An eye-witness account of the Russian/European conflict at the heart of WWII, relevant today as war rages again along similar battle lines in Ukraine, Crimea and the Caucasus.
In a corner of 20th-century history almost unknown to the English-speaking public, anti-Stalinist Georgians and anti-Hitlerite Germans worked as an arm of the GermanResistance, disavowing Hitler's inhuman "East Policy" mandates and seeking to liberateCaucasian nations from Stalin. Allies Against Two Evils: Georgian P.O.W.s in WWII'sBergmann Units and the Quest to Liberate the Caucasus from Russian Imperialismpeople, and why they made the alliances they did.
Gabliani's memoir, written in English and published several years ago in Georgia,contrasts the vision of an ascendant Russian Empire and a decaying West with historicalEuropean-Georgian cooperation and the centuries-long quest of the Georgian people forself-determination.
The preface by Georgian-German scholar and former head of the GeorgianNational Library, Alexander Kartozia examines the legacy of Givi Gabliani and theGabliani family from the highland province of Svaneti, keepers of 12th century artifacts from Georgia's Golden Age and leaders of the 1920s resistance insurgency against Soviet invasion.
Gabliani envisions a future Europe supporting a trans-Caucasian alliance with mixed races and religions living together equally in tolerance and prosperous harmony, as they had for millennia in Georgia. As a spokesman for the POWs, he coordinates with the Georgian exile government in occupied Paris and Berlin, finding a secret effort afoot in occupied France to save Georgian and other Eastern European Jews. Today,Gabliani's war memoir centers our attention on an active fault line. Across the great conflicts of the twentieth century that undergird and still define the region between Russia, with its imperialist ambitions, and the Black Sea, Georgia and the Georgian people appear as some of the most likely partners for international efforts toward peace.
