Alexi Inauri

Alexi Inauri ( _ka. ალექსი ინაური; _ru. Алексей Николаевич Инаури, "Aleksey Nikolayevich Inauri") (April 20 1908 – 1993) was a Soviet Georgian commander who headed the Georgian KGB (Committee for State Security) for over 30 years (1954-1986) and made it one of the most effective of the KGB's regional Soviet branches. [Cherkashin, Victor & Feifer, Gregory (2005), "Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer", p. 125. Basic Books, ISBN 0465009689.] He ended his career as a colonel general and the Hero of the Soviet Union. Inauri was assassinated in Batumi, Georgia, at the age of 85.

Born of a mixed Georgian-Ossetian family in Gori (then under the Russian Empire), Inauri volunteered in the Red Army in 1927 and graduated from a school of cavalry officers for the North Caucasian mountainous nationalities in 1931. In 1932, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Prior to and at the outbreak of Soviet-German hostilities during World War II, he was a regimental commander in Ukraine, and then headed a cavalry division in the course of the war. Having graduated from the General Staff Academy in 1948, he was in charge of various military units until being appointed Minister of Interior of the Georgian SSR in 1953. In an unprecedented display of military presence, Inauri, together with the commander of the Transcaucasian Military District Antonov, joined the Georgian Central Committee chaired by Vasil Mzhavanadze, himself an army officer.Knight, Ami W. (1993), "Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant", pp. 214, 277. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, ISBN 0691010935..]

In 1954, Inauri was made head of the Georgian KGB, a post that he retained until 1986. His tenure coincided with a series of upheavals and rise in anti-Soviet dissident movements in Georgia to which Inauri was able to respond vigorously due largely to a strict discipline imposed by him within the KGB and a large web of espionage through which Inauri's agents infiltrated dissident groups and even the Georgian Orthodox Church. He played a role in a palace coup against Nikita Khrushchev in October 1964, escorting the Soviet leader from his datcha at Pitsunda to a special meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee in Moscow where Khrushchev was to be ousted.ru icon [http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=8791 Инаури, Алексей Николаевич ("Inauri, Aleksey Nokolayevich")] . "warheroes.ru". Retrieved on 2008-06-14.] Inauri was promoted to the rank of colonel-general in 1967 and awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union in 1985, shortly before his retirement later in 1986. Inauri was murdered by unidentified assailants in the Black Sea city of Batumi in a newly independent Georgia in 1993.

References