Evgen Gvaladze

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Evgen (Geno) Gvaladze (Georgian: ევგენ (გენო) ღვალაძე) (May 13, 1900 - October 15, 1937) was a Georgian jurist, journalist and politician involved in the anti-Soviet national-liberation movement throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

He was born in a small village of Sveri near the mining town of Chiatura, Imereti, western Georgia, the part of Imperial Russia, into the family of a retired cavalry officer Artem Gvaladze (1862-1918). Having graduated from the Tiflis Gymnasium in 1920, he joined the National Army of the Democratic Republic of Georgia and took part in the battles against the invading Soviet and Turkish armies in 1921. After the Bolshevik takeover of the Georgian government, he was demobilized and enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Tbilisi State University from which he graduated in 1926. At the same time, Gvaladze was involved in the underground activities of the Georgian Menshevik Party to which he was a member from 1917 to 1922.

From 1926 to 1932, Gvaladze was a member of the Board of the Defending Lawyers, and lectured at the Pedagogical Institute in Gori from 1935 to 1937. His articles were systematically published in the Georgian press. In spite of continuing social activity under the Soviet government, he never abandoned his political positions and led, from 1926, the underground conspirative group of the Georgian national political organization "Tetri Giorgi". Earlier, on May 26, 1922, on the fourth anniversary of the independence of Georgia, he was one of the organizers of the first mass anti-Soviet demonstration in Tbilisi and hence was briefly arrested by the GPU. Later, in 1922, he joined the underground anti-Bolshevik bloc of the Georgian political opposition known as the Committee for Independence of Georgia and represented it in the Kakheti district where he was involved in preparation of an armed rebellion in 1924. He was arrested August 30, 1924, but was released as a part of the declared amnesty in March 1925. In August 1937, during the Great Purge, he was rearrested along with his comrades from the Tetri Giorgi group and shot in Tbilisi on October 15, 1937.

[edit] References

• Newspaper "Akhali Era", Tbilisi, No: 24, 2000, pp. 15-16 (in Georgian)
• L. Bitsadze, "Unforgettable contribution" (about the famous people from Chiatura), Kutaisi, 2004, pp. 179-180 (in Georgian)