The Soviet invasion of Georgia (12 February – 17 March 1921), also known as the Georgian–Soviet War or the Red Army 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 (Communist Party of Georgia) in the country. The conflict was a result of expansionist policy by the Bolsheviks, 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 Georgian Bolsheviks located in Russia, who did not have sufficient support in their native country to seize power without external intervention.
Soviet Russia recognised Georgia's independence in the Treaty of Moscow, signed on 7 May 1920, and the subsequent invasion of the country was not universally agreed upon in Moscow. It was largely engineered by two influential Georgian-born Soviet officials, Joseph Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who on 14 February 1921 received the consent of Russian leader Vladimir Lenin to advance into Georgia, on the pretext of supporting the alleged "peasants' and workers' rebellion" in the country. 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. The rest of the country was overrun within three weeks, but Soviet rule was not firmly established until September 1924, when it crushed the August Uprising. The almost simultaneous invasion and 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.
Background
After the February Revolution that began in Russia in 1917, Georgia effectively became independent. In April 1918 it joined with Armenia and Azerbaijan to form the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, but left after one month and declared independence as the Democratic Republic of Georgia on 26 May, followed the next day by both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia engaged in small conflicts with its neighbouring states as it attempted to establish its borders, though it was able to maintain independence and de facto international recognition throughout the Russian Civil War, including being recognized by Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Moscow.
Despite relatively broad public support and some successful reforms, Georgia's Social Democratic leadership failed to build a stable economy or a strong, disciplined army capable of resisting an invasion. Although there were a significant number of highly qualified officers who had served in the Imperial Russian Army, the DRG's Regular Army as a whole was underfed and poorly equipped. 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 politicised organisation dominated by party functionaries, it had little usefulness as a combat force.
Prelude to the war
Since the beginning of 1920, local Georgian Bolsheviks actively fomented political unrest in Georgia, leveraging agrarian disturbances in rural areas and inter-ethnic tensions within the country. The operational centre of the Soviet military-political forces in the Caucasus was the Kavbiuro (or Caucasian Office) attached to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. Established in February 1920, this body was chaired by the Georgian Bolshevik Sergo Ordzhonikidze, with Sergey Kirov as vice-chairman. 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; 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 Soviet leadership successfully exploited this situation and sent in its army to occupy Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.
The Sovietization of Georgia in 1921 created major disagreements among Bolshevik leaders over how to bring the country under Soviet control. Stalin and Orjonikidze supported an immediate military invasion and stronger centralized control from Moscow, while Trotsky preferred allowing a local uprising to develop before intervening. Lenin was initially hesitant to approve the invasion because he feared international consequences, particularly tensions with Turkey, and resistance from the Georgian population. However, he eventually authorised the Red Army to support the uprising, partly because Bolshevik leaders operating from Baku had already taken steps toward invading Georgia. Even after approving the invasion, Lenin emphasised the importance of treating the Georgian population with caution and moderation, opposing the harsher policies favoured by Stalin and Orjonikidze. When Lenin became seriously ill, his influence weakened, allowing Stalin and his supporters to gain the upper hand and impose a more centralised and authoritarian Soviet system in Georgia.
After Soviet rule was established in Baku in April 1920, Ordzhonikidze, likely acting on his own initiative, advanced into Georgia to support a planned Bolshevik coup in Tbilisi. When the coup failed, the Georgian government concentrated all its forces on blocking the Soviet advance across the Georgian-Azerbaijani border. Facing a difficult war with Poland, Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin ordered negotiations with Georgia to begin. In the Treaty of Moscow signed on 7 May 1920, Soviet Russia recognised Georgia's independence and concluded a non-aggression pact. The treaty established the existing borders between the two nations de jure and also obliged Georgia to surrender all third-party elements considered hostile by Moscow. In a secret supplement, Georgia promised to legalise the local Bolshevik party.
Despite the peace treaty, the Menshevik-dominated government of Georgia was ultimately overthrown as intended and planned. With its well-established diplomatic ties to several European nations, and its control of strategic transit routes from the Black Sea to the Caspian, Georgia was viewed by the Soviet leadership as "an advance post of the Entente". Stalin called his homeland "the kept woman of the Western Powers". Georgian independence was seen as a propaganda victory for exiled Russian Mensheviks in Europe; the Bolsheviks couldn't long tolerate a viable Menshevik state on their own doorstep.
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 favourable situation to suppress the last independent nation in the Caucasus to resist Soviet control. By then, the British expeditionary corps had evacuated the Caucasus, and the West was reluctant to intervene in support of Georgia.
Moscow did not universally agree on Soviet military intervention, and Bolshevik leaders disagreed over how to deal with their southern neighbour. 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. He strongly supported a military overthrow of the Georgian government and continuously urged Lenin to give his consent for an advance into Georgia. Soviet leadership had established a right to succession, but the precedence of the cause of socialism over national self-determination made it a flexible policy, subject to debate. 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. Pursuant to his national policy on the right of nations to self-determination, Lenin had initially rejected use of force, calling for extreme caution in order to ensure that Russian support would help but not dominate the Georgian revolution; however, as victory in the Civil War drew ever closer, Moscow's actions became less restrained. For many Bolsheviks, self-determination was increasingly seen as "a diplomatic game which has to be played in certain cases".
According to Moscow, relations with Georgia deteriorated over alleged violations of the peace treaty, the re-arrest by Georgia of Georgian Bolsheviks, obstruction of the passage of convoys to Armenia, and a suspicion that Georgia was aiding armed rebels in the North Caucasus.
Red Army invasion
The tactics used by the Soviets to gain control of Georgia were similar to those applied in Azerbaijan and Armenia in 1920, i.e., to send in the Red Army while encouraging local Bolsheviks to stage unrest; however, this policy was difficult to implement in Georgia, where the Bolsheviks did not enjoy popular support and remained an isolated political force.
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. Georgia had taken over the Lori "neutral zone" in a disputed Armeno–Georgian borderland on the pretext of defending the district and approaches to Tiflis in October 1920, in the course of the Armenian genocide, which was perpetrated by Turkey. The Armenian government protested but could not resist.
Shortly after the Bolshevik revolt, Armenian-based Red Army units quickly came to the insurrection's aid, though without Moscow's formal approval. When the Georgian government protested to the Soviet envoy in Tbilisi, Aron Sheinman, over the incidents, he denied any involvement and declared that the disturbances must be a spontaneous revolt by the Armenian communists. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks had already set up a Georgian Revolutionary Committee (Georgian Revkom) in Shulaveri, a body that would soon acquire the functions of a rival government. Chaired by the Georgian Bolshevik Filipp Makharadze, the Revkom formally applied to Moscow for help.
Disturbances also erupted in the town of Dusheti and among Ossetians in northeast Georgia who resented the Georgian government's refusal to grant them autonomy. Georgian forces contained the disorder in some areas, but preparations for a Soviet intervention were already underway. When the Georgian army moved to Lori to crush the revolt, Lenin finally gave in to Stalin and Ordzhonikidze's repeated requests to allow the Red Army to invade Georgia, on the pretext of aiding an uprising. 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. 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. We are compelled to transport nothing from the Caucasus but grain and oil. We require an immediate answer by direct line signed by all members of the Military Revolutionary Council of the Eleventh Army.
The decision to support the invasion was not unanimous. Karl Radek opposed it, and the decision was kept secret from Trotsky, who was in the Ural area at the time. 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. Later Trotsky would reconcile himself to the accomplished fact and even defend the invasion in a special pamphlet. This pamphlet by Trotsky is perhaps the best-known book justifying the invasion. It rebutted Karl Kautsky's work, which declared Georgia a democratic socialist workers' and peasants' republic.
Battle for Tbilisi
At dawn on 16 February the main body of 11th Red Army troops under Anatoliy Gekker crossed into Georgia and started the Tiflis Operation aimed at capturing the capital. Georgian border forces under General Stephen Akhmeteli were overwhelmed on the Khrami River. Retreating westward, Georgian commander General Tsulukidze blew up railway bridges and demolished roads to delay the enemy's advance. Simultaneously, Red Army units marched into Georgia from the north through the Daryal and Mamisoni passes, and along the Black Sea coast towards Sukhumi. 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.