Georgia gifted unique correspondence between 1st Georgian republic and League of Nations
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Thursday, June 13
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has been handed historic, unique and ‘dramatic’ correspondence between the officials of the First Democratic Republic of Georgia and the League of Nations, the first worldwide intergovernmental organization created after the First World War whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.
Zurabishvili said in Geneva on Wednesday, where the materials were preserved at the UN office archive, that the correspondence is “dramatic,” as they were made shortly before Georgia’s occupation by the Soviet Union in 1921.
“Thank you, Michael Moller, [Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva] for a fantastic gift, the historical correspondence between Georgian Ambassador to France Akaki Chkhenkeli and Sir Eric Drummond, first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, straight from the UN library,“ Zurabishvili tweeted.
The materials are photocopies of the correspondence, as the UN archive has been digitalized.
The Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG) existed from May 1918 to February 1921 and was the first modern establishment of the republic of Georgia.
The DRG was created after the collapse of the Russian Empire that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Facing permanent internal and external problems, the young state was unable to withstand invasion by the Russian Red Army, and collapsed between February and March 1921 and became a Soviet republic.
Salome Zurabishvili’s ancestor Niko Nikoladze was one of the top figures of the First Democratic Republic of Georgia, who had to leave the country in 1921 and live as an emigrant in France, that is why Georgia now has a French-born president.
