The Experiment: Georgia's Forgotten Revolution 1918–1921 by Eric Lee (review)

In May 2018, Georgia celebrated the centennial of the establishment of its first republic. On May 26, 1918, the Georgian National Council declared Georgia's independence and the foundation of the Democratic Georgian Republic (henceforth DGR). It was born amid the havoc of World War I. Like Armenia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus, the DGR was short-lived – it lasted until February 1921, when the Bolshevik forces occupied Georgia and established the communist regime. The significance of the first modern Georgian state notwithstanding, its history remains underresearched. Its abrupt end and the socialist government partially explain the insufficient interest of Georgian historians in the topic (in post-Soviet Georgia, socialism is seen with suspicion, as closely associated with communism). Therefore, Eric Lee's book has become a particularly important contribution to the history of Georgia and the wider South Caucasus region.

The book is organized into sixteen chapters. After discussing the identity and social background of the founding fathers of the DGR, the author examines the 1905 peasant rebellion in the Guria region of Georgia as a precursor of the subsequent independence movement. The bulk of the book documents the rise, development, and fall of the DGR. Lee provides a detailed account of the road to independence from the collapsing Russian Empire, and the difficult search for foreign protection in the situation of the ongoing World War I, against the overpowering Ottoman army. One of the chapters covers the short Georgian-Armenian war in late 1918, another discusses agrarian reforms, policies stimulating trade unions and cooperatives. An important subject tackled in the book is Tbilisi's complex relations with the national minorities, and the failure to find a lasting solution to the problem. The final four chapters examine the last months of the DGR and the Soviet occupation of it.

Lee approaches the history of the DGR as an important episode of the early socialist revolutions outside Europe that aspired to build a new society on the principles inspired by Marxism. The word "experiment" in the title captures the complexity of the task and the novelty of the ambitious policies that the leaders of the Georgian republic sought to implement. Thus, the book places the story of the short-lived Georgian statehood within the broader context of the European history of the early twentieth century. This approach proves useful in comprehending the worldview and objectives of the leaders of the Georgian Social Democratic movement. It also helps to go beyond the established narratives of Georgian national history and reveal the roots of the Georgian "experiment" in the European socialist movement. The author persuasively demonstrates the importance of the European political and cultural agenda of the time for shaping the policies of Georgia's Social Democratic leaders of the First Republic.

One of the important contributions of the book to Georgian history is its reassessment of the popular revolt in Western Georgia – the so-called Gurian Republic, when socialists seized power and attempted to implement their vision of a new society in a remote province of the Russian Empire. Lee argues that it was the second most successful attempt, after the Paris Commune in 1871, to establish a popular revolutionary self-government. Reconstructing the organizational features and objectives of the Gurian Republic, the author suggests that its history is directly connected to the history of the DGR. Leaders of the DGR – Noe Zhordania, Noe Ramishvili, and Noe Khomeriki – were all natives of Guria, and relied on the experience of the 1905 self-proclaimed republic. That experience was both practical and intellectual, in terms of adapting Marxism to the realities of Georgian society.

The centrality of Marxist ideas to Georgian Social Democrats notwithstanding, leaders of the DGR had to deal with the everyday challenges of the "real world" (P. 49). Territorial disputes and wars with Armenia (over the Akhalkalak, Lori, and Borchalo regions), Ottoman Empire (over Adjara, Akhalkalak, and Akhaltsikhe), Azerbaijan (over the Zakatala...