1.
Tbilisi
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Tbilisi, commonly known by its former name Tiflis, is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of roughly 1.5 million inhabitants. Founded in the 5th century by the monarch of Georgias ancient precursor the Kingdom of Iberia, Tbilisi has since served, with intermissions, as the capital of various Georgian kingdoms and republics. Under Russian rule, from 1801 to 1917 Tiflis was the seat of the Imperial Viceroy governing both sides of the entire Caucasus. Tbilisis varied history is reflected in its architecture, which is a mix of medieval, classical, Middle Eastern, Art Nouveau, historically, Tbilisi has been home to people of diverse cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, though it is overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox Christian. Archaeological studies of the region have indicated human settlement in the territory of Tbilisi as early as the 4th millennium BC, according to an old legend, the present-day territory of Tbilisi was covered by forests as late as 458. One widely accepted variant of the legend of Tbilisis founding states that King Vakhtang I Gorgasali of Georgia went hunting in the wooded region with a falcon. The Kings falcon allegedly caught or injured a pheasant during the hunt, King Vakhtang became so impressed with the hot springs that he decided to cut down the forest and build a city on the location. The name Tbilisi derives from Old Georgian Tbilisi, and further from Tpili, the name Tbili or Tbilisi was therefore given to the city because of the areas numerous sulphuric hot springs that came out of the ground. King Dachi I Ujarmeli, who was the successor of Vakhtang I Gorgasali, Tbilisi was not the capital of a unified Georgian state at that time and did not include the territory of Colchis. It was, however, the city of Eastern Georgia/Iberia. During his reign, King Dachi I oversaw the construction of the wall that lined the citys new boundaries. From the 6th century, Tbilisi grew at a steady pace due to the favourable and strategic location which placed the city along important trade. Tbilisis favourable and strategic location did not necessarily bode well for its existence as Eastern Georgias/Iberias capital, in the year 627, Tbilisi was sacked by the Byzantine/Khazar armies and later, in 736–738, Arab armies entered the town under Marwan II Ibn-Muhammad. After this point, the Arabs established an emirate centered in Tbilisi, in 764, Tbilisi, still under Arab control was once again sacked by the Khazars. In 853, the armies of Arab leader Bugha Al-Turki invaded Tbilisi in order to enforce its return to Abbasid allegiance, the Arab domination of Tbilisi continued until about 1050. In 1068, the city was again sacked, only this time by the Seljuk Turks under Sultan Alp Arslan. In 1122, after fighting with the Seljuks that involved at least 60,000 Georgians and up to 300,000 Turks. After the battles for Tbilisi concluded, David moved his residence from Kutaisi to Tbilisi, making it the capital of a unified Georgian State, from 12–13th centuries, Tbilisi became a dominant regional power with a thriving economy and a well-established social system/structure
2.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
3.
Armenian language
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The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
4.
Azerbaijani language
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The language has official status in Azerbaijan and Dagestan but it does not have official status in Iranian Azerbaijan, where the majority of Azerbaijanis live. It is also spoken to varying degrees in Azerbaijani communities of Georgia and Turkey and by diaspora communities, primarily in Europe. Azerbaijani is a member of the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages, modern literature in Azerbaijan is based on the Shirvani dialect mainly, while in Iranian Azerbaijan region it is based on the Tabrizi one. Azerbaijani evolved from the Eastern branch of Oghuz Turkic which spread to the Caucasus, in Eastern Europe, Persian and Arabic influenced the language, but Arabic words were mainly transmitted through the intermediary of literary Persian. By the beginning of the 16th century, it had become the dominant language of the region, the historical development of Azerbaijani can be divided into two major periods, early and modern. Early Azerbaijani differs from its descendant in that it contained a larger number of Persian. Early writings in Azerbaijani also demonstrate linguistic interchangeability between Oghuz and Kypchak elements in many aspects, despite major differences, they all aimed primarily at making it easy for semi-literate masses to read and understand literature. They all criticized the overuse of Persian, Arabic, and European elements in both colloquial and literary language and called for a simpler and more popular style. Despite the wide use of Azerbaijani in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, after independence, Azerbaijan republic decided to switch back to the Latin script. The first examples of Azerbaijani literature date to the late 1200s following the Mongol conquest and were written in Arabic script, in the 1300s Kadi Burhan al-Din, Hesenoghlu, and Imadaddin Nasimi helped to establish Azerbaiijani as a language through poetry and other literary works. In 1875 Akinchi became the first Azerbaijani newspaper to be published in the Russian Empire and it was started by Hasan bey Zardabi, a journalist and education advocate. Following the rule of the Qajar dynasty Iran was ruled by Reza Shah who banned the publication of texts in Azerbaijani, modern literature in the Republic of Azerbaijan is based on the Shirvani dialect mainly, while in Iranian Azerbaijan it is based on the Tabrizi dialect. Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar is an important figure in Azerbaijani poetry and his most important work is Heydar Babaya Salam and it is considered to be a pinnacle of Azerbaijani literature and gained popularity in the Turkic-speaking world. It was translated more than 30 languages. In the mid-19th century Azerbaijani literature was taught at schools in Baku, Ganja, Shaki, Tbilisi, since 1845, it has also been taught in the Saint Petersburg State University in Russia. Per the 1829 Caucasus School Statute, Azerbaijani was to be taught in all schools of Ganja, Shusha, Nukha, Shamakhi, Quba, Baku, Derbent, Yerevan, Nakhchivan, Akhaltsikhe. Beginning in 1834, it was introduced as a language of study in Kutaisi instead of Armenian, in 1853, Azerbaijani became a compulsory language for students of all backgrounds in all of Transcaucasia with the exception of the Tiflis Governorate. Azerbaijani is one of the Oghuz languages within the Turkic language family, the International Organization for Standardization encodes North Azerbaijani and South Azerbaijani as distinct languages
5.
Svan language
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The Svan language is a Kartvelian language spoken in the western Georgian region of Svaneti primarily by the Svan people. With its speakers variously estimated to be between 30,000 and 80,000, the UNESCO designates Svan as a endangered language. It is of particular interest because it has retained many features that have been lost in the other Kartvelian languages. Like all languages of the Kartvelian family, Svan has a number of consonants. It has agreement between subject and object, and a split-ergative morphosyntactic system, verbs are marked for aspect, evidentiality and version. Svan retains the voiceless aspirated uvular plosive, /qʰ/, and the glides /w/ and its morphology is less regular than that of the other three sister languages, and there are notable differences in verbal inflections. Svan is the language of fewer than 30,000 Svans, living in the mountains of Svaneti, i. e. in the districts of Mestia and Lentekhi of Georgia, along the Enguri, Tskhenistskali. Some Svan speakers live in the Kodori Valley of the de facto independent republic of Abkhazia, although conditions there make it difficult to reliably establish their numbers, there are only an estimated 2,500 Svan individuals living there. The language is used in familiar and casual social communication and it has no written standard or official status. Most speakers also speak Georgian, the official language, and use it as their literary. There is no instruction in Svan, and the number of speakers is declining due to the dispersal of the Svan population in the face of increasing economic hardship. The language is regarded as being endangered, as proficiency in it among people is limited. Svan is the most differentiated member of the four Kartvelian languages and is believed to have split off in the 2nd millennium BC or earlier, about one thousand years before Georgian did. The Svan language is divided into the dialects and subdialects, Upper Svan Upper Bal, Ushguli, Kala, Ipar, Mulakh, Mestia, Lenzer. Lower Bal, Becho, Tskhumar, Etser, Par, Chubekh, lentekhian, Lentekhi, Kheled, Khopur, Rtskhmelur, Cholur Freely varies between and Apart from the odd /eː/, only Upper Bal and Lashkh dialects have long vowels. Only Upper Bal has /æ, æː/, Lashkh does not have the front rounded vowels /œ, œː, y, yː/. The digraphs ჳი /y/ ჳე /œ/ are used in the Lower Bal and Lentekh dialects, and occasionally in Upper Bal, Svan at TITUS database ECLING - Svan. Svan alphabet and language at Omniglot Svan Youth literature in Svan language
6.
Mingrelian language
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Mingrelian or Megrelian is a Kartvelian language spoken in Western Georgia, primarily by Mingrelians. The language was also called Iverian in the early 20th century, no reliable figures exist for the number of Mingrelian native speakers, but it is estimated to be between 500,000 and 800,000. Most speakers live in the Samegrelo region of Georgia, that comprises the Odishi Hills and the Kolkheti Lowlands, from the Black Sea coast to the Svan Mountains and the Tskhenistskali River. Smaller enclaves existed in Abkhazia, but the civil unrest there has displaced many Mingrelian speakers to other regions of Georgia. Their geographical distribution is relatively compact, which has helped to promote the transmission of the language between generations, Mingrelian is generally written with the Georgian alphabet, but has no written standard or official status. Almost all speakers are bilingual, they use Mingrelian mainly for familiar and informal conversation, in the summer of 1999, books of the Georgian poet Murman Lebanidze were burned in the Mingrelian capital, Zugdidi, after he made disparaging remarks about the Mingrelian language. Mingrelian is one of the Kartvelian languages and it is closely related to Laz, from which it has differentiated mostly in the last 500 years, after the northern and southern communities were separated by Turkic invasions. It is somewhat closely related to Georgian and even more distantly related to Svan. Mingrelian is not mutually intelligible with any of other languages. Some linguists refer to Mingrelian and Laz as grouped within the Zan languages, Zan had already split into Mingrelian and Laz variants by early modern times, however, and it is not customary to speak of a unified Zan language today. The oldest surviving texts in Mingrelian date from the 19th century, the earliest linguistic studies of Mingrelian include a phonetic analysis by Aleksandre Tsagareli, and grammars by Ioseb Kipshidze and Shalva Beridze. From 1930 to 1938 several newspapers were published in Mingrelian, such as Kazakhishi Gazeti, Komuna, Samargalosh Chai, Narazenish Chai, Mingrelian has five primary vowels a, e, i, o, u. The Zugdidi-Samurzaqano dialect has a sixth, ə, which is the result of reduction of i and u. Consonant inventory of Mingrelian is almost identical to Laz, Georgian, and Svan. Certain pairs of vowels reduce to single vowels, ae and ai → ee → e ao, oa, in word-initial prevocalic and intervocalic positions, q → ʔ. Before the consonant v, q → ʔ/ḳ, the common types are, voicing/devoicing of voiceless/voiced consonants before voiced/voiceless ones. Glottalization of consonants before the ones and the glottal stop. If the stem contains r then the suffixes -ar and -ur transform to -al and -ul, before the stops and affricates, an inorganic augmentation n may appear. Megrelian is written in the Mkhedruli script, Aleksandre Tsagareli, Megrelskie Etiudi, Analiz Fonetiki Megrelskogo Yazika
7.
Laz language
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The Laz language is a Kartvelian language spoken by the Laz people on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea. It is estimated there are around 20,000 native speakers of Laz in Turkey, in a strip of land extending from Melyat to the Georgian border. Laz is one of the four South Caucasian languages, along with Mingrelian, it forms the Zan branch of this Kartvelian language family. In general, however, Mingrelian and Laz are considered as separate languages, the Laz are shifting to the Turkish of Trebizond. The Georgian language, along with its relatives Mingrelian, Laz, the initial breakup of Proto-Kartvelian is estimated to have been around 2500–2000 B. C. with the divergence of Svan from Proto-Kartvelian. Assyrian, Urartian, Greek, and Roman documents reveal that in historical times. The northern coast and coastal mountains of Asia Minor were dominated by Kartvelian peoples at least as far west as Samsun and their eastward migration may have been set in motion by the fall of Troy. Kiessling sees in the Lazoi a section of the Kerketai, who in the first centuries of the Christian era had to migrate southwards under pressure from the Zygoi, the same author regards the Kerketai as a Georgian tribe. The fact is that at the time of Arrian, the Lazoi were already living to the south of um, the ancient kingdom of Colchis was located in the same region the Laz speakers are found in today, and its inhabitants probably spoke an ancestral version of the language. Colchis was the setting for the famous Greek legend of Jason, there are also communities in northwestern Anatolia where many immigrants settled since the Russo-Turkish War and now also in Istanbul and Ankara. Only a few Laz live in Georgia, chiefly in Ajaria, Laz are also present in Germany where they have migrated from Turkey since the 1960s. Laz has no status in either Turkey or Georgia. It is presently used only for familiar and casual interaction, for literary, business, Laz is unique among the South Caucasian languages in that most of its speakers live in Turkey rather than Georgia. While the differences between the dialects are minor, their speakers feel that their level of mutual intelligibility is low. Given that there is no standard form of Laz, speakers of its different dialects use Turkish to communicate with each other. Between 1930 and 1938, Zan enjoyed cultural autonomy in Georgia and was used as a literary language, since then, all attempts to create a written tradition in Zan have failed, despite the fact that most intellectuals use it as a literary language. In Turkey, Laz has been a language since 1984. Since then, this system has used in most of the handful of publications that have appeared in Laz
8.
Georgian Orthodox Church
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The Georgian Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church in full communion with the other churches of Eastern Orthodoxy. It is Georgias dominant religious institution, and a majority of Georgian people are members and it asserts apostolic foundation, and its historical roots can be traced to the Christianization of Iberia by Saint Nino in the 4th century AD. As in similar autocephalous Orthodox churches, the Churchs highest governing body is the Holy Synod of bishops, the church is headed by the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, currently Ilia II, who was elected in 1977. The current Constitution of Georgia recognizes the role of the Georgian Orthodox Church in the countrys history. Government relations are defined and regulated by the Concordat of 2002. The church is the most trusted institution in Georgia, according to a 2013 survey 95% respondents had a favorable opinion of its work. It is highly influential in the sphere and is considered Georgias most influential institution. According to Georgian Orthodox Church tradition, the first preacher of the Gospel in Colchis and Iberia was the apostle Andrew, the First-called. However, modern historiography considers this account mythical, and the fruit of a late tradition, similar traditions regarding Saint Andrew exist in Ukraine, Cyprus and Romania. The Church also claims the presence in Georgia of the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus, the propagation of Christianity in present-day Georgia before the 4th century is still poorly known. The first documented event in this process is the preaching of Saint Nino and its consequences, Saint Nino, honored as Equal to the Apostles, was according to tradition the daughter of a Roman general from Cappadocia. She preached in the kingdom of Iberia in the first half of the 4th century, cyril Toumanoff dates the conversion of Mirian to 334, his official baptism and subsequent adoption of Christianity as the official religion of Iberia to 337. From the first centuries C. E. the cult of Mithras, pagan beliefs, the royal baptism and organization of the Church were accomplished by priests sent from Constantinople by Constantine the Great. Conversion of the people of Kartli proceeded quickly in the plains, the conversion of Kartli marked only the beginnings of the formation of the Georgian Orthodox Church. In the next centuries, different processes took place that shaped the Church, and gave it, by the beginning of the 11th century, the main characteristics that it has retained until now. In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Church of Kartli was strictly subordinate to the Apostolic See of Antioch, in 1010, the Catholicos of Kartli was elevated to the honor of Patriarch. From then on, the hierarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church carried the official title of Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia. At the beginnings of the Church history, what is now Georgia was not unified yet politically, such division was reflected in major differences in the development of Christianity
9.
Republic
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It is a government where the head of state is not a monarch. Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their ideology, composition, in the classical and medieval period of Europe, many states were fashioned on the Roman Republic, which referred to the governance of the city of Rome, between it having kings and emperors. The Italian medieval and Renaissance political tradition, today referred to as humanism, is sometimes considered to derive directly from Roman republicans such as Sallust. Republics were not equated with classical democracies such as Athens, but had a democratic aspect, Republics became more common in the Western world starting in the late 18th century, eventually displacing absolute monarchy as the most common form of government in Europe. In modern republics, the executive is legitimized both by a constitution and by popular suffrage, for instance, Article IV of the United States Constitution guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government. The term originates as the Latin translation of Greek word politeia, cicero, among other Latin writers, translated politeia as res publica and it was in turn translated by Renaissance scholars as republic. The term politeia can be translated as form of government, polity, or regime, and is therefore not always a word for a specific type of regime as the modern word republic is. And also amongst classical Latin, the term republic can be used in a way to refer to any regime. In medieval Northern Italy, a number of city states had commune or signoria based governments, in the late Middle Ages, writers, such as Giovanni Villani, began writing about the nature of these states and the differences from other types of regime. They used terms such as libertas populi, a free people, the terminology changed in the 15th century as the renewed interest in the writings of Ancient Rome caused writers to prefer using classical terminology. To describe non-monarchical states writers, most importantly Leonardo Bruni, adopted the Latin phrase res publica. While Bruni and Machiavelli used the term to describe the states of Northern Italy, which were not monarchies, the term can quite literally be translated as public matter. It was most often used by Roman writers to refer to the state and government, in subsequent centuries, the English word commonwealth came to be used as a translation of res publica, and its use in English was comparable to how the Romans used the term res publica. Notably, during The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell the word commonwealth was the most common term to call the new monarchless state, likewise, in Polish, the term was translated as rzeczpospolita, although the translation is now only used with respect to Poland. Presently, the term republic commonly means a system of government which derives its power from the rather than from another basis. After the classical period, during the Middle Ages, many cities developed again. The modern type of itself is different from any type of state found in the classical world. Nevertheless, there are a number of states of the era that are today still called republics
10.
Noe Ramishvili
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Noe Besarionis dze Ramishvili was a Georgian politician and the president of the first government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. He was one of the leaders of the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and he was also known by his party noms de guerre, Pyotr, and Semyonov N. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902 and soon became a prominent spokesman of the Mensheviks, on May 26,1918, Georgia became an independent state as the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Ramishvili was elected a chairman of the government and was replaced by his associate, Noe Zhordania. In a new government, Ramishvili accepted the post of interior minister, from March 1919, he also simultaneously held the posts of education minister and defense minister. After the Soviet Russian forces occupied the country in February–March 1921, Ramishvili emigrated to France and he sponsored the preparation for the 1924 August Uprising in Georgia, which ended unsuccessfully and was followed by mass repressions against the Georgian nobility and intellectuals. Ramishvili was one of the most prominent leaders of the Poland-guided anti-Soviet Prometheism movement, in 1930, he was assassinated in Paris, France, by a Soviet foreign intelligence agent. Ière République de Géorgie en exil
11.
Noe Zhordania
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Noe Zhordania born January 141868 and dead January 11,1953, was a Georgian journalist and Menshevik politician. There Zhordania led the government-in-exile until his death in 1953, Zhordania was born on 14 January 1868, to a petty landowner family living in the village of Lanchkhuti in Guria, western Georgia, then part of the Kutaisi Governorate of Imperial Russia. According to the Radjeb Zhordania, grandson of Noe Zhordania, his lineage back to three Italian friends who emigrated from Genova to Georgia. One of them was a gardener and the others were merchants, one moved in Samegrelo and became the ancestor of the Zhordanias from the Tsaishi. Another moved in Arkhaveti and his descendants are the Zhordanias from Arkhaveti, the third was granted serfs and estates from the House of Gurieli in Lanchkhuti, and so remained in Guria. He was the ancestor of the Zhordanias from Lanchkhuti, including Radjeb Zhordania, in his early years Radjab became an orphan and he was taken in Samegrelo by his uncles. Later he returned in his hometown Lanchkhuti, but he was not welcomed by the relatives, thus, after moving in Shukhuti he demanded his share of the property from the relatives. He was given the land, where he built the Oda, married the daughter of Apakidze, later he participated in the Crimean War, where he received the rank of captain and where he was later killed. He had four sons, Butchu, Potine, Niko and Iosef, Niko, father of Noe and Gulchino Zhordania, was the village scriber, and lawyer and mediator in court. Kristine Chikovani, mother of Noe, was from the Samegrelo and he had his primary education in a Lanchkhuti public school. Afterwards, he graduated from the Ozugreti Orthodox Theological Academy and he then moved to Tbilisi where he graduated from the Georgian Orthodox Theological Seminary, a prestigious academic institution at the time. However, while Noes parents hoped that their child would become a priest and he wrote, God is Nature herself, as for a white-bearded deity, seated upon a throne, such a personage simply does not exist. I thought to myself, If Natures lord and master is Nature itself, then who is the rightful lord, the general opinion was that the Tsar was the lord over the people, and that the Tsar was himself appointed by God. But if God did not exist any more, the Tsar could not be his representative, I was therefore at a loss to understand by whose command and authority he sat upon his throne. In the Academy he was the head of a student association that was opposing the drawbacks of the present situation in Academy. In 1891 he moved to Warsaw, Poland, and attended the Warsaw Veterinarian Institute, during this period young Zhordania understood the basics of Marxism. In his memories Zhordania described his political evolution in 1892 as a reflection of Russias transition from socialism to Marxism, specifically he meant the period after 1891, when he left his homeland to continue his studies abroad. With Filipp Makharadze, Noe Zhordania started a correspondence with other Georgian intellectuals, namely Silvester Dzhibladze and Egnate Ninoshvili
12.
Interwar period
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There were numerous new nations in Eastern Europe, most of them small in size. The United States gained dominance in world finance, by the middle of the decade, prosperity was widespread, with the second half of the decade known, especially in Germany, as the Golden Twenties. The Roaring Twenties highlighted novel and highly social and cultural trends. These trends, made possible by sustained economic prosperity, were most visible in major cities like New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, the Jazz Age began and Art Deco peaked. For women, knee-length skirts and dresses became socially acceptable, as did bobbed hair with a marcel wave, the women who pioneered these trends were frequently referred to as flappers. Not all was new, “normalcy” returned to politics in the wake of hyper-emotional wartime passions in the United States, France, and Germany. The leftist revolutions in Finland, Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Spain were defeated by conservatives, but succeeded in Russia, in Italy the fascists came to power under Mussolini after threatening a march on Rome. Most independent countries enacted womens suffrage in the era, including Canada in 1917, Britain in 1918. There were a few countries that held out until after the Second World War. If women could work in factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the polling booth. But the vote was more than simply a reward for war work. The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Greece did especially well, in advanced economies the prosperity reached middle class households and many in the working class. With radio, automobiles, telephones, and electric lighting and appliances, there was unprecedented industrial growth, accelerated consumer demand and aspirations, and significant changes in lifestyle and culture. The media began to focus on celebrities, especially sports heroes, major cities built large sports stadiums for the fans, in addition to palatial cinemas. The Great Depression was a worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. The depression originated in the United States, after a decline in lofty stock prices. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession
13.
Red Army invasion of Georgia
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The independence of Georgia had been recognized by Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Moscow, signed on 7 May 1920, and the subsequent invasion of the country was not universally agreed upon in Moscow. Soviet forces took the Georgian capital Tbilisi after heavy fighting and declared the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic on 25 February 1921, the rest of the country was overrun within three weeks, but it was not until September 1924 that Soviet rule was firmly established. Georgia effectively escaped Russian control in the aftermath of the February Revolution in Russia in 1917. After an abortive attempt to unite with Armenia and Azerbaijan in a federative state, although there were a significant number of highly qualified officers who had served in the Imperial Russian military, the army as a whole was underfed and poorly equipped. Since early 1920, local Bolsheviks were actively fomenting political unrest in Georgia, capitalizing on agrarian disturbances in rural areas, the operational centre of the Soviet military-political forces in the Caucasus was the Kavburo attached to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. Set up in February 1920, this body was chaired by the Georgian Bolshevik Grigol Ordzhonikidze, the Soviet leadership successfully exploited this situation and sent in its army to occupy Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. Following the establishment of Soviet rule in Baku in April 1920, Ordzhonikidze, probably acting on his own initiative, when the coup failed, the Georgian government was able to concentrate all its forces on successfully blocking the Soviet advance over the Georgian-Azerbaijani border. Facing a difficult war with Poland, Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin ordered a start to negotiations with Georgia, in the Treaty of Moscow signed on 7 May 1920, Soviet Russia recognized Georgias independence and concluded a non-aggression pact. The treaty established the borders between the two nations de jure and also obliged Georgia to surrender all third-party elements considered hostile by Moscow. In a secret supplement, Georgia promised to legalize the local Bolshevik party, despite the peace treaty, an eventual overthrow of the Menshevik-dominated government of Georgia was both intended and planned. Stalin called his homeland the kept woman of the Western Powers, Georgian independence was seen as a propaganda victory for exiled Russian Mensheviks in Europe, the Bolsheviks couldnt long tolerate a viable Menshevik state on their own doorstep. By that time, the British expeditionary corps had completely evacuated the Caucasus, Soviet military intervention was not universally agreed upon in Moscow, and there was considerable disagreement among the Bolshevik leaders on how to deal with their southern neighbor. He strongly supported a military overthrow of the Georgian government and continuously urged Lenin to give his consent for an advance into Georgia. The Peoples Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky, strongly disagreed with what he described as a “premature intervention”, for many Bolsheviks, self-determination was increasingly seen as a diplomatic game which has to be played in certain cases. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks had already set up a Georgian Revolutionary Committee in Shulaveri, chaired by the Georgian Bolshevik Filipp Makharadze, the Revkom formally applied to Moscow for help. Disturbances also erupted in the town of Dusheti and among Ossetians in northeast Georgia who resented the Georgian governments refusal to grant them autonomy, Georgian forces managed to contain the disorders in some areas, but the preparations for a Soviet intervention were already being set in train. The ultimate decision was made at the 14 February meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and it was opposed by Karl Radek and was held secret from Trotsky who was in the Ural area at that time. Later Trotsky would reconcile himself to the fact and even defend the invasion in a special pamphlet
14.
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
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After the February Revolution, the Russian Provisional Government installed the Special Transcaucasian Committee to govern the area. In November 1917, following the October Revolution, the first government of an independent Transcaucasia was created in Tbilisi, a Transcaucasian Committee and a Transcaucasian Commissariat existed for a couple of months. On December 5,1917, the Committee endorsed the Armistice of Erzincan signed by the Ottoman command of the Third Army, on March 3,1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk marked the end of Russias involvement in World War I. The Ottoman Empire regained Batum, Kars and Ardahan, starting on March 14, the Trabzon peace conference was held between the Ottoman Empire and a delegation from the Sejm. The mood in Tbilisi, however, was very different, instead of being bound by the terms of Brest-Litovsk, the Sejm gathered and made the decision to establish independence. On 22 April 1918, it proclaimed the establishment of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, a state of war between the Republic and the Ottoman Empire was confirmed and, shortly afterwards, the Ottoman Third Army took Erzerum and Kars. A new peace conference was convened at Batum on May 11, the Ottoman Empire extended its demands to include Tiflis as well as Alexandropol and Echmiadzin, where their leaders wanted to build a railroad to connect Kars and Julfa with Baku. No agreement was reached and, on May 21, the Ottoman forces resumed their advance, the battles of Bash Abarn, Sardarapat and Kara Killisse followed. On May 26,1918, the Democratic Republic of Georgia declared independence and this marked the end of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. Following the Russian Revolution, the breakup of the Russian Caucasus Army left the Caucasus virtually undefended against the advancing Ottoman Third Army. In response, the Armenians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis attempted to establish a unified military and these forces consisted of Armenian volunteer units formed during the course of World War I, Georgian forces raised by their Provisional Government, and Azerbaijani troops raised independently. The Military Council of Nationalities was short-lived, on May 28,1918, Georgia signed the Treaty of Poti with Germany and welcomed the German Caucasus Expedition as protection against post-Revolution instability and the Ottoman military advance. Azerbaijan, on the hand, chose to ally itself with the Ottoman Empire. Transcaucasian SFSR Armenian–Azerbaijani War Georgian–Armenian War 1918
15.
Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Georgia, formally the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, also commonly known as Soviet Georgia was one of the republics of the Soviet Union from its inception in 1922 to its breakup in 1991. From November 18,1989, the Georgian SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws, geographically, the Georgian SSR was bordered by Turkey to the south-west and the Black Sea to the west. Within the Soviet Union it bordered the Russian SFSR to the north, Armenian SSR to the south, on November 28,1917, after the October Revolution in Russia, there was a Transcaucasian Commissariat established in Tiflis. A moderate, multi-party democratic system led by the Social Democratic Party of Georgia operated in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, but in February 1921, the Red Army invaded Georgia. The Socialist Soviet Republic of Georgia was established on February 25,1921, on March 2 of the following year the first constitution of Soviet Georgia was accepted. From March 12,1922 to December 5,1936 it was part of the Transcaucasian SFSR together with the Armenian SSR, in 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved. In 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved and Georgia became the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, lavrentiy Beria became head of the Georgian OGPU and purged Georgia until he was transferred to Moscow in 1938. Reaching the Caucasus oilfields was one of the objectives of Hitlers invasion of the USSR in June 1941. The country contributed almost 700,000 fighters to the Red Army and he abolished their respective autonomous republics. The Georgian SSR was briefly granted some of their territory until 1957, the decentralisation program introduced by Khrushchev in the mid-1950s was soon exploited by Georgian Communist Party officials to build their own regional power base. A thriving pseudo-capitalist shadow economy emerged alongside the official state-owned economy, corruption was at a high level. Among all the republics, Georgia had the highest number of residents with high or special secondary education. Although corruption was hardly unknown in the Soviet Union, it became so widespread, shevardnadze ascended to the post of First Secretary with the blessings of Moscow. He was an effective and able ruler of Georgia from 1972 to 1985, improving the official economy, Soviet power and Georgian nationalism clashed in 1978 when Moscow ordered revision of the constitutional status of the Georgian language as Georgias official state language. Bowing to pressure from street demonstrations on April 14,1978. April 14 was established as a Day of the Georgian Language, on April 9,1989, Soviet troops were used to break up a peaceful demonstration at the government building in Tbilisi. Twenty Georgians were killed and hundreds wounded and poisoned, the event radicalised Georgian politics, prompting many - even some Georgian communists - to conclude that independence was preferable to continued Soviet unity. On October 28,1990, democratic elections were held
16.
Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
17.
Armenia
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Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a sovereign state in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. The Republic of Armenia constitutes only one-tenth of historical Armenia, Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. Urartu was established in 860 BC and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia, in the 1st century BC the Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great. Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, in between the late 3rd century to early years of the 4th century, the state became the first Christian nation. The official date of adoption of Christianity is 301 AD. The ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century, under the Bagratuni dynasty, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was restored in the 9th century. Declining due to the wars against the Byzantines, the fell in 1045. An Armenian principality and later a kingdom Cilician Armenia was located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the 11th and 14th centuries. By the 19th century, Eastern Armenia had been conquered by the Russian Empire, during World War I, Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian Genocide. By 1920, the state was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, in 1936, the Transcaucasian state was dissolved, transforming its constituent states, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, into full Union republics. The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Armenia recognises the Armenian Apostolic Church, the worlds oldest national church, as the countrys primary religious establishment. The unique Armenian alphabet was invented by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD, Armenia is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Council of Europe and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Armenia supports the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which was proclaimed in 1991, the native Armenian name for the country is Հայք. The name in the Middle Ages was extended to Հայաստան, by addition of the Persian suffix -stan, the further origin of the name is uncertain. It is also postulated that the name Hay comes from one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states—the Ḫayaša-Azzi. The exonym Armenia is attested in the Old Persian Behistun Inscription as Armina, the ancient Greek terms Ἀρμενία and Ἀρμένιοι are first mentioned by Hecataeus of Miletus. Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. According to the histories of both Moses of Chorene and Michael Chamchian, Armenia derives from the name of Aram, a descendant of Hayk
18.
Azerbaijan
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Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a country in the South Caucasus region, situated at the crossroads of Southwest Asia and Southeastern Europe. It is bound by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west and Iran to the south. The exclave of Nakhchivan is bound by Armenia to the north and east, Iran to the south and west, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence in 1918 and became the first democratic state in the Muslim orient world. The country was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920 as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, the modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, prior to the official dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. In September 1991, the Armenian majority of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region seceded to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the region and seven adjacent districts outside it became de facto independent with the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994. These regions are recognized as part of Azerbaijan pending a solution to the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan is a unitary semi-presidential republic, the country is a member state of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the NATO Partnership for Peace program. It is one of six independent Turkic states, a member of the Turkic Council. Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 158 countries and holds membership in 38 international organizations and it is one of the founding members of GUAM, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Its term of office began on 19 June 2006, Azerbaijan is also a member state of the Non-Aligned Movement, holds observer status in World Trade Organization and is a correspondent at the International Telecommunication Union. The Constitution of Azerbaijan does not declare an official religion and all political forces in the country are secularist. However, the majority of the population are of a Shiite Muslim background, Azerbaijan has a high level of human development which ranks on par with most Eastern European countries. It has a rate of economic development and literacy, as well as a low rate of unemployment. According to the Davos World Economic Forum, Azerbaijans economy has scored 37th place within 138 countries in 2016, Global Competitiveness Index 2015 indicates that Azerbaijan scores highest in its region. ASAN services, established with Presidential Decree, are known for eliminating bribery. ASAN Service has been awarded with United Nations Public Service Award 2015, the ruling party, the New Azerbaijan Party, has been accused of authoritarianism and human rights abuses. The original etymology of name is thought to have its roots in the once-dominant Zoroastrianism. In the Avesta, Frawardin Yasht, there is a mention of âterepâtahe ashaonô fravashîm ýazamaide, the name Atropates itself is the Greek transliteration of an Old Iranian, probably Median, compounded name with the meaning Protected by the Fire or The Land of the Fire
19.
Georgia (country)
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Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi, Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres, and its 2016 population is about 3.72 million. Georgia is a unitary, semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy, during the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia. The kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia adopted Christianity in the early 4th century, a unified Kingdom of Georgia reached the peak of its political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Thereafter the kingdom declined and eventually disintegrated under hegemony of various powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire. Russian rule over Georgia was eventually acknowledged in various treaties with Iran. Since the establishment of the modern Georgian republic in April 1991, post-communist Georgia suffered from civil, the countrys Western orientation soon led to the worsening of relations with Russia, culminating in the brief Russo-Georgian War in August 2008. Georgia is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and it contains two de facto independent regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Georgia and a part of the international community consider the regions to be part of Georgias sovereign territory under Russian military occupation. Georgia probably stems from the Persian designation of the Georgians – gurğān, in the 11th and 12th centuries adapted via Syriac gurz-ān/gurz-iyān, starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was later adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic and West European languages. This term itself might have established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region. The self-designation used by ethnic Georgians is Kartvelebi, the medieval Georgian Chronicles present an eponymous ancestor of the Kartvelians, Kartlos, a great-grandson of Japheth. However, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the name Sakartvelo consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i, specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, ancient Greeks and Romans referred to early western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians. Today the full, official name of the country is Georgia, before the 1995 constitution came into force the countrys name was the Republic of Georgia. The territory of modern-day Georgia was inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic Era, the proto-Georgian tribes first appear in written history in the 12th century BC. The earliest evidence of wine to date has found in Georgia. In fact, early metallurgy started in Georgia during the 6th millennium BC, the classical period saw the rise of a number of early Georgian states, the principal of which was Colchis in the west and Iberia in the east
20.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
21.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
22.
Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
23.
Kuban People's Republic
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The Kuban Peoples Republic was an anti-Bolshevik state that comprised the territory of the Kuban in the modern-day Russian Federation during the Russian Civil War. The republic was proclaimed by the Kuban Rada on January 28,1918, during its brief period of independence, it sought union with the Ukrainian Peoples Republic until the latter was occupied by Soviet forces. The Kuban Peoples Republic would include all territory of the former Kuban Oblast of the Russian Empire and it was crushed 7 November 1919 and existed for a period of 1 year 9 months. During the Russian Empire, the region of the Kuban was a Cossack territory, like many similar provinces, its demographics constituted several differences from ordinary Russian governorates. The western regions belonged to the descendants of the Black Sea Cossack Host from Ukraine in 1792, the southern and eastern regions were made from the Caucasus Line Cossack Host, descendants of the Don Cossacks. Historically, the Kuban Cossacks were formed to guard the Russian borders from the Mountain peoples which caused the Caucasus War that lasted for six decades up until 1860. In addition, during wars, Cossacks sent large army contingents to fight alongside the Imperial Russian Army. In return for loyalty, they lived free from taxes in a semi-independent way with various privileges. The question of ownership caused extensive friction between the peasants and the Cossacks, and often resulted in the latters action to ensure its ownership. After the February Revolution in Petrograd, the inefficient Russian Provisional Government decided to prolong its involvement in the increasingly unpopular First World War, as a result, the Russian Army began to collapse. The Kuban Cossack units deserted the front lines and returned home to protect their homelands from a threatened Turkish invasion from the South, during the Russian Empire, the Kuban was directly administered by an appointed Ataman directly by the Tsar, usually a skilled non-Cossack general. From 30 April to 3 May 1917, a Cossack meeting took place in Yekaterinodar and it formed a Cossack government – the Kuban Military Council – electing Mykola Riabovil as its head. With the October Revolution the people of the Kuban found themselves divided among several groups, the large non-Cossack peasants were infiltrated and influenced by the Bolsheviks and proclaimed a Kuban Soviet Republic, which dispersed the Council. On February 16,1918, however, the Kuban Rada proclaimed the independence of the Kuban Peoples Republic from Bolshevik Russia. A few days after the closing of the sessions, the members of the Council voted for a resolution to join the Kuban under a structure with Ukraine under the conservative Skoropadsky government. In March 1918, after Lavr Kornilovs successful offensive, the Kuban Rada was re-established and placed itself under his authority, the Cossacks, formerly loyal to the Russian Empire, supported the White movement. Yet after the successes of Kornilovs Volunteer Army, which rid the Kuban of the Bolsheviks. This affected the importance of the Rada, and in June 1918 friction began to grow between the head of the leadership and the Cossacks, in particular, the main focal point was between the Chernomortsy and the Lineitsy
24.
Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus
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The Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus was a short-lived state situated in the Northern Caucasus. It broke away from the Russian Empire during the February Revolution, the total land area was about 70,000 square kilometers, with a population of about 1 million. Its capital was initially at Vladikavkaz, then Nazran, and finally Temir-Khan-Shura, the state was captured by Soviet Russian forces in 1920, who transformed it into the Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The Union of the Peoples of the Northern Caucasus was created in March 1917, the Chairman of the Executive Committee was one of the leaders of the National‐Liberation movement of the Peoples of the Northern Caucasus, Tapa Tchermoeff. The Nizam of Imam Shamil was adopted on 5 August 1917 by the Central Committee of the Northern Caucasus. The republic was established on 11 May 1918, after the collapse of the Russian Tsarist empire in the Russian revolution of 1917. The main founders of the MRNC included Said Shamil, Prime Minister Tapa Tchermoeff, Sheikh Ali-Khaji Akusha, the Mountainous Republic was de jure recognized by the Ottoman Empire, Germany, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, the Democratic Republic of Georgia and the Kuban Peoples Republic. During the Russian Civil War, the Mountaineers were engaged in clashes against the invading White troops of General Anton Denikins Volunteer Army. The fighting ended in January 1920, when Denikins army was defeated by the XI Red Army. The advancing Red Army was at first greeted with red flags in the villages of the Northern Caucasus, in June 1920, the MRNC was occupied by the Red Army of Bolshevik Russia and the Government of the republic was forced to leave the Caucasus. In January 1921, the Soviet Mountain Republic of the Russian SFSR was established, Caucasian Imamate North Caucasian Soviet Republic Prometheism J. Obedinennyi Kavkaz, 1–3, München,1954. Levan Z. Urushadze, About the history of the question of unity of the Caucasian Peoples, J. Amirani, XIII, Montreal‐Tbilisi,2005, pp. 72–87. Baddeley, J. F.1908, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus, Longmans, Green, London Madeleine Henrey, Madeleine Grown Up, J. M. Dent & Sons, London,1954. Caucasian Republic Mission to the Peace Conference Appeal for Help, The Morning Post, London, elti Temihan, Tapa Tchermoeff, Obituary, The Times. Storozhenko, Ingushetia and Chechen Republic Map, Northern Caucasian Aerogeodesic Company of Roskartografia, Russia,1995, kathleen R. Jackson, Marat Fidarov, Essays on the History of the North Caucasus, HHN Media, New York,2009
25.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
26.
First Republic of Armenia
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The First Republic of Armenia, officially known at the time of its existence as the Republic of Armenia, was the first modern Armenian state since the loss of Armenian statehood in the Middle Ages. The republic was established in the Armenian-populated territories of the disintegrated Russian Empire, the leaders of the government came mostly from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. The First Republic of Armenia bordered the Democratic Republic of Georgia to the north, the Ottoman Empire to the west, Persia to the south, and it had a total land area of roughly 70,000 km², and a population of 1.3 million. The Armenian National Council declared the independence of Armenia on 28 May 1918, from the very onset, Armenia was plagued with a variety of domestic and foreign problems. A humanitarian crisis emerged from the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide as tens of thousands of Armenian refugees from the Ottoman Empire settled there, the republic lasted for over two years, during which time it was involved in several armed conflicts caused by territorial disputes. By late 1920, the nation was conquered by the Soviet Red Army, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the republic regained its independence as the current Republic of Armenia in 1991. With the help of several battalions of Armenians recruited from the Russian Empire, the Russians continued to make considerable advances even after the toppling of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917. In March 1917, the revolution that toppled Tsar Nicholas. Shortly after, the Provisional Government replaced Grand Duke Nicholas administration in the Caucasus with the five-member Special Transcaucasian Committee, the Ozakom included Armenian Democrat Mikayel Papadjanian, and was set to heal wounds inflicted by the old regime. In doing so, Western Armenia was to have a general commissar and was to be subdivided into the districts of Trebizond, Erzerum, Bitlis, and Van. The decree was a concession to the Armenians, Western Armenia was placed under the central government. Dr. Hakob Zavriev would serve as the assistant for civil affairs, in October 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power from the Provisional Government and announced that they would be withdrawing troops from both the Western and Caucasus fronts. The Armenians, Georgians, and Muslims of the Caucasus all rejected the Bolsheviks legitimacy, on December 5,1917, the armistice of Erzincan was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Transcaucasian Commissariat, ending armed conflict. After the Bolshevik seizure of power, a congress of Transcaucasian representatives met to create a provisional regional executive body known as the Transcaucasian Seim. The Commissariat and the Seim were heavily encumbered by the pretense that the South Caucasus formed a unit of a non-existent Russian democracy. The Armenian deputies in the Seim were hopeful that the forces in Russia would prevail in the Russian Civil War. In February 1918, the Armenians, Georgians and Muslims had reluctantly joined to form the Transcaucasian Federation, on March 3,1918, Russian followed the armistice of Erzincan with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and left the war. It ceded territory From March 14 to April 1918, when a conference was held between the Ottoman Empire and the delegation of the Seim
27.
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic
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The ADR was founded by the Azerbaijani National Council in Tiflis on 28 May 1918 after the collapse of the Russian Empire. Its established borders were with Russia to the north, the Democratic Republic of Georgia to the north-west, the First Republic of Armenia to the west and it had a population of 2.86 million. Ganja was the capital of the Republic as Baku was under Bolshevik control. Fatali Khan Khoyski became its first prime minister, besides the Musavat majority, Ahrar, Ittihad, Muslim Social Democrats as well as representatives of Armenian, Russian, Polish, Jewish and German minorities gained seats in the parliament. Some members supported Pan-Islamist and Pan-Turkist ideas, another important accomplishment of the ADR was the establishment of Baku State University, which was the first modern-type university founded in Azerbaijan. It was a region of the Russian Empire, where 3 independent states were born later, Armenia, Georgia. The population of the latter was in major part Muslims and that is why it is referred to as Muslim territory when talking about this period of history. After the February revolution of 1917 in Russia on March 22,1917, the members of Ozakom were the members of the State Council and representatives of the Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijan political elite. Ozakom announced that in the months the most important issues, i. e. national, religious, agrarian. In the course of April and May 1917 several Muslim Assemblies took place, like many ethnic minorities of Transcaucasia, Azeris aimed at secession from Russia after the February Revolution. Two general opinions were expressed by the representatives of the Muslim community, pan-Turkish, meaning joining with Turkey, the Transcaucasian region got an opportunity to decide its destiny, taking the course of federalization. After the October revolution of 1917 the Transcaucaisan government had to change its policy as Russia was now involved in the Civil War, the Transcaucausians did not accept the Bolshevik revolution. In February,1918 the Transcaucasian Council started its work in Tbilisi, the “Sejm” consisted of 125 deputies and represented 3 leading parties, Georgian mensheviks, Azerbaijan Muslims and Armenian “dashnaks”. Bolsheviks refused to join the Sejm and established their own government of the local Soviet in Baku, the Commune was formed by 85 Social Revolutionaries and Left Social Revolutionaries,48 Bolsheviks,36 Dashnaks,18 Musavatists and 13 Mensheviks. Stepan Shaumyan, a Bolshevik, and Prokopius Dzhaparidze, a leftist SR, were elected Chairmen of the Council of Peoples Commissioners of the Commune of Baku, the Russian Caucasus Army was degrading after the collapse of the Russian Empire. The Russian forces were substituted by new Armenian bodies, which were not prepared to the war, given the circumstances, the Transcaucasian Sejm signed the Armistice of Erzincan with the Ottoman Empire on December 5,1917. On March 3,1918 the Bolshevik government in Russia signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany, one of the terms was the loss of the regions of Cars, Batumi and Ardagan to the Ottoman Empire. The terms of the Treaty revealed a conflict between Georgians and Armenians on one side and the Muslims on another
28.
Transcaucasian Federation
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After the February Revolution, the Russian Provisional Government installed the Special Transcaucasian Committee to govern the area. In November 1917, following the October Revolution, the first government of an independent Transcaucasia was created in Tbilisi, a Transcaucasian Committee and a Transcaucasian Commissariat existed for a couple of months. On December 5,1917, the Committee endorsed the Armistice of Erzincan signed by the Ottoman command of the Third Army, on March 3,1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk marked the end of Russias involvement in World War I. The Ottoman Empire regained Batum, Kars and Ardahan, starting on March 14, the Trabzon peace conference was held between the Ottoman Empire and a delegation from the Sejm. The mood in Tbilisi, however, was very different, instead of being bound by the terms of Brest-Litovsk, the Sejm gathered and made the decision to establish independence. On 22 April 1918, it proclaimed the establishment of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, a state of war between the Republic and the Ottoman Empire was confirmed and, shortly afterwards, the Ottoman Third Army took Erzerum and Kars. A new peace conference was convened at Batum on May 11, the Ottoman Empire extended its demands to include Tiflis as well as Alexandropol and Echmiadzin, where their leaders wanted to build a railroad to connect Kars and Julfa with Baku. No agreement was reached and, on May 21, the Ottoman forces resumed their advance, the battles of Bash Abarn, Sardarapat and Kara Killisse followed. On May 26,1918, the Democratic Republic of Georgia declared independence and this marked the end of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. Following the Russian Revolution, the breakup of the Russian Caucasus Army left the Caucasus virtually undefended against the advancing Ottoman Third Army. In response, the Armenians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis attempted to establish a unified military and these forces consisted of Armenian volunteer units formed during the course of World War I, Georgian forces raised by their Provisional Government, and Azerbaijani troops raised independently. The Military Council of Nationalities was short-lived, on May 28,1918, Georgia signed the Treaty of Poti with Germany and welcomed the German Caucasus Expedition as protection against post-Revolution instability and the Ottoman military advance. Azerbaijan, on the hand, chose to ally itself with the Ottoman Empire. Transcaucasian SFSR Armenian–Azerbaijani War Georgian–Armenian War 1918
29.
Social Democratic Party of Georgia
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The Social Democratic Party of Georgia, also known as the Georgian Menshevik Party, was Georgian Marxist, and later, a social democratic political party. It was founded in the 1890s by Nikolay Chkheidze, Silibistro Jibladze, Egnate Ninoshvili, Noe Zhordania and it became the Georgian branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. After 1905, Georgian social democrats joined the Menshevik faction, except for such as Joseph Stalin. Several leaders were elected to the Russian Duma from Kutais or Tifli, Nikolay Chkheidze, Akaki Chkhenkeli, Evgeni Gegechkori, Isidore Ramishvili, Irakly Tsereteli, Noe Zhordania. The party was prior to 1917 ambivalent on Georgias independence from Russia, for which it has been criticized by some Georgians as unpatriotic, natalie Sabanadze describes them as unique in their non-nationalist approach to national liberation. She argues that they led a successful national movement while maintaining a degree of hostility towards nationalism and avoiding the use of nationalist rhetoric. The party became a vehicle for Georgian nationalism following the Russian Revolution and it governed the Democratic Republic of Georgia from 1918 to 1921. At parliamentary elections on February 14,1919 it garnered 81. 5% of the votes, in the words of Ronald Grigor Suny, Their achievement in building a Georgian political nation was extraordinary. Their support among all classes of the Georgian people was genuine, in March 1921 the Georgian government was overthrown by the Red Army invasion. The party was liquidated in Georgia during the Soviet repressions predating to the failed anti-Soviet August Uprising in 1924, from 1921 onwards, the party began operating in exile, particularly in France, Germany and the United States. A Foreign Bureau was set up as the new leading organ of the party, the party was a member of the Labour and Socialist International between 1923 and 1940. Government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in Exile Stephen F. Jones, Socialism in Georgian Colors, The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917, ISBN 0-674-01902-4
30.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700
31.
Red Army
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The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
32.
February Revolution
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The February Revolution, known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution was the first of two Russian revolutions in 1917. The revolution centered on Petrograd, then the Russian capital, arguably beginning on 8 March, Revolutionary activity was largely confined to the capital and its vicinity, and lasted about eight days. It involved mass demonstrations and armed clashes with police and gendarmes, on 12 March mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later the result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, Russian Council of Ministers was replaced by a Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov. The revolution appeared to break out spontaneously, without any leadership or formal planning. Russia had been suffering from a number of economic and social problems, bread rioters primarily women in bread lines, and industrial strikers were joined on the streets by disaffected soldiers from the citys garrison. As more and more troops deserted, and with loyal troops away at the Front, in all, over 1,300 people were killed in the protests of February 1917. A number of factors contributed to the downfall of the Imperial government in the spring of 1917, different historians apply different weights to different factors, liberal historians emphasise the turmoil created by the war, whereas Marxists emphasise the inevitability of change. Rabinowitch summarizes the main long-term and short-term causes, The February 1917 revolution, despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. As historian Richard Pipes writes, the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter. The first major event of the Russian Revolution was the February Revolution, dissatisfaction of proletarians was compounded by food shortages and military failures. Widespread strikes, riots and the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin ensued. These conditions caused much agitation among the working and professional classes. This tension erupted into revolt with the 1905 Revolution, and again under the strain of war in 1917. The revolution was provoked by Russian military failures during the First World War, the economic challenges faced due to fighting a total war also contributed. In August 1914, all supported and virtually all political deputies voted in favour of the war. The exceptions included the Bolshevik Party and specifically Vladimir Lenin who argued it was not a war fighting. The declaration of war was followed by a revival of nationalism across Russian society, nearly six million casualties—dead, wounded and missing—had been accrued by January 1917
33.
Caucasus
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The Caucasus /ˈkɔːkəsəs/ or Caucasia /kɔːˈkeɪʒə/ is a region at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, which contain Europes highest mountain, politically, the Caucasus region is separated between northern and southern parts. The southern parts consist of independent sovereign states, and the parts are under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. The region is known for its diversity, aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian. Pliny the Elders Natural History derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis, German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means ice. According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the South Caucasus region and southern Dagestan were the furthest points of Persian expansions, with areas to the north of Caucasus Mountains practically impregnable. The mythological mountain of Qaf, the worlds highest mountain that ancient lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region, therefore, the Caucasus might be associated with the legendary mountain. The Ciscaucasus contains the majority of the Greater Caucasus Mountain range. It includes Southwestern Russia and northern parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Transcaucasus is bordered on the north by Russia, on the west by the Black Sea and Turkey, on the east by the Caspian Sea, and on the south by Iran. It includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands, all of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in South Caucasus. The main Greater Caucasus range is generally perceived to be the line between Asia and Europe. The highest peak in the Caucasus is Mount Elbrus in the western Ciscaucasus in Russia, the Caucasus is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions on Earth. The nation states that comprise the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia, Armenia, three territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful or by no independent states, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognised by the majority of independent states as part of Georgia, the Russian divisions include Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the autonomous republics of Adygea, Karachay–Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. The region has many different languages and language families, there are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region. Russian is used as a common language, today the peoples of the Northern and Southern Caucasus tend to be either Eastern Orthodox Christians, Oriental Orthodox Christians, or Sunni Muslims. Shia Islam has had many adherents historically in Azerbaijan, located in the part of the region. Located on the peripheries of Turkey, Iran, and Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, throughout its history, the Caucasus was usually incorporated into the Iranian world
34.
Special Transcaucasian Committee
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The Special Transcaucasian Committee was established on March 9,1917, with Member of the State Duma V. A. Soviets also sprang up throughout the area and, in time, hakob Zavriev was instrumental in having Ozakom issue a decree about the administration of the occupied territories. This region was identified as the land of Turkish Armenia and transferred to a civilian rule under Zavriev, who oversaw districts Trebizon, Erzurum, Bitlis. Each of the districts under Administration for Western Armenia had their own Armenian governor, the position of the Caucasian Muslems was different though membership was drown from ethnically representatives of Duma deputies. It was headed by a Georgian Menshevik Nikolay Chkheidze, on December 5,1917, this new Transcaucasian Committee given the endorsement to Armistice of Erzincan that was signed with the Ottoman command of Third Army. This was followed with what is known as Trabzon peace nogetions, on February 10,1918, the Sejm gathered and made the decision to establish independence. On February 24,1918, Sejm proclaimed Transcaucasia independent under Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, headed by the Georgian Social Democrat Evgeni Gegechkori, Transcaucasian Commissariat was anti-Bolshevik in its political goals and sought the separation of Transcaucasia from Bolshevik Russia. The committee ignored the Social Democratic hegemony in the region and provoked the Soviet to demand its abolition, Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic Caucasus Viceroyalty Administration for Western Armenia
35.
Russian Provisional Government
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The Russian Provisional Government was a provisional government of the Russian Republic established immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire on 2 March 1917. The intention of the government was the organization of elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly. The provisional government lasted approximately eight months, and ceased to exist when the Bolsheviks seized power after the October Revolution in October 1917. According to Harold Whitmore Williams the history of eight months during which Russia was ruled by the Provisional Government was the history of the steady and systematic disorganisation of the army. The Provisional Government was formed in Petrograd by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and was led first by Prince Georgy Lvov and it replaced the institution of the Council of Ministers of Russia, members of which after the February Revolution presided in the Chief Office of Admiralty. At the same time the Russian Emperor Nicholas II abdicated in favor of the Grand Duke Michael who agreed that he would accept after the decision of Russian Constituent Assembly, the Provisional Government was unable to make decisive policy decisions due to political factionalism and a breakdown of state structures. This weakness left the government open to challenges from both the right and the left. The weakness of the Provisional Government is perhaps best reflected in the nickname given to Kerensky. The authority of the Tsars government began disintegrating on 1 November 1916, Stürmer was succeeded by Alexander Trepov and Nikolai Golitsyn, both Prime Ministers for only a few weeks. During the February Revolution two rival institutions, the Imperial Duma and the Petrograd Soviet, both located in the Tauride Palace, competed for power. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on 2 March and Milyukov announced the decision to offer the Regency to his brother. Grand Duke Michael did not want to take the poisoned chalice, public announcement of the formation of the Provisional Government was made. It was published in Izvestia the day after its formation, the announcement stated the declaration of government Full and immediate amnesty on all issues political and religious, including, terrorist acts, military uprisings, and agrarian crimes etc. Freedom of word, press, unions, assemblies, and strikes with spread of political freedoms to military servicemen within the restrictions allowed by military-technical conditions, abolition of all hereditary, religious, and national class restrictions. Immediate preparations for the convocation on basis of universal, equal, secret, and direct vote for the Constituent Assembly which will determine the form of government, replacement of the police with a public militsiya and its elected chairmanship subordinated to the local authorities. Elections to the authorities of local self-government on basis of universal, direct, equal, non-disarmament and non-withdrawal out of Petrograd the military units participating in the revolution movement. Under preservation of strict discipline in ranks and performing a military service - elimination of all restrictions for soldiers in the use of rights granted to all other citizens. It also said, The provisional government feels obliged to add that it is not intended to take advantage of circumstances for any delay in implementing the above reforms
36.
Petrograd Soviet
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The Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies was a city council of Petrograd, the capital of the Russian Empire. For brevity, it is called the Petrograd Soviet. Its committees were key components during the Russian Revolution and some of them led the revolt of the October Revolution. Before 1914, Petrograd was known as Saint Petersburg, and in 1905 the workers called the St Petersburg Soviet was created. The group became increasingly radical as World War I progressed and the situation worsened, encouraging street demonstrations. That evening, between 50 and 300 people attended the meeting at the Tauride Palace, a provisional executive committee was chosen, chaired by Nikolay Chkheidze, and with mostly Menshevik deputies. Izvestia was chosen as the newspaper of the group. The following day, February 28, was the session, elected representatives from factories and the military joined the soviet. Non-representative voting and enthusiasm gave the Soviet almost 3,000 deputies in two weeks, of which the majority were soldiers, the meetings were chaotic, confused and unruly, little more than a stage for speechmakers. The party-based Ispolkom quickly took charge of actual decision-making and this created an intellectual and radical head to the peasant-, worker-, and soldier-dominated body. The Executive Committee meetings were more intense and almost as disorderly as the public meetings, on March 1, the Executive Committee resolved to remain outside any new State Duma. This allowed the group to criticize without responsibility, and kept away from any potential backlash. On March 2, the Soviet received the eight-point program of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma, appointed an oversight committee, moreover, the Soviet undermined the Provisional Government by issuing its own orders, beginning with the seven-article Order No.1. This created a situation described as dvoevlastie, in which the Petrograd Soviet competed for legitimacy with the Provisional Government until the October Revolution, the Ispolkom of the Petrograd Soviet often publicly attacked the Provisional Government as bourgeois and boasted of its de facto power over de jure authority. A shadow government with a Contact Commission was created on March 8 to inform, about the demands of the revolutionary people, to exert pressure on the government to satisfy all these demands, and to exercise uninterrupted control over their implementation. On March 19, the control extended into the front lines with commissars appointed with Ministry of War support. In March 1917, the Petrograd Soviet was opposed to the workers, on March 8, the Menshevik newspaper Rabochaia Gazeta even claimed that the strikers were discrediting the soviet by disobeying it. The Ispolkom expanded to 19 members on April 8, nine representing the Soldiers Section, all members were socialists, the majority Mensheviks or Socialist-Revolutionaries, there was no Bolshevik representation
37.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
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October Revolution
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It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October 1917. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and this immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first self-proclaimed socialist state. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces, Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace, was captured, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, as the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 25th, in Russian, however, переворот has a similar meaning to revolution and also means upheaval or overturn, so coup is not necessarily the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use and it is also known as the November Revolution having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Great October Socialist Revolution was the name for the October Revolution in the Soviet Union after the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, however, the provisional government was weak and riven by internal dissension. It continued to wage World War I, which became increasingly unpopular, a nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social, economic, and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased, gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, at the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913, russias national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles, the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In these months alone, more than a million took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution, by October 1917, there had been over 4,000 peasant uprisings against landowners. When the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments, it only enraged the peasants
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Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
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Russian Caucasus Army (World War I)
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The Russian Caucasus Army of World War I was the Russian field army that fought in the Caucasus Campaign and Persian Campaign of World War I. It was renowned for inflicting casualties on the opposing forces of the Ottoman Empire. These included Georgians, Caucasus Greeks, and Armenians - the latter in particular strongly represented among both the soldiers and senior officers - as well as ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, the Caucasus Army was formed in July 1914 from units of the Caucasus Military District. It ceased to exist in April 1917 when it was reorganized as the Caucasus Front, although this Front contained many of the same units and this Front in turn formally ceased to exist in March 1918. It withdrew from Armenia that year, the Caucasus Army was under the nominal command of the Governor General of the Caucasus Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov at the start of hostilities. His chief of command was Aleksandr Zakharevich Myshlayevsky, the Caucasus Army had 100 battalions of infantry,117 sotnis, and 256 guns for a total of 100,000 troops. The flanks were covered by small units formed from the Border Guard, the Cossacks, Caucasus Army Corps from November 12,1914 April 2,1915 Berhman George E. His chief of command was Nikolai Yudenich, Caucasus Army Corps from February 2,1915 -12. March 1917 Kalitin, Pyotr Petrovich Turkistan Army Corps from February 3,1915 -3 April 1917 General of Infantry Przewalski, Michael A. The 1915 engagements were Battle of Dilman, Van, Battle of Manzikert, and Kara Killisse The 1916 engagements were Erzincan, Erzerum Offensive, Trebizond Campaign, Battle of Bitlis and it was under the nominal command of Vasily Kharlamov of Transcaucasian Commissariat beginning with the May 1917. His chief of command was Ilia Odishelidze, Caucasus Army Corps from April 12,1917 Lyakhov, Vladimir Rakhmanov Turkistan Army Corps from April 25–12 October 1917 - Lt. Gen. Chaplygin, Alexander,12 October 1917 -. - Lieutenant General Savitsky, Hippolyte V. Georgian Ilia Odishelidze Russian Theodore G. Chernozubov Armenian Tovmas Nazarbekian Armenian Movses Silikyan Armenian volunteer units
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Nikolay Chkheidze
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Nikoloz Chkheidze commonly known as Karlo Chkheidze or Nicolas Cheidze was a Georgian Social Democrat politician. In the 1890s, he promoted Marxism in Georgia, Chkheidze was born to an aristocratic family in Poti, Shorapansky Uyezd, Kutaisi Governorate. He married and had a daughter, in 1892, Chkheidze, together with Egnate Ninoshvili, Silibistro Jibladze, Noe Zhordania and Kalenike Chkheidze, became a founder of the first Georgian Social-Democratic group, Mesame Dasi. From 1907 to 1916, Chkheidze was a member of Tiflis Gubernyia in the Russian State Duma, in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, Chkheidze became Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He failed to prevent the rise of radical Bolshevism and refused a post in the Russian Provisional Government, however, he did support its policies and advocated revolutionary oboronchestvo. He also voted to continue the war against the German Empire, in October 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. At the time, Chkheidze was in Georgia and he remained in Georgia and on 23 February 1918, became leader of the Transcaucasian Federation in Tiflis. Some months later the federation was dissolved, on 26 May 1918, Chkheidze was elected chairman of the National Council of Georgia in Tiflis. He was then elected chairman of the Georgian Provisional Assembly when the council adopted an Act of Independence, in February 1919, as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Georgia, he was elected president of the Constituent Assembly. In 1919, Chkheidze chaired the Georgian delegation to the Versailles Conference where he tried to gain the Ententes support for a Democratic Republic of Georgia. He also proposed to Georges Clémenceau and to David Lloyd George a French or British protectorate for Georgian foreign affairs and defense, Chkheidze was one of the authors of the constitution of 1921 of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. In March 1921, when the Red Army invaded Georgia, Chkheidze fled with his family to France via Constantinople, in 1923 and 1924, as part of the Social Democratic Labour Party of Georgia in exile, Chkheidze opposed a national uprising in Georgia. Chkheidze, Irakly Tsereteli, Datiko Sharashidze, and Kale Kavtaradze formed a group called Oppozitsia, in their mind, the Red Army and Cheka were too strong, and the unarmed Georgian people too weak. After the August Uprising of 1924, more than 10,000 Georgians were executed, on 13 June 1926, Chkheidze committed suicide, in his official residence in Leuville-sur-Orge, France
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Evgeni Gegechkori
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Evgeni Gegechkori was a Georgian nobleman, politician, and Social Democratic revolutionary. He was involved in the 1905 revolution in Georgia and was elected a member to the Third State Duma for the Kutais Governorate from 1907 to 1912, during the February Revolution in 1917, Gegechkori became commissar for the Russian Provisional Government in western Georgia. From November 28,1917 to March 26,1918, he chaired the Transcaucasian Commissariat and served as minister of labor before leading the Transcaucasian Sejm, after the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in May 1918, he became its Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1921, he served as a Minister of Justice. After the Red Army invasion of Georgia, Gegechkori left for France in March 1921, from 1953 until his death, he headed the Georgian government in exile. Socialism in Georgian Colors, The European Road to Social Democracy, the history of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia. Ière République de Géorgie en exil
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Akaki Chkhenkeli
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Akaki Chkhenkeli was a Georgian Marxist politician and publicist who acted as one of the leaders of the Menshevik movement in Russia and Georgia. His younger brother was the linguist Kita Tschenkéli and he was born in the town of Khoni, Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia, to a noble family. A graduate from the universities in Kiev, Berlin, and London, he was a lawyer and he joined the Social Democratic movement in 1898 and sided with the Menshevik faction in 1903. He was involved in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and was arrested in its aftermath. He was elected to the Fourth State Duma where he advocated self-determination for the peoples of Russia, on February 14,1918, he became a Deputy Head and a Foreign Minister in the government of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, a short-lived Armenian-Azerbaijani-Georgian federation. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Georgia in 1919, the Soviet invasion of Georgia early in 1921 forced him into exile to Paris where he remained in émigré opposition to the Soviet Union until his death in 1959. Ière République de Géorgie en exil
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History of Georgia
