People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1924–1994 ○ Natural causes

Georgian film director whose Repentance fired the cultural starting gun of glasnost

When Repentance was shelved, Abuladze kept the only video copy under his bed, fearing it would be destroyed.

A Georgian Soviet film director. His debut Magdana's Donkey (1955), co-directed with Rezo Chkheidze, won the Cannes short film prize and signaled Soviet cinema's return to the international stage. His trilogy of The Plea (1967), The Wishing Tree (1976), and Repentance (1984) marked his peak; Repentance, shelved for two years after completion, was the first Soviet film to confront the Stalinist terror in allegorical form, and its 1986 release at the Fifth Congress of the Filmmakers' Union became the cultural starting gun of glasnost. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1987; Abuladze later served as a People's Deputy of the USSR (1989–1991).

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1928–2014 ○ Natural causes, died

The Soviet foreign minister who ended the Cold War, then led Georgia

On 20 December 1990 Shevardnadze warned the Congress of People's Deputies that dictatorship was coming, announcing his resignation as foreign minister and his break with the party; some accounts date the speech to 21 December, so the date is disputed.

Born in 1928 at Mamati in Georgia, in a teacher's family. Interior minister of Georgia from 1965, he became the republic's party first secretary in 1972, waging large-scale anti-corruption campaigns and the Abasha experiment. In 1985, despite having no diplomatic experience, he was made Soviet foreign minister and negotiated arms cuts, the Afghan withdrawal and German unification. On 20 December 1990 he resigned, warning that dictatorship was coming. He returned home in 1992 and led Georgia as State Council chairman and president until the 2003 Rose Revolution. He died in Tbilisi on 7 July 2014.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1939–

The Georgian First Secretary who asked Moscow for troops, then resigned after 21 died

Patiashvili later recalled: 'Gorbachev phoned and said, in a tone that left no room for argument: The square must be cleared immediately, and the army will handle it. I understood he knew about the plan and supported it.'

He succeeded Shevardnadze as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party in 1985, but dismantled most of his predecessor's reform experiments and drove the opposition underground. In April 1989, facing independence protests sparked by the Abkhaz autonomy dispute, he asked Moscow to send troops and on 8 April convened the republic's Defence Council, which decided to disperse the demonstrators by force. Before dawn the next day, Soviet troops armed with sapper shovels and poison gas descended on unarmed civilians, killing 21; Patiashvili accepted responsibility and resigned within two weeks. He remained in Georgian politics, twice ran for president against Shevardnadze, and supported the 2003 Rose Revolution, though he later criticized Saakashvili.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Soviet communism 1945–

A Georgian party official at the edge of Soviet collapse

“The law should be enforced, but it should be enforced without victims.”

Givi Gumbaridze was a Communist Party official who rose from archival and party-organizational work to the top leadership of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. A former state-security chief, he governed as national mobilization intensified and party rule collided with popular demands. After the bloody Tbilisi crackdown of 1989, he called for both accountability and order, but could not reverse the crisis of Soviet authority.