CHAPTER VII.
THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE GOVERNMENT.
However favoured Georgia may be by nature, and however rational the democratic methods of its socialist government, its situation was anything but brilliant.
We have already described the chief causes of its distress. They consist in the dependence of the economic life of Georgia upon foreign countries. Without the importation of corn, as well as of industrial products, and a corresponding exportation of its own products, such as manganese, copper, tobacco, wool, silk, and wine, the country cannot exist. The old trade connections were destroyed by the war, which still continues on the borders of Georgia, and renders difficult any relations with other countries. This is doubly unfortunate at a time when world commerce is impeded by various measures arising out of the after-effects of the war and the general lack of confidence, which would be merely ridiculous if they did not involve the ruin of the people.
The Georgian Government is not in a position to change these disastrous international conditions, and thus the people of Georgia, like so many other peoples, must suffer from their effects.
The inhabitants of the capital of Tiflis were hit the hardest. Until the revolution Tiflis was the political centre of the whole of the Caucasus, a territory with about ten million people. To>-day it forms the capital of little Georgia, with three million inhabitants. This country by itself must sustain the 400,000 inhabitants of Tiflis. This would not have been a simple matter in a state of uninterrupted world trade, but the task assumes
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