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Irakli Tsereteli
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Irakli Tsereteli
Irakli Tsereteli (2 December [O.S. 20 November] 1881 – 20 May 1959) was a Georgian politician and a leading spokesman of the Social Democratic Party of Georgia and later Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) during the era of the Russian Revolutions.
Tsereteli was born and raised in Georgia when it was part of the Russian Empire. A member of the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP, Tsereteli was elected to the Duma in 1907, where he gained fame for his oratorical skill. Shortly after entering the Duma, Tsereteli was arrested and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Tsarist government, and exiled to Siberia. A dedicated Social Democrat who believed in the Menshevik ideology, Tsereteli was one of the leading figures of the movement in Russia. In 1915, during his Siberian exile, Tsereteli formed what would become known as Siberian Zimmerwaldism, which advocated for the role of the Second International in ending the war. He also developed the idea of "Revolutionary Defensism", the concept of a defensive war which only allowed for the defence of territory, and argued it was not being utilized.
Returning to the government in the aftermath of the 1917 February Revolution, he took up a leading position in the Petrograd Soviet and accepted a position in the Russian Provisional Government as Minister of Post and Telegraph, and briefly as Minister of the Interior. Concerned that political fragmentation would lead to a civil war in Russia, Tsereteli strived to broker compromises between the various leftist factions in the Russian Revolution and was the force behind efforts to work together with the middle classes, to no avail. Renowned for his speaking ability, Tsereteli gained appreciation for his ability in this regard, giving impassioned speeches in the Duma and in the Petrograd Soviet.
After the Bolsheviks seized power of the Russian government during the October Revolution, Tsereteli returned to Georgia. He worked as a diplomat at the Paris Peace Conference, where he lobbied for international recognition and assistance for the newly independent Democratic Republic of Georgia; meaningful assistance largely failed to materialize before the Bolshevik-led Red Army invaded in 1921. An avowed internationalist, Tsereteli grew increasingly distant from the Georgian Mensheviks who gradually adopted more nationalist tendencies. He spent the rest of his life in exile, mainly in France, working with socialist organisations and writing on socialism, and died in New York City in 1959.
Tsereteli was born on 2 December [O.S. 20 November] 1881 in Gorisa, Kutais Governorate, in the Russian Empire (now in Imereti, Georgia), to a Georgian Orthodox Christian family, the third child of Giorgi Tsereteli, a radical writer from the noble Tsereteli family, and Olympiada Nikoladze, the sister of the journalist Niko Nikoladze. Tsereteli had one sister, Eliko, and brother, Levan. Both Giorgi and Niko were members of the meore dasi (მეორე დასი; Georgian for "second group"), a group of Georgian populists and socialists, and they greatly influenced Irakli's outlook. Tsereteli grew up in nearby Kutaisi and spent the summers at his family's estate in Gorisa; from a young age he noticed the inequality between his family and their servants and the local peasants, and desired to fix the imbalance.
When he was three, Tsereteli's mother died, so he and his siblings were sent to live with two aunts in Kutaisi, while Giorgi moved to Tiflis (now Tbilisi), the administrative centre of the Caucasus, occasionally visiting the children. Tsereteli would later move to Tiflis and attend a gymnasium. While there, he lived with his father who had since married Anastasia Tumanishvili, a Georgian writer and educator. Tsereteli's biographer W.H. Roobol suggests that due to Tsereteli's reserve towards Tumanova, Giorgi's influence over his son declined: "In any event, Giorgi Tsereteli was unable to imbue his son Irakli with his patriotic ideals." Nikoladze's views, which were more cautious against Georgian nationalism, also likely played a part in Tsereteli's shifting ideals. At the gymnasium Tsereteli distanced himself from Christianity, questioning death and its meaning, and was introduced to the writings of the British naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin, which also factored into his move away from religion. He completed his schooling in 1900, the same year as his father's death, and moved to Moscow to study law.
Soon after arriving in Moscow, Tsereteli became embroiled in the student protests that broke out that year; how involved he initially was is unclear, with the only certainty being he was not yet a Marxist. It was during these protests that Tsereteli first gained fame as a speaker, and he eventually became a leading figure in the student movement. He was arrested in the spring of 1901 and after a brief detention was allowed to return to Georgia. Though he had been arrested, he was allowed to return to Moscow in the autumn of 1901 to write his exams. There had been relative quiet in the universities until that point, but it again erupted into protests; this time Tsereteli took a leading role, and was regarded as one of the most important figures of the Moscow student movement.
At a meeting of student protesters on 9 February 1902 Tsereteli was arrested; considered one of the most radical leaders, he was one of two students given a sentence of five years' exile in Siberia, the longest sentence given to the protesting students. Though the government quickly backtracked and offered him the chance to serve it in Georgia, Tsereteli refused, seeing it as a pardon and considering "its acceptance as being in conflict with [his] views", as he explained in a letter. This refusal, which was publicised with other exiles, cited social democracy as advocated by the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), and effectively confirmed Tsereteli's support for the ideology by this point. After declining the offer to return to Georgia, Tsereteli arrived in the village of Tulun in early 1902, located about 400 kilometres (250 mi) from Irkutsk, Siberia's administrative centre. However, by late summer he was permitted to move to Irkutsk. It was during this exile that Tsereteli became familiar with the Russian Social Democrats, particularly Marxism; Tsereteli read Vladimir Lenin's What Is To Be Done?, though he disliked the view Lenin espoused. Indeed, the RSDLP would split into two main factions in 1903 over factional differences.
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Irakli Tsereteli
Irakli Tsereteli (2 December [O.S. 20 November] 1881 – 20 May 1959) was a Georgian politician and a leading spokesman of the Social Democratic Party of Georgia and later Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) during the era of the Russian Revolutions.
Tsereteli was born and raised in Georgia when it was part of the Russian Empire. A member of the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP, Tsereteli was elected to the Duma in 1907, where he gained fame for his oratorical skill. Shortly after entering the Duma, Tsereteli was arrested and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Tsarist government, and exiled to Siberia. A dedicated Social Democrat who believed in the Menshevik ideology, Tsereteli was one of the leading figures of the movement in Russia. In 1915, during his Siberian exile, Tsereteli formed what would become known as Siberian Zimmerwaldism, which advocated for the role of the Second International in ending the war. He also developed the idea of "Revolutionary Defensism", the concept of a defensive war which only allowed for the defence of territory, and argued it was not being utilized.
Returning to the government in the aftermath of the 1917 February Revolution, he took up a leading position in the Petrograd Soviet and accepted a position in the Russian Provisional Government as Minister of Post and Telegraph, and briefly as Minister of the Interior. Concerned that political fragmentation would lead to a civil war in Russia, Tsereteli strived to broker compromises between the various leftist factions in the Russian Revolution and was the force behind efforts to work together with the middle classes, to no avail. Renowned for his speaking ability, Tsereteli gained appreciation for his ability in this regard, giving impassioned speeches in the Duma and in the Petrograd Soviet.
After the Bolsheviks seized power of the Russian government during the October Revolution, Tsereteli returned to Georgia. He worked as a diplomat at the Paris Peace Conference, where he lobbied for international recognition and assistance for the newly independent Democratic Republic of Georgia; meaningful assistance largely failed to materialize before the Bolshevik-led Red Army invaded in 1921. An avowed internationalist, Tsereteli grew increasingly distant from the Georgian Mensheviks who gradually adopted more nationalist tendencies. He spent the rest of his life in exile, mainly in France, working with socialist organisations and writing on socialism, and died in New York City in 1959.
Tsereteli was born on 2 December [O.S. 20 November] 1881 in Gorisa, Kutais Governorate, in the Russian Empire (now in Imereti, Georgia), to a Georgian Orthodox Christian family, the third child of Giorgi Tsereteli, a radical writer from the noble Tsereteli family, and Olympiada Nikoladze, the sister of the journalist Niko Nikoladze. Tsereteli had one sister, Eliko, and brother, Levan. Both Giorgi and Niko were members of the meore dasi (მეორე დასი; Georgian for "second group"), a group of Georgian populists and socialists, and they greatly influenced Irakli's outlook. Tsereteli grew up in nearby Kutaisi and spent the summers at his family's estate in Gorisa; from a young age he noticed the inequality between his family and their servants and the local peasants, and desired to fix the imbalance.
When he was three, Tsereteli's mother died, so he and his siblings were sent to live with two aunts in Kutaisi, while Giorgi moved to Tiflis (now Tbilisi), the administrative centre of the Caucasus, occasionally visiting the children. Tsereteli would later move to Tiflis and attend a gymnasium. While there, he lived with his father who had since married Anastasia Tumanishvili, a Georgian writer and educator. Tsereteli's biographer W.H. Roobol suggests that due to Tsereteli's reserve towards Tumanova, Giorgi's influence over his son declined: "In any event, Giorgi Tsereteli was unable to imbue his son Irakli with his patriotic ideals." Nikoladze's views, which were more cautious against Georgian nationalism, also likely played a part in Tsereteli's shifting ideals. At the gymnasium Tsereteli distanced himself from Christianity, questioning death and its meaning, and was introduced to the writings of the British naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin, which also factored into his move away from religion. He completed his schooling in 1900, the same year as his father's death, and moved to Moscow to study law.
Soon after arriving in Moscow, Tsereteli became embroiled in the student protests that broke out that year; how involved he initially was is unclear, with the only certainty being he was not yet a Marxist. It was during these protests that Tsereteli first gained fame as a speaker, and he eventually became a leading figure in the student movement. He was arrested in the spring of 1901 and after a brief detention was allowed to return to Georgia. Though he had been arrested, he was allowed to return to Moscow in the autumn of 1901 to write his exams. There had been relative quiet in the universities until that point, but it again erupted into protests; this time Tsereteli took a leading role, and was regarded as one of the most important figures of the Moscow student movement.
At a meeting of student protesters on 9 February 1902 Tsereteli was arrested; considered one of the most radical leaders, he was one of two students given a sentence of five years' exile in Siberia, the longest sentence given to the protesting students. Though the government quickly backtracked and offered him the chance to serve it in Georgia, Tsereteli refused, seeing it as a pardon and considering "its acceptance as being in conflict with [his] views", as he explained in a letter. This refusal, which was publicised with other exiles, cited social democracy as advocated by the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), and effectively confirmed Tsereteli's support for the ideology by this point. After declining the offer to return to Georgia, Tsereteli arrived in the village of Tulun in early 1902, located about 400 kilometres (250 mi) from Irkutsk, Siberia's administrative centre. However, by late summer he was permitted to move to Irkutsk. It was during this exile that Tsereteli became familiar with the Russian Social Democrats, particularly Marxism; Tsereteli read Vladimir Lenin's What Is To Be Done?, though he disliked the view Lenin espoused. Indeed, the RSDLP would split into two main factions in 1903 over factional differences.
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