Architect of Revolutionary Defencism and the man to whom Lenin replied, 'There is such a party!'
At the First Congress of Soviets on 4 June 1917, Tsereteli declared that 'there is no party in Russia that says: give us power.' Lenin rose from his seat and answered: 'There is such a party!'
A Georgian Menshevik leader who championed Revolutionary Defencism in 1917 and served as Interior Minister in the Provisional Government. He is remembered for drawing Lenin's famous retort, 'There is such a party!' After the October Revolution he helped found an independent Georgia.
Career timeline
1900–1902Entered Moscow University law faculty; arrested as student-movement leader, exiled to Siberia
1903–1906Joined RSDLP, aligned with Mensheviks; editor of Kvali weekly. Studied in Berlin, returned 1906
1907Deputy, Second Duma (Kutaisi); head of SD faction. After dissolution, 5 years' hard labour, Siberian exile
1915–1917.2Led Siberian Zimmerwaldism; edited Siberian Journal. Joined Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee
1917.3–9Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee; leading voice of Revolutionary Defencism
1917.5–8Minister of Post and Telegraph (May–July), concurrently Minister of Interior (July–August)
1918–1921Co-signed Georgian independence declaration; Constituent Assembly deputy; Paris Peace Conference delegate
1921–1959Exile in France; executive member of the Second International. Moved to USA 1940; died in New York, 1959
Dissident
1939–1993
✕ Shot dead under disputed circumstances
The nationalist dissident who became Georgia's first democratically elected president
"All my life I was in the opposition and fought against the government. Now I am the government": said in an interview after becoming chairman of the newly elected Supreme Council, 1990.
Georgian philologist and dissident, son of the celebrated writer Konstantine Gamsakhurdia. In 1977 he co-founded the Georgian Helsinki Group with Merab Kostava, exposing Soviet human rights abuses to the world, and was repeatedly imprisoned. In April 1989, as co-leader of the Independence Committee, he organized mass peaceful demonstrations and hunger strikes in Tbilisi; the Soviet military's bloody crackdown on them decisively radicalized Georgian opinion toward independence. Leading the Round Table-Free Georgia coalition, he won the first multiparty elections in 1990 and was elected Georgia's first president in May 1991 with 87% of the vote, only to be overthrown in an armed coup seven months later, flee to Chechnya, and die under disputed circumstances in western Georgia in December 1993.
Career timeline
1954Founded the underground youth group Gorgasliani
1963–1977Lecturer in English, Tbilisi State University; researcher, Institute of Literature, Georgian Academy of Sciences
1977–1979Co-founded Georgian Helsinki Group; arrested, imprisoned, released after public recantation
1988–1990Co-chair, Society of St. Ilia the Righteous; co-leader of the Independence Committee
1990–1991Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia
