Batum

Outlet port on the Black sea, Postal service started 1919, 1st Stamps issued 1919

During 1901, sixteen years prior to the October Revolution, Joseph Stalin, the future leader of the Soviet Union, lived in the city organizing strikes. On March 3, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk gave the city back to the Ottoman Empire; unrest during the closing weeks of World War I led to the re-entry of Turkish forces in April 1918, followed in December by British forces, who stayed until July 1920. Kemal Atatürk ceded the area to the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union on the condition that it be granted autonomy, for the sake of the Muslims among Batumi's mixed population