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

32 Ë The Russo-Japanese War

ing.” Indeed, the whole province resisted and, as Villari described it, was “drenched

in blood.”⁴⁵

In the spring of 1905, Tedo Sakhokia, a Socialist Federalist leader and

Dekanozishvili’s close associate, was dispatched to Georgia to create party cells in

Batumi, Poti, and Sukhumi and prepare for the receipt of weapons to be sent from Eu-

rope. He succeeded in creating party committees and taking over the editorial oce

of the Batumi newspaperChernomorskii vestnik(Black Sea Herald). Secret military

organizations led by Georgian ocers serving in the Russian Army were also created.

Information gained from them was then handed to Akashi.⁴⁶

With Tokyo’s approval of substantial funding in the spring of 1905, Akashi began

working closely with Caucasian revolutionaries. In his work, he may well have been

helped by Britain, which favored Japan’s victory over Russia for its own strategic rea-

sons. Indeed, Britain is said to have facilitated Japan’s penetration of the Caucasus by

its agents. For example, in 1904 the English steam boatHempsud(Hampstead?) ar-

rived in Batumi, most of whose crew, according to the Russian police, were Japanese

spies. It was further reported that the Japanese government was sending more of its

agents to Black Sea ports to destroy the Russian military eet by mines and other

explosives. The Russian police, suspecting that British boats were being staed by

Japanese spies, paid particular attention to ships run by the English company Samuel

Samuelson servicing the route between Istanbul and Batumi.⁴⁷

Akashi found Dekanozishvili reliable and signicant. Moreover, Dekanozishvili’s

reach went beyond Georgia per se. According to Russian police information, he had

informants in Azerbaijan and Dagestan as well, where his relatives (Khananov or

Khananashvili) worked as high-ranking ocials in the Russian police and administra-

tion. Only at the end of May 1906 did the Russian police nd out that Dekanozishvili

had maintained contact with them.⁴⁸It was probably through his contact that the

socialist-federalist ideas of the Georgians reached Azerbaijan. In early 1905, for in-

stance, the Turkic Social-Federal Revolutionary Committee distributed leaets of

“separatist content” in Elizavetpol’ (Ganja) in today’s Azerbaijan. The committee

called for the unity of Caucasian peoples and condemned the mutual massacres

committed by Armenians and Azeris in Baku in February 1905. Accusing the Rus-

sian government of attempts to incite the Caucasian peoples against one another, the

Committee issued an appeal: “Turkic brothers! The Baku massacres have pushed back

us Muslims and Armenians by a hundred years and shamed us in the eyes of other

45 Villari,Fire and Sword, pp. 84–85, 98, 99. On the Gurian Republic, see also Stephen F. Jones,So-
cialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883–1917(Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2005), ch. 6.
46 Correspondence from Sakhokia to Dekanozishvili (3 April, 9 May, and 28 June 1905): Fonds Georges
Dekanozichvili, CHAN, boxe 345, AP/1.
47 Menteshashvili,Zakavkaz’e v anglo-russkikh protivorechiiakh, 54.
48 GSCHA, f. 836, op. 1, d. 237, ll. 1, 1–5.