In 1889, the construction of a naval port in Batumi was completed, which quickly turned the Black Sea city into an industrial center of the Caucasus. However, the revolutionary uprising of 1905 shook its status and by 1910 the industrial life of Batumi had mostly collapsed.

Meanwhile, under Niko Nikoladze’s management, another Georgian port city, Poti, was being rebuilt. The port reconstruction was completed several months before the Batumi uprising, and the instability gave rise to Poti’s economic flourishing.

The illustration, accompanied by a satire, depicts Batumi’s harsh reality of those times and offers a “solution” in the form of merging the two cities into one.

Source: National Parliamentary Library of Georgia