The Transcaucasian Commissariat was established at Tbilisi on 11 November 1917, as the first government of the independent Transcaucasia following the October Revolution in Petrograd. The Commissariat decided to strengthen the Georgian–Armenian–Azerbaijani union by convoking a Diet or general assembly (Sejm) in January 1918.Richard Pipes, The formation of the Soviet Union, page 103. It declared independence from Soviet Russia and formed the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic after being faced with the threat of being overrun by the Ottoman invasion.
