Noe Schordania

Noe Schordania

Noe zhordania ( Georgian ნოე ჟორდანია ; Russian Ной Николаевич Жордания , Noi Nikolaevich Schordanija ; born January 2, ^jul. / 14. January  1868 ^greg. In lanchkhuti , West Georgia ; † 11. January 1953 in Paris ) was a Georgian politician (social democrat ). He was a journalist and Prime Minister of Georgia from June 24, 1918 to March 17, 1921.

Life

Study and career start

Schordania was born the son of a country nobleman. He graduated from the Theological Seminary in Tbilisi, later he studied at the Veterinary Medical Institute in Warsaw .

Together with Nikolos Tschcheidze and G. Tsereteli, he founded the first Georgian socialist party in Tbilisi in 1893 , the Messame Dassi group (the third group ). In order to avoid imminent arrest, he left the country in May 1893, went on a multi-year trip to Europe and became a correspondent for the liberal magazine Kwali (dt. Die Furche ). When the arrest warrant was issued in his place of birth, Lantschchuti, he was already in Geneva , where he met other followers of Marxism: Plechanov , Lev Deichi and Vera Zasulich , and reports on Swiss workers 'and peasants' life to the newspaper Kwali (Georgian: კვალი) sent. In 1894 he was tried by the Russian authorities for his efforts in the Georgian struggle for freedom. In 1895 he traveled to Paris , where he studied for a few months at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and during this time he met Jules Guesde , Paul Lafargue and other French socialists. After four months in Paris he returned to Geneva and traveled from there to Germany. He settled in Stuttgart , where he met Karl Kautsky and was forced to learn German, since there were neither Georgians nor Russians in that city at the time. In order to familiarize himself with the political conditions of the bourgeoisie, he moved to Munich. Here he enrolled at the university and took a course from Franz Brentano . At the beginning of 1896 Schordania left Munich and traveled to Berlin. During his stay in Germany, Schordania wrote the following articles for "Kwali": "Friedrich Engels" (1895), "The village and agriculture in Germany" (1895, Georgian: სოფელი და სასოფლო შკოლა გერმანიაში), "Political parties in Germany "(1897, Georgian: პოლიტიკური პარტიები გერმანიაში)," Bismarck "(1898, Georgian: ბისმარკი).

In March 1897 Schordania moved with the socialist journalists Prince Warlam Cherkezishvili of London , read in the British Museum literature from around the world, including Georgia, and returned later this year to Georgia and founded the journal Sotsial Democracy (dt. Social Democracy ). On his return the country was divided into two political camps: the representatives of the right-wing ideology under the leadership of Ilia Chavchavadze , the " Iberia camp ", and the representatives of the left ideology, the so-called "Kwali camp".

Menshevik oppositionist

In 1903 he was a delegate to the second congress of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Russia (RSDLP) in London , where he joined the reform-oriented Mensheviks . The Georgian Social Democratic Labor Party elected him chairman.

In 1906 he was elected a member of the first State Duma in the constituency of Tbilisi . After its dissolution was one of the signatories of the Vyborg Manifesto , which called on the population to civil disobedience. There he became chairman of the social democratic group. From 1907 to 1912 he was a member of the Social Democratic Central Committee. In the summer of 1912 he became the editor of the Menshevik daily Nasche Slowo in Baku . In 1914 he worked with Leon Trotsky on the magazine Borba (Eng. Der Kampf ).

In February 1917 he became chairman of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Tbilisi, and repeatedly opposed Bolshevik tendencies. In vain he traveled to Moscow in September to push through Menshevik positions in the Russian pre-parliament, but after the October Revolution he returned to Tbilisi disappointed. From then on Schordania relied on the independence of Transcaucasia from Russia.

Georgian Prime Minister

On November 26, 1917, the Georgian National Assembly (Georgian Dampudsnebeli Kreba ) elected him as its president. On June 24, 1918, he succeeded Noe Ramishvili as Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Georgia . Until 1921 Schordania was at the head of a social democratic-bourgeois government. He implemented agrarian reform and comprehensive social legislation, introduced the eight-hour working day and cracked down on Bolshevik and separatist movements in Georgia.

He successfully sought international recognition of Georgia by the world powers. At first he was an ally of the German Reich. After Germany's military defeat , he united his country with Western Europe and forced Soviet Russia on May 7, 1920 to recognize Georgia under international law.

On February 25, 1921, Schordania and the Georgian government were expelled from Tbilisi by the Red Army . He resided first in Kutaisi , then in Batumi . On March 18, 1921, he left Georgia and went into exile in France .

exile

In France, he first lived in Paris, from 1922 in Leuville-sur-Orge, and from there he participated in the preparation of the August uprising in Georgia in 1924.

He wrote various books in which he criticized the policy of the Soviet Union as "imperialism under a revolutionary mask" . In 1968 his autobiography Chemu dsarduli, Magonebani ( Eng . My Life ) was published in English and Russian.

Schordania was buried in the communal cemetery in Leuville-sur-Orge. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili honored Shordania with a wreath laying on his grave on March 10, 2004 and offered the family a reburial and a state funeral in Tbilisi.

In France, the Paris-based Institut Noé Jordania is dedicated to the legacy of Schordania and the history of social democracy in Georgia.

literature

• V. Guruli: The Western European Orientation in Georgian Social Democracy (1892-1904) . In: Georgica . Vol. 20 (1997), pp. 44-50
• Stephen F. Jones: Socialism in Georgian colors: The European road to social democracy, 1883-1917 . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2005, ISBN 0-674-01902-4
• AM Menteshashvili: Iz istori vzaimootnosheni Gruzinsko Demokratieichesko Respubliki s Sovetski Rossie i stranami Antanty, 1918-1921 gg . Izd-vo. Tbilisskogo universiteta, Tbilisi 2000, ISBN 99928-77-69-3

Fonts

• Doklady i retschi: sa dwa goda . Tip. Gruz. Prawit, Tbilisi 1919
• Marxism and Democracy . Publishing company Society and Education, Berlin 1921
• Bolshevism . Berlin 1920
• Imperialism under a revolutionary mask: an answer to Trotsky . Breitscheid, Berlin 1922
• Politika . Lejeune in Arpajon, Paris 1926
• Itogi . Paris 1928
• Nashi rasnoglasija . Paris 1928
• The problem of Géorgien . Impr. De Navarre, Paris 1948
• My life . The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, Calif. 1968

Web links

Commons : Noe Schordania  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography Noe Schordania (en)
• Institut Noé Jordania, Paris ( Memento of December 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 96 kB; French)