He drove the Mingrelian affair and then fell himself
As Gagra NKVD chief, he made beatings routine in interrogations, declaring: "Whoever does not beat is himself an enemy of the people!"
Rukhadze rose through Georgia's security organs, and by 1937, as head of the NKVD in Gagra, Abkhazia, he directed mass arrests using "simplified investigation" methods. During the war he served as head of the Special Department of the Transcaucasian Front and chief of SMERSH counter-intelligence before becoming Georgia's state security minister in 1948. In that post he became the driving figure behind the fabricated "Mingrelian affair," aimed at Beria's clients. Yet he fell himself: arrested in November 1952, months before Stalin's death, he was tried in 1955, ironically, as a member of Beria's group, and shot.
Career Timeline
- 1937–1938Head of the Gagra district NKVD department, Abkhazia
- 1939–1941Chief of the investigation section, NKVD of the Georgian SSR
- 1941–1943Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Georgian SSR; head of the Special Department of the Transcaucasian Front
- 1943–1945Head of SMERSH counter-intelligence, Transcaucasian Front and Military District
- 1948–1952Minister of State Security, Georgian SSR
- 1952–1955Arrested, tried at Tbilisi and executed
Related historical events
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeThe Gagra district NKVDHe headed the NKVD district office in Gagra, Abkhazia, in 1937; his surviving indictment attributes to him over 300 arrests conducted by "simplified investigation" methods.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarSMERSH counterintelligence chief on the Transcaucasian Front
- 1953The Fall of BeriaThe Tbilisi trial, 1955He had driven the "Mingrelian affair" against Beria's own clients and was already under arrest from November 1952, yet was ultimately shot in 1955 not for that case but as an alleged member of Beria's group.
Architect of the Mingrelian Affair
Rukhadze left his deepest mark on history as the driving force behind the 1951–1952 'Mingrelian affair.' In the autumn of 1951, while Stalin was vacationing at the Tsqaltubo resort, Rukhadze requested a private audience. He had been purging the allies of his predecessor Avksenti Rapava and found himself under counterattack from powerful Mingrelians, so he appealed directly to Stalin. Stalin seized the opening to weaken Lavrentiy Beria's influence. On 9 November 1951 the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party adopted a resolution 'On bribery in Georgia and the anti-party group of Comrade Baramia,' and the next day Rukhadze arrested 37 high-ranking officials, including Mikhail Baramia (Second Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party), Avksenti Rapava (Minister of Internal Affairs), and Vladimir Shonia (Prosecutor of the Republic). The case rapidly expanded to more than 500 detainees; seven of the eleven members of the Georgian Party Central Committee were arrested.
Rukhadze and his subordinates used torture to extract confessions of an 'anti-Soviet plot linked to Turkey.' First Secretary Kandid Charkviani was removed and replaced by Akaki Mgeladze. But Rukhadze did not stop: he obtained testimony from Baramia that also compromised Mgeladze and forwarded it to Moscow. On 4 June 1952 Stalin publicly rebuked Rukhadze for bypassing the republican party leadership, and on 9 June Rukhadze was dismissed and soon arrested. In a bitter irony, at the 1955 Tbilisi trial Rukhadze was grouped alongside Rapava, whom he himself had tortured, as part of 'Beria's gang,' sentenced to death, and shot.