The Eurasian Triangle. Russia, the Caucasus and Japan, 1904-1945

10 Ë Introduction

Caucasian-Japanese nexus, adopted in the beginning of the twentieth century the ban-

ner of Socialist-Federalism to attract the laboring population, even though they were

much closer in conviction to political liberalism than to socialism.²⁵

In Georgia, however, the Social Democrats (the so-called Menshevik faction) were

much more dominant than the Bolsheviks and the Socialist-Federalists. As Marxist

internationalists, the Mensheviks were interested in solving the question of national

liberation in Georgia as elsewhere in the empire by a revolutionary change in the em-

pire as a whole. For them, the national question was merely a subset of the class ques-

tion. Under the inuence of European socialism rather than Russian Bolshevism, they

managed to appeal eectively to both workers and peasants.²⁶In Armenia, the So-

cial Democrat Hnchakian Party, formed abroad in 1887, was also nationally oriented.

Likewise the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), formed in Tiis

in 1890, was both socialist and nationalist. Both Armenian parties practiced political

terrorism against Russian and Turkish autocracy.²⁷

As one historian has put it, “In the years 1903 through 1905, between the organized

terrorism of the Armenian revolutionaries, the increase in strike activity of workers,

and the armed resistance of Georgian peasants, Transcaucasia was rapidly becoming

ungovernable and previewed for the whole of Russia the revolutionary situation that

developed in 1905.”²⁸

It was against this background of rapid modernization and political unrest that the

Caucasus began to attract the attention of Japanese strategists. It is dicult to pin-

point exactly when Japan began turning its attention to the Caucasus. After all, it was

only in the mid-nineteenth century that Japan had begun opening its doors widely to

the outside world after more than two centuries of a largely isolated existence. Japan

had always been aware of the big country to the north called Russia. Yet it appears

that it was only with its imperial contention with Russia over Asia in the late nine-

teenth century that Japan began to concern itself with Russia’s periphery (including

the Caucasus) as the weak ring and therefore as suitable for political subversion. It is

also likely that Japan acquired the expertise of Britain in Caucasian aairs because at

25 See K. Zalevkii, “Natsional’nyia partii v Rossii,”Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii v nachale xx-go
veka, v. 3 (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1914) pp. 316–18. They were federalists in the sense
that they initially sought a democratic federalist Russia in which Georgia was to enjoy full autonomy.
26 The Menshevik predominance is peculiar to Georgia in the Russian Empire. Whether there were
objective conditions for this uniqueness is dicult to answer. See Stephen F. Jones,Socialism in Geor-
gian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883–1917(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2005), pp. 120–127 (stressing the “ecumenism” of Georgian Menshevism) and Suny,The Making of the
Georgian Nation, pp. 158–164 (emphasizing the “strong elective tradition among Georgian workers”).
27 See Suny,Looking toward Ararat, 24.
28 Suny,Looking toward Ararat, 92.