SOME ASPECTS OF THE COLONIAL POLICY OF TSARISM IN BATUMI DISTRICT

Abstract

Tsarism was firmly pursuing a national-colonial policy in Adjara. The colonial policy of Tsarism has always sought to disconnect small nations from one another and assimilate these disjointed nations. Great-power policy was  artifically creating a proper conditions for small nations to forget their past. First of all, it was trying to convince Adjarians that they did not have any connection with Georgians. Officials of the King’s government were repeating over and over again that Georgian culture was foreign for residents of Adjara. Tsarism expelled the Georgian language from schools, court and administrative institutions. The government communicated to inhabitants through Ottoman language translators which the government had in these institutions. For the local Muslin population, The deprivation of the mother language was anti-national act: “Local Muslin population must know russian language well. We must do everything to make russian language as their unique and native language. As for mountaines, where the Ottoman remnants are still strong, here too, the Russian gradually must weaken and then expel it from useage",- denotes the Military Governor of Batumi District  in the official letter of 1901 to the Vicehent of the Caucasus.