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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Mourning events held in Georgia on the anniversary of the Soviet occupation
2023-02-26
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Events in memory of those killed in battles with the Red Army were held today in Georgia on the occasion of the 102nd anniversary of those events. In connection with the mourning date, the flags at the diplomatic missions of Georgia abroad were lowered to half mast.
There’s an awful lot of ill will in the region for the Soviet conquest and seventy years of totalitarian rule. To some extent, the current active support of Ukraine’s side in this war is an expression of their refusal to accept Russian conquest again if they can prevent it.
The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that since 2010 February 25 has been celebrated in Georgia as the Day of Soviet Occupation. On this day, state flags are flown at half mast, and residents pay tribute to the memory of the cadets who died in 1921 in battles with the Red Army on the outskirts of Tbilisi.

The 11th Red Army invaded Georgia in February 1921. The resistance of the Georgian army, volunteer detachments and cadets was suppressed. On April 21, 1921, Soviet power was formed in Georgia, the Decree on the establishment of the People's Commissariats of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was signed. For almost three years before that, the Georgian Democratic Republic, proclaimed on May 26, 1918, operated on the territory of the country. Political scientists interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" noted that in the context of Russian-Georgian relations one can say that  Georgia's independence remains under threat .

State flags are flown at half mast on buildings in Georgia today in connection with the Day of Soviet Occupation, Novosti Georgia reports.

Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, Speaker of the Parliament Shalva Papuashvili, Minister of Defense Juansher Burchuladze laid wreaths at the memorial of the cadets who died 102 years ago, Georgian TV Channel One informs on its website.

State flags are also flown at half mast at all state institutions and diplomatic missions of Georgia abroad, writes "Georgia Online".

The author of the "BERG...man Tbilisi" blog on the "Caucasian Knot" in his post "Day of the Soviet occupation of Georgia and the slogan: back home, to Europe" today offered to participate in a discussion about whether it was then possible for Georgia and the entire South Caucasus to go not on the path of Soviet Russia. "And who did it depend on, Europe, Russia, or maybe the young republics of the South Caucasus?" he wrote.

Recall that in 2021, the mourning event for the centenary of the occupation of Georgia was held in Tbilisi by the Sirtskhvili NGO (Shameful). The events of 1921 are covered "very poorly" in the school curriculum , residents of Tbilisi said.

"They just talk about the fact that in 1921 there was a war during which Georgia was captured. But they don’t say anything about the losses that the people suffered, they don’t say anything about the fact that the inhabitants of Mtianeti stood up against the invaders in the north, and in the south - Kakhetians, and both uprisings were drowned in blood. I learned all this after school," said, in particular, a resident of Tbilisi, Solomon.

The capture of Tbilisi by the Red Army in 1921 is  an important element of historical memory for the Georgian people, but the perception of the scale of resistance to the Soviet offensive in the mass consciousness is distorted, noted Georgian historians interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" in 2019.

The term "Soviet occupation" is not historical, noted, in particular, Mikhail Volkhonsky, a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of the Caucasus at MGIMO. "The Soviet leadership of Georgia was mostly Georgians themselves. In fact, it was a conflict between a not very representative part of the Georgian establishment, which was the Menshevik government, and the Bolshevik part of the Georgian public," he told the "Caucasian Knot".
Sure, and it was the local fascists running things in many of the countries of the Nazi empire, not Nazi Germans themselves, right?
In Georgian historiography, the prevailing view is that the Georgian Democratic Republic is the forerunner of modern Georgia, while the Soviet period is ignored, the historian pointed out. "But if we discard the era of Soviet Georgia from memory, then we will have to discard a huge layer of Georgian culture - literature, cinematography, theater. And the society, the intelligentsia that was formed in Georgia by the 1990s, comes from the Soviet past. From this you can't get anywhere," Volkhonsky said.

The events that preceded the Sovietization of Georgia, the historian Vadim Mukhanov regarded as a political conflict between the two parts of Georgian society. The leaders of the first republic - Noy Zhordania, Noy Namishvili, Yevgeny Gegechkori, Irakli Tsereteli, many of whom managed to escape from Petrograd at the end of 1917 - were in a tough conflict with both Georgian and non-Georgian Bolsheviks, while the process of Sovietization of the South Caucasus as a whole controlled by the Bolsheviks of Georgian origin.
Related:
Tbilisi: 2023-01-16 Ukrainian Perspective: Invasion of Ukraine: January 15th, 2023
Tbilisi: 2023-01-11 Russian Perspective: Operation to Denazify Ukraine: Operational Brief January 10th (updated)
Tbilisi: 2023-01-10 Ukrainian Perspective: Invasion of Ukraine: January 9th, 2023
Posted by:badanov

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