Transcaucasus as a participant in the Soviet federal construction (historical and state studies analysis)

Background. The study of the formation of a federal state in our Fatherland has always been and will remain relevant, which is associated not only with the patriotic focus of the problem, but also with its high academic value in the context of political science. The purpose of this publication is to show the complex ethnic composition of Transcaucasia, its socio-political characteristics, which predetermined the construction of the Transcaucasian Federation after the end of the Civil War. Materials and methods. The article uses historical and historical-political studies, as well as materials from the Twelfth Congress of the RCP(b) when considering acute domestic policy. The author resorts to diachronic and synchronous comparison, geopolitical analysis. Results. The article recalls that the Russian Empire tried to govern Transcaucasia as a single territory, and after the February and October revolutions of 1917, local leading ethnic groups were quite reluctant to separatize. Relations. The famous compromise between them was the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, which existed for just over a month. The Turkish aggression against Transcaucasia in the spring of 1918 provoked the creation of independent Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, whose bourgeois regimes fell in 1920-1921. Moreover, since the end of 1920, the Bolshevik leadership was thinking about uniting the three republics, which was implemented in March 1922. However, the unification that took place caused sharp rejection on the part of the Georgian national communists. I.V. Stalin in his report at the XII Congress of the RCP(b) formulated the main reasons for such national-separatist behavior, rooted in national chauvinism, geopolitical and economic egoism. Conclusions. The "Georgian affair" quite clearly characterizes the peculiarity of the Soviet federal project, which was formed from above, in a centralized manner. The construction of the Transcaucasian Federation, which the Bolshevik leadership insisted on, lasted until 1936 and turned out to be a temporary but necessary measure at that stage of federalization. It helped to a certain extent to smooth out territorial and other contradictions between the republics and reduce the intensity of nationalist ambitions.