Terek Soviet Republic

Origins

In March 1918 a congress of the peoples of the Terek region at Pyatigorsk proclaimed the Terek Soviet Republic as part of the Russian SFSR. It covered the lands of the Terek Cossack Host and of the Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians and Kabardians, with its government at Pyatigorsk and Vladikavkaz.

Rule and society

The republic was led by a people's council and council of commissars under Samuil Buachidze until his murder in June 1918. It tried to balance the claims of Cossacks and mountain peoples over land, while fighting the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus and anti-Bolshevik Cossacks. A Cossack uprising broke out in June 1918.

Decline and legacy

In July 1918 it was merged into the North Caucasian Soviet Republic, though its government survived in Vladikavkaz until the White advance of early 1919. Soviet power returned in 1920, and the region was later divided into autonomous units for its peoples.

Few sources survive for this state; details are uncertain.