The Georgian Occupation Regime in Abkhazia, 1918 to 1919, 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), the second under the title "Challenging Georgian Narratives (Response 2): A Further Exploration on Abkhazia" (pp. 7 to 18), the third under the title "Not a Hint of Autonomy: Abkhazia and Georgia, 1917 to 1918" (pp. 18 to 28), the fourth under the title "The Treaty That Never Was: Forgery, Occupation and June 1918" (pp. 28 to 39), and the fifth under the title "Rounding Out the Borders: The Occupation of Abkhazia, 1918" (pp. 39 to 55).

Below, you will read the sixth response from the same book (pp. 55 to 65), which sets out what that occupation looked like on the ground. Lakoba documents the punitive expeditions through the Kodor district that followed the mahajir landings of the summer of 1918, among them the destruction of Djgerda, the birthplace of the insurgent leader Tatash Marshania, and traces the Abkhaz People's Council through its two dispersals: first by Menshevik guardsmen on 15 August, then by armed force again on 10 October, each followed by arrests, deportation to Batum and imprisonment in Tiflis at Metekhi. He sets R. Chkhotua's own reports of arrests and arson against the 'autonomous' language of Tiflis's decrees, follows Benia Chkhikvishvili's appointment as commissar extraordinary and the tightly managed 'democratic' elections that installed deputies with no connection to Abkhazia in the Council's place, and closes with Trotsky's 1922 verdict on Georgian diplomacy and a transcript, drawn from the Georgian archive at Harvard, of a British colonel's questioning of Georgian officials over the imprisoned Abkhaz deputies. The section ends, as Lakoba's do, on a question: what does it mean that a scholar can quietly remove a document from his own footnotes once someone has pointed out what it proves?

Occupation and Repression: Abkhazia, 1918 to 1919

Georgian occupation authorities pursued a repressive policy in Abkhazia. Yet a number of Georgian authors attempt to present these actions as 'rare cases of the abuse of authority by government troops'.

What actually happened in Abkhazia after the invasion of the Georgian army?

After repeated landings of Abkhaz mahajir fighters from Turkey between June and August 1918, the forces of the Georgian Republic carried out punitive operations in the Kodor sector. A war in every sense was unleashed against the peaceful peasant population, who had not had time to organise themselves or support the Abkhaz mahajirs. The authorities in Tiflis, while hypocritically describing the Abkhaz of Ochamchira as loyal, used the landing as a pretext, and under cover of fighting it, went 'with fire and sword' through the villages of the Kodor district. Djgerda, the home village of Tatash Marshania, was razed almost entirely. The Menshevik government opened a major case, 'On the Insurgent Movement in Abkhazia'. A search began for the leaders of the movement: Alexander Shervashidze, Tatash Marshania, Simon Basaria, Takuy Tsvizhba, Khaki Avidzba, Medjid Bagapsh, Kegva Kiut, Khabidj and Karaman Ashuba, among others.

On the night of 15 August 1918, regular troops together with Cossacks defeated the mahajirs near the Mokva monastery. That same day, with the active participation of Varlam Shervashidze, the Georgian government dispersed the Abkhaz People's Council, which had begun slipping out of obedience: as early as 8 August 1918 it had passed a resolution, in the absence of Vasily Shervashidze, to set up a commission for elections to an Abkhaz Constituent Assembly.⁹⁸ This decision posed a serious threat, since under point one of the 'treaty' of 8 June (or 11 June) 1918, Abkhazia was to use such a Constituent Assembly to settle, once and for all, its political structure and its relations with Georgia. In response to this aspiration, Tiflis accused the deputies of the Council of 'Turcophilism', the standard charge levelled at anyone suspected of pro-Turkish sympathies. Menshevik guardsmen burst into the chamber. The Council was broken up and 'reorganised' by replacing unwanted deputies of the 'mountain' orientation with men loyal to the Georgian government. At the time, Tiflis was informed as follows: 'Today, 15 August, the opposition of the Abkhaz People's Council has dispersed the old membership, which was organising an insurrection of a Turcophile character in the rear.'⁹⁹

R. Chkhotua, minister for Abkhazian affairs, gave a detailed account of the occupying regime's punitive operations in a report sent from Tiflis on 2 September 1918 to Vasily Shervashidze, chairman of the Council: 'Regular troops in the rear, both nearby and further afield, unable to make contact with the Turks, have taken to mass arrests of the peaceful population and to arson. The Sukhum prison is now overflowing with peaceful Abkhaz from the Kodor sector, who are listed by the Staff as prisoners of war. As for the arson, it has continued right up to the present... In view of everything stated above, the population is beginning to regard all this as an act of hostile violence on the part of the Government of the Democratic Republic, aimed at the subjugation of Abkhazia...'¹⁰⁰

After its first dispersal and 'reorganisation', the Council became a convenient screen for the government and military circles of Georgia. In its name the authorities carried out the most shameless measures in Abkhazia, extending to punitive operations against the peaceful population. Discontent grew among the people at the policy of suppression and at the conduct of the Council, headed as it was by Vasily Shervashidze, an Abkhaz prince of Georgian sympathies.

On the eve of the second dispersal of the Council, R. Chkhotua sent a note on 20 September 1918¹⁰¹ to the head of the Georgian government and to Vasily Shervashidze on the need to revise the 'treaty' of 11 June 1918 between Abkhazia and Georgia, citing its first point (he was apparently unaware of the 'treaty' of 8 June!).

According to Mikhail Tarnava, the opposition sharply criticised the Menshevik ruling party's faction for its inaction in the face of the outrages committed by the military authorities. By October 1918 the balance of forces was already shifting in the opposition's favour. At a stormy session of the Council on 9 October 1918, the deputies raised the question of who was to blame, and who had assisted, in the armed dispersal of the Council on 15 August. In their statement, the deputies Dmitry Alania, Semyon Ashkhatsava and others demanded that 'the forcibly dissolved People's Council, which enjoys the full confidence of the Abkhaz people, be restored to its rights, with its lawful presidium at its head'. Semyon Ashkhatsava demanded: 'The working population of Abkhazia has firmly resolved to take power into its own hands, and has sent its representatives for this purpose... The presidium must be re-elected (that is, Vasily Shervashidze, Stanislav Lakoba). People who enjoy neither the confidence nor the respect of the people cannot govern the country.'¹⁰² That evening, the deputies voted against Vasily Shervashidze as chairman of the Council. Georgian guardsmen immediately surrounded the building, and the following day, 10 October, the second Abkhaz People's Council was dispersed by armed force. The Menshevik government announced the dissolution of the Council and the calling of new elections. On the morning of 10 October, the district commissar I. Margania and Semyon Ashkhatsava were arrested. That afternoon a rally gathered on the boulevard, at which G. Tumanov spoke with 'a sharp denunciatory speech against Menshevik outrages'. The rally was broken up, and G. Tumanov and G. Adjamov, both of whom had taken part in the delegation over the 'treaty' of 8 June 1918, were arrested. In the following days the authorities took into custody the prominent Abkhaz deputies Dmitry Alania, Vasily Chachba and M. Shlatter, sixteen people in all. Several Abkhaz politicians were sent by night on a steamer to Batum, then imprisoned in Tiflis, in Metekhi. They were accused of conspiring against the Georgian republic, and of links with the Turks and with the Volunteer Army. The organisers of the attempted coup in Abkhazia were named as the minister R. Chkhotua and the commissar I. Margania. On 10 October 1918, the head of the government, Noe Zhordania, delivered a report in Tiflis (Menteshashvili, pp. 270 to 272). By decree of the Georgian government, the Council was declared dissolved, and the post of minister for Abkhazian affairs was abolished.

In this way the last vestiges of the bogus 'treaty' of 8 June, and of fictitious self-government, were done away with in Abkhazia. Abkhazia found itself entirely occupied by the armed force of the Georgian Republic, and Tiflis screened its presence there now with the fight against the Bolsheviks and anarchy, now with Turcophilism and Alexeyev sympathies, that is, sympathy for General Mikhail Alexeyev of the Volunteer Army... Semyon Ashkhatsava put it very aptly at the stormy session of the Council on 9 October 1918: 'The existing order cannot continue any longer. This talk of Turcophilism is nonsense and deceit; if things go on as they are, the people really will adopt whatever orientation it likes, not only a Turkish one, even a devilish one, so long as it can be rid of the invaders...'¹⁰³

Prompted by Vasily Shervashidze, D. Emukhvari and other puppets, the membership of the second Abkhaz People's Council, unwanted by Tiflis, was finally dispersed once and for all. A period of undisguised occupation of Abkhazia began. Point three of the Georgian government's decree of 10 October 1918 stated: 'Temporarily, pending the election of a People's Council of Abkhazia (Zhordania had already changed the name of the Council. Stanislav Lakoba), Benia Chkhikvishvili is to be appointed commissar of the Sukhum district, into whose hands full authority is to pass; until his arrival, supreme military and civil authority is vested in the head of the Sukhum detachment's staff, Tukhareli.' (Menteshashvili, p. 271).

This document shows that the Georgian government carried out a coup long in preparation. From October 1918 to March 1919, the entire civil administration of Abkhazia was conducted by the direct intervention of the Georgian Republic. The 'treaty' of 8 June had lost all meaning. The whole country lay under alien rule. The commissar extraordinary, Benia Chkhikvishvili, relied on the armed force of Georgia and on the district commissars subordinate to him.

Under conditions of undisguised occupation, the Georgian government proceeded to hold elections to the third Abkhaz People's Council on 'democratic' lines. The chairman of the central electoral commission, and its members, turned out to be its own men, chiefly the Menshevik Vasily Shervashidze, though the entire operation was directed from Tiflis through Benia Chkhikvishvili and Isidore Ramishvili. On 17 December 1918, Noe Ramishvili, Minister of Internal Affairs, addressed the Georgian parliament with a report on the situation in Abkhazia. He conceded, among other things, that martial rule had prevailed there until then. But military operations, he went on, are always accompanied by the 'oppression' of the peaceful population, which was why voices of discontent were being heard in Abkhazia. The Minister of Internal Affairs proposed proceeding at once to broad, constructive measures and creating a new People's Council without delay, and put forward a bill for elections to the Council, which the Georgian parliament duly approved on 27 December 1918.¹⁰⁴

The new Council was to be elected by all inhabitants of Abkhazia regardless of citizenship, at a time when a significant part of the population of Georgia itself was denied the vote. The amendments introduced into the electoral bill concerning Abkhazia had a quite definite purpose. One of them, for instance, stated that deputies to the Council might be elected from among citizens of Georgia not resident in Abkhazia, and from among those who had gained the right of residence in Abkhazia only after 19 July 1914.

In this way, everything was arranged to ensure that the new Council would include deputies such as Isidore Ramishvili, Lev Tumarkin, who had found himself a post in the service of the Tiflis authorities, and many others who had no connection whatever with Abkhazia, but who, after such 'democratic' elections, effectively governed it.

As a result of the November revolution of 1918 in Germany, Georgia lost its principal ally, and all of Tiflis's agreements with imperial Germany and with Ottoman Turkey sank into oblivion. The victorious powers, above all Britain, did not recognise Georgian statehood. This suited the wishes of General Anton Denikin, Britain's closest ally in the region. It seemed that Noe Zhordania's regime was living out its final days, since a victory for the Entente meant a victory for Denikin and the end of Menshevik Georgia. Unlike the Germans, the British stood on no ceremony with Tiflis, and immediately presented the Georgian government with harsh demands, including over the occupied territory of Abkhazia. 'The first Englishman', Zhordania recalled, 'who came to me on behalf of the British command was General Brightford. The general arrived at a session of the government. He came in to us like a sergeant-major, coarse and ill-mannered, appearing as if he were the master. A clash occurred between us. He announced to us with a threat: "You will not be masters here for long!", and left.'¹⁰⁵

It was precisely in this exceedingly difficult situation for Georgia that its government acknowledged the nature of the punitive operations in Abkhazia (Noe Ramishvili), issued a special decree in December 1918 ordering an inquiry into the actions of the Georgian troops, and hastened to announce, yet again, the organisation of Abkhazia's internal life on 'autonomous lines' (Menteshashvili, pp. 271 to 272), so as not to lose the territory it had seized, and, above all, to preserve its own existence.

The political situation of this difficult period was captured with psychological accuracy by the 'leader of the Red Army', Leon Trotsky, who, alongside the other actors of the civil war, was himself one of its vivid figures. In February 1922, in his work 'Between Imperialism and Revolution' (Между империализмом и революцией. Основные вопросы революции на частном примере Грузии), he wrote: 'On 25 September 1918, Zhordania assured Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein in writing that "it is not in our interest to diminish the prestige of Germany in the Caucasus." Two months later he was already obliged to open the gates to British troops... In short, in exchanging German allegiance for that of the Entente, the leaders of Georgian Menshevism paid too little heed to the sound old advice of the Russian poet:

"Flatterers, flatterers! Know how to preserve,
Even in the depths of baseness, a shade of nobility."'¹⁰⁶

The Abkhaz deputies arrested on 10 October 1918 remained in custody throughout the whole period during which the electoral regulations for the Council were being drafted, while the campaign before the elections was conducted exclusively by the ruling Social Democratic party and by agents of the Georgian government. Only shortly before the elections were the deputies released from Metekhi, at the demand of Denikin and of General William Thomson, commander of the Allied forces in the Caucasus, who addressed the Georgian government on 5 December 1918 concerning the arrested Abkhaz. The following day, 6 December, a conversation took place between the British Colonel Claude Stokes and the Georgian representatives, Alshibaya (in Baku) and Colonel Marganadze. Menteshashvili quotes a very interesting transcript of this meeting, drawn from the archive of Harvard University.¹⁰⁷ It is worth noting, incidentally, that the scholar sometimes cites documents that cast doubt on some of his own conclusions. (And how many more documents from the 'Georgian archive' at Harvard, which somehow 'embarrass' historians from Tbilisi and are for that reason left unpublished? We ourselves are denied access to these materials at Harvard University. What if we were to find something there?) I quote only a fragment from the conversation between Stokes and the Georgian representatives.

[The exchange below is a translation back into English of a Russian-language transcript held in the Georgian archive at Harvard. The original English wording of the meeting should be consulted before publication.]

Stokes: Where are they being held?

Alshibaya: In Tiflis, in Metekhi Castle. It is a prison for political prisoners.

Stokes: Why such severity?

Alshibaya: Colonel, they are accused of state treason. The government could not but deal with them with the full rigour of the law. Of those arrested, one was involved in the Bolshevik movement, the other was one of the Turcophile Abkhaz who, four months ago, wished to organise the landing of a Turkish force in Abkhazia.

Stokes: You are keeping Abkhaz in prison without bringing charges against them. We cannot allow this.

Alshibaya: We have the very best relations with Abkhazia. Colonel Marganadze, our military representative attached to the diplomatic mission, can confirm this to you.

Marganadze: I am an Abkhaz, and I serve the Georgian government. I must assure you that there is no hostility between us Abkhaz and Georgia. Under the terms of its treaty with Abkhazia, Georgia has granted it complete internal self-government. The Abkhaz People's Council has charge of all Abkhazia's internal affairs. Only certain individuals may act against the Georgian government, not the Abkhaz people as a whole.

Alshibaya: You are pleading for people who do not deserve your intercession. The fate of the imprisoned Abkhaz ought to concern the Abkhaz People's Council more than anyone, yet the Council has made no statement whatever in defence of the arrested men, and that is because they have not earned its intercession.

Stokes: I should think it necessary to release them from prison, but to keep them in Tiflis until our representative arrives and looks into the matter.

Soon afterwards a British representative arrived and looked into the matter. According to Leon Trotsky, 'the English lieutenant banged his bayonet on the table of the Georgian prosecutor', demanding the immediate release of those under arrest.¹⁰⁸

+ The Barn at Aatsy

+ What exactly happened in Batumi on May 11, 1918?

+ General Mazniashvili and the 1918 Occupation of Abkhazia

The transcript quoted above is a remarkable document of the cunning and hypocrisy of the representatives of the Georgian government, who passed off Colonel Marganadze as an Abkhaz in the hope that the word 'Abkhaz' would produce the desired effect on the English officer. The government was ready for any deception so long as it kept Abkhazia in its grip. Its envoys cynically claimed that the fate of the imprisoned Abkhaz deputies ought to concern the Abkhaz People's Council, which had 'made no statement whatever' in their defence. Alshibaya repeated the same transparent absurdity, evidently confident that the British did not have the full picture, in his letter to General Thomson as well. How could the Council have made any statement, when it had already been dispersed by the Georgian authorities on 10 October 1918?

It is worth drawing particular attention, incidentally, to the fact that in his most recent publication Menteshashvili (pp. 272 to 273) removed altogether an entire passage mentioning the Abkhaz Marganadze, one which he had included in earlier editions.¹⁰⁹ Is this a manipulation of the record, or simply a different edition? Or is it that the scholar was reacting in this way to my criticism¹¹⁰ of this document, voiced as long ago as 1991?

References

98. TsGAA (Central State Archive of Abkhazia), f. I-39, d. 3, l. 31 and verso.

99. Abkhazia (newspaper), 4 June 1991, no. 22.

100. TsGAA, f. I-39, d. 6, l. 77 and verso.

101. Ibid., ll. 73 to 75.

102. Nashe slovo, 11, 12, 14 October 1918; Edinenie, 1991, no. 2.

103. Ibid.

104. See D. Gamakharia, Z. Papaskiri, V. Chania: Sabchota Apkhazeti, 3 and 4 August 1990 (in Georgian).

105. Zhordania, N., My Life.

106. Trotsky, L., Sochineniya [Works], vol. 12, pp. 207 to 208.

107. Menteshashvili, A., Iz istorii [From History], pp. 26 to 27.

108. Trotsky, L., Sochineniya [Works], vol. 12, p. 216.

109. Compare the article by A. Menteshashvili in Razyskaniya [Investigations] (1999), pp. 272 to 273, with his work Iz istorii vzaimootnosheniy [From the History of Relations] (1990), pp. 26 to 27.

110. See Lakoba, S., '"It Is Not This Land We Need"', in Edinenie, 1991, no. 3, p. 8; Istoriya Abkhazii [History of Abkhazia], Sukhum, 1991; Istoriya Abkhazii, Gudauta, 1993, p. 309.