Over more than a century of the Russian rule of the Caucasus, the structure of the viceroyalty underwent a number of changes, with the addition or removal of administrative positions and redrawing of provincial divisions.

General Karl Knorring was the first person to be assigned to govern the Caucasus territory, being officially titled as the Commander-in-Chief in Georgia and Governor-General of Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi).

The scope of its jurisdiction eventually came to include what is now Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the North Caucasus, as well as parts of Northeastern Turkey (today the provinces of Artvin, Ardahan, Kars, and Iğdır).

[2] Headquartered at Tiflis, the viceroys acted as de facto ambassadors to neighboring countries, commanders in chief of the armed forces, and the supreme civil authority, mostly responsible only to the Tsar.

After the 1917 February Revolution, which dispossessed Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian crown, the Viceroyalty of the Caucasus was abolished by the Russian Provisional Government on March 18, 1917, and all authority, except in the zone of the active army, was entrusted to the civil administrative body called the Special Transcaucasian Committee or Ozakom (short for Osobyy Zakavkazskiy Komitet, Особый Закавказский Комитет).