ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 2 ( 2013/1 ) |
“A
WONDERFUL COUNTRY IN THE CAUCASUS…”:[1]
A
BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSO-GEORGIAN RELATIONS IN THE PRE-SOVIET ERA
EMIL SOULEIMANOV*
“For us in Georgia, the sun rises in the North”
Eduard Shevardnadze, First Secretary of Communist Party of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republuc, circa 1978
In July 2010, the Georgian parliament approved a resolution to mark 25th February as the Soviet Occupation day.[2] In September 2010, Georgian students
received a new history textbook detailing what is termed as the
history of the “200
years of Russian occupation of Georgia”.
Summary
This essay problematizes recently established clichés in both Russia and
Georgia, clichés that promote mutual anxiety whose roots are traced back in the
modern history of these two nations. It identifies the roots of these clichés
as closely related to the stirred interrelationship of post-Soviet Russian and
Georgian elites determined by discord over a series of political issues that
resonated in both countries’ public discourse attributing to the political
conflict significant ethnic overtones. Focusing on the Tsarist period, the
article seeks to highlight the evolution of mutual perceptions between the Russians
and Georgians, whilst emphasizing the Georgian perspective and concentrating heavily
on the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as a crucial
period that predetermined the Georgian view of Russia and the Russians as part
of Georgians’ modern-day self-consciousness.
Keywords: Russia,
Georgia, Caucasus, perceptions, history, conflict.
Following the deterioration of the Russo-Georgian
relations in the post-Soviet period that culminated during the 2008 war in
South Ossetia and the subsequent recognition of independence by Moscow of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgia’s breakaway territories, anti-Russian sentiments
have been on the rise in Georgia, a tiny country to the south of the Greater
Caucasus mountain range that used to be a historical crossroads of many empires,
cultures and religions. Similarly, anti-Georgian bias have gradually risen in post-Soviet
Russia which has manifested itself in the aftermath of what came to be known as
the “Rose revolution”, a popular revolt that took place in Georgia in Fall 2003,
resulting in the ousting of Eduard Shevardnadze, a patriarch of (post-) Soviet
politics, and accession to presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili, a young and
pro-Western reformist politician determined to regain control over separatist
territories and ensure the country’s integration into key Western political and
security organizations. Indeed, in the
recent decade, mutual anxiety between Russian and Georgian officials has grown
to unprecedented proportions threatening to affect the milieu of inter-ethnic
relations on the level of individuals that has always been marked by a relatively
high degree of mutual sympathy.[3] This essay in an attempt to look at the
modern history of Russo-Georgian relations concentrating heavily on the Tsarist
period and providing a view of Russia and the Russians from a Georgian
perspective.
Georgia: A
Brief History
While in Armenia, after centuries of
foreign domination viewed as suffering in the name of faith and the nation, the
regaining of statehood has had a virtually metaphysical dimension, and while to
the contrary in Azerbaijan the idea of a unified nation state had never taken
root, in Georgia the announcement of independence was rather understood as the
restoration – however much desired – of historical justice. The year 1991 was
regarded as an important milestone, meaning the reestablishment of the
historical continuity of Georgian statehood that had been fundamentally
disrupted twice in modern history: in 1801 and again over a century later in
1921.
The (Proto-) Georgian
state has been documented in various forms since the early Middle Ages; some
local sources even give a much earlier date, placing the emergence of a unified
Georgian kingdom already in the 4th century BC.[4] Georgian
historiography lacks a uniform view of the ethnogenesis of the Georgians;
traditionally there has been a conflict of opinion between an archaistic and an
autochthonous approach, but there are ever more frequent attempts to synthesize
the two viewpoints.[5] The Georgian state has gone through periods of great
development and decline. It flourished, for example, during the rule of King
David IV (David the Builder, 1089–1125) or of Queen Tamar (1184–1213), when the
united Georgian kingdom included vast areas of the South Caucasus and eastern
Anatolia. During periods of decline and political disintegration, Georgia[6]
was subject to the power of Rome, the Persian empires, Byzantium, Arabs,
Mongols and first Seljuq then Ottoman Turks, for whose rulers the territory
represented a strategically located point between the endless Eurasian steppes
to the north and the Anatolian-Iranian plains to the south.[7] Georgian
kingdoms and principalities were thus very often under the domination of
powerful neighbors, but elements of Georgian statehood were seldom eliminated
entirely, if by that we mean the running of a political entity by rulers of
local origin. The territorial and political continuity of Georgian statehood,
whether in the form of the ancient unified kingdoms or (semi-) vassal
principalities, has played an important role in recent years in efforts to
consolidate Georgian national consciousness.
Meanwhile, the strong
differences of regional culture and religion that have been only partially a
consequence of the historical ascendancy of one power or another have hindered
the consolidation of a collective identity of ethnic Georgians within the
framework of a unified political nation, and this difficult process has
therefore taken long centuries.[8] The problem of the cultural and political
fragmentation of the Georgian nation was solved successfully during the 20th
century, which was a period of effective “social engineering of nationalities.”
With the development of nationalism, however, there was also a strengthening of
national self-awareness among the non-Georgian nationalities inhabiting the
border areas of the Georgian state – whether this involved the former Meskheti
Turks, Javakheti Armenians and Borchali (Kvemo Kartli) Azerbaijanis to the
south or especially the South Ossetians in the north and Abkhazians in the
northwest of the country. In the country’s modern history, the mosaic-like
(sub)ethnic maps of Georgia with conflicting (sub)ethnic and political
loyalties within the country and beyond its borders has been quite an effective
tool for intervention by outsiders, and this has become the nightmare of Georgian
intellectuals and statesmen striving for the territorial and
ideological-political cohesion of the country. They are especially sensitive to
the efforts – if sometimes only perceived – of foreign powers to take advantage
of Georgia’s ethnic and territorial fragmentation.
Relations with Russians and Russia in historical perspective
Until the 15th century,
when the remnants of the Byzantine Empire were swallowed up by the expanding
Ottoman Empire, Georgia had ceased to have direct contact with the Christian
world. The strong Greek influence, which was not limited to the area of their
shared Orthodox religion,[9] together with a no less strong (old-) Persian
influence had an effect on a broad stratum of Georgian high culture, and this
is especially true of the (early) Middle Ages, when Georgian statehood
solidified and strengthened. The territory of historical Georgia was united for
the first time in history in the 11th century by the effort of
rulers from the Georgian branch of the ancient Bagratid (Bagrationi) Dynasty,
which ruled the eastern Georgian states almost without interruption until 1783,
and formally until 1801. The idea, strong by local standards, of ethnic and
territorially grounded statehood based on Orthodoxy ensured during the
following centuries that the consciousness of Georgia’s elite were permanently
ingrained with a gravitation towards the West and Christian Europe, and with a
self-image of being a part of the West in spite of the massive cultural and
political influence of Turkey and Persia.
The orientation of
Georgian kings towards the increasingly powerful Muscovite or Russian state,
regarding itself as the “third Rome” and a bastion of Orthodoxy, dates back to
as early as the 16th century when Georgian kings started addressing
their Russian counterparts in an attempt to obtain military and political
relief in their permanent warfare with their powerful neighbors. In fact, this can
be viewed as a continuation of the religiously grounded orientation of Georgia
towards the West, Christendom and Europe. The orientation of the Georgian elite
towards the West began to manifest itself most emphatically in the 18th
century during the rule of King Erekle (Heraclius) II Bagrationi (Bagratid) of
Kartli-Kakheti who ruled over much of Eastern Georgia. This orientation had
both ideological and strategic reasons; attempts to create close contacts with
the remote northern state had already been undertaken several centuries
earlier. As mentioned above, Georgian kings and princes had hoped for the aid
of the Orthodox rulers of Russia for the solidifying of their rule at home, but
above all they wanted to secure an ally in the unceasing wars with their Muslim
neighbors, Turkey and Persia, whose expansionist plans caused the inhabitants
of Georgia considerable problems.[10] In turn, some sort of association of
Georgia to the Russian state was proposed by Georgians in various times. In
spite of the many communications from Georgian kings, the first Georgia-Russian
alliance is not documented until 1783, when the Treaty of Georgievsk was
signed, sealing the status of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti as a vassal state
of the Russian Empire in exchange for the providing of guarantees of security
by St. Petersburg. In 1795, when the army of the Persian ruler Agha Mohammed-Khan
Qajar directly threatened Tiflis (Tbilisi), however, the Russian troops in
Georgia remained neutral; their failure to fulfill their duty as allies cost
the lives of tens of thousands of inhabitants of the ravaged city and kingdom.
Another controversial event, often brought up by post-Soviet Georgian
nationalists, was the unilateral decree in 1801 of Tsar Alexander I, who had
just ascended to the Russian imperial throne, dissolving the Kingdom of
Kartli-Kacheti in contradiction to the terms of the Treaty of Georgievsk;
thereafter, guberniyas were set up on
Georgian territory following the Russian model.
By
Nonetheless, Georgian
culture flourished in the 19th century - as did Armenian and
Azerbaijani culture. For the first time after many centuries, long-term
stability and relative prosperity were secured, brought about by Russian rule;
the country underwent a population explosion. Especially in the latter half of
the 19th century, economic growth intensified. As the seat of the
Russian governor for the Caucasus, Tiflis became the cultural and, in a sense,
the economic metropolis of the region.[11] While centuries of perceived backwardness
combined with unending wars and suffering are associated in the Georgian
national consciousness with the culturally “alien” neighboring Muslim powers,
Turkey and Persia, there was a growing awareness of religious, cultural and
historical kinship with Russia.[12] To use the words of Konstantine
Gamsakhurdia, a well-known Soviet-era author and the father of Georgia’s first
president, “Russia was called upon to carry out a great cultural and historical
mission in the East. The semi-European monarchy fought against tyrannical
Persia and Turkey. Russia started the offensive against the Muslim states that
Byzantium had turned over in the name of Western civilization to the Austrian
Habsburgs and the Russian Romanovs.”[13]
Georgian nobility had
the same rights and duties as their Russian counterparts; as a consequence,
they could be incorporated into imperial institutions, the administration and,
last but not least, the army, and in this way the Romanov crown soon secured
the loyalty of the local elite. Among high-ranked members of Georgian nobility
who obtained wide public acclaim in the Empire was, for instance, Prince Peter
Bagration, the hero of the Patriotic War (1812) who died from injuries suffered
in the Borodino battle.
Most importantly, throughout the 19th
century, liberal Russian circles were enthralled with Georgia, the beautiful
country beneath the peaks of the Greater Caucasus Range, where one found a rare
mingling of the explosiveness of the highlanders with oriental refinement; it
was the poets Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov who were responsible for
the emergence of this phenomenon.[14] Some authors have even gone as far as to
claim that Georgia has been the second – naturally after their native Russia –
homeland of Russian poets. The colonial authorities were very sympathetic
towards the Georgians, whether because of religious affinity or because of a
similarity of mindset between the Russian and Georgian nobility and some other
reasons. Contemporary Russian accounts describe
Georgians as “merry, sociable and congenial in nature.” They are “tied to the
homeland and devoted to old practices, ancient myths and customs; they are
trusting and sincere; credulous to the point of flippancy; adventurous,
perceptive, kind to guests […] The negative personality traits of Georgians
include a lack of energy and industriousness, laziness and a certain apathy,
which explains to some extent their dependence on the more determined and more
industrious Armenians.”[15]
The Russian view of
Georgians at the time was at least in part derived from the way that Armenians
were viewed. The important socioeconomic changes that took place in the region
after the abolition of serfdom in 1861 (the end of traditional feudal relations
and the rise of capitalism, industrialization and urbanization) led to the
hurtful downfall of the once all-powerful Georgian nobility, while to the
contrary the Armenian bourgeoisie took skillful advantage of the changes, soon
taking control over the economy and increasingly over the political life of
Georgian cities. Unified Georgian national consciousness crystallized at the
turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in opposition to
Armenians, who played the role of the notorious “Others”; socioeconomic
disputes soon gained such a clearly ethnic dimension that the members of the
successful Armenian middleclass became the object of the common hatred of both
the Georgian aristocracy and intelligentsia and of Georgians who had formerly
lived in the countryside and who were settled in Tiflis and other towns.
Typical in this respect is the account of a Russian commentator dated 1873:
“Trade in the Caucasus is entirely in the hands of clever and calculating
Armenians. Armenians are higher than Georgians in intelligence and in love for
work, and for that reason there is nothing surprising in the fact that Georgian
properties are rapidly falling into Armenian hands. Georgians are dependent on
them just as the Poles are dependent on the Jews and similarly feel toward them
the same contempt and hatred (if not more than the Poles toward the Jews).”[16]
Dissatisfaction with the ever growing political and economic influence of the
Armenian element was absorbed to some degree by the dissatisfaction of the Georgian
population with the ups and downs of “wild” capitalism and the problems of the
Russian authorities with administration of the country.
The failure of the
first Russian revolution (1905) led to the strengthening of the police state in
Russia. Already beforehand, however, in the spheres of the newly forming
Georgian intellectual elite, from the 1870s coming more and more often from the
milieu of the raznochintsy and
sharing none of the aristocracy’s privileges nor its devotion to St.
Petersburg, there began to emerge a feeling of dissatisfaction with, among
other things, the policy of Russification that started being enforced in the
country at the end of the 19th century. In the early 20th
century, the backers of socialist movements in Georgia started strengthening
their position. Some of these movements even promoted the idea of armed
resistance, necessary for the purpose of overthrowing absolutism, and they
therefore formed active contacts with Caucasian and mainly Russian allies. Part
of the Georgian intellectual elite, developing intensive contacts with European
socialists and gradually leaning towards the idea of socio-economic (and
national) emancipation, no longer viewed Russia as a liberating state, but
rather as a backward empire that was holding up the development of the further
Georgian nation. It is no wonder that in the South Caucasus as well as in
industrial Baku, it was Georgians who along with Armenians gave the most eager
support to the first Russian revolution (1905). By local standards, the
Georgians (as well as Armenians) already had a large network of left-wing
activists with a well-defined socialist ideology.
These moods gradually
strengthened until finally in the spring of 1918, soon after the Russian
revolutions and complicated developments in the region, Tiflis declared
independence from Russia, as did Yerevan and Baku; according to the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk, Russia had to give up its holdings in the South Caucasus. As in
the neighboring countries, the period of the first republic in Georgia
(1918–1921) was characterized by sometimes almost desperate attempts to
maintain the republic’s integrity and independence. Ruled by Social Democrats
(Mensheviks), Georgia soon found itself in a state of war with the Volunteer
Army of General Anton Denikin, a “Great Russia” nationalist who did not
recognize the existence of the Republic of Georgia. In 1918 he fought for the
territory around the city of Sochi, claimed both by the White Guards and the
government in Tiflis; a greater security threat, however, was the Bolshevik
inciting of – or support to - separatism among the South Ossetians and
Abkhazians, which caused revolts and their suppression by Georgian armies back
in the 1918-1920/1921 period. Indeed, the civil war that broke out in Georgia’s
ethnic peripheries, costing thousands of lives, was partially instigated by the
Bolsheviks who, after the smashing of Denikin’s troops at the end of 1919,
concentrated on regaining control over the South Caucasus, a strategically
important region bordering Turkey and Persia with its rich oil resources (Baku
oilfields).
In spite of Tbilisi’s
strenuous efforts, at the beginning of 1921 Georgia became the last of the
countries of the South Caucasian region to be occupied by the Eleventh Red
Army, and it became a part of the emerging Soviet Union in spite of the fact
that a year beforehand, the Russians had formally recognized Georgian
independence and even signed a treaty with Georgian government. In 1922–1936,
Georgia together with Armenia and Azerbaijan constituted parts of the so-called
Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Republic, an integral part of the Soviet Union.
During the nearly
seventy years that followed, peace prevailed in the country, with the exception
of the anti-Bolshevik uprising in 1924 and the bloody suppression of peace
demonstrations in 1956.[17] From the latter half of the 1950s until the 1970s,
anti-Communist dissent, well-organized by regional standards, was active in the
South Caucasus, with an obvious subtext of national liberation, centered around
the poet and musician Merab Kostava and the philologist Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The
major event of that period was the series of demonstrations that broke out in
the center of Tbilisi in April 1978, at which the Georgian public and mostly
university pedagogues and students protested against the plan to cancel the
status of Georgian as a state language. By Soviet standards, Georgia enjoyed
relative prosperity and was popular thanks to its Black Sea summer resorts,
wine, cinematography and unique musical culture.[18] Interestingly, similarly
to Armenia, but unlike Azerbaijan and Central Asian nations, by Soviet
standards relatively high level of ethno-nationalism was tolerated in Georgia.
Conclusion
The Georgian national identity,
unlike that of neighboring nationalities, is less burdened by historical
wrongdoings and the Georgian understanding of its neighbors, especially of its
powerful neighbors, is – or at least was until the first half of the 1990s –
less black and white. This is given by the absence of experience with the
massacres and deportations that Armenians have been through and by the absence
of any idea of a “thousand-year struggle” that characterizes the Armenian view
of the Turkish-Armenian or Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict. The threat from
Persia in the south ended back in the first third of the 19th
century, when Teheran had to surrender its Caucasian territories to the empire
of the Romanovs. Fifty years later, the threat from Turkey also nearly
vanished, when in 1878 as a consequence of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)
the remaining territory of historical Georgia, still inhabited by a Kartvel
element (Adjara),[19] was annexed to Russia. The Turkish and Persian (Iranian)
factor of Georgian security has become a thing of the past over the last two
centuries[20] but the Russian factor still remained relevant. Under the
influence of this fact the reflection of Russia and the Russians was shaped in
the 19th century which was understood by local intellectuals as the
period of gathering historical Georgian territories under the under the
dominion of the Empire of the “White Tsar”; yet it underwent serious changes in
the years to come. The historically conditioned view of Russia, modified by the
most recent developments, still influences the policy thinking of Tbilisi
today, and this also applies on a broader, regional scale.
[1]The title of this article is a paraphrase of a
famous statement made by Alexander Pushkin who during his 1829 travel in the
Caucasus called Georgia “a wonderful country” ("волшебный край").
[2]On that day, in 1921, Georgia
was occupied
by the Red Army which marked its incorporation into the Soviet Union.
[3]For instance, in the aftermath of the August war
in South Ossetia (2008), Georgian officials even introduced ban on
Russian-language pop-music in restaurants and other public places.
[4]Efforts to archaicize the beginnings of statehood
as much as possible, which even modern Georgian historiography has failed to
avoid, is a widespread phenomenon (not only) in post-Soviet territory.
[5]For more details on Georgian conceptions of
ethnogenesis, see Shnirelman (2003), 293–353.
[6]The place name Georgia seems to come from Russian
and is probably an altered form of the Persian-Turkish word Gurjistan/Gürcistan, derived from the name of the
patron saint of Georgia, St. George (Giorgi in Georgian). The Georgians
themselves, however, now generally regard themselves as Kartvels (Qarthvels).
[7]The southwestern and western areas of present-day
Georgia (including Abkhazia and Ajaria) were under the influence of the Ottoman
Empire or were directly under its administration, while the southeastern and
eastern areas were subject to Persia, and the areas in the north, difficult to
access, retained their independence. These spheres of power and cultural
influence (west, east) were the consequence of the great power constellations,
within the framework of which the Persian (Iranian) states or Arab caliphates
or emirates controlled the south and the Romans, Greeks and Turks, controlling
Asia Minor, dominated Georgia’s western areas.
[8]The Surami mountain range divides Georgia’s
territory into two equal parts. The present Georgian nation includes a number
of historically occurring sub-ethnic groups that are designated by the common
term Kartvels (the autoethnonym in modern Georgian, from which the country’s
historical name, Sakartvelo, is derived), speak more or less independent
languages and have specific cultural-regional peculiarities. Those are the
Kakhetians or Kakhs (the region of Kakheti), Imeretians (Imereti), Gurians
(Guria), Ratchians (Racha), Khevsurs (Khevsureti), Meskhs (Meskheti), Tushians
or Tush (Tusheti), Ajarians (Ajaria or Ajara), Ingiloys (northeastern
Azerbaijan or Hereti in Georgian) and other groups. A specific standing both
from a linguistic and from a cultural-historical standpoint has been assumed by
two other subethnic groups – Svans (Svaneti) of the mountainous northwest and
the Megrels (Samegrelo, Mingrelia or Megrelia) in the west of the country
(culturally and linguistically close to the Laz, inhabiting certain
northeastern parts of modern Turkey), whose dialects are very different from
modern written Georgian. The Svans, Megrels and to a certain extent also the
Islamicized Ajarians still regarded themselves as independent nationalities in
the first half of the 20th century, although they are culturally and
linguistically related to Georgians (Kartvels).
[9]Christianity was adopted by King Mirian of Iberia
in 337 after, according to Georgian tradition, the king himself had been
baptized by St. Nino of Cappadocia.
[10]Especially for the territory of eastern Georgia,
the almost regular Dagestani (Lezgin, Avar) raids were a nightmare. The valleys
and foothills of Kakheti neighboring Dagestan were often laid to waste by the
unexpected hit-and-run-style attacks of highlanders who stole valuables, drove
off livestock and abducted people; among highlanders, Georgian brides are said
to have been held in particular esteem. Then they would hide out in “eagle’s
nests” in hard-to-reach, mountainous areas where it was virtually impossible to
catch them. Their banditry was also sometimes coordinated with Turkish or
Persian rulers, who thereby sought to weaken the east Georgian states as much
as possible. It was the attacks by Dagestanis that led the east Georgian ruler
to turn for the first time to Moscow with a request for the providing of
military assistance (at the end of the 16th century). The subsequent
military campaign to Dagestan – the very first such campaign undertaken by the
Russian state – was requested by the Georgians in order to strike a blow
against the local ruler, the Kumyk Shamkhal. In spite of initial successes, the
Muscovites’ campaign, lacking good organization, was halted by Dagestani
troops; it also was not favored by the then still powerful Safavids and
Ottomans.
[11]At the end of the 19th century, Tiflis
began to compete successfully against Baku, which was attracting more and more
investors thanks to the industrial extraction of crude oil.
[12]Especially in the 1920s and ’30s, the “urban”
material and spiritual culture of eastern Georgia, and the musical culture in
particular, concentrated in Tiflis/Tbilisi, rid itself of “oriental” elements –
the age-old influence of Persia and Turkey.
[13]Quoted from that author’s “Otkrytoe pismo Ulyanovu-Leninu,” in Ozhog rodnogo ochaga (symposium, editor
not given) (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 222.
[14]For more details on the topic of
Georgia and the Caucasus in Russian literature of the 19th century,
see Susan Layton, Russian Literature and
Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus
from Pushkin to Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994).
[15]K. K. Arsenyev, F. F. Petrushevsky (eds.), Enciklopedicheskiy slovar (St.
Petersburg: Brockhaus – Yefron, 1913), vol. 12, 127.
[16]Quoted from Sergei Maximov in: Ronald G. Suny,
“The Emergence of Political Society in Georgia,” in Transcaucasia, Nationalism and Social Change. Essays in the History of
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, ed. Ronald G. Suny (Ann Arbor: Michigan
University Press, 1996), 115.
[17]These were demonstrations in the center of
Tbilisi, held on 9 March 1956. The original purpose for the assembly of
inhabitants was for protests against ending the “personality cult” of Joseph
Stalin (Jughashvili), of Georgian ethnic origin from the north-Georgian town of
Gori, which took place at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR.
Thereafter, certain demonstrators, mostly university students, became radical;
slogans could even be heard calling for the renewal of Georgian independence.
During the attack against the demonstrators, between 80 and 150 mostly young
people were killed. Such a big discrepancy in the data is given by the fact
that the incident was covered up for decades of Soviet rule, and the
authorities never made public the exact numbers of dead and wounded.
[18]Representing a special problem is the growth in
Russian society of anti-Caucasian attitudes that started spreading back in the
1970s, reaching a climax during the current period. Regarding this topic, see Emil
Souleimanov, “O fenoménu kavkazofobie a čečenofobie v ruské společnosti,” Mezinárodní politika, 29:5 (2005).
[19]We can hardly label the strongly Turkified Muslim
Laz, who have historically tended to be under the dominion of Anatolian
empires, as part of the (political) Georgian nationality. Nonetheless, the Laz
language (Chanun) is very close to west-Georgian Mingrelian. Some other areas
of northeastern Turkey, claimed by Georgian as well as Armenian nationalists,
are inhabited at present only by Turkish or Kurdish elements, but not by a
Georgian or Armenian population.
[20]It needs to be said that in the 20th
century Turkey once again threatened Georgia, in 1918. The advance of the
Ottoman army, supported by Muslim Adjarians and Meskhis or Meskhetians, was
stopped before the suburbs of Tbilisi only by the vigorous intervention of
Turkey’s ally, Berlin, which held a protecting hand over the Menshevik Georgian
government in Tbilisi.
Bibliography
Arsenyev, K. K., Petrushevsky, F. F. (eds.),
“Enciklopedicheskiy
slovar” (St.
Petersburg: Brockhaus – Yefron, 1913), vol. 12, 127.
Gamsakhurdia, Konstantine, Otkrytoe pismo
Ulyanovu-Leninu,” in Ozhog rodnogo ochaga
(symposium, editor not given), Moscow: Nauka, p. 222., 1990
Layton, Susan,
“Russian
Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy”, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1994.
Souleimanov, Emil, “O fenoménu kavkazofobie a čečenofobie v ruské
společnosti,” Mezinárodní politika,
29:5 (2005).
Suny,
Ronald G. Quoted from Sergei Maximov in:, “The Emergence of Political Society in Georgia,” in Transcaucasia, Nationalism and Social
Change. Essays in the History of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, ed.
Ronald G. Suny (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1996), 115.
*Emil Souleimanov - Assistant Professor at the Department of Russian and East European Studies, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. The present article is an outcome of research carried out in the framework of the Center for the Study of Collective Memory (UNCE 204007), Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.
© 2010, IJORS - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES