August uprising in Georgia
The August uprising in Georgia ( Georgian აგვისტოს აჯანყება) in August 1924 was a popular uprising against the Soviet occupation of Georgia and the establishment of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (Georgian SSR). The last major rebellion against the rule of the Bolsheviks in the South Caucasus was put down under the leadership of Stalin and Ordzhonikidze and Beria as chief of the Cheka .
prehistory
Between the spring of 1921 and the winter of 1922, the Soviet occupiers were repeatedly met with civil and armed resistance in various regions of Georgia. There were isolated partisan actions and peasant revolts .
The Mensheviks , National Democrats, Social Federalists, Social Revolutionaries and Independent Social Democrats (Schiwi), formerly represented in the Georgian National Assembly , united in May 1922 to form a non-partisan committee for the restoration of Georgia's independence (Georgian Sakartvelos Damoukideblobis Komiteti - Damkom ) who organized an underground uprising against the Bolsheviks. It was supported in this by the Georgian government in exile under Prime Minister Noe Schordania in Paris , which sent the former commander of the national guard Waliko Jugeli and the former agriculture minister Noe Chomeriki to Georgia. The government in exile negotiated with Turkey to support the uprising.
The extensive efforts of the Cheka Bolshevik secret police did not go unnoticed. Peasant revolts were pursued with extreme brutality from 1922 onwards. In Guria , Svaneti and Kakheti people were killed and villages burned down. In February 1923, the Cheka arrested the 15-member Military Center of Damkom . Most of them lost their lives three months later, including the chairman of the National Democrats and Generals Kote Abkhazi, A. Andronikashvili and Vardan Zulukidze. Ex-Agriculture Minister Chomeriki and the former head of the National Guard, Jugeli, also fell into the hands of the Cheka in the summer of 1924.
Jugeli tried in vain to convince the co-conspirators with a message that the plans were hopeless. It came too late and only postponed the uprising for two weeks. It was to begin on August 29, 1924.
fail
The armed uprising started prematurely on August 28, 1924, the Georgian Assumption Day (Georgian Mariamoba ) in Chiatura , western Georgia. The next day, riots began in various regions of Georgia. The rebels used a variety of hidden weapons. The commander of the Red Army in Georgia was killed by a local pilot who shot down the plane in a suicide attack.
The uprising initially appeared successful. But the success did not last long. Poor organization and ineffective cooperation between the resistance groups led to a rapid crackdown. The Red Army emerged victorious from all clashes by mid-September.
The Damkom leadership was arrested between August 29 and September 5, had to sign a paper in which they revoked the idea of the uprising and were liquidated. In the weeks that followed, around 7,000 of their supporters were shot dead. The mass executions mostly took place in freight wagons of the Georgian Railways in order to be able to transport the bodies more quickly. Tens of thousands of people, including entire families, were exiled to Siberia or Central Asia . Individual resistance fighters, such as Kakuza Choloqashvili or the Kakheti partisan leader Micheil Laschkarashvili , were able to save themselves abroad.
The August uprising was a taboo subject in the Soviet Union. In official historiography , the Georgian resistance from 1921 to 1924 was considered a "bloody adventure of dark forces led by the Mensheviks " . In Georgian society, the mass executions had a traumatic effect that could not be overcome for decades.
rehabilitation
The victims of the political persecution of 1924 were rehabilitated on May 25, 1992 in a decree of the Georgian State Council chaired by Eduard Shevardnadze . In May 2006 a museum of the Soviet occupation was opened in Tbilisi , which exhibits documents from the August uprising in Georgia. The Georgian Ministry of the Interior began publishing the names of the victims of persecution in 1924 that same year.
literature
- ვალერი ბენიძე (Valery Benidze): 1924 წლის აჯანყება საქართველოში (The uprising in Georgia 1924) . სამშობლო (Samschoblo), Tbilisi 1991 (in Georgian)
- Markus Wehner : Le soulèvement géorgien de 1924 et la réaction des bolcheviks . In: Communisme , n ° 42/43/44 (1995), pp. 155-170
- Stephen F. Jones: The Establishment of Soviet Power in Transcaucasia: The Case of Georgia 1921-1928 . In: Soviet Studies , 40 (1988), No. 4, pp. 616-639
- R. Abramowitsch , W. Suchomlin, I. Tseretelli : The terror against the socialist parties in Russia and Georgia , Dietz, Berlin 1925
- Amy W. Knight: Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant . Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1993, ISBN 0-691-01093-5