- Varlam Cherkezishvili
Prince Varlam Cherkezishvili ( _ka. ვარლამ ჩერქეზიშვილი) (
Tiflis ,September 15 ,1846 –London ,August 18 ,1925 ) was a Georgian politician and journalist, involved in anarchist communist movement, and later in the Georgian national liberation movement. He was also known as Warlaam Tcherkesoff or Varlam Cherkezov in Russian manner.He was born into the family of the Georgian Prince Aslan Cherkezishvili in Tbilisi, Georgia (then part of
Imperial Russia ). He was sent to be educated in Russia in the 1850s. He joined theRussia n socialist movement at its very beginnings, and was arrested twice between 1866 and 1869. Following a trial in the summer of 1871, he was imprisoned at thePeter and Paul Fortress , and then exiled inTomsk in 1874. Two years later, he escaped to Western Europe, where he worked with the press in the circles of Russian emigration and fellow anarchists. He was also prominent in his criticism of Marxist ideas. His main work, "Pages of Social History", was translated into nine languages. Actively involved in the Georgian national liberation movement, he helped to found the Georgian Socialist-Federalist Party. He wrote for theTimes a series of articles in 1877 to bring to the attention of an English speaking audience the situation in Georgia.He returned to
Tiflis , Georgia, with the break-up of theRussian Revolution of 1905 , but its failure and the repression in Georgia compelled Cherkezishvili to return to Europe (1907). WithKropotkin ,Rudolf Rocker andAlexander Schapiro he participated in the foundation of the AnarchistRed Cross . Back inLondon , he rallied Kropotkin's position in defense of the Allies inWorld War I , and signed in 1916 the so-called "Manifesto of the Sixteen ". With theOctober Revolution of 1917 he returned toPetrograd , and when Georgia obtained its independence in May 1918, he obtained a seat in the Constituent Assembly of theDemocratic Republic of Georgia . The Soviet occupation forced him into exile in March 1921. He returned toLondon where he would continue to fight again for Georgia’s independence, until his death in 1925.
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