CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VIII (2) ContEurVIII2 | Page 23

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VIII (2)
started to openly express its pretensions not only to Lori, but also to
Akhalkalaki, and refused to take its army out. Under those circumstances,
in December 1918, Armenian forces entered Lori and Borchalu. 2
Hovannisian (1971) asserts that after ten days of violent clashes, a
British-brokered ceasefire was reached between the parties that urged the
cessation of military actions, but it did not end the hostilities. A
provisional agreement signed in January 1919 proclaimed Borchalu
(Lori) a “neutral zone” under British supervision. The northern and
southern parts of Lori were given to Georgia and Armenia, respectively,
and mixed governance was established in the central region. Armenia was
forced to return Akhalkalaki to Georgia.
The 1918 war generated the problem of the Armenian-Georgian
border demarcation 3 . Samkharadze (2012) states that the January 1919
agreement provided a final resolution of the conflict and delimitation of
the border at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. However, the Paris
Conference did not resolve this issue. After the establishment of Soviet
rule in Georgia and the resistance carried out by the Armenian population
of Lori, it was reunited with the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
(ASSR). 4 The border issue between the Georgian and Armenian SSRs
again remained unresolved and became a source of tension during the
Soviet period. Up until now, the border has not been fully demarcated
and delineated. 5 From time to time, the uncertainty becomes the cause of
unpleasant, albeit minor incidents.
Diverging Foreign Policy Vectors
The South Caucasus has historically been subjected to Russian
political, economic, and military domination. After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the Russian position was remarkably undermined and the
United States along with European Union started to pursue the aim of
filling the void of influence in the region by expressing their interest in
the vast energy resources of the South Caucasus. Except for Armenia,

2
Eric Lee, The Experiment: Georgia's Forgotten Revolution 1918-1921 (London, Zed
Books Ltd, The Foundry, 2017).
3 Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia (Los Angeles, University of California
Press, 1971).
4 Nika Samkharadze, “Georgian State Border – Past and Present”, Center for Social
Science (CSS), (2012), 9-12,
http://css.ge/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/nika_border_eng.pdf.
5 Artyom Tonoyan, “Rising Armenian-Georgia Tensions and the Possibility of a New
Ethnic Conflict in the South Caucasus”, Demokratizatsiya 18, no. 4 (2010): 301-302.
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