Timeline of Batumi

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Prior to 20th century

• 1882 – Population: 8,671.
• 1888
  • April 28: Batum was officially granted the city status and the right to elect the city council (duma).
  • September 2: Gavronsky elected the first mayor of Batum.
• 1889 – Population: 12,000.
• 1895 – January 25: Prince Luka Asatiani, former mayor of Kutaisi, was elected a mayor of Batum.

20th century

• 1900s, Batumi became a focus of Social Democratic agitation.
• 1901 – Stalin arrived in Batumi, setting up base in Ali, the Persian tavern.
• 1902
  • Population: 16,000, with 1,000 of them oil refinery workers.
  • January 1: Stalin made a speech to 30 party members shouting "We mustn't fear death! The sun is rising. Let's sacrifice our lives!"
  • January 4: Stalin set the refinery on fire, the workers put it out meaning they are due a bonus which is refused. Stalin got a printing press from Tiflis and called a strike.
  • February 17: the strikers win a 30% pay increase.
  • February 26: 389 radical workers are sacked. Stalin calls a second strike.
  • March: mass strike at the Rothschild oil refinery.
    • March 7: strike leaders arrested.
    • March 8: Stalin leads demonstrations outside the police station demanding their release. The prisoners are moved to a transit prison. Governor general Smagin agrees to meet the demonstrators.
    • March 10: A mob tries to storm the prison but a renegade tips off the Cossacks and troops who fire on them though some prisoners escape. The events culminated in rioting in which the future Soviet leader Joseph Stalin played a role. The clashes with police left 15 dead, 54 wounded, and 500 in prison.
    • March 12: the dead workers are buried triggering a 7,000 strong demonstration surrounded by Cossacks and gendarmes who ban songs and speeches.
• 1906 – construction of the Baku-Batumi pipeline completed.
• 1910 – the Russian authorities decided to dismantle the Mikhailovsky naval fortress at Batumi.
• 1912-1913 – a gunboat was stationed permanently to keep a check on arms smuggling.
• 1914 – Although the project to dismantle the Batum fortifications had not been completed by the beginning of World War I.
  • 7 and 10 December: the port still remained vulnerable to the powerful Ottoman-German vessels SMS Breslau and Goeben, which shelled Batum, without much effect.
• 1915: the Batumi Naval Detachment was established to support the Russian ground operations against Trebizond.
• 1918
  • 12 February: Ottoman Empire briefly occupied Batumi.
  • On 3 March: Soviet Russia granted the Muslim population of Batumi, Kars and Ardahan the right of self-determination under the Ottoman suzerainty.
  • 14 March-5 April: The Transcaucasian delegation attempted to reverse the clause on the Trabzon conference, but failed to achieve any results.
  • 14 April: the Ottoman army annexed Batum.
• 1919 – the British took over and appointed General James Cooke-Collis as the governor of Batumi. They also Britain created the Batumi council under the presidency of the Russian cadet Pyotr Maslov.
  • 14 April 1919, the governor disbanded the council and left the city.
  • July 1920, Britain ceded the entire region to Georgia.
• March 1921.

Batumi was briefly occupied by Turkey during the Soviet invasion of Georgia in

• On 18 March 1921, the city was recovered by Georgian troops, who then ceded its control to the arriving Soviets.

Finally, in the treaty of Kars, Kemal Atatürk ceded Batumi to the Bolsheviks, on the condition that it be granted autonomy, for the sake of the Muslims among Batumi's mixed population. Thus, it became the capital of the Adjar ASSR within the Georgian SSR. During the 1924 August Uprising in Georgia, Batumi remained relatively quiet. On 31 August 1924, the local cell of the anti-Soviet underground organization was destroyed; its leaders, including major general Giorgi Purtseladze (then the chief of staff of the Batum fortifications), were shot. During World War II, the city sent 12,258 soldiers in the Soviet army, and 4,728 never returned home.