Russian-Georgian War of 1921 and the Trench №4

Abstract

The Russian-Georgian War of 1921 is one of the most important and tragic episodes in Georgia's modern history, an episode that ended the existence of the First Democratic Republic of Georgia and plunged the country into a 70-year Soviet experiment. For Georgian historiography, a comprehensive study of this war is a very important issue, this applies equally to the political and diplomatic components of this war, as well as its culmination - the military component. In 2017, an archeological expedition lead by Zurab Bragvadze explored the right section of one of the most important positions of the Tbilisi battle during the Russian-Georgian war of 1921, the T abakhmela’s trench №4. We compared the materials obtained by archaeologists with the archival documents and memoir sources obtained by us. The research paper consists of two parts. In the first part, based on Georgian and Russian written sources, the ongoing combat operations on the Trench №4, (the same strategic height 1046) including February 19-24, are investigated. This part of the paper shows that a particularly large battle for the trench took place on 24 February, as described by Georgian soldiers who took part in the battle, also this is confirmed by Russian historiography and documents. This information contradicts a small amount of ammunition found during archeological excavations; however, it is noteworthy that only one part of the first strip of the three-lane trench was excavated, which is only a small insignificant part of the entire position (Consisting of a three-lane defensive line and the space between these lanes). At the same time, it is not excluded that the collected masses will be reloaded after the battle, which was an adopted practice at the time, as well as the collection of broken and damaged weapons for repair from the battlefield. Therefore, the obtained scarce material cannot be used as an evidence that there was no major clash on the trench. The second part of the study summarizes the relevance of the information obtained by archaeologists to the archival information or memoirs we have found about the lack of ammunition and types of ammunition. Despite the scarcity of firearms obtained in this regard, their diversity clearly confirms the information preserved in written sources the shortage of ammunition and the diversity of rifles and machine guns systems.