The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and World War II Ë 177
It was probably for this reason that in November or December 1939, Shalva
Berishvili (1901–89), a professional spy and nephew of the former Promethean leader
and Georgian Social Democrat Noe Ramishvili, became acquainted (“accidentally,”
according to Berishvili) with the Japanese military attaché in Turkey, Hory ̄ o Tateishi. ̄
Berishvili, who in 1930 had successfully accomplished a secret mission to the Soviet
Caucasus and repeated another mission in October 1939, was charged by the Georgian
Menshevik (Social Democratic) government in exile with coordinating intelligence
operations in Turkey. (By this time, after expelling the Caucasian political émigrés
in 1938, Turkey was now compelled to use Caucasian émigrés again for intelligence
in view of the German-Soviet rapprochement in August 1939.) Tateishi, a Russian
hand (it is known that he was stationed in Poland and the Soviet Union in 1935),
worked in Turkey as an attaché from 1938 to 1945, an extraordinarily long tenure
by Japanese standards of the time, a testimony to his competence as an intelligence
o cer. Berishvili’s clandestine trip to Georgia in 1939 yielded much valuable infor-
mation, including Soviet secret plans to occupy Turkey and annex Iranian Azerbaijan
at a propitious moment.³²In the summer of 1940, Berishvili, working with French,
British, and Turkish intelligence services, made another secret mission to Georgia
(he later claimed that he had received no special assignment from Tateishi. During
this mission, however, Berishvili switched sides and oered his services to Moscow
(under the code name “Omeri”). Briefed in Moscow and placed under Lavrenti Be-
ria’s direct control, he was sent back to Turkey. Moscow authorized him to meet with
Tateishi, which he did in Turkey in late 1940. Subsequently arrested in the Soviet
Union, Berishvili “confessed,” according to Soviet records, that in that meeting he
provided to the Japanese military attaché information about the Red Army.³³
Independently of Berishvili and his group, Bammat’s Caucasus group, supported
by Japan, also carried out a secret mission to the Caucasus in September-October 1939,
shortly after the Soviet Union and Japan had engaged in a serious battle in Khalkhin
Gol on the Mongolian-Manchukuo border (ending in Japan’s decisive defeat).³⁴Sam-
son Kruashvili (who had successfully returned from an August-September 1938 mis-
sion to Soviet Georgia) and Osman Tedoradze crossed the Soviet border from Turkey
and reached Batumi. Their comrades in Batumi were astonished to see them, prompt-
ing them to ask questions such as “How can you ght against the Bolsheviks now that
an accord with the Germans has been concluded?” The two reassured them that the
new situation did not change their ght against the Communists at all and that they
32 Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 241–43, 259–60.
33 File of Sh.N. Berishvili, Archive of the Ministry of Internal Aairs of Georgia (Tbilisi), 78–79, and
Gela Suladze,kartuli ant’isabch’ota emigratsia da sp’etssamsakhurebi (1918–1953 ts’.ts’)(Georgian An-
tibolshevik Emigration and the Secret Services) (Tbilisi: “erovnuli mts’erloba,” 2010), 275–309.
34 As it turned out, Japan’s defeat was not as decisive as it appeared; also, the commander of the
Japanese ghting forces may have been a Soviet agent. See Hiroaki Kuromiya, “The Mystery of Nomon-
han, 1939.”The Journal of Slavic Military Studies24, no. 4 (December 2011), 659–77.