Extraordinary Eighth All-Georgia Congress of Soviets, On the Dissolution of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. February 13, 1937

The issuing of this resolution was closely followed by similar resolutions, passed by the Extraordinary Ninth All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets on March 14, 1937, and then the Extraordinary Ninth Congress of Soviets of Armenia on March 23, 1937.

Original Source: S"ezdy sovetov Soiuza SSR, soiuznykh i avtonomnykh sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik; sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Institut prava, Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1964), Vol. 6, p. 601.

The Extraordinary Eighth All-Georgia Congress of Soviets notes with great satisfaction that the Transcaucasian Federation has played its historic part in the political and economic life of the peoples of Transcaucasia by establishing lasting national peace and fraternal cooperation between the peoples of Transcaucasia and securing the triumph of socialist construction in the republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The peoples of Transcaucasia, liberated by the Great October Socialist Revolution from the yoke of imperialist interventionists and their hirelings and the people's traitors--Mensheviks, Dashnaks and Mussavatists, created on 12 March 1922 the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic on the initiative of Lenin, the great leader of the working class, in order to unite their efforts to defend the gains of the socialist revolution, to abolish chaos and dislocation and advance the economy, to rout the counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet parties and to establish peace among the nationalities and develop their close fraternal cooperation.

The Transcaucasian Federation has fulfilled the historic tasks it was set.

Soviet power has scored victories in socialist construction in Transcaucasia under the leadership of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), under the banner of Leninist nationalities policy. Soviet power has built a powerful industry in the Transcaucasian republics and transformed them into advanced industrial-agrarian republics.

The collective-farm system has triumphed in the rural areas of Transcaucasia once and for all. Hundreds upon hundreds of collective farms have grown in strength and ensure the collective farmers a prosperous life on the basis of collective-farm rules.

The culture of the Transcaucasian peoples, national in form and socialist in content, has flourished in unprecedented fashion.

The people's enemies--the counter-revolutionary parties of Mensheviks, Mussavatists and Dashnaks have been defeated once and for all. Fraternity and indissoluble friendship among nations have been established in the relations between the peoples of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

By creating and strengthening the Transcaucasian Federation, an organ of national peace, which was impossible and unknown under the bourgeois system, the workers, peasants and the toiling intelligentsia of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia have achieved their historic victories in socialist construction.

The victory of socialism in the Transcaucasian republics has created the requisite conditions for the dissolution of the Transcaucasian Federation at the present stage of historical development of the great Soviet Union.

By virtue of the growing socialist economy and culture the Transcaucasian republics--Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan--now have the broadest economic and cultural ties not only between themselves, but also with the other republics of the USSR, which has given each republic a new status in the fraternal family of the peoples of the Soviet Union and created the necessary conditions for the Transcaucasian republics' accession to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The new Constitution opens up great prospects for the Transcaucasian republics' growth and efflorescence and raises to a new level the indissoluble fraternal union of the Transcaucasian peoples.

Proceeding from the foregoing, the Extraordinary Eighth All-Georgia Congress of Soviets resolves:

That in accordance with Article 13 of the Constitution of the USSR that provides for the direct accession of the Azerbaijan SSR, the Georgian SSR and the Armenian SSR to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it be considered necessary to dissolve the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and its governing bodies, as having performed their historic function.

Source: USSR, Sixty Years of the Union, 1922-1982 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), p. 259.