The Gurian Republic was an insurgent community that existed between 1902 and 1906 in the western Georgian region of Guria (known at the time as the Ozurget Uyezd) in the Russian Empire. It rose from a revolt over land grazing rights in 1902. Several issues over the previous decades affecting the peasant population including taxation, land ownership and economic factors also factored into the start of the insurrection. The revolt gained further traction through the efforts of Georgian social democrats, despite some reservations within their party over supporting a peasant movement, and grew further during the 1905 Russian Revolution.
During its existence, the Gurian Republic ignored Russian authority and established its own system of government, which consisted of assemblies of villagers meeting and discussing issues. A unique form of justice, where trial attendees voted on sentences, was introduced. While the movement broke from imperial administration, it was not anti-Russian, desiring to remain within the Empire.
The 1905 Russian Revolution led to massive uprisings throughout the Empire, including Georgia, and in reaction the Russian imperial authorities deployed military forces to end the rebellions, including in Guria. The organised peasants were able to fend off a small force of Cossacks, but the imperial authorities returned with overwhelming military force to re-assert control in 1906. Some of the Republic's leaders were executed, imprisoned or exiled, but others later played prominent roles in the 1918–1921 Democratic Republic of Georgia. The Republic also showed that peasants could be incorporated into the socialist movement, an idea previously downplayed by leading Marxists.
Background
Guria within the Russian Empire Guria is a historic region in western Georgia. In the early 19th century it had been incorporated into the Russian Empire: the Principality of Guria was made a protectorate in 1810 and retained autonomy until 1829 when it was formally annexed. The region was re-organised in 1840 into an uyezd (; a secondary administrative division) and renamed the Ozurget Uyezd, after Ozurgeti, the main city in the region; it was added to the Kutais Governorate in 1846. Until the Russo-Turkish War and the annexation of Adjara in 1878, Guria bordered the Ottoman Empire, and that legacy as a borderland was slow to dissipate: many residents remained armed, and bandits frequented the region.
The Russian Empire's only census, in 1897, counted Guria's population at just under 100,000, while the Kutais Governorate had the second-highest population density in the Caucasus (after the Erivan Governorate). That reflected a major increase during this era, and by 1913 it had grown a further 35 per cent. Guria was overwhelmingly rural, with Ozurgeti the largest city at 4,694, and only 26 other villages listed. There were few factories, though some smaller distilleries did exist, with most of the population working in agriculture. In contrast to other parts of Georgia, especially the capital Tiflis, Guria was ethnically homogeneous, with most of the population being ethnic Georgians.
Guria had high levels of education for a poor peasant region. There were an estimated 63 schools, with 2,833 students, throughout the region by 1905. Ozurgeti alone had four, including one for girls, and 681 total students. As a result, literacy rates were high throughout the region; with one student per 20 people, the Ozurget Uyezd had by far the highest proportion of students in Georgia. This gave Guria a reputation as an educated and literate region, but there were no real opportunities for further development there, which frustrated the rural intelligentsia.
The development of the Transcaucasus Railway in 1872 had a major effect on Guria. It connected Tiflis with the port cities of Batumi and Poti, allowing passengers to easily travel across Georgia; it was possible to go from Ozurgeti to Batumi in 40 minutes. With many Gurians unable to make a living from farming land, they instead became seasonal workers, travelling to Batumi and Poti, or other developing regions across Georgia. Indeed, by 1900 most of the 12,000 workers in Batumi, which was the third-largest industrial centre in the Transcaucasus, were from Guria.
The advent of socialist ideas was also an important factor in Guria. It was noted by Grigory Aleksinsky, a Bolshevik active during the republic's existence, as "a citadel of Menshevism." Many of the leading Georgian Mensheviks, the leading faction of the Georgian Social Democrats, came from Guria; nearly 30 per cent of the Georgian delegates at the Fifth Party Congress in 1907 were from the region. Several leading Georgian Bolsheviks, the other main faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), were also Gurian, though the region overwhelmingly supported the Mensheviks. Many labourers who went to Batumi and Poti were exposed to socialist ideals, and participated in strikes and other labour actions led by the RSDLP; on their return to Guria they would expose the peasants to these ideas. In particular, after a strike action was broken up in Batumi in 1902, some 500 to 600 workers were forced to leave the city, with many of them going to Guria.
Land issues Underdeveloped and poor, Guria had serious land shortages, made worse by population growth and the emancipation of the serfs. Though nominally freed from serfdom, serfs were not freed from their economic obligations, and thus many peasants in Georgia remained "temporarily obligated" to their former masters without real improvement in their lives.
The average peasant household had no more than 1.5 desyatina (roughly the same amount of hectares), with half of that land rented. In European Russia this figure was closer to 10 or 11 desyatina per household, while the authorities in Kutaisi estimated at least 4 desyatina were required for a poor family to survive. Estimates by government officials suggested that 70 percent of Gurian households could not meet these land requirements. Peasants thus farmed their own plots, but as this was not enough to survive on they rented from nobles or worked on the land as labourers. Roughly 60 percent of the peasants rented land, paying anywhere from one-sixth to one-half of the harvest in rent. Between the 1880s and 1900, Guria had seen the highest average increase in rent of anywhere in the Transcaucasus.
This was compounded by the high proportion of nobles in Georgia, where approximately 5.6 percent of the population were landowning nobles, compared to 1.4 percent in European Russia. While larger landowners were required to make land available for rent, those who owned less than 11.25 desyatina did not have to, which meant some 80 percent of landowners were exempt, greatly limiting the amount of land available. The nobles were reluctant to sell their land, further increasing tensions.
Guria's high dependence on maize as a cash crop exacerbated the issue further. While other products, notably silk and wine, were major sources of income in the Kutais Governorate, maize was by far the most important. In the 1880s over one-quarter of all Russian maize exports came from the Kutais Governorate; by 1901 it was producing 90 percent of all maize from the Transcaucasus. Exports were severely restricted in 1891 to help alleviate the shortages caused by the bad harvest in the rest of Russia that year; they did not recover until 1895. By that time grain from the United States had become popular, and the prices for maize dropped considerably. A poor harvest in Guria itself during 1902–1903 further agitated its peasantry.
History Formation of the republic According to historian Stephen F. Jones, the Gurian Republic began in May 1902. A dispute over grazing rights in the village of Nigoiti between peasants and the local noble, Prince Machutadze, led to a meeting of peasants, who agreed to stop working on the Prince's land and stop paying rent. Led by former workers from Batumi, approximately 700 peasants met, organised by Grigol Uratadze, a member of the RSDLP. Uratadze sought the support of the RSDLP for the boycott, but they refused because of the overt religious elements of the meeting, such as swearing oaths on icons. They were reluctant to help a peasant movement, seeing social democracy as a worker-led movement. Nikolay Chkheidze, a Georgian Menshevik active in Batumi at the time, said that social democrats "cannot have a peasant movement under our banners." However two local Mensheviks, Noe Zhordania and Silibistro Jibladze, agreed to help. The peasants' demands included free grazing rights, rent reduction, and an end to payments to the clergy.
The movement gained momentum, with meetings occurring on a frequent basis, and by the spring of 1903 half of the region was involved. The following year 20 of the 25 rural societies (analogous to municipal governments) were participating in boycotts of landowners. The boycott was extended in January 1904 to include government institutions and the church, with further calls to seize these lands.
The authorities responded by arresting over 300 people, and several, including Zhordania and fellow Menshevik leader Noe Khomeriki were exiled to Siberia; this only encouraged further participation. The peasants wanted to use terrorism and acts of violence to support their movement, but this was not considered proper for revolutionaries and not promoted. By that time the Georgian Social Democrats, a branch of the RSDLP, agreed at a May 1903 meeting to support the Gurian Republic. They established a separate committee for "agricultural workers" that would focus on Guria, a term that attempted to reconcile Marxism with the peasant movement. Tsarist officials remained in Guria, though they were boycotted, with Luigi Villari, an Italian traveler who visited Guria in 1905, stating that "no Gurian would think of applying to a Government official for anything."
Organization System of government The Gurian Republic's government was organised from the village level up, based on the legislation that came from the emancipation of the serfs. Village meetings were vested with supreme authority, and also served as a court. These meetings initially met infrequently, but by 1905 were assembling weekly. They were forums for a variety of topics, from banning expensive funerals and weddings to setting the curriculum for schools. They became increasingly political and could last for hours, even days, at a time. According to Gurian linguist Nikolai Marr, while the peasants took an active role in the meetings, the workers from the cities were largely running them.
Within a village a "circle" was made, and there were on average 10 circles for 90 households. Each circle would elect a "tensman" (, ) who then would select among themselves a "hundredsman" (, ). They would then elect representatives for the rural society, who selected their own regional representatives. All people were expected to contribute money or labour, and Villari reported that "one sometimes saw nobles, priests, peasants, and shopkeepers all manfully doing their turn of work."
These regional representatives would be the ones directly in contact with the Gurian Social Democratic Committee, established as a parallel governmental structure by the Social Democrats. Guria was divided into five regions, each led by a committee member, though the village assembly still held ultimate authority. Commissions were formed to set rent and establish grazing rights on confiscated land. In charge of the committee was Benia Chkhikvishvili, who was variously referred to as the "Gurian President" or the "Gurian King." According to Jones, "in all the meetings there was no sign of nationalism or anti-Russian feeling", as Russia was seen as a protector against a possible invasion from the neighbouring Ottoman Empire.