36 Ë The Russo-Japanese War
Fig. 2.14.Giorgi and Leo Kereselidze, Geneva, 1907.
Georgians rolling back the Russians over the mountains, avenging the brutalities and
the misrule of a hundred years, and smashing the Russian Empire so that it would
never again be a menace. He had no thought for himself, what success would mean
to him. He did not work for any material advantages for himself, wealth, in uence or
power.... He worked only for Georgia, for their Georgia.”⁶⁴
A realist, Dekanozishvili of course did not exclude the eventuality of failure in his
plan to deliver weapons to the Caucasus. Yet even were it to fail, he calculated that
the mere fact of such attempts would force the Tsarist government, weakened by the
defeat in the Far East and revolutionary upheaval within the country, to make con-
cessions to the peoples of the Caucasus. Such concessions would include autonomy
similar to that enjoyed (at least nominally) by Poland and Finland. On 13 November
Dekanozishvili made note of this matter in his diary: “Even if a boat [with weapons
64 Armstrong,Unending Battle, 10, 19–20, 38.