HISTORY OF GEORGIA: Summary in English of the Book - Georgien zwischen Eigenstaatlichkeit und russischer Okkupation Die Wurzeln des Konflikts vom 18. Jh. bis 1924. Von Philipp Ammon

here is a content of the book: "Where lie the roots for the alienation between Russia and Georgia, two countries of the same Chalcedonian Creed, whose links go back to the early Middle Ages? Georgian influences can already be seen in the Glagolitic alphabet (9th century) and the Nestor Chronicle (12th century). The Russian longing for the Georgian paradise garden, the Vyrïj-sad, where birds migrate every year to spend the winter, is just as old. "Indeed, we began to believe that most Russians hope that if they live good and virtuos lives, they will not go to heaven, but to Georgia, when they die," writes John Steinbeck in the Russian Journal in 1948. After the fall of Constantinople, for the Georgians "the sun began to rise in the north", as the poet Mamuk´a Barat´ašvili puts it, but the Georgians missed the secularization of the "holy Rus´", which is no longer guided by the belief in an eschatalogical mission but by the reason of state. This misunderstanding causes an alienation and a tragedy that lasts until today.

To provide an answer to his questions the author investigates the history of Georgia from ancient times beginning with the genesis of Georgian statehood. He limns the Christianisation of the country, its early ties to Byzantium, its blood witness of faith amongst foreign empires, the rise of the Bagratid kingdom and its prime during the Golden Age from the reign of David the Builder (1073– 1125) and Tamar the Great (1160 –1213) until its decline due to the Mongol conquests of the 13th century. He then qualifies the cultural transfer from Georgia to Russia during the Middle Ages. He delineates the Georgian kings´ requests for military aid to the Tsardom of Muscovy from 1483 after the downturn of Byzantine protecting power. He then characterises the Treaty of Georgievsk of 1783 between Catherine II the Great of Russia and Irakli II of Georgia as crucial to the conflict as in 1795 promised Russian troops stayed away from the Battle of Krtsanisi when the Qajar khan Agha Mohammad Shah attempted to reinforce Iranian overlordship upon Eastern Georgia. Thus the Georgians felt betrayed by their Russian ally. The period following the annexation of Georgia in 1801 is described as ambivalent as the ensuing modernisation of the land, its demographic and economic growth went with the abolition of the Bagratid dynasty and the autocephaly of the Georgian Apostolic Church and Russification in contradiction to the Treaty of 1783. Those measures of the new administration give rise to frequent peasant revolts and to the aristocratic conspiracy of 1832. On the other hand Georgian nobles – plus russe que les Russes – rise to the top in Russian ranks whereas despite their commitment to the mission civilisatrice russe Russian poets imagine the Caucasus and its Georgian heartland as a paradise lost. Unlike their Romantic fathers national movement Georgia´s generation of the sons, the tergdaleulni, returning from Russian universities is striving for feasable improvements for their countrymen. Their national movement is broader in its aims. They found a society to spread literacy among commoners and a bank to save the estates of the landed gentry. In the Revolution of 1905 Gurian peasants form a self-governed social-democratic local republic and in 1907 the “uncrowned king of Georgia” and leader of the country´s national movement Ilya Chavchavadze is killed by Georgian bolsheviks. On the eve of World War I the very existence of Georgia is in danger when Transcaucasia at risk to be settled by Russian peasants and Cossacks and the Georgian Exarchate is threatened to be dissolved into a Caucasian metropolis. During the Great War Georgian emigrants get in close contact with the German comand that is to promote Georgian indepence after the October Revolution. This independent Republic of Georgia persists after the military collapse of the Central Powers until in 1921 the Red Army led by Georgian bolsheviks invades the country. In 1924 a last insurgency for independence is crushed by overwhelming forces of the new Soviet government. Despite occupation and terror Soviet Georgia witnesses the establishment of national institutions as schools, colleges, universities and an academy as well as the development of governmental structures. Georgia´s secession from the Soviet Union in 1991 was payed with the loss of two provinces and those frozen conflicts stepped into war with Russia in 2008. At present no substantial enhancement of the relationship between Russia and Georgia let alone an agreement with her lost provinces is apparent." (Philipp Ammon)

You can order the book here: lehmanns.de