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Georgia Social and Intellectual Developments
By 1850 the social and political position of the Georgian
nobility, for centuries the foundation of Georgian society, had
deteriorated. A new worker class began to exert social pressure
in Georgian population centers. Because the nobility still
represented Georgian national interests, its decline meant that
the Armenian merchant class, which had been a constructive part
of urban life since the Middle Ages, gained greater economic
power within Georgia. At the same time, Russian political
hegemony over the Caucasus now went unopposed by Georgians. In
response to these conditions, Georgian intellectuals borrowed the
thinking of Russian and West European political philosophers,
forging a variety of theoretical salvations for Georgian
nationalism that had little relation to the changing economic
conditions of the Georgian people.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Russia, fearing
increased Armenian power in Georgia, asserted direct control over
Armenian religious and political institutions. In the first
decade of the twentieth century, a full-fledged Georgian national
liberation movement was led by Marxist followers of the Russian
Social Democrat Party. Marxist precepts fell on fertile soil in
Georgia; by 1900 migration from rural areas and the growth of
manufacturing had generated a fairly cohesive working class led
by a new generation of Georgian intellectuals who called for
elimination of both the Armenian bourgeoisie and the Russian
government bureaucracy. The main foe, however, was tsarist
autocracy.
Data as of March 1994
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