ABOUT SOME NOTABLE MOMENTS OF GEORGIAN-OSSETIAN RELATIONS (THE FIRST DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY)

Abstract

After the February Revolution of 1917, Georgia was faced with a completely new reality: during the centuries of captivity, the only point in Treaty of Georgievsk defended by the Russian Empire was to fortify its borders and protect Georgia from foreign enemies. However, it is clear that the policy of the Russian Empire in the protection of the borders was conditioned not by the obligation to protect the relevant article of the treaty, but by its own state interests. It is noteworthy that this only protected article of the agreement in post-revolutionary Russia was also violated. The territorial integrity of the country was posed a real threat by, on the one hand, the activated Ottomans, and, on the other hand, by the emerging Bolshevism in the north.

The Georgian people, who were constantly thinking about the restoration of their lost, deprived independence, faced the need to make very important decisions.

"It has taken into account the path of self-determination in the hope that the act of liberation would only evoke compassion in cultural humanity." (Ingilo, 1918, p. 1)

Naturally, this idea was not new. After the national liberation charge exerted by the Tergdaleuli’s in 1903, the Paris-born National-Revolutionary Mood periodical "Sakartvelo (Georgia)" (Newspaper Georgia, 1903) for the first time formally formulated the demand for Georgian statehood in the form of national-territorial autonomy of freedom.

Although Treaty of Georgievsk was only an agreement between the allies and did not mean the complete loss of Georgia's independence and sovereignty, it cost the Georgian people dearly.

Prof. Iv. Javakhishvili noted in a report on the situation in the country on April 28-29, 1919, at the State University, that the more our ancestors were experienced in policy-making with the Eastern states (Persia, the Ottoman Empire), the more naive they were in policy-making with Europeans. Our ancestors thought that a strong Christian nation would unselfishly help a small Christian nation, and that unfaithfulness would not take place in the politics of a strong nation, but the reality has shown us something completely different. If Georgia itself pursued politics independently, then so was its renaissance. Even when Georgia was approaching Russia, then its affairs were mixed up, because Russia's policy was not entirely to help Georgia. Russia had its goals and caring for Georgia was just a matter of words. (Newspaper Georgia, 1919, p. 4)

 Keywords: Sovereignty, Georgian-Ossetian. Territorial integrity, Soviet Russia, Occupation, Separatism, Independence;