Democratic Republic of Georgia?

[cb9's_unity]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Georgia

For some reason I have never heard of this before. This is odd as it seemed to be (from my very limited and recent research) a genuinely democratic and autonomous nation and was controlled by the Mensheviks through democratic elections.

The existence of this state leads me to ask quite a few questions. The article seems to un-specifically state that the red armies invaded the countrie. This is either untrue or damning to the idea that Lenin actually acted on his belief that nations have the right to self-determination. The country could also reveal quite a bit about the Mensheviks. It seems as though that even in practice the Mensheviks stayed true to many of their democratic ideals. And beyond that it seems that if Georgia willingly entered the USSR the Mensheviks would appear to be true anti-sectarians, willing to give up some of their own autonomy in order to serve the greater good. If this is true then the constant bashing of Mensheviks i often see by Leninist's would appear to be completely unwarranted.

I only found this a few minutes ago so I am likely to have misread something but can someone enlighten me with the story of the Democratic Republic of Georgia? How did it truly relate to Russia and then the USSR? And how should history perceive it?

[cb9's_unity]

“We do not only recognize, but we also give full support to the principle of self-determination, wherever it is directed against feudal, capitalist and imperialist states. But wherever the fiction of self-determination, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, becomes a weapon directed against the proletarian revolution, we have no occasion to treat this fiction differently from the other ‘principles’ of democracy perverted by capitalism.” - Trotsky

So if the country is not socialist then it is ok to invade? Because the Georgian people picked Menshevism over Bolshevism it is essentially ok to strip them of any sort of democratic rights? This sounds way to much like imperialism for my tastes.


The most prominent difference between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks was that the former called on the workers to fight and die in a revolutionary struggle to create a capitalist state and then fall back until some time in the future when 'conditions would be ready' for them to take power themselves while the latter believed that the working class itself should carry out the revolution and rule in its own name.

This was born out with the situation of Georgia where the Mensheviks tried to create set up a capitalist republic.So what? Did the Georgian people not have the right to create a capitalist republic if they so desired, how did the Russians get away with enforcing their policies on the Georgian people? Again this sounds a lot like imperialism to me.

My point in this thread wasn't really to attack the Bolsheviks so I can hope someone can provide me with a better explanation. I try to keep an open mind on Lenin and the Bolsheviks and I can only hope this wasn't their reasoning.

[LeninBalls]

Stalin invaded it, not Lenin.

[cb9's_unity]

Stalin invaded it, not Lenin.

Can someone verify this? And even if it was carried out by Stalin it still would have been under Lenin's watch. Beyond that, if the reasoning's really were what Nothing Human Is Alien said they were it doesn't speak well of the Bolsheviks at all.

[Led Zeppelin]

I think LeninBalls was referring to the way Stalin handled (or rather, mishandled) the Georgian question in 1922, and how Lenin criticized him for it.


From what I was told by Comrade Dzerzhinsky, who was at the head of the commission sent by the C.C. to "investigate" the Georgian incident, I could only draw the greatest apprehensions. If matters had come to such a pass that Orjonikidze could go to the extreme of applying physical violence, as Comrade Dzerzhinsky informed me, we can imagine what a mess we have got ourselves into. Obviously the whole business of "autonomisation" was radically wrong and badly timed.

It is said that a united apparatus was needed. Where did that assurance come from? Did it not come from that same Russian apparatus which, as I pointed out in one of the preceding sections of my diary, we took over from tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil?

There is no doubt that that measure should have been delayed somewhat until we could say that we vouched for our apparatus as our own. But now, we must, in all conscience, admit the contrary; the apparatus we call ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois and tsarist hotch-potch and there has been no possibility of getting rid of it in the course of the past five years without the help of other countries and because we have been "busy" most of the time with military engagements and the fight against famine.

It is quite natural that in such circumstances the "freedom to secede from the union" by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a fly in milk.

It is said in defence of this measure that the People's Commissariats directly concerned with national psychology and national education were set up as separate bodies. But there the question arises: can these People's Commissariats be made quite independent? and secondly: were we careful enough to take measures to provide the non-Russians with a real safeguard against the truly Russian bully? I do not think we took such measures although we could and should have done so.

I think that Stalin's haste and his infatuation with pure administration, together with his spite against the notorious "nationalist-socialism" [Stalin critised the minority nations for not being "internationalist" because they did want to unite with Russia], played a fatal role here. In politics spite generally plays the basest of roles.

I also fear that Comrade Dzerzhinsky, who went to the Caucasus to investigate the "crime" of those "nationalist-socialists", distinguished himself there by his truly Russian frame of mind (it is common knowledge that people of other nationalities who have become Russified over-do this Russian frame of mind) and that the impartiality of his whole commission was typified well enough by Orgonikidze's "manhandling". I think that no provocation or even insult can justify such Russian manhandling and that Comrade Dzerzhinsky was inexcusably guilty in adopting a light-hearted attitude towards it.

For all the citizens in the Caucasus Orjonikidze was the authority. Orjonikidze had no right to display that irritability to which he and Dzerzhinsky referred. On the contrary, Orjonikidze should have behaved with a restraint which cannot be demanded of any ordinary citizen, still less of a man accused of a "political" crime. And, to tell the truth, those nationalist-socialists were citizens who were accused of a political crime, and the terms of the accusation were such that it could not be described otherwise.

Here we have an important question of principle: how is internationalism to be understood?

[...]

What is important for the proletarian? For the proletarian it is not only important, it is absolutely essential that he should be assured that the non-Russians place the greatest possible trust in the proletarian class struggle. What is needed to ensure this? Not merely formal equality. In one way or another, by one's attitude or by concessions, it is necessary to compensate the non-Russian for the lack of trust, for the suspicion and the insults to which the government of the "dominant" nation subjected them in the past.

I think it is unnecessary to explain this to Bolsheviks, to Communists, in greater detail. And I think that in the present instance, as far as the Georgian nation is concerned, we have a typical case in which a genuinely proletarian attitude makes profound caution, thoughtfulness and a readiness to compromise a matter of necessity for us. The Georgian [Stalin] who is neglectful of this aspect of the question, or who carelessly flings about accusations of "nationalist-socialism" (whereas he himself is a real and true "nationalist-socialist", and even a vulgar Great-Russian bully), violates, in substance, the interests of proletarian class solidarity, for nothing holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity so much as national injustice; "offended" nationals are not sensitive to anything so much as to the feeling of equality and the violation of this equality, if only through negligence or jest- to the violation of that equality by their proletarian comrades. That is why in this case it is better to over-do rather than undergo the concessions and leniency towards the national minorities. That is why, in this case, the fundamental interest of proletarian class struggle, requires that we never adopt a formal attitude to the national question, but always take into account the specific attitude of the proletarian of the oppressed (or small) nation towards the oppressor (or great) nation.

[...]

Thirdly, exemplary punishment must be inflicted on Comrade Orjonikidze (I say this all the more regretfully as I am one of his personal friends and have worked with him abroad) and the investigation of all the material which Dzerzhinsky's commission has collected must be completed or started over again to correct the enormous mass of wrongs and biased judgments which it doubtlessly contains. The political responsibility for all this truly Great-Russian nationalist campaign must, of course, be laid on Stalin and Dzerzhinsky.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm)

[LeninBalls]

Can someone verify this? And even if it was carried out by Stalin it still would have been under Lenin's watch. Beyond that, if the reasoning's really were what Nothing Human Is Alien said they were it doesn't speak well of the Bolsheviks at all.

From the book "Young Stalin". Apparently some pro-Bolshevik Georgians (good friends of Stalin) "invited" Stalin to come back and invade.

It could be bullshit though, as that's the only place I've read it.

[cb9's_unity]

An army crossing a border isn't imperialism. It's a specific stage of capitalism. See this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/imperialism-iti-t59302/index.html) for a more detailed explanation.

Notice carefully how I didn't straight out say it was imperialism. However what was done against Georgia and what imperialists do is unnervingly similar. In both situations the larger country took over political control of a smaller nation against that smaller nations will.

Was it technically Imperialism? I'm not sure. Just as reprehensible? Absolutely.


Trotsky's point was that communists don't support self-determination as some abstract principle. We do so in furtherance of the class struggle, in the interests of the international proletariat. When capitalists pervert the concept to use it for their own reactionary ends we must oppose it, just as we do with bourgeois "democracy."Opposing something and invading a country are two entirely different matters. There is a difference between opposing bourgeois democracy in your own country and forcing your beliefs upon another country. It was obvious by the election that the Mensheviks, not the Bolsheviks, had the support of the country. The Bolsheviks had no right to impress there beliefs onto the Georgian people. Such a concept may have been spouted by Trotsky or Stalin but it is entirely un-marxist. Socialism must be brought through internal revolution, not through the Red Army.

You don't really support democracy at all do? The only system you support is one that elects Bolsheviks (or Leninists, or Stalinists, or Trostskyists, or whatever specific faction you support at the time). And even if those bolsheviks are not elected it is apparently better than an elected anything else.



The Mensheviks weren't some noble group fighting for the democratic rights of the Georgian people. They viewed Georgia's independence as temporary. They controlled a capitalist state that suppressed the proletariat. Peasant and ethnic-based rebellions were put down. Bolsheviks were arrested and pushed out of public life.I would love a few sources but even then I'll just for arguments sake assume what your saying is true. It is not like any of this never happened in Russia under the Bolsheviks. Have you ever heard of the Kronstadt? Is Russia allowed to murder dissidents and not Georgia? And clearly the Mensheviks were treated with much more respect in Russia...

From all I can see Georgia had a legitimate democracy (do you have evidence that the democracy was only controlled by the bourgeoisie and not just Mensheviks who thought countries should develop as Marx described?). And if they made mistakes it doesn't sound like they were considerably worse than the 'mistakes' the Bolsheviks made while controlling their country.


The Mensheviks sought to use Georgia as a base. Their ultimate goal was to boot out the Bolsheviks and reunite the Russian Empire as a capitalist republic.Give me of a speech of a prominent Georgian Menshevik saying this. Even so to say that Georgia posed any sort of threat politically or militarily to Russia at the time just doesn't all that plausible.

[cb9's_unity]

To Led Zeppelin, (sorry i usually don't double-post but this seemed to warrant one)

Thank you for your post but it still doesn't resolve a lot of my questions about the situation.

If Lenin recognized the situation in Georgia was mishandled why didn't he call for them to regain their autonomy? Was the protection of Russian Bolshevism important enough to completely disregard the will of the Georgian people. I understand he wanted to punish Stalin and a few others but that does nothing for Georgians. And beyond that did Georgia really become a willing member of the USSR? How does a country that was 85% Menshevik then decide to join the Bolsheviks? Either the Mensheviks were the true internationalists or the country simply had the Menshevism scared out of them.

[Korchagin]

Lenin in 1918 wrote:


"You are all aware that this independence of Georgia has become a sheer fraud. In actual fact it amounts to the occupation and complete seizure of Georgia by the German imperialists, an alliance of German bayonets with the Menshevik government against the Bolshevik workers and peasants."

When Georgia suffered under the Menshevik yoke, the economy collapsed. The agrarian question was not resolved as peasants remained landless. The Georgian masses actively resisted the counter-revolutionary regime in armed uprisings. German imperialists occupied Georgia in May 1918 followed by the British.

Mensheviks terrorized the revolutionary forces, shutting down Bolshevik newspapers and carrying out a massacre against Tbilisi workers in February 1918.

The Bolsheviks led the Georgian toiling masses in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary Menshevik gangs. An armed uprising began in Lori on February 11, 1921. On February 18, the Revolutionary Committee proclaimed Georgia to be a soviet republic, and with the help of Russia, the revolutionaries entered Tbilisi and drove out the Menshevik gangs.

[cb9's_unity]

Lenin in 1918 wrote:
When Georgia suffered under the Menshevik yoke, the economy collapsed. The agrarian question was not resolved as peasants remained landless. The Georgian masses actively resisted the counter-revolutionary regime in armed uprisings. German imperialists occupied Georgia in May 1918 followed by the British.

Mensheviks terrorized the revolutionary forces, shutting down Bolshevik newspapers and carrying out a massacre against Tbilisi workers in February 1918.


On February 14 1919, Georgia held parliamentary elections won by the Social Democrats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democrat) with 81.5% of the votes. On March 21, Noe Zhordania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Zhordania) formed a new government, which had to deal with armed peasants' revolts, excited by the local Bolshevik activists and largely supported from Russia, and becoming more troublesome when carried out by ethnic minorities such as Abkhazians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhazia) and Ossetians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ossetia).


How did the "Georgian masses" actively resist the Mensheviks yet vote for them in an election the next year? It also doesn't sound like the Bolsheviks played a completely innocent role in the whole affair. Can you really incite a minority of the peasants to fight the popularly elected government and expect that government to be ok with it. I understand Russian Bolsheviks wanted socialism right away but is that justification for attacking a group that from most accounts just wanted to follow a more traditional marxist time line (which yes unfortunately includes a period of Bourgeois Democracy).


The Bolsheviks led the Georgian toiling masses in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary Menshevik gangs. An armed uprising began in Lori on February 11, 1921. On February 18, the Revolutionary Committee proclaimed Georgia to be a soviet republic, and with the help of Russia, the revolutionaries entered Tbilisi and drove out the Menshevik gangs.I apologize I'm still trying to learn about this time period but who exactly is the Revolutionary Committee. Were they Russian or Georgian? If they were Russian they had no right to proclaim any region a soviet Republic. If they were Georgian where did they gain the power to announce Georgia a soviet republic. After all they seemed to be fighting the government since before the Mensheviks won the popular election.

Is it the Bolshevik way to fight undesirable elections with violence as they appeared to be doing. I thought Marxism was about popular and democratic uprisings. Aren't the masses supposed to topple the minority, not the other way around.

You say Georgia was "occupied" by the Germans and then the British. While the article certainly talks about both countries having a presence in Georgia it doesn't seem to say they actually occupied the country. And even at that point what is the difference between German, British, and Russian occupation. Again, I thought revolution was supposed to be an internal process. All of this just seems to much like the imperialist's who are claiming to act as the 'liberators' by slandering the countries government and pretending the masses are on their side.

I guess I'm not working with a great source with Wikipedia here, but I was hoping to get something better than the clearly biased Lenin. Either these explanations fail to add up or fail to defend the Bolsheviks in any way that should be acceptable to socialists.

[Korchagin]

I apologize I'm still trying to learn about this time period but who exactly is the Revolutionary Committee. Were they Russian or Georgian?
On February 16, 1921, the Revolutionary Committee was formed by Georgian revolutionaries in the town of Shulaveri. It consisted of A. Gegechkori, V. Kvirkvelia, F. Makharadze, and others. Units of the Red Army were to give active support to the Lori Uprising that began on February 11. Basically, Georgian Bolsheviks and revolutionaries led armed resistance against the Menshevik regime and appealed to the RSFSR for help.


I guess I'm not working with a great source with Wikipedia here
I would avoid Wikipedia and start with finding scholarly works on Google Books.

[Ismail]

Check out Between Red and White (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/red-white/index.htm) (1922) by Trotsky on Georgia during this period.


“We do not only recognize, but we also give full support to the principle of self-determination, wherever it is directed against feudal, capitalist and imperialist states. But wherever the fiction of self-determination, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, becomes a weapon directed against the proletarian revolution, we have no occasion to treat this fiction differently from the other ‘principles’ of democracy perverted by capitalism.” - TrotskyThis was Stalin's position too (he stated pretty much the same thing during a May 1918 speech on the creation of the Tatar-Bashkir ASSR). I don't necessarily agree with it though, if only because it can easily be used to justify imperialism and Russian Chauvinism, as Sultan-Galiev pointed out and as such did indeed come to fruition.

Ian Grey in Stalin: Man of History (1979) notes Georgia in this period (pp. 153-56):

The policy of centralizing power in the one communist party had been clearly stated in the party rules in December 1919.18 Communist parties in the Ukraine, the Muslim borderlands, and Georgia had been subordinated to the Russian Central Committee in the course of the Civil War, and claims to autonomy of the preservation of national identity had been brushed aside. Lenin had become disturbed, however, about the working of communist policy among national minorities. He had always had misgivings about Great Russian Chauvinism, although in a party which was some 80 per cent Russian in composition, the predominance of Russian influence was inevitable. To Stalin the policy was clear: It was to reunite without delay much of the tsarist empire as possible directly under Moscow's rule. Lenin accepted this principle, but worried about the dangers of pushing the policy through in haste, especially in Georgia, where the despised Mensheviks were in power.

In November 1920 Stalin went to Baku... [Ordzhonikidze, L. M. Kaganovich, S. M. Kirov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Anastas Mikoyan were soon to join the Central Committee's Caucasian Bureau, aka (Kavburo)]. All were eager for the complete reconquest of Transcaucasia and this meant seizing Georgia.

Early in May 1920, Ordzhonikidze, impatient for action, sent telegrams to Lenin and Stalin, proposing that the Eleventh Army, then in the North Caucasus under the command of Tukhachevsky, should march into Georgia. At this time the Poles were advancing into the Ukraine. Anxious to avoid further commitments for the weary Red forces, the Politburo, in a telegram signed by Lenin and Stalin, expressively forbade invasion and instructed him to open negotiations with the Georgian government, led by the Menshevik Noi Zhordania. A treaty was duly signed on May 7 (1920) by which the government of the R.S.F.R. formally recognized the independence of Georgia and guaranteed the legal status of the local Communist party. Kirov went to Tiflis as Moscow's envoy, and by diplomatic and other means he set about undermining the Georgian government. The republic's independence could only be a temporary arrangement.

In an interview, published in Pravda on November 30, 1920, Stalin stated that "the Georgia that enmeshed itself in the toils of the Entente and was consequently deprived both of Baku oil and of Kuban grain, the Georgia that became the main base of imperialist operations by Britain and France and hence entered into hostile relations with Soviet Russia—this Georgia is now living out the last days of its existence."20

In December 1920 and again in January 1921, Ordzhonikidze, with the support of all members of the Kavburo, sent telegrams to Lenin urging the immediate take-over of Georgia. The reply on each occasion was that the time was not yet ripe. Lenin's hesitation was due to many factors. The Red Army was in no condition to wage a long campaign. The Turkish armies along the Georgian and Armenian frontiers might attack. He feared, too, that since Britain had recognized independent Georgia, she must intervene in support of the regime. Leonid Krasin was instructed to take soundings in London, and he obtained an assurance from the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, that the British government would not be unduly distressed by Soviet action.

At this stage Stalin took up the Kavburo proposals, and this was the decisive factor. He made an issue of allegations that Zhordania's government had violated the Soviet-Georgian treaty, and argued that a revolutionary situation existed in Georgia. He proposed to the Central Committee that Ordzhonikidze be directed to prepare an armed communist rising in Georgia and that the Revolutionary War Council should stand ready to give military assistance. He added a postscript to his letter in which read tersely: "I request a reply before 6 o'clock." Lenin responded promptly, adding to the letter the words "Not to be delayed."21 On February 15, 1921, the Red Army invaded Georgia.

Lenin continued nevertheless to feel troubled about Georgia. Socialists abroad would be critical of the Soviet government's use of force to overthrow a social democratic regime. At this time, too, it was important to avoid damaging further good relations with the West, which the Soviet government was cultivating in the hope of attracting the massive capitalist aid urgently needed for the revival of the Russian economy. Such factors had not troubled him unduly in respect of other national minorities, but Georgia was an exception. Early in March 1921 he sent messages to Ordzhonikidze, urging him to try to reach a compromise agreement with Zhordania and the Georgian Mensheviks. But Zhordania and his ministers had already fled from Tiflis and soon afterwards sought refuge abroad. Lenin continued to urge moderation, but Ordzhonikidze was impatient and overbearing in his methods, and Lenin's advice was ignored.

The Red Army had carried out its invasion of the country with brutality. It was followed by a swarm of officials from Moscow who took over the administration, and the Cheka exercised police functions with a crude unconcern for Georgian feelings. Ordzhonikidze set up his headquarters in Baku, and ruthlessly asserted his authority throughout Transcaucasia, especially in purging the Menshevik and anti-Soviet elements.

The Georgians reacted angrily. The conflict developed into a feud between Ordzhonikidze, supported by Stalin, and Budu Mdivani, leading the Georgian Bolsheviks, which came to a climax over the formation of the Transcaucasian federation. At first Lenin supported Ordzhonikidze and the Kavburo, but gradually he became opposed to them, and in the process he turned against Stalin.

18 L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2nd ed. (London, 1970), p. 208.
20 Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol. 4. p. 410.
21 R. C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary 1879-1929 (New York, 1973), pp. 231-32.Grey was a bourgeois historian, so don't take his word on how events in Georgia went as definite.

Edit: Might as well throw this in here. From A Peace to End All Peace (1989) by David Fromkin (pp. 354-5) in 1918 when Georgia was threatened by Ottoman forces under Ismail Enver:

Germany urgently needed the agricultural and mineral wealth and the railroad system of Georgia, and even more so the oil wells of Azerbaijan, to sustain her war effort. Thinking ahead to the postwar world, German leaders also intended to use Transcaucasia as a spearhead into the markets of the Middle East... Germany, beset by shortages, had counted on replenishing her resources from the captured south and west of Russia, and controlled much of the economy of Georgia during 1918; but in Berlin the resources of Georgia were not regarded as sufficient. Enver's race to Baku... threatened to wreck the armistice arrangement with Russia... The German leaders told the Russian ambassador in Berlin that they would take steps to stop the Ottoman advance if Russia gave assurances that she would supply at least some of Baku's oil to Germany. "Of course, we will agree," Lenin cabled to Stalin in reporting this development.6

6 Fritz Kazemradeh, [I]The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917-1921) (New York: Philosophical Library and Oxford: George Ronald, 1951), p. 135.