Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus
region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is
bounded to the west by the Black
Sea, to the north by Russia, to the
south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of Georgia is Tbilisi. Georgia covers a territory of
69,700 km², and its population is almost 4.7 million. Georgia is a unitary, semi-presidential republic, with the
government elected through a representative democracy.
During the classical era,
independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia. The kingdoms of
Colchis and Iberia adopted
Christianity in the early 4th century. A unified Georgia reached the peak of its
political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV
and Queen
Tamar in the 11th–12th centuries. At the beginning of the 19th century,
Georgia was annexed by the Russian Empire.After a brief period of independence following
the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia
was occupied by Soviet Russia in 1921,
becoming the Georgian Soviet Socialist
Republic and part of the Soviet Union. After independence in 1991, post-communist Georgia suffered from civil unrest and
economic crisis for most of the 1990s. This lasted until the Rose Revolution of
2003, after which the new government introduced democratic and economic reforms
