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

The Akashi Operations Ë 31

Fig. 2.13.Giorgi Dekanozishvili, his wife Henriette Frenois, and children Tinatin and Tariel (Paris,
beginning of the twentieth century).

The real governor of Batumi was not the ocial Russian governor but someone living

in one of its suburbs. His “word was obeyed as law”:

Orders will suddenly be issued that the workmen of such and such a factory must strike; the men

obey without a murmur, and any manager or employee who attempts to stop the movement is

assassinated.... It seemed incredible that in a town fortied like Batum, surrounded by batteries

bristling with guns and garrisoned by large bodies of troops, murder and outrage should be so

easy. No attempt was made to arrest the guilty, and in fact the word seemed to have been passed

that the revolutionists be left alone.⁴⁴

In the north of Batumi, in the Guria region of Georgia, people rejected any governmen-

tal authority, making instead “a practical experiment in peasant autonomy of a very

interesting nature.” The “Gurian Republic” impressed Lev Tolstoi, who commented

with admiration that the Gurians organized “life in such a manner that there should

be no need for any authority.” But unlike the pacist Tolstoi, the Gurians fought with

arms against interference in their aairs: “If they (the Russians) wish to restore the old

form of government, they must kill us to the last man; till then we shall go on resist-

44 Luigi Villari,Fire and Sword in the Caucasus(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1906), 52, 53, 55.