Perspectives on the August 1924 Uprising in Georgia

Three years after the forceful imposition of Soviet rule in Georgia, the Bolshevik leadership there, itself fractious and lacking a broad base of popular support, faced a large-scale armed uprising in August 1924. Making use of a range of recently available and underutilized primary sources from the period as well as the existing secondary literature, this article considers the 1924 uprising in Georgia from several different perspectives – of the Georgian Government-in-Exile in France, of the leadership of the Communist Party in Georgia, of the Georgian secret police, the Cheka , and of the central Bolshevik leadership in Moscow – in order to explore the likely causes and consequences of these events.