Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Rcp Bolshevik

also Kavbiuro, a regional body authorized to represent the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) in the Caucasus.

The Caucasian Bureau was founded by a decision of a Central Committee plenum of Apr. 8, 1920. Its purpose was to direct all the organizational work of the party organizations in the Soviet areas of the Northern Caucasus. The Central Committee assigned the bureau the task of establishing contacts with the party organizations of Transcaucasia and of rendering assistance to them in directing the struggle of the working masses for Soviet power in the region. After the dissolution of the Caucasus Regional Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) the Caucasian Bureau directly headed the work of the Transcaucasian party organizations. After the summer of 1920 it directed the party organizations of the Northern Caucasus, Sevastopol, ’ Kuban’-Black Sea Oblast, the Don region, and Transcaucasia.

For greater effectiveness in directing the local organizations, two so-called troikas (triumvirates) were established within the bureau—the Baku Troika and the Armavir Troika (later the Rostov Troika). The first was concerned with the party organizations of Transcaucasia, and the second with those of the Northern Caucasus, the Don region, and Kuban’-Black Sea Oblast. On Mar. 23, 1921, the Southwestern Bureau was separated from the Caucasian Bureau. The Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Georgian party organizations were under the bureau, as were those of the Gortsy Republic and Dagestan until their transferal to the Southwestern Bureau in October 1921.

The organ of the bureau was at first the newspaper Sovetskii Kavkaz, and after October 1920, Sovetskii iug. From 1920 to 1922 it published the magazine Izvestiia Kavbiuro TsK RKP(b).

The bureau existed until the First Congress of the Communist Organizations of Transcaucasia in February 1922, which elected a Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik). Among the members of the bureau at various times were S. M. Kirov, P. G. Mdivani, A. F. Miasnikov, F. I. Makharadze, A. M. Nazaretian, N. N. Narimanov, I. D. Orakhelashvili, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, Ia. I. Poluian, M. G. Pleshakov, E. D. Stasova, Iu. P. Figatner, and Sh. Z. Eliava.