he article describes a little known area of cooperation between representatives of the Georgian revolutionary Socialist-Federalist Part and Japanese intelligence during the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905). The formation process of political parties and organizations in the Caucasus, and especially in Georgia, that coincided with the war between Russia and Japan, turned out to have a significant influence on members of Japanese intelligence. They chose to cooperate with those Georgian political activists who, while opting for a federal system in the Russian empire, perceived it only as a first step on Georgia’s – and indeed the whole Caucasus’ – path to independence. Undoubtedly, Tokyo realized the fact that the Caucasus region, as well as Poland and Finland, constituted a sort of “Achilles’ heel” of the Russian empire. Nevertheless, the activities of Caucasian revolutionaries and insurgents could only be successful if coordinated with the liberation-revolution struggle of different nations of the empire.
Simultaneously, the Japanese attempted to direct the Georgian’s anti-imperial struggle towards a national solidarity. They tried to suggest to the insurgents that they conduct their revolutionary actions solely against representatives of the imperial administration and bureaucratic institutions and not against representatives of the propertied class among the local population – who, in their opinion, were also the insurgent’s allies in their struggle for liberation. All this was met with understanding from the Georgian Socialist-Federalists, who at that time were the only political party with a clear national program. Within the limits of their possibilities, they strived to persuade the Georgian Social-Democrats to also adopt this platform of action. At the time, the Social-Democrats had opted for centralism and national nihilism.
From a historical point of view, diversionary actions – like sending arms and revolutionary literature to the Caucasus – played a positive role in the course of the 1905 revolution. They were a significant contribution because, despite the fact that the revolution was defeated, the Tsarist autocracy was forced to make extensive concessions which started the irreversible processes, ending in the final fall of the monarchy in February 1917. These actions had an important influence on those events.
Japanese-Caucasian cooperation in 1904-1905, was not limited to strictly technical diversionary activity; it shows significant elements of political cooperation, becoming an integral – though undeservedly forgotten – part of the national-liberation struggle of the nations of the Caucasus.
