Georgia’s European aspirations have lately been all over the news. The country’s spectacular and joyful, albeit short-lived performance at the European Football Championship has stunned fans and spectators everywhere. A few weeks earlier, the biggest demonstrations in Georgia’s history occurred in Tbilisi and other cities in reaction against a Russia-inspired “foreign agent” law, pushed through by a government representing above all the interests of Georgia’s richest oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, and sabotaging the process of Georgia’s accession to the EU, favoured by around 80 percent of the population. Georgia’s current path to Europe, it appears, is fraught with obstacles and setbacks. But as its inspiring footballers and the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets have made abundantly clear, they see Europe as their historic destination in a struggle about the country's national identity. It is safe to say that most Georgians today see themselves as Europeans and want to live in a western, democratic state. And as the book by Giorgi Astamadze strongly suggests, they have a historical precedent on their side.

Since antiquity, Georgia was torn between East and West and, to varying degrees, went through periods of independent statehood and absorption into adjacent empires. The 100th anniversary of its penultimate phase of independence (1918–1921), when Georgia was a modern democratic republic with a western-style government run by moderate Social Democrats, led to a renewed focus on the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution in the South Caucasus among a new generation of historians who have the advantage of access to archives beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.1 Astamadze is one of these young scholars. His book, based on his PhD dissertation, illuminates in impressively painstaking detail and with a keen eye for the personal agendas of the various political players the pivotal role of the Kaiserreich in Georgia’s independence in 1918. It is based on a plethora of primary sources from the major German and Austrian state archives, the UK National Archives, the Georgian Historical Archive, several university and museum collections as well as a few private archives.

The book starts with a brief overview of Georgian-German relations before 1918. Georgia had a sizeable German minority who had been invited as agricultural colonists in the 19th century. Later, it was mostly German economic interests that linked the two countries. The Siemens company was a prominent example (several members of the Siemens family served as German consuls in Tbilisi). Other German firms held the monopoly of manganese extraction in Georgia (about half of the world’s output around 1900). Meanwhile, Georgian political emigres campaigning for the independence of their country from the Russian Empire, were active in Switzerland and Germany. They founded a Georgian National Committee at the beginning of World War I and eventually created the pro-German Georgian Legion fighting on the side of the Central Powers. Clearly, Georgian nationalist struggles for independence and German interests in weakening the Russian Empire, accessing precious raw materials and pushing towards the Baku oilfields went hand in hand; German U-boat expeditions landed military hardware in Georgian ports and members of the Georgian National Committee established valuable contacts in the corridors of power in Berlin and fed German newspapers with propaganda about their country.

The German Empire saw Georgia not only as an economic and military asset against Russia but also as a strategic partner in its struggle against Great Britain. After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the ensuing power vacuum at its peripheries, politically influential German generals (Erich Ludendorff, Hans von Seeckt) thought of the Caucasus as a potential launchpad for further expansion into Central Asia and India. As Astamadze shows, such ideas were vastly overambitious. They were simply “nice fantasies” of which the British War Cabinet moreover was fully aware. The actual trigger for a closer alliance between Germany and Georgia, then, was not an imaginary advance towards the Ganges but very real Ottoman aggressions in the Caucasus in early 1918, especially the annexation of Batumi. Although Germany was allied with Turkey (and had agreed to its occupation of Batumi in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk), it became increasingly concerned about more wide-ranging Turkish plans to seize the whole Caucasus. However, there were diverging opinions on this issue in Germany, and rifts within the ministry of foreign affairs and the military hierarchy, documented meticulously by Astamadze, caused a considerable amount of confusion. In the end, it was the decision of General Ludendorff to support direct German military involvement in the Caucasus and stop Turkish advances on Tbilisi and Erevan.

On the Georgian side, the Turkish threat also quickly focused minds. Georgian Social Democrats had played major roles in the February Revolution and wanted to remain part of the new democratic Russia. Once this possibility had become obsolete after the October Revolution, they formed a National Council in Tbilisi under their leader, Noe Zhordania. As he confessed later in his memoirs, as a revolutionary socialist, he had never envisioned national independence, but in May 1918, with Turkish troops advancing and urged on by the Georgian National Committee in Berlin, he changed tack. Georgia should be independent under German protection. The solemn proclamation of independence happened on 26.05.1918 in the presence of high-ranking German diplomats and officers. A few days later, various agreements were signed in which Germany was to guarantee Georgia’s borders while Georgia was handing over its railways and seaports, accepting the German currency as legal tender and providing access to its raw materials.

The cordial cooperation between the German military and the Georgian Social Democrats throughout 1918 is discussed at length and in great detail in the second half of the book. In June, a German military mission arrived under the command of the Bavarian General Kreß von Kressenstein. It was meant to secure all strategically important places and assist in building up a Georgian army and navy. Turkey became increasingly upset about the presence of the Germans in what it considered to be its backyard. Diplomatic antagonisms and military tensions between the two allies grew over Turkish encroachments on Georgian lands, the Turkish occupation of Baku in September and the refusal to share oil with Germany and Georgia. Meanwhile, a high-ranking Georgian delegation had arrived in Berlin in early June, lobbying for closer economic ties and signing various agreements with German banks and businesses. Its main objective, however, was gaining official German recognition of Georgia’s independence. This goal came within reach after Germany and Russia signed a supplementary protocol to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which Russia agreed to accept German recognition of Georgia’s independence. By early October, a treaty was ready to be signed, but Germany’s defeat in the war prevented this from happening. Instead, Georgia’s independence was de jure recognized by numerous countries, including Germany, after Soviet Russia had done so in May 1920.

But 1918 was the crucial year for Georgia. As Astamadze concludes, the cooperation with Germany allowed the country to become independent, to stabilize the internal situation after the revolutionary upheavals of 1917, to fence off Turkish and Bolshevik ambitions and to turn Georgia into the “safest place in the South Caucasus”. Furthermore, Germany was instrumental in Georgia becoming a modern European state without actually interfering much in its internal affairs. Georgian sympathies for Germany ran accordingly high, both in the government and the population, and when the Germans had to withdraw at the end of the year to give way to an incoming British protection force, they were showered with cordial farewell ceremonies. In Astamadze’s words, Georgia was one of few countries where the Kaiserreich enjoyed a good reputation at the end of World War I. His book explains how this came about. It provides valuable new insights into the foreign policies of Germany, Turkey, and Russia during the final stages of the war, but particularly into the diplomatic and military shenanigans surrounding Georgia’s independence in a rather volatile geographic region. The latter, unfortunately, cannot be changed, but Georgia’s move towards Europe in 1918 as an astute example of Realpolitik is still instructive today.

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1 Watch out, inter alia, for the forthcoming studies by Beka Kobakhidze and Sarah Slye.