Gaioz Devdariani

Who was Gaioz Devdariani?

Gaioz Devdariani was a prominent Georgian revolutionary, Soviet politician, member of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences and a victim of the Great Purge of 1937. Devdariani was born in the village of Kharagauli, Western Georgia into a large family. In 1919, Devdariani was arrested by the Menshevik Government of Georgia for plotting and masterminding an insurrection against the Democratically elected government. He was imprisoned in Metekhi but managed to escape from the prison in 1920. Between 1921 and 1923, Devdariani worked in various communist ministries of Georgian SSR. From 1929 to 1931 Devdariani became the first Minister of Education of the Georgian SSR. During the same year Devdariani because the honorable member of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences in department of Economics. After only a year as a Minister, he was promoted to the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Georgian SSR. However, soon after his appointment, Lavrentiy Beria started agitations and provocations against Gaioz.

Brothers of Devdariani, George Devdariani and Shalva Devdariani held important positions in Georgian SSR and the communist party. They became the first targets of Beria and Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze. In 1933, George Devdariani was shot by one of the deserters from his division. It has been alleged that Beria plotted the desertion and instructed the soldier to kill his commanding officer. In 1934 Shalva Devdariani was arrested in Tbilisi and was said to have been personally executed by Beria. After learning of his brother’s arrest and execution, Devdariani resigned from his position and moved to Zaporizhia, Ukraine. There he became the head of military aviation factory. Under the pressure from Beria, Joseph Stalin gave an order to arrest Devdariani and indict him with charges of plotting to assassinate Lavrentiy Beria and of having links with exiled Leon Trotsky. Devdariani was declared an "enemy of the people" and was denounced for Trotskyism. While the charges against Devdariani were entirely false, Beria, a master provocateur, persuaded Stalin to grant him an approval for Devdariani's liquidation.