Georgia

Archaeological 䥜ndings make it possible to trace the origins of human society on the territory of modern Georgia back to theearly Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. A number of Neolithic sites have been excavated in the Kolkhida Lowland, in the KhramiRiver valley in central Georgia, and in South Ossetia; they were occupied by settled tribes engaged in cattle raising andagriculture. The cultivation of grain in Georgia during the Neolithic Period is attested by 䥜nds of saddle querns and 䥴int sickles;the earth was tilled with stone mattocks. The Caucasus was regarded in ancient times as the primeval home of metallurgy. Thestart of the 3rd millennium BC witnessed the beginning of Georgia’s Bronze Age. Remarkable 䥜nds in Trialeti show that centralGeorgia was inhabited during the 2nd millennium BC by cattle-raising tribes whose chieftains were men of wealth and power.Their burial mounds have yielded 䥜nely wrought vessels in gold and silver; a few are engraved with ritual scenes suggestingAsiatic cult in䥴uence.

Early in the 1st millennium BC, the ancestors of the Georgian nation emerge in the annals of Assyria and, later, of Urartu. Amongthese were the Diauhi (Diaeni) nation, ancestors of the Taokhoi, who later domiciled in the southwestern Georgian province ofTao, and the Kulkha, forerunners of the Colchians, who held sway over large territories at the eastern end of the Black Sea. Thefabled wealth of Colchis became known quite early to the Greeks and found symbolic expression in the legend of Medea and theGolden Fleece.

Following the in䥴ux of tribes driven from the direction of Anatolia by the Cimmerian invasion of the 7th century BC and theirfusion with the aboriginal population of the Kura River valley, the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era witnessedthe growth of the important kingdom of Iberia, the region that now comprises modern Kartli and Kakheti, along with Samtskheand adjoining regions of southwestern Georgia. Colchis was colonized by Greek settlers from Miletus and subsequently fellunder the sway of Mithradates VI Eupator, king of Pontus. The campaigns of the Roman general Pompey the Great led in 66 BC tothe establishment of Roman hegemony over Iberia and to direct Roman rule over Colchis and the rest of Georgia’s Black Sealittoral.

Georgia embraced Christianity about the year 330; its conversion is attributed to a holy captive woman, St. Nino. During the nextthree centuries, Georgia was involved in the con䥴ict between Rome—and its successor state, the Byzantine Empire—and thePersian Sāsānian dynasty. Lazica on the Black Sea (incorporating the ancient Colchis) became closely bound to Byzantium. Iberiapassed under Persian control, though toward the end of the 5th century a hero arose in the person of King Vakhtang Gorgaslani(Gorgasal), a ruler of legendary valour who for a time reasserted Georgia’s national sovereignty. The Sāsānian monarch KhosrowI (reigned 531–579) abolished the Iberian monarchy, however. For the next three centuries, local authority was exercised by themagnates of each province, vassals successively of Persia (Iran), of Byzantium, and, after AD 654, of the Arab caliphs, whoestablished an emirate in Tbilisi. (See Iran, ancient.)

Toward the end of the 9th century, Ashot I (the Great), of the Bagratid dynasty, settled at Artanuji in Tao (southwestern Georgia),receiving from the Byzantine emperor the title of kuropalates (“guardian of the palace”). In due course, Ashot pro䥜ted from theweakness of the Byzantine emperors and the Arab caliphs and set himself up as hereditary prince in Iberia. King Bagrat III(reigned 975–1014) later united all the principalities of eastern and western Georgia into one state. Tbilisi, however, was notrecovered from the Muslims until 1122, when it fell to King David IV (Aghmashenebeli, “the Builder”; reigned 1089–1125).

The zenith of Georgia’s power and prestige was reached during the reign (1184–1213) of Queen Tamar, whose realm stretchedfrom Azerbaijan to the borders of Cherkessia (now in southern Russia) and from Erzurum (in modern Turkey) to Ganja (modernGäncä, Azerbaijan), forming a pan-Caucasian empire, with Shirvan and Trabzon as vassals and allies.

The invasions of Transcaucasia by the Mongols from 1220 onward, however, brought Georgia’s golden age to an end. EasternGeorgia was reduced to vassalage under the Mongol Il-Khanid dynasty of the line of Hülegü, while Imereti, as the land to thewest of the Suram range was called, remained independent under a separate line of Bagratid rulers. There was a partialresurgence during the reign (1314–46) of King Giorgi V of Georgia, known as “the Brilliant,” but the onslaughts of the Turkicconqueror Timur between 1386 and 1403 dealt blows to Georgia’s economic and cultural life from which the kingdom neverrecovered. The last king of united Georgia was Alexander I (1412–43), under whose sons the realm was divided into squabblingprincedoms.

The fall of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 isolated Georgia from western Christendom.In 1510 the Ottomans invaded Imereti and sacked the capital, Kʿutʿaisi. Soon afterward, Shah Ismāʿīl I of Iran (Persia) invadedKartli. Ivan IV (the Terrible) and other Muscovite tsars showed interest in the little Christian kingdoms of Georgia, but the

History

Origins of the Georgian nation

Medieval Georgia

Turkish and Persian domination

Kartli. Ivan IV (the Terrible) and other Muscovite tsars showed interest in the little Christian kingdoms of Georgia, but theRussians were powerless to stop the Muslim powers—Ṣava䥜d Iran and the Ottoman Empire, both near their zenith—frompartitioning the country and oppressing its inhabitants. In 1578 the Ottomans overran the whole of Transcaucasia and seizedTbilisi, but they were subsequently driven out by Iran’s Shah ʿAbbās I (reigned 1587–1629), who deported many thousands of theChristian population to distant regions of Iran. There was a period of respite under the viceroys of the house of Mukhran, whogoverned at Tbilisi under the aegis of the shahs from 1658 until 1723. The most notable Mukhranian ruler was Vakhtang VI,regent of Kartli from 1703 to 1711 and then king, with intervals, until 1723. Vakhtang was an eminent lawgiver and introducedthe printing press to Georgia; he had the Georgian annals edited by a commission of scholars. The collapse of the Ṣafaviddynasty in 1722, however, led to a fresh Ottoman invasion of Georgia. The Ottomans were expelled by the Persian conquerorNādir Shah, who gave Kartli to Tʿeimuraz II (1744–62), one of the Kakhian line of the Bagratids. When Tʿeimuraz died, his sonErekle II reunited the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti and made a brave attempt at erecting a Caucasian multinational state basedon Georgia. Imereti under King Solomon I (1752–84) succeeded in 䥜nally throwing o䰔 the domination of the declining OttomanEmpire.

Raids by Lezgian mountaineers from Dagestan, economic stringency, and other di䧴culties impelled Erekle to adopt a pro-Russian orientation. On July 24, 1783, he concluded with Catherine II (the Great) the Treaty of Georgievsk, whereby Russiaguaranteed Georgia’s independence and territorial integrity in return for Erekle’s acceptance of Russian suzerainty. Yet Georgiaalone faced the Persian Āghā Moḥammad Khan, 䥜rst of the Qājār dynasty. Tbilisi was sacked in 1795, and Erekle died in 1798. Hisinvalid son Giorgi XII sought to hand over the kingdom unconditionally into the care of the Russian emperor Paul, but both rulersdied before this could be implemented. In 1801 Alexander I rea䧴rmed Paul’s decision to incorporate Kartli and Kakheti into theRussian Empire. Despite the treaty of 1783, the Bagratid line was deposed and replaced by Russian military governors whodeported the surviving members of the royal house and provoked several popular uprisings. Imereti was annexed in 1810,followed by Guria, Mingrelia, Svaneti, and Abkhazia in 1829, 1857, 1858, and 1864, respectively. The Black Sea ports of Potʿi andBatʿumi and areas of southwestern Georgia under Ottoman rule were taken by Russia in successive wars by 1877–78.

By waging war on the Lezgian clansmen of Dagestan and on Iran and the Ottomans, the Russians ensured the corporate survivalof the Georgian nation. Under Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, who served with distinction as viceroy (1845–54),commerce and trade 䥴ourished. Following the liberation of the Russian serfs in 1861, the Georgian peasants also receivedfreedom from 1864 onward, though on terms regarded as burdensome. The decay of patriarchy was accelerated by the spreadof education and European in䥴uences. A railway linked Tbilisi with Potʿi from 1872, and mines, factories, and plantations weredeveloped by Russian, Armenian, and Western entrepreneurs. Peasant discontent, the growth of an urban working class, and thedeliberate policy of Russi䥜cation and forced assimilation of minorities practiced by Emperor Alexander III (1881–94) fosteredradical agitation among the workers and nationalism among the intelligentsia. The tsarist system permitted no organizedpolitical activity, but social issues were debated in journals, works of 䥜ction, and local assemblies.

The leader of the national revival in Georgia was Prince Ilia Chavchavadze, leader of a literary and social movement dubbed thePirveli Dasi, or First Group. The Meore Dasi, or Second Group, led by Giorgi Tseretʿeli, was more liberal in its convictions, but itpaled before the Mesame Dasi, or Third Group, an illegal Social Democratic party founded in 1893. The Third Group professedMarxist doctrines, and from 1898 it included among its members Joseph Dzhugashvili, who later took the byname Joseph Stalin.When the Mensheviks—a branch of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party—gained control of the group, Stalin leftGeorgia.

The 1905 Revolution in Russia led to widespread disturbances and guerrilla 䥜ghting in Georgia, later suppressed by Russiangovernment Cossack troops with indiscriminate brutality. After the Russian Revolution of February 1917 the Transcaucasianregion—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—was ruled from Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and known as the Ozakom. TheBolshevik coup later that year forced the predominantly Menshevik politicians of Transcaucasia to reluctantly secede from Russiaand form the Transcaucasian Commissariat. The local nationalisms, combined with the pressure brought on by an Ottomanadvance from the west during World War I (1914–18), brought about the breakdown of the Transcaucasian federation. On May26, 1918, Georgia set up an independent state and placed itself under the protection of Germany, the senior partner of theCentral Powers, but the victory of the Allies at the end of 1918 led to occupation of Georgia by the British. The Georgians viewedAnton Ivanovich Denikin’s counterrevolutionary White Russians, who enjoyed British support, as more dangerous than theBolsheviks. They refused to cooperate in the e䰔ort to restore the tsarist imperial order, and British forces evacuated Batʿumi inJuly 1920.

Georgia’s independence was recognized de facto by the Allies in January 1920, and the Russo-Georgian treaty of May 1920 brie䥴yresulted in Soviet-Georgian cooperation.

Refused entry into the League of Nations, Georgia gained de jure recognition from the Allies in January 1921. Within a month theRed Army—without Lenin’s approval but under the orders of two Georgian Bolsheviks, Stalin and Grigory KonstantinovichOrdzhonikidze—entered Georgia and installed a Soviet regime.

After Georgia was established as a Soviet republic, Stalin and Ordzhonikidze incorporated it into the Transcaucasian SovietFederated Socialist Republic. The still-popular Georgian Social Democrats organized a rebellion in 1924, but it was brutallysuppressed by Stalin.

National revival

Incorporation into the U.S.S.R.

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suppressed by Stalin.

During Stalin’s despotic rule (1928–53), Georgia su䰔ered from repression of all expressions of nationalism, the forcedcollectivization of peasant agriculture, and the purging of those communists who had led the Soviet republic in its 䥜rst decade.Stalin installed his Georgian comrade Lavrenty Beria as party chief, 䥜rst in Georgia and later over all of Transcaucasia. Even afterBeria was transferred to Moscow to head the secret police, the republic was tightly controlled from the Kremlin. In the Sovietperiod, Georgia changed from an overwhelmingly agrarian country to a largely industrial, urban society. Meanwhile, Georgianlanguage and literature were promoted, and a national intelligentsia grew in number and in䥴uence. After Stalin’s death, afreewheeling “second economy” developed, which supplied goods and services not otherwise available.

Under the reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, Georgia moved swiftly toward independence. The formerdissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia led a coalition called the Round Table to victory in parliamentary elections in October 1990. AfterGeorgia declared independence on April 9, 1991, Gamsakhurdia was elected president. But Gamsakhurdia’s policies soon drovemany of his supporters into opposition, and in late 1991 civil war broke out. In January 1992 Gamsakhurdia was deposed andreplaced by the Military Council, which subsequently gave power to the State Council headed by Eduard Shevardnadze, formerSoviet foreign minister and one-time 䥜rst secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia. In October, 95 percent of voters electedShevardnadze to serve as chair of the Supreme Council, Georgia’s legislature, a position then tantamount to the country’spresident.

David Marshall Lang

Ronald Grigor Suny

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At the same time, secessionist movements—particularly in South Ossetia and Abkhazia—erupted invarious parts of the country. In 1992 Abkhaziareinstated its 1925 constitution and declaredindependence, which the international communityrefused to recognize. In late 1993 Georgia joined theCommonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a looseconfederation of former Soviet republics; following acease-䥜re reached with Abkhazia in 1994, CISpeacekeepers were deployed to the region, althoughviolence was ongoing. Georgia later signed anassociation agreement with the European Union,joined the Council of Europe and the World TradeOrganization, and became a partner in the NorthAtlantic Treaty Organization.

In 1995 a new constitution, which created a strongpresident, was enacted, and in NovemberShevardnadze was elected to that o䧴ce with 75percent of the vote, and his party, the Citizens’ Unionof Georgia (CUG), won 107 of the parliament’s 231seats. In legislative elections four years later, the CUGwon an absolute majority, and in 2000 Shevardnadzewas reelected president with nearly 80 percent of thevote. Accusations that he condoned widespread

corruption and that his party engaged in rampant election fraud haunted Shevardnadze’s administration. In 2003 former justiceminister Mikheil Saakashvili, the head of the United National Movement (UNM), lead a peaceable uprising—termed the “RoseRevolution”—that drove Shevardnadze from power. Saakashvili was elected president the following year and immediatelyopened a campaign against corruption, sought to stabilize the economy, and attempted to secure the country against ethnicstrife.

Because of a pattern of human rights abuses and a growing sense of authoritarianism, the administration of PresidentSaakashvili was shortly confronted by growing—if loosely knit—opposition. Journalists and international observers noted thatthe country’s freedom of speech practices, though protected by law, were susceptible to in䥴uence by indirect pressure tactics,and Saakashvili’s campaign against graft was criticized for its focus on the president’s opposition while corrupt practices wereallowed to persist among administration associates. Highly critical of the fraud and corruption he had noted among defenseo䧴cials was Irakli Okruashvili, an opponent of the administration and its onetime defense minister. During his tenureOkruashvili had made public his observation of graft so widespread among armed forces o䧴cials that the army itself had falleninto a poor state of order. In 2007 he established an opposition party, Movement for United Georgia, and appeared on Imedi TV,

an independent television station, to issue a number of direct accusations against President Saakashvili.

Independence

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an independent television station, to issue a number of direct accusations against President Saakashvili.

Though the statements served as a rallying point for a largely disorganized opposition, they resulted in Okruashvili’s arrest onextortion charges of his own. His televised appearance a number of days later, in which he pled guilty to the charges against himand retracted his earlier accusations, was largely held by others among Saakashvili’s opposition to be the result of duress; thecircumstances under which he left the country following his release on bail were unclear.

These events contributed to the culmination of a number of points of criticism against Saakashvili and his once-populargovernment, providing opposition activists with the opportunity to arrange for massive demonstrations—thought perhaps to beas large as those that had previously brought Saakashvili to power—in Tbilisi in early November 2007. Though Saakashvili initiallymet the protests with several days’ silence, forcible measures were soon employed in breaking up the demonstrations, and itwas announced that a potential coup had been thwarted. Saakashvili’s declaration of a 15-day state of emergency— criticizedboth locally and abroad—was quickly followed by his call for early elections in January. Though emergency rule was formallylifted a week after it had begun, Imedi TV remained o䰔 the air; ongoing demonstrations called for its return to broadcast, which䥜nally took place approximately one month later. In late November 2007, Saakashvili resigned as president as required by law inpreparation for the early elections.

In January 2008 Saakashvili was reelected, narrowly attaining the majority needed to forego a second round of voting. Althoughopposition groups criticized the process as 䥴awed, the election was largely deemed free and fair by international monitors, whonoted only isolated procedural violations and instances of fraud.

Meanwhile, the simmering con䥴ict between Georgiaand its breakaway regions had returned to the forefollowing the 2004 election of Saakashvili, whoprioritized Georgian territorial unity and the reductionof ethnic strife. Although in mid-2004 Saakashvilisuccessfully forced the leader of the autonomousrepublic of Ajaria from power and returned thatrepublic to central government control, hostilitiescontinued in the territories of Abkhazia and SouthOssetia. O䰔ers by Saakashvili in 2005 to discussautonomy for South Ossetia within the Georgian statewere rejected, and in late 2006 the region reiteratedits desire for independence through an uno䧴cialreferendum. The ongoing con䥴ict also exacerbatedGeorgia’s tense relationship with neighbouring Russia,which Georgia accused of providing support for theseparatists.

In August 2008 the con䥴ict with South Ossetia swelledsharply as Georgia engaged with local separatist䥜ghters as well as with Russian forces that hadcrossed the border with the stated intent to defendRussian citizens and peacekeeping troops already inthe region. In the days that followed the initialoutbreak, Georgia declared a state of war as Russian

forces swiftly took control of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital; violence continued to spread elsewhere in the country asRussian forces also moved through the breakaway region of Abkhazia in northwestern Georgia. Georgia and Russia signed a

French-brokered cease-䥜re that called for the

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A Georgian opposition protestor standing in a makeshift jail cell erected outside thepresidential …

Vano Shlamov—AFP/Getty Images

French-brokered cease-䥜re that called for thewithdrawal of Russian forces, but tensions continued.Russia’s subsequent recognition of the independenceof Abkhazia and South Ossetia was condemned byGeorgia and met with criticism from other members ofthe international community. In the midst of itshostilities with Russia, Georgia announced its intentionto withdraw from the CIS and called upon othermember states to do likewise; the following yearGeorgia formally withdrew from the association.

Saakashvili continued to face domestic challenges aspolitical tensions mounted in 2009. Opposition partiescalled on Saakashvili to resign, and in April a series ofdaily demonstrations was launched. Saakashvilipledged increased reforms and called for earlyelections to be held in May 2010, but he refused tostep down. Although the daily protests of the springdwindled, new demonstrations were launched towardthe end of 2009, and calls for Saakashvili’s resignationpersisted as political tension continued to simmer.

In 2012 Saakashvili’s UNM faced a challenge from thenewly formed opposition coalition, Georgian Dream,led by Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. Althoughpolls showed the UNM with a strong lead severalweeks before the October parliamentary election, theparty’s position was damaged in late September whenthe release of videos showing Georgian prison guardsbeating and sexually abusing prisoners provokedwidespread public anger. When preliminary electionresults indicated a resounding victory for the GeorgianDream coalition, Saakashvili, set to remain in o䧴ce aspresident until the end of his term in 2013, concededhis party’s defeat and acknowledged Ivanishvili’s rightto become prime minister.

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"Georgia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 19 Apr. 2016 <http://www.britannica.com/place/Georgia>.