en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besarion_Jughashvili
1 correction found
It grew in importance in 1871 when a branch of the Transcaucasus Railway connected the town to Tiflis and Poti, a major port for oil export.
This gets the railway chronology wrong. The Poti–Tiflis line reached Tiflis in 1872, and a scholarly source says Gori was bypassed in 1871 and only later improved by a spur.
Full reasoning
The sentence compresses several railway developments into an incorrect claim about Gori in 1871.
Two problems are documented in the sources:
- The Poti–Tiflis line did not connect Poti to Tiflis in 1871. Georgian Railway's own history states that the first train from Poti to Tbilisi ran on October 10, 1872, not 1871.
- Gori itself was not connected by that line in 1871. Historian Alfred J. Rieber writes that "Gori lost some of its commercial importance when the Poti–Tiflis railroad bypassed it in 1871" and that "a railroad spur later further improved its communications."
So the article's statement that in 1871 a branch of the railway connected Gori to Tiflis and Poti is contradicted by both the railway's own historical timeline and a scholarly history of Stalin's Georgian background.
2 sources
- Georgian Railway: 'საქართველოს რკინიგზა 150 წლისაა!'
1872 წლის 10 ოქტომბერს ფოთიდან თბილისისკენ პირველი მატარებელი დაიძრა. (On October 10, 1872, the first train departed from Poti toward Tbilisi.)
- Stalin and The Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia (preview PDF)
Gori lost some of its commercial importance when the Poti–Tiflis railroad bypassed it in 1871... A railroad spur later further improved its communications.