Transcaucasian Seim

(or diet), a counterrevolutionary organ of state authority in Transcaucasia convoked by the Transcaucasian Commissariat in Tbilisi on Feb. 10 (23), 1918, with a view to placing the cessation of Transcaucasia from Soviet Russia on a juridical basis. The Seim was composed of deputies elected from Transcaucasia to the Constituent Assembly and representatives of bourgeois political parties, such as the Mensheviks, Dashnaks, and Musavatists. The Bolsheviks refused to participate in the Seim and protested against its creation. In March 1918 the Transcaucasian Seim sanctioned the separation of Transcaucasia from Soviet Russia and on April 22 proclaimed Transcaucasia an “independent federal republic.” Under the pressure of German and Turkish occupation forces, the federation, rent by contradictions between the nationalist parties, disintegrated into separate bourgeois republics—Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. On May 26, 1918, the Transcaucasian Seim declared itself dissolved.