August Uprising

 Soviet Union

• Red Army
• Cheka
•  Georgian SSR

The August Uprising (

Red Army and Cheka troops, under orders of the Georgian Bolsheviks Joseph Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze,^[1] suppressed the insurrection and instigated a wave of mass repressions that killed several thousand Georgians. The August uprising was one of the last major rebellions against the early Soviet government, and its defeat marked a definitive establishment of Soviet rule in Georgia.

Background

The Red Army proclaimed Georgia a

Loyalty of the Georgian population to the new regime did not come easily. Within the first three years of their rule, the Bolsheviks managed to recruit fewer than 10,000 people into their party, while the

In the course of the Red Army invasion, part of the defeated Georgian forces withdrew into the mountains and organized themselves into a number of small partisan groups. From 1921 to 1922, guerrilla warfare broke out in several regions of Georgia. In May 1921, the highlanders of

Under these circumstances, some Georgians doubted whether the uprising could be successful. The captured rebel leader, Jugheli, urged Cheka officials to allow him to inform his comrades that their plans had been discovered and advise them to abandon their proposed revolt, but the Cheka refused.[15] Jugheli's message still reached the rebels, but the conspirators decided that this might have been a Cheka provocation and went ahead with plans for the uprising.

There are many indications that Soviet intelligence had been, at a certain level, implicated in provoking the uprising. The Cheka, employing secret agents in local socialist circles, were well informed of the conspiracy and popular dissatisfaction with Bolshevik rule. Instructed by Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, Beria and his superior, Kvantaliani, actually encouraged the rebellion so they would have a pretext for eliminating all political opposition and avenging personal scores with their former rivals in Georgia.^[15][16]

Outbreak and reaction

On 18 August 1924, the Damkom laid plans for a general insurrection for 2:00 am 29 August. The plan of the simultaneous uprising miscarried, however, and, through some misunderstanding, the mining town of Chiatura, western Georgia, rose in rebellion a day earlier, on 28 August. This enabled the Soviet government to timely put all available forces in the region on alert. Yet, at first the insurgents achieved considerable success and formed an Interim Government of Georgia chaired by Prince Giorgi Tsereteli. The uprising quickly spread to neighboring areas and a large portion of western Georgia and several districts in eastern Georgia were wrested out of Soviet control.^{[citation needed]}

The success of the uprising was short-lived, however. Although the insurrection went further than the Cheka had anticipated, the reaction of the Soviet authorities was prompt. Stalin dissipated any doubt in Moscow of the significance of the disorders in Georgia by the one word: "Kronstadt", referring to the

Following the setback suffered by the insurgents in the west, the epicenter of the revolt shifted into eastern Georgia, where, on 29 August, a large rebel force under Colonel Cholokashvili assaulted the Red Army barracks in Manglisi, on the southwestern approaches of Tiflis, but was driven back by Soviet troops, who had heavily fortified all strategic positions in and around the capital. Reinforcements failed and Cholokashvili's forces were left isolated, forcing them to retreat eastward into the Kakheti province. On 3 September Cholokashvili made a last desperate attempt to turn a tide of the rebellion and took the town of Dusheti in a surprise attack. However, he could not hold off a Red Army counter-offensive and withdrew into the mountains. The suppression of the rebellion was accompanied by a full scale outbreak of the Red Terror, "unprecedented even in the most tragic moments of the revolution" as the French author Boris Souvarine puts it.^[16] The scattered guerrilla resistance continued for several weeks, but by mid-September most of the main rebel groups had been destroyed.

On 4 September, the Cheka discovered the rebels' chief headquarters at the

The persecutions did not end, however. In violation of the promise made by Beria to the arrested opposition leaders, mass arrests and executions continued. The political guidance of the anti-revolt operations was effected by the GPU chief in Georgia, Solomon Mogilevsky,^{[note 2]} and the repressions were largely supported by the Transcaucasian Central Committee.^{[note 3]} Stalin himself is quoted to have vowed that "all of Georgia must be plowed under".^[21]

In a series of raids, the Red Army and Cheka detachments killed thousands of civilians, exterminating entire families including women and children.^[18][19] Mass executions took place in prisons,^{[note 4]} where people were killed without trial, including even those in prison at the time of the rebellion.^[22] Hundreds of arrested were shot directly in railway trunks, so that the dead bodies could be removed faster—a new and effective technical invention by the Cheka officer, Talakhadze.^[23]

The exact number of casualties and the victims of the purges remains unknown. Approximately 3,000 died in fighting.^[24] The number of those who were executed during the uprising or in its immediate aftermath amounted to 7,000–10,000^[19][25] or even more. According to the most recent accounts included also in The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press, 1999), 12,578 people were put to death from 29 August to 5 September 1924. About 20,000 people were deported to Siberia and Central Asian deserts.^[19][25]

Aftermath

Reports of the extent of the repressions caused an outcry among socialists abroad. Leaders of the Second International sent a resolution to the League of Nations condemning the Soviet government, but did not achieve any substantial results. Clara Zetkin, a notable German Social Democrat, attempted to counteract the negative publicity, visited Tiflis and then wrote a leaflet on Georgia, in which she claimed that only 320 persons had been shot.^[13] Nonetheless, the public outcry resulted in unpleasant repercussions for the central government in Moscow, prompting the Politburo to set up a special commission, led by Ordzhonikidze, to investigate the causes of the uprising and the Cheka activities during its elimination. In October 1924, following the issuance of the commission's report, some members of the Georgian Cheka were purged as "unreliable elements" who were presumably offered up as scapegoats for the atrocities.^[20] Ordzhonikidze himself admitted before a meeting of the Central Committee in Moscow in October 1924 that "perhaps we did go a little far, but we couldn't help ourselves."

On 7 October 1924, the Soviet administration (

The uprising was also exploited as the pretext for disrupting Tiflis University, which was seen by the Bolsheviks as a shelter of Georgian nationalism. Despite the fact that several leading academics, who sympathized with or even participated in the anti-Soviet movement, eventually distanced themselves from the idea of an armed revolt and even denounced it in a special statement, the university was purged of unreliable elements and placed under the complete control of the Communist Party. Substantial changes were made in its structure, curriculum, and personnel, including the dismissal of the Rector, a noted historian Ivane Javakhishvili.^[29][31]

On the other hand, the events in Georgia demonstrated the necessity for greater concessions to the peasants; Stalin declared that an August 1924 uprising in Georgia was sparked by dissatisfaction among the peasants and called the party to conciliate them. He admitted that "what has happened in Georgia may happen throughout Russia, unless we make a complete change in our attitude to the peasantry" and placed the responsibility for the errors committed on subordinate officials.

• Svaneti uprising of 1921
• February Uprising, a similar anti-Soviet uprising in Armenia in 1921

Notes