108 Ë Renewal
To “pacify” the region, Moscow took various measures, including forcibly reset-
tling and deporting people and disarming locals. In Chechnia, for example, in the
summer and autumn of 1925, Moscow carried out a massive disarmament campaign
using artillery and aerial bombardment by forces of the Red Army and OGPU (Soviet
secret police).⁸Shortly afterward similar operations were carried out elsewhere in the
Caucasus. In Dagestan, for instance, where 55,000 people were said to have taken part
in anti-Soviet uprisings in 1925, several divisions of the Red Army were deployed to dis-
arm the population. In the process, 1,867 people were arrested and of them, 139 people
were tried extra judicially, with 52 sentenced to be shot.⁹
The Georgians were not far behind in taking a stand against the Soviet govern-
ment. In 1922 popular uprisings spread across Georgia and parts of Dagestan, only to
be suppressed by Soviet forces, although the rebels did receive sympathy (but no ma-
terial support) from Poland.¹⁰In the same year the Georgian political parties united
to create a clandestine organization, the Committee for the Independence of Georgia,
with a military branch (United Military Center). In 1923 the committee, in collaboration
with anti-Bolshevik forces in Azerbaijan and the Northern Caucasus, began planning
an insurrection, only for the Soviet secret police to preempt their plans by arresting
the leaders of the United Military Center. Simultaneously, Moscow implemented con-
certed campaigns nationwide to liquidate the Mensheviks as an organization, forcing
them to proclaim their “self-dissolution.”¹¹
In 1924 the August Uprising took place in Georgia. After the 1923 debacle, the Com-
mittee for the Independence of Georgia soon reconstructed itself. During that time the
international situation turned unfavorable, with Britain formally recognizing the So-
viet Union in February 1924, and expectations that France would follow Britain’s suit
in the wake of a new French cabinet formed by the pro-Soviet prime minister Édouard
Herriot in June 1924. (Indeed, France recognized the Soviet Union de jure six months
later). To counter this move and draw the attention of the world to the Bolshevik oc-
cupation of Georgia, the Georgian Menshevik (Social Democratic) leaders in exile pre-
pared for new popular uprisings. In February 1924 they secretly dispatched Valerian
Dzhugeli, the former chief of the people’s guard in Georgia, for this purpose, but he
was arrested on 6 August. Gogita Pagava, one of the Menshevik leaders charged with8 See “Vtoroe pokorenie Kavkaza: Bol’sheviki i chechenskie povstantsy.”Rodina1995, no. 6, 43–45.
9 Lubianka: Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD. Arkhiv Stalina. Dokumenty vyschikh organov partiinoi i
gosudarstvennoi vlasti. Ianvar’1922–dekabr’ 1936(Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond Demokratiia, 2003),
793.
10 Georges Mamoulia,Bor’ba za svobodu i nezavisimost’ Kavkaza (1921–1945)(Tbilisi-Paris: Meridi-
ani, 2012), 82–85, and Georges Mamoulia, “ ‘Prometei’ do prometeizma: neizvestnye stranitsy iz istorii
natsional’no-osvoboditel’nogo dvizheniia na Kavkaze (1922 g.).”Nowy Prometeusz, no. 2 (2012), 286–
287.
11 Georges Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens entre URSS et puissances occi-
dentales: Le cas de la Géorgie (1921–1945)(Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), 30, 68, 74–75, 82.