Clandestine Operations Ë 165
6.6 Clandestine Operations
In line with theOshima-Canaris agreement of May 1937, Japan soon implemented its ̄
intelligence operations in the Caucasus. Several cross-border links were attempted
by the Caucasus group with Japan’s support. Iran served as a bridgehead, where the
Georgian patriotic organization Thethri Giorgi was active and collaborated with the
Caucasus group. In Tehran, Bammat’s representative (former general of the Tsarist,
Georgian, and Azerbaijani armies V.D. Kargareteli, one of whose daughters worked as
a dragoman at the Japanese embassy in Tehran) and Japan’s military attaché worked
together to organize clandestine activities. Moscow suspected that Japan was trans-
porting weapons secretly to the region using freight boats in the Persian Gulf. One of
the purported aims of the clandestine missions to the Caucasus was to explore ways
to deliver these weapons to the region. In July 1938, for example, three Georgians and
members of Thethri Giorgi, Bezhan Giorgadze, G. Vardiashvili, and M. Nikolaishvili,
crossed from Iran along the Soviet border to link up with Soviet Georgia. This was
not the rst time Nikolaishvili had done so, since he had entered Soviet Georgia suc-
cessfully in 1929. This time, however, the three were arrested soon after crossing the
border.¹⁵⁷In August and September 1938, shortly after Japan and the Soviet Union en-
gaged in a small war in the Far East (the battle of Lake Khasan), Samson Kruashvili
and Elizbar Vachnadze (old members of Georgian ghting forces), along with some-
one named “Kazim Bey,” tried in vain to cross the Turkish-Soviet border into Georgia.
But they did manage to dispatch emissaries, who then contacted a clandestine orga-
nization in Batumi, collected military and other intelligence, returned to Turkey, and
reported back to Bammat.¹⁵⁸In November 1938, Bammat and the Caucasus group suc-
ceeded in dispatching a mission (headed by Kruashvili) from Turkey to Batumi, where
they met with members of the clandestine organization. Kruashvili instructed them to
create secret cells elsewhere in the Caucasus (Kutaisi, Tbilisi, and Vladikavkaz) as well
as one on a passenger liner in Batumi in order to maintain contact with the outside
world. The expedition was successfully completed.¹⁵⁹
Perhaps owing to these operations (which relied on cross-border family connec-
tions), in December 1938 Tbilisi asked Moscow to expel 180 families from the border
regions of Georgia who had family links with those living on the other side of the bor-
157 The le of B.G. Giorgadze, Archive of the Ministry of Internal Aairs of Georgia (Tbilisi), 47–
48, 150–165, 321. See also Sotskov,Neizvestnyi separatizm, 102—103, and Gela Suladze,kartuli
ant’isabch’ota emigratsia da sp’etssamsakhurebi (1918–1953 ts’.ts’)(Georgian Antibolshevik Emigra-
tion and the Secret Services) (Tbilisi: “erovnuli mtserloba,” 2010), 269. Before eing Georgia in 1930,
Vardiashvili was said to have organized “armed bands” who terrorized Soviet o cials.
158 Reports to Bammat by E. Vachnadze and S. Kruashvili (September 1938) from the Bammat family
archive in Paris. This and other reports are reproduced in Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes
des Caucasiens, 376–80.
159 Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 228, 381–84.