GEORGIAN REPUBLIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 June 1940, Page 6

GEORGIAN REPUBLIC

not big, but important. TWO CLAIMS TO FAME. Georgia, a little Socialist Soviet Republic on the shores of the Black Sea, has two claims to fame. It gave Russia Stalin and it plays a vital part in the distribution of the Russian, oil from the neighbouring district of Baku. These are the oilfields from which it is thought the bulk of the petroleum with which Russia has undertaken to supply Germany will come. Also, Georgia is on the Soviet frontier with Turkey, and has a coastline on the Black Sea. If war comes to that area, Georgia will be in the thick of it. It is now reported that. M. Stalin has deposed the Soviet Government in Georgia and appointed -a mili&ry governor. The exiled Georgian Government’s representative in Geneva says that news of the gathering of Allied armies in Syria and Palestine had increased resistance to the Soviet Government in the three trans-Caucasian republics (Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan), with the result that the Kremlin had forced the entire Georgian Soviet to resign and had sent a heavy force of military police to support the new governor. The three republics mentioned lie across the ngek of land between the Black and Caspian Seas and in the shadow of the Caucasus. Georgia has a coastline on the Black Sea and Azerbaijan on the Caspian. The great oilfields lie in the Baku district of Azerbaijan, but much of the output is shipped through the Black Sea port of Batum, in Georgia, 559 miles away. A pipeline “marches through Georgia” (though not the Georgia of the song), between the two places . In this neck of land, also, the frontiers of Rus-i sia, Turkey and Iran meet. Georgia, with an area of 25,470 square miles and a population of between 2,000.000 and 3,000,000, has a history of more than 2,000 years as a State. It was annexed by Russia in 1801, but regained its independence in 1918, only to be occupied by Bolshevist forces in 1921. Of the Georgians, John Gunther had the following comment to make in "Inside Europe.” "Georgians are not Russians. Even today Stalin speaks Russian with a soft hint of Georgian accent. The Georgian language not only differs from Russian as much, say, as English differs from Portuguese; even the alphabets are dissimilar. The Georgians are a southern race of complex Caucasian blood; they are mountaineers, with the primitive defensive instinct of the frontiersman; tenacity, temper, are ingrained in their physiognomy; like Armenians, they have their own proud national history; they have purple-black hair, and eyes black as midnight.” Georgians displayed these qualities of temper and tenacity to the utmost when they strove to retain their independence. They fought with a reckless ferocity and caused trouble far out of proportion to their numerical strength before they were subdued. So today, when the region of the Caucasus is one of the centres of interest. Stalin cannot afford to have in Georgia any serious state of unrest. He is said to be fortifying the frontier regions.

As recently as 1938 five leaders of a counter-revolutionary organisation in Tiflis were sentenced to death for plotting to overthrow the Soviet regime and endeavouring to secure the seces-

sion of Georgia from the Soviet Union. Incidentally, in addition to its connection with the oil trade, Georgia has the world's richest manganese ore beds and more than half the world's supply was produced from the Chiatury mines in 1914. There are also abundant supplies of coal and more than 500 mineral springs. Exports include grain, wine, tobacco and timber. The output of industrial machinery has become important of recent years, and copper and lead are mined. John Gunther tells a story of Stalin's mother, an old Georgian, who was living in Tiffis and who spoke hardly a word of Russian . Some years ago Stalin took her to Moscow. She spent an unhappy month in the Kremlin puzzled at her boy's prominence, because she could not discover “what he did to earn a living." Then she retreated to the Tiflis hills, morose, but content.