the period following the war of 1828–1829, Sultan Mahmud II attempted to break the power of the great independent derebeys of Lazistan. In the event, the Laz derebeys, led by Tahir Ağa Tuzcuoğlu of Rize, did rise in revolt in 1832. The revolt was initially successful: at its height in January 1833, but by the spring of 1834, the rising had been put down. The suppression of the rising had finally broken the power of the Laz derebeys. This state of insubordination was not really broken until the assertion of Ottoman authority during the reforms of the Osman Pasha in the 1850s. In 1547, Ottomans built coastal fortress of Gonia, an important Ottoman outpost in southwestern Georgia, which served as capital of Lazistan; then Batum until it was acquired according to the Congress of Berlin by the Russians in 1878, throughout the Russo-Turkish War, thereafter, Rize became the capital of the sanjak. The Muslim Lazs living in newly established Batumi Oblast were subjected to ethnic cleansing; by 1882, approximately 40,000 Lazs had settled in the Ottoman Empire, especially to provinces in Western Anatolia such as Bursa, Yalova, Karamursel, Izmit, Adapazarı and Sapanca. With the spread of Young Turk movement in Lazistan, the short-lived autonomist national movement headed by Faik Efendişi was established. However, it was soon eliminated as the result of Abdul Hamid's intervention. During the First World War (1914–18) Russians invaded the provinces of Rize and Trabzon. However, following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian forces had to withdraw from the region and finally left the area to the Ottoman-Turkish forces in March 1918. From 1918 to 1920, the national movement swept rapidly all around Lazistan, committees and an interim government was created. It was oriented towards Soviet Russia. But as soon as, the Soviet-Turkish treaty of friendship was concluded, it helped the Turks, to integrate Lazistan. The autonomous Lazistan sanjak existed until 1923, while the designation of the term of Lazistan was officially banned in 1926, by the Kemalists. Lazistan was divided between Rize and Artvin provinces. During the beginning of the Stalinist era, the Lazs living under Soviet domination had a certain cultural autonomy in the Soviet Union but after breakout of the Second World War, Soviet authorities designed a strategy to ethnically cleanse the border regions of populations it deemed unreliable. The Laz population was sent to exile in Siberia and Central Asia. After the