Prokopius Dzhaparidze

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Prokopius Aprasionovich Dzhaparidze or Japaridze (1880-1918) was a Georgian Communist activist, one of the Red Army and Bolshevik Party leaders in Azerbaijan during the Russian Revolution.

Educated at the Aleksandrovsk Teachers Institute in Tbilisi, Dzhaparidze joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898. He was one of the founders of Gummet organization, set up to do political work amongst Muslims, which grew into a mass organisation, drawing large masses of Muslim people behind the Bolsheviks.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Dzhaparidze was a member of the Baku Committee of the Bolshevik Party (see Baku Commune); as a delegate to the 6th congress of the Bolshevik Party, he was selected as a candidate member of its Central Committee, and became a member of Caucasian Border Committee. From December 1917 Deputy Chairman, during January–July 1918 the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Baku Soviet.

During March, Dzhaparidze was the member of the Committee of Revolutionary Defence which suppressed a mutiny in Baku; from April, he was the Commissar for Internal Affairs in Baku, and, from June, he also served as Commissar for Food.

On September 20, 1918, he was one of the 26 Baku Commissars shot by the White Army of the Central Caspian Dictatorship.