FURTHER READING Independent Georgia sets sail - cartoon from 'The Devil's Whip' satirical magazine, Tbilisi, 1919 1930s poster produced by tbe Georgian Bolsbeviks exborting tbe Georgian people to ''figbt against tbe kulaks and create a new, Socialist agriculture " Appendix: Oil, water & Mensheviks t would be improper to write about modern Georgia without a few words on the Caucasian oil industry, former and present. Azerbaijani I black gold and its transportation, has played a crucial role in the region's fortune, at every level of society- from railway tickets to opera houses. As I write, a new mood of optimism fills Georgia as oil again begins its tentative flow to the Black Sea ports from the large Caspian field (and to a lesser extent local deposits). Yet one cannot help but notice a curious similarity to the former Western oil investment and pipeline project of almost exactly a century ago. In 1874, Robert Nobel, brother of the Swedish inventor of dynamite Alfred, arrived in Baku shortly after the Russian government deregulated the fledgling Baku oil industry. He came looking for walnut to fulfil an arms contract for the Russian government. But instead of purchasing rifle-butts he bought an oil refinery. Together with another brother, Ludwig, the Nobels radically transformed the few hand-dug oil pits in the Baku area, effectively increasing Russia's total oil production from 600,000 barrels a year in 1874, to ten million a decade later. They also invested in a number of new refineries and, in this short time, successfully forced nearly all the American kerosine out of the Russian market. Having launched a major new industry the Nobels then needed to expand out into foreign markets, ahead of the American competition -John Rockefeller and his Standard Oil. Thus they initiated major investment into the Caucasian infrastructure. In the mid 1870s the people ofTbilisi still found it cheaper to import kerosine all 12,800 kilometres from America, than transport it the 546 from Baku. Ludwig Nobel ended the dislocation between East and West Caucasia once and for all when, in 1883, he entered into a financial partnership with the Rothschild family and completed the coast to coast railway link between Baku and Batum (Batumi) on the Black Sea coast. With the help of more Rothschild money he funded several other projects including the Batumi refinery. Then in 1889, to solve problems of delay on the painfully slow section over Georgia's Surami Mountains, he constructed a 67km pipeline. Not long after this the pipeline was expanded in both directions to cover the full distance, Baku to Batumi (completed in 1905). The same problem of transportation from the Caucasus oil-fields was also responsible for the birth-cry of another of the world's biggest companies: Shell. Its founder, Marcus Samuel, son of a shell merchant in London's East End, made his first trip to the region in 1890. He immediately realised the great potential of the Caspian fields and the same year devised a new bulk- Georgia: in the mountains of poetry tanker design - whose progeny he named after shells - 'Conch,' 'Clam,' 'Cowrie,' etc. Within a mere three years he had ten such ships, which he sailed through the new Suez Canal to the new Far Eastern markets. Today with curious fin-de-siecle coincidence, Western oil investment has again spread itself across Caucasian soil - already to the tune of over a billion dollars (30 billion are promised). Georgia will serve as the first transit corridor for 'early oil,' the first pipeline was scheduled to be finished in September 1998, terminating as a mooring out into the Black Sea at Supsa. It can deliver 115,000 barrels a day for transportation westward through the Bosphoros. The AIOC (Azerbaijan International Oil Company) consortium of companies has halved the political risk by proposing two pipeline routes - the second passing northward through Russia. The danger of terrorist attacks has been calculated into the economics of delivery. The decision was taken to include more, rather than less, of the local states, relying on safety in numbers. In the 19th and early 20th centuries oil brought significant riches, not only to the Rothschilds and Nobels, but also to cities like Baku, Batumi and, to a lesser extent, Tbilisi. The hope is it will again. In the early 20th century it led to a strong desire from the Western powers for stability in the region (British troops were stationed across the Caucasus). The same international pressure for Caucasian peace is now also expected. Whether it is strong enough to placate Russian and internal Caucasian jealousies over the contract awards remains to be seen - especially after the second attempt on Eduard Shevardnadze's life on the February 9th 1998. In the 1920s, the West, of course, failed in its quest for calm- although, it has to be said, not helped by the turmoil in Europe itself. Then, as today, Georgia's independence as a nation was preceded by a period of intense nationalistic sentiment - its prime stoker being the poet and banker Ilia Chavchavadze (murdered in 1907, probably by Tsarist agents). With independence this feeling, in both periods, dwindled. However here is the point where the parallels divide. The intellectual climate greeting the Western investment today is very different to that in the late 19th century. Then the Caucasus, particularly Georgia, was a spawning ground for furtive intellectual and revolutionary activity. Many educated in Tbilisi later became prominent Narodniks, Marxists, Anarchists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks. Publications that would never have survived the Tsarist secret police (Okhrana) in Russia, emerged from Baku and Tbilisi - like Lenin's Iskra ('The Spark'); the Anarchist weekly Nobati ('The Toxin'); and the satirical, semi-Menshevik Esmakis Matrakhi ('The Devil's Whip'). One young Bolshevik revolutionary codenamed 'Koba' -Stalin - said he owed the sharpening of his skills in 'revolutionary combat' to his early strike-raising experiences in Batumi and Baku. The emerging oil industry provided a perfect Capitalist foil for teeth-sharpening by these early Communists. The conditions of work undergone by the first oil employees were appalling- compulsory 12 to 14 hour days were common. The success Appendix of Stalin and others in organising strikes was a main factor in the decline of 'Russian oil.' In 1904, it supplied 31 per cent of the world's total petroleum; by 1913 it had dropped to 9 per cent. Today, after 70 years of Communist isolation, the will for revolution is gone. The psychological climate for re­ engagement with the West is very open. However this is accompanied by a dramatic, television-led rise in expectations. Comparisons of wealth will inevitably lead to feelings of injustice and jealousy - which will take every trick of modem marketing and social management to contain. One other result of that first oil boom and political backlash, was the Georgian Menshevik movement. Noe Ramishvili (who became Georgia's first Prime Minister on May 26th 1918), and Noe Zhordania (who took over until the Bolshevik invasion of February 1921) separated the Georgian leadership from the Russian Bolsheviks and followed the Menshevik ('minority') path set out by L. Martov. The Georgian Mensheviks are regarded by some as the world's first liberal Communist government (1918-1921). They accepted the creation of the Russian Duma after the 1905 October Revolution, and quickly found themselves attacked by the Bolsheviks for abandoning the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a ruling elite (Stalin daubed them "liberal constitutionalists"). They fascinated many prominent Socialists in England, including Ramsay MacDonald who visited independent Georgia with a delegation of prominent European Socialists and future prime ministers, in 1920. The Mensheviks nationalised the estates of the rich landowners and aristocrats but left the 'bourgeois order' and middle class more or less intact. Georgian was declared the official language of state and Russian was banned in the constituent assembly, courts and army. They also opened the first university in Tbilisi in 1918 and introduced the eight-hour working day. However their rule was frustrated from the start. Ridden with Bolshevik agitation, Georgia was also blockaded on two sides - by the Red Army, as well as the Russian Whites under General Denikin, to the north, and a hostile Armenia to the south. It suffered food shortages, a chronically imbalanced budget and tear-away inflation outdoing even the 1995 coupon. In 1919, the government issued 50 kopek notes (the maximum being 500 roubles)- by the time of 1924 monetary reform under the Bolsheviks, 250 million rouble notes were not uncommon. Added to these troubles came an invasion by the Armenians- repulsed in December 1918. However, according to the widely respected Georgian scholar, David Marshall Lang, the Menshevik experiment had started off well and, but for the Bolshevik invasion, may have succeeded. The parallels with its policies and today's continue right up to the moment its leaders had to flee the country. In late 1920, the Georgian government sent a delegation to Western Europe which managed to secure promises of loans and concessions from Britain, concerning the Batumi naval base and oil refineries. In Italy they signed a deal for coal extraction near Sukhumi, and in France an agreement for silk production. 301 Select bibliography Allen, W E. D., A History of the Georgian People, Kegan Paul, 1932. Allen, WE. D. & Muratov P., Caucasian Battlefields: 1828-1921, Cambridge University Press, 1953. Allen, W. E D., Russian Embassies to the Georgian Kings, 2 vols, Cambridge University Press, 1970. Ascherson, Neal, The Black Sea, Jonathan Cape, 199 5. Avalov, Zurab, The Independence of Georgia in International Politics, 1918-1921, Headly Brothers, 1940. Aves, Jonathan, Georgia: From Chaos to Stability, Chatham House (RIIA), 1995.