Socialist Soviet Republic of Georgia (1921–1936) საქართველოს სოციალისტური საბჭოთა რესპუბლიკა(Georgian) Социалистическая Советская Республика Грузия(Russian)Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (1936–1990) საქართველოს საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკა(Georgian) Грузинская Советская Социалистическая Республика(Russian)Republic of Georgia (1990–1991) საქართველოს რესპუბლიკა(Georgian) Республика Грузия(Russian)
The Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic,[2] also known as Soviet Georgia, the Georgian SSR, or simply Georgia, was one of the republics of the Soviet Union from its second occupation (by Russia) in 1921 to its independence in 1991. Coterminous with the present-day republic of Georgia, it was based on the traditional territory of Georgia, which had existed as a series of independent states in the Caucasus prior to the first occupation of annexation in the course of the 19th century. The Georgian SSR was formed in 1921 and subsequently incorporated in the Soviet Union in 1922. Until 1936 it was a part of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, which existed as a union republic within the USSR. From November 18, 1989, the Georgian SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws. The republic was renamed the Republic of Georgia on November 14, 1990, and subsequently became independent before the dissolution of the Soviet Union on April 9, 1991, whereupon each former SSR became a sovereign state.
Geographically, the Georgian SSR was bordered by Turkey to the south-west and the Black Sea to the west. Within the Soviet Union it bordered the Russian SFSR to the north, the Armenian SSR to the south and the Azerbaijan SSR to the south-east.
On 13 October 1921 the Treaty of Kars was signed, which established the common borders between Turkey and the three Transcaucasian republics of the Soviet Union. Georgian SSR was forced to cede the Georgian-dominated Artvin Okrug to Turkey in exchange for keeping Adjara, which was granted political autonomy within the Georgian SSR under Soviet rule.[citation needed]
Reaching the Caucasus oilfields was one of the main objectives of Adolf Hitler's invasion of the USSR in June 1941, but the armies of the Axis powers never reached as far as Georgia. The country contributed almost 700,000 fighters (350,000 were killed) to the Red Army, and was a vital source of textiles and munitions. During this period Joseph Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, ordered the deportation of the Chechen, German, Ingush, Karachay, Karapapaks, Meskhetian Turks and Balkarian peoples from the Caucasus; they were transported to Siberia and Central Asia for alleged collaboration with the Nazis. He also abolished their respective autonomous republics. The Georgian SSR was briefly granted some of their territory until 1957.[5]
The decentralisation program introduced by Khrushchev in the mid-1950s was soon exploited by Georgian Communist Party officials to build their own regional power base. A thriving pseudo-capitalist shadow economy emerged alongside the official state-owned economy. While the official growth rate of the economy of the Georgia was among the lowest in the USSR, such indicators as savings level, rates of car and house ownership were the highest in the Union,[6] making Georgia one of the most economically successful Soviet republics. Among all the union republics, Georgia had the highest number of residents with high or special secondary education.[7]
Although corruption was hardly unknown in the Soviet Union, it became so widespread and blatant in Georgia that it came to be an embarrassment to the authorities in Moscow. Eduard Shevardnadze, the country's interior minister between 1964 and 1972, gained a reputation as a fighter of corruption and engineered the removal of Vasil Mzhavanadze, the corrupt First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party. Shevardnadze ascended to the post of First Secretary with the blessings of Moscow. He was an effective and able ruler of Georgia from 1972 to 1985, improving the official economy and dismissing hundreds of corrupt officials.
In the 1970s Soviet authorities adopted a new policy of forming a "Soviet people". The "Soviet people" were said to be a "new historical, social, and international community of people having a common territory, economy, and socialist content; a culture that reflected the particularities of multiple nationalities; a federal state; and a common ultimate goal: the construction of communism." Russian was meant to become the common language of this community, considering the role that Russian was playing for the nations and nationalities of the Soviet Union. However, in 1978, Soviet authorities had to face the opposition of thousands of Georgians, who gathered in downtown Tbilisi to hold mass demonstration after Soviet officials accepted removal of the constitutional status of the Georgian language as Georgia's sole official state language. Bowing to pressure from mass street demonstrations on April 14, 1978, Moscow approved Shevardnadze's reinstatement of the constitutional guarantee the same year. April 14 was established as a Day of the Georgian Language. In 1981, massive celebrations took place in honour of the republic's 60th anniversary, with a mass event taking place in front of General SecretaryBrezhnev on Tbilisi's Constitution Square.[8]
Shevardnadze's appointment as Soviet Foreign Minister in 1985 brought his replacement in Georgia by Jumber Patiashvili, a conservative and generally ineffective Communist who coped poorly with the challenges of perestroika. Towards the end of the late 1980s, increasingly violent clashes occurred between the Communist authorities, the resurgent Georgian nationalist movement and nationalist movements in Georgia's minority-populated regions (notably South Ossetia). On 9 April 1989, Soviet troops were used to break up a peaceful demonstration at the government building in Tbilisi. Twenty Georgians were killed and hundreds wounded. The event radicalised Georgian politics, prompting many—even some Georgian communists—to conclude that independence was preferable to Soviet unity and would provide Georgia with a chance to fully integrate both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose peoples were still loyal to the Union.
On October 28, 1990, democratic parliamentary elections were held. On November 14 a transitional period was declared until the restoration of Georgia's independence and in this regard, the republic changed its name to "Republic of Georgia".[9] Georgia (excluding Abkhazia) was one of the six republics along with Armenia, Moldova and the Baltic States who boycotted participation in the March 1991 union-wide preservation referendum.[10] On 31 March 1991, a referendum was held on the restoration of Georgia's independence on the basis of the Independence Act of 26 May 1918. The majority of voters voted in favor of the act.[10]
Georgia declared independence on 9 April 1991 under Zviad Gamsakhurdia[11] as one of the republics to secede just four months before the failed coup against Gorbachev in August, which was supported by a declining number of hardliners. However, this was unrecognized by the Soviet government and Georgia remained a part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in December 1991.
Footnotes
^On 14 November 1990, article 6 on the monopoly of the Communist Party of Georgia on power was excluded from the Constitution of the Georgian SSR
^(Georgian: საქართველოს საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკა, romanized:sakartvelos sabch'ota sotsialist'uri resp'ublik'a; Russian: Грузинская Советская Социалистическая Республика, romanized: Gruzinskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika)
^The Europa World Year Book 2004, Volume I. Europa World Year Book (45th ed.). London: Europa Publications. 2004 [1928]. p. 1806. ISBN1-85743-254-1. However, Georgia was invaded by Bolshevik troops in early 1921, and a Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was proclaimed on 25 February.
^. Geronti Kikodze (1954) Notes of a Contemporary, first published in 1989, Mnatobi, Issue 1, Tbilisi, Georgia.
Jones, Stephen F. (October 1988), "The Establishment of Soviet Power in Transcaucasia: The Case of Georgia 1921–1928", Soviet Studies, 40 (4): 616–639, doi:10.1080/09668138808411783
Marshall, Alex (2010), The Caucasus Under Soviet Rule, New York City: Routledge, ISBN978-0-41-541012-0
Martin, Terry (2001), The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, ISBN978-0-80-143813-4
Rayfield, Donald (2004), Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, New York City: Random House, ISBN978-0-37-575771-6
Saparov, Arsène (2015), From Conflict to Autonomy in the Caucasus: The Soviet Union and the making of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh, New York City: Routledge, ISBN978-0-41-565802-7
Scott, Erik R. (2016), Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of Soviet Empire, Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0-19-939637-5
Smith, Jeremy (2013), Red Nations: The Nationalities Experience in and after the USSR, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, ISBN978-0-52-112870-4
Zürcher, Christoph (2007), The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict, and Nationhood in the Caucasus, New York City: New York University Press, ISBN978-0-81-479709-9
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