In February 1921, the Red Army launched an invasion of Georgia which brought an end to the Democratic Republic, with the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic being established in its place. At its last session the Constituent Assembly voted to establish a government-in-exile before fleeing the country to Europe. Tsereteli emigrated to Belgium, where he became a teacher at the Free University of Brussels. Cherkezishvili returned to London, where he continued to agitate for Georgian independence and resistance to the newly-established Soviet Union. The Soviet government was unpopular in Georgia and faced the prospect of an insurrection against its rule from its inception. Even those members of the working class that were the most sympathetic towards Bolshevik ideology were opposed to the new government, due to the subordination of workers' organizations and trade unions to Bolshevik committees, as well as the centralization of power in Moscow. An internal conflict within the Georgian Bolsheviks over the question of national autonomy ended with the defeat of the "national deviationists" (led by Filipp Makharadze and Polikarp Mdivani) by the "hardliners" (led by Joseph Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze), who advocated for greater centralized rule of Georgia under the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. The Bolsheviks subsequently ordered the forcible dissolution of all opposition parties, in order to cement power in a one-party state.