Zed Books The Experiment: Georgia's Forgotten Revolution 1918-1921

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The ExperimentGeorgia's Forgotten Revolution 1918–1921By Eric LeeZed Books LtdCopyright © 2017 Eric LeeAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78699-093-8ContentsTimeline, Preface, Prologue, 1. Founding father, 2. Dress rehearsal, 3. The experiment begins, 4. The turn towards Germany, 5. At war with Armenia, 6. The British take charge, 7. Georgia's agrarian revolution, 8. The independence of the trade unions, 9. The rise and rise of the cooperatives, 10. Achilles heel: Georgia's national minorities, 11. Fifth column, 12. Europe's socialist leaders come for a visit, 13. The state that never was, 14. The experiment ends, 15. The final battle, 16. Another revolution was possible, Acknowledgements, Notes, Index, CHAPTER 1FOUNDING FATHERGeorgia is an ancient land situated on the crossroads between Europe and Asia. To its north is the Caucasus mountain range; to its west is the Black Sea. Its neighbours today include Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey. For centuries, powerful empires fought over it, including the Ottomans and Persians, and it was not until 1783 that Georgians could finally feel a degree of safety. In that year King Erekle II signed a treaty with the Russian empress Catherine the Great which turned this proud country into a Russian protectorate. Eighteen years later, the Russians decided to extend that protection without asking anyone's permission, and annexed Georgia. From then onwards it was a province of their vast and growing empire.Though deprived of their statehood, for more than a century Georgians could feel relatively secure knowing that a Russian army stood between them and their neighbours. But the country also suffered because it was a remote outpost of the empire, and the vast majority of its inhabitants lived in poor rural communities. Nevertheless, as Russia itself began to slowly modernise during the nineteenth century, so did Georgia ? fuelled in part by the discovery of oil in neighbouring Azerbaijan. The oil pipeline from Baku to the Georgian port of Batumi and the railways that spanned the Transcaucasian region began to transform the country.In 1868, in the small village of Lanchkhuti in the province of Guria in western Georgia, a baby son was born to the Zhordania family. His name was Noe and he would go on to become the leader of the Georgian socialists and later the president of his country. But at the time of his birth, Zhordania's family lived in a modest one-storey wooden house with a covered porch, built on a stone platform. In 1990, after the collapse of communism, Zhordania's son Redjeb returned from France, where his family had gone into exile in 1921. He paid a visit to Lanshkhuti. All that remained of the house was the stone base and a magnolia, which according to local legend Noe Zhordania himself had planted.Noe Zhordania described the backwardness of the province in which he was born. "All the villagers in Lanshkhuti, and probably all the Gurians, had a fantasmatic view of the world," he wrote. "They were convinced that the universe was populated by invisible beings that were constantly fighting against the humans and confusing them as to their destiny. And who were these beings? They were demons, devils, monsters, ghouls, incubus, succubus, witches, warlocks and many others."Like so many other Georgian revolutionaries, including a young Stalin several years later, Zhordania escaped village life by enrolling in the Tiflis Seminary, where he trained to be a priest. But the young Noe was already starting to have his doubts about religion and the monarchy. He read illegal publications and like many other young students across the Russian empire, he fell under the influence of the Narodniks, the populist rebels who were the forerunners of Russia's modern socialist movement. The Narodniks were already being challenged by the likes of Georgi Plekhanov, who introduced Russians to the writings of Karl Marx. In Georgia, intellectuals