Not a Hint of Autonomy: Abkhazia and Georgia, 1917 to 1918, by Stanislav Lakoba

In the book "Ответ историкам из Тбилиси (документы и факты)" (English: "A Response to Historians from Tbilisi: Documents and Facts"), Abkhazian historian Stanislav Lakoba addresses critical issues surrounding Georgian-Abkhazian relations. Drawing on extensive research and documentation, Lakoba examines the intricacies of historical narratives and their role in contemporary conflicts. The first response from this book was published on AW under the title "Rewriting History? A Critique of Modern Georgian Historiography on Abkhazia" (pp. 3 to 7), and the second under the title "Challenging Georgian Narratives (Response 2): A Further Exploration on Abkhazia" (pp. 7 to 18).

Below, you will read the third response from the same book (pp. 18 to 28), in which Lakoba turns to the years 1917 and 1918. Against Avtandil Menteshashvili, Levan Toidze and others, he argues that Abkhazia was never part of Georgia in this period, that the Abkhaz-Georgian Agreement of 9 February 1918 conferred no autonomy on Abkhazia within a Georgian state that did not yet exist, and that on 11 May 1918 Abkhazia became a founding part of the North Caucasian Mountain Republic, a fortnight before Georgia itself was proclaimed independent. Reading the three-point Agreement alongside the record of the Congress of the Abkhazian People, the addresses to the Batum conference and the secret von Lossow letter of 28 May 1918, Lakoba concludes that the June 1918 entry of Georgian troops was neither a defence of territorial integrity nor a response to Bolshevism, but an occupation.

Stanislav Lakoba, 'A Response to Historians from Tbilisi', Response 3 (Section 3 of the book)

One of the key painful points in the history of Georgian-Abkhaz relations is the period from 1917 to 1921, to which a good many studies have been devoted. The most active writer on this acute political problem, of the present as much as of the past, is the historian Avtandil Menteshashvili. A fair number of works, admittedly of varying scholarly quality, have been devoted to the subject by other Georgian authors too, among whom Ushangi Sidamonidze and Akaki Surguladze deserve particular mention, along with Levan Toidze, Jemal Gamakharia and others.

Thus, for example, Menteshashvili and Toidze write that Abkhazia was always part of Georgia, and that after the 1917 revolution in Russia, Abkhazia was allegedly granted autonomy within the Georgian state on 9 February 1918. Later, under the 'treaty' of 8 June 1918, Abkhazia supposedly became an autonomous part of Georgia once and for all, and therefore the entry of Georgian troops into Abkhazia in the second half of June 1918 was not an act of occupation and annexation. They describe such actions as a defence of Georgia's territorial integrity, and explain them as a struggle against the Bolsheviks, pro-Turkish forces and Denikin's forces (Toidze, pp. 292 to 293; Menteshashvili, p. 266).

A short digression is needed here. Menteshashvili, for example, declares in all seriousness that the transfer in 1904 of Prince Alexander Oldenburgsky's climatic station at Gagra out of Sukhum District, together with the territory up to the right bank of the river Bzyb, into the Sochi District of the Black Sea Province 'unceremoniously violated the territorial integrity of Georgia, and of Abkhazia in particular' (p. 259). The claim is utterly unhistorical, because in 1904 this territory lay under the jurisdiction of one state only, the Russian Empire, within which, holding the status of provinces and a district, were then to be found both Georgia, which in 1801 had lost not only its statehood but its very name (it recovered its statehood only on 26 May 1918), and Abkhazia, deprived of its statehood in 1864 (restored on 11 May 1918 within a federation, the Mountain Republic). To speak of a violation of the territorial integrity of Georgia in 1904, when Georgia was not a state, is simply absurd. To say nothing of the fact that what is at issue is the Gagra district of present-day Abkhazia, which had no connection to Georgia whatever.

What, then, was actually happening in Abkhazia in 1917 and 1918?

After the events of February and October 1917, which shook Russia and brought it down as a single state, Abkhazia entered the Union of United Highlanders of the Caucasus, in whose government the interests of Abkhazia were represented by the minister Simon Ashkhatsava.²³ At the Congress of the Abkhazian People in Sukhum on 8 November 1917, a parliament was elected (created, incidentally, before the Georgian one), the Abkhazian People's Council (APC), and the most important documents were adopted: the 'Declaration of the Congress of the Abkhazian People' and the 'Constitution of the Abkhazian People's Council'.²⁴ An enormous role in the adoption of these documents on the 'self-determination of the Abkhazian people' was played by the chairman of the congress and first chairman of the APC, Simon Basaria; the principal speaker, Aslanbek Sheripov; the princes Alexander Shervashidze and Tatash Marshania; and prominent figures of the Abkhazian intelligentsia: M. Tsaguria, D. Alania, Mikhail Tarnava and others. The congress's 'Declaration' noted with foresight that 'every people must keep close watch to ensure that its rights and interests do not suffer from encroachments' upon its freedom, in connection with which 'the Abkhazian people is confident that its brothers, the highlanders of the North Caucasus and Daghestan, will support it whenever it defends its rights'.

Interestingly, a representative of the parliament of Abkhazia, the Chechen Aslanbek Sheripov, spoke at the opening of the first Georgian parliament, the National Council of Georgia (NCG), which convened in Tiflis on 19 November 1917. 'I am happy', he said, 'that the high honour has fallen to me of conveying to you warm greetings in the name of the Abkhazian People's Council. The Abkhazian people, which belongs to the union of united highlanders, congratulates beautiful Georgia on its first steps along the path to national self-determination... The Abkhazians, having entered a union with their northern brothers, are therefore also confident that in the near future they will meet the noble Georgian people in a common union of all the peoples of the Caucasus. And in that future union the Abkhazian people conceives of itself as an equal member of the Union of United Highlanders.'²⁵

Simon Basaria (1882 to 1941), prominent political figure of the Mountain Republic, first chairman of the Abkhazian People's Council (November 1917 to May 1918). Shot in December 1941. Prison photograph.

Contacts between representatives of the Abkhazian and Georgian parliaments continued thereafter, amid a very difficult military and political situation in the Caucasus as a whole and in Abkhazia in particular, over which hung the threat of a Bolshevik coup. Yet despite all the complexity of the situation, the APC representatives who arrived for a meeting with deputies of the National Council of Georgia declared in Tiflis on 9 February 1918 that they were striving for the political independence of Abkhazia, 'maintaining with Georgia only good-neighbourly relations, as with an equal neighbour'.²⁶ Given that framing of the question, Menteshashvili is forced to admit that the APC delegation, headed by Alexander Shervashidze and comprising Colonel R. Chkhotua, N. Margania, B. Tsaguria and M. Emukhvari, held, in the main, to 'right-wing nationalist positions' (p. 262). On the NCG side the conference was attended by Akaki Chkhenkeli, K. Meskhi, Giorgi Gvazava, Pavle Sakvarelidze and N. Kartsivadze, who came out categorically against Abkhazia's entry into the Union of Highlanders of the Caucasus.

As early as 8 November 1917, the very day the Congress of the Abkhazian People opened, the former deputy of the Fourth State Duma of Russia, the Social Democrat Akaki Chkhenkeli, arrived in Sukhum together with other Menshevik figures. 'They had evidently been informed', wrote Mikhail Tarnava, a participant in those events, 'of the union then being prepared between Abkhazia and the North Caucasian state of the highlanders, and came specially in order to prevent that union. Chkhenkeli evidently counted on success above all because he was popular in Abkhazia as its deputy in the State Duma. Representatives of the Mountain Government also arrived for the congress, in addition to Sheripov, who was in any case taking an active part. Simon Ashkhatsava arrived from there as well... Heated speeches unfolded at the congress. Two opposing camps took the floor. The Georgian delegates pulled Abkhazia towards Georgia, and the North Caucasians towards the North Caucasus... However hard Chkhenkeli tried to turn the Abkhazians away from such a decision, he nevertheless failed to prevent the congress from resolving to join Abkhazia to the North Caucasian Mountain State. Such a resolution was indeed adopted by a majority of votes, although here too, as with the church question, the Gal delegates pulled towards Georgia and threatened secession from Abkhazia if it did not join Georgia.'²⁷

An almost identical situation with the Gal delegates, openly backed by Chkhenkeli, who had close ties to Samurzakan, repeated itself, to judge by Menteshashvili's own account, at the conference in Tiflis on 9 February 1918. Concerning the Samurzakan of that period the historian offers a very sly gloss: 'now the Gal district of Abkhazia, populated entirely by Georgians' (p. 263). Today, yes. But it is populated not by Georgians proper but by Mingrelians. As for 1918, at that time this part of Abkhazia was inhabited mainly by a mixed Abkhaz and Mingrelian population, among whom an intensified process of de-ethnicisation of the Abkhazians was under way 'through the Georgianisation (Mingrelisation)' of its inhabitants.²⁸ There is therefore nothing surprising in the fact that Chkhenkeli, by then a well-known politician, supported by such Samurzakanians as the Social Democrats the princes Arzakan (Dmitry) Emukhvari, Lado (Vladimir) Emukhvari and M. Emukhvari, Abkhaz by descent alone, tried openly to blackmail the Abkhazian delegation with the artificially inflated problem of Samurzakan. It was not in Georgian interests, however, to push the question to extremes, since in Samurzakan in this period the greatest influence belonged not to the Mensheviks but to the Bolsheviks, led by P. Dzigua, as subsequent events confirmed.

The political blackmail undertaken by Chkhenkeli did not succeed. To see this, it is enough to look at the actual text of the Agreement, which consists of three points and which Menteshashvili himself has published more than once.²⁹ For certainty's sake I shall cite them once again:

1. To re-establish a single indivisible Abkhazia within the boundaries from the river Ingur to the river Mzymta, to comprise Abkhazia proper and Samurzakan, or, what is the same thing, the present Sukhum District.
2. The form of the future political structure of Abkhazia is to be worked out [in accordance] with the principle of national self-determination at a Constituent Assembly of Abkhazia, convened on democratic principles.
3. In the event that Abkhazia and Georgia should wish to enter into political treaty relations with other national states, they mutually undertake to hold preliminary negotiations with one another on the matter.'³⁰

Thus this document did no more than raise the question of establishing relations between Abkhazia and Georgia as equals, while the second point speaks outright of 'national self-determination', that is, of the right of the Abkhazian people to its own statehood within the boundaries of Abkhazia.

On the basis of the Agreement of 9 February 1918, a whole series of Georgian historians (Menteshashvili, Toidze, Zhorzholiani, Gamakharia and others) arrive at the very strange assertion that from that moment 'Abkhazia was granted broad autonomy within Georgia'.

First, there is not so much as a hint of autonomy in the document itself. Second, on 9 February 1918 Georgia had not yet been proclaimed an 'independent republic' and, together with Armenia and Azerbaijan, still remained part of Russia. How could Georgia grant autonomy to Abkhazia when Georgia itself, as a state, simply did not exist at the time, and Abkhazia remained within the Union of Highlanders of the Caucasus? Third, the Agreement states plainly that 'the form of the future political structure of a single Abkhazia' was to be determined at a Constituent Assembly of Abkhazia.

The Agreement was an agreement between equals, which makes Menteshashvili's remark about the Abkhazian delegation, that 'they had nowhere else to go' (p. 263), hard to understand. They did not go anywhere. As for the difficulty of the situation in and around Abkhazia at that period, it can be said with confidence that in Georgia, with the threat of Turkish occupation hanging over it, the situation was not merely no better but simply catastrophic. That is why the NCG representatives were happy to sign any document at all with the APC.

'One might have thought', Menteshashvili complains indignantly, 'that after the agreement of 9 February the Abkhazian leaders would hold firmly to a pro-Georgian orientation; however... their actions at the Batum conference in May 1918 testify that, relying on the ruling circles of the Sultan's Turkey, A. Shervashidze, together with the highlanders of the North Caucasus, strove to realise the project of creating a Caucasian confederation, which the Abkhaz were to enter independently.' More than that: they succeeded, as is attested by the secret letter of 28 May 1918 from the German general Otto von Lossow to the Georgian government (p. 264).

All of this is true; what is hard to understand is why the Georgian historian is displeased, and why he decided that after the Agreement the Abkhazian leaders were obliged to 'hold to a pro-Georgian orientation'. They acted in exact accordance with the decision of the First Congress of the Highlanders, which as early as May 1917 had sketched the 'contours of a national ideology', and which a year later led to the proclamation of the independence of the Republic of the Highlanders of the Caucasus (the Mountain Republic). From the minutes of the first session of the Batum international peace conference (Batum was then part of Turkey), held on 11 May 1918, it is known that it was attended by the delegations of Germany, Turkey, the Transcaucasian republic, and the highlanders of the North Caucasus and Daghestan.³¹ At the same time the APC deputies Alexander Shervashidze, Tatash Marshania, Simon Basaria and others addressed the Turkish government and declared at the Batum conference that 'Abkhazia does not wish to enter the group of Transcaucasian peoples, but counts itself part of the North Caucasian union of highlanders'.³²

On 11 May 1918 the independence of the Mountain Republic was proclaimed; alongside Daghestan, Chechnya, Kabarda, Adygea and other lands, Abkhazia became part of it.³³ With the support of Turkey and the participation of Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Republic of the Highlanders then received international recognition.

After the formation of the Mountain Republic, the Transcaucasian federation (the TDFR) fell apart, and on that same day, 26 May 1918, under an ultimatum from Turkey, the Democratic Republic of Georgia was proclaimed, followed by the Azerbaijani (27 May) and the Armenian (28 May) republics.

This period in the history of the peoples of the Caucasus became known as the 'Caucasian May', and one of the proclamations issued on the occasion declared: 'At a moment when the anti-national elemental force of Bolshevism raged in Russia, the idea of healthy national statehood triumphed in the Caucasus.'³⁴

The Act of Independence of Georgia states that Georgia was proclaimed independent on 26 May 1918. Yet the Act itself did not define Georgia's borders. Their first preliminary sketches were made by a highly interested party, the German general von Lossow, in the letter of 28 May 1918 already mentioned. The general undertook to make every effort to see that 'Germany renders Georgia assistance in the matter of securing her borders'.³⁵

The Georgian historians Toidze (pp. 291 to 292), Gamakharia³⁶ and others make a particular point of the fact that the Act of Independence of Georgia was signed at the time by Varlam Shervashidze, Arzakan Emukhvari, V. Gurjua, I. Pashalidi and D. Zakharov. How exactly did this come about? As is well known, all the figures named became deputies of the Constituent Assembly of Georgia on the party list of the Social Democrats in the spring of 1919. The new parliament of Georgia, which convened in Tiflis on 12 March 1919, confirmed the Act of Independence of 26 May 1918, and the aforementioned 'envoys from Abkhazia' added their signatures to it. But, first, they put their signatures to it not on 26 May 1918, a fact over which many authors 'modestly' pass in silence, but only on 12 March 1919, by which time Abkhazia had already been occupied by Georgian troops and the parliament of Abkhazia had twice been dispersed (in August and October 1918). Second, they signed not as representatives of Abkhazia and the Abkhazian people, which boycotted the elections to the Constituent Assembly of Georgia, but as members of the regional branch of the ruling Georgian Menshevik party. Third, this was a patent attempt to doctor the historical facts: an effort by Tiflis, through its puppets, to tie Abkhazia to Georgia at least retroactively, on 12 March 1919. Fourth, on 26 May 1918 Abkhazia lay outside the territory of the Georgian republic, since from 11 May 1918 it formed part of another state, the Mountain Republic, which, regrettably, existed for only a single year.

That Abkhazia lay outside Georgia's jurisdiction is shown by the very character of the documents signed by the representatives of these countries. And one further highly significant detail is perfectly obvious: had Abkhazia been Georgia, the latter would never have sought to conclude 'agreements' and 'treaties' with it, or to conduct negotiations with it as with another country. Yet all of this took place.

References

23. Soyuz obyedinennykh gortsev Severnogo Kavkaza i Dagestana (1917–1918 gg.), Gorskaya respublika (1918–1920 gg.) [Union of the United Mountain Peoples of the North Caucasus and Dagestan (1917–1918)]. Dokumenty i materialy. Makhachkala [Mountain Republic (1918–1920). Documents and Materials]. Makhachkala, 1994, pp. 4–5, 134.
24. TsGAA [Central State Archives of Abkhazia]. F.I-39, d.1, l.1.
25. TsGVIA [Central State Military Historical Archive of the Russian Federation]. F.1300, op.1, d.130, l.135 (verso).
26. Tsit. po state: Menteshashvili A., Surguladze A. Tol'ko fakty i dokumenty // Literaturnaya Gruziya [Cited from the article: Menteshashvili A., Surguladze A. "Only Facts and Documents" // Literary Georgia]. 1989. No. 11, p. 146.
27. Tarnava Mikh. Vospominaniya [Tarnava Mikh. Memoirs].
28. Anchabadze Z.V. Ocherk etnicheskoy istorii abkhazskogo naroda [An Essay on the Ethnic History of the Abkhaz People]. Sukhum, 1976, pp. 89–90.
29. Literaturnaya Gruziya. 1989. No. 11, p. 146; Menteshashvili A. Iz istorii [From History], p. 11.
30. TsGAA [Central State Archives of Abkhazia]. F.I-39, d.6, ll.22–23.
31. Dokumenty i materialy po vneshney politike Zakavkaz'ya i Gruzii [Documents and Materials on the Foreign Policy of Transcaucasia and Georgia]. Tiflis, 1919, pp. 312–313.
32. Istoriya Abkhazii [History of Abkhazia], p. 291.
33. Ahmet Hazir Hızal. Kuzey Kafkasya [The North Caucasus]. Ankara, 1961, p. 143.
34. Severny Kavkaz (Varshava) [The North Caucasus (Warsaw)], 1937, No. 37, p. 13.
35. Avalov Z. Nezavisimost' Gruzii v mezhdunarodnoy politike 1918-1921 gg. [The Independence of Georgia in International Politics, 1918–1921.] Paris, 1924; New York, 1982, p. 68.
36. Vestnik Gruzii. 1991. 29 marta; Gamakharia D., Chania V. “Okkupatsiya Abkhazii”: mif i real’nost’? [The “Occupation of Abkhazia”: Myth and Reality?] // Svobodnaya Gruziya. 1991. 27, 30 aprelya, 1, 2, 3 maya. See also responses: Lakoba S. // Abkhazia. 1991. 19 maya – 18 iyunya. No. 21–24; Yedinenie. 1991. No. 3, 5.