Petition of the Georgian People to the International Peace Conference at the Hague
The petition demanded the withdrawal of Russian punitive troops from the territory of Georgia and full political autonomy for Georgia.
The 1907 Conference of European States in the Hague was the largest international conference since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The purpose of the conference was to discuss a multilateral treaty to regulate the armaments and establish new norms of international law.
In order to submit it to the conference, the Petition of the Georgian People was drafted by Georgian anarchist Varlam Cherkezishvili, Oliver Wardrop, a British Foreign Office official, and Ernest Nys, a professor of international law at the University of Brussels. Signatures to the petition were secretly collected throughout Georgia. The signatories risked their lives if the petition were discovered. Nevertheless, up to 3,000 people signed the petition and it escaped the attention of the Russian government. The petition was signed by teachers, scientists, workers, clergymen, nobles, and peasants, – both men and women. It should be noted that the petition was signed not only by ethnic Georgians but also by Georgian citizens of other ethnic origins.
The petition called for the withdrawal of Russian punitive forces from Georgia and the granting of full political autonomy to Georgia in accordance with the Treaty of Georgievsk, signed in 1783, which Russia had been breaching.
With the help of Oliver Wardrop, the conference delegates found the text of the petition on their tables. As Varlam Cherkezishvili noted, “for the first time in 100 years, the world was talking about our Georgia.”
