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The first Democratic Republic of Armenia was created following the collapse of Impeial Russia and the short-lived Transcaucasian Federation with Georgia and Azerbaijan. Following the defeat of the Ottomans at the conclusion of the Great War, additional territories were ceded to Armenia following the Treaty of Batum and the provisions of the Paris Peace Conference which were then ratified by the treaties of Sèvres, Alexandropol, Kars and Lausanne. However, the regions of Nakhchivam Nagorono-Karabakh and Syunik were disputed with Azerbaijan with which there was armed conflict in 1918 and again between 1920 and 1922 whilst control over the provinces of Oltu and Lori were disputed with Georgia with which Armenia was also in conflict in 1918.

However, following the invasion of the Red Army and the forcible incorporation of Armenia into the subsequently created Transcaucasian Soviet, in 1922 Nagorono-Karabakh was ceded to Azerbaijan albeit as an autonomous Armenian enclave along with, in 1931, Qazakh and Artsvashe whereas Lori was ceded to Armenia from Georgia. Following dissolution of the Transcaucasian Soviet in 1936, Armenia became a Soviet republic in its own right.

A humanitarian crisis involving the influx of some 400,000 refugees into Armenia from the Ottoman Empire of which almost half died through famine and sickness and the lack of the nascent republic's resources to deal with the catostrophe was followed in September 1920 by further military conflict with Turkey, which eventually led to invasion by the 11th Red Army and the absorption of Armenia into the Soviet Union, some two months later.

Though rich in oil and natural gas, the Republic of Ingushetia is one of the most economically depressed in the whole of the Russian Federation, not only because of its shared frontiers with Chechnya and North Ossetia-Alania but by the high crime rate, anti-government agitation, terrorist incidents and dire human rights situation.

After Sovietization, the Ingush were denied the autonomy they had been promised by the Bolsehviks and were incorporated into the Chechen-Ingush ASSR

In 1944 both the Ingush and Chechens were accused of collaboration with Nazi Germany and were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia, in the process of which an estimated two thirds of the population perished. They were allowed to return home in 1957 by which time however, much of their territory had been settled by the Ossetians part of which had been transferred to North Ossetia.

Following the declaration of Chechen independence in 1991, the Ingush ceded from the Chechen-Ingush Republic. However, ethnic tensions in North Ossetia led to the outbreak of conflict with North Ossetia in which over 60,000 Ingush civilians were forced from their homes in the Prigorodny district. .

Following commencement of the conflict between Russia and Chechnya in 1995, the influx of refugees into Ingushetia from both Chechnya and North Ossetia, doubled obviously leading to the complete economic, social and political destabilisation of Ingushetia which is now ruled by an ex KGB general..

In recent years, the security situation has markedly deteriorated. Despite the pervasive presence of Russian military and security forces, there was a marked increase in 'terrorist' attacks accompanied by abductions and extrajudicial killings by paramilitary death squads which did not abate until much of the Russian forces assigned to Ingushetia were redeployed following the conflict in South Ossetia. In August 2008, Magomed Yevoluev, an Ingush opposition leader was allegedly assassinated by the Russian FSB.

There was at the outset a series of rebellions in Ossetia in agtitation for independence, it is said, at the institgation of Bolshevik agitators.

After the Sovietisation of Georgia in 1921, the tettitory became an autonomous oblast albeit as part of Georgia.

In 1990, the Georgian government enacted a law barring regional poltiical parties which would effectively have prohibited the existence of any separarist parties within South Ossetia, Adjara or Abhkazia. The South Ossetians then declated independence and boycotted the Georgian parliamentary elections.. The Georgian government responded by purporting to abolish South Ossetia's autonomous status resulting in civil war within the terrority in late 1991 following which some 100,000 ethnic Ossetians fled the territory into North Ossetia whilst some 23,000 ethnic Georgians fled South Ossetia to other parts of Georgia. Many of the refugees from South Ossetia were resettled in uninhabited areas of North Ossetia from which the Ingush had been expelled by Stalin in 1944 which then led to conflict with the Ingush.

In 1992, Georgia was forced to accept a ceasefire to avoid a large scale confrontation with Russia. The government of Georgia and South Ossetian separatists reached an agreement to avoid the use of force against one another and Georgia pledged not to impose sanctions against South Ossetia.

In November 1992, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) set up a mission in Georgia to monitor the peacekeeping operation. From then until mid-2004 South Ossetia was generally peaceful.

In June 2004, serious tensions began to rise as the Georgian authorities strengthened their efforts to bring the region back under Tbilisi rule. They established an alternative government pro-Georgian government for South Ossetia in Tbilisi following which violence between the two sides again flared up.

It soon became apparent that South Ossetian separatism was being actively encouraged by Russia and assisted economically, politically and militarily.