The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1981 (4. évfolyam, 3-6. szám)
1981-05-01 / 3. szám
"Glorious" Anniversary of Re-colonisation R ussia’s re-colonisation of the ancient Transcaucasian nation of Georgia in 1921 was recalled recently at anniversary celebrations organised by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In a speech delivered at a joint meeting of the Georgian Communist Party and Supreme Soviet in Tbilisi on May 22, the CPSU e'ader, President Brezhnev, referred to "the glorious 60th anniversary" of the establishment of Soviet power in Georgia. "The historical destiny of Georgia was not easy", he said. "For centuries it was invaded by foreign conquerors who devasted the country. However, generations of your ancestors... upheld their independence, created and preserved a distinctive and in many respects unique national culture." If he had been frank he would have added that the annexation of Georgia by Lenin’s Soviet Russia in 1921 was yet another conquest by foreigners, and that Tsarist Russia’s colonialist rule of the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries was maintained through military might. Tsarist control of Georgia was abandoned immediately after Tsar Nicholas ll’s enforced abdication in March, 1917. Georgian governments in the next four years were composed partly or wholly of the Mensheviks, a social democratic party. A properly-run democracy was established. For example, in February, 1919, elections/with unievrsal suffrage and a secret ballot, were held for a Georgian Constituent Assembly; the Mensheviks, one of the 15 competing parties, won 109 of the 130 seats. The Assembly met for the first time in March, 1919, and continued in being until the Russian Bolshevik (communist) military invasion two years later. Georgian independence was recognised by the Soviet Government in a treaty signed in Moscow in May, 1920. However, in February, 1921, the Soviet Eleventh Army overran Georgia and a Mascow-controlled communist administration was set up there in place of the Menshevik one. The Russian occupation troops and the Cheka, the Soviet secret police, forerunners of today’s KGB, killed thousands of people, and the soldiers also indulged in widespread rape and looting. In 1922, the Georgians secretly formed an Independence Committee with representatives from most of the non-communist political parties and organisations. However, the committee’s effectiveness was weakened by the arrest in subsequent months of many of the former national leaders, some of whom had fled abroad during the invasion but had later returned clandestinely. Those arrested and executed included Valiko Jugheli, commander of the pre-invasion National Guard, and three other generals. Catholicos-Patriarch Ambrosius, the aged and revered head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, described the excesses committed by the Russian colonialist authorities. In a message addressed to an international conference in Geneva in 1922, he begged the world to help the Georgians. Patriarch Ambrosius was immediately arrested and, during a pediod of „softening up" in prison, was coached to make a „confession" fabricated by the invaders. However, at his subsequent show trial he refused to say anything helpful to them. He told the court: „My soul belongs to God, my heart to my country. You, my executioners, may do what you like with my body." Having been made aware of foreign opinion, the Soviet authorities refrained from killing him, but they held him in captivity until his death in 1927. President Brezhnev did, of course, mention none of these events in his recent speech in Tbilisi. Instead, he made one brief reference to what he alleged was „Georgia’s voluntary union with Russia and friendship with the great Russian people..." I n recent months there have been three big unathorised public demonstration in Georgia. On April 14, about 500 peoole, many of them young, gathered in the cathedral at Mtskheta on the anniversary of a demonstration in 1978 in defence of Georgian culture. It was proposed to say prayers for the nation and play tape-recordings of old Georgian songs. Evidently the Soviet authorities had discovered some while before that this disolay of Georgian nationalism was to occur. To minimise its imoact the authorities had announced that a major sporting event would be held at Mtskheta on April 14 and for that reason it would be impossible to go to the town by car or train. Nevertheless many people managed to get there, some travelling by boat down the River Kura. When the demonstrators tried to turn on the tape-recorders, the electric current for the whole town was switched off. But the programme of singing went ahead as planned. Old Georgian songs and hymns were heard in the town centre. The entire crowd of nationalist demonstrators sang and passers-by joined in. About 1,000 people, mainly students, demonstrated on March 30 for nearly five hours in Tbilisi, capitol of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. They vere protesting against the Kremlin’s sustained efforts to impose the Russian language and culture in Georgia, whose people are proud of their ancien* traditions, some spanning at least 25 centuries. The demonstrators also appealed for Georgian history to be included in the curricula of the schools and colleges of Georgia, which was a strong, independent State in the 12th and 13th centuries but was later absorbed into the Russian Tsarist Empire and eventually into the USSR. The demonstration was held outside the Georgian Supreme Soviet building, where a conference of writers was in progress. A week earlier, on March 23, about 1,000 students demonstrated in the streets against the dismissal from Tbilisi University of Professor Akaki Bakhradze, an authority on Georgian literature. He was later reinstated. The demonstrators also protested against recent trials of Georgians living in the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which is administratively attached to Georgia and is "autonomous" only in name. Many arrests were made after both demonstrations. However, Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian Communist Party leader, personally intervened in an attempt to settle the unrest. Last December, it was learned that a blunt statement of opposition to the Russification of Georgia was contained in a document which 365 Georgians addressed to President Brezhnev and Shevardnadze. The signatories included six members or corresponding members of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, including a leading scholar, A. G. Shanidze, who is also a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Others who signed included prominent writers. The document demanded that Article 83 of the 1975 Statutes of the Higher Certification Commission (VAK), which awards higher degrees, be annulled. This article stipulates that dissertations must be in Russian and that works relating to the dissertations which had first been published in other languages must also be written in Russian. The signatories also demanded the withdrawal of Instruction Number 1,116, dated December 6, 1978, of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialised Education. This instruction has the effect of making Russian, rather than Georgian, the language of instruction in many disciplines. The document also demanded the reinstatement of hours previously allocated for the teaching of Georgian history. MAY-JUNE, 1981 2 FEMINIST’S SMALL CHILD DISAPPEARS The small daughter of Natalia Maltseva, a prominent member of the USSR's new feminist movement, has disappeared. Aged about 33, Miss Maltseva is unmarried. She was a television journalist until the authorities discovered her interest in the feminist cause. Until her arrest in Leningrad on December 17, she was a member of the board of Woman and Russia, a samizdat journal. She wrote for it under the pseudonym of Vera Golubeva. She has tuberculosis and had a high temperature when arrested and forcibly separated from her child. Also on December 17, the KGB searched Miss Maltseva’s home and those of other feminis+s. The secret police and other officials also interrogated Raisa Bocharova and Galina Vladkina, whose memoirs have appeared in Woman and Russia.