1.
Independence
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Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory. The opposite of independence is a dependent territory, Independence does not necessarily mean freedom. Whether the attainment of independence is different from revolution has long been contested, nation-states have been granted independence without any revolutionary acts. The Russian October Revolution, for example, was not intended to seek national independence, however, the American Revolutionary War was intended to achieve independence from the beginning. Causes for a country or province wishing to seek independence are many, the means can extend from peaceful demonstrations, like in the case of the Indian independence movement, to a violent civil war. Autonomy refers to a kind of independence which has been granted by an authority that itself still retains ultimate authority over that territory. A protectorate refers to a region that depends upon a larger government for its protection as an autonomous region. Declaring independence and attaining it however, are quite different, a well-known successful example is the U. S. Declaration of Independence issued in 1776, the dates of established independence, are typically celebrated as a national holiday known as an independence day
2.
Republics of the Soviet Union
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The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically based proto-states that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that the rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR. In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics, all of them, with the exception of the Russian Federation, had their own local party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party. In 1944, amendments to the All-Union Constitution allowed for branches of the Red Army for each Soviet Republic. They also allowed for Republic-level commissariats for foreign affairs and defense and this allowed for two Soviet Republics, Ukraine and Byelorussia, to join the United Nations General Assembly as founding members in 1945. All of the former Republics of the Union are now independent countries, however, most of the international community did not consider the Baltic countries to have legitimately been part of the USSR. Their position is supported by the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, in contrast, the Russian government and state officials maintain that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was legitimate. Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation, in accordance with provisions present in the Constitution, each republic retained the right to secede from the USSR. Under the constitution adopted in 1936 and modified along the way until October 1977, along with the state administrative hierarchy, there existed a parallel structure of party organizations, which allowed the Politburo to exercise large amounts of control over the republics. State administrative organs took direction from the party organs, and appointments of all party. Each republic had its own set of state symbols, a flag, a coat of arms, and, with the exception of Russia until 1990. Every republic of the Soviet Union also was awarded with the Order of Lenin, number of the union republics of the USSR varied from 4 to 16. In majority of years and at the decades of its existence. The Soviet Union considered the initial annexation legal, but officially recognized their independence on September 6,1991, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia, in winter of 1919 The Lithuanian–Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in 1919 but fell very soon. The Persian Socialist Soviet Republic, in what is now Iran, the Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic was proclaimed in 1918 but did not survive to the founding of the USSR, becoming the short-lived Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR. When the Tuvan Peoples Republic joined the Soviet Union in 1944, it did not become a union republic, the leader of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, suggested in the early 1960s that the country should become a union republic, but the offer was rejected. During the Soviet–Afghan War, the Soviet Union proposed to annex the Northern Afghanistan as its 16th union republic in what was to become the Afghan Soviet Socialist Republic, though administratively part of their respective Union Republics, ASSRs were also established based on ethnic/cultural lines. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, openness and restructuring were intended to liberalise, however, they had a number of effects which caused the power of the republics to increase
3.
Flag of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The flag of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was adopted by the Georgian SSR on April 11,1951. The flag was designed by the artist Severian Maysashvili Davidovich, range of hammer and sickle, above them a five-pointed star. From the circle to the square sides disagree 24 beam, the hammer and sickle, red star and red rays. Before 1937 the flag was red with the Georgian characters სსსრ in gold in the top-left corner, between 1922 and 1937, the flag was red, with the Cyrillic characters ССРГ in the top left-hand corner. Between 1937 and the adoption of the flag in the 1940s. The 1951 flag fell into disuse in November 1990 when the flag based on the Democratic Republic of Georgia was introduced until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Flag of the Soviet Union Coat of arms of the Georgian SSR Flag of Georgia Georgia in the Soviet Union Georgia in the Soviet Union
4.
Anthem of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The State Anthem of the Georgian SSR was the national anthem of Georgia when it was a republic of the Soviet Union and known as the Georgian SSR. The anthem was used from 1946 to 1991, the music was composed by Otar Taktakishvili, and the words were written by Grigol Abashidze and Alexander Abasheli. All three stanzas in the lyrics have references to Joseph Stalin, a native Georgian and leader of the Soviet Union at that time. These words were removed after Stalins death as part of Nikita Khrushchevs De-Stalinization program. Flag of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, Coat of arms of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic MIDI file Vocal recording in MP3 format Lyrics - nationalanthems. info
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Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
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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
7.
Abkhaz language
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Abkhaz /æpˈhɑːz/ is a Northwest Caucasian language most closely related to Abaza. It is spoken mostly by the Abkhaz people and it is the official language of Abkhazia where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgias other autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan, the Russian census of 2010 reported 6,786 speakers of Abkhaz in Russia. Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language and is related to Adyghe. Grammatically, the two are similar, however, the differences in phonology are substantial and are the main reason for many other linguists preferring to keep the two separate. Most linguists believe that Ubykh is the closest relative to the Abkhaz–Abaza dialect continuum, Abkhaz is spoken primarily in Abkhazia. However, the number of Abkhaz speakers in these countries remains unknown due to a lack of official records. Bzyb or Bzyp, spoken in the Caucasus and in Turkey, Sadz, nowadays spoken only in Turkey, formerly also spoken between the rivers Bzyp and Khosta. The literary Abkhaz language is based on the Abzhywa dialect, Abkhaz has a very large number of consonants, with three-way voiced/voiceless/ejective and palatalized/labialized/plain distinctions. By contrast, the language has only two phonemically distinct vowels—which, however, have several allophones depending on the palatal and/or labial quality of adjacent consonants. Phonemes in green are found in the Bzyp and Sadz dialects of Abkhaz, Abkhaz is typologically classified as an agglutinative language. Like all other Northwest Caucasian languages, Abkhaz has a complex verbal system coupled with a very simple noun system. Viacheslav Chirikba has characterized Abkhaz as a language, as the verb occupies the central place in Abkhaz morphology. Abkhaz is a language that distinguishes just two cases, the nominative and the adverbial. Abkhaz uses the Cyrillic script since 1862, the first alphabet was a 37–character Cyrillic alphabet invented by Baron Peter von Uslar. In 1909 a 55-letter Cyrillic alphabet was used, a 75-letter Latin script devised by a Russian/Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr lasted for 2 years 1926–1928. The earliest extant written records of the Abkhaz language are in the Arabic script, Abkhaz has been used as a literary language for only about 100 years. Both Georgian and Abkhaz law enshrines an official status of the Abkhaz language in Abkhazia, the 1992 law of Georgia, reiterated in the 1995 Constitution, grants Abkhaz the status of second official language in the territory of Abkhazia, along with Georgian
8.
Ossetian language
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Ossetian, also known as Ossete and Ossetic, is an Eastern Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. It is a descendant of the Scythian, Sarmatian and Alanic languages. Ossetian speakers number about 577,450, with 451,000 speakers in the Russian Federation recorded in the 2010 census, Ossetian belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. Within Iranian it is placed in an Eastern subgroup and further to a Northeastern sub-subgroup, the other Eastern Iranian languages such as Pashto and Yaghnobi show certain commonalities but also deep-reaching divergences from Ossetic. From deep Antiquity, the languages of the Iranian group were distributed in a vast territory including present-day Iran, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Ossetian is the sole survivor of the branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian. The Scythian group included numerous tribes, known in ancient sources as the Scythians, Massagetae, Saka, the more easterly Khorezmians and the Sogdians were also closely affiliated, in linguistic terms. Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tati and Talyshi, is one of the main Iranian languages with a community of speakers in the Caucasus. It is descended from Alanic, the language of the Alans and it is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language. The closest genetically related language may be the Yaghnobi language of Tajikistan, the names of ancient Iranian tribes in fact reflect this pluralization, e. g. Saromatae and Masagetae. The earliest known sample of Ossetian is an inscription which dates from the 10th to 12th centuries and was found near the River Bolshoi Zelenchuk at Arkhyz. The text is written in the Greek alphabet, with special digraphs, the scholarly transliteration of the Alanic phrases is, dæ ban xʷærz, mæ sfili, xsinjæ kurθi kændæ and du farnitz, kintzæ mæ sfili, kajci fæ wa sawgin. Equivalents in modern Ossetian would be Dæ bon xwarz, me’fšini ‘xšinæ, kurdigæj dæ. and farm neč, the passage translates as, The Alans I greet in their language, Good day to you my lords lady, where are you from. Good day to you my lords lady, where are you from, and other things, When an Alan woman takes a priest as a lover, you might hear this, Arent you ashamed, my lordly lady, that your cunt is being fucked by a priest. Arent you ashamed, my lady, to have an affair with the priest. Marginalia of Greek religious books, with parts of the book translated into Old Ossetic, have been recently found. Heavy-stem nouns possessed a long vowel or diphthong, and were stressed on the first-occurring syllable of this type. This is precisely the situation observed in the earliest records of Ossetian presented above and this situation also obtains in Modern Ossetian, although the emphasis in Digor is also affected by the openness of the vowel. The trend is found in a glossary of the Jassic dialect dating from 1422
9.
Socialist state
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A socialist state or socialist republic refers to any state that is constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. Aside from the Communist states, a number of states have described their orientation as socialist in their constitutions. In such cases, the system and machinery of government is not specifically structured to pursue the development of socialism. The concept of a socialist state is related to state socialism. Specifically, the state would become an entity for production as opposed to a mechanism for political control. According to Friedrich Engels, Saint-Simon foreshadowed the classical Marxist notion of the development of the state in a socialist society, karl Marx understood the state to be an instrument of the class rule, dominated by the interests of the ruling class in any mode of production. This transitional stage would involve working-class interests dominating government policy, in the manner that capitalist-class interests dominate government policy under capitalism. Karl Marx described the Paris Commune as the prototype for a government of the future. Friedrich Engels noted that all officials, high or low, were only the wages received by other workers. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, such a state would be a temporary affair, Engels argued. A new generation, he suggested, brought up in new and free social conditions, the Leninist conception of a socialist state is tied to Vladimir Lenins theory of the revolutionary party and organizational principles of democratic centralism. These ideas were adopted by Vladimir Lenin in 1917 just prior to the October Revolution in Russia and published in The State and Revolution, a central text for many Marxists. Vladimir Lenin argued that as socialism is replaced by communism, the state would wither away as strong centralized control progressively reduces as local communities gain more empowerment, as he put succinctly, So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state, states run by Communist parties that adhere to Marxism–Leninism, or some variation thereof, refer to themselves as socialist states. The Soviet Union was the first to proclaim itself a socialist state in its 1936 Constitution, another well-known example is the Peoples Republic of China, which proclaims itself to be a socialist state in its 1982 Constitution of the Peoples Republic of China. In the West, such states are known as communist states. This often includes at least the commanding heights of the economy to be nationalized, usually operated according to a plan of production, at least in the major production and social spheres. These Communist states often dont claim to have achieved socialism in their countries, rather, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea used to be a Marxist–Leninist state
10.
Mamia Orakhelashvili
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Mamia Orakhelashvili was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician energetically involved in the revolutionary movement in Russia and Georgia. Born in the Kutaisi Governorate, Imperial Russia in the family of a landlord, Orakhelashvili studied medicine at the University of Kharkov and he joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 and took an active part in the 1905 uprising in Petersburg. Between 1906 and 1914 he was arrested by the Tsarist police several times, after the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power, Orakhelashvili chaired the Vladikavkaz Soviet. Between 1918 and 1920 he worked in the underground Bolshevik group in the Democratic Republic of Georgia and he was released in accordance to the Moscow Treaty between Georgia and Soviet Russia and became chairman of the recently legalized Georgian Communist party. In February 1921, he participated in a Bolshevik diversion in southern Georgia, after the Sovietization of Georgia, Orakhelashvili served as chairman of the Georgian Revkom and secretary of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party. He later became deputy chairman of the Georgian Council of People’s Commissars, in 1930, Orakhelashvili joined the editorial board of the Moscow-based Communist newspaper Pravda. In 1932, he was appointed a deputy director of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute and authored works on Communist Party history. His historic descriptions of the period in question did not particularly meet the Stalinist version of the events, during the Great Purge in 1937, he was arrested and executed. His wife Mariam Orakhelashvili, the Minister of Education of the Georgian SSR was tortured and their daughter, Ketevan, was sent to a Gulag camp, and her husband, the prominent conductor Evgeni Mikeladze, tortured to death
11.
Tengiz Sigua
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Tengiz Sigua is a Georgian politician and former Prime Minister of the country. Sigua was an engineer by profession and entered politics on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse, in 1990 he led an expert group of the bloc Round Table-Free Georgia. Following the first multiparty elections in Georgia, he was elected Chair of the Ministers’ Council of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic on 14 November 1990 and he was the prime minister in Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s government from 15 November 1990 to 18 August 1991. However, he resigned in August 1991 after disagreements with the president, after Gamsakhurdia’s fall, he became Prime Minister in the Georgian interim government which was joined by Eduard Shevardnadze) on 6 January 1992. He was reappointed Prime Minister on 8 November 1992 by the newly elected Parliament and he resigned on 6 August 1993 after the Parliament rejected the budget submitted by the government. He remained as an MP, led the National Liberation Front opposition party, list of Georgians Prime Minister of Georgia
12.
President of Georgia
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The President of Georgia is the head of state, supreme commander-in-chief, and holder of the highest office within the Government of Georgia. Executive power is split between the President and the Prime Minister, who is the head of government, the office was first introduced by the Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia on 14 April 1991, five days after Georgias declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. The President serves a five-year term, the incumbent is Giorgi Margvelashvili, who was sworn in on 17 November 2013. The President of Georgia is Head of State, the President is a guarantor of national independence and unity of the country. He/she ensures the functioning of state bodies in accordance with the Constitution, the President is the representative of Georgia in foreign relations. The President of Georgia is elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot, the President may not be elected for more than two consecutive terms. Appoints and dismisses military commanders in agreement with the government, the president of Georgia issue decrees, edicts, and ordinances, also orders as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Georgia, to exercise constitutional powers. The President of Georgia also exercises other powers defined in the Constitution, legal acts of the president require countersignature from the Prime Minister. Any legal act of the President that requires countersigning shall be promulgated, in the case of countersignature, the responsibility for legal acts shall rest with the Government. During his/her period in office, he/she may not be arrested, in the event that the President violates the Constitution, betrays the state or commits other crimes, Parliament may remove him/her from office with the approval of the Constitutional Court. Security of the President of Georgia is provided by the Special State Protection Service, copies of the standard are used inside the Presidents office, at the Chancellery Building, other state agencies, and as a car flag on vehicles bearing the President within Georgian territory. In the nationwide elections to this post, on 26 May 1991, Gamsakhurdia won a landslide victory, Gamsakhurdia was ousted in a military coup détat in January 1992. He continued to function as a president-in-exile until his death in a attempt to regain power in December 1993. In the post-coup absence of power, a position of the Head of State was introduced for Georgias new leader Eduard Shevardnadze on 10 March 1992. After the adoption of a new Constitution on 24 August 1995, Shevardnadze was elected to presidency on 5 November 1995, and reelected on 9 April 2000. He resigned under pressure of mass known as Rose Revolution on 23 November 2003. After Nino Burjanadzes brief tenure as an Acting President, Mikheil Saakashvili was elected on 4 January 2004 and he was reelected on 5 January 2008. For leaders before independence, see List of leaders of Georgia Presidential Administration of Georgia Official Site of the President of Georgia
13.
Zviad Gamsakhurdia
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Zviad Gamsakhurdia was a Georgian politician, dissident, scholar, and writer who became the first democratically elected President of Georgia in the post-Soviet era. Gamsakhurdia is the only Georgian President to have died whilst formally in office, perhaps influenced by his father, Zviad received training in philology and began a professional career as a translator and literary critic. Despite the countrys association with Joseph Stalin, Soviet rule in Georgia was particularly harsh during the 1950s, in 1955, Zviad Gamsakhurdia established a youth underground group which he called the Gorgasliani which sought to circulate reports of human rights abuses. In 1956, he was arrested during demonstrations in Tbilisi against the Soviet policy of de-stalinization and was arrested again in 1958 for distributing anti-communist literature and he contributed to the Moscow-based underground periodical Chronicle of Current Events. Gamsakhurdia was also the first Georgian member of the International Society for Human Rights, perhaps seeking to emulate his father, Zviad Gamsakhurdia also pursued a distinguished academic career. He was also an outstanding Rustvelologist and researcher of history of the Iberian-Caucasian culture and his luck ran out in 1977 when the activities of the Helsinki Groups in the Soviet Union became a serious embarrassment to the Soviet government of Leonid Brezhnev. A nationwide crackdown on human rights activists was instigated across the Soviet Union and members of the Helsinki Groups in Moscow, Lithuania, Ukraine, in Georgia, the government of Eduard Shevardnadze arrested Gamsakhurdia and his fellow dissident Merab Kostava on 7 April 1977. There remains some dispute about Gamsakhurdias behaviour or strategy during his pre-trial detention, in particular, this concerns a TV broadcast in which, apparently, he recanted his activities as a human rights activist. A contemporary and uncensored account of events may be found in the Chronicle of Current Events. The two men were sentenced to three years in the camps three years exile for anti-Soviet activities. Gamsakhurdia did not appeal but his sentence was commuted to two years exile in neighbouring Dagestan, kostavas appeal was rejected and he was sent to a penal colony for three years, followed by three years exile or internal banishment to Siberia. Kostavas sentence only ended in 1987, at the end of June 1979, Gamsakhurdia was released from jail and pardoned in controversial circumstances. By then, taking pre-trial detention into account, he had served two years of his sentence, the authorities claimed that he had confessed to the charges and recanted his beliefs, a film clip was shown on Soviet television to substantiate their claim. According to a transcript published by the Soviet news agency TASS, bourgeois propaganda seized upon my mistakes and created a hullabaloo around me, which causes me pangs of remorse. I have realized the essence of the campaign launched in the West. Perhaps more importantly, his actions ensured that the dissident leadership could remain active, Kostava and Gamsakhurdia later both independently stated that the latters recantation had been a tactical move. In an open letter to Shevardnadze, dated April 19,1992, if there had been no confession and my release from the prison in 1979 had not taken place, then there would not have been a rise of the national movement. Gamsakhurdia returned to dissident activities soon after his release, continuing to contribute to samizdat periodicals, in 1981 he became the spokesman of the students and others who protested in Tbilisi about the threats to Georgian identity and the Georgian cultural heritage
14.
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
15.
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
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Democratic Republic of Georgia
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The Democratic Republic of Georgia existed from May 1918 to February 1921 and was the first modern establishment of a Republic of Georgia. The DRG was created after the collapse of the Russian Empire that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and it had a total land area of roughly 107,600 km², and a population of 2.5 million. The republics capital was Tbilisi, and its language was Georgian. Proclaimed on May 26,1918, on the break-up of the Transcaucasian Federation, after the February Revolution of 1917 and collapse of the tsarist administration in the Caucasus, most power was held by the Special Transcaucasian Committee of the Russian Provisional Government. All of the soviets in Georgia were firmly controlled by the Georgian Social Democratic Party, the Bolshevist October Revolution changed the situation drastically. The Caucasian soviets refused to recognize Vladimir Lenins regime, many Georgians, influenced by the ideas of Ilia Chavchavadze and other intellectuals from the late 19th century, insisted on national independence. A cultural national awakening was further strengthened by the restoration of the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church, in contrast, the Georgian Mensheviks regarded independence from Russia as a temporary step against the Bolshevik revolution and considered calls for Georgias independence chauvinistic and separatist. The union of Transcaucasus was short-lived though, Noe Ramishvili formed the first government of Democratic Republic of Georgia. Georgia was immediately recognized by Germany and the Ottoman Empire, the young state had to place itself under German protection and to cede its largely Muslim-inhabited regions to the Ottoman government. However, German support enabled the Georgians to repel the Bolshevik threat from Abkhazia, German forces were almost certainly under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein. Following the German defeat in the First World War, British occupation forces arrived in the country, Relations between the British and the local population were more strained than they had been with the Germans. British-held Batum, remained out of Georgias control until 1920, on December 25,1918, a British force was deployed in Tbilisi too. Georgias relations with its neighbours were uneasy, territorial disputes with Armenia, Denikins White Russian government and Azerbaijan led to armed conflicts in the first two cases. A British military mission attempted to mediate these conflicts in order to consolidate all anti-Bolshevik forces in the region, the threat of invasion by Denikins forces, notwithstanding the British position, brought Georgia and Azerbaijan together in a mutual defense alliance on June 16,1919. On February 14,1919, Georgia held parliamentary elections won by the Social Democratic Party of Georgia with 81. 5% of the vote. On March 21, Noe Zhordania formed the government, which had to deal with armed peasants revolts incited by local Bolshevik activists. These became more troublesome when carried out by ethnic minorities such as Abkhazians and Ossetians, in 1919, reforms in judicial system and local self-governance were carried out. Nevertheless, ethnic issues continued to trouble the country, especially on the part of the Ossetians, some contemporaries also observed increasing nationalism among the Social Democratic Party of Georgia leaders
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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
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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
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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
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Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic or Abkhaz ASSR was an autonomous republic of the Soviet Union within the Georgian SSR. The Abkhaz ASSR adopted its own constitution on 2 August 1937, the supreme organ of legislative power was the Supreme Soviet elected every 4 years and its Presidium. The executive power was vested with the Council of Ministers appointed by the Supreme Soviet, the Abkhaz ASSR had 11 representatives in the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Abkhazia First Secretary of the Abkhaz Communist Party Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Big Soviet Encyclopedia, on-line edition
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Order of the Red Banner
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The Order of the Red Banner was the first Soviet military decoration. The order was established on 16 September 1918, during the Russian Civil War by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and it was the highest award of Soviet Russia, subsequently the Soviet Union, until the Order of Lenin was established in 1930. Recipients were recognised for extraordinary heroism, dedication, and courage demonstrated on the battlefield, the order was awarded to individuals as well as to military units, cities, ships, political and social organizations, and state enterprises. In later years it was awarded on the twentieth and again on the thirtieth anniversary of military service without requiring participation in combat. The Russian Order of the Red Banner was established during the Russian Civil War by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of September 16,1918, the first recipient was Vasily Blyukher on September 28,1918. The second recipient was Iona Yakir, during the Civil War there existed similarly named orders and decorations established by the Soviet communist governments of several other constituent and nonconstituent republics. The August 1,1924 decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee established the all-Soviet Order of the Red Banner for deserving personnel of the Red Army, from 1918 till the late 1930s there was also a collective variant - the Revolutionary Red Banner of Honor. This was in the form of a military color awarded to distinguished Red Army, Soviet Air Force and it was more older than the order, having been established on August 3, a month and several weeks before. As a military decoration, The Order of the Red Banner recognised heroism in combat or otherwise extraordinary accomplishments of military valour during combat operations. Before the establishment of the Order of Lenin on April 5,1930, during World War II, under various titles, it was presented both to individuals and to units for acts of extreme military heroism. Nearly all well-known Soviet commanders became recipients of the Order of the Red Banner, the order was awarded to individuals as well as whole formations, which then added the prefix Red Banner to their official designations. Naval vessels also flew a special ensign, the Order of the Red Banner was also used as a long service award between 1944 and 1958 to mark twenty and thirty years of service in the military, state security, or police. This was surrounded by two golden panicles of wheat, at the bottom were the letters SSSR, additional awards of the Order bore a white enamelled shield with a silver sequence number at the bottom of the obverse. A recipient of three Orders of the Red Banner would wear a badge of the order followed by his second award bearing a number 2. The early variants of the Order were screw back badges to wear on clothing. Later variants hung from a standard Soviet pentagonal mount with a ring through the suspension loop, the mount was covered with an overlapping 24mm wide red silk moiré ribbon with 1. 5mm wide white edge stripes and a 7mm wide white central stripe. The Order of the Red Banner was worn on the side of the chest. If worn in the presence of Orders or medals of the Russian Federation, pavel Dybenko won 3 Orders of the Red Banner, his first in the 1921 bloody suppression of the naval rebellion in Kronstadt, his 2 others in 1922 in the suppression of peasants uprisings
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Romanization of Georgian
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Romanization of Georgian is the process of transliterating the Georgian language from the Georgian script into the Latin script. The system was already in use, since 1998, on driving licenses and it is also used by BGN and PCGN since 2009. Despite its popularity this system leads to ambiguity. The system is used in social networks, forums, chat rooms. The system is influenced by the common case-sensitive Georgian keyboard layout that ties each key to each letter in the alphabet. ISO9984,1996, Transliteration of Georgian characters into Latin characters, was last reviewed and confirmed in 2010, Transliteration web utility for the National and ISO transliteration of Georgian
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Romanization of Russian
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Romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin alphabet. Scientific transliteration, also known as the International Scholarly System, is a system that has used in linguistics since the 19th century. It is based on the Czech alphabet and formed the basis of the GOST, OST8483 was the first Soviet standard on romanization of Russian, introduced in 16 October 1935. This standard is an equivalent of GOST 16876-71 and was adopted as a standard of the COMECON. GOST7. 79-2000 System of Standards on Information, Librarianship and it is the official standard of both Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Machine readable passports is an adoption of an ICAO stadards for travel documents and it was used in Russian passports for a short period during 2010–2013. The standard was substituted in 2013 by GOST R ISO/IEC 7501-1-2013, which does not contain romanization, ISO/R9, established in 1954 and updated in 1968, was the adoption of the scientific transliteration by the International Organization for Standardization. It covers Russian and seven other Slavic languages, ISO9,1995 is the current transliteration standard from ISO. It is based on its predecessor ISO/R9,1968, which it deprecates, for Russian, the UNGEGN, a Working Group of the United Nations, in 1987 recommended a romanization system for geographical names, which was based on the 1983 version of GOST 16876-71. It may be found in some international cartographic products, American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization tables for Slavic alphabets are used in North American libraries and in the British Library since 1975. The formal, unambiguous version of the system requires some diacritics and two-letter tie characters, British Standard 2979,1958 is the main system of the Oxford University Press, and a variation was used by the British Library to catalogue publications acquired up to 1975. The BGN/PCGN system is relatively intuitive for Anglophones to read and pronounce, the portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944 and by PCGN in 1947. In Soviet international passports, transliteration was based on French rules, in 1997, with the introduction of new Russian passports, a diacritic-free English-oriented system was established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but this system was also abandoned in 2010. In 2006, GOST52535. 1-2006 was adopted, which defines technical requirements and standards for Russian international passports, in 2010, the Federal Migratory Service of Russia approved Order No. 26, stating that all names in the passports issued after 2010 must be transliterated using GOST52535. 1-2006. The standard was abandoned in 2013, finally in 2013, Order No.320 of the Federal Migratory Service of Russia came into force. It states that all names in the passports must be transliterated using the ICAO system. This system differs from the GOST52535. 1-2006 system in two things, ц is transliterated into ts, ъ is transliterated into ie, Scholarly ¹ Some archaic letters are transcribed in different ways
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Dissolution of the Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26,1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and that evening at 7,32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December, all the individual republics, the week before the unions formal dissolution,11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR also signalled the end of the Cold War, on the other hand, only the Baltic states have joined NATO and the European Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11,1985, Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, the reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23,1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the power ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and this liberalisation, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. Under Gorbachevs leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, in May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised in order to make these drinks more expensive and a disincentive to consumers, unlike most forms of rationing intended to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachevs plan also included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, however, Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition as did the last Tsar. The disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev. Alcohol production migrated to the market, or through moonshining as some made bathtub vodka with homegrown potatoes. The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms. The latter, disparaged as Mr Nyet in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs, gromyko was relegated to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as he was considered an old thinker. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger, at the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. Finally, on December 23,1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin, Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. The CTAG Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liepāja by three workers, Linards Grantiņš, Raimonds Bitenieks, and Mārtiņš Bariss and its name refers to the human-rights statements of the Helsinki Accords
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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
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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
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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
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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
29.
Black Sea
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The Black Sea is a body of water between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. It is supplied by a number of rivers, such as the Danube, Dnieper, Rioni, Southern Bug. The Black Sea has an area of 436,400 km2, a depth of 2,212 m. It is constrained by the Pontic Mountains to the south and by the Caucasus Mountains to the east, the longest east-west extent is about 1,175 km. The Black Sea has a water balance, that is, a net outflow of water 300 km3 per year through the Bosphorus. Mediterranean water flows into the Black Sea as part of a two-way hydrological exchange, the Black Sea drains into the Mediterranean Sea and then the Atlantic Ocean, via the Aegean Sea and various straits. The Bosphorus Strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and these waters separate Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The Black Sea is also connected to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch, the water level has varied significantly. Due to these variations in the level in the basin. At certain critical water levels it is possible for connections with surrounding water bodies to become established and it is through the most active of these connective routes, the Turkish Straits, that the Black Sea joins the world ocean. When this hydrological link is not present, the Black Sea is a basin, operating independently of the global ocean system. Currently the Black Sea water level is high, thus water is being exchanged with the Mediterranean. The Turkish Straits connect the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea, and comprise the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Black Sea as follows, On the Southwest. The Northeastern limit of the Sea of Marmara, a line joining Cape Takil and Cape Panaghia. Strabos Geographica reports that in antiquity, the Black Sea was often just called the Sea, for the most part, Graeco-Roman tradition refers to the Black Sea as the Hospitable sea, Εὔξεινος Πόντος Eúxeinos Póntos. This is a euphemism replacing an earlier Inhospitable Sea, Πόντος Ἄξεινος Póntos Áxeinos, strabo thinks that the Black Sea was called inhospitable before Greek colonization because it was difficult to navigate, and because its shores were inhabited by savage tribes. The name was changed to hospitable after the Milesians had colonized the southern shoreline and it is also possible that the epithet Áxeinos arose by popular etymology from a Scythian word axšaina- unlit, dark, the designation Black Sea may thus date from antiquity. A map of Asia dating to 1570, entitled Asiae Nova Descriptio, from Abraham Orteliuss Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, english-language writers of the 18th century often used the name Euxine Sea to refer to the Black Sea
30.
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
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It was established in December 1920, when the Soviets took over control of the short-lived First Republic of Armenia and lasted until 1991. On August 23,1990, it was renamed the Republic of Armenia after its sovereignty was declared and its independence was recognized on 26 December 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the state of the post-Union Republic of Armenia existed until the adoption of the new constitution in 1995, the modern Armenian Hayastan derives from earlier Armenian Hayk’ and Persian -stān. Hayk’ derives from Old Armenian Haykʿ, traditionally derived from a legendary patriarch named Hayk, aram above was considered to be one of his descendants. Officially, the name of the republic was the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic as defined by the 1937 and 1978 constitutions. From 1828 with the Treaty of Turkmenchay to the October Revolution in 1917, Eastern Armenia was part of the Russian Empire, after the October Revolution, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenins government announced that minorities in the empire could pursue a course of self-determination. Following the collapse of the empire, in May 1918 Armenia, a number of Armenians joined the advancing 11th Soviet Red Army. The medieval Armenian capital of Ani, as well as the icon of the Armenian people Mount Ararat, were located in the ceded area. Additionally, Joseph Stalin, then acting Commissar for Nationalities, granted the areas of Nakhchivan, the republic began under the name the Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia in 1920. From March 12,1922 to December 5,1936, Armenia was a part of the Transcaucasian SFSR together with the Georgian SSR, the Red Army, which was campaigning in Georgia at the time, returned to suppress the revolt and drove its leaders out of Armenia. With the introduction of the New Economic Policy, Armenians began to enjoy a period of relative stability, life under the Soviet rule proved to be a soothing balm in contrast to the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians received medicine, food, as well as other provisions from the central government, the situation was difficult for the Armenian Apostolic Church, however, which became a regular target of criticism in educational books and in the media and struggled greatly under Communism. After the death of Vladimir Lenin in January 1924, there was a power struggle in the Soviet Union. Armenian society and its economy were changed by Stalin and his fellow Moscow policymakers, in 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved under Stalins orders and the socialist republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia were established instead. For the Armenian people, conditions grew worse under Stalins rule, in a period of twenty-five years, Armenia was industrialized and educated under strictly prescribed conditions, and nationalism was harshly suppressed. Stalin took several measures in persecuting the Armenian Church, already weakened by the Armenian Genocide, in the 1920s, the private property of the church was confiscated and priests were harassed. Soviet assaults against the Armenian Church accelerated under Stalin, beginning in 1929, in 1932, Khoren Muradpekyan became known as Khoren I and assumed the title of His Holiness the Catholicos. However, in the late 1930s, the Soviets renewed their attacks against the Church and this culminated in the murder of Khoren in 1938 as part of the Great Purge, and the closing of the Catholicosate of Echmiatsin on August 4,1938
31.
Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic
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Established on 28 April 1920 as the Azerbaijan SSR, from 12 March 1922 to 5 December 1936, it was part of the Transcausasian SFSR together with the Armenian SSR and the Georgian SSR. In December 1922, the Transcaucasian SFSR became part of the newly established Soviet Union, the Constitution of Azerbaijan SSR was approved by the 9th Extraordinary All-Azerbaijani Congress of Soviets on 14 March 1937. On 19 November 1990, Azerbaijan SSR was renamed the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Constitution of the Azerbaijan SSR ceased to exist in 1995, upon the adoption of the new Constitution of Azerbaijan. The name Azerbaijan originates as the Land of Atropates, an Achaemenid then Hellenistic-era king over a region in present-day Iranian Azarbaijan and Iranian Kurdistan, despite this difference, the present name was chosen by the Musavat to replace the Russian names Transcaucasia and Baku in 1918. Azerbaijan derives from Persian Āzarbāydjān, from earlier Ādharbāyagān and Ādharbādhagān, from Middle Persian Āturpātākān, from its founding it was officially known as the Azerbaijan Socialist Soviet Republic. Upon independence, it was renamed to the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991, the current official name was retained after the new Constitution of Azerbaijan was adopted in 1995. On 13 October 1921, the Soviet republics of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the previously independent Naxicivan SSR would also become an autonomous ASSR within Azerbaijan by the Treaty of Kars. Borders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, like elsewhere in the USSR, were several times. On 12 March 1922 the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenian, and this was the first attempt at a union of Soviet republics, preceding the USSR. The Union Council of TSFSR consisted of the representatives of the three republics – Nariman Narimanov, Polikarp Mdivani, and Aleksandr Fyodorovich Miasnikyan, the First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Communist Party was Sergo Ordzhonikidze. In December 1922 TSFSR agreed to join the union with Russia, Ukraine, the TSFSR, however, did not last long. In December 1936, the Transcaucasian Union was finally dismantled when the leaders in the Union Council found themselves unable to come to agreement over several issues, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia then became union Republics of the Soviet Union directly. In the spring of 1921, a general change-over from revkoms, in order to help the Azerbaijani oil industry the Supreme Council of the National Economy decided in the same year to provide it with everything necessary out of turn. The new oilfields, like Ilyich Bay, Qara-Chukhur, Lok-Batan, in 1929 a great kolkhoz movement had developed and Azerbaijan became the second Soviet tea producer after the Georgian SSR for the first time. On 31 March 1931 the oil industry of the Azerbaijan SSR, the republic gained the second Order on 15 March 1935 during the observation of its 15th anniversary. At the end of the second five-year plan Azerbaijan appeared at 3rd place in the Soviet Union by its capital investment size, in 1938, the Azerbaijani alphabet was changed from Latin to Cyrillic alphabet. During the period 17 September 1939 to 21 June 1941, the Soviet Union was Nazi Germanys most important ally, in April,1940, intelligence flights by the British and French Air Forces passed over the Absheron Peninsula. Great Britain and France seriously considered the possibility of bombing the Republics oil fields and this changed when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941
32.
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
33.
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
34.
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
35.
Mensheviks
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The dispute originated at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, ostensibly over minor issues of party organization. Neither side held a consistent majority over the course of the congress, Lenins formulation required the party member to be a member of one of the partys organizations, whereas Martovs only stated that he should work under the guidance of a party organization. Martovs proposal was accepted by the majority of the delegates and that was also the reason behind the naming of the factions. Despite the outcome of the congress, the years saw the Mensheviks gathering considerable support among regular Social Democrats. In 1906, at the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, on the other hand, numerous disagreements about alliances and strategy emerged. The two factions kept their separate structures and continued to operate separately, both believed that the working class had to contribute to this revolution. In the event of a revolution, this was meant to lead to a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, the Mensheviks came to argue for predominantly legal methods and trade union work, while the Bolsheviks favoured armed violence. Some Mensheviks left the party after the defeat of 1905 and joined legal opposition organisations, after a while, Lenins patience wore out with their compromising and in 1908 he called these Mensheviks liquidationists. The Menshevik faction split further in 1914 at the beginning of World War I, most Mensheviks opposed the war, but a vocal minority supported it in terms of national defense. They called for a revolution and transfer of all power to the Soviets. In March–April 1917, the Menshevik leadership conditionally supported the newly formed liberal Russian Provisional Government, from then on, the Mensheviks had at least one representative in the Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution of 1917. With Mensheviks and Bolsheviks diverging, Mensheviks and non-factional social democrats returning from exile in Europe, others, like Alexandra Kollontai, joined the Bolsheviks. A significant number, including Leon Trotsky and Adolf Joffe, joined the non-factional Petrograd-based anti-war group called Mezhraiontsy, a small but influential group of social democrats associated with Maxim Gorkys newspaper Novaya Zhizn refused to join either party. The Mensheviks got just 3. 3% of the national vote,41. 7% of their support came from the Transcaucasus. In Georgia about 75% voted for them, the right wing of the Menshevik party supported actions against the Bolsheviks, while the left wing, the majority of the Mensheviks at that point, supported the Left in the ensuing Russian Civil War. However, Martovs leftist Menshevik faction refused to break with the wing of the party, resulting in their press being sometimes banned. The Mensheviks opposed war communism, and in 1919 suggested an alternative programme, during World War I, some anti-war Mensheviks had formed a group called Menshevik-Internationalists. They were active around the newspaper Novaya Zhizn and took part in the Mezhraiontsy formation. After July 1917 events in Russia, they broke with the Menshevik majority that supported continued war with Germany, the Mensheviks-Internationalists became the hub of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party
36.
Lavrentiy Beria
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Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalins secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag labor camps and was responsible for overseeing the secret defense institutions known as sharashkas. He also played the role in coordinating the Soviet partisans, developing an impressive intelligence. He attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as our Himmler, after the war, he organized the communist takeover of the state institutions of Central and Eastern Europe. Berias uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. Stalin gave it priority and the project was completed in under five years in no small part due to Soviet espionage against the West organized by Berias NKVD. Upon Stalins death in March 1953, Beria was promoted to First Deputy Premier and he was briefly a part of the ruling troika with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. Berias overconfidence in his position after Stalins death led him to misjudge other Politburo members, the compliance of the NKVD was ensured by Zhukovs troops, and after interrogation Beria was taken to the basement of the HQ of the Moscow Military District and shot by General Pavel Batitsky. Beria was born in Merkheuli, near Sukhumi, in the Sukhumi district of Kutaisi Governorate and he was from the Mingrelian subethnic group of Georgians and grew up in a Georgian Orthodox family. Berias mother, Marta Jaqeli, was a religious, church-going woman, she was previously married and widowed before marrying Berias father, Pavel Khukhaevich Beria. He also had a brother, and a sister named Anna, in his autobiography, Lavrentiy Beria mentioned only his sister and his niece, implying that his brother either was dead or had no relationship with Beria after he left Merkheuli. Beria attended a school in Sukhumi, and joined the Bolsheviks in March 1917 while a student in the Baku Polytechnicum. As a student, Beria distinguished himself in mathematics and the sciences, the Polytechnicums curriculum concentrated on the petroleum industry. Beria also worked for the anti-Bolshevik Mussavatists in Baku, after the citys capture by the Red Army, Beria was saved from execution only because there was likely little arrangement time and Sergei Kirov had possibly intervened. While in prison, he formed a connection with Nina Gegechkori, his cellmates niece and she was 17, a trained scientist from an aristocratic family. In 1919, at the age of twenty, Beria started his career in state security when the security service of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic hired him while still a student at the Polytechnicum, in 1920 or 1921, Beria joined the Cheka – the original Bolshevik secret police. At that time, a Bolshevik revolt took place in the Menshevik-controlled Democratic Republic of Georgia, the Cheka became heavily involved in the conflict, which resulted in the defeat of the Mensheviks and the formation of the Georgian SSR. By 1922, Beria was deputy head of the Georgian branch of Chekas successor, in 1924 he led the repression of a Georgian nationalist uprising, after which up to 10,000 people were executed
37.
Principality of Tao-Klarjeti
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Tao and Klarjeti were originally only the names of the two most important provinces of the Georgian lands that stretched from the Georgian Gorge in the south to the Lesser Caucasus in the north. The landscape is characterised by mountains and the river-systems of the Chorokhi, the principalities of Tao-Klarjeti arose out of the turmoils of the Muslim conquests in the Caucasus in the 7th and 8th centuries, succeeding the early medieval kingdom of Caucasian Iberia. The new era began in Tao-Klarjeti in 813, when the Georgian prince Ashot I of the Bagrationi family made Klarjeti a base in his struggle against the Arab occupation. Recognizing the Byzantine suzerainty, he received a title of κουροπαλάτης, Ashot fought the Arabs from there, gradually incorporating the surrounding lands of Tao, Kola, Artaani and Shavsheti, along with a few other lesser lands, from the Arab dominance. He encouraged resettlement of Georgians in these lands, and patronized monastic life initiated by the prominent Georgian ecclesiastic figure Grigol Khandzteli in Klarjeti, for a long time the region became a cultural safe-house and one of the most important religious centers of Georgia. Ashot’s successors continued fighting for the Kartlian lands, contested also by the Abkhazian dynasty of western Georgia, however, internal feuds, not infrequent in the principality, were an important obstacle. A civil war following the assassination of David I brought the victory of Adarnase I over his rival, Nasra, David’s murderer. During the reign of Adarnase’s son David II the Georgians had also to defend against the Byzantine aggression, the Kingdom of the Kartvels also included several other minor princedoms more or less dependent to the Tao crown. In 958, Bagrat II Regueni, the Simple was crowned King of the Georgians and inherited Northern Tao, while David III received a title of Kuropalates and got Southern Tao in possession. With the strong intention to unite all Georgian lands, he adopted Prince Bagrat, the only setback was the 987–989 unsuccessful conflict with the Byzantine Empire that forced David to agree to cede his dominion to Emperor Basil II on his death. Despite this reverse, Bagrat was able to become the first ruler of the unified Georgian kingdom on his father’s death in 1008, the area continued to remain a Georgian territory and was administered by the princes of Samtskhe-Saatabago until conquered by the Ottomans in 1551. During their rule, a policy of Islamization was implemented and many of the Christian churches were converted into mosques, the Ottoman defeat in World War I allowed the newly created Democratic Republic of Georgia to regain control of the region. Olti district, which was contested between Georgians and Armenians had stayed under Turkish control. Several monuments of medieval Georgian architecture – abandoned or converted churches, monasteries, bridges and castles – are scattered across the area. Best known are the monasteries of Khandzta, Khakhuli, Ancha, F. Macler, 2e partie, livre III, Paris 1917 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, ed. G. Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins, Dumbarton Oaks 1967 Aristakes Lastivert, Récit des malheurs de la nation arménienne, M. Canard and H. Berberian, Brussels 1973 John Scylitzes, Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis historiarum, ed. I. Thurn, Berlin – New York 1973 Elishe, History of Vardan,1982 The Life of Kartli, Das Leben Kartlis. 300-1200, ed. G. Pätsch, Leipzig 1985 Life of John and Euthymius, B. kratchkovsky and A. Vasiliev, Patrologia Orientalis 18, 700-833 “Histoire de Yahya-Ibn-Sa‘ïd d’Antioche”, ed. and transl
38.
Batumi
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Batumi is the second largest city of Georgia, located on the coast of the Black Sea in the countrys southwest. Much of Batumis economy revolves around tourism and gambling, but the city is also an important sea port and includes industries like shipbuilding, food processing and light manufacturing. Since 2010, Batumi has been transformed by the construction of modern high-rise buildings, Batumi is located on the site of the ancient Greek colony in Colchis called Bathus or Bathys – derived from the Greek phrase βαθύς λιμεν bathus limen or βαθύς λιμήν bathys limin meaning deep harbor. Under Hadrian, it was converted into a fortified Roman port, from 1010, it was governed by the eristavi of the king of Georgia. In the late 15th century, after the disintegration of the Georgian kingdom, Batumi passed to the princes of Guria, de Thoisy was taken captive and released through the mediation of the emperor John IV of Trebizond. In the 15th century in the reign of the prince Kakhaber Gurieli and they returned to it in force a century later and inflicted a decisive defeat on the Georgian armies at Sokhoista. Batumi was recaptured by the Georgians several times, first in 1564 by prince Rostom Gurieli, who lost it soon afterwards, in 1723, Batumi again became part of the Ottoman Empire. It was the last Black Sea port annexed by Russia during the Russian conquest of that area of the Caucasus, in 1878, Batumi was annexed by the Russian Empire in accordance with the Treaty of San Stefano between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Occupied by the Russians on August 28,1878, the town was declared a port until 1886. It functioned as the center of a military district until being incorporated in the Government of Kutaisi on June 12,1883. Finally, on June 1,1903, with the Okrug of Artvin, it was established as the region of Batumi, the expansion of Batumi began in 1883 with the construction of the Batumi-Tiflis-Baku railway and the finishing of the Baku-Batumi pipeline. Henceforth, Batumi became the chief Russian oil port in the Black Sea, the town expanded to an extraordinary extent and the population increased rapidly, from 8,671 inhabitants in 1882 to 12,000 in 1889. By 1902 the population had reached 16,000, with 1,000 working in the refinery for Baron Rothschilds Caspian, in the late 1880s and after, more than 7400 Doukhobor emigrants sailed for Canada from Batumi, after the government agreed to let them emigrate. Canada settled them in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, during 1901, sixteen years prior to the October Revolution, Joseph Stalin, the future leader of the Soviet Union, lived in the city organizing strikes. Kemal Atatürk ceded the area to the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union on the condition that it be granted autonomy, when the USSR collapsed in 1989, Aslan Abashidze was appointed head of Adjaras governing council and subsequently held onto power throughout the unrest of the 1990s. Whilst other regions, such as Abkhazia, attempted to break away from the Georgian state, Abashidze exploited the central governments weaknesses and ruled the area as a personal fiefdom. In May 2004, he fled to Russia because of protests in Tbilisi sparked by the Rose Revolution. Batumi today is one of the port cities of Georgia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Georgia
Russia
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