Noe Zhordania

Noe Zhordania (ნოე ჟორდანია, also transliterated as Jordania) (January 2, 1868 – January 11, 1953) was a Georgian journalist and Menshevik politician. He played an eminent role in the Social Democratic revolutionary movement in Imperial Russia, and later chaired the government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia from July 24 1918 until March 18 1921, when the Soviet Russian Red Army invasion of Georgia forced him into exile to France where he led the government-in-exile until his death in 1953.

Early career

Noe Zhordania was born on March 9, 1869, to a petty landowner in the village of Lanchkhuti in Guria, western Georgia, then part of the Kutais guberniya of Imperial Russia. Having graduated from the Theological Seminary at Tiflis, he entered the Warsaw Veterinarian Institute.

Returning to Georgia, he propagated Marxist ideas among the workers of Tiflis and in the 1890s emerged as a leader of the first legal Marxist organization in Georgia called "Mesame Dasi" (the Third Group). In 1894, he was tried by the Russian authorities for his participation in the "League of Freedom of Georgia". Elected a delegate to the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903, he sided with the Menshevik faction and gained significant influence among them. In 1905 he edited a Tiflis-based Georgian Menshevik newspaper Sotsial-Demokratia known for its fierce attacks on the Bolsheviks. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he went against the armed uprising and advocated the creation of a legal workers’ party. On the 4th Congress of the RSDLP in 1906, he supported the idea of land municipalization. The same year, he was elected to the First State Duma for the Tiflis Governorate and became a spokesman for the Social Democratic faction. The 5th Congress of the RSDLP elected him into the Central Committee where he maintained his post until 1912. Having signed the "Viborg declaration", a protest against the dissolution of the First Duma, in December 1907, he was sentenced to three months of imprisonment. In mid-1912, he edited a Baku-based legal Menshevik newspaper Nashe Slovo. In 1914, he collaborated with Leon Trotsky in the magazine Borba where he published a series of articles on the question of nationalities.

Revolution and independence

During the World War I years, he maintained a “defensist” position and worked for Plekhanov’s Samozaschita (1916). After the February Revolution of 1917, he chaired the Tiflis soviet and on March 6 1917 was elected a commissar of the executive committee of the Tiflis Soviet. In August 1917, he was elected to the Central Committee of the RSDLP(u[nited]). On the session of the Tiflis Soviet of September 3 1917, he made a speech calling the workers not to succumb to the Bolshevist sentiments, but rather to fight for the establishment of a parliamentary republic. In October 1917, he joined the all-Russian Pre-Parliament, but soon became disillusioned in it and returned to his native Georgia. On November 26, 1917, he became a chair of the Presidium of the National Council of Georgia and played a leading role in the consolidation of the Menshevik power in Georgia. His wavering position on the formal secession from Bolshevist Russia ended in May 1918, and Zhordania effectively chaired a parliament session which declared the independent Democratic Republic of Georgia. On July 24, 1918, he became a Head of the Government of Georgia. Within the three years of rule, his government organized a successful land reform, adopted comprehensive social and political legislation, and cultivated widespread international ties, enabling Georgia to become the only Transcaucasian nation to earn de jure recognition from Soviet Russia and the Western powers. Apart from a massive peasant support, his government managed to gain, through combining socialism, democracy, and a moderate form of nationalism, the loyalty of intellectual élites and nobility, and played a crucial role in transforming Georgia into the modern political nation. However, the invasion of the Soviet armies in February-March 1921 toppled down the Georgian government, forcing Zhordania and many of his colleagues to take refuge in France where he led the government-in-exile and continued his efforts to earn the international recognition of the Soviet occupation of Georgia and a foreign support for the Georgian independence cause until his death in Paris in 1953.

In 1923, Noe Zhordania made an appeal to Washington on which he said:

In the twentieth century, before the eyes of the civilized world, I appeal to the conscience of civilized nations and all honest people to condemn this persecution of a small nation and the criminals inspiring and carrying out these barbarous acts — the Bolshevik Government.

He also said in the appeal that Chekists had killed without trial hundreds of people, including women and children, many of them from the Georgian intellectual class.

Zhordania was buried on Leuville-sur-Orge Cemetery in France.

Works

• Noi Nikolaevich Zhordania, My Life, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, California, 1968, ISBN 0817940316

References

• Mikaberidze, Alexander (ed., 2007), Zhordania, Noe Dictionary of Georgian National Biography. Retrieved on May 24, 2007.
• Noi Zhordania Hronos. Retrieved on May 24, 2007.

Works

• Noi Nikolaevich Zhordania, My Life, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, California, 1968