Rounding Out the Borders: The Occupation of Abkhazia, 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), 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), and the fourth under the title "The Treaty That Never Was: Forgery, Occupation and June 1918" (pp. 28 to 39).

Below, you will read the fifth response from the same book (pp. 39 to 55), which follows the consequences of that clause. Lakoba argues that the landing of 17 to 19 June 1918 was an occupation, that Abkhazia at the time was still treated as part of the Republic of the Union of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, whose foreign ministry protested to Tiflis and to the German mission over the 'Georgian bands in Abkhazia', and that the machinery of annexation followed within days: Samurzakan quietly subordinated to the Kutais commissar on 18 June, in breach of the February agreement on a single and indivisible Abkhazia; General Mazniashvili appointed governor-general in Tiflis on the same day, before he had even reached Sukhum; and Abkhazia declared a governor-generalship by his own order of 23 June. Reading Varlam Shervashidze's protest of 4 July alongside Simon Basaria's account of the demand that the Abkhazian People's Council certify Tuapse as Abkhazia's border, the census figures Menteshashvili prefers to the imperial and Soviet returns, and the record of the Ekaterinodar conference of 25 September, where Evgeni Gegechkori conceded that no precise borders of Georgia had ever been fixed, he arrives at the question the section ends on: what autonomy could a state that nobody recognised grant to anyone?

Rounding Out the Borders: The Occupation of Abkhazia, 1918

Taking advantage of the so-called agreement of 8 June 1918, the troops of the Georgian Republic, backed by German military force, landed at Sukhum as early as 17 to 19 June and occupied the country. Alexander Lukomsky wrote of this: 'With Germany's support, Georgia occupied Abkhazia and the Sochi district against the will of the population...'⁵⁶

By that time Abkhazia was in a difficult position, since it had lost any real support from the Republic of the Union of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (the Mountain Republic) on account of the turbulent military events in the North Caucasus. In that troubled period priorities changed daily, the interests of different states collided, fresh whirlpools of political life kept forming, and anarchy and chaos prevailed. Abkhazia was cut off from its natural allies. Left alone with Georgia and Germany, and despite an attempt to defuse the situation by diplomatic means, it was subjected to military intervention. The government of the Mountain Republic did not, however, remain indifferent to Abkhazia's fate, and it condemned the invasion by Georgian troops. In June 1918 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Mountain Republic, under its minister Haydar Bammate, lodged a protest with the government of Georgia and with Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, head of the German government's diplomatic mission in the Caucasus, over the entry of German troops into Sukhum and 'the presence of Georgian bands in Abkhazia'⁵⁷.

The documents of the Mountain Republic show convincingly that Abkhazia continued to be part of the North Caucasian state, which did not recognise Georgia's claims to Abkhazia. This is why Akaki Menteshashvili's reasoning appears altogether too superficial: 'The Caucasian confederation did not come about, and therefore Abkhazia's entry into Georgia in June 1918 had a basis in international law' (p. 264). But could anyone in June 1918 say with confidence that the Confederation would not come about? Even General Otto von Lossow did not know that. The Georgian historian knows it now, after the event. It is perfectly clear that he is entirely unacquainted with the documents that empty his conclusions of any meaning.

Even several months after the occupation of Abkhazia, in August 1918, the chairman of the Mountain government, Abdul-Majid 'Tapa' Chermoev, again protested to Germany over the invasion of Abkhazia by Georgian troops with the support of regular units of the German army. At the same time he warned that the peoples of the North Caucasus, bound to Georgia by 'a unity of race and long-standing sympathies', ought not to allow any political complications in their striving for 'the closest possible allied ties, up to and including confederation' (emphasis added, Stanislav Lakoba). The document went on: 'On behalf of my Government I protest in the most categorical terms against Georgia's conduct in Abkhazia, a constituent part of the federative Republic of the Union of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (emphasis added, Stanislav Lakoba), and in order to avoid the grave complications that may follow from the stated policy of the Georgian Government, my Government considers it necessary to withdraw Georgian troops, officials and emissaries from Abkhazia immediately'⁵⁸.

It was in this period, in June to August 1918, that Alexander Shervashidze (Chachba), Tatash Marshania (Marshan), Simon Basaria and other influential Abkhazians appealed for help to the Abkhaz mahajirs living in Turkey, whose ancestors had been forced to leave their homeland in the nineteenth century as a result of the Russian-Caucasian war.

The people and many deputies of Abkhazia's parliament regarded Georgia's use of force as an armed invasion of the territory of the Mountain state. Noe Zhordania, chairman of the government of the Georgian Republic, recalled how representatives of the North Caucasus presented an ultimatum at the time: 'Abkhazia is ours, get out of there!'⁵⁹ The Turks, for their part, also dreamed of Sukhum, and planned to 'defend Abkhazia from the Georgians'⁶⁰ with Chechen help.

On the night of 27 June 1918 an Abkhaz armed landing party (not a 'Turkish' one, as Menteshashvili writes, pp. 267 to 268) came ashore from Turkey at the Kodor river. This was a response to the Georgian occupation of Abkhazia and to the proclamation on 23 June of Giorgi Mazniev (Mazniashvili) as governor-general of Abkhazia. At the official level Turkey did not intervene in the conflict. The landing party was in essence an armed force of the Mountain state. German sources also show that in June to August 1918 the Mountain government continued to claim Abkhazia and the port of Sukhum. It is therefore no accident that in those same months Abkhaz mahajirs landed by sea in Abkhazia on several occasions. Such aspirations, however, ran counter to the interests of German policy in the region⁶¹.

The government of the Mountain Republic continued to regard Abkhazia as part of its own state, notwithstanding the Georgian occupation. In 1919, to the order of the Mountain delegation, a colour ethnographic and political map of the Republic of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus⁶² was printed at Lausanne, in French, for the Paris peace conference. (A representative of Abkhazia was included in the Mountain delegation⁶³.) On this brightly coloured map not only Abkhazia but South Ossetia too lies within the borders of the Mountain state.

Irritated by these and other obvious facts, against which they have nothing to set, a number of Georgian scholars are indignant at the publications of Abkhazian historians. That anyone answers them at all strikes them as odd. And so they resort to devices of this kind. 'Abkhazian historians hold', writes Menteshashvili, 'that the treaty of 8 June did not grant Abkhazia autonomy within Georgia. They need this assertion in order to support the well-known thesis of the ideologist of the Abkhaz separatists, Stanislav Lakoba, that Georgia, having helped Abkhazia in the struggle against Bolshevik detachments and Turkish bands which were attempting to seize Sukhumi and the territory of Abkhazia, then itself established an "occupation regime" on that territory... Such a position is no accident, since the mention of Abkhazia's autonomy within Georgia makes absurd the separatist ideologists' assertion that Georgian troops established an occupation regime on their own territory' (Menteshashvili, p. 266). In the heat of it he went so far as to make me a defender of the 'Soviet empire', because in his view only a supporter of empire could 'keep harping on the "occupation" of Abkhazia by Georgia in 1918 to 1921' (p. 267).

This is very strange logic, dictated by the weakness and helplessness of a whole series of positions. As for the term 'occupation' applied to Abkhazia, it was first used in that same year of 1918, when Georgian troops invaded Abkhazia, which is to say long before I was born. More will be said about this below, although a great deal has already been published on the subject.

In the days of the 'Soviet empire' Menteshashvili studied the daily life of the Kurds and wrote about the October revolution and the national movement, and then, under the influence of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, he turned to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians. I have no wish to pin on an eminent scholar the label of an ardent representative of Georgian colonialism, the more so as it would not be true.

In connection with certain of the scholar's pronouncements, I shall cite the view of Georgia's policy at the time held by Carl Eric Bechhofer, who travelled in the Caucasus in 1919 to 1920. 'The free and independent social-democratic government of the state of Georgia', he noted, 'will remain in my memory for ever as a classic example of an imperialist "small nation". Both in the matter of external territorial seizures and in bureaucratic tyranny within the country. Its chauvinism knows no bounds'⁶⁴.

Georgian troops under the command of General Mazniashvili occupied not only Abkhazia but, by 26 July 1918, had seized the territory along the Black Sea coast as far as Tuapse. They were very soon driven out by the Volunteer Army and fell back to the Bzyb. They lost no time, however, in placing all the seized countries and regions on a map of 'Greater Georgia', which they intended to present at the Paris peace conference. Their actions in the Black Sea region they explained as a struggle against the Bolsheviks, which in Evgeni Gegechkori's words was a question of 'our life and death'. But, Anton Denikin observes, 'the categorical nature of this statement was, however, immediately weakened by an explanation' that the task was being set only on the 'Black Sea coast'⁶⁵.

A great deal was said on this subject by Generals Mikhail Alexeyev, Anton Denikin and Alexander Lukomsky, by Nikolai Vorobyov of the Kuban government and by others, who in the course of 1918 to 1919, and afterwards in émigré publications, reported repeatedly on events in Abkhazia and did not recognise it as part of Georgia. I shall not quote their testimony here, since much of it is in print, Nikolai Vorobyov's among it⁶⁶, and it greatly irritates certain Georgian historians.

Many soldiers and politicians demanded at the time that Abkhazia be cleared of Georgian troops and administration, and proposed to the English that the territory of Abkhazia be declared neutral⁶⁷.

Georgia's seizures abroad were also described in the memoirs of so objective a witness as Boris Baykov. He noted that imperialism 'is the distinguishing feature of the foreign policy of all the new state formations' of Transcaucasia, which began to advance territorial claims against one another. It was imperialism that pushed 'Georgia into taking possession of Samurzakania and Abkhazia'⁶⁸.

Here is a typical example, and it concerns Samurzakania. On 18 June 1918, at the same time as the Georgian troops landed at Sukhum, a telegram arrived at the Abkhaz People's Council from Tiflis. In it the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that the Samurzakan district was temporarily subordinated to the Kutais provincial commissar 'in matters relating to the maintenance there of state order and public safety'. Samurzakania was being incorporated directly into Georgia. This was a flagrant breach of point 1 of the Agreement of 9 February 1918 on 'a single and indivisible Abkhazia within the boundaries of the Ingur and the Mzymta rivers'. Simon Basaria, acting commissar of the Sukhum district, was alarmed by the telegram and referred the document, 'in view of the importance of what it sets out', to the Abkhaz People's Council⁶⁹. As it turned out, the deputies of the APC knew nothing whatever of what was going on, while the Georgian government was acting through its placeman Vasily Shervashidze, who as early as 12 June 1918 had secretly applied to the war minister in Tiflis 'for the restoration of order' in Samurzakan⁷⁰. It was an old and well-tried device, making policy with other people's hands...

A little more time passed and General Mazniashvili, by his own order of 23 June 1918, declared Abkhazia a governor-generalship and himself its governor. Such openly high-handed conduct by the government of Georgia produced an explosion of indignation in Abkhazia. Now even Vasily Shervashidze, chairman of the APC, was outraged: he was being openly stripped of even the formal authority of Abkhazia's leader. On 4 July 1918 he sent a protest in the name of the APC to the government of Georgia and to the chairman of the National Council of Georgia. It said, in part:

'In full consciousness of its responsibility the Abkhaz People's Council entered into negotiations with the Government of the Georgian Democratic Republic with the aim of establishing mutual understanding and friendly relations. The Government of Georgia, likewise conscious of the full responsibility of the moment, signed with the Abkhaz People's Council the treaty of 11 June of this year (emphasis added, Stanislav Lakoba); and in execution of point 6 of the treaty (emphasis added, Stanislav Lakoba), on 11 June the Government of Georgia sent military units to Abkhazia to assist the Abkhaz People's Council and to be at its disposal under the command of General Mazniashvili.

On arriving at Sukhum General Mazniashvili published order no. 1 of 23 June of this year for the Sukhum governor-generalship, by which Abkhazia, in accordance with a telegram from the Minister of War, was declared the Sukhum governor-generalship and General Mazniashvili its governor-general. In order no. 3 the general, now entering the field of political relations between Georgia and Abkhazia, declares himself the representative of Georgian authority and demands of the population unconditional obedience to all the laws of the Georgian Democratic Republic, by which point 8 of the treaty is violated (emphasis added, Stanislav Lakoba)...

The Abkhaz People's Council requests an instruction rescinding the order of the Minister of War by which General Mazniashvili was appointed governor-general of Sukhum without the knowledge or consent of the People's Council. I would further bring to your attention that the Abkhaz People's Council did grant General Mazniashvili broad powers, extending to the right to declare a state of siege, but solely in the conduct of military operations.

I ask that it be pointed out to the general that the sole source of authority and of extraordinary powers on the territory of Abkhazia is the Abkhaz People's Council...

The actions of the governor-general in Abkhazia set out above are in essence creating among the mass of Abkhazia's population a mistrust of the Government of the Georgian Republic...'⁷¹

Vasily Shervashidze's protest thus recorded the accomplished fact of the occupation of Abkhazia by Georgian troops, following the detachment from Abkhazia of Samurzakan (now the Gal district), the very thing Simon Basaria had feared... In Denikin's apt phrase, Georgia had set about 'rounding out its borders'⁷². The chairman of the APC, it appears, had no notion that the 'treaty' had been substituted, and cited its text of 11 June 1918 rather than that of 8 June, as was discussed in detail above. He referred to point 6 of the 'treaty', on the strength of which the troops had been brought in, and also to point 8, which stated that social reforms were to be carried through by the Abkhaz parliament 'on the basis of the general laws issued by the Transcaucasian Seim, but as applied to local conditions' (compare point 6 of the 'treaty' of 8 June, which says that social reforms in Abkhazia are carried out by the APC 'on the basis of the general laws of Georgia with account taken of local particularities').

Nor did Vasily Shervashidze know that Mazniashvili had been appointed governor-general of Abkhazia in Tiflis on 18 June 1918 by order of Georgia's minister of war. In other words, he became the effective ruler of Abkhazia before he even appeared in Sukhum, where he arrived on 19 June.

After Georgian troops were brought into Abkhazia the situation deteriorated sharply. Already in July 1918 'the people thought the Georgians had come to occupy Abkhazia'⁷³. Speaking at a session of the APC on 18 July 1918, Isidore Ramishvili was obliged to admit: 'The minds of the Abkhaz people are set against Georgian democracy and its representatives, about whom the rumour has been put about that they supposedly bring slavery and subjugation to the Abkhaz people... The situation appears such that the Georgian troops must undoubtedly be withdrawn from here, and he is therefore going to Tiflis to report on the matter, since it is better to withdraw the troops in good time than to wait for bloodshed'⁷⁴.

The government of Georgia, however, could not restrain its imperial ambitions, and the troops were not only not withdrawn from Abkhazia but went on occupying fresh territory in the direction of Tuapse. The cause of this advance, in Denikin's words, was the weakness of the Black Sea region; the pretext was the struggle against the Bolsheviks; the guarantee was the consent and support of the Germans, who had occupied and fortified Adler.

The Georgian government did not keep anyone waiting long, and set about 'substantiating' its claims to this advantageous stretch of the Black Sea with the help of scholars, Pavle Ingorokva among them⁷⁵, and of generals. A document submitted later by General Ilia Odishelidze to the Paris conference on 1 May 1919 asserted that the entire coastal strip as far as Anapa and the mouth of the Kuban had belonged to Georgia in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Wholly absurd was the claim that 'in the course of the fourteenth century the borders gradually receded to the Makopse river, and from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth, that is until this part of Georgia was annexed to Russia, the border was always the Makopse river (south of Tuapse)'. The historian Menteshashvili is in full agreement with such inventions⁷⁶, savouring this forgery at length and with relish.

In the memorandum of General Odishelidze just mentioned there is an obvious confusion between the political borders of Georgia in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries (it was then a federative state) and its ethnic borders proper. In the eighth to tenth centuries the political borders of the Abkhazian kingdom likewise extended as far as Ereti (to the border of present-day Azerbaijan) and were far wider than the ethnic ones. But nobody argues on that basis that Imereti, Kakheti and Kartli were settled by Abkhazians in that period, or that this is Abkhaz land. Though one could arrive at that conclusion by following the logic of the Georgian general and of the historian Menteshashvili. Is the Georgian scholar unaware that from the earliest times the Abkhaz-Adyge peoples inhabited the whole area from the mouth of the Kuban and Anapa to the Ingur?

General Odishelidze went so far as to declare Sochi 'a purely Georgian town' and the whole Black Sea district 'an ancient Georgian province'. He also claimed that the tsarist minister Yermolov 'handed out the land of the Georgians to Russian officials and generals'⁷⁷.

Incidentally, I recall how aptly Zurab Achba put it in 1990: 'Some Georgian scholars claim that the territory from the Kuban to the Ingur is their land. But let them name, within that territory, so much as one Georgian or Mingrelian prince or nobleman who held ancestral estates and lands of his own, in Abkhazia among other places. There simply are none'⁷⁸.

The Black Sea territory, as is known, occupied the area from Anapa to Gagra, and until 1864 it was populated throughout by kindred peoples: the Adyge (Natukhai, Shapsug, Abadzekh and others), the Ubykh and the Abkhazians (Sadz, Akhchipsou). After the end of the Russian-Caucasian war in 1864 the indigenous population of the territory was forced to move to Turkey. The Sochi area, where the Ubykh had lived, was left empty altogether. Colonists began to settle the abandoned lands: Russians, Poles, Estonians, Germans, Armenians, Greeks and Moldovans. The first Georgians moved into the Sochi district from Kutais province in 1881 to 1882 and settled mainly in the village of Plastunskoye⁷⁹. From that time, it would seem, Sochi became a 'Georgian town'.

As far back as 1991, on the appearance of the politicised volume 'Iz istorii vzaimootnosheniy gruzinskogo, abkhazskogo i osetinskogo narodov' [From the History of Relations between the Georgian, Abkhazian and Ossetian Peoples] (Tbilisi, 1990), I made a particular point of noting: 'When you read Menteshashvili's little book, you cannot help arriving at a very simple thought: this work is a political commission and a vivid expression of those imperial ambitions which today have once again come openly and aggressively to prevail in Georgia'⁸⁰.

The Georgian historian attempts to reduce the already small Abkhaz population to a negligible figure, citing biased and secondary Georgian sources and ignoring altogether the returns of the first all-Russian census of 1897 and the first all-Union census of 1926. For 1917 he gives the following figures for Abkhazia in 'Razyskaniya' [Investigations] (p. 268): Georgians 74,846 (42.1 per cent), Abkhazians 38,121 (21.4 per cent), Russians 20,893 (11.7 per cent), Greeks 20,673 (11.7 per cent), Armenians 18,219 (10.2 per cent) and others 5,087 (2.9 per cent)⁸¹. It has to be borne in mind that the 'Georgians' referred to include every last Samurzakanian and Mingrelian. Yet the authoritative census of 1897 gives 58,697 Abkhazians (55.3 per cent) and 25,875 Georgians, mostly Mingrelians (22.4 per cent); only in the census of 1926 do the Georgians reach 67,494 (31.8 per cent) against 55,918 Abkhazians (26.4 per cent)⁸².

It is interesting that even the Georgian Minister of Internal Affairs Noe Ramishvili, whose words Menteshashvili quotes⁸³, puts the number of Georgians in Abkhazia in 1919 at 60,000 (!). I do not suppose that he was unaware of the fantastic figure for Georgians in the Georgian agricultural census of 1917, and that two years later, in negotiations with the English of all settings, he thus 'understated' the numbers of his own 'kinsmen' in Abkhazia. The reverse is more likely: Noe Ramishvili inflated their numbers as far as he possibly could. But unlike Menteshashvili he knew the real state of affairs in Abkhazia perfectly well, and 75,000 Georgians there in 1917 was impossible: neither the English nor General Denikin would ever have believed such an inflated figure. The more so as Denikin had quite different figures, relating to 1916: 'Abkhazians 56 per cent, Georgians 18, Russians 11, Armenians 10, others 5'⁸⁴. Even in 1926 the Georgians, chiefly Mingrelians, numbered fewer than 70,000. Menteshashvili then cites figures from another source⁸⁵, published in Tiflis in 1927, in which 36,000 Abkhazians already appear. In other words, over ten years from 1917 the number of Abkhazians did not grow but fell, on the Georgian figures, by more than two thousand. It is remarkable that the Abkhazians have survived to the present day in Georgian statistics at all!

Men like Menteshashvili were answered as early as 30 March 1920, in the Abkhaz newspaper 'Apsny', by one of the finest authorities on Abkhaz life, Dmitry Gulia. In an article entitled 'The Truth Benefits One Man and Harms Another' he observed: 'For many years running now, at crowded gatherings, at "meetings", in speeches, one constantly hears that some 33,000 Abkhazians live in Abkhazia. How is this to be understood? According to Florenty Pavlenkov's encyclopaedic dictionary, 70,000 Abkhazians lived in Abkhazia in 1910; according to Konstantin Machavariani (1912) the figure was 82,900; according to the statistics for 1916 it was 91,000. At present it is about 100,000. What sort of people are these, who cannot tell 100,000 from 33,000? If they do not know, why not ask some Abkhazian, or look into the literature? Why are they not ashamed of a deliberate lie?'⁸⁶

The methods by which the government of Georgia acted in 1918 to establish itself on the seized territory cannot be passed over in silence. Simon Basaria left a very important and interesting account of it.

'The following monstrous and incredible fact', he wrote, 'finally revealed to the population that the Georgian imperialists were up to something nightmarish, equally shameful for the Abkhaz and for the Georgian nation. Specifically, they demanded from the Abkhaz People's Council a written document stating that Tuapse was the boundary of Abkhazia and that Abkhazia had the right to occupy the Black Sea coast up to and including Tuapse. The whole manoeuvre was required because Mazniashvili's army, having taken Sochi, was already approaching Tuapse, while General Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, the German protector of Georgia, had pointed out to the Georgian government the awkwardness of occupying somebody else's territory. So they needed to secure a document from which it would appear that Tuapse was being occupied at the request of the Abkhaz people, who supposedly had a historic right to it. The Abkhaz members of the People's Council protested against this demand and pointed to Georgia's imperialist designs and so on, but the majority of the Council, made up of appointees (appointed to the APC by the occupation authorities, Stanislav Lakoba), together with its new chairman (Vasily Shervashidze, Stanislav Lakoba), who shared the policy of the new authorities, got their way. Evidently, as with all builders of empires, there rose up before the Georgian government a vision of an enormous state, a state of grandeur, which is what the "democratic republic" was to become'⁸⁷. Such are the facts.

In mid-September 1918 an Abkhaz delegation arrived to see General Mikhail Alexeyev⁸⁸, and on 25 September the well-known conference took place at Ekaterinodar, at which the Abkhazian question was among the matters considered. At the very outset the generals of the Volunteer Army made no secret of their suspicions about the joint Georgian and German incursion into the Black Sea region, and asked whether Georgia was 'taking part, in alliance with the Germans and the Bolsheviks, in a scheme to encircle' General Alexeyev's army. Gegechkori rejected the suggestion⁸⁹. It is interesting that he then told Alexeyev: 'the question of relations between Abkhazia, Georgia and the Kuban must be settled not here but elsewhere'⁹⁰. That is, Gegechkori acknowledged, if indirectly, that the Abkhazian question was still open.

On the Sochi to Gagra territory occupied by Mazniashvili, General Alexeyev said: 'Can one speak of these districts as Georgian at all, when a whole district, Abkhazia, lies between them and Georgia?'⁹¹ Nikolai Vorobyov of the Kuban government spoke still more sharply at the conference: 'If we are to speak of Georgia's border, then it must be set only as far as Abkhazia...'⁹² He went on: 'Beyond the Gagra district there is also Abkhazia, which we cannot hand over to be devoured. Georgia's borders must begin beyond Abkhazia...'⁹³

General Lukomsky gave a concrete assessment of Georgia's actions and of the situation on the Black Sea: '...In this period the Georgian Government had to act at the dictation of the Germans and, finally, the Sochi district was of enormous importance to Georgia as a zone separating from the Volunteer Army the Sukhum district, inhabited by the freedom-loving and warlike Abkhaz people, who had no wish to submit to Georgia. The Georgian Government feared that if the Sochi district were to become part of the Black Sea province, the immediate proximity of a district subordinate to the Volunteer Army to the Sukhum district might contribute to Abkhazia's falling away from Georgia and to Georgia's loss of its ports on the Black Sea'⁹⁴.

At the September conference in Ekaterinodar General Alexeyev stated that Abkhazia's future position had not been determined at all⁹⁵. A very interesting position was taken by the well-known Russian political figure Vasily Shulgin. Turning to Gegechkori, he asked: '...We may be entirely competent in our own decisions on the Abkhazian question as well. Under article 13 of the supplement to the Brest treaty, Georgia is recognised as independent, and if Abkhazia wished for the same, I think that on the same grounds it could obtain independence. I ask you to answer this: if borders were discussed at the conclusion of the Brest treaty, were the borders of Georgia established?'

The question came so unexpectedly to Gegechkori that he was obliged to admit: 'No, no precise borders were fixed. A special decree stated that borders are established by time'⁹⁶. But if 'Georgia considers itself an independent republic', the diplomat from Tiflis was told, then 'let it allow Abkhazia too to have a view on its own fate'⁹⁷.

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

+ The Treaty That Never Was: Forgery, Occupation and June 1918, by Stanislav Lakoba

+ The Barn at Aatsy

+ Quotes from the 'Between Red and White' by Leon Trotsky

+ Abkhazia and Georgia on the Verge of Independence (1917 - 1921), by Cem Kumuk

As the document shows, even at the end of September 1918 Georgia's borders had not been established, and its 'statehood' was so unsteady that claims to Abkhazia looked unserious. The more so as the chief ally of social-democratic Georgia, imperial Germany, was living out its last months and, together with sultanate Turkey, was receding into the background. As their international positions weakened sharply, the hopes of the Georgian government collapsed with them. Germany was suffering a crushing defeat in the First World War, and 'Denikin and his government did not recognise Abkhazia as part of Georgia' even in 1919, as is shown by the note from Denikin's representative at the Paris conference, Sergey Sazonov, formerly foreign minister of tsarist Russia, to Lord Curzon (Menteshashvili, pp. 280 to 281). With this fair observation of Menteshashvili's one cannot but agree.

It should be borne in mind that from the autumn of 1918 the Volunteer Army of Russia was the main political force, reckoned with above all by its ally England, while Georgia decided practically nothing and to all intents did not exist as a state. Thus, in citing the minutes of the meeting of 23 May 1919 between the Georgian delegation, Evgeni Gegechkori and Noe Ramishvili, and Denikin's representative General Briggs, Menteshashvili notes that the document plainly attests to Denikin's plans to seize 'the whole of Abkhazia and detach it from Georgia' (p. 273). For all the grandiloquence of the Georgian delegation's talk about the state border, about how 'for 2000 years Georgia existed as an independent state' and so forth, it is perfectly clear that the government of Georgia was seeking international recognition, which England resisted in every way. 'Our international position has still not been finally clarified, and we are waiting for the question to be resolved' (p. 276), Gegechkori exclaimed in exasperation. It was May 1919. Nobody recognised Georgia as a state. What autonomy, then, could it grant Abkhazia?

References

Archival references follow the Russian convention: F. (fond, collection), d. (delo, file), l. (list, folio), ll. (folios), ob. (oborot, verso). TsGAA is the Central State Archive of Abkhazia. Several short titles used here were given in full in the notes to earlier responses: *Arkhiv Russkoy Revolyutsii*, *Soyuz obyedinennykh gortsev*, Denikin's *Ocherki*, Menteshashvili's *Iz istorii*, *Dokumenty i materialy po vneshney politike*, Lezhava's *Iz istorii rabochego klassa Abkhazii* and Achugba's *O natsionalnom sostave*.

56. Arkhiv Russkoy Revolyutsii [Archive of the Russian Revolution]. Berlin, 1922, vol. 6, p. 114.
57. Soyuz obyedinennykh gortsev [The Union of United Mountain Peoples], p. 132.
58. Ibid., pp. 133 to 135.
59. Noe Zhordania, My Life. Stanford, Mass., 1968, p. 98.
60. G. Avetisyan, 'K voprosu o "Kavkazskom dome" i panturkistskikh ustremleniyakh' [On the Question of the 'Caucasian Home' and Pan-Turkist Aspirations], in Etnicheskiye i regionalnyye konflikty v Yevrazii [Ethnic and Regional Conflicts in Eurasia], in three books: book 1, *Tsentralnaya Aziya i Kavkaz* [Central Asia and the Caucasus], general editors Aleksei Malashenko, Bruno Coppieters and Dmitri Trenin. Moscow, 1997, p. 140.
61. Stanislav Lakoba, 'K voprosu o Kavkazskoy konfederatsii. Abkhaziya i Gruziya: vmeste ili vroz?' [On the Question of a Caucasian Confederation. Abkhazia and Georgia: Together or Apart?], in Gruziny i abkhazy. Put k primireniyu [Georgians and Abkhazians: The Path to Reconciliation], general editors Bruno Coppieters, Ghia Nodia and Yuri Anchabadze. Moscow, 1998, pp. 157 to 158.
62. S. Kiladze, 'Yedinstvo Kavkaza: popytka vykhoda iz krizisa' [The Unity of the Caucasus: An Attempt to Escape the Crisis], in Tbilisskiy Meridian [Tbilisi Meridian], 1997, no. 1, pp. 20 to 22.
63. Soyuz obyedinennykh gortsev, p. 197.
64. Carl Eric Bechhofer, In Denikin's Russia and the Caucasus, 1919-1920. London, 1921, p. 14.
65. Anton Denikin, Ocherki Russkoi Smuty [Sketches of the Russian Turmoil], vol. 3, pp. 49, 243, 241.
66. Nikolai Vorobyov, O neosnovatelnosti prityazaniy gruzin na Sukhumskiy okrug (Abkhaziyu) [On the Groundlessness of the Georgians' Claims to the Sukhum District (Abkhazia)]. Rostov-on-Don, 1919.
67. Anton Denikin, Ocherki, vol. 3, pp. 242 to 243; *Denikin, Yudenich, Wrangel*. Moscow and Leningrad, 1927, pp. 96 to 97.
68. Arkhiv Russkoy Revolyutsii. Berlin, 1923, vol. 9, pp. 171 to 172.
69. TsGAA, F. I-39, d. 6, ll. 37 to 40.
70. Ibid., d. 7, ll. 1 to 2.
71. Ibid., d. 6, ll. 49 to 50.
72. Anton Denikin, Ocherki, vol. 3, p. 48.
73. TsGAA, F. I-39, d. 3, l. 20.
74. Ibid., ll. 7 to 9 and ob.
75. Pavle Ingorokva, O granitsakh territorii Gruzii [On the Borders of the Territory of Georgia]. Constantinople, 1918 (in Georgian).
76. Avtandil Menteshashvili, Iz istorii [From the History], pp. 34 to 39.
77. Ibid., pp. 37 to 38.
78. See Yedinenie [Unity], 1991, no. 3.
79. See A. Tulumdzhyan, Iz istorii revolyutsionnogo dvizheniya v Sochinskom okruge v 1905-1907 gg. [From the History of the Revolutionary Movement in the Sochi District in 1905 to 1907]. Sukhum, 1958, pp. 12 to 23.
80. See Yedinenie, 1991, no. 3.
81. See also Avtandil Menteshashvili, Iz istorii, p. 19.
82. See G. P. Lezhava, Iz istorii rabochego klassa Abkhazii [From the History of the Working Class of Abkhazia].
83. Avtandil Menteshashvili, Iz istorii, p. 31.
84. Anton Denikin, Ocherki Russkoi Smuty, vol. 3, p. 49.
85. Avtandil Menteshashvili, Iz istorii, p. 53.
86. Quoted from Teimuraz Achugba, O natsionalnom sostave [On the National Composition], p. 31.
87. Simon Basaria, Abkhaziya v geograficheskom, etnograficheskom i ekonomicheskom otnoshenii [Abkhazia in its Geographical, Ethnographic and Economic Aspects]. Sukhum-Kale, 1923.
88. Stanislav Lakoba, Ocherki politicheskoy istorii Abkhazii [Sketches of the Political History of Abkhazia]. Sukhum, 1990, pp. 68 to 73.
89. Anton Denikin, Ocherki, vol. 3, p. 241.
90. Dokumenty i materialy po vneshney politike [Documents and Materials on Foreign Policy], p. 411.
91. Ibid., p. 392.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid., p. 408.
94. Arkhiv Russkoy Revolyutsii. Berlin, 1922, vol. 6, p. 105.
95. Dokumenty i materialy po vneshney politike, p. 413.
96. Ibid., p. 408.
97. Anton Denikin, Ocherki, vol. 3, p. 242.