Following the February Revolution and the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Russian Provisional Government established the Special Transcaucasian Committee (Ozakom) on this date to administer the Transcaucasian region. This committee replaced the imperial viceroyalty and was intended to act as the highest organ of civil administration.1
In the wake of the October Revolution and the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd, the leading political forces in Transcaucasia, including the Georgian Mensheviks, Azerbaijani Musavatists, and Armenian Dashnaks, refused to recognize the new Soviet government. They dissolved the Ozakom and established the Transcaucasian Commissariat in Tbilisi, which declared itself the legitimate government of the region until an All-Russian Constituent Assembly could be convened.2 Headed by the Georgian Menshevik Evgeni Gegechkori, this body acted as an independent government, effectively severing ties with Bolshevik Russia.3
The Transcaucasian Seim (parliament), which had been formed in February 1918 from the region's elected delegates to the now-dissolved All-Russian Constituent Assembly, formally declared the independence of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR).4 This act was a direct response to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under which Soviet Russia had ceded Transcaucasian territories to the Ottoman Empire. Refusing to recognize the treaty, the Seim established a new, sovereign, and federal state.5
The TDFR existed for only a month. Facing an ongoing invasion by the Ottoman army and irreconcilable internal divisions among its Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani factions, the federation collapsed. On this date, the Democratic Republic of Georgia declared its independence, effectively dissolving the TDFR.6 Armenia and Azerbaijan declared their own independence two days later, on 05/28, marking the final end of the short-lived republic.7
For the time after 05/28/1918, see Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.