South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast
In February 1921, many Ossetians joined the advancing Red Army which brought Georgia's independence to an end. In April 1922, newly established Soviet Georgian government rewarded the Ossetian service with the establishment of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast which included not only Ossetian and mixed Georgian-Ossetian, but also purely Georgian villages and had Tskhinvali, where the Ossetians were in minority at that time, as its capital. However, an area populated by the Ossetians equal to what became the Ossetian Autonomous Oblast was left out inside Georgia. These included great pockets of Ossetian ethnic territories south of Gori and along the spine of Mount Caucasus, east of South Ossetia to the borders of Azerbaijan.