Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/94

 fact demonstrated the firmness as well as the circumspection and energy of the Georgian Government. It also showed the shamelessness! of the Communists who were never tired of waxing indignant over the terrorism in Georgia, because a few Communist conspirators had sometimes been arrested and condemned to imprisonment, or some Communist newspaper,which spread false news had been suspended for a few days.

In the few months prior to February of this year, a new storm broke over the small, but undaunted Republic. At the end of September, 1920 the Turkish Nationalists invaded Armenia.

Soon Russian troops from Azerbaijan proceeded to Armenia, in order to seize the country and transform it into a vassal of Russia. Both in Armenia and Azerbaijan Russian troops assembled in a threatening guise, on the borders of Georgia. This fact compelled the latter to mobilise also.

The language of the Russian Representative in Tiflis became increasingly threatening. In the middle of December, a conspiracy was discovered in Tiflis, the object of which was to provoke street-fightngfightng [sic] in that town, which would furnish a pretext for the invasion of Georgia by the Russian troops watching on the border, 60 kilometres from Tiflis. Among the conspirators, officials of the Russian Embassy were again discovered.

This would have justified the Georgian Government in giving Herr Scheimann, the Russian ambassador in Tiflis, his passports, but it contented itself with asking Lenin to recall Scheimann and replace him. by another person, because, his activities disturbed the good relations between the two States.

But Scheimann remained.

Thus at the beginning of January, the situation of the small Republic had become very troubled.

The Bolshevist invasion which threatened in the spring if the Moscow Dictators had not themselves been checked, has now come sooner than was expected. The fate of Georgia only depended on the strength of her arms.