, counting over 60,000 members in their organizations. The 1918–1921 independence, though short-lived, had played a crucial role in the national awakening of Georgia, winning a high popular support to the ruling Menshevik party. A forcible Sovietization
and grievances over the ensuing border rearrangements in which Georgia lost sizeable portion of its pre-Soviet territories to Turkey
(see Treaty of Kars
), Azerbaijan SSR
, Armenian SSR
and Russia, fueled a widespread opposition to the new regime. The new Bolshevik government, led by the Georgian Revkom (Revolutionary Committee), enjoyed so little support among the population that it faced the distinct prospect of insurrection and civil war. The Bolsheviks had limited ties with the Georgian peasantry, which was overwhelmingly opposed to collectivization and dissatisfied over land shortages and other economic troubles. The situation in the country was further aggravated by a famine
prevailing in many areas and the summer 1921 outbreak of cholera
which carried off thousands of victims. The desperate shortage of food and the breakdown of medical services resulted in heavy mortality, Catholicos Patriarch
Leonid
being among the dead. The highly politicized working class of Georgia, with its severe economic problems, was also hostile toward the new regime as were the national intelligentsia and nobility who had pledged their loyalty to the Menshevik republic. A delayed transition from the Revkom’s rule to the Soviets’ system, subordination of workers’ organizations and trades unions to the Bolshevik party committees and Moscow’s centralizing policy created a discontent even among the multiethnic workers of Tiflis who were the most sympathetic towards Communist doctrines.
Public discontent within the Georgian society indirectly reflected in a bitter struggle among Bolsheviks about the way in which social and political transformation was to be achieved in Georgia. Hardliners led by Sergo Ordzhonikidze, head of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee (Zaikkraikom) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
, and Joseph Stalin
, People's Commissar for Nationalities for the RSFSR, launched a series of measures aimed at elimination of the last remnants of Georgia’s self-rule. They were opposed by a group of Georgian Bolsheviks, described by their opponents as "national deviationists" and led by Filipp Makharadze
and Budu Mdivani, who advocated tolerance toward the Menshevik opposition, greater democracy within the party, a moderate approach toward land reform, and, above all, called for greater autonomy from Moscow and stubbornly opposed Stalin’s project of uniting all the three Transcaucasian republics economically and politically. The crisis known as the "Georgian Affair
" lasted throughout 1922 and ended with the hardliners’ victory. As a result, Georgia was forcibly merged with the Armenian
and Azerbaijan
republics into the Transcaucasian SFSR
, a decision which delivered a heavy blow to Georgian national pride. With the defeat of "national deviationists", the Bolsheviks’ policy became more aggressive; all kind of opposition was severely suppressed; those parties which still retained legal status were forced to announce their dissolution and declare their official loyalty to the Soviet authorities between April 1922 and October 1923. Those who continued to operate did that as underground organizations. The Georgian Orthodox Church was also persecuted; over 1,500 churches and monasteries were closed or demolished and a number of clerics were imprisoned, including Catholicos Patriarch Ambrose who was arrested and tried for having sent a letter of protest to the 1922 Genoa Conference
in which he described the conditions under which Georgia was living since the Red Army invasion and begged for the "help of the civilized world".
In the course of the Red Army invasion, part of the defeated Georgian forces withdrew into the mountains and organized themselves into a number of small partisan groups. From 1921 to 1922, guerrilla warfare broke out in several regions of Georgia. In May 1921, the highlanders of Svaneti
, northwestern Georgia, led by Mosestro Dadeshkeliani, Nestor Gardapkhadze and Bidzina Pirveli, rose in rebellion
. After a resistance of six months, the revolt was put down and its leaders were purged. In early 1922, the rebellion against the Soviet rule
broke out in Khevsureti
, another mountainous district, but in northeast Georgia. Soviet troops using aviation managed to stop this rebellion from spreading, but could not crush it completely. Colonel Kakutsa Cholokashvili
, who had led the revolt, managed to escape to the neighboring Chechnya
, whence he made several inroads into Georgia, preventing the Bolsheviks from gaining a foothold in the eastern Georgian mountains. The local militsiya
chief Levan Razikashvili
was arrested and later shot for having sympathized with the rebellion.
Still, these revolts were local and spontaneous and did not attract large masses. Within the period of 1922–1923, 33 of 57 active guerrilla detachments disintegrated or surrendered to the Soviet authorities. The deplorable situation of the anti-Soviet opposition forced all major underground parties to seek closer cooperation. The negotiations proceeded slowly, however, and it was not until mid-1922 that the Mensheviks reached an agreement with their formal rivals—the National Democrats and some other political groups—to coordinate their efforts against the Bolsheviks. Soon the opposition parties congregated into an underground movement known as the Committee for the Independence of Georgia or the "Damkom" (short for damoukideblobis komiteti, Committee for Independence). Sponsored by the government of Georgia-in-exile, the Damkom began preparations for a general uprising in Georgia. The organization set up a "Military Center" and appointed General Spiridon Chavchavadze the commander-in-chief of all rebel forces. Several members of the former Menshevik government returned clandestinely from exile, including the former Minister of Agriculture, Noe Khomeriki
, as well as the former commander of the National Guard, Valiko Jugheli
. The organizers, encouraged by the Georgian emigrants in Europe, had still more expectations that the Western powers intended to help. They also hoped that the Georgian revolt would further other Caucasian peoples to rise in arms, but the secret negotiations with Armenian and Azeri nationalists yielded no results and even more promising talks with the Muslim
Chechen
leader, Ali Mitayev
, were finally aborted due to mass arrests and repressions in Northern Caucasus.
The Georgian branch of the Soviet secret police, Cheka
, with recently appointed Deputy Chief Lavrentiy Beria
playing a leading role, managed to penetrate the organization and carried out mass arrests. A prominent Menshevik activist, David Sagirashvili, was arrested and then deported to Germany in October 1922 along with sixty-two other Mensheviks. A heavy loss was sustained in February 1923 by the Georgian opposition, when fifteen members of the military center were arrested. Among them were the principal leaders of the resistance movement, Generals Kote Abkhazi
, Alexander Andronikashvili
and Varden Tsulukidze
; they were executed on 19 May 1923. In March 1923 the Cheka discovered an underground Menshevik printshop and arrested several oppositionists. The Menshevik leaders Noe Khomeriki, Benia Chkhikvishvili
, and Valiko Jugheli too fell in the hands of the Cheka on 9 November 1923, 25 July 1924, and 6 August 1924, respectively.
Under these circumstances, some Georgians doubted whether the uprising could be successful. The captured rebel leader, Jugheli, urged Cheka officials to allow him to inform his comrades that their plans had been discovered and advise them to abandon their proposed revolt, but the Cheka refused. Jugheli’s message still reached the rebels, but the conspirators decided that this might have been a Cheka provocation and went ahead with plans for the uprising.
There are many indications that the Soviet intelligence had been, at a certain level, implicated in provoking the uprising. The Cheka, employing secret agents in local socialist circles, were well informed of the conspiracy and popular dissatisfaction of the Bolshevik rule. Instructed by Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, Beria and his superior, Kvantaliani, actually encouraged the rebellion so they would have a pretext for eliminating all political opposition and avenging personal scores with their former rivals in Georgia.
On 18 August 1924, the Damkom laid plans for a general insurrection for 2.00 am
29 August. The plan of the simultaneous uprising miscarried, however, and, through some misunderstanding, the mining town of Chiatura
, western Georgia, rose in rebellion a day earlier, on 28 August. This enabled the Soviet government to timely put all available forces in the region on alert. Yet, at first the insurgents achieved considerable success and formed an Interim Government of Georgia chaired by Prince Giorgi Tsereteli. The uprising quickly spread to neighboring areas and a large portion of western Georgia and several districts in eastern Georgia wrested out of the Soviet control.
The success of the uprising was short-lived, however. Although the insurrection went further than the Cheka had anticipated, the reaction of the Soviet authorities was prompt. Stalin dissipated any doubt in Moscow of the significance of the disorders in Georgia by the one word: "Kronstadt", referring to the Kronstadt rebellion
, a large scale though unsuccessful mutiny by Soviet sailors in 1921. Additional Red Army troops under the overall command of Semyon Pugachev were promptly sent in and Georgia’s coastline was blockaded to prevent a landing of Georgian émigré groups. Detachments of the Red Army and Cheka attacked the first insurgent towns in western Georgia—Chiatura, Senaki
and Abasha
—as early as 29 August and managed to force the rebels into forests and mountains by 30 August. The Red Army forces employed artillery and aviation to fight the guerrillas who still continued to offer resistance, especially in the province of Guria
, a home region to many Georgian Menshevik leaders and thus overwhelmingly disloyal to the Bolshevik rule. Tiflis, Batumi
and some larger towns, where the Bolsheviks enjoyed more authority, remained quiet as did Abkhazia
and most of the territories compactly settled by ethnic minorities.
Following the setback suffered by the insurgents in the west, the epicenter of the revolt now shifted into eastern Georgia, where, on 29 August, a large rebel force under Colonel Cholokashvili assaulted the Red Army barracks in Manglisi, on southwestern approaches of Tiflis, but was driven back by the Soviet troops which had heavily fortified all strategic positions in and around the capital. Reinforcements failed and Cholokashvili’s forces were left isolated, forcing them to retreat eastward into the Kakheti
province. On 3 September Cholokashvili made the last desperate attempt to turn a tide of the rebellion and took the town of Dusheti
in a surprise attack. However, he could not hold off a Red Army counter-offensive and withdrew into mountains. The suppression of the rebellion was accompanied by a full scale outbreak of the Red Terror
, "unprecedented even in the most tragic moments of the revolution" as the French author Boris Souvarine
puts it. The scattered guerrilla resistance continued for several weeks, but by mid-September most of the main rebel groups had been destroyed.
On 4 September the Cheka discovered the rebels’ chief headquarters at the Shio-Mgvime Monastery
near the town of Mtskheta
, and arrested Prince Andronikashvili, the Damkom chairman, and his associates Javakhishvili, Ishkhneli, Jinoria, and Bochorishvili. On the same day, Beria met with the arrested oppositionists in Tiflis, and proposed to issue a declaration urging the partisans to put down their arms. The committee members, tied up and facing death themselves, accepted the proposal on the condition that an order to stop mass executions be given immediately. Beria agreed and the rebels signed the declaration in order to put an end to the bloodshed.
The persecutions did not end, however. In violation of the promise made by Beria to the arrested opposition leaders, mass arrests and executions continued. The political guidance of the anti-revolt operations was effected by the GPU
chief in Georgia, Solomon Mogilevsky
, and the repressions were largely supported by the Transcaucasian Central Committee. Stalin himself is quoted to have vowed that "all of Georgia must be plowed under".
In a series of raids, the Red Army and Cheka detachments killed thousands of civilians, exterminating entire families including women and children. Mass executions took place in prisons, where people were killed without trial, including even those in prison at the time of the rebellion. Hundreds of arrested were shot directly in railway trunks, so that the dead bodies could be removed faster, a new and effective technical invention authored by the Cheka officer Talakhadze.
The exact number of casualties and the victims of the purges remains unknown. Approximately 3,000 died in fighting. The number of those who were executed during the uprising or in its immediate aftermath amounted to 7,000–10,000 or even more. According to the most recent accounts included also in The Black Book of Communism
(Harvard University Press
, 1999), 12,578 people were put to death from 29 August to 5 September 1924. About 20,000 people were deported to Siberia
and Central Asian deserts.
sent a resolution to the League of Nations
condemning the Soviet government, but did not achieve any substantial results. Clara Zetkin
, a notable German
Social Democrat, attempted to counteract the negative publicity, visited Tiflis and then wrote a leaflet on Georgia, in which she claimed that only 320 persons had been shot. Nonetheless the public outcry resulted in unpleasant repercussions for the central government in Moscow, prompting the Politburo
to set up a special commission, led by Ordzhonikidze, to investigate the causes of the uprising and the Cheka activities during its elimination. In October 1924, following the issuance of the commission’s report, some members of the Georgian Cheka were purged as "unreliable elements" who were presumably offered up as scapegoats for the atrocities. Ordzhonikidze himself admitted before a meeting of the Central Committee in Moscow in October 1924 that "perhaps we did go a little far, but we couldn't help ourselves.” On 7 October 1924, the Soviet administration (Sovnarkom, "Council of People's Commissars") of Georgia declared an amnesty to all participants of the revolt who would surrender voluntarily. In early March 1925 the Chairman of the All-Union Executive Committee
, Mikhail Kalinin
, arrived in Georgia and called for the amnesty of the participants of the August 1924 insurrection, and for the suspension of religious persecutions. As a result, the Cheka grip in Georgia was relatively eased (for example, Catholicos Patriarch Ambrose and the members of the Patriarchal Council were released), military pacification was completed and an appearance of normality returned to the country, but Georgians had suffered a shock from which they were never able to completely recover. The uprising proved to be a last armed effort of Georgians to oust the Bolshevik regime and regain their independence. The most active pro-independence part of the Georgian society, nobility, military officers and intellectual elites were virtually exterminated. Only a few survivors such as Cholokashvili, Lashkarashvili and some of their associates managed to escape abroad. The Georgian émigré Irakly Tsereteli considered the event disastrous both for the future of social democracy and of Georgia. The failure of the uprising and the intensified police repression that followed decimated the Menshevik organization in Georgia and it no longer was a threat to the Bolsheviks. However, Beria and his colleagues continued to use a "menshevik danger" as an excuse for reprisals in Georgia. During the years 1925–6 at least 500 socialists were shot without trial.
The uprising was also exploited as the pretext for disrupting Tiflis University
which was seen by the Bolsheviks as a shelter of Georgian nationalism. Despite the fact that several leading academics, who sympathized with or even participated in the anti-Soviet movement, eventually distanced themselves from the idea of an armed revolt and even denounced it in a special statement, the university was purged of unreliable elements and placed under the complete control of the Communist Party. Substantial changes were made in its structure, curriculum, and personnel, including the dismissal of the Rector, a noted historian Ivane Javakhishvili
.
On the other hand, the events in Georgia demonstrated the necessity for greater concessions to the peasants; Stalin declared that an August 1924 uprising in Georgia was sparked by dissatisfaction among the peasants and called the party to conciliate them. He admitted that "what has happened in Georgia may happen throughout Russia, unless we make a complete change in our attitude to the peasantry" and placed the responsibility for the errors committed on subordinate officials. Vyacheslav Molotov
, an influential member of the Politburo, for his part declared: "Georgia provides a startling example of the breach between the Party and the mass of the peasantry in the country." As a result, the Communist Party of Georgia chose, for the time being, to use peaceful persuasion rather than armed coercion to extend their influence over the peasant masses, and to moderate the attempts to enforce collectivization. The extension of the radical land reform and the relative freedom granted peasants reduced hostility to the new regime. Although the last attributes of Georgia’s political and economic sovereignty, which both the Mensheviks and the "national Communists" had fought to preserve, had been eliminated, the final victory of the Soviet power in Georgia was accompanied by moderate economic growth, that ensured relative stability in the country. Another important factor in lessening opposition to the Bolsheviks, particularly from the intelligentsia
, was the policy of "nativization
" persuaded by the Soviet government in the 1920s; Georgian art, language, and learning were promoted; the spread of literacy was sponsored and the role of ethnic Georgians in administrative and cultural institutions enhanced.
, emerged as a major symbol of Georgian patriotism and national resistance to the Soviet rule. The process of legal "rehabilitation"
(exoneration) of the victims of the 1920s repressions began under Mikhail Gorbachev
’s policy of Glasnost
("openness") and was completed in 25 May 1992 decree issued by the State Council of the Republic of Georgia chaired by Eduard Shevardnadze
. In connection with the opening of the Museum of Soviet Occupation
in May 2006, more archival reserves were made public by the Ministry of Interior of Georgia which has recently started to publish the names of the victims of the 1924 purges and other materials from the Soviet era secret archives.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic from late August to early September 1924.
Aimed at restoring the independence of Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
from the Soviet Union, the uprising was led by the Committee for Independence of Georgia
Committee for Independence of Georgia
The Committee for the Independence of Georgia or the Parity Committee was an underground anti-Soviet organization active in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in the early 1920s. It is commonly known as "Damkom"...
, a bloc of anti-Soviet political organizations chaired by the Georgian Social Democratic (Menshevik) Party
Georgian Social Democratic (Menshevik) Party
200px|thumb|Menshevik Flag of Georgia, created by Iakob NikoladzeThe Social Democratic Labour Party of Georgia was a political party in Georgia. It was founded as the Georgian branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party separated itself from the Russian mother-party.The party dominated...
. It was a culmination of the three-year struggle against the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
regime established by the Soviet Russia’s Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
during a military campaign against
Red Army invasion of Georgia
The Red Army invasion of Georgia also known as the Soviet–Georgian War or the Soviet invasion of Georgia was a military campaign by the Soviet Russian Red Army against the Democratic Republic of Georgia aimed at overthrowing the Social-Democratic government and installing the Bolshevik regime...
the Democratic Republic of Georgia
Democratic Republic of Georgia
The Democratic Republic of Georgia , 1918–1921, was the first modern establishment of a Republic of Georgia.The DRG was created after the collapse of the Russian Empire that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917...
in early 1921. The insurrection was suppressed by the Red Army and Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
troops under orders of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and was followed by a wave of mass repressions in which several thousand citizens of Georgia were purged. The August uprising proved to be one of the last major rebellions against the early Soviet government, and its defeat marked the final establishment of Communist rule in Georgia.
Background
Georgia was proclaimed a Soviet Socialist Republic on 25 February 1921, when the Red Army took control of Tiflis (Tbilisi), the capital of Georgia, and forced the Menshevik government into exile.Yet, Georgia’s loyalty to the new regime proved not so easy to obtain. Within the first three years of their rule, the Bolsheviks managed to recruit fewer than 10,000 people into their party, while the Mensheviks still enjoyed significant popularity in Georgia, counting over 60,000 members in their organizations. The 1918–1921 independence, though short-lived, had played a crucial role in the national awakening of Georgia, winning a high popular support to the ruling Menshevik party. A forcible Sovietization
Sovietization
Sovietization is term that may be used with two distinct meanings:*the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets .*the adoption of a way of life and mentality modelled after the Soviet Union....
and grievances over the ensuing border rearrangements in which Georgia lost sizeable portion of its pre-Soviet territories to Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
(see Treaty of Kars
Treaty of Kars
The Treaty of Kars was a "friendship" treaty signed in Kars on October 13, 1921 and ratified in Yerevan on September 11 1922.Signatories included representatives from the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, which in 1923 would declare the Republic of Turkey, and also from Soviet Armenia, Soviet...
), Azerbaijan SSR
Azerbaijan SSR
The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Azerbaijan SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union....
, Armenian SSR
Armenian SSR
The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet...
and Russia, fueled a widespread opposition to the new regime. The new Bolshevik government, led by the Georgian Revkom (Revolutionary Committee), enjoyed so little support among the population that it faced the distinct prospect of insurrection and civil war. The Bolsheviks had limited ties with the Georgian peasantry, which was overwhelmingly opposed to collectivization and dissatisfied over land shortages and other economic troubles. The situation in the country was further aggravated by a famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
prevailing in many areas and the summer 1921 outbreak of cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
which carried off thousands of victims. The desperate shortage of food and the breakdown of medical services resulted in heavy mortality, Catholicos Patriarch
Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia
Catholicos–Patriarch has been the title of the heads of the Georgian Orthodox Church since 1010. The first Catholicos–Patriarch of All Georgia was Melkisedek I...
Leonid
Patriarch Leonid of Georgia
Leonid was a Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia from 1918 to 1921.Born Longinoz Okropiridze in Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia, he graduated from the Theological Academy of Kiev, Ukraine in 1888...
being among the dead. The highly politicized working class of Georgia, with its severe economic problems, was also hostile toward the new regime as were the national intelligentsia and nobility who had pledged their loyalty to the Menshevik republic. A delayed transition from the Revkom’s rule to the Soviets’ system, subordination of workers’ organizations and trades unions to the Bolshevik party committees and Moscow’s centralizing policy created a discontent even among the multiethnic workers of Tiflis who were the most sympathetic towards Communist doctrines.
Public discontent within the Georgian society indirectly reflected in a bitter struggle among Bolsheviks about the way in which social and political transformation was to be achieved in Georgia. Hardliners led by Sergo Ordzhonikidze, head of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee (Zaikkraikom) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
, and Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, People's Commissar for Nationalities for the RSFSR, launched a series of measures aimed at elimination of the last remnants of Georgia’s self-rule. They were opposed by a group of Georgian Bolsheviks, described by their opponents as "national deviationists" and led by Filipp Makharadze
Filipp Makharadze
Filipp Makaradze was a Bolshevik revolutionary and government official.-Life:...
and Budu Mdivani, who advocated tolerance toward the Menshevik opposition, greater democracy within the party, a moderate approach toward land reform, and, above all, called for greater autonomy from Moscow and stubbornly opposed Stalin’s project of uniting all the three Transcaucasian republics economically and politically. The crisis known as the "Georgian Affair
Georgian Affair
The Georgian Affair of 1922 was a political conflict within the Soviet leadership about the way in which social and political transformation was to be achieved in the Georgian SSR...
" lasted throughout 1922 and ended with the hardliners’ victory. As a result, Georgia was forcibly merged with the Armenian
Armenian SSR
The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet...
and Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan SSR
The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Azerbaijan SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union....
republics into the Transcaucasian SFSR
Transcaucasian SFSR
The Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic , also known as the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian SFSR and the TSFSR for short, was a short-lived republic of the Soviet Union, lasting from 1922 to 1936...
, a decision which delivered a heavy blow to Georgian national pride. With the defeat of "national deviationists", the Bolsheviks’ policy became more aggressive; all kind of opposition was severely suppressed; those parties which still retained legal status were forced to announce their dissolution and declare their official loyalty to the Soviet authorities between April 1922 and October 1923. Those who continued to operate did that as underground organizations. The Georgian Orthodox Church was also persecuted; over 1,500 churches and monasteries were closed or demolished and a number of clerics were imprisoned, including Catholicos Patriarch Ambrose who was arrested and tried for having sent a letter of protest to the 1922 Genoa Conference
Genoa Conference
The Genoa Conference was held in Genoa, Italy in 1922 from 10 April to 19 May. At this conference, the representatives of 34 countries convened to speak about monetary economics in the wake of World War I...
in which he described the conditions under which Georgia was living since the Red Army invasion and begged for the "help of the civilized world".
Preparation
Svaneti
Svaneti is a historic province in Georgia, in the northwestern part of the country. It is inhabited by the Svans, a geographic subgroup of the Georgians.- Geography :...
, northwestern Georgia, led by Mosestro Dadeshkeliani, Nestor Gardapkhadze and Bidzina Pirveli, rose in rebellion
1921 Svanetian Uprising
The Svanetian Uprising of 1921 was an unsuccessful rebellion against the recently established Bolshevik regime in Georgia.The uprising broke out in Svaneti, a highland western Georgian province, almost immediately after the Red Army invasion of Georgia and the establishment of the Georgian SSR...
. After a resistance of six months, the revolt was put down and its leaders were purged. In early 1922, the rebellion against the Soviet rule
Kakhet-Khevsureti Rebellion
The Kakhet–Khevsureti Rebellion was a rebellion in 1921 against the Bolshevik forces in the Kakheti and Khevsureti regions of Georgia following the Red Army invasion of Georgia....
broke out in Khevsureti
Khevsureti
Khevsureti/Khevsuria is a historical-ethnographic region in eastern Georgia. They are the branch of Kartvelian people located along both the northern and southern slopes of the Great Caucasus...
, another mountainous district, but in northeast Georgia. Soviet troops using aviation managed to stop this rebellion from spreading, but could not crush it completely. Colonel Kakutsa Cholokashvili
Kakutsa Cholokashvili
Kaikhosro Cholokashvili commonly known as Kakutsa was a Georgian nobleman and military commander, regarded as a National Hero of Georgia...
, who had led the revolt, managed to escape to the neighboring Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
, whence he made several inroads into Georgia, preventing the Bolsheviks from gaining a foothold in the eastern Georgian mountains. The local militsiya
Militsiya
Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...
chief Levan Razikashvili
Levan Razikashvili
Levan Razikashvili was a Georgian military officer and victim of Soviet repressions.He was born into the family of the Georgian poet Luka Razikashvili, better known by his pseudonym Vazha-Pshavela. Razikashvili graduated from the Tbilisi Gymnasium for Nobility and joined the Social-Federalist...
was arrested and later shot for having sympathized with the rebellion.
Still, these revolts were local and spontaneous and did not attract large masses. Within the period of 1922–1923, 33 of 57 active guerrilla detachments disintegrated or surrendered to the Soviet authorities. The deplorable situation of the anti-Soviet opposition forced all major underground parties to seek closer cooperation. The negotiations proceeded slowly, however, and it was not until mid-1922 that the Mensheviks reached an agreement with their formal rivals—the National Democrats and some other political groups—to coordinate their efforts against the Bolsheviks. Soon the opposition parties congregated into an underground movement known as the Committee for the Independence of Georgia or the "Damkom" (short for damoukideblobis komiteti, Committee for Independence). Sponsored by the government of Georgia-in-exile, the Damkom began preparations for a general uprising in Georgia. The organization set up a "Military Center" and appointed General Spiridon Chavchavadze the commander-in-chief of all rebel forces. Several members of the former Menshevik government returned clandestinely from exile, including the former Minister of Agriculture, Noe Khomeriki
Noe Khomeriki
Noe Khomeriki was a Georgian politician involved in the Social Democrat movement and shot during the Bolshevik Red Terror in the Georgian SSR....
, as well as the former commander of the National Guard, Valiko Jugheli
Valiko Jugheli
Vladimir “Valiko” Jugheli was a Georgian politician and military commander.He was involved in the Marxist movement in Georgia at the beginning of the 20th century...
. The organizers, encouraged by the Georgian emigrants in Europe, had still more expectations that the Western powers intended to help. They also hoped that the Georgian revolt would further other Caucasian peoples to rise in arms, but the secret negotiations with Armenian and Azeri nationalists yielded no results and even more promising talks with the Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
Chechen
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...
leader, Ali Mitayev
Ali Mitayev
Ali Mitayev was a Chechen sheikh and leader of anti-Soviet movement in the 1920s.Born in the Chechen aul Avtury, Mitayev was educated at a madrasah in Grozny and, in 1912, founded a similar school in his native village. During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War,...
, were finally aborted due to mass arrests and repressions in Northern Caucasus.
The Georgian branch of the Soviet secret police, Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
, with recently appointed Deputy Chief Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
playing a leading role, managed to penetrate the organization and carried out mass arrests. A prominent Menshevik activist, David Sagirashvili, was arrested and then deported to Germany in October 1922 along with sixty-two other Mensheviks. A heavy loss was sustained in February 1923 by the Georgian opposition, when fifteen members of the military center were arrested. Among them were the principal leaders of the resistance movement, Generals Kote Abkhazi
Kote Abkhazi
Prince Konstantine "Kote" Abkhazi , was a Georgian military officer and politician. During the Imperial Russian rule, he was a general in the tsar's army, and a recognized leader of the liberal nobility of Georgia. After the Sovietization of Georgia, he emerged as one of the leaders of an...
, Alexander Andronikashvili
Alexander Andronikashvili
Alexander Andronikashvili also known as Andronikov was a Georgian military commander and anti-Soviet resistance leader.Of an old noble family, Andronikashvili served in the Imperial Russian army and was promoted to the rank of general in World War I. He then served for the General Staff of the...
and Varden Tsulukidze
Varden Tsulukidze
Varden Tsulukidze was a Georgian military commander and anti-Soviet resistance leader.Of a noble family, Tsulukidze served in the Imperial Russian army and was promoted to the rank of major-general in World War I...
; they were executed on 19 May 1923. In March 1923 the Cheka discovered an underground Menshevik printshop and arrested several oppositionists. The Menshevik leaders Noe Khomeriki, Benia Chkhikvishvili
Benia Chkhikvishvili
Benia Chkhikvishvili was a Georgian politician who was involved in the Social Democratic movement in the early 20th century. An active member of the Menshevik party, he led the 1905 revolution in Guria , a Georgian province on the Black Sea...
, and Valiko Jugheli too fell in the hands of the Cheka on 9 November 1923, 25 July 1924, and 6 August 1924, respectively.
Under these circumstances, some Georgians doubted whether the uprising could be successful. The captured rebel leader, Jugheli, urged Cheka officials to allow him to inform his comrades that their plans had been discovered and advise them to abandon their proposed revolt, but the Cheka refused. Jugheli’s message still reached the rebels, but the conspirators decided that this might have been a Cheka provocation and went ahead with plans for the uprising.
There are many indications that the Soviet intelligence had been, at a certain level, implicated in provoking the uprising. The Cheka, employing secret agents in local socialist circles, were well informed of the conspiracy and popular dissatisfaction of the Bolshevik rule. Instructed by Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, Beria and his superior, Kvantaliani, actually encouraged the rebellion so they would have a pretext for eliminating all political opposition and avenging personal scores with their former rivals in Georgia.
Outbreak and reaction
12-hour clock
The 12-hour clock is a time conversion convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods called ante meridiem and post meridiem...
29 August. The plan of the simultaneous uprising miscarried, however, and, through some misunderstanding, the mining town of Chiatura
Chiatura
Chiatura is a city in the Imereti region of Western Georgia. In 1989, it had a population of about 30,000. It is inland, in a mountain valley on the banks of the Kvirila River, and since 1879 has been a major centre of manganese production in the Caucasus. There is a rail link to transport...
, western Georgia, rose in rebellion a day earlier, on 28 August. This enabled the Soviet government to timely put all available forces in the region on alert. Yet, at first the insurgents achieved considerable success and formed an Interim Government of Georgia chaired by Prince Giorgi Tsereteli. The uprising quickly spread to neighboring areas and a large portion of western Georgia and several districts in eastern Georgia wrested out of the Soviet control.
The success of the uprising was short-lived, however. Although the insurrection went further than the Cheka had anticipated, the reaction of the Soviet authorities was prompt. Stalin dissipated any doubt in Moscow of the significance of the disorders in Georgia by the one word: "Kronstadt", referring to the Kronstadt rebellion
Kronstadt rebellion
The Kronstadt rebellion was one of many major unsuccessful left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War...
, a large scale though unsuccessful mutiny by Soviet sailors in 1921. Additional Red Army troops under the overall command of Semyon Pugachev were promptly sent in and Georgia’s coastline was blockaded to prevent a landing of Georgian émigré groups. Detachments of the Red Army and Cheka attacked the first insurgent towns in western Georgia—Chiatura, Senaki
Senaki
Senaki is a town in Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region, western Georgia. It is located at around .From 1935 to 1976 it was called Tskhakaya in honor of the Georgian Bolshevik revolutionary leader Mikhail Tskhakaya....
and Abasha
Abasha
Abasha is a town in western Georgia with a population of 6,400 . It is situated between the rivers of Abasha and Noghela, at 23m above sea level and is located some to the west of Tbilisi. The settlement of Abasha acquired the status of a town in 1964 and currently functions as an administrative...
—as early as 29 August and managed to force the rebels into forests and mountains by 30 August. The Red Army forces employed artillery and aviation to fight the guerrillas who still continued to offer resistance, especially in the province of Guria
Guria
Guria is a region in Georgia, in the western part of the country, bordered by the eastern end of the Black Sea. The region has a population of 143,357 and Ozurgeti is a regional capital.-Geography:...
, a home region to many Georgian Menshevik leaders and thus overwhelmingly disloyal to the Bolshevik rule. Tiflis, Batumi
Batumi
Batumi is a seaside city on the Black Sea coast and capital of Adjara, an autonomous republic in southwest Georgia. Sometimes considered Georgia's second capital, with a population of 121,806 , Batumi serves as an important port and a commercial center. It is situated in a subtropical zone, rich in...
and some larger towns, where the Bolsheviks enjoyed more authority, remained quiet as did Abkhazia
Abkhazia
Abkhazia is a disputed political entity on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the south-western flank of the Caucasus.Abkhazia considers itself an independent state, called the Republic of Abkhazia or Apsny...
and most of the territories compactly settled by ethnic minorities.
Following the setback suffered by the insurgents in the west, the epicenter of the revolt now shifted into eastern Georgia, where, on 29 August, a large rebel force under Colonel Cholokashvili assaulted the Red Army barracks in Manglisi, on southwestern approaches of Tiflis, but was driven back by the Soviet troops which had heavily fortified all strategic positions in and around the capital. Reinforcements failed and Cholokashvili’s forces were left isolated, forcing them to retreat eastward into the Kakheti
Kakheti
Kakheti is a historical province in Eastern Georgia inhabited by Kakhetians who speak a local dialect of Georgian. It is bordered by the small mountainous province of Tusheti and the Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north, Russian Federation to the Northeast, Azerbaijan to the Southeast, and...
province. On 3 September Cholokashvili made the last desperate attempt to turn a tide of the rebellion and took the town of Dusheti
Dusheti
Dusheti is a town in Georgia, situated in the Mtskheta-Mtianeti region, 54 km northeast of the nation’s capital of Tbilisi.Dusheti is located on both banks of the small mountainous river of Dushetis-Khevi at the foothills of the Greater Caucasus crest at an elevation of 900 m above sea level...
in a surprise attack. However, he could not hold off a Red Army counter-offensive and withdrew into mountains. The suppression of the rebellion was accompanied by a full scale outbreak of the Red Terror
Red Terror
The Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. In Soviet historiography, the Red Terror is described as having been officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended about October 1918...
, "unprecedented even in the most tragic moments of the revolution" as the French author Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.-Early years:...
puts it. The scattered guerrilla resistance continued for several weeks, but by mid-September most of the main rebel groups had been destroyed.
On 4 September the Cheka discovered the rebels’ chief headquarters at the Shio-Mgvime Monastery
Shio-Mgvime Monastery
The Shio-Mgvime monastery is a medieval monastic complex in Georgia, near the town of Mtskheta. It is located in a narrow limestone canyon on the northern bank of the river Mtkvari , some 30 km from Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital....
near the town of Mtskheta
Mtskheta
Mtskheta , one of the oldest cities of the country of Georgia , is located approximately 20 kilometers north of Tbilisi at the confluence of the Aragvi and Kura rivers. The city is now the administrative centre of the Mtskheta-Mtianeti region...
, and arrested Prince Andronikashvili, the Damkom chairman, and his associates Javakhishvili, Ishkhneli, Jinoria, and Bochorishvili. On the same day, Beria met with the arrested oppositionists in Tiflis, and proposed to issue a declaration urging the partisans to put down their arms. The committee members, tied up and facing death themselves, accepted the proposal on the condition that an order to stop mass executions be given immediately. Beria agreed and the rebels signed the declaration in order to put an end to the bloodshed.
The persecutions did not end, however. In violation of the promise made by Beria to the arrested opposition leaders, mass arrests and executions continued. The political guidance of the anti-revolt operations was effected by the GPU
State Political Directorate
The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...
chief in Georgia, Solomon Mogilevsky
Solomon Mogilevsky
Solomon Grigorevich Mogilevsky headed the Soviet foreign intelligence service, the INO of the GPU, from 1921 until May 1922, when he was sent to head the GPU in the South Caucasus region where had been involved in the suppression of the 1924 August Uprising in the Georgian SSR...
, and the repressions were largely supported by the Transcaucasian Central Committee. Stalin himself is quoted to have vowed that "all of Georgia must be plowed under".
In a series of raids, the Red Army and Cheka detachments killed thousands of civilians, exterminating entire families including women and children. Mass executions took place in prisons, where people were killed without trial, including even those in prison at the time of the rebellion. Hundreds of arrested were shot directly in railway trunks, so that the dead bodies could be removed faster, a new and effective technical invention authored by the Cheka officer Talakhadze.
The exact number of casualties and the victims of the purges remains unknown. Approximately 3,000 died in fighting. The number of those who were executed during the uprising or in its immediate aftermath amounted to 7,000–10,000 or even more. According to the most recent accounts included also in The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored by several European academics and edited by Stéphane Courtois, which describes a history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and...
(Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
, 1999), 12,578 people were put to death from 29 August to 5 September 1924. About 20,000 people were deported to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and Central Asian deserts.
Aftermath
Reports of the extent of the repressions caused an outcry among socialists abroad. Leaders of the Second InternationalSecond International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
sent a resolution to the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
condemning the Soviet government, but did not achieve any substantial results. Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, activist, and fighter for women's rights. In 1910, she organized the first International Women's Day....
, a notable German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Social Democrat, attempted to counteract the negative publicity, visited Tiflis and then wrote a leaflet on Georgia, in which she claimed that only 320 persons had been shot. Nonetheless the public outcry resulted in unpleasant repercussions for the central government in Moscow, prompting the Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
to set up a special commission, led by Ordzhonikidze, to investigate the causes of the uprising and the Cheka activities during its elimination. In October 1924, following the issuance of the commission’s report, some members of the Georgian Cheka were purged as "unreliable elements" who were presumably offered up as scapegoats for the atrocities. Ordzhonikidze himself admitted before a meeting of the Central Committee in Moscow in October 1924 that "perhaps we did go a little far, but we couldn't help ourselves.” On 7 October 1924, the Soviet administration (Sovnarkom, "Council of People's Commissars") of Georgia declared an amnesty to all participants of the revolt who would surrender voluntarily. In early March 1925 the Chairman of the All-Union Executive Committee
President of the Soviet Union
The President of the Soviet Union , officially called President of the USSR was the Head of State of the USSR from 15 March 1990 to 25 December 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev was the only person to occupy the office. Gorbachev was also General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between...
, Mikhail Kalinin
Mikhail Kalinin
Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin , known familiarly by Soviet citizens as "Kalinych," was a Bolshevik revolutionary and the nominal head of state of Russia and later of the Soviet Union, from 1919 to 1946...
, arrived in Georgia and called for the amnesty of the participants of the August 1924 insurrection, and for the suspension of religious persecutions. As a result, the Cheka grip in Georgia was relatively eased (for example, Catholicos Patriarch Ambrose and the members of the Patriarchal Council were released), military pacification was completed and an appearance of normality returned to the country, but Georgians had suffered a shock from which they were never able to completely recover. The uprising proved to be a last armed effort of Georgians to oust the Bolshevik regime and regain their independence. The most active pro-independence part of the Georgian society, nobility, military officers and intellectual elites were virtually exterminated. Only a few survivors such as Cholokashvili, Lashkarashvili and some of their associates managed to escape abroad. The Georgian émigré Irakly Tsereteli considered the event disastrous both for the future of social democracy and of Georgia. The failure of the uprising and the intensified police repression that followed decimated the Menshevik organization in Georgia and it no longer was a threat to the Bolsheviks. However, Beria and his colleagues continued to use a "menshevik danger" as an excuse for reprisals in Georgia. During the years 1925–6 at least 500 socialists were shot without trial.
The uprising was also exploited as the pretext for disrupting Tiflis University
Tbilisi State University
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University , better known as Tbilisi State University , is a university established on 8 February 1918 in Tbilisi, Georgia. TSU is the oldest university in the whole Caucasus region...
which was seen by the Bolsheviks as a shelter of Georgian nationalism. Despite the fact that several leading academics, who sympathized with or even participated in the anti-Soviet movement, eventually distanced themselves from the idea of an armed revolt and even denounced it in a special statement, the university was purged of unreliable elements and placed under the complete control of the Communist Party. Substantial changes were made in its structure, curriculum, and personnel, including the dismissal of the Rector, a noted historian Ivane Javakhishvili
Ivane Javakhishvili
Ivane Javakhishvili was a Georgian historian whose voluminous works heavily influenced the modern scholarship of the history and culture of Georgia...
.
On the other hand, the events in Georgia demonstrated the necessity for greater concessions to the peasants; Stalin declared that an August 1924 uprising in Georgia was sparked by dissatisfaction among the peasants and called the party to conciliate them. He admitted that "what has happened in Georgia may happen throughout Russia, unless we make a complete change in our attitude to the peasantry" and placed the responsibility for the errors committed on subordinate officials. Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
, an influential member of the Politburo, for his part declared: "Georgia provides a startling example of the breach between the Party and the mass of the peasantry in the country." As a result, the Communist Party of Georgia chose, for the time being, to use peaceful persuasion rather than armed coercion to extend their influence over the peasant masses, and to moderate the attempts to enforce collectivization. The extension of the radical land reform and the relative freedom granted peasants reduced hostility to the new regime. Although the last attributes of Georgia’s political and economic sovereignty, which both the Mensheviks and the "national Communists" had fought to preserve, had been eliminated, the final victory of the Soviet power in Georgia was accompanied by moderate economic growth, that ensured relative stability in the country. Another important factor in lessening opposition to the Bolsheviks, particularly from the intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
, was the policy of "nativization
Korenizatsiya
Korenizatsiya sometimes also called korenization, meaning "nativization" or "indigenization", literally "putting down roots", was the early Soviet nationalities policy promoted mostly in the 1920s but with a continuing legacy in later years...
" persuaded by the Soviet government in the 1920s; Georgian art, language, and learning were promoted; the spread of literacy was sponsored and the role of ethnic Georgians in administrative and cultural institutions enhanced.
Assessment
Under the Soviet Union, the August Uprising remained a taboo theme and was hardly mentioned at all, if not in its ideological content. Using its control over education and the media, the Soviet propaganda machine denounced the Georgian rebellion as a "bloody adventure initiated by the Mensheviks and other reactionary forces who managed to implicate a small and undereducated part of the population in it." With a new tide of independence movement sweeping throughout Georgia in the late 1980s, the anti-Soviet fighters of 1924, particularly, the leading partisan officer Kakutsa CholokashviliKakutsa Cholokashvili
Kaikhosro Cholokashvili commonly known as Kakutsa was a Georgian nobleman and military commander, regarded as a National Hero of Georgia...
, emerged as a major symbol of Georgian patriotism and national resistance to the Soviet rule. The process of legal "rehabilitation"
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...
(exoneration) of the victims of the 1920s repressions began under Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
’s policy of Glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
("openness") and was completed in 25 May 1992 decree issued by the State Council of the Republic of Georgia chaired by Eduard Shevardnadze
Eduard Shevardnadze
Eduard Shevardnadze is a former Soviet, and later, Georgian statesman from the height to the end of the Cold War. He served as President of Georgia from 1995 to 2003, and as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party , from 1972 to 1985. Shevardnadze was responsible for many top decisions on...
. In connection with the opening of the Museum of Soviet Occupation
Museum of Soviet Occupation (Tbilisi)
The Museum of the Soviet Occupation is a history museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, documenting the seven decades of the Soviet rule in Georgia and dedicated to the history of the anti-occupational, national-liberation movement of Georgia, to the victims of the Soviet political repressions throughout...
in May 2006, more archival reserves were made public by the Ministry of Interior of Georgia which has recently started to publish the names of the victims of the 1924 purges and other materials from the Soviet era secret archives.
Sources
- ვალერი ბენიძე (Valeri Benidze) (1991), 1924 წლის აჯანყება საქართველოში (1924 Uprising in Georgia). Tbilisi: სამშობლო ("Samshoblo") (in Georgian)
- ლევან ზ. ურუშაძე (Levan Z. Urushadze) (2006), ქაიხოსრო (ქაქუცა) ჩოლოყაშვილის ბიოგრაფიისათვის (For the biography of Kaikhosro (Kakutsa) Cholokashvili).- "ამირანი" ("Amirani"), XIV-XV, მონრეალი-თბილისი (Montreal-Tbilisi), pages 147–166, ISSN 15120449 (in Georgian, English summary).
- Ariel Cohen (1998), Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis. Praeger/Greenwood, ISBN 978-0-275-96481-8.
- Raymond Duguet (1927), Moscou et la Géorgie martyre. Préface de C. B. Stokes. Paris: Tallandier.
- Amy W. Knight (1993), Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant, Princeton University PressPrinceton University Press-Further reading:* "". Artforum International, 2005.-External links:* * * * *...
, Princeton, New JerseyPrinceton, New JerseyPrinceton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
, ISBN 978-0-691-01093-9. - David Marshall LangDavid Marshall LangDavid Marshall Lang , was a Professor of Caucasian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was one of the most productive British scholars who specialized in Georgian, Armenian and ancient Bulgarian history.David M...
(1962). A Modern History of Georgia, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. - Ghia NodiaGhia NodiaGhia Nodia is a Georgian political analyst who served as the Minister of Education and Science in the Cabinet of Georgia from January 31, 2008 until 10 December 2008....
, Álvaro Pinto Scholtbach, coordinators-editors (2006), The Political Landscape of Georgia. Eburon Delft, ISBN 978-90-5972-113-5. - Roger William Pethybridge (1990), One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward: Soviet Society and Politics in the New Economic Policy, Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, ISBN 978-0-19-821927-9. - Rudolph J. Rummel (1990), Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers, ISBN 978-1-56000-887-3.
- Boris SouvarineBoris SouvarineBoris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.-Early years:...
(2005), Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4191-1307-9. - Ronald Grigor SunyRonald Grigor SunyRonald Grigor Suny is currently director of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies and the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan, as well as Emeritus Professor of political science and history at the University of Chicago...
(1994), The Making of the Georgian Nation: 2nd edition, Indiana University PressIndiana University PressIndiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. It was founded in 1950. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana....
, ISBN 978-0-253-20915-3. - Akaki SurguladzeAkaki SurguladzeAkaki Surguladze was a Georgian historian. He was the first Soviet scholar, who attempted, in 1988, to revise the hitherto commonly accepted official Soviet version of the Soviet-Georgian War which led to the forcible Sovietization of Georgia in 1921.- References :...
, Paata Surguladze (1991), საქართველოს ისტორია, 1783-1990 (History of Georgia, 1783-1990), Tbilisi: Meroni. (in Georgian)
External links
- A documentary film "1924" (includes original footage). Retrieved from Youtube on 4 September 2007.