Soviet Occupation Day

Soviet Occupation Day (Georgia):

Soviet Occupation Day (Georgian: საბჭოთა ოკუპაციის დღე, sabch'ot'a okupats'iis dge) is a holiday in the country of Georgia. It is observed annually on February 25 to commemorate the Red Army invasion of Georgia in 1921. The holiday was established in 2010 and its first observance was in 2011.  In February 1921, the Red Army, following the post-1917 turmoil in Transcaucasia, entered Georgia, which was then the Menshevik-controlled Democratic Republic of Georgia. The Georgian Menshevik army was defeated and the government fled the country. On February 25, 1921 the Red Army entered the capital Tbilisi and installed a communist government, led by Georgian Bolshevik Filipp Makharadze. The Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was established on February 25, 1921. For the next 68 years, February 25 was celebrated as an official holiday, the Day of Establishment of Soviet Power in Georgia. On July 21, 2010, Georgia declared February 25 Soviet Occupation Day to recall the Red Army invasion of Georgia in 1921. The Georgian parliament voted in favor of the government’s initiative. The decision, endorsed unanimously by the Parliament of Georgia instructs the government to organize various memorial events on every February 25 and to fly national flags half-staff to commemorate, as the decision puts it, hundreds of thousands of victims of political repressions of the Communist occupational regime. Georgia's establishment of Soviet Occupation Day followed the example of Moldova. Moldova's president Mihai Ghimpu instituted in 2010, Soviet Occupation Day to remember the Soviet occupation on June 28, 1940, but the Constitutional Court cancelled his decree on July 12, 2010. In Latvia the Occupation of the Latvian Republic Day was declared an official remembrance day on May 18, 2000, it is observed on June 17.

^ The Soviet invasion of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (which had only been created after the collapse of the Czarist Russian Empire in 1917) forced Georgia back into Russia - now the Soviet Union. 3,200 Georgian soldiers were killed and 5,000 Georgian civilians were killed during the Communist invasion. In the end Georgia went from a democratic country to the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (a Communist Dictatorship) that lasted until the USSR collapsed in December 1991.   Parts of Georgia continue to be occupied - by Russia since 2008: South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia claims they are independent countries, but the citizens of those "countries" use the Russian Language, the Russian Ruble, Russian Passports, they receive Government Pensions from Russia and Russian troops occupy their territory. ^

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