International Realignments Ë 113
into Iranian territory to liquidate military detachments of émigré Azeris.³¹(Techni-
cally speaking, this sort of expedition was allowed by the 1921 Soviet-Persian treaty.)
Nonetheless, the Sovietization of the Caucasus remained a di cult task for Moscow.
5.2 International Realignments
By the mid-1920s, the consolidation of the Soviet government had led to its inter-
national recognition by Finland, Turkey, Iran, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania), Germany, Poland, Britain, Italy, France, and China, followed by Japan in
- The United States, which did not open diplomatic relations with Moscow until
1933, was the most notable exception. (Bulgaria and Romania recognized the Soviet
Union in 1934, but the Kingdom of Yugoslavia did so only in 1940.) In 1926 the US
House of Representatives discussed the issue of recognizing the Georgian government-
in-exile in Paris, but did not carry its deliberations to the end.³²
These events made it di cult for supporters of the independence of national mi-
norities within the Soviet Union to gain international support. The Caucasian émigré
groups knew well that a political struggle against the behemoth of the Soviet Union re-
quired their solidarity. At the same time, the dierences in their political orientations
made it almost impossible to maintain political unity. Thus, the interwar period was
characterized by a desire for unity matched by the reality of political fragmentation.
Against this background of international isolation, the eorts of the Caucasian
émigrés and their supporters were noteworthy. In June 1921, for example, represen-
tatives of the four Caucasian states (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Northern
Caucasus) submitted a joint declaration to the League of Nations, in which, “desirous
of assuring the peoples of the Caucasus the bene ts of independence, democratic gov-
ernment and economic prosperity” and “anxious to eliminate all ground for disputes
between these republics and to establish their intimate union on a rm foundation,”
they declared:
The above mentioned representatives unanimously recognise that Caucasia, a clearly de ned
isthmus between Europe and Asia, is, owing to its geographical location, the great international
highway connecting the Black Sea and the Mediterranean with the countries in Central Asia and
Western Asia, and that the freedom of this highway cannot be ensured to all peoples except by the31 Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 132.
32 SeeNational Republic of Georgia: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Aairs, House of Repre-
sentatives, Sixty-ninth Congress, rst session, on H.J. Res. 195, Providing for the Appointment of a Diplo-
matic Representative to the National Republic of Georgia, April 1 and 2, 1926(Washington: Govt. Print.
O ce, 1926).