Tiflis Governorate

Tiflis Governorate (Old Russian: Тифлисская губернiя) was one of the guberniyas of the Russian Empire with its centre in Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, capital of Georgia). In 1897 it constituted 44,607 sq. kilometres in area and had a population of 1,051,032 inhabitants.

Tiflis Governorate was established in 1848 along with the Kutaisi Governorate, after the dissolution of the Georgia-Imeretia Governorate. In 1860 and 1868 parts of the Tiflis were used to form Elisabethpol Governorate and Dagestan Oblast. The governorate lasted in these boundaries for 50 years, until the Democratic Republic of Georgia was founded.

Administrative divisions

Tiflis Governorate consisted of the following uyezds:

• Tiflis
• Akhalkalaki
• Akhaltsikhe
• Aresh (attached to Elisabethpol Governorate in 1868)
• Borchali
• Elisabethpol (attached to Elisabethpol Governorate in 1868)
• Gori
• Kazakh (attached to Elisabethpol Governorate in 1868)
• Dusheti
• Signakhi
• Telavi
• Tianeti

Demographics

As of 1897, 1,051,032 lived in the governorate, with around 20% of them being urban. Ethnic Georgians constituted 44.3% of the population, followed by Armenians (18.7%), Azeris (10.2%), Russians (including Ukrainians and Old Believers, 9.7%), Ossetians (6.4%), Avars (3.2%), Greeks (2.6%), Turks (2.4%), etc. More than half of the population adhered to Eastern Orthodox Christianity with significant Muslim, Catholic and Jewish minorities.

Known governors

• Sergei Yermolov, 1847–1849
• Ivan Andronnikov, 1849–1855
• Nikolai Lukash, 1855–1857
• Alexander Kapker, 1858–1860
• Konstantin Orlovsky, 1860–1876
• Maxim Osten-Sacken, 1876–1878
• Konstantin Gagarin, 1878–1883
• Alexander Grossman, 1883–1887
• Karl Zisserman, 1887–1889
• Giorgi Shervashidze, 1889–1897
• Fiodor Bykov, 1897–1899
• Ivan Svechin, 1899–1905
• Paulus Rausch von Traubenberg, 1905–1907
• Mikhail Lozina-Lozinsky, 1907–1911
• Andrei Cherniavsky, 1911–1914
• Ivan Strakhovsky, 1914–1916
• Alexander Mandrika, 1916–1917 (acting)

References