Salome Zurabishvili: Our extraordinary mother tongue is what unites us all and will be our strength and energy for a very long time

President Salome Zurabishvili congratulates the citizens of Georgia on Mother Language Day.

"Our extraordinary mother tongue is what unites us all and will be our strength and energy for a very long time!", Salome Zurabishvili noted.

Mother Language Day is celebrated in Georgia on April 14. 35 years ago, in 1978, the Soviet government decided to cancel the status of the state language for the local languages in the allied republics. Only Russian had to remain the state language of the USSR. The corresponding change was to be made to Article 78 of the Soviet Constitution of Georgia, according to which the Georgian language would have lost the status of the state language. It had to be approved by the Supreme Council of Georgia on April 14, 1978. However, on the same day, several thousand people who came out on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi stood up against this intention. The largest part of them was student youth.

A mass march was organized in the capital from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University to the Supreme Council (now Parliament) building. Similar processes also developed in Batumi. The situation was becoming unmanageable. The government of the Soviet Union had two options: bloodshed or surrender. Official Moscow was forced to refuse to make changes to the constitution.

April 14 was declared Mother Language Day. Historians believe that April 14, 1978 gave the first impetus to the rise of the national movement in the eighties of the last century.