An analysis of Russian and international law, as well as the review of how the “peace enforcement operation” was conducted by Russia in Georgia in August 2008, leads one to conclude that no international or domestic legal act can justify the Russian military invasion of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Georgia, or the recognition of the self-proclaimed independence of Georgian separatist regions by the Russian Federation. So…to a large extent, Georgia was left on its own.”. Georgian border forces under General Stephen Akhmeteli were overwhelmed on the Khrami river. France had never considered sending an expeditionary force, and the United Kingdom had ordered the Royal Navy not to intervene; furthermore, on 16 March the British and Soviet governments signed a trade agreement, in which Prime Minister Lloyd George effectively promised to refrain from anti-Soviet activities in all territories of the former Russian Empire. Stalin called his homeland "the kept woman of the Western Powers". Georgian troops riding in a civilian vehicle as a Georgian Armored Personnel Carrier lies wrecked on the road on August 11, 2008 near Gori, Georgia. He emphasized the "tremendous importance of devising an acceptable compromise for a bloc" with the Mensheviks. On the same day, Mazniashvili surrendered the city to the Revkom and Zhloba's cavalry entered Batumi to reinforce Bolshevik authority there. A few years earlier Russia’s invasion of Georgia, despite my dire warnings, also took the world by surprise. The commission came to the conclusion[46] that "the [Soviet Russian] deployment of troops in Georgia and seizure of its territory was, from a legal point of view, a military interference, intervention, and occupation with the aim of overthrowing the existing political order. A parallel military structure recruited from members of the Menshevik Party, the People's Guard of Georgia, was better motivated and disciplined, but being a lightly-armed, highly politicized organization dominated by party functionaries, had little usefulness as a combat force. [41] In 1922, a strong public resentment over the forcible Sovietization indirectly reflected in the opposition of Soviet Georgian authorities to Moscow's centralizing policies promoted by Dzerzhinsky, Stalin and Ordzhonikidze. Within a week, from 29 August to 5 September 1924, 12,578 people, chiefly nobles and intellectuals, were executed[44] and over 20,000 exiled to Siberia. When the coup failed, the Georgian government was able to concentrate all its forces on successfully blocking the Soviet advance over the Georgian-Azerbaijani border. Russian forces took the Georgian capital Tbilisi (then known as Tiflis to most non-Georgian speakers) after heavy fighting and declared the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic on 25 February 1921. Georgian forces under General Giorgi Mazniashvili managed to push the Soviets back inflicting heavy losses; they quickly regrouped and tightened the circle around Tbilisi. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili declared a ‘state of war’ as his troops battled it out with Russian forces over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Chaired by the Georgian Bolshevik Filipp Makharadze, the Revkom formally applied to Moscow for help. The Sovietization of the Caucasus appeared to Bolshevik leaders to be a task which would be easier to achieve while the Allied powers were preoccupied with the Turkish War of Independence;[17] furthermore, the Ankara-based Turkish national government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had expressed its full commitment to close co-operation with Moscow, promising to compel "Georgia … and Azerbaijan … to enter into union with Soviet Russia … and … to undertake military operations against the expansionist Armenia. The People's Commissar of Nationalities Affairs, Joseph Stalin, who by the end of the Civil War had gained a remarkable amount of bureaucratic power, took a particularly hard line with his native Georgia. © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. The cessation of Red Army operations against Poland, the defeat of the White Russian leader Wrangel, and the fall of the First Republic of Armenia provided a favorable situation to suppress the last independent nation in the Caucasus to resist Soviet control. [24] He strongly supported a military overthrow of the Georgian government and continuously urged Lenin to give his consent for an advance into Georgia. For many, the impact of the conflict continues: livelihoods remain destroyed, families remain separated, freedom of movement has not been restored , and property has not been returned. It had to maintain its sphere of influence, and if it let Georgia go, then who could be next?”, A convoy of Russian troops making its way through the mountains toward the armed conflict between Georgian troops and separatist South Ossetian troops on August 9, 2008. We are compelled to transport nothing from the Caucasus but grain and oil. The Georgians’ attempt to hold out near Kutaisi was spoiled by the surprise advance of a Red Army detachment from North Caucasia, which traversed the virtually impenetrable Mamisoni Pass through deep snow drifts, and advanced down the Rioni Valley. “No one was willing to go to war for Georgia,” Galeotti points out. [42], The world largely neglected the violent Soviet takeover of Georgia. The war ran from 7-12 August 2008 and ended after Russian President, Dmitri Mendelev, announced the cessation of his “peace enforcement” campaign in Georgia. The independence of Georgia had been recognized by Russia in the Treaty of Moscow, signed on 7 May 1920, and the subsequent invasion of the country was not universally agreed upon in Moscow. The invasion came on the heels of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s now famous imperialist revival speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, where he launched into a long tirade against the West, enumerating Russia’s … Moscow’s aggressive reaction to its long-simmering tensions with Georgia announced Russia’s reemergence as a military power, and paved the way for its controversial dealings with another former Soviet republic, Ukraine, beginning in 2014. “One can track [the 2008 conflict] back, really from the very beginning of the independence of Georgia, when Abkhazia in particular split away, and the Russians backed Abkhazia,” says Mark Galeotti, senior non-resident fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague and an expert on modern Russian history and security affairs. On 23 February, ten days after the Red Army began its march on Tbilisi, Kâzım Karabekir, the commander of the Eastern Front of the Turkish Army of the Grand National Assembly, issued an ultimatum demanding the evacuation of Ardahan and Artvin by Georgia. We give warning that we are having to go without bread for want of transport and that we shall therefore not let you have a single locomotive or railway track. Though Moscow had long attempted to thwart Georgia’s turn to the West, Russia had not launched a conventional military attack on a neighboring country since it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. 1918-1921 гг. Needless to say, the “war” did not last long—it was over by August 12. Almost simultaneous occupation of a large portion of southwest Georgia by Turkey (February–March 1921) threatened to develop into a crisis between Moscow and Ankara, and led to significant territorial concessions by the Soviets to the Turkish National Government in the Treaty of Kars. The People's Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky, strongly disagreed with what he described as a "premature intervention", explaining that the population should be able to carry out the revolution. In response, Ali Fuat handed two notes to the Soviet government. At least for now, the smoke seems to be clearing from the Georgian battlefield. The United States began training 5,000 Georgian troops a few months later. Political scientist Kimberly Joy Marten discusses how the Russian troop invasion into South Ossetia was a … (Credit: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images). [31] On 28 February, the French opened fire on the 31st Rifle Division of the 9th Red Army under V. Chernishev, but did not land troops. Soviet forces joined by Abkhaz peasant militias, the Kyaraz, succeeded in taking Gagra on 1 March, New Athos on 3 March, and Sukhumi on 4 March; they then advanced eastward to occupy Zugdidi on 9 March and Poti on 14 March. Don’t say America didn’t respond. The Georgian army put up a stubborn fight in defense of the approaches to the capital, which they held for a week in the face of overwhelming Red Army superiority. In early August 2008, after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent troops into the rebellious province of South Ossetia, Russia came to its defense, beginning a five-day-long conflict that ended with Russian troops within striking distance of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. Lenin also favored a policy of conciliation in Georgia, where a pro-Bolshevik revolt did not enjoy the popular backing claimed for it,[40] and the population was solidly anti-Bolshevik. The Treaty of Kars, signed on 13 October contained the provisions agreed upon in March and some other new territorial settlements just reached. Following the establishment of Soviet rule in Baku in April 1920, Ordzhonikidze, probably acting on his own initiative, advanced on Georgia in support of a planned Bolshevik coup in Tbilisi. On the night of 11–12 February 1921, at Ordzhonikidze's instigation, Bolsheviks attacked local Georgian military posts in the predominantly ethnic Armenian district of Lori and the nearby village of Shulaveri, near the Armenian and Azerbaijani borders. It is therefore all the more … The conflict was a result of expansionist policy by the Russians, who aimed to control as much as possible of the lands w… For its part, Georgia was moving further West, even joining the U.S.-led coalition fighting in the Iraq War in 2003. After a bloody clash at Surami on 5 March 1921, the 11th Red Army also crossed the Likhi Range into the western part of the country. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. [18], Despite the peace treaty, an eventual overthrow of the Menshevik-dominated government of Georgia was both intended and planned. This week marks 12 years since Russia’s five-day invasion of Georgia allowed two provinces to break away, splintering the Caucasian nation. All Rights Reserved. Russia and its new president, Vladimir Putin (first elected in 2000), bitterly resented the loss of this buffer zone between Moscow and the West. In Georgia, an intellectual resistance to the Bolshevik regime and occasional outbreaks of guerrilla warfare evolved into a major rebellion in August 1924. This version exculpated Soviet Russia from any charge of aggression against Georgia by pointing out that the Georgians themselves asked Moscow to send the Red Army into their country, so as to remove their existing government and replace it with a communist one. [31][38] The Revkom headed by Mamia Orakhelashvili and Shalva Eliava ventured into the capital and proclaimed the overthrow of the Menshevik government, the dissolution of the Georgian National Army and People's Guard, and the formation of a Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. 1802–1946", Georgia: A Social-Democratic Peasant Republic - Impressions And Observations, Between Red and White: A Study of Some Fundamental Questions of Revolution, with Particular Reference to Georgia, Scytho-Cimmerian invasions of the Caucasus, Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar's sack of Tbilisi, Sino-Russian border conflicts (1652–1689), Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940), Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Red_Army_invasion_of_Georgia&oldid=998472494, Articles with Turkish-language sources (tr), Articles needing additional references from February 2018, All articles needing additional references, Articles with French-language sources (fr), Articles with Russian-language sources (ru), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 5 January 2021, at 15:00. The Soviet Invasion of Georgia Dr. Gary K. Busch In a chilling reprise of the excesses of the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Poland and Afghanistan the military forces of the spiritual inheritors of the Cold War tradition in the Russian Federation sent their troops into the sovereign territory of Georgia. Instability in Georgia is mounting. [18], Under strong public pressure, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR set up, on 2 June 1989, a special commission for investigation of legal aspects of the 1921 events. largely based upon extensive studies conducted in the "Georgian Archive" of Houghton Library. Russia has escalated its military campaign through strategic bombing and the movement of its ground forces into the heart of Georgia. The roots of the Russia-Georgia conflict go back to the early 1990s, when both Russia and Georgia were newly independent nations after the dissolution of the USSR. As Galeotti puts it: “The Russians built up their plans, built up their forces, and they ensured that their local proxies in South Ossetia needled Georgians enough, knowing that Sakaashvili….would rise to the bait.”. Hence, the later Soviet histories put things differently. Thirty-five percent of Georgia’s Internet networks suffered decreased functionality during the attacks, with the highest levels of online activity coinciding with the Russian invasion of South Ossetia on August 8, 9, and 10. The ultimate decision was made at the 14 February meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party: The Central Committee is inclined to allow the 11th Army to give active support to the uprising in Georgia and to occupy Tiflis provided that international norms are observed, and on condition that all members of the Military Revolutionary Council of the Eleventh Army, after a thorough review of all information, guarantee success. Russian tanks invade Georgia. [54], According to a Russian statistician and Soviet-era. [32] The latter was so upset by the news of the Central Committee decision and Ordzhonikidze's role in engineering it that on his return to Moscow he demanded, though fruitlessly, that a special party commission be set up to investigate the affair. While these events were proceeding, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs issued a series of statements disclaiming involvement by the Red Army and professing willingness to mediate any disputes which had arisen within Georgia.[31]. In the North Caucasus, Dagestani rebels continued to fight the Soviets. U.S. interests there coincide almost exactly with those of the European Union. The result was a brutal war in 1990-92, which ended with an uneasy truce and a force of Georgians, Russians and South Ossetians keeping peace in the region. The United States, Europe and all other concerned countries must stand united in condemning this aggression, and seeking a peaceful resolution to this crisis. Georgian forces managed to contain the disorders in some areas, but the preparations for a Soviet intervention were already being set in train. Some Georgian forces withdrew into the mountains and continued to fight. South Ossetia enjoyed local autonomy as part of Soviet Georgia, but as the USSR disintegrated, a separatist movement emerged. The army was gradually disintegrating as it continued its retreat westward, offering sometimes fierce but largely unorganized resistance to the advancing Red Army troops. After the February Revolution that began in Russia in 1917, Georgia effectively became independent. [37] On 24 February, the Georgian commander-in-chief, Giorgi Kvinitadze, bowed to the inevitable and ordered a withdrawal to save his army from complete encirclement and the city from destruction. [27] Later Trotsky would reconcile himself to the accomplished fact and even defend the invasion in a special pamphlet. (CreditL Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images). There is no possible justification for these attacks. After Georgia arrested four Russian military officers for suspected espionage, Russia responded by closing Georgian businesses and deporting Georgian citizens. The operational centre of the Soviet military-political forces in the Caucasus was the Kavburo (or Caucasian Office) attached to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. On 8 March, the Georgian Revkom reluctantly proposed a coalition government, which the Mensheviks refused.[6]. [33] This pamphlet by Trotsky is perhaps the best known book justifying the invasion. 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