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

International Realignments Ë 119

occupied Caucasus. In 1925–26, German General Max Homann (who had led the

German oensive against the Bolsheviks in February 1918), Alfred Nobel (whose oil

interests in Baku had been conscated by Moscow), and Henri Deterding (chairman

of Royal Dutch/Shell, whose oil wells had also been conscated by the Bolsheviks)

conspired to use two Georgian National Democrats, Spiridon Kedia and Shalva Karu-

midze, for this purpose.⁴⁷Kedia was charged with uniting all rightists of Georgia and

the Caucasus. Counterfeit bills printed in Germany did reach the Soviet Union in 1927,

although the impact on the Soviet economy was by all indications negligible since

the Soviet secret police eectively forestalled clandestine operations. By 1928 the

grandiose plan against the Soviet Union, which would have far exceeded the nan-

cial means of Deterding and others, was abandoned, and some of those involved were

arrested in Germany.⁴⁸

The political cohesion of the Caucasian émigrés was, however, undermined by

the absence of the Armenians. Even though central gures of the Promethean move-

ment and others sought reconciliation and cooperation with them, the latter’s dis-

trust of Turkey and Muslims made it dicult to join forces. Within each group there

also occurred internal ghting over leadership and command (among the Northern

Caucasians, for instance, Shamil did not get along with Bammat, Chermoev, or Kan-

temir). Moreover, Moscow made every eort to subvert the émigré movement directed

against the Soviet Union through political manipulation and provocation. Mutual sus-

picion among political activists was widespread, as were accusations of connections

with the Soviet secret police, who spread disinformation and carried out provocations

intended to divide the émigré communities. The Poles in turn erroneously suspected

that some Caucasian political activists, especially rightists such as Alikhan Kantermir

and Haidar Bammat, were Soviet agents.⁴⁹

47 The Foreign Oce of Britain as well as Russian monarchists were also a party to this operation.
In 1927 the British government severed diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union over Soviet espi-
onage in Britain. In addition, at the time London was greatly disturbed by the Soviet construction of
railways near the Soviet-Afghanistan frontier which London considered a preparation for invasion of
Afghanistan and/or Persia by the Soviets. Britain drew up plans to bomb Baku and Grozny, the center
of the Soviet oil industry. See Patrick R. Osborn,Operation Pike: Britain versus the Soviet Union, 1939–
1941 (Westport, CT-London: Greenwood Press, 2000), p. xvii. On Karumidze, see Françoise Thom,Be-
ria: Le Janus du Kremlin(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2013), 74, 87–89.
48 See A. Norden,Fälscher: Zur Geschichte der deutsch-sowjetischen Beziehungen(Berlin: Dietz Ver-
lag, 1960), and Andreas Dornheim,Röhms Mann fürs Ausland. Politik und Ermordung des SA-Agenten
Georg Bell(Münster: Lit Verlag, 1998), 46. See also Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des
Caucasiens, 107–111 and Oleg Mozokhin,VChK-OGPU na zashchite ekonomicheskoi bezopasnosti go-
sudarstva i v bor’be s terrorizmom(Moscow: Iauza-Eksmo, 2004), 253–58.
49 See S.M. Iskhakov (ed.),Iz istorii azerbaidzhanskoi emigratsii. Sbornik dokumentov, proizvedenii,
pisem(Moscow: Izd-vo Sotsial’no-politicheskaia mysl’, 2011), 40. On an incident of Soviet provocation
against Kantemir, see Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 115–16.