GEORGIAN MILITARY OFFICERS AND COMMAND STAFF IN 1918

Abstract

The article discusses the general professional assessment of the officer corps and command staff of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, the difficulties and challenges that the country’s military organization was facing by 1918 in terms of staffing.
After the declaration of independence, the government of Georgia undertook a very difficult and responsible task of establishing and organizing a professional, regular army. It is a well-known fact that even in the Russian Caucasus Army
alone, there were so many talented and successful Georgian generals and officers who would adorn the army of any country. Unsurprisingly, for the Georgian military servicemen of the king’s army, with rare exceptions, the idea of national independence was accepted and most of them were ready to make a proper contribution to the reconstruction of the independent Georgian army. But here, too, there have often been appointments based on personal trust and sympathy by the ruling party in the selection and transfer of command staff, or, more directly, appointments and dismissals based on the principle of ideological and political credibility.
The Georgian Social-Democrats did not trust the former officers and generals of the Tsarist army not because of their professional qualities or national self consciousness, but because of their ideological incompatibility. After all, the vast majority of them belonged to the Georgian aristocratic circles and were considered “class enemies” by the Georgian orthodox Marxists. They did not know, did not feel and did not want the Georgian social democrats to understand that for the of ficer, the insignias and the military rank depicted on it were symbols of personal honor, uniform dignity and the way of fighting and not an expression of the whims of any social or political class. And these were the people, the military, some of whom, a little later, after the Soviet Union, had heroically sacrificed themselves in the struggle for the independence of the homeland, but not in the war, not on the battlefield, which was their professional duty, but they were shot by the Bolsheviks in Cheka’s ghettos and slaughterhouses, which they could freely avoid. They remained fully committed to their national and patriotic beliefs. They owed a sincere military duty to the homeland, god and the nation.