International Realignments Ë 115
Fig. 5.1.Władysław Baranowski, Polish ambassador in Turkey with his wife; Sadazuchi Uchida,
Japan’s plenipotentiary at the League of Nations and ambassador in Turkey; and Konstantin
Gvardzhaladze, representative in Turkey of the Paris-based Georgian government-in-exile, with
his wife in Istanbul, 1922.
nizations for the same purpose. In this connection, in November 1924 a committee of
Caucasians was created in Paris to coordinate the future form of the federation and
its constitution. The committee was represented by Georgian Social Democrats (Akaki
Chkhenkeli and Noe Ramishvili) as well as National Democrats (Spiridon Kedia), Az-
eris (Alimardan Topchubashi, former foreign minister of the Azerbaijan Democratic
Republic, and Dzheikhun Khadzhibeili), and Northern Caucasians (Tapa Chermoev
and Haidar Bammat). Meanwhile, Warsaw nancially supported the clandestine dis-
patch of Vachnadze and Kantemir to the Caucasus to establish links to those areas
under Soviet occupation.³⁶
Japan, like Poland, did not cease to view the Soviet Union as it had Russia be-
fore World War I, and it remained strikingly active in the Caucasus. In the spring of
1922, a Japanese steam boat and its crew were detained by the Soviet government
in Sukhumi, Abkhazia. Although the boat, owned by the Nitta Steam Boat Company
36 Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 91–95, 367–72 and Mamoulia, ed.,
Kavkazskaia Konfederatsiia, 8–10, 47–54. At the time there were other secret dispatches of people into
the Soviet Caucasus. Samson Kruashvili, or Samson Themur, who had left Batumi for Turkey in 1924
and then for France with a Turkish passport, was sent to Soviet Georgia in 1926. Kruashvili went to
Trabzon, from where he crossed the border on foot. He spent seven to eight months in Georgia inves-
tigating the “Bolshevik movement,” then, fearing arrest, left for Persia. See the French police report:
Service historique de l’armée de Terre (Château de Vincennes)Series 7 N-3086.