It was largely engineered by two influential Georgian-born Soviet officials, Joseph Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who on 14 February 1921 received the consent of Russian leader Vladimir Lenin to advance into Georgia, on the pretext of supporting the alleged "peasants' and workers' rebellion" in the country.

Almost simultaneous occupation of a large portion of southwest Georgia by Turkey (February–March 1921) threatened to develop into a crisis between Moscow and Ankara, and led to significant territorial concessions by the Soviets to the Turkish National Government in the Treaty of Kars.

[12][13] Georgia engaged in small conflicts with its neighbouring states as it attempted to establish its borders, though it was able to maintain independence and de facto international recognition throughout the Russian Civil War, including being recognized by Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Moscow.

[14] Despite relatively wide public support and some successful reforms, the Social Democratic leadership of Georgia failed to create a stable economy or build a strong, disciplined army capable of opposing an invasion.

Since early 1920, local Bolsheviks had been actively fomenting political unrest in Georgia, capitalizing on agrarian disturbances in rural areas and also on inter-ethnic tensions within the country.

The Sovietization of the Caucasus appeared to Bolshevik leaders to be a task which would be easier to achieve while the Allied powers were preoccupied with the Turkish War of Independence;[17] furthermore, the Ankara-based Turkish national government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had expressed its full commitment to close co-operation with Moscow, promising to compel "Georgia … and Azerbaijan … to enter into union with Soviet Russia … and … to undertake military operations against the expansionist Armenia.

[19][20] With its well-established diplomatic ties to several European nations, and its control of strategic transit routes from the Black Sea to the Caspian, Georgia was viewed by the Soviet leadership as "an advance post of the Entente".

[9][22] The cessation of Red Army operations against Poland, the defeat of the White Russian leader Wrangel, and the fall of the First Republic of Armenia provided a favorable situation to suppress the last independent nation in the Caucasus to resist Soviet control.

The People's Commissar of Nationalities Affairs, Joseph Stalin, who by the end of the Civil War had gained a remarkable amount of bureaucratic power, took a particularly hard line with his native Georgia.

Georgia had taken over the Lori "neutral zone" in a disputed Armeno–Georgian borderland on the pretext of defending the district and approaches to Tiflis in October 1920, in the course of the Armenian genocide, which was perpetrated by Turkey.

[31] When the Georgian government protested to the Soviet envoy in Tbilisi, Aron Sheinman, over the incidents, he denied any involvement and declared that the disturbances must be a spontaneous revolt by the Armenian communists.

[33] The latter was so upset by the news of the Central Committee decision and Ordzhonikidze's role in engineering it that on his return to Moscow he demanded, though fruitlessly, that a special party commission be set up to investigate the affair.

[35][36] At dawn on 16 February the main body of 11th Red Army troops under Anatoliy Gekker crossed into Georgia and started the Tiflis Operation[37] aimed at capturing the capital.

While these events were proceeding, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs issued a series of statements disclaiming involvement by the Red Army and professing willingness to mediate any disputes which had arisen within Georgia.

Georgian forces under General Giorgi Mazniashvili managed to push the Soviets back inflicting heavy losses; they quickly regrouped and tightened the circle around Tbilisi.

On 10 March Soviet forces entered Kutaisi, which had been abandoned, the Georgian leadership, army and People's Guard having evacuated to the key Black Sea port city of Batumi in southwest Georgia.

Hoping to use these circumstances to their advantage, the Mensheviks reached a verbal agreement with Karabekir on 7 March, permitting the Turkish army to enter the city while leaving the government of Georgia in control of its civil administration.

Georgy Chicherin, Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, submitted a protest note to Ali Fuat Cebesoy, the Turkish representative in Moscow.

On 2 March Lenin, who feared an unfavorable outcome to the Georgian campaign, sent his "warm greetings to Soviet Georgia", clearly revealing his desire to bring hostilities to an end as quickly as possible.

France had never considered sending an expeditionary force, and the United Kingdom had ordered the Royal Navy not to intervene; furthermore, on 16 March the British and Soviet governments signed a trade agreement, in which Prime Minister Lloyd George effectively promised to refrain from anti-Soviet activities in all territories of the former Russian Empire.

Amid the ongoing Turkish-Soviet consultations in Moscow, the armistice with the Mensheviks allowed the Bolsheviks to act indirectly from behind the scenes, through several thousand soldiers of the Georgian National Army mobilized at the outskirts of Batumi and inclined to fight for the city.

The sanguinary events in Batumi halted the Russian-Turkish negotiations, and it was not until 26 September when the talks between Turkey and the Soviets, nominally including also the representatives of the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian SSRs, finally reopened in Kars.

On 27 March 1921, the exiled Georgian leadership issued an appeal from their temporary offices in Istanbul to "all socialist parties and workers' organizations" of the world, protesting against the invasion of Georgia.

Beyond passionate editorials in some Western newspapers and calls for action from such Georgian sympathizers as Sir Oliver Wardrop, the international response to the events in Georgia was silence.

Its failure and the ensuing wave of large-scale repressions orchestrated by the emerging Soviet security officer, Lavrentiy Beria, heavily demoralized the Georgian society and exterminated its most active pro-independence part.

Soviet historians considered the Red Army invasion of Georgia a part of the larger conflict which they referred to as "the Civil War and Foreign Intervention".

This version exculpated Soviet Russia from any charge of aggression against Georgia by pointing out that the Georgians themselves asked Moscow to send the Red Army into their country, so as to remove their existing government and replace it with a communist one.

Most Georgian historians were not allowed to consult Spetskhran, special restricted access library collections and archival reserves that also covered the "unacceptable" events in Soviet history, particularly those that could be interpreted imperialist or contradicted a concept of a popular uprising against the Menshevik government.

[18] Under strong public pressure, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR set up, on 2 June 1989, a special commission for investigation of legal aspects of the 1921 events.

The commission came to the conclusion[47] that "the [Soviet Russian] deployment of troops in Georgia and seizure of its territory was, from a legal point of view, a military interference, intervention, and occupation with the aim of overthrowing the existing political order.