110 Ë Renewal
The mass executions of rebels disquieted Moscow, which, concerned about inter-
national repercussions, prohibited further executions without its authorization. (In-
deed, the League of Nations adopted a resolution, as it had in 1922 concerning the
suppression of rebellions at that time, drawing the attention of the world to the plight
of the Georgians under Soviet rule.)¹⁶Nevertheless, the Transcaucasian Regional Com-
mittee of the Communist Party, headed by Sergo Ordzhonikidze, continued with the
executions without Moscow’s permission. Stalin deplored this action, which he saw
as damaging the authority of the Communists and helping turn the executed into na-
tional heroes.¹⁷But with Stalin’s implicit support, Ordzhonikidze and other Caucasian
Communist leaders escaped formal reproof.¹⁸A month and a half after the incident,
Stalin spoke about the Georgian uprisings, characterizing them not as a demonstra-
tion of national sentiments but as a manifestation of peasant economic discontent in
areas where, according to him, Communists were well represented in local govern-
ments.¹⁹Stalin thus refused to acknowledge any national or religious content to the
uprisings in his home land. Yet Moscow could not kill the “Georgian soul,” which one
writer declared “should rule in Georgia.” As Stephen Jones has noted, Russians “who
remained an insigni cant minority of the [Georgian] republican population until the
1930s, were under considerable pressure to adapt to Georgian customs in the 1920s.”²⁰
The political situation in the Caucasus had long been a bone of contention within
the Politburo of the Communist Party in Moscow. Well known is Lenin’s irritation with
the high-handed policy (forcible Sovietization) by Ordzhonikidze and other Caucasian
Communists such as Filipp Makharadze and Budu Mdivani toward their native lands.
There was also disagreement among them regarding the degree of centralization to be
imposed on the Caucasus. This issue became known through Lenin’s “Last Testament”
as a source of con ict between Lenin on the one hand and Stalin and Ordzhonikidze
on the other, the former accusing the latter of “Great Russian chauvinism.” Recent
studies, however, have suggested that in fact the con ict may not have been between
Lenin and Stalin (although disagreements did exist between them). The authenticity
of the relevant part of Lenin’s testament has also come under scrutiny.²¹In any event,16 Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 69 and 86, and Materski, “Powstanie
narodowowyzvoleńcze 1924 r. w Gruzii,” 64–65.
17 TsK RKP(b)–VKP(b) i natsional’nyi vopros. Kniga 1. 1918–1933 gg.(Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2005), 232–33
(Stalin’s memorandum to the Politburo dated 5 September 1924).
18 Wehner, “Le soulèvement géorgien de 1924,” 162, 164–65.
19 I.V. Stalin,Sochineniia, vol. 6 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1947), 308–309.
20 Stephen Jones, “The Establishment of Soviet Power in Transcaucasia: The Case of Georgia 1921–
1928.”Soviet Studies40, no. 4 (1988), 266, 269. Note that in 1904 the young Stalin criticized the “philo-
sophical absurdities” of Georgian nationalists, insisting that there was no such thing as a “national
spirit.” See I.V. Stalin,Sochineniia, vol. 1 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1946), 53.
21 See Eric van Ree, “ ‘Lenin’s Last Struggle’ Revisited.”Revolutionary Russia14, no. 2 (December
2001), 85–122; Jeremy Smith,The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917–1923(London, 1999), chs.