Kakuza Choloqashvili

Kakuza Choloqashvili

Kakuza (Kaichosro) Tscholoqashvili ( Georgian ქაქუცა (ქაიხოსრო) ჩოლოყაშვილი ; born July 14, 1888 in Matani , Kakheti , Georgia ; † June 27, 1930 in Leuville-sur-Orge , France ) was a Georgian officer. In 1919 he was Deputy Minister of Defense of the first Georgian republic. From 1922 to 1924 he led partisan units against the Soviet occupation of Georgia. He is considered a Georgian national hero .

Life

Youth and job

He came from the political and military elite of Georgia. His father was Prince Iosseb Choloqashvili , a descendant of Bidzina Choloqashvili , who had organized the uprising against the Persian occupation of Kakheti in 1654 .

After graduating from the Georgian Gymnasium in Tbilisi , he served in the Russian army . He was an officer in the regiment of the Tver Dragoons . In 1913 he married Nino Megwinetuchutsesi. After the marriage, he first cultivated his lands in Georgia.

Officer in two armies

Kakuza Choloqashvili

In the First World War he fought on the Austro-Hungarian front. He was seriously wounded in 1914 and, after recovering, was assigned to the Caucasian front as commander of a rear unit. During the Turkish offensive he defended the fortress Eagle's Nest and was seriously wounded again. In 1915 he was appointed head of the Georgian Cavalry Legion , which fought in Persia under General Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Baratow . He made a successful breakthrough to Mesopotamia . There he joined the British Expeditionary Forces in 1916 .

After Georgia's independence in 1918, Choloqashvili joined the new Georgian army with the rank of colonel . In 1919 he became Deputy Minister of Defense of the Democratic Republic of Georgia . After the Georgian capital Tbilisi was taken by the Red Army on February 25, 1921, the government and the national army moved to the western part of the country.

Partisan leader

Georgian partisans under the command of Kakuza Choloqashvili

While the Georgian government went into exile in Paris on March 17, 1921 , Choloqashvili stayed in the country. In March 1922 he organized a partisan unit, the sworn in (Georgian შეფიცულები ), which took up the resistance against the Soviet occupation in the summer of the same year. In June 1922 he led a partisan attack on the Red Army near the town of Sighnaghi , then organized a peasant uprising in Chewsureti, a mountain region in the Caucasus . The uprising was put down and Choloqashvili fled with his troops to Chechnya . In November 1922 he returned and began new attacks on the Red Army. His brother Swimon was killed during the fighting. His family was arrested by the Bolsheviks and his father-in-law was executed.

In 1923 Choloqashvili took part in various attacks on Bolshevik institutions. In 1924 he took part in the August uprising in Georgia . His partisan unit captured the city of Manglisi on August 29, one day after the start of the uprising, then went to the eastern Georgian mountains, where he took the city of Dusheti and on September 3, smashed the Red Army units at Swimoniant-Chewi.

Various attempts by the occupying power to render his unit harmless failed. In mid-September the partisans fought their last battle at Chew-Grdsela in the Kakheti region. The Red Army outnumbered them there. Choloqashvili's unit narrowly escaped under artillery fire.

Tomb in the Pantheon in Tbilisi

Exile in France

After the suppression of the August uprising, he and his supporters fled to Turkey . He emigrated to France with 30 men and lived at the headquarters of the Georgian government in exile near Paris . He spoke Georgian, Russian and French.

death

Kakuza Tscholoqashvili died of tuberculosis in Leuville-sur-Orge in 1930 . He was first buried in the communal cemetery in Leuville-sur-Orge. On the initiative of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili , his remains were transferred to Tbilisi and buried on November 21, 2005 with a state funeral on the Pantheon on Mtatsminda .

The Georgian National Bank issued a 200 Lari banknote with his portrait on the front.

literature

• Alexandre Mikaberidze: Kakutsa Cholokashvili . In: The Dictionary of Georgian National Biography (online version)

Web links

Commons : Kakutsa Cholokashvili  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files