Democratic Republic of Georgia

The Democratic Republic of Georgia was the first modern republic of Georgia, existing from May 1918 to March 1921. It was born from the Russian Revolution, which broke the Russian Empire and let its borderlands claim independence, and unlike Bolshevik Russia it was run by a moderate multi-party system under the Georgian Social Democrats, the Mensheviks, with Noe Zhordania as premier. At first it sheltered as a protectorate of the German Empire; after Germany's defeat British troops held the country against a Bolshevik landing, until the Treaty of Moscow of 1920 bought Russia's recognition at the price of keeping hostile forces out. With the Western powers gone, the Red Army invaded in February 1921, and the republic fell by March, becoming a Soviet republic. The Zhordania government fled to France and was recognised in exile into the 1930s. Short as it was, the republic left a democratic legacy: its constitution gave women the vote ahead of most of Europe, its parliament seated nine ethnicities, and it founded Georgia's first full university.