 The demonstrators began gradually to withdraw only after Shevardnadze announced the final decision and read out the article affirming the status of Georgian as the state language of the Georgian SSR.Following this unprecedented concession to public opinion, Soviet authorities, alarmed by the mass actions in Georgia, abandoned similar amendments to the constitutions of Armenia and Azerbaijan and declared Armenian and Azerbaijani state languages at the republican level, without waiting for similar manifestations in either republic.The language issue in the Transcaucasian republics revealed the sensitivity of the national problem in the region.