1920 Georgian coup attempt | |||||||
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Part of the Russian Civil War | |||||||
The former Military College in Tbilisi, targeted during the coup | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
Georgian Bolsheviks supported by: Soviet Russia | Georgian government | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Giorgi Kvinitadze | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
Approx 25 fighters | Georgian military cadets | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Several killed and wounded, three captured and later executed | |||||||
A simultaneous invasion of Georgian territory from Azerbaijan was repulsed and a treaty of mutual recognition signed by Georgia and Russia on May 7 |
The Georgian coup in May 1920 was an unsuccessful attempt to take power by the Bolsheviks in the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Relying on the 11th Red Army of Soviet Russia operating in neighboring Azerbaijan, the Bolsheviks attempted to take control of a military school and government offices in the Georgian capital of Tiflis on May 3. The Georgian government suppressed the disorders in Tiflis and concentrated its forces to successfully block the advance of the Russian troops on the Azerbaijani-Georgian border. The Georgian resistance, combined with an uneasy war with Poland, persuaded the Red leadership to defer their plans for Georgia's Sovietization and recognize Georgia as an independent nation in the May 7 treaty of Moscow. [1] [2] [3]
After their failure to secure the control of government in Georgia following the Russian Revolution of 1917, most of the Bolshevik Georgian leaders relocated to Soviet Russia, from where they guided underground activities aimed at undermining the Menshevik-dominated government in Tiflis. A series of attempts to lead a peasant revolution against the Mensheviks were rendered abortive from 1918 to 1919, but preparations for a larger-scale revolt had been set in motion. [1] [2]
The overthrow of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan by the Red Army in April 1920 created a precedent for the Bolsheviks in Georgia. Georgia had been in a defense alliance with Azerbaijan since 1919, but the Menshevik government hesitated to get involved in the conflict. In his April 30 speech, Georgian Premier Noe Zhordania stated that his country had been prepared to come to aid to Azerbaijan provided that the latter's own people fought for their independence. But as the Reds met minimal resistance in Baku, the Georgian government chose not to, a decision that was heavily criticized by the opposition. [4] In conclusion, Zhordania declared that Georgia, if attacked, would defend its independence. [1]
Sergo Ordzhonikidze, a Bolshevik commissar with the Red Army in the Caucasus and close ally of Joseph Stalin, tried to persuade the Russian leader Lenin to allow an advance into Georgia. On May 1, the Georgian government ordered mobilization and appointed General Giorgi Kvinitadze, Director of the Tiflis Military College, as commander-in-chief. The Bolsheviks in Georgia, fully confident that the Red Army would continue its march into Georgia, no longer hesitated. Following the restive May 1 International Workers' Day manifestations and unrest in Tiflis, the Bolsheviks formed and supported armed groups to take control of government buildings. On the night of May 2–3, some 25 Bolshevik fighters attacked the Tiflis Military College as a preliminary step to taking power. General Kvinitadze was still in residence there, and he and his cadets resisted, killing and wounding several attackers. Afterwards, the ringleaders, three Armenian Bolsheviks, were court-martialed and executed. The attempt to take power had failed and Bolsheviks were rounded up throughout Tiflis and other Georgian towns. [1] [2] [5]
In the meantime, the Red Army, upon reaching the Georgian-Azerbaijani frontier, continued to advance into Georgian territory apparently on Ordzhonikidze's own initiative. Having successfully dealt with the unrest in Tiflis, the Georgian government concentrated all its forces on the border with Azerbaijan and repulsed the Red Army detachments, staging a counter-offensive. The Russian government tried to maintain that this fighting was a local conflict between Georgia and Soviet Azerbaijan. Facing renewed hostilities with Poland, the Soviets concluded that under the circumstances it would cost too much to open a second front and occupy Georgia. Lenin decided for the moment to give up the attempt and agreed on negotiations for which the Georgian delegation had been in Moscow since late April, days before the attempted invasion. On May 7, 1920, Russia and Georgia signed a treaty of mutual recognition. [1] [2] [6] [7]
The Democratic Republic of Georgia was the first modern establishment of a republic of Georgia, which existed from May 1918 to February 1921. Recognized by all major European powers of the time, DRG was created in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which led to the collapse of the Russian Empire and allowed territories formerly under Russia's rule to assert independence. In contrast to Bolshevik Russia, DRG was governed by a moderate, multi-party political system led by the Georgian Social Democratic Party (Mensheviks).
Noe Zhordania was a Georgian journalist and Menshevik politician. He played an eminent role in the socialist revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire, and later chaired the government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia from July 24, 1918, until March 18, 1921, when the Bolshevik Russian Red Army invasion of Georgia forced him into exile to France. There Zhordania led the government-in-exile until his death in 1953.
Kaikhosro "Kakutsa" Cholokashvili was a Georgian military officer and a commander of an anti-Soviet guerrilla movement in Georgia. He is regarded as a national hero in Georgia.
The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was a short-lived state in the Caucasus that included most of the territory of the present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as parts of Russia and Turkey. The state lasted only for a month before Georgia declared independence, followed shortly after by Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The Armeno-Georgian War was a short border dispute that was fought in December 1918 between the newly independent Democratic Republic of Georgia and the First Republic of Armenia, largely over the control of former districts of the Tiflis Governorate, in Borchaly (Lori) and Akhalkalaki.
Sergo Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze, born Grigol Konstantines dze Orjonikidze was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician.
Giorgi Kvinitadze was a Georgian military commander who rose from an officer in the Imperial Russian army to commander-in-chief of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. After the Red Army invasion of Georgia, Kvinitadze went into exile to France, where he wrote his memoirs of the 1917–1921 events in Georgia. In 2013, he was posthumously awarded the title and Order of National Hero of Georgia.
The August Uprising was an unsuccessful insurrection against Soviet rule in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic from late August to early September 1924.
The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, also known as the Azerbaijan People's Republic, was the first secular democratic republic in the Turkic and Muslim worlds. The ADR was founded by the Azerbaijani National Council in Tiflis on 28 May 1918 after the collapse of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and ceased to exist on April 28, 1920. Its established borders were with Russia to the north, the Democratic Republic of Georgia to the north-west, the Republic of Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south. It had a population of around 3 million. Ganja was the temporary capital of the Republic as Baku was under Bolshevik control. The name of "Azerbaijan" which the leading Musavat party adopted, for political reasons, was, prior to the establishment of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918, exclusively used to identify the adjacent region of contemporary northwestern Iran.
The Southern Front was a military theatre of the Russian Civil War.
The Treaty of Moscow, signed between Soviet Russia (RSFSR) and the Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG) in Moscow on 7 May 1920, granted de jure recognition of Georgian independence in exchange for promising not to grant asylum on Georgian soil to troops of powers hostile to Bolshevik Russia.
The Social Democratic Party of Georgia, also known as the Georgian Menshevik Party, was a Georgian Marxist and social democratic political party. It was founded in the 1890s by Nikolay Chkheidze, Silibistro Jibladze, Egnate Ninoshvili, Noe Zhordania and others. It became the Georgian branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. After 1905, Georgian social democrats joined the Menshevik faction, except for some such as Joseph Stalin, Grigol Ordzhonikidze and Makharadze. Several leaders were elected to the Russian Duma from Kutais or Tifli: Nikolay Chkheidze, Akaki Chkhenkeli, Evgeni Gegechkori, Isidore Ramishvili, Irakly Tsereteli, and Noe Zhordania.
The Red Army invasion of Georgia, also known as the Georgian–Soviet War or the Soviet invasion of Georgia, was a military campaign by the Russian Soviet Red Army aimed at overthrowing the Social Democratic (Menshevik) government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG) and installing a Bolshevik regime in the country. The conflict was a result of expansionist policy by the Russians, who aimed to control as much as possible of the lands which had been part of the former Russian Empire until the turbulent events of the First World War, as well as the revolutionary efforts of mostly Russian-based Georgian Bolsheviks, who did not have sufficient support in their native country to seize power without external intervention.
Polikarp "Budu" Gurgenovich Mdivani was a veteran Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet government official energetically involved in the Russian Revolutions and the Civil War. In the 1920s, he played an important role in the Sovietization of the Caucasus, but later led Georgian Communist opposition to Joseph Stalin's centralizing policy during the Georgian Affair of 1922. He was executed during the Great Purge.
The Georgian affair of 1922 was a political conflict within the Soviet leadership about the way in which social and political transformation was to be achieved in the Georgian SSR. The dispute over Georgia, which arose shortly after the forcible Sovietization of the country and peaked in the latter part of 1922, involved local Georgian Bolshevik leaders, led by Filipp Makharadze and Budu Mdivani, on one hand, and their de facto superiors from the Russian SFSR, particularly Joseph Stalin and Grigol Ordzhonikidze, on the other hand. The content of this dispute was complex, involving the Georgians' desire to preserve autonomy from Moscow and the differing interpretations of Bolshevik nationality policies, and especially those specific to Georgia. One of the main points at issue was Moscow's decision to amalgamate Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan into Transcaucasian SFSR, a move that was staunchly opposed by the Georgian leaders who urged for their republic a full-member status within the Soviet Union.
The Special Transcaucasian Committee was established on March 9, 1917, with Member of the State Duma V. A. Kharlamov as Chairman, to replace the Imperial Viceroy Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and with special instruction to establish civil administrations in areas occupied in the course of the war on the Caucasian front by the Russian Provisional Government in the Transcaucasus as the highest organ of the civil administrative body. Commissars were appointed for the Terek Oblast and the Kuban Oblast, and these as well as the Committee were to carry on relations with central government institutions through a Commissar for Caucasian Affairs in Petrograd attached to the Provisional Government.
The National Council of Georgia was the first delegated legislative body formed by Georgia's major political parties and social organizations on November 19, 1917, during the Russian Revolution. The Council presided over the declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Georgia on May 26, 1918, and was renamed into the Parliament of Georgia on October 4, 1918. It was succeeded by the Constituent Assembly of Georgia, a legislative body elected through the nationwide general elections on February 14, 1919.
The Mensheviks were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. The Mensheviks were led by Julius Martov and Pavel Axelrod.
The Armenian Social-Democratic Labour Organization, often pejoratively referred to as the Specificists, was an Armenian Marxist organization in the Russian Empire.
Anarchism in Georgia began to emerge during the late 19th century out of the Georgian national liberation movement and the Russian nihilist movement. It reached its apex during the 1905 Russian Revolution, after a number of anarchists returned from exile to participate in revolutionary activities, such as in the newly-established Gurian Republic.
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