Leo Kereselidze

Last updated April 17, 2019

Leo Kereselidze (Georgian :ლეო კერესელიძე) (1885 – 1944) was a Georgian military figure, politician and journalist involved in the Georgian national movement against the Russian and later Soviet domination.

Georgian is a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians. It is the official language of Georgia. Georgian is written in its own writing system, the Georgian script. Georgian is the literary language for all regional subgroups of Georgians, including those who speak other Kartvelian languages: Svans, Mingrelians and the Laz.

Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres (26,911 sq mi), and its 2017 population is about 3.718 million. Georgia is a unitary semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy.

The Russian Empire, also known as Imperial Russia or simply Russia, was an empire that existed across Eurasia and North America from 1721, following the end of the Great Northern War, until the Republic was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917.

Early in his twenties, Keresselidze was involved in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and took part in attacks against Russian officials and military as well as in the running of a cargo of guns to the port of Sukhum-Kale. He subsequently moved to Western Europe and obtained a Ph.D. degree from the University of Geneva. In 1913, he joined a group of Georgian patriots in the Committee of Independent Georgia, and engaged in journalism, co-editing with his brother Georges Keresselidze a Geneva-based Georgian newspaper Tavisupali Sakartvelo (“Free Georgia”) from 1913 to 1914, and then working for a Berlin-based Kartuli Gazeti (“Georgian Newspaper”) from 1916 to 1918. In 1914, at the eve of World War I, the Committee moved to Germany and sought the German aid in restoring the independence of Georgia from Russia. Keresselidze led a military unit of Georgian volunteers, the Georgian Legion, which fought on the German side and was transferred to the Ottoman-Russian Caucasus front. Keresselidze tried to negotiate an alliance with the Ottoman Empire, but refused to accept its suzerainty over a potentially independent Georgia.^[1] He was subsequently promoted to major general, but the Legion was disbanded due to his disagreement with the Ottoman government. Keresselidze was then involved in diplomacy between Georgians and Germans, and staging subversions against the Russian troops. After the collapse of the Russian armies in the Caucasus and the proclamation of Georgian independence in May 1918, Keresselidze was able to his own country and helped create national army divisions. The 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia forced him into exile to Germany where he was among the founding members and a secretary general of the right-leaning nationalist organization Tetri Giorgi. Not long before his death, he helped establish a new political organization of Georgian émigrés, the Union of Georgian Traditionalists.

Sukhumi or Sokhumi is a city on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of the breakaway Republic of Abkhazia which has controlled it since the 1992-93 war in Abkhazia, although most of the international community considers it legally part of Georgia.

Western Europe is the region comprising the western part of Europe. Though the term Western Europe is commonly used, there is no commonly agreed-upon definition of the countries that it encompasses.

University of Geneva Public university in Geneva, Switzerland

The University of Geneva is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland.

Keresselidze's revolutionary career is the subject of a fictionalized biography Unending Battle (London, 1934) by the British army officer and writer Harold Courtenay Armstrong (1891–1943).^[2]

The United Kingdom (UK), officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.

Related Research Articles

The Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria—hence also known as the Quadruple Alliance —was one of the two main coalitions that fought World War I (1914–18).

Russian Civil War multi-party war in the former Russian Empire, November 1917-October 1922

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the two Russian Revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. The two largest combatant groups were the Red Army, fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism led by Vladimir Lenin, and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army, which included diverse interests favouring political monarchism, economic capitalism and alternative forms of socialism, each with democratic and anti-democratic variants. In addition, rival militant socialists and non-ideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites. Eight foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the former Allied military forces from the World War and the pro-German armies. The Red Army eventually defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine and the army led by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak to the east in Siberia in 1919. The remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920. Lesser battles of the war continued on the periphery for two more years, and minor skirmishes with the remnants of the White forces in the Far East continued well into 1923. The war ended in 1923 in the sense that Bolshevik communist control of the newly formed Soviet Union was now assured, although armed national resistance in Central Asia was not completely crushed until 1934. There were an estimated 7,000,000–12,000,000 casualties during the war, mostly civilians. The Russian Civil War has been described by some as the greatest national catastrophe that Europe had yet seen.

The Democratic Republic of Georgia existed from May 1918 to February 1921 and was the first modern establishment of a Republic of Georgia.

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.

Ismail Enver Pasha was an Ottoman military officer and a leader of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. He became the main leader of the Ottoman Empire in both the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and in World War I (1914–18). In the course of his career he was known by increasingly elevated titles as he rose through military ranks, including Enver Efendi, Enver Bey, and finally Enver Pasha, "pasha" being the honorary title Ottoman military officers gained on promotion to the rank of Mirliva.

The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, also known as the Transcaucasian Federation, was a short-lived South Caucasian state extending across what are now the modern-day countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, plus parts of Eastern Turkey as well as Russian border areas.

Mustafa Suphi was a Turkish revolutionary communist militant leader.

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922) began with the Second Constitutional Era with the Young Turk Revolution. It restored the Ottoman constitution of 1876 and brought in multi-party politics with a two stage electoral system under the Ottoman parliament. The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernize the state's institutions and dissolve inter-communal tensions.

The Middle Eastern theatre of World War I saw action between 29 October 1914 and 30 October 1918. The combatants were, on one side, the Ottoman Empire, with some assistance from the other Central Powers; and on the other side, the British, the Russians and the French from among the Allied Powers. There were five main campaigns: the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, the Mesopotamian Campaign, the Caucasus Campaign, the Persian Campaign, and the Gallipoli Campaign. There were also several minor campaigns: the Senussi Campaign, Arab Campaign, and South Arabia Campaign.

The Caucasus Campaign comprised armed conflicts between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, later including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the German Empire, the Central Caspian Dictatorship and the British Empire as part of the Middle Eastern theatre during World War I. The Caucasus Campaign extended from the South Caucasus to the Armenian Highlands region, reaching as far as Trabzon, Bitlis, Mush and Van. The land warfare was accompanied by the Russian navy in the Black Sea Region of the Ottoman Empire.

The Islamic Army of the Caucasus was a military unit of the Ottoman Empire formed on July 10, 1918. The Ottoman Minister of War, Enver Pasha, ordered its establishment, and it played a major role during the Caucasus Campaign of World War I.

Garegin or Karekin Pastermadjian, better known by his nom de guerreArmen Garo or Armen Karo was an Armenian nationalist activist and politician. Armen Karo was a leading member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation for more than two decades. He was one of the masterminds of the 1896 occupation of the Ottoman Bank in response to the Hamidian massacres and Operation Nemesis, in which several perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide were assassinated. Between 1918 and 1920 he served as the first ambassador to the United States from the First Republic of Armenia.

Ahmed İzzet Pasha, known as Ahmet İzzet Furgaç after the Turkish Surname Law of 1934, was an Ottoman general during World War I. He was also one of the last Grand Viziers of the Ottoman Empire and its last Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Dmitry Petrovich Zhloba was a Soviet military commander who participated in the Russian Civil War.

The Armenian national liberation movement aimed at the establishment of an Armenian state. It included social, cultural, but primarily political and military movements that reached their height during World War I and the following years.

The Armenian resistance is a name given to the military and political activities of the Armenians under the Armenian political parties of Henchak, Armenakan, Dashnaktsutiun against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, considered a struggle for freedom and resistance to the Armenian Genocide by the Armenian combatants, but high treason by the Ottoman Empire. These Armenian national organizations established Armenian fedayeen generally referred to as Armenian irregular units and the Russian Empire formed Armenian volunteer units, which recruited Ottoman Armenians from behind the Ottoman lines, to help the Russian Caucasus Army against the Ottoman Empire. During this period the Siege of Van on April 20, 1915, and consequent establishment of the Administration for Western Armenia were significant events. The Ottoman Minister of Interior Mehmed Talat Pasha considered the Armenian population a fifth column within the Empire, blaming the rise of the Armenian national liberation movement for the overall unrest inside the Empire in his order on April 24, 1915 that ended with arrests in Red Sunday.

The Battle of Baku also known as the Liberation of Baku was a battle in World War I that took place between August–September 1918 between the Ottoman–Azerbaijani coalition forces led by Nuri Pasha and Bolshevik–Dashnak Baku Soviet forces, later succeeded by the British–Armenian–White Russian forces led by Lionel Dunsterville and saw briefly Soviet Russia re-enter the war. The battle was fought as a conclusive part of the Caucasus Campaign, but as a beginning of the Armenian–Azerbaijani War.

The Committee of Independent Georgia, also known as the Georgian Committee, was a political organization formed in 1914 by Georgian émigrés and students in Germany during World War I. It aimed at ending Imperial Russian rule in Georgia and reasserting the country’s independence under German protection. The Committee was chaired by Petre Surguladse; other members included Prince Georges Matchabelli, Mikheil Tsereteli, Leo and Giorgi Kereselidze, and the Muslim Georgian Osman Bey (Meliton) Kartsivadze. The Committee also established branches in Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

The German Caucasus expedition was a military expedition sent in late May 1918, by the German Empire to the formerly Russian Transcaucasia during the Caucasus Campaign of World War I. Its prime aim was to stabilize the pro-German Democratic Republic of Georgia and to secure oil supplies for Germany by preventing the Ottoman Empire from gaining access to the oil reserves near Baku on the Abşeron peninsula.

Victor Tevzaia was a Georgian Social-Democratic politician, diplomat, and economist, specializing in agrarian questions. He also published using pseudonyms, Машинадзе (Mashinadze) and Georgien.

References

↑ Strachan, Hew (2001), The First World War, p. 718. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-926191-1.
↑ Smele, Jonathan D. (2006), The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921: An Annotated Bibliography, p. 467. Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 0-8264-9067-0.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Strachan, Hew (2001), The First World War, p. 718. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-926191-1.

[2] Smele, Jonathan D. (2006), The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921: An Annotated Bibliography, p. 467. Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 0-8264-9067-0.