The Status of Language
The three Transcaucasian republics – Georgia, Armenian SSR and Azerbaijan SSR – were the only Union republics where the language of a "titular nationality", in this case Georgian, enjoyed the status of state language. When in early 1978 the issue of adopting new constitutions in the republics, based on the 1977 Soviet Constitution, came up, an attempt was made by the Soviet authorities to remove the anomaly of the three Transcaucasian republics, replacing it with a clause giving an equally official status to the Russian language. The move was highly unpopular, but in Georgia the question of language was particularly sensitive and a negative outcry was quite predictable since a suggestion to hold certain courses in the local institutions of higher learning in Russian two years earlier, in April 1976, had provoked a public outrage. While the situation in Azerbaijan remained calm, the events proceeded in an unexpectedly dramatic manner in Georgia and to a lesser extent Armenia.
Read more about this topic: 1978 Georgian Demonstrations
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