TIMELINE

1801–04

Most of present-day Georgia becomes part of the Russian Empire.

1879

Future Soviet leader Iosif Dzhugashvili (Joseph Stalin) is born in the town of Gori in eastern Georgia.

1918

An independent Georgian state is declared in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

1921

The Red Army invades; Georgia is absorbed into the emerging Soviet Union.

1956

Protests against Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation policy turn violent and prompt calls for secession from the USSR; the uprising is brutally crushed by Soviet forces.

1989

Demands for more autonomy in the South Ossetia region lead to violent clashes between Georgians and Ossetians. Soviet peacekeepers are deployed.

1991

The Georgian parliament declares secession from the Soviet Union after independence is overwhelmingly supported in a referendum.

1993

Separatists drive Georgian troops out of almost all of Abkhazia, which becomes an internationally unrecognised breakaway state under Russian tutelage.

2008

Georgia is drawn into a war in breakaway South Ossetia that sees Russian forces intervene and evict Georgia’s forces from its remaining areas of control in the region, as well as from Abkhazia.