SCIENCE:

The Forest Philosophers
by C. E. Bechhofer Roberts

Journalist Carl Eric Bechhofer Roberts first met Gurdjieff in Tiflis in 1919. His In Denikin's Russia and the Caucasus, 1919-1920, contains the first description of Gurdjieff published in English. He warmly recounts being guided by Gurdjieff on an unusual tour of Tiflis, especially the baths and restaurants. Roberts notes that this "curious individual named Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff… was still surrounded by this strange entourage of philosophers, doctors, poets and dancers. He was not exploiting them; on the contrary, several of them were living on his diminishing means.

More: http://www.gurdjieff.org/roberts.htm

Source: Gurdjieff International Review

A Journey Through Georgia
C. E. Bechhofer Roberts

Journalist Carl Eric Bechhofer Roberts, spoke Russian and travelled widely in Russia and the Caucasus. He was acquainted with Ouspensky as a fellow journalist, when he went to report on conditions there in 1919. Roberts describes a series of engaging meetings he had with “a curious individual named Georgiy Ivanovich Gourjiev” as well as an informed assessment of the volatile social and political situations he encountered throughout the Caucasus. His skeptical but admiring observations provide the first published account in English about Gurdjieff, who gave Roberts an insider’s tour of Tiflis. Excerpted from Robert’s In Denikin’s Russia and the Caucasus, (1921).

More: Excerpted (pdf)

Source: www.gurdjieff-bibliography.com

SCIENCE:

Reinventing the Caucasus

By de Wall, Thomas

Publication: World Policy Journal Date: Spring 2002

Location: Armenia, Azerbaijan

Thomas de Waal is Caucasus editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. His book, Black Garden, on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, will be published by New York University Press later this year.
In the winter of 1919 and the spring of 1920, the British journalist C. E. Bechhofer traveled around southern Russia and the southern Caucasus. His In Denikin's Russia and the Caucasus, 1919-1920 is a classic and terrifying account of a region imploding. The White armies' resistance to the Bolsheviks was crumbling and the newly independent states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan were falling apart. Bechhofer witnessed floods of refugees, famine, typhus epidemics, and terrible massacres by all sides.
Bechhofer, a fellow freelancer, was an inspiration and guide for me as I spent much of 2000 and 2001 traveling through the south Caucasus and doing research for a book on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Experiencing independence anew in the 1990s, the three Caucasian countries went through a depressingly similar descent into chaos and self-destructive nationalism. Ten years into their second round of independence, it frequently felt as though I was studying the sequel of the same conflicts Bechhofer had observed 80 years before. At the same time, I shared his love and excitement for a region that can be dangerous but is never dull. As he assures us in his foreword: "[L]est the reader should come to these pages in too gloomy a spirit, I venture to assure him that many of the incidents of Caucasian life during the past three years belong as much to the world of opera bouffe as to history." 1

Full Text: Reinventing the Caucasus

Notes
1. C. E. Bechhofer, In Denikin's Russia and the Caucasus, 1919-1920 (London: Collins, 1921, reprinted by Ayer, Salem, N.H., 1992), p. x.
2. Lucian Pugliaresi, Energy Security: How Valuable Is Caspian Oil? (Cambridge: Harvard University Caspian Studies Program, January 2001).
3. Bechhofer, In Denikin's Russia, p. 44.
4. Nazarbayev, interview in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 24, 2000, quoted in Radio Liberty's Caucasus Report.
5. For a stimulating discussion of the issues raised by the separatist statelets, see Dov Lynch, "Frozen Conflicts in Eurasian Security," The World Today (London), August/September 2001.
Map (Azerbaijan and Armenia)

Source: www.allbusiness.com