Sochi conflict

Georgia Military support: Russian SFSR White movement Yepifan KovtyukhEfrem Eshba The Sochi conflict was a three-party armed conflict which involved the counterrevolutionary White Russian forces, Bolshevik Red Army and the Democratic Republic of Georgia, each of which sought control over the strategic Black Sea town of Sochi.

According to Peter Kenez, "The collapse of the Turkish front, which resulted directly from the fall of the Provisional Government, meant a great danger to this area: Georgians and Armenians, traditional enemies of the Turks, remained defenseless.

Politicians formed a federal government, the Transcaucasian Commissariat, with the participation of Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Russians in order to cope with the immediate problems of the area and to organize some sort of defense."

Kenez states, "Whatever the Georgian Mensheviks felt about the Germans, the Republic desperately needed their help; they were the only force with the means to restrain the Turks.

In March 1918, local Bolsheviks in Abkhazia under the leadership of Nestor Lakoba, a close associate of Joseph Stalin, capitalized on agrarian disturbances and, supported by the revolutionary peasant militias, kiaraz, won power in Sukhumi in April 1918.

The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, which claimed the region as its part, sanctioned the suppression of the revolt and, on May 17, the National Guard of Georgia ousted the Bolshevik commune in Sukhumi.

[1] On September 18, a Council for Sochi (a legislature formed by the local Mensheviks and SRs in August) declared the unification of the city and its district to the Democratic Republic of Georgia as a "temporary measure" against the threats from both Lenin and Denikin.

"[1] On February 6, 1919, the Georgian troops were forced back to the Bzyb river with their commander General Konyev (Koniashvili), and his staff captured by the Russians at Gagra.

On March 14, 1919, a Georgian delegation presented at Paris peace conference a project of the borders of the country in which it demanded a part of the former Black Sea province up to the small river Makopse 14 km southeast to the town Tuapse.

Soldiers of the People's Guard of Georgia and their commander Valiko Jugheli (far Left) in Gagra, 1919