DECREE ISSUED BY THE SUPREME COUNCIL OF THE GEORGIAN SSR on introduction of amendments to the decree issued by the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR on March 9, 1990 “Guarantees for Protection of State Sovereignty of Georgia”

The Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR decrees:

To introduce the following amendments to the Decree issued by the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR on 9 March 1990 “Guaranties for Protection of State Sovereignty of Georgia”:

1. To add after Paragraph 10 the following Paragraph:

“Noting that the regime established in Georgia as a result of military intervention and occupation - initially non-elected authority (Revolutionary Committee) and then, extremely limited, based on narrow class-interest principles Soviets did not express genuine and free will of the Georgian people. Proceeding from the aforementioned, the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR declares null and void all those legal acts that abolished political and other institutions of the Democratic Republic of Georgia and replaced them with other political and legal institutions introduced through violence and external force …”

2. To add at the end of the decree the following: “ to start negotiations between the Georgian SSR and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic aimed at establishment of fundamentally new and appropriate for sovereign states relationship, and acknowledgment on the part of the Government of RSFSR (the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic-edit) of the fact of gross violation in February-March 1921 of the 7 May 1920 Treaty and adequate political and legal assessment of this violation should lay foundation for such relationship.

Despite the heavy legacy and irrefutable fact of forceful establishment of Soviet regime in Georgia, taking into account the present political realities, historical experience of genesis of state power and its development, the existence, although not good enough, democratic and representative political institutions and being fully aware of the fact that these institutions function within the Soviet Union’s political system and that reality plays major role in assessment of legal bases of any authority. Today, only the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR is able and authorized to create through legal means all necessary conditions for establishment of genuinely democratic and multi-party system based bodies of central and local authorities, while taking in due account the best interests of all strata and political spectrum of the society. Only such an approach could serve as solid precondition for successful steps undertaken towards the restoration of state independence of Georgia.

The Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR and every single member of it, is fully aware of its huge responsibility before the Georgian people at this epoch-making and historical stage of Georgia’s development and calls upon the Georgian people, all residents of Georgia to exert every effort to the achievement of our cherished goal - the restoration of state independence of Georgia”.

Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR G. Gumbaridze

Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR V. Kvaratskhelia

20 June 1990

(Bulletin of the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR, 1990, # 6, p. 11-12)