The 1918–1921 independence, though short-lived, had played a crucial role in the national awakening of Georgia, winning a popular support to the ruling Georgian Social Democratic (Menshevik) Party.

The new Bolshevik government, led by the Georgian Revkom (Revolutionary Committee), enjoyed so little support among the population that it faced the distinct prospect of insurrection and civil war.

Hardliners led by Sergo Ordzhonikidze, head of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee (Zakkraikom) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Joseph Stalin, People's Commissar for Nationalities for the RSFSR and himself a Georgian, launched a series of measures aimed at the elimination of the last remnants of Georgia's self-rule.

[6] They imprisoned a number of clerics, including Catholicos Patriarch Ambrose who was arrested and tried for having sent a letter of protest to the 1922 Genoa Conference, in which he described the conditions under which Georgia was living since the Red Army invasion and begged for the "help of the civilized world".

Colonel Kakutsa Cholokashvili,[8] who had led the revolt, managed to escape to the neighboring Chechnya, whence he made several inroads into Georgia, preventing the Bolsheviks from gaining a foothold in the eastern Georgian mountains.

Several members of the former Democratic Republic of Georgia government[9] returned clandestinely from exile, including the former Minister of Agriculture, Noe Khomeriki,[10] as well as the former commander of the National Guard, Valiko Jugheli.

They also hoped that the Georgian revolt would further other Caucasian peoples to rise in arms, but the secret negotiations with Armenian and Azeri nationalists yielded no results and even more promising talks with the Muslim Chechen leader, Ali Mitayev, were finally aborted due to mass arrests and repressions in the North Caucasus.

The Georgian branch of the Soviet secret police, Cheka,[note 1] with recently appointed Deputy Chief Lavrentiy Beria playing a leading role, managed to penetrate the organization and carried out mass arrests.

[13] The Georgian Social Democratic (Menshevik) Party leaders Noe Khomeriki, Benia Chkhikvishvili,[14] and Valiko Jugheli too fell into the hands of the Cheka on 9 November 1923, 25 July 1924, and 6 August 1924, respectively.

Instructed by Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, Beria and his superior, Kvantaliani, actually encouraged the rebellion so they would have a pretext for eliminating all political opposition and avenging personal scores with their former rivals in Georgia.

The plan of the simultaneous uprising miscarried, however, and, through some misunderstanding, the mining town of Chiatura, western Georgia, rose in rebellion a day earlier, on 28 August.

Additional Red Army troops under the overall command of Semyon Pugachev were promptly sent in and Georgia's coastline was blockaded to prevent a landing of Georgian émigré groups.

The Red Army forces employed artillery and aviation to fight the guerrillas who still continued to offer resistance, especially in the province of Guria, a home region to many Georgian Social Democratic (Menshevik) Party leaders and thus overwhelmingly disloyal to Bolshevik rule.

[17] Following the setback suffered by the insurgents in the west, the epicenter of the revolt shifted into eastern Georgia, where, on 29 August, a large rebel force under Colonel Cholokashvili assaulted the Red Army barracks in Manglisi, on the southwestern approaches of Tiflis, but was driven back by Soviet troops, who had heavily fortified all strategic positions in and around the capital.

The suppression of the rebellion was accompanied by a full scale outbreak of the Red Terror, "unprecedented even in the most tragic moments of the revolution" as the French author Boris Souvarine puts it.

On 4 September, the Cheka discovered the rebels' chief headquarters at the Shio-Mgvime Monastery near the town of Mtskheta, and arrested Prince Andronikashvili, the Damkom chairman, and his associates Javakhishvili, Ishkhneli, Jinoria, and Bochorishvili.

The political guidance of the anti-revolt operations was effected by the GPU chief in Georgia, Solomon Mogilevsky,[note 2] and the repressions were largely supported by the Transcaucasian Central Committee.

Clara Zetkin, a notable German Social Democrat, attempted to counteract the negative publicity, visited Tiflis and then wrote a leaflet on Georgia, in which she claimed that only 320 persons had been shot.

[13] Nonetheless, the public outcry resulted in unpleasant repercussions for the central government in Moscow, prompting the Politburo to set up a special commission, led by Ordzhonikidze, to investigate the causes of the uprising and the Cheka activities during its elimination.

In early March 1925, the Chairman of the All-Union Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin, arrived in Georgia and called for the amnesty of the participants of the August 1924 insurrection, and for the suspension of religious persecutions.

Despite the fact that several leading academics, who sympathized with or even participated in the anti-Soviet movement, eventually distanced themselves from the idea of an armed revolt and even denounced it in a special statement, the university was purged of unreliable elements and placed under the complete control of the Communist Party.

"[32] As a result, the Communist Party of Georgia chose, for the time being, to use peaceful persuasion rather than armed coercion to extend their influence over the peasant masses, and to moderate the attempts to enforce collectivization.

"[34] With a new tide of independence feeling sweeping throughout Georgia in the late 1980s, the anti-Soviet fighters of 1924, particularly, the leading partisan officer Kakutsa Cholokashvili, emerged as a major symbol of Georgian patriotism and national resistance to Soviet rule.

The process of legal "rehabilitation" (exoneration) of the victims of the 1920s repressions began under Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of Glasnost ("openness") and was completed on 25 May 1992 decree issued by the State Council of the Republic of Georgia chaired by Eduard Shevardnadze.